Chapter Thirty
THE SHORES OF TOMORROW
LODESTARVII
Neshobe Kalzant waited, alone in her cabin. It couldn’t take much longer. Except, as Captain Marquez was fond of saying,everything was harder and took longer.
It had been a solid week since the departure of Solace-D. Apart from various physicists and astrogeologists who were eagerly making use of the rare chance to study firsthand the effects on other bodies of removing a large mass from a planetary system, that was one week too long. The Grand Gateseemed to have come through the transport of Solace-D in good shape, but everyone had seen just how violent an event that was. And while the power beam from the rebuilt SunSpot was working fine, there was never a gate engineer who didn’t want as much power as possible stored in the rings’ accumulators.
Nor was it far from anyone’s mind that it didn’t matter so much if Solace-D got a little bit roughed up during transit—but Solace-R was another matter altogether. No. Let the engineers take their time, and get it right.
At last, they had declared themselves satisfied, and the SunSpot’s power beam was brought to bear, one more time, aimed at a huge mirror orbiting just a few thousand kilometers sunward from the Grand Gate. The power beam reflected off the mirror and struck the sunward-side power receptors of the Grand Gate, more than quadrupling the rate of power being delivered to the gate.
That had been thirty-six hours ago. No one could say for certain how long, or at what level, the gate would reach maximum power storage capacity. When the engineers decided they had reached that point—then it would be time to go.
That was fine with Neshobe. She could wait as long as they wanted. Alone, in her cabin. This time,really alone, with no security detail at all. Alone, to contemplate the most welcome notion that she would not be Planetary Executive much longer.
In a very real sense, she was already out of power. If they succeeded, and she did step down on schedule, the next PlanEx would have almost nothing to do, no decisions to make—for the job ahead would be so clear, so obvious, that the demands of the times would be enough to make the job happen.
And if they failed, if Solace-R did not appear, or was somehow destroyed in the process of arrival—well, the habitat domes on Greenhouse could hold out another year, or two, before they started failing in large numbers. There was nothing else she or anyone else could do about it. Long before the final blackout, the planetary system of Solace would cease to have a government at all, let alone a PlanEx.
She could not help but think back to the time she had spent in this cabin during the long wait for NovaSpot Ignition. Then they had been involved in a last-ditch effort that they knew could do very little more than keep the patient alive a little bit longer. The only hope they had had that day was to keep things going long enough for a miracle to come and save them. Today, it was the miracle itself they waited on, and hope was all around them.
The door annunciator chimed. There were precious few people she would want to see—but it might be someone with news.
She stood, checked the security camera view of the hallway, and opened the door at once.
“I was just thinking about you,” she said. “The troublemaker. Please, come in.”
Admiral Anton Koffield smiled and walked into her cabin. He glanced at the display screens on the wall, saw that they were dark and blank, and nodded. “I thought you might have your displays off,” he said, “and your intercom was set to private. I just wanted to come and give you the news that they’re ready to go. The final six-hour countdown to the start of the Reception Sequence should begin any minute. That’s all,” he said. “I won’t disturb you any further.” He bowed to her, very slightly, and turned back to the door.
“No, please, sit down,” she said, directing him to an armchair. Suddenly she found herself hungry for company—at least, Koffield’s company.
He hesitated briefly, then took a seat and smiled at her, plainly unsure of what, exactly, to say.
She was at a bit of a loss for words herself—but then she found the way to begin. “That was most unkind of me, just now, calling you a troublemaker. You saved us all, you know. Thank you.”
He gestured awkwardly. “I don’t know what to say to that,” he replied. “Sometimes, these last few years, when I’ve thought about it, I’m not so sure I should get the credit for very much, especially if motive counts for anything. I think that all I was trying to do was redeem myself for the loss of Circum Central and the harm that did. Later, all I was really doing was saving my reputation.”
“I don’t believe that for a moment,” said Neshobe. “And deep in your heart, I don’t think you do either. I don’t know why, but it’s not at all uncommon for a good man to try to avoid taking—or accepting—credit for what he’s done.” She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “No, strike that—perhaps Ido know why.”
“Do you? I’d be very interested to hear,” Koffield said.
“You’ve accomplished things far larger than yourself,” she said. “Things you know are worthy of respect, in and of themselves, regardless of who did them. They don’tbelong to you anymore, for you’ve given them to all of us. To claim too much credit would be to say that your accomplishments are, after all, small enough for one man to own, that they don’t really belong to all of Solace system. Accepting credit would come close to diminishing your own estimation of all that you have done.”
Koffield thought it over first. “There’s something in what you say,” he admitted. “But even so—especiallyif it’s so—I’m not going to feel too comfortable talking about it for quite a while.”
“We’ll leave it there, then,” she said, and they were both quiet for a time.
“Have you heard about the message pods?” Koffield asked.
“No. What message pods?”
“It was Captain Marquez’s idea. He’s got some engineers who were done with their part of the Grand Gate—which is nearly everyone, by now—working on it. They’re digging up every surplus long-durability component they can, and putting together pods that will carry complete records of everything we’ve done. Most of the data is aboard the pods already. They’re just waiting to find out what happens in, ah, six hours or so.”
“But, why? If we succeed—”
“They’re not in case we succeed,” Koffield said quietly. “They’re in case we fail. In case some tiny, trivial error turns around and bites us hard enough to kill. Then they’ll send the pods out, at sublight-speeds, multiple copies to every inhabited star system, adjusting their boost schedules and their velocities so they’ll all arrive at just about the same time, in every system. That way the CP won’t be warned by their arrival one place to be watching out for them other places.
“Marquez is going to time them to get to their destinations a hundred standard years from today, or as close as he can manage it. Once they get where they’re going, the pods will start broadcasting a basic report of what we’ve done and how we did it. The locals will home in, make pickup—and find the complete record on board. Everything. What we did, what we learned, what we got from the Dark Museum—everything from Harmonic Gates and FTL, right on down to improved power storage in temporal confinements. And, if we can figure it out, we’ll include a report on what went wrong, as well.”
“Marquez would think of something like that,” Neshobe muttered. “Still, it’s a good idea. But why build the pods now? Why not wait until we see if they’re needed?”
“Marquez told the team it was just something to do, something to keep them busy while they were waiting out Dispatch and Reception. But the real reason for doing it now—well, maybe if wedo fail, maybe no one is going to be in the mood for stuffing messages in bottles and throwing them into the ocean.”
Neshobe nodded.Or maybe the inevitable disturbances will be so violent it won’t even be possible. “Tell Marquez to send them out even if we succeed,” she said. “Especiallyif we succeed.”
“Aren’t we supposed to stay in quarantine from the rest of Settled Space longer than that?” Koffield asked.
“If I felt like splitting hairs, and the CP complains a hundred years from now, I’ll say we agreed not to use wormholes or FTL,” Neshobe said. “Besides, what are they going to do if we do announce early? Sue us?” She gestured at the Grand Gate. “Make us build a new one, and send Solace-Rback ? Tell him to send the pods no matter what happens. It’ll be good for morale.”And enough publicity might keep the CP from moving against us, if they do turn totally reactionary by then, instead of just falling apart they way they should.
“All right,” Koffield said with a smile. He stood up. “But I should be getting back.”
“You’re more than welcome to watch the show from here, with me,” she said, standing up herself. “I’ve just decided to give myself the gift ofnot watching it in public. After all, what can they do tome for not showing up? Throw me out of office?”
He laughed. “You don’t seem much worried about the consequences of your actions today. But no, thank you, Madam Executive. There are two ladies who would be very cross with me if I wasn’t with them for this.”
Neshobe nodded. “Of course. Give my regards to both of them.” She shook her head. “PerhapsI will come along myself, after a little bit, to one of the smaller receptions. I don’t care to be out in the public galleries, but this won’t be something to watch all alone.”
“I quite agree. I’ll see you down there, then, Madam Kalzant.”
She saw him out and shut the door. It was only after he was gone that she realized with a sudden thrill that “down there” could mean more than one thing. She turned on her display and brought up a view of the Grand Harmonic Gate, and the emptiness at its center. There was not yet any “there” there.
But it was starting to seem real to her that there would be—and soon.
At last it was time. Once again, and for the last time, the Grand Harmonic Gate came alive, with all the people of the Solace system to bear witness. In every dome, aboard every spacecraft, in every outer-system mining camp and subterranean habitat, the people watched. They had risked everything for this moment—and if Solace-R did not arrive safely, then there could be no second chances, for the gate, or for any of them.
The gate’s three rings began to move, ever so slowly starting to spin, gaining speed, until the geometric tracking patterns painted on them vanished from sight altogether. Somewhere, somewhen, if all was going well, the uptime duplicate end of this gate, a gate that had been built around the revived and reterraformed Solace, was spinning up as well, generating field strength, reaching out, establishing its own harmonic pattern, edging closer, ever closer, to a perfect phase match with the Grand Harmonic Gate of the present.
The true test of the here-and-now Grand Gate was at hand. The energy discharges it had experienced when dispatching Solace-D were a mere backwash of the system power output. As the uptime and downtime Gates hunted closer and closer to phase-lock, the downtime Gate began absorbing detuned energy from the uptime Gate, far more energy than it could convert and put to use. That energy had to go somewhere—and it did. Lightning flashes blazed and flared all about the rings, even before momentum transfer was initiated. A plasma sheath formed, completely engulfing the rings and spanning and merging across the empty center, until the gate was a disk of fire, roaring and wheeling across the sky.
And then, faster than they could see, the angular momentum transfer formed spontaneously. The disk became a globe, a raging glowing ball of power, fire, and glory, bright enough to shine like yet another sun, rivaling Lodestar and the NovaSpot, utterly dwarfing SunSpot’s focused beam of power. Plasma tubes began to form at either pole, pillars of fire reaching upward and outward. Pulsations began to form in the surface of the fireball as the gate fought to maintain its form and integrity. No one needed to look at the telemetry displays to know that the gate was straining against its limits, barely containing the unspeakable power required to form and hold so massive a link across so great a span of years.
The strain built to its maximum, the pulsations growing deeper, more profound, until the whole surface of the gate was shuddering, flickering, flaring brighter, bucking and fighting against the outrage being committed against the existing shape of space and time.
And then it happened.
The Grand Harmonic Gate of Solace exploded, a flash of light and power that burned out half the long-range cameras in the Solace system. The shock wave pulsed outward, and, just for a moment, the rings of the Gate could be seen, still holding their forms—until they burst apart, disintegrating instantaneously, smashed to bits by the power they could no longer absorb. They blasted outward, into space, utterly destroyed.
No know or theoretically possible structural material could have withstood such a massive energy transfer.
The engineers had known that, accounted for it. Any receiving gate large enough to handle a planet-sized mass would inevitably be destroyed by the act of being used. There was nothing left of the gate, no chance to try again.
And neither would there be any need—for something was left behind where once the gate had been.
A world. A green and living world, for a moment beset by monstrous lightning flashes, magnetic disturbances, transit shock waves—and then all was serene.
Solace had come home.
The first ship set down on the first morning of the first day on the new old world, in a meadow that stood between a stand of pine trees and the seashore.
Not long after, the hatches swung open, and a ramp extended, forming a gentle incline down which one could easily walk to the sweet green grass below. Two men, both of average build, or perhaps a bit below, both well past middle age, but one plainly much older than the other, started to make their way down, moving slowly, the older one steadying himself a bit on the arm of the younger. The old man moved carefully, but eagerly as well, as if toward the promised land. For so it was.
Anton Koffield let go of Oskar DeSilvo’s arm and paused at the base of the ramp just long enough to make sure it was DeSilvo who first set foot on the reborn, twice-made world of Solace.
Oskar DeSilvo turned, looked back, looked down at his feet, there on solid ground, and smiled his thanks for the gesture. He looked past Anton Koffield, at the others who were coming down the ramp as well.
“And so,” DeSilvo said in solemn tones, “here we are, in the world we have all made new.” He paused for a moment and laughed out loud. “I suppose that discharges my duties to the history books,” he said. “They always want grand words, you know. Thank heavens all that is out of the way.” Anton stepped off the ramp as well, and the two of them stood to one side, in part to let the others come down, but mostly just to breathe in the fine clean air, feel the breeze muss their hair, let the sunshine warm their faces.
The others who had come along in the first contingent made their way down the ramp and onto the clean new world.
Anton had eyes especially for Elber Malloon and his wife Jassa—and their poised, coltish, twenty-two-year-old daughter, Zari, setting foot on her native planet for the first time—for she had been too young to walk when she departed. Anton watched her face as she looked up, in wonder, at an open, undomed sky, as she took her first breath of natural air, and as she looked for the first time at grass and trees and plants that grew where they wanted, and not where they were planted. It had been Malloon’s ability to see another way that had brought them there. It seemed quite fit and natural for his family to be among the first to return.
Some would not be coming back. Wandella Ashdin, still engrossed in her histories until the end, had died three years too soon to see the future. Olar Sotales had died as well, under circumstances that were as murky and well hidden as his motives. Perhaps he would have wanted it that way.
But individuals died. That was as it was. Those two, and many others, had spent their lives seeing to it that apeople would not die. A fair exchange.
Anton looked upward at the sky and watched as a dozen meteors, each easily bright enough to see in daytime, streaked across the sky in as many seconds. The barrage of fragments from the Grand Gate would keep up for months, an all-day all-night fireworks display to celebrate the rebirth of a world.
“Did you ever truly think that you would live to see this?” DeSilvo asked.
“Me?” Anton asked. “No. I never dared think about it, one way or the other.”
“I couldn’t help but think of it,” DeSilvo said. “In any event, I’m quite glad to have broken the rules governing such matters.”
“What rules haven’t you broken?” Anton asked with a smile.
“Fair enough, fair enough. But I was referring to the precedent set by Moses, of course. I was supposed to die within sight of the promised land and not quite get here. I must confess I was nervous that the universe would make sure I obeyedthat rule, at least—but nothing much seems to have occurred.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Anton said, straight-faced. “It seems to me that quite a few things have happened.”
“And they’re going to keep happening for a while yet,” Norla Chandray announced, coming down the ramp and into earshot. She moved carefully down the ramp, a wide-eyed little four-year-old girl riding on her hip. “There’s the small matter of building cities, towns, roads, farms. That sort of thing.” She lifted the little girl off her hip, and handed her to Anton Koffield—her husband of five years’ standing. “Let your daddy hold you for a while, Theresa.”
Anton lifted her up, shifted her about, and planted her on his shoulders, up where she could get a good view. But rebellion was instantaneous. “No!” Theresa announced. “You said I could go andlook . You said I could go look bymyself .”
“So we did,” Anton said, and carefully lifted her down. He set her on the ground and watched as his daughter solemnly trod her first-ever steps on living grass under an open sky.
“No more domes,” Norla announced, looking first at her daughter, then up at the sky, and then at Anton. “Is that clear? No more domes, no more habitats, no more canned air, no more food put in storage before we were born.”
“No argument from me,” her husband said placidly.
“What?” asked Oskar DeSilvo. “Don’t you ever plan to go off-world?”
Norla shook her head and looked to Anton. “We haven’t been home five minutes, and already he’s talking about leaving.” She looked back to DeSilvo. “Areyou planning a trip?”
“Oh no,” said DeSilvo. “I’m not planning to go anywhere. I plan to stay right here. I don’t want to miss anything.”
Anton looked at both of them, then turned to watch as his daughter walked away toward the booming of the waves. He moved forward, as if to intercept her, but Norla took him by the arm and held him back. “Let her go on her own,” she said. “She’s been talking about nothing else.”
“Oh, I will,” he said. “I just want to be close enough to see it.”
He followed along, about a hundred meters back, and watched as his daughter climbed over the dunes, and looked for the first time upon the open sea. With a cry of delight, she ran down the other side, out of sight. Anton, with a jolt of fatherly fear, ran forward to the top of the dune. He stopped there and looked down at the fair white sand below. Theresa had sat down, and was most carefully removing her shoes and socks. She set them in a neat little pile, and rolled up the legs of her ship’s coveralls. Then she stood up, let out a yell of triumph, and ran down to the sea. She charged, full speed ahead, out up to about ankle deep—and then stopped, and stood, as if transfixed, staring out across the broad vistas of sea and land, across the wide horizons of hope and promise.
The waves splashed over her feet, rushed up to meet the land, and then broke, gentle as a kiss, upon the shores of tomorrow.
THE END