The Ophiuchi Hotline (30 page)

“Oh, shut up,” Vaffa said. She looked at Lilo, and so did everyone else.

“It’s going to happen,” Lilo said, quietly, and Diana was nodding her agreement. “I’m sorry to admit this…but I don’t really care. I don’t love the government any more than Javelin or Cathay. Or you, Vaffa. You’re dedicated to throwing it out and putting the Boss back in. But it doesn’t matter. It’s going to happen, that’s one thing I’m sure of. I guess you people don’t believe us, but we really did see into the future, at least as far as our own lives go. Many people are going to die. The Invaders will wipe out anyone who remains in the solar system.”

“That doesn’t bother you?” Vaffa asked.

“I…” Lilo was a little concerned about that, herself. But the answer was clear. “No. It’s like…like it’s already happened. I’ve already seen it. We can go back and add our story to what the Traders are already broadcasting, do our best to convince people to get out. But many won’t. And that’s the most we can do. It’s inevitable.”

But Vaffa could not accept that. Lilo looked at her, closed her eyes and tried to remember her. There was a change coming, she was sure of it. Vaffa was about to overcome her limitations—was she Tweed’s child? Lilo seemed to recall that Vaffa would eventually tell her that. But she was no longer sure of much about the future. There were bits and pieces that usually did not fit together. She knew Vaffa was now wondering if she had done her job well for the Boss. But at the same time doubt had crept into her mind. Diana’s story had impressed

Vaffa more than anyone. For the first time, she saw the Invaders as real things, not as cardboard enemies.

But for the time being, her loyalty was still to the Boss. It wouldn’t do to tell her that he had been forced to flee Luna as a direct result of the actions of another Lilo and Cathay.

The conversation went on, but Lilo ignored it. She was watching her other self, her clone, and the clone was watching her.

“I remember Makel,” Lilo said, softly.

“And I remember Javelin when she was a much thinner person.” Diana smiled, and Lilo returned it. “I also remember the impact of
Vengeance
, and being killed by Vaffa.”

“Come back to my room,” Lilo said.

Once settled in the bunks, facing each other, they didn’t say anything for a long time. The voices from the solarium were like the buzzing of a fly. They were discussing the events of the last few hours, while Lilo felt very much above it. She still retained parts of her transcendental experience, her glimpse of the way things had been, were, and would always be. She knew she had a long life ahead, but the details were blurred and fading.

“It’s going, isn’t it?” said Diana.

“Yes. I just remember the high points of your past, and the other…this gets confusing, doesn’t it. To talk about.”

Diana smiled.

“I can’t remember too much of the future,” she said.

“Just an impression that it’s going on for quite a while. For each of us.”

“Yes.”

They were quiet again. Lilo had the sense that something had not been said, but knew it would be. She looked at the silver cube in Diana’s hand. It looked ordinary enough.

“Can I see that?”

Diana looked at it, as if she had forgotten it was in her hand. She tossed it to Lilo.

It traveled a meter from her hand, slowing down all
the way, and stopped halfway between them. Lilo could not think of any force that could have slowed it down; in weightlessness it should have moved in a straight line until it hit something. Nevertheless, there it floated.

She reached out and took it. It resisted her slightly. It seemed to prefer being motionless, though not with any great tenacity.

“What does it do, I wonder?” Lilo asked.

“You think we should fool with it?”

Lilo was holding it close to her face, studying it carefully. She had thought there was a slight discoloration on one side and was picking at it with her thumbnail. “I won’t, I just want to—”

It unfolded.

It was not an easy thing to watch; it was not a matter of sides detaching themselves or opening up in any way. It was larger cubes evolving themselves from smaller ones until she had what she thought was an unsteady stack of eight, but which turned cut to be just one hypercube. Lilo drew her hands back in dismay, and the thing floated.

“Uh…. what should I do now?”

Diana moved around it, craning her neck to get a closer look without touching it.

“You think we can put it back like it was?”

Lilo reached out. Evidently the arrangement was unstable. The singularity moved again as soon as she touched it, and it became a simple cube again, but with sides of ten centimeters. It now had eight times its former volume.

“I thought I almost saw how it was done,” Diana said. She took the cube, but before she could try anything it had started folding again. This time it was inward, but when it was done she ended with two five-centimeter cubes.

“Maybe we ought to leave this to the mathematicians,” Diana said, and set them carefully on the bunk beside her.

“If we learned how to use it, it would save Javelin a lot of fuel on the trip back.”

“Hm. Well, I think we’d better ask her first.”

Diana looked at Lilo, then looked away again. But her eyes were drawn back.

“I…the details are getting fuzzier. About what’s going to happen to us, I mean.”

“Yes?”

“But I have…well, do
you
have the same memory that I do? You and I were…together a great deal. I remember that you seemed to be involved in most everything I do from now on.”

“Yes.” Lilo relaxed even more. She couldn’t have been wrong about it, but it was nice to hear that Diana remembered the same thing. There was now very little left of her memories of the future: dream glimpses dissolving as she examined them, impressions rather than memories. What was left was vivid and real, but like flash-frames on a film or odd pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

She could see the forest under the blue sun. It was at least a hundred years in her future, but Diana was there with her.

“I wonder what sun it is?” Diana asked, and they both laughed. “Won’t it be fun to find out?”

The sun was hard to find in the sky now, and in any case, Lilo was on the wrong side of Poseidon. They had accomplished turnover a few weeks ago, and were now decelerating. Alpha Centauri was directly under them.

It had taken Lilo a while to get used to her sunflower garden. To tend it, she had to move along catwalks hanging upside down from the ground. It was like moving beneath some vast overhang of rock. Through the grid of the catwalk she could see stars beneath her feet.

The garden was three concentric rings of plants centered around the huge silver bowl of the nullfield which contained the hole. She could see it in the distance, supported on three invisible pillars evidenced only by the massive installations which generated them. A white radiance exploded downward from the open end of the bowl, pointing toward Alpha; silently, constantly putting out its one-twentieth-gee deceleration.

She moved along the catwalk, her safety line securely tethered to a cable that ran just above her head. The gravity was very small, but if she fell, that first step down was two light-years.

The sunflower was not a new invention; the germ of the idea went back to pre-Invasion times. They were three-meter parabolic dishes, each with a white-hot nodule at the center. The dish focused energy on the
nodule. Photosynthesis took place, and the roots of the sunflower plants produced tubers with tough skins. Inside, they were sweet and soft like pineapples.

Each sunflower spent its life hanging down, its roots embedded in the ground overhead, its flower suspended by a thick stalk. To harvest the crop, Lilo hung a big metal pan from hooks on the catwalk and dug in the ground. Rock, newly converted soil, and tubers fell down into the pan. It was exactly the opposite of stoop labor, she reflected. It got you in your arms and shoulders, not your back.

She cat down to take a rest, and while she was dangling her legs over infinity a strange thing happened to her. Her life flashed before her eyes, and it was an intricate and various thing, not a simple journey from birth to death, but tortuous, full of pain and many deaths. And yet…

“Are you all right, Lilo?”

“What?” She looked up. “How long have you been here?”

“A few minutes,” Cass said. He was a young adult now, looking like his parent in many ways. “You didn’t answer when I said hello. Are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m fine.” It was fading already. She tried to hold it, to contain that fantastic tapestry as she had grasped it for one glorious instant. But it was too much for her mind. She felt her two living sisters drop away from her, but knew it would not be forever.

Cass was sitting beside her now. He looked down between his feet.

“What do you think we’ll find when we get out there?” he asked.

“What?” It was gone now. She was only herself. Had it actually happened? But she remembered, she
had
seen the future.

“What will we find when we get out there? To Alpha?”

“People,” Lilo said. “Some people we know.”