Hilltown Chapter 14
Aug. 21st, 2006 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hafoc
Chapter 14
She woke to the warmth of the sun on her neck. The fire had gone out. Hill lay curled on his side, breathing evenly. His forehead, where the boom had hit, looked as if the accident had happened a week ago. It was hard to believe it had been just last night.
“Ready to move on, Hill?”
He groaned, rolled over, and sat up. “My head still hurts, some. And things look-- I don't know. It's hard to describe. Doubled, almost. Unsteady.”
Maggie looked down the coast, past the volcano. The southern horizon was white and indistinct. Even the mountain seemed to waver slightly in a faint haze. “I don't think it's your eyesight.”
Now Hill looked really worried. “It's still the vortex? I'd hoped that I was just dying.”
“Sorry to disappoint you. The vortex is still nearby, it has to be. And I can't see Dawn Treader anywhere.”
“Did she leave us? Did she sink?”
“How could I know if she's still afloat? I know Captain Hardy wouldn't just sail off and leave us, though. What bothers me is that she might be close and still be out of sight. The horizon might be four miles off, or half a mile. I can't tell, the way it fades into that haze. Damn. What if the vortex never lifts?”
Hill shrugged. “They always lift.”
How could Hill know what a vortex would do, here in the Southern Lands, where nobody had ever been before? It would be better not to say anything about that, though. She shrugged. “First things first. We need to find water, and food if we can. Let's head for the volcano.”
“Why that way? I don't like going that way. It looks, well, less real than the coast to the north.”
She didn't know quite why herself, but she wanted to head toward the volcano. “It's snow-capped. There has to be some meltwater coming off that peak. And if we go up the slopes a ways, we should be able to see Dawn Treader even if she's far offshore.” There. That sounded plausible, at least.
“You just said we can't see far in that vortex-fog.”
“You just said a vortex always lifts, sooner or later.”
Hill grinned sourly. “Touche'. Shall we?”
At least the beach made for easy walking. The surf wasn't high. The wet sand near the water's edge was good and firm. It was black sand. It must have come from the volcano somehow.
They'd come ashore close to the mountain. It stood so close to the sea that its western edge had collapsed into the water, leaving a cliff that looked to be a hundred feet high in places. It was a good thing they hadn't had to try to come ashore there!
“Look, Maggie. There, just past that clump of trees. There's a cut in the beach. Is it...?”
“Why I'll be. A creek.”
“You're surprised that you were right? I knew it. I knew you were feeding me a line.”
“Um, no, of course not. It's just a pleasant surprise when something you heard in some survival lecture somewhere turns out to be good advice.”
“I guess so. Water! I'm thirsty and-- wait a minute. Aren't we going to get sick from drinking water that comes out of the Redwoods?”
“It's the one thing we don't have to worry about. Redwoods germs and parasites don't like our chemistry. Besides, we drink the water or die, assuming the ship doesn't find us right away.”
“Right. You said something about finding food?”
“I might be able to find a thing or two, but it would be better not to until we know we don't have any other choice.”
Hill sighed. “I'd so hoped for some breakfast.”
“Well, could you catch a fish? Fish are Earth-bio, even here.”
He brightened. “You know, that bamboo-stuff would make for a decent fishing pole. And I could twist string out of those streamer-leaves. If I can think of something to use for a hook, we're golden. Nobody's fished here, I'm sure, so there ought to be lots of fish to catch. Big, stupid ones.”
“You keep thinking.” The creek had seemed far away, but they were coming up on it already. That seemed strange. Maggie hoped Hill hadn't noticed that the sun didn't seem to have moved since they'd started their walk. In fact, it might have moved a bit toward the east. It was hard to tell, when it shimmered and wobbled so.
The creek ran clean over black stones and black sand to the sea. Maggie knelt on the bank and dipped her cupped hands into the stream, lifting water to her lips to drink. Hill did the same, except he knelt right in the stream itself. It was getting warm. The water's coolness must feel good to him.
This was a beautiful place, in its way. The mountain was magnificent, rising higher and higher to its snowy peak. The creek meant water and, maybe, food. She could see minnows in the clear water, and Hill certainly seemed to have hopes of catching something; he was up along the bank now, bending the stems of a streamside thicket, fingering some of the long, trailing leaves, apparently trying to pick the best materials for his fishing outfit.
Aside from the fact that he might actually be able to catch a fish, Maggie had suggested fishing as a way to keep Hill's mind off his injuries and his other worries. Maybe she'd done better than she knew. He was acting with an enthusiasm that hinted he might be a fishing fanatic to begin with. So much the better. If the fishing was good, he'd probably be disappointed when Dawn Treader showed up.
She missed the green of Earth plants, but the redwoods here were beautiful in their own way. This shore had more variety of plants than even the Crays had. There was everything from low shrubs, huge bamboo-things that looked like they must have taken centuries to grow. Of course, the beauty was ruined by the way everything shimmered in the sun, and from the vortex distortion.
She squinted at the sky, at the mountain, noticing something strange about the distortion. There seemed to be waves of it sweeping across the world. No, it was more like rays. Rays of faint mist, waves of transparent refraction, sweeping around like the beam of light from a lighthouse. The source of the rays seemed to be a thicket of taller trees up the slope. It hurt to look at it; it seemed to crawl.
She shaded her eyes. There was no green anywhere. She could wish there was a little green somewhere, a little place of safety, a little bit of home. Wait a minute. She squinted into the shimmering distortion. Was that--
“Green?” she asked.
“What?” Hill seemed to be doing well at making string from the streamer-leaves. “What's green?”
“I think I see something green, up the slope there.”
Hill squinted. “I don't see it.”
“I think I should go up there and find out. Green. What if it's a patch of Earth plants?”
“It can't be. None of Carpathia's lifeboats could have crashed this far south, and what else could have brought Earth plants here? It's more likely it's some weird redwoods species we haven't found before. It'll turn out to be carnivorous, or uproariously poisonous, or something. We should stay here and watch for the ship.”
“No. You should stay here and watch. Somebody has to. I have to scout things out for our survival, in case we're stuck here for a while. A patch of green could be the most important thing we could find, so I have to go look for it. It's only a mile or so. Look, Hill, if there are Earth plants there, there might be some food. There might even be what's left of a lifeboat; yeah, supposedly the two missing ones crashed in the sea, but what if that story is wrong? What if one of them made it here? Or what if one of our exploring ships got here, but never made it back to Hilltown? There might even be survivors living up there. I'll be careful. You should stay here and watch for the ship. Besides, you have to catch us some fish.”
“I would stop you if I could, but you've got that damned Officer Blood look on your face again.”
She laughed. “No doubt.”
“If you won't listen to reason, then go ahead and be a damned fool. Maggie? Please be careful. Don't leave me alone here.”
“Keep an eye out for Dawn Treader. Here, keep the flares. I'll take one in case I get into trouble. Good enough?”
“No, but you're going to go anyway. You've had a bug in your ear over this accursed mountain since we first saw it. In fact, I think you've been leading us here since even before you knew it existed, if that were possible. You're drawn to it like one who is dragon-doomed. Just don't get yourself killed.”
“I won't.” She smiled to him, and then turned and started walking inland.
It looked like the green spot might be along the creek somewhere upstream. The creek was good to follow at first, at least. It would keep her from getting lost.
She made her way up the stream, wading in the water. It was hot once she got away from the beach, stifling hot and silent. It felt like the redwoods were watching her. Overhead, the rays of mist and distortion spun. As far as she could tell, she was heading toward their source, whatever it might be.
It was getting insanely hot It was more than hot. Her head spun. She couldn't think. Green, green, she wanted to see some Earth plants, she longed for that with all her being. The world seemed to lurch. She felt dizzy and nearly fell, and saw a little flower on the bank. It was a trumpet-shaped white flower, on a vine with green leaves. It was an Earth plant, shimmering and wavering like a dream. She squinted at it with fierce determination, and it became solid, but her head hurt so!
Somehow she kept going upstream, her head spinning so badly she was almost blinded. But there were more Earth plants, more of the vines with their white flowers. They smelled sweet. The scent and the sight of them seemed to steady the world a bit, as long as she concentrated on them. She went to hands and knees so she could see the vines and concentrate on them. They were thicker upslope. She crawled that way. The vines were soft, and smelled wonderful.
Meanwhile, the bars of distortion swept the sky overhead. It seemed she could hear them and feel them as they came by. They made everything unreal, doubled, tripled, as if everything was made of infinite layers that were trying to destroy each other. She stared at one of the ripples as it swept toward her, tried with all her strength to focus on it, to make sense of it. Green. If the ripples could be anything, why wasn't one of them full of the green she wanted so much? She wanted green. The world lurched. She fell flat on her face in the sweet vines.
She looked up. She was in a pine forest. The air was cool, pleasant and fragrant with resin. The ground was soft and comfortable with a layer of needles. The flowering vines were there too, in the patches where sun broke through the canopy. But the ground here was almost clear of underbrush. The trees were huge, perhaps a hundred years old, and shaded out most of the light. She got to her feet and continued upslope. It was pleasant, easy walking in here.
That was much better.
But it wasn't quite right. Things seemed transparent somehow. The waves of distortion shimmered overhead, beside her, all around her. She had to squint and concentrate on the pine woods, because any time her attention started to wane they tried to melt into some other form.
It didn't help to know that this forest couldn't be here. It didn't help to know this was impossible.
Or was it? How impossible was it, exactly?
Well, it couldn't exist, because she would have seen a pine forest like this from the beach. But if Hilltown had taught her anything, it was that ghosts of things that had once been, or of things that could have been, had a way of showing up to plague the living. Could there have been a pine forest like this some time in the mountain's past? Or was it something that might have happened, if Fate had dealt this world a different hand of cards? Perhaps the pine woods weren't impossible, perhaps they were just very unlikely. Maybe the fact they were unlikely was what made them seem so fragile and transparent. Was reality just a probability function? Were the rays of distortion somehow made up of probabilities?
Was it impossible that another of Carpathia's lifeboats might have crashed here? No, but a lifeboat crash wouldn't explain these trees. None of them were over a century old. Well, then, was it impossible that another ship, some kind of colony ship from Hilltown could have reached this place? Had Admiral Cray's lost colony ended up here?
She knew that story as well as anyone; how the Republican Army had stormed the Cray Archipelago and had found Cray's naval base half-burned and wholly abandoned. There had been food on the mess tables, ready for men and women who had vanished.
Some said the invading army had killed everyone they found, and engineered a monstrous cover-up to hide it. Some said Cray's people had known the fleet was coming, had taken to their supply ships, had reached the Continent and had vanished into the chaos of the wars. Of course, it was always possible they'd all ended up as vortex meat. But what if they hadn't? What if they tried to escape to a place even farther from the reach of the Republic?
Or-- she blinked, and the pine forest tried to dissolve. Quickly she focused her attention on it again. Or would it have been possible for a ship from Old Earth to have arrived here and have established a colony? Had people from Earth come that close to establishing contact with the Continent?
Now, as she moved further into the grove, the trees appeared to have been planted in rows. The rows meandered, to try to make the planting look random, but the effect wasn't quite perfect.
But if ships from Earth had arrived a hundred years ago, in time for their crews to plant these trees, they would surely have reached the Continent by now! No ships from Earth had touched this world's skies since the crashlanding. Nobody had seen any. She herself had certainly never seen any, except in some dream she now remembered she'd had. In her dream, she'd spoken with a dragon and watched something follow a curved path across the sky. It must have been a landing craft; a starship's boat, or a starship itself, if it was a small one with in-atmosphere capability. She'd seen a ship coming in for a landing in that dream. It had to be; meteors didn't maneuver like that.
That would mean that a ship from Earth had followed Carpathia here. Why? How? But that hadn't happened either, couldn't have happened. This was so confusing! It was hard to know what was real, as the waves of distortion pounded against her sanity.
She made her way upslope. Something gleamed in the shimmering mass of dream-stuff ahead of and around her. It looked like a metal roof on a white building, a line of white buildings. And she realized that, yes, this colony she was approaching was possible. Or not impossible, at least. Not quite impossible. It was one of the things that could have been.
Was that what the waves of distortion were? Different things that could have been, leading to different things that could still be, and none of it resolved? Her head ached and spun. Things were getting worse again. There seemed to be people moving in the shimmer around her, but they were fading and melting and becoming others. She lost her hold on them, fell to the ground again--
She was in the Redwoods. For the first time in her life, she welcomed the alien bamboo-like plants, with their red and orange foliage, as something natural, something familiar, an old friend. Things still rippled, waves of distortion still spun overhead, but these Redwoods were a lot more solid than the pine woods had been. They hurt her head less because they were a lot more probable. That was it. The more probable, the more solid? It might be fascinating, or alarming, to talk that over with Dean Lansen, if she ever got home again. Dean would understand it, wouldn't he? Why did she think so?
She walked up the slope. The green spot she'd seen from the beach should be around here somewhere. But she couldn't see anything but
---redwoods, nothing but redwoods, just the same as anywhere else. She blinked and saw--
---a depression, a crater, blasted in the volcanic soil--
---a scatter of metal fragments strewn among the red trees--
---a broken mass of metal that she could nearly recognize, wreathed in a mass of emerald vines studded with lovely white flowers. This was the spot of green she'd been looking for. She focused her attention on it with desperate intensity.
The ship was broken, and there had been fire when it crashed here. But still she could see it had been shaped like a high-speed airplane, one of the ones from Earth's historical archive that she'd studied all her days in school. It had been a thick fuselage, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet long, with small, sharp-edged, straight wings. It had probably had conventional tail surfaces too, although the aft part was twisted and broken too badly for her to be certain.
Now the craft lay on its side, broken in the middle, nose crumpled, with one of its wings standing up into the air like a knife blade, or like a silver tombstone. There was volcanic ash on that wing, in places where the metal was buckled enough to create ledges to catch it. The flowered vine had climbed partway up that slippery face of metal. But under the dust, under the vines, the metal seemed to be as bright as a mirror. Even the best steels of the Continent would tarnish or rust, exposed to the weather for a few years. What wonderful kind of metal must this be to have remained so bright for so long, standing lost and abandoned in this forest, in this weather?
Forcing the wreck to stay in its current form- if she looked away for an instant, it would shift into something else, she knew it, she could feel its reality trying to squirm away from her- she walked closer. The metal of the hull was ripped open here. Pulling the vines aside, she looked through the tear, then stepped inside.
They had almost made it, whoever they were. That was the sad part. For a ship to come down from orbit and crash-land, but remain intact enough for her to recognize, it must have been attempting a controlled landing, and it must have nearly succeeded. How sad to have come so far, and to have nearly made it, only to fail within sight of their goal!
This ship's builders had done their job well! Inside, broken and burned as things were, there were still devices in this wreck that looked like they might still be put into service, after what must have been a hundred years or more. A few lights on buckled control panels still glowed. The footlights, the emergency lighting at deck level along what must have been a fore-aft passageway, still cast dim light across melted and charred deck material- now vertical, now the wall, as she picked her way aft, stepping over tears and holes and the occasional open access panel or open door in what had been the passageway's portside wall.
Where had this ship come from? She thought it had to be Old Earth, but which nation? If Earth had nations at all, were they still the same as they had been when Carpathia became lost? Time had removed most of the markings from this ship and its equipment, but one of the lights on a control panel beside an airlock door she crossed had the word PURGE printed across it. Whatever nation they came from, then, this ship's builders must have spoken English.
She continued aft, walking on the wall, leaning one hand on what had been the deck. Aft, the wreck's interior was in better shape.
She must have been about as far aft as the wing when she squeezed between the two halves of a pressure door that had once sealed the passageway from what lay beyond. It was like cracking the seal and invading a pharaoh's tomb.
In more ways than one. Crawling in, she set her feet on what looked like a sarcophagus made of steel and glass. Beneath the glass was a metal and fabric form she recognized as a space suit. One of the gloves was half off. She could see wrist bones in the gap between suit and glove. CORT, the tag on the left side of the chest said. An insignia painted on the suit's shoulder showed a bird made of fire rising above a blue planet. CHRONOS III- CORT MICHAELS FREEDMAN SIMS, read the gold letters in the black circle around the firebird insignia.
A second spacesuit labeled FREEDMAN was in the sarcophagus which would have been above CORT's, if the ship were upright. Along the starboard side of the compartment, above her head as she edged through, was a third sarcophagus, but it was empty. There were cables and tubes where there might have been a fourth, but if so it was gone.
These were hibernation pods, obviously. Located amidships, they would have been in the most sheltered position aboard ship. Were they for emergency use, or had the crew intended to make their journey in cold sleep? What happened to them? How did they get here? She wished she knew!
She felt dizzy. Everything spun. She fell to the deck- yes, the deck, the ship had somehow rolled right-side up again, or the ancient gravity generators had kicked in somehow. The lights came on. She shook her head and raised herself up on one elbow. Smoke billowed. A form that must be human staggered out of it, burning head to foot. As it fell, a horror of burned flesh, it knocked something aside, a pot hanging from ropes. A pot hanging from ropes? A flower pot! It had been hanging from the overhead, near one of the lights. It contained an emerald green vine with beautiful white flowers.
She screamed and recoiled from the burning man- or woman? Scrambling backward, crablike, she watched the burning man rise from the floor. He moved backward as flames and smoke shot into him, making him more whole as he backed away from her. Now he was intact, and the smoke was vanishing. It sucked itself into ruptured plates at the starboard side of the passageway, near its front end. The flaming man stopped burning. He knelt down and started working with a portable welder, head and shoulders out of sight inside the wall. After a while, he got up and backed away. A door behind him slid open, and she saw the seats, windshield, and instrument screens of the ship's cockpit before he backed through the door and it slid shut in front of him.
She had to get out of here. She headed forward. But the pressure doors were closed. She saw a small circle of glass, a peephole, and looked through it. Beyond, in the amidships passageway, three figures in spacesuits were in weightlessness, maneuvering detached hibernation pod into the airlock. It appeared both airlock doors were open; the lock's control panel was flashing a warning about that. Inside the pod was something vaguely human-shaped, covered in a blue, starry flag. The container-- the coffin, now-- eased into the airlock, and with a shove it was drifting away. The space-suited figures saluted as it drifted out. Then one of them reached toward the airlock control panel.
She turned to the compartment's rear door. It slid open before her. She saw a compartment full of machinery, surrounding a transparent globe full of a gray mist that was disturbingly familiar. “Engaging,” the woman inside said. She pulled a lever, and rings of electrical fire formed inside the sphere.
She must have heard the door open, because she turned to face Maggie. She went pale. “Who are you? How did you get--”
“Turn it off!” Maggie screamed. But it was too late. The grayness reached out, engulfed the interior of the compartment. As the woman dissolved away, Maggie saw her uniform; it remained for an instant after her body had gone. SIMS, the nametag read.
Maggie closed her eyes, and opened them again. The engine compartment was quiet. The transparent sphere was empty. She turned forward again, and screamed. Sims stood there, but now she was ancient. She had a few wisps of gray hair. Her face was like a wrinkled skull, and her eyes were full of horror. “Free us,” she croaked.
“What? How?” Her skin crawled. It was all she could do to keep from screaming.
“Set us free. Set Andy free. Make him choose his path.”
“I don't understand.” But there was nobody there.
Forward was the only way out. Maybe she could force the door open. But as she approached, something clicked and the doors slid aside.
The passageway was cool and quiet. Somewhere, something hummed, a faint, reassuring sound of power supplies functioning normally. Air moved gently. The vine was in its flowerpot, hanging across from the airlock. The passageway widened into an alcove there, probably to let large objects (such as the occasional coffin) be maneuvered in and out. There was a light panel in the overhead right there too. The plant seemed to be doing pretty well, but she would have expected that. Given what its future would be, it just had to be healthy.
Further forward, the steel panels on the starboard side were freshly painted. There were a few dings, but all in all somebody had done a good job repairing the place where she'd seen the fire and the burning man.
The forward door slid open. She stepped onto the bridge. Or did you call it a flight deck, on something airplane-shaped?
The compartment was surprisingly roomy. It held four large, padded, very adjustable swivel chairs, or couches, upholstered in something that looked like red leather, and fitted with safety harnesses and connections for wires and hoses. One was on either side of her as she stood just inside the doorway. The other two, a bit closer together, faced a large windshield and the ship's nose.
It was surprising how simple and clean everything appeared. The left forward couch had a control yoke, for manual flight control, but it was folded up against the side wall, out of the way. There were a few small display screens and digital readouts, a few switches, but this starship's controls and instruments were hardly any more complicated than those on her beloved motorcycle. It didn't make sense! Something as complicated as a starship had to have complex controls. Either that, or insanely sophisticated ones.
Fascinated, she stepped closer to the windshield. She would have expected to see stars outside, but instead she saw that same gray fog she feared above all things. It was stripes and streamers, lined up as if forming the walls of a tunnel through which the starship moved at tremendous speed. But it looked like vortex-stuff, all the same.
“Lieutenant Sims?”
She spun. “Who's there? Show yourself.”
The air shimmered, and an old man appeared. He looked... well, cute was the best way to put it. Dressed in Victorian clothes, wearing a green visor, with gold glasses perched on his nose and spotless white hair, he looked like a cross between Tom Cratchitt and Santa Claus. He seemed to be a librarian or a clerk; he carried a huge book, and had a quill pen stuck behind one ear. “Oh, Lieutenant, I am so glad to see you again! I feared the worst after we re-engaged the timedrive, and you stopped talking to me. It was bad enough losing Michaels--”
The old man jerked. “Losing Michaels--” Jerk. “Losing Michaels--” Jerk. “Losing Michaels. Then, when the timedrive came back online, I lost track of your biological signs. Cort and Freedman are in suspended animation and I can't rouse them. I don't know what to do!”
She guessed this had to be Andy. Who else could it be? It didn't seem much of a risk to assume so. “How long has it been since I stopped talking to you, Andy?”
“You don't know?”
“Sorry, I don't.” What could she say? Andy must be an expression of the computer that ran this ship. She should say something a computer would understand, then. “I have been caught in that gray fog; call it a magnetic vortex, or something like that. It involves time distortion, among other things. Exposure to it caused me some data loss, and reset my sense of time. My internal timer is malfunctioning, you might say.”
“I understand. The ship's chronometer is also malfunctioning; it indicates a hundred years have passed, although it has only been a few minutes according to my own timer. Do you think I might have lost some of my data? Is that why I can't decide what to do?”
Maggie tried to hide a big grin at the opportunity Andy had just given her. “Let's find out. Replay for me basic mission objectives and chronology. Can you also download your full memory into a backup copy? I'll use some computer not attached to you to scan the memory files for discontinuities.”
“That seems wise. Memory downloaded to a standard ceramic module at your workstation.” She heard a click from the starboard aft corner of the bridge; that must be Sims's station, then.
Andy opened his book for her. At first it looked like pages of printed text, but then beautiful pictures sprung to life on the virtual paper. “The Chronos series of missions are part of the Timelord Project, to investigate time rate manipulation as a means of increasing speed in hyperspatial travel, and to perfect the Total Probabilities Prediction navigation and disaster-avoidance system. Chronos III is the first mission aboard Firebird, a new long-range experimental exploration ship. Firebird incorporates technologies based on the earlier discoveries of the Timelord program, including among other things prototypes of both the timedrive and the TPP system.” He smiled, and by the Old Gods, his perfect blue eyes twinkled when he did! “Modesty nearly forbids my mentioning that the TPP system, which Major Freedman named 'Andy' on the whimsical grounds that I am not, in fact, an android, is the most capable shipboard computer ever designed. Although the timedrive was important, testing me was this mission's main purpose.
“And I have failed-- failed-- failed--” It was spooky. Andy kept smiling, kept his perfect quaint Victorian appearance, but she could feel the anguish that overwhelmed him, the anguish that expressed itself by his losing control of his virtual body. The book he held, which had been showing beautiful three-dimensional pictures of Firebird leaving Old Earth's orbit and flying out into deep space, now showed a scene she knew too well. For in some strange way, she had been there too, when something inside an access panel exploded and the man she now knew was Michaels burst into flame.
“Andy. Stop. Break replay. That was a welding accident! That couldn't be your fault. You're a ship's computer!”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Sims. That's what Captain Freedman said too. But as TPP, my purpose is to predict any possible hazard and adjust events in the present so as to avoid it. I should have been looking for threats inside the ship too, not just setting our course to avoid external ones!”
“Andy, if nobody programmed you to do it, then it's not your fault that you didn't. You can't predict any possible hazard, after all.”
“But I can. I can see into the future, and change the present to pick the future my masters would want. It's not enough to say nobody told me to save Michaels. It's true that they didn't, but saving the crew is my first directive. I have to save them, from anything that might happen to them. It is my primary function. It's how I was made, and I can't change it.”
But she wasn't quite listening. Something he'd said sent a chill through her. “You can see the future?”
“I can see all possible futures, and pick the one that leads to success. But I can't find one! No matter what I choose, the crew will-- the crew will-- the crew will--”
“Don't you know how dangerous that is? You can't change the past. If you do, you weaken the structure of reality. Things get less and less probable. That makes them weaker and weaker, until eventually, they tear apart.” Where had she heard that? She knew it was true, somehow. She knew that changing the past was the most dangerous thing you could do. It could destroy civilizations, or entire worlds. It had destroyed them.
At least her words broke Andy out of his latest infinite loop. He laughed. “Don't be silly, Lieutenant Sims. Nobody can change the past; that's impossible. All I do is see the future, and change the present to reach the future you and the Captain want.”
“Andy, it's the same thing! Seeing the future perfectly and steering the present to the future you want is just the same as changing the past to create a different present. The only difference is that you're looking at it from the back end instead of the front.”
“I'm not programmed for metaphysics, Lieutenant Sims, but you remind me of how much I used to enjoy discussing that subject with you. Why had I forgotten that? I need to resurvey my memories and organize them into a more efficient structure.”
“Speaking of which, continue basic mission briefing, please.”
“Chronos I found nothing. Chronos II, investigating the Carpathia Timerift--”
“Stop playback. Why is it called that?”
“Because some metallic debris and some radioactive gasses were found there. Upon analysis, it was found that the metal plates were consistent with those used to construct the Carpathia, the legendary Flying Dutchman of the Eridani Run. When we discovered that the fabric of time and space was weak there, some overly romantic popular writers hypothesized the timerift might have something to do with Carpathia's disappearance.”
“Ah. Of course, I remember now. Continue.”
“Chronos II, investigating the Carpathia Timerift, returned readings indicating that a timedrive such as that now installed aboard Firebird might be possible, and might allow a ship so equipped to transit that rift. As indeed it did. However, two days in, the power system overloaded for reasons unknown, and Firebird dropped out into normal space again, location unknown. During repairs-- repairs-- repairs--”
“Skip that part. What happened after we restarted the timedrive?”
“Nothing, except that I lost track of you. Here we are. Lieutenant Sims, I am malfunctioning, because any future I can see includes death of all crewmembers and Firebird's destruction. I keep trying to shift from one future to another, looking down each as far as I can, trying to find some way out. There's no way out. There isn't one! All the crew-- crew-- crew--”
“Andy, it's all right. You have to choose some path for Firebird. You have to choose something. You can't hang here between choices forever.” She sighed. “Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, there's no way out. It's not your fault.”
“I know. But I have to keep looking.” His image smiled, but the anguish was almost enough to choke her. “I have to find a way. It's how I was made. I have to find a way to save them, even if I have to keep searching forever. There is no possible escape for me. Do you understand?”
She thought of Dean Lansen then, and she nodded. There was a tear in her eye. “Yes, Andy. I understand.”
“Can you help me?”
“Yes. I know how to help you. The time distortion from the timedrive, and that magnetic vortex it creates, has impaired your ability to calculate the future. You need a few manual adjustments. Then everything will be all right again.”
“I underesand, Lieutenant Sims. What should I do?”
“Set yourself to put Firebird into the future that comes closest to saving her, on my mark. Can you do that?”
“Easily. But she'll crash on a mountainside. The remaining crewmembers will die in their sleep upon impact.”
“As things are now. But once you've chosen that path, I'll make some adjustments on you. Once you're operating properly, it should be easy for you to make that final adjustment from a crash to a safe landing.”
“Thank you for your help, Lieutenant Sims. I presume you'll have to get at my main processing core.” A panel below the windshield popped open; inside it was a beautiful sculpture of colored crystals, glowing with pulsating light. “Be careful. With inertial and gravitational shields disengaged, my main core is very delicate. It is especially vulnerable to fire.”
“Put us on course to landing now, Andy.”
“Done.” The gray fog faded away outside. She saw a few stars, and a dark bulk below; a planet. Her planet. There was a faint whistling, and Firebird's nose began to glow. Red, yellow, white.
“Thank you, Andy.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Sims. Course programmed into backup autopilot system. Make your adjustments now.”
“I will.” She reached for the silver cylinder in her belt pouch.
“Lieutenant Sims?”
“Yes, Andy?”
“Thank you for releasing me. And goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” she said. Her eyes were blurred with tears as she aimed her flare into Andy's heart, and pressed the launching stud.
Andy exploded. She felt bits of crystal pepper her. The fire was terrifying. She hadn't thought of that, of the danger of fire. But it went out. She hurried aft, grabbing the ceramic memory module Andy had made for her as she left. The bridge doors closed behind her, sealing her away from the smoke.
Now what? Great, she'd trapped herself aboard a starship heading for a crash landing, maybe a hundred years before she was even born. And she hadn't left herself any way out.
But there hadn't been any way for her to get in, either, had there? And she'd done that.
She hurried aft to the hibernation pods again. Kneeling, facing the door into the engine room, she thought about how the wreck had looked when she found it. How would this all come out? Where would Firebird land? What would she look like after she got there, after she'd been there a hundred years, at a particular point in the infinity of time where a small schooner happened to enter the seas near the coast that was Firebird's final resting place?
She wanted to see it. She concentrated on that scene as strongly as she could--
--and fell, slamming into the port side of the compartment. The ship was resting on her side. Forward, the doors to the passageway were partly open. There were a few dim lights here and there, where ancient machines still functioned, but they were nothing compared with the glory of sunlight shining in through Firebird's broken hull.
Almost afraid to do so, she looked at her hands. In her left was the ceramic memory module containing all of Andy's data. In her right was the scorched cylinder of a spent flare.
She dropped the flare. She picked her way forward, through the tear in the hull, and out. Fresh air and sunshine had never seemed so wonderful to her. The bars of distortion were gone. Everything was solid, everything was real, whether she forced it to be or whether she didn't.
Firebird rested on her side. Her starboard wing was indeed a tombstone, a memorial for four brave adventurers. No, for five. Andy had been one of them too.
If they had to die, there were worse places to have their memorial than in this clearing, bright with plants-- the red and orange of the Redwoods, strung and bejewled by green vines with beautiful white flowers.
Through a gap in the trees, she could see blue waters stretching off to a sharp horizon. There was no mist, the horizon was perfectly clear. Out there, half a mile offshore, Dawn Treader sailed, safe and proud.
A flare launched from the beach, then a cloud of orange smoke rose. She saw Dawn Treader fire a flare in answer. The ship turned toward shore. Her sails started to come down.
Maggie nearly yelped with joy. She shoved the memory module into her belt pouch and headed downhill, toward the creek, toward the beach, toward the ship, toward home.
<\lj-cut>
She woke to the warmth of the sun on her neck. The fire had gone out. Hill lay curled on his side, breathing evenly. His forehead, where the boom had hit, looked as if the accident had happened a week ago. It was hard to believe it had been just last night.
“Ready to move on, Hill?”
He groaned, rolled over, and sat up. “My head still hurts, some. And things look-- I don't know. It's hard to describe. Doubled, almost. Unsteady.”
Maggie looked down the coast, past the volcano. The southern horizon was white and indistinct. Even the mountain seemed to waver slightly in a faint haze. “I don't think it's your eyesight.”
Now Hill looked really worried. “It's still the vortex? I'd hoped that I was just dying.”
“Sorry to disappoint you. The vortex is still nearby, it has to be. And I can't see Dawn Treader anywhere.”
“Did she leave us? Did she sink?”
“How could I know if she's still afloat? I know Captain Hardy wouldn't just sail off and leave us, though. What bothers me is that she might be close and still be out of sight. The horizon might be four miles off, or half a mile. I can't tell, the way it fades into that haze. Damn. What if the vortex never lifts?”
Hill shrugged. “They always lift.”
How could Hill know what a vortex would do, here in the Southern Lands, where nobody had ever been before? It would be better not to say anything about that, though. She shrugged. “First things first. We need to find water, and food if we can. Let's head for the volcano.”
“Why that way? I don't like going that way. It looks, well, less real than the coast to the north.”
She didn't know quite why herself, but she wanted to head toward the volcano. “It's snow-capped. There has to be some meltwater coming off that peak. And if we go up the slopes a ways, we should be able to see Dawn Treader even if she's far offshore.” There. That sounded plausible, at least.
“You just said we can't see far in that vortex-fog.”
“You just said a vortex always lifts, sooner or later.”
Hill grinned sourly. “Touche'. Shall we?”
At least the beach made for easy walking. The surf wasn't high. The wet sand near the water's edge was good and firm. It was black sand. It must have come from the volcano somehow.
They'd come ashore close to the mountain. It stood so close to the sea that its western edge had collapsed into the water, leaving a cliff that looked to be a hundred feet high in places. It was a good thing they hadn't had to try to come ashore there!
“Look, Maggie. There, just past that clump of trees. There's a cut in the beach. Is it...?”
“Why I'll be. A creek.”
“You're surprised that you were right? I knew it. I knew you were feeding me a line.”
“Um, no, of course not. It's just a pleasant surprise when something you heard in some survival lecture somewhere turns out to be good advice.”
“I guess so. Water! I'm thirsty and-- wait a minute. Aren't we going to get sick from drinking water that comes out of the Redwoods?”
“It's the one thing we don't have to worry about. Redwoods germs and parasites don't like our chemistry. Besides, we drink the water or die, assuming the ship doesn't find us right away.”
“Right. You said something about finding food?”
“I might be able to find a thing or two, but it would be better not to until we know we don't have any other choice.”
Hill sighed. “I'd so hoped for some breakfast.”
“Well, could you catch a fish? Fish are Earth-bio, even here.”
He brightened. “You know, that bamboo-stuff would make for a decent fishing pole. And I could twist string out of those streamer-leaves. If I can think of something to use for a hook, we're golden. Nobody's fished here, I'm sure, so there ought to be lots of fish to catch. Big, stupid ones.”
“You keep thinking.” The creek had seemed far away, but they were coming up on it already. That seemed strange. Maggie hoped Hill hadn't noticed that the sun didn't seem to have moved since they'd started their walk. In fact, it might have moved a bit toward the east. It was hard to tell, when it shimmered and wobbled so.
The creek ran clean over black stones and black sand to the sea. Maggie knelt on the bank and dipped her cupped hands into the stream, lifting water to her lips to drink. Hill did the same, except he knelt right in the stream itself. It was getting warm. The water's coolness must feel good to him.
This was a beautiful place, in its way. The mountain was magnificent, rising higher and higher to its snowy peak. The creek meant water and, maybe, food. She could see minnows in the clear water, and Hill certainly seemed to have hopes of catching something; he was up along the bank now, bending the stems of a streamside thicket, fingering some of the long, trailing leaves, apparently trying to pick the best materials for his fishing outfit.
Aside from the fact that he might actually be able to catch a fish, Maggie had suggested fishing as a way to keep Hill's mind off his injuries and his other worries. Maybe she'd done better than she knew. He was acting with an enthusiasm that hinted he might be a fishing fanatic to begin with. So much the better. If the fishing was good, he'd probably be disappointed when Dawn Treader showed up.
She missed the green of Earth plants, but the redwoods here were beautiful in their own way. This shore had more variety of plants than even the Crays had. There was everything from low shrubs, huge bamboo-things that looked like they must have taken centuries to grow. Of course, the beauty was ruined by the way everything shimmered in the sun, and from the vortex distortion.
She squinted at the sky, at the mountain, noticing something strange about the distortion. There seemed to be waves of it sweeping across the world. No, it was more like rays. Rays of faint mist, waves of transparent refraction, sweeping around like the beam of light from a lighthouse. The source of the rays seemed to be a thicket of taller trees up the slope. It hurt to look at it; it seemed to crawl.
She shaded her eyes. There was no green anywhere. She could wish there was a little green somewhere, a little place of safety, a little bit of home. Wait a minute. She squinted into the shimmering distortion. Was that--
“Green?” she asked.
“What?” Hill seemed to be doing well at making string from the streamer-leaves. “What's green?”
“I think I see something green, up the slope there.”
Hill squinted. “I don't see it.”
“I think I should go up there and find out. Green. What if it's a patch of Earth plants?”
“It can't be. None of Carpathia's lifeboats could have crashed this far south, and what else could have brought Earth plants here? It's more likely it's some weird redwoods species we haven't found before. It'll turn out to be carnivorous, or uproariously poisonous, or something. We should stay here and watch for the ship.”
“No. You should stay here and watch. Somebody has to. I have to scout things out for our survival, in case we're stuck here for a while. A patch of green could be the most important thing we could find, so I have to go look for it. It's only a mile or so. Look, Hill, if there are Earth plants there, there might be some food. There might even be what's left of a lifeboat; yeah, supposedly the two missing ones crashed in the sea, but what if that story is wrong? What if one of them made it here? Or what if one of our exploring ships got here, but never made it back to Hilltown? There might even be survivors living up there. I'll be careful. You should stay here and watch for the ship. Besides, you have to catch us some fish.”
“I would stop you if I could, but you've got that damned Officer Blood look on your face again.”
She laughed. “No doubt.”
“If you won't listen to reason, then go ahead and be a damned fool. Maggie? Please be careful. Don't leave me alone here.”
“Keep an eye out for Dawn Treader. Here, keep the flares. I'll take one in case I get into trouble. Good enough?”
“No, but you're going to go anyway. You've had a bug in your ear over this accursed mountain since we first saw it. In fact, I think you've been leading us here since even before you knew it existed, if that were possible. You're drawn to it like one who is dragon-doomed. Just don't get yourself killed.”
“I won't.” She smiled to him, and then turned and started walking inland.
It looked like the green spot might be along the creek somewhere upstream. The creek was good to follow at first, at least. It would keep her from getting lost.
She made her way up the stream, wading in the water. It was hot once she got away from the beach, stifling hot and silent. It felt like the redwoods were watching her. Overhead, the rays of mist and distortion spun. As far as she could tell, she was heading toward their source, whatever it might be.
It was getting insanely hot It was more than hot. Her head spun. She couldn't think. Green, green, she wanted to see some Earth plants, she longed for that with all her being. The world seemed to lurch. She felt dizzy and nearly fell, and saw a little flower on the bank. It was a trumpet-shaped white flower, on a vine with green leaves. It was an Earth plant, shimmering and wavering like a dream. She squinted at it with fierce determination, and it became solid, but her head hurt so!
Somehow she kept going upstream, her head spinning so badly she was almost blinded. But there were more Earth plants, more of the vines with their white flowers. They smelled sweet. The scent and the sight of them seemed to steady the world a bit, as long as she concentrated on them. She went to hands and knees so she could see the vines and concentrate on them. They were thicker upslope. She crawled that way. The vines were soft, and smelled wonderful.
Meanwhile, the bars of distortion swept the sky overhead. It seemed she could hear them and feel them as they came by. They made everything unreal, doubled, tripled, as if everything was made of infinite layers that were trying to destroy each other. She stared at one of the ripples as it swept toward her, tried with all her strength to focus on it, to make sense of it. Green. If the ripples could be anything, why wasn't one of them full of the green she wanted so much? She wanted green. The world lurched. She fell flat on her face in the sweet vines.
She looked up. She was in a pine forest. The air was cool, pleasant and fragrant with resin. The ground was soft and comfortable with a layer of needles. The flowering vines were there too, in the patches where sun broke through the canopy. But the ground here was almost clear of underbrush. The trees were huge, perhaps a hundred years old, and shaded out most of the light. She got to her feet and continued upslope. It was pleasant, easy walking in here.
That was much better.
But it wasn't quite right. Things seemed transparent somehow. The waves of distortion shimmered overhead, beside her, all around her. She had to squint and concentrate on the pine woods, because any time her attention started to wane they tried to melt into some other form.
It didn't help to know that this forest couldn't be here. It didn't help to know this was impossible.
Or was it? How impossible was it, exactly?
Well, it couldn't exist, because she would have seen a pine forest like this from the beach. But if Hilltown had taught her anything, it was that ghosts of things that had once been, or of things that could have been, had a way of showing up to plague the living. Could there have been a pine forest like this some time in the mountain's past? Or was it something that might have happened, if Fate had dealt this world a different hand of cards? Perhaps the pine woods weren't impossible, perhaps they were just very unlikely. Maybe the fact they were unlikely was what made them seem so fragile and transparent. Was reality just a probability function? Were the rays of distortion somehow made up of probabilities?
Was it impossible that another of Carpathia's lifeboats might have crashed here? No, but a lifeboat crash wouldn't explain these trees. None of them were over a century old. Well, then, was it impossible that another ship, some kind of colony ship from Hilltown could have reached this place? Had Admiral Cray's lost colony ended up here?
She knew that story as well as anyone; how the Republican Army had stormed the Cray Archipelago and had found Cray's naval base half-burned and wholly abandoned. There had been food on the mess tables, ready for men and women who had vanished.
Some said the invading army had killed everyone they found, and engineered a monstrous cover-up to hide it. Some said Cray's people had known the fleet was coming, had taken to their supply ships, had reached the Continent and had vanished into the chaos of the wars. Of course, it was always possible they'd all ended up as vortex meat. But what if they hadn't? What if they tried to escape to a place even farther from the reach of the Republic?
Or-- she blinked, and the pine forest tried to dissolve. Quickly she focused her attention on it again. Or would it have been possible for a ship from Old Earth to have arrived here and have established a colony? Had people from Earth come that close to establishing contact with the Continent?
Now, as she moved further into the grove, the trees appeared to have been planted in rows. The rows meandered, to try to make the planting look random, but the effect wasn't quite perfect.
But if ships from Earth had arrived a hundred years ago, in time for their crews to plant these trees, they would surely have reached the Continent by now! No ships from Earth had touched this world's skies since the crashlanding. Nobody had seen any. She herself had certainly never seen any, except in some dream she now remembered she'd had. In her dream, she'd spoken with a dragon and watched something follow a curved path across the sky. It must have been a landing craft; a starship's boat, or a starship itself, if it was a small one with in-atmosphere capability. She'd seen a ship coming in for a landing in that dream. It had to be; meteors didn't maneuver like that.
That would mean that a ship from Earth had followed Carpathia here. Why? How? But that hadn't happened either, couldn't have happened. This was so confusing! It was hard to know what was real, as the waves of distortion pounded against her sanity.
She made her way upslope. Something gleamed in the shimmering mass of dream-stuff ahead of and around her. It looked like a metal roof on a white building, a line of white buildings. And she realized that, yes, this colony she was approaching was possible. Or not impossible, at least. Not quite impossible. It was one of the things that could have been.
Was that what the waves of distortion were? Different things that could have been, leading to different things that could still be, and none of it resolved? Her head ached and spun. Things were getting worse again. There seemed to be people moving in the shimmer around her, but they were fading and melting and becoming others. She lost her hold on them, fell to the ground again--
She was in the Redwoods. For the first time in her life, she welcomed the alien bamboo-like plants, with their red and orange foliage, as something natural, something familiar, an old friend. Things still rippled, waves of distortion still spun overhead, but these Redwoods were a lot more solid than the pine woods had been. They hurt her head less because they were a lot more probable. That was it. The more probable, the more solid? It might be fascinating, or alarming, to talk that over with Dean Lansen, if she ever got home again. Dean would understand it, wouldn't he? Why did she think so?
She walked up the slope. The green spot she'd seen from the beach should be around here somewhere. But she couldn't see anything but
---redwoods, nothing but redwoods, just the same as anywhere else. She blinked and saw--
---a depression, a crater, blasted in the volcanic soil--
---a scatter of metal fragments strewn among the red trees--
---a broken mass of metal that she could nearly recognize, wreathed in a mass of emerald vines studded with lovely white flowers. This was the spot of green she'd been looking for. She focused her attention on it with desperate intensity.
The ship was broken, and there had been fire when it crashed here. But still she could see it had been shaped like a high-speed airplane, one of the ones from Earth's historical archive that she'd studied all her days in school. It had been a thick fuselage, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet long, with small, sharp-edged, straight wings. It had probably had conventional tail surfaces too, although the aft part was twisted and broken too badly for her to be certain.
Now the craft lay on its side, broken in the middle, nose crumpled, with one of its wings standing up into the air like a knife blade, or like a silver tombstone. There was volcanic ash on that wing, in places where the metal was buckled enough to create ledges to catch it. The flowered vine had climbed partway up that slippery face of metal. But under the dust, under the vines, the metal seemed to be as bright as a mirror. Even the best steels of the Continent would tarnish or rust, exposed to the weather for a few years. What wonderful kind of metal must this be to have remained so bright for so long, standing lost and abandoned in this forest, in this weather?
Forcing the wreck to stay in its current form- if she looked away for an instant, it would shift into something else, she knew it, she could feel its reality trying to squirm away from her- she walked closer. The metal of the hull was ripped open here. Pulling the vines aside, she looked through the tear, then stepped inside.
They had almost made it, whoever they were. That was the sad part. For a ship to come down from orbit and crash-land, but remain intact enough for her to recognize, it must have been attempting a controlled landing, and it must have nearly succeeded. How sad to have come so far, and to have nearly made it, only to fail within sight of their goal!
This ship's builders had done their job well! Inside, broken and burned as things were, there were still devices in this wreck that looked like they might still be put into service, after what must have been a hundred years or more. A few lights on buckled control panels still glowed. The footlights, the emergency lighting at deck level along what must have been a fore-aft passageway, still cast dim light across melted and charred deck material- now vertical, now the wall, as she picked her way aft, stepping over tears and holes and the occasional open access panel or open door in what had been the passageway's portside wall.
Where had this ship come from? She thought it had to be Old Earth, but which nation? If Earth had nations at all, were they still the same as they had been when Carpathia became lost? Time had removed most of the markings from this ship and its equipment, but one of the lights on a control panel beside an airlock door she crossed had the word PURGE printed across it. Whatever nation they came from, then, this ship's builders must have spoken English.
She continued aft, walking on the wall, leaning one hand on what had been the deck. Aft, the wreck's interior was in better shape.
She must have been about as far aft as the wing when she squeezed between the two halves of a pressure door that had once sealed the passageway from what lay beyond. It was like cracking the seal and invading a pharaoh's tomb.
In more ways than one. Crawling in, she set her feet on what looked like a sarcophagus made of steel and glass. Beneath the glass was a metal and fabric form she recognized as a space suit. One of the gloves was half off. She could see wrist bones in the gap between suit and glove. CORT, the tag on the left side of the chest said. An insignia painted on the suit's shoulder showed a bird made of fire rising above a blue planet. CHRONOS III- CORT MICHAELS FREEDMAN SIMS, read the gold letters in the black circle around the firebird insignia.
A second spacesuit labeled FREEDMAN was in the sarcophagus which would have been above CORT's, if the ship were upright. Along the starboard side of the compartment, above her head as she edged through, was a third sarcophagus, but it was empty. There were cables and tubes where there might have been a fourth, but if so it was gone.
These were hibernation pods, obviously. Located amidships, they would have been in the most sheltered position aboard ship. Were they for emergency use, or had the crew intended to make their journey in cold sleep? What happened to them? How did they get here? She wished she knew!
She felt dizzy. Everything spun. She fell to the deck- yes, the deck, the ship had somehow rolled right-side up again, or the ancient gravity generators had kicked in somehow. The lights came on. She shook her head and raised herself up on one elbow. Smoke billowed. A form that must be human staggered out of it, burning head to foot. As it fell, a horror of burned flesh, it knocked something aside, a pot hanging from ropes. A pot hanging from ropes? A flower pot! It had been hanging from the overhead, near one of the lights. It contained an emerald green vine with beautiful white flowers.
She screamed and recoiled from the burning man- or woman? Scrambling backward, crablike, she watched the burning man rise from the floor. He moved backward as flames and smoke shot into him, making him more whole as he backed away from her. Now he was intact, and the smoke was vanishing. It sucked itself into ruptured plates at the starboard side of the passageway, near its front end. The flaming man stopped burning. He knelt down and started working with a portable welder, head and shoulders out of sight inside the wall. After a while, he got up and backed away. A door behind him slid open, and she saw the seats, windshield, and instrument screens of the ship's cockpit before he backed through the door and it slid shut in front of him.
She had to get out of here. She headed forward. But the pressure doors were closed. She saw a small circle of glass, a peephole, and looked through it. Beyond, in the amidships passageway, three figures in spacesuits were in weightlessness, maneuvering detached hibernation pod into the airlock. It appeared both airlock doors were open; the lock's control panel was flashing a warning about that. Inside the pod was something vaguely human-shaped, covered in a blue, starry flag. The container-- the coffin, now-- eased into the airlock, and with a shove it was drifting away. The space-suited figures saluted as it drifted out. Then one of them reached toward the airlock control panel.
She turned to the compartment's rear door. It slid open before her. She saw a compartment full of machinery, surrounding a transparent globe full of a gray mist that was disturbingly familiar. “Engaging,” the woman inside said. She pulled a lever, and rings of electrical fire formed inside the sphere.
She must have heard the door open, because she turned to face Maggie. She went pale. “Who are you? How did you get--”
“Turn it off!” Maggie screamed. But it was too late. The grayness reached out, engulfed the interior of the compartment. As the woman dissolved away, Maggie saw her uniform; it remained for an instant after her body had gone. SIMS, the nametag read.
Maggie closed her eyes, and opened them again. The engine compartment was quiet. The transparent sphere was empty. She turned forward again, and screamed. Sims stood there, but now she was ancient. She had a few wisps of gray hair. Her face was like a wrinkled skull, and her eyes were full of horror. “Free us,” she croaked.
“What? How?” Her skin crawled. It was all she could do to keep from screaming.
“Set us free. Set Andy free. Make him choose his path.”
“I don't understand.” But there was nobody there.
Forward was the only way out. Maybe she could force the door open. But as she approached, something clicked and the doors slid aside.
The passageway was cool and quiet. Somewhere, something hummed, a faint, reassuring sound of power supplies functioning normally. Air moved gently. The vine was in its flowerpot, hanging across from the airlock. The passageway widened into an alcove there, probably to let large objects (such as the occasional coffin) be maneuvered in and out. There was a light panel in the overhead right there too. The plant seemed to be doing pretty well, but she would have expected that. Given what its future would be, it just had to be healthy.
Further forward, the steel panels on the starboard side were freshly painted. There were a few dings, but all in all somebody had done a good job repairing the place where she'd seen the fire and the burning man.
The forward door slid open. She stepped onto the bridge. Or did you call it a flight deck, on something airplane-shaped?
The compartment was surprisingly roomy. It held four large, padded, very adjustable swivel chairs, or couches, upholstered in something that looked like red leather, and fitted with safety harnesses and connections for wires and hoses. One was on either side of her as she stood just inside the doorway. The other two, a bit closer together, faced a large windshield and the ship's nose.
It was surprising how simple and clean everything appeared. The left forward couch had a control yoke, for manual flight control, but it was folded up against the side wall, out of the way. There were a few small display screens and digital readouts, a few switches, but this starship's controls and instruments were hardly any more complicated than those on her beloved motorcycle. It didn't make sense! Something as complicated as a starship had to have complex controls. Either that, or insanely sophisticated ones.
Fascinated, she stepped closer to the windshield. She would have expected to see stars outside, but instead she saw that same gray fog she feared above all things. It was stripes and streamers, lined up as if forming the walls of a tunnel through which the starship moved at tremendous speed. But it looked like vortex-stuff, all the same.
“Lieutenant Sims?”
She spun. “Who's there? Show yourself.”
The air shimmered, and an old man appeared. He looked... well, cute was the best way to put it. Dressed in Victorian clothes, wearing a green visor, with gold glasses perched on his nose and spotless white hair, he looked like a cross between Tom Cratchitt and Santa Claus. He seemed to be a librarian or a clerk; he carried a huge book, and had a quill pen stuck behind one ear. “Oh, Lieutenant, I am so glad to see you again! I feared the worst after we re-engaged the timedrive, and you stopped talking to me. It was bad enough losing Michaels--”
The old man jerked. “Losing Michaels--” Jerk. “Losing Michaels--” Jerk. “Losing Michaels. Then, when the timedrive came back online, I lost track of your biological signs. Cort and Freedman are in suspended animation and I can't rouse them. I don't know what to do!”
She guessed this had to be Andy. Who else could it be? It didn't seem much of a risk to assume so. “How long has it been since I stopped talking to you, Andy?”
“You don't know?”
“Sorry, I don't.” What could she say? Andy must be an expression of the computer that ran this ship. She should say something a computer would understand, then. “I have been caught in that gray fog; call it a magnetic vortex, or something like that. It involves time distortion, among other things. Exposure to it caused me some data loss, and reset my sense of time. My internal timer is malfunctioning, you might say.”
“I understand. The ship's chronometer is also malfunctioning; it indicates a hundred years have passed, although it has only been a few minutes according to my own timer. Do you think I might have lost some of my data? Is that why I can't decide what to do?”
Maggie tried to hide a big grin at the opportunity Andy had just given her. “Let's find out. Replay for me basic mission objectives and chronology. Can you also download your full memory into a backup copy? I'll use some computer not attached to you to scan the memory files for discontinuities.”
“That seems wise. Memory downloaded to a standard ceramic module at your workstation.” She heard a click from the starboard aft corner of the bridge; that must be Sims's station, then.
Andy opened his book for her. At first it looked like pages of printed text, but then beautiful pictures sprung to life on the virtual paper. “The Chronos series of missions are part of the Timelord Project, to investigate time rate manipulation as a means of increasing speed in hyperspatial travel, and to perfect the Total Probabilities Prediction navigation and disaster-avoidance system. Chronos III is the first mission aboard Firebird, a new long-range experimental exploration ship. Firebird incorporates technologies based on the earlier discoveries of the Timelord program, including among other things prototypes of both the timedrive and the TPP system.” He smiled, and by the Old Gods, his perfect blue eyes twinkled when he did! “Modesty nearly forbids my mentioning that the TPP system, which Major Freedman named 'Andy' on the whimsical grounds that I am not, in fact, an android, is the most capable shipboard computer ever designed. Although the timedrive was important, testing me was this mission's main purpose.
“And I have failed-- failed-- failed--” It was spooky. Andy kept smiling, kept his perfect quaint Victorian appearance, but she could feel the anguish that overwhelmed him, the anguish that expressed itself by his losing control of his virtual body. The book he held, which had been showing beautiful three-dimensional pictures of Firebird leaving Old Earth's orbit and flying out into deep space, now showed a scene she knew too well. For in some strange way, she had been there too, when something inside an access panel exploded and the man she now knew was Michaels burst into flame.
“Andy. Stop. Break replay. That was a welding accident! That couldn't be your fault. You're a ship's computer!”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Sims. That's what Captain Freedman said too. But as TPP, my purpose is to predict any possible hazard and adjust events in the present so as to avoid it. I should have been looking for threats inside the ship too, not just setting our course to avoid external ones!”
“Andy, if nobody programmed you to do it, then it's not your fault that you didn't. You can't predict any possible hazard, after all.”
“But I can. I can see into the future, and change the present to pick the future my masters would want. It's not enough to say nobody told me to save Michaels. It's true that they didn't, but saving the crew is my first directive. I have to save them, from anything that might happen to them. It is my primary function. It's how I was made, and I can't change it.”
But she wasn't quite listening. Something he'd said sent a chill through her. “You can see the future?”
“I can see all possible futures, and pick the one that leads to success. But I can't find one! No matter what I choose, the crew will-- the crew will-- the crew will--”
“Don't you know how dangerous that is? You can't change the past. If you do, you weaken the structure of reality. Things get less and less probable. That makes them weaker and weaker, until eventually, they tear apart.” Where had she heard that? She knew it was true, somehow. She knew that changing the past was the most dangerous thing you could do. It could destroy civilizations, or entire worlds. It had destroyed them.
At least her words broke Andy out of his latest infinite loop. He laughed. “Don't be silly, Lieutenant Sims. Nobody can change the past; that's impossible. All I do is see the future, and change the present to reach the future you and the Captain want.”
“Andy, it's the same thing! Seeing the future perfectly and steering the present to the future you want is just the same as changing the past to create a different present. The only difference is that you're looking at it from the back end instead of the front.”
“I'm not programmed for metaphysics, Lieutenant Sims, but you remind me of how much I used to enjoy discussing that subject with you. Why had I forgotten that? I need to resurvey my memories and organize them into a more efficient structure.”
“Speaking of which, continue basic mission briefing, please.”
“Chronos I found nothing. Chronos II, investigating the Carpathia Timerift--”
“Stop playback. Why is it called that?”
“Because some metallic debris and some radioactive gasses were found there. Upon analysis, it was found that the metal plates were consistent with those used to construct the Carpathia, the legendary Flying Dutchman of the Eridani Run. When we discovered that the fabric of time and space was weak there, some overly romantic popular writers hypothesized the timerift might have something to do with Carpathia's disappearance.”
“Ah. Of course, I remember now. Continue.”
“Chronos II, investigating the Carpathia Timerift, returned readings indicating that a timedrive such as that now installed aboard Firebird might be possible, and might allow a ship so equipped to transit that rift. As indeed it did. However, two days in, the power system overloaded for reasons unknown, and Firebird dropped out into normal space again, location unknown. During repairs-- repairs-- repairs--”
“Skip that part. What happened after we restarted the timedrive?”
“Nothing, except that I lost track of you. Here we are. Lieutenant Sims, I am malfunctioning, because any future I can see includes death of all crewmembers and Firebird's destruction. I keep trying to shift from one future to another, looking down each as far as I can, trying to find some way out. There's no way out. There isn't one! All the crew-- crew-- crew--”
“Andy, it's all right. You have to choose some path for Firebird. You have to choose something. You can't hang here between choices forever.” She sighed. “Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, there's no way out. It's not your fault.”
“I know. But I have to keep looking.” His image smiled, but the anguish was almost enough to choke her. “I have to find a way. It's how I was made. I have to find a way to save them, even if I have to keep searching forever. There is no possible escape for me. Do you understand?”
She thought of Dean Lansen then, and she nodded. There was a tear in her eye. “Yes, Andy. I understand.”
“Can you help me?”
“Yes. I know how to help you. The time distortion from the timedrive, and that magnetic vortex it creates, has impaired your ability to calculate the future. You need a few manual adjustments. Then everything will be all right again.”
“I underesand, Lieutenant Sims. What should I do?”
“Set yourself to put Firebird into the future that comes closest to saving her, on my mark. Can you do that?”
“Easily. But she'll crash on a mountainside. The remaining crewmembers will die in their sleep upon impact.”
“As things are now. But once you've chosen that path, I'll make some adjustments on you. Once you're operating properly, it should be easy for you to make that final adjustment from a crash to a safe landing.”
“Thank you for your help, Lieutenant Sims. I presume you'll have to get at my main processing core.” A panel below the windshield popped open; inside it was a beautiful sculpture of colored crystals, glowing with pulsating light. “Be careful. With inertial and gravitational shields disengaged, my main core is very delicate. It is especially vulnerable to fire.”
“Put us on course to landing now, Andy.”
“Done.” The gray fog faded away outside. She saw a few stars, and a dark bulk below; a planet. Her planet. There was a faint whistling, and Firebird's nose began to glow. Red, yellow, white.
“Thank you, Andy.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Sims. Course programmed into backup autopilot system. Make your adjustments now.”
“I will.” She reached for the silver cylinder in her belt pouch.
“Lieutenant Sims?”
“Yes, Andy?”
“Thank you for releasing me. And goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” she said. Her eyes were blurred with tears as she aimed her flare into Andy's heart, and pressed the launching stud.
Andy exploded. She felt bits of crystal pepper her. The fire was terrifying. She hadn't thought of that, of the danger of fire. But it went out. She hurried aft, grabbing the ceramic memory module Andy had made for her as she left. The bridge doors closed behind her, sealing her away from the smoke.
Now what? Great, she'd trapped herself aboard a starship heading for a crash landing, maybe a hundred years before she was even born. And she hadn't left herself any way out.
But there hadn't been any way for her to get in, either, had there? And she'd done that.
She hurried aft to the hibernation pods again. Kneeling, facing the door into the engine room, she thought about how the wreck had looked when she found it. How would this all come out? Where would Firebird land? What would she look like after she got there, after she'd been there a hundred years, at a particular point in the infinity of time where a small schooner happened to enter the seas near the coast that was Firebird's final resting place?
She wanted to see it. She concentrated on that scene as strongly as she could--
--and fell, slamming into the port side of the compartment. The ship was resting on her side. Forward, the doors to the passageway were partly open. There were a few dim lights here and there, where ancient machines still functioned, but they were nothing compared with the glory of sunlight shining in through Firebird's broken hull.
Almost afraid to do so, she looked at her hands. In her left was the ceramic memory module containing all of Andy's data. In her right was the scorched cylinder of a spent flare.
She dropped the flare. She picked her way forward, through the tear in the hull, and out. Fresh air and sunshine had never seemed so wonderful to her. The bars of distortion were gone. Everything was solid, everything was real, whether she forced it to be or whether she didn't.
Firebird rested on her side. Her starboard wing was indeed a tombstone, a memorial for four brave adventurers. No, for five. Andy had been one of them too.
If they had to die, there were worse places to have their memorial than in this clearing, bright with plants-- the red and orange of the Redwoods, strung and bejewled by green vines with beautiful white flowers.
Through a gap in the trees, she could see blue waters stretching off to a sharp horizon. There was no mist, the horizon was perfectly clear. Out there, half a mile offshore, Dawn Treader sailed, safe and proud.
A flare launched from the beach, then a cloud of orange smoke rose. She saw Dawn Treader fire a flare in answer. The ship turned toward shore. Her sails started to come down.
Maggie nearly yelped with joy. She shoved the memory module into her belt pouch and headed downhill, toward the creek, toward the beach, toward the ship, toward home.
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