THAT EVENING, RUE undertook yet another pointless inventory of the remaining supplies. She was in the «attic» of the cache, feeling bad about herself, missing Max. Funny how she'd turned into the sort of person who worked compulsively; she remembered how she'd had contempt for that sort of laborer at Allemagne. Well, maybe they'd known things about life that she hadn't, at that point. Once upon a time, her only task had been keeping out of Jentry's way.
Max had picked a rotten time to bail on her. He'd said that for him, life was like running on water. She understood that, more than he seemed to know. Rue had been running too, she felt, ever since Allemagne. Not running to keep herself up, maybe, but running away from Jentry, and everything that she had been raised to be, there in that little station in the middle of the void.
What Max didn't get— the idiot! — was that without him she'd have faltered and fallen long ago. Rue kept going forward, true, but she understood how less and less. Responsibility, doubt and insecurities beaten into her in her childhood all pulled at her, all the time. Max had been a rock to cling to. He seemed so certain of what to do, there at the beginning. Now he'd taken that certainty away.
Now she was arguing with him in her own mind, the sort of satisfying internal dialogue that one always wins. She had just scored a major point when she heard the airlock cycling; expecting it to be Corinna returning from the Banshee, she returned to her checklist. Across the attic space from her, Evan was running simulations on their approach to Colossus. Good for him.
Rebecca's voice floated up from downstairs. "Dr. Bequith! How nice to see you!"
Damn that woman. Rue and Rebecca had discussed the possible romantic prospects among the Banshee's crew the previous day. Rebecca had shied away from mentioning any men she found attractive, but had suggested a few prospects for Rue. It had been frivolous banter— but Rue had mentioned that she found Mike attractive. Had Rebecca invited him over?
"Please, call me Michael." It was Mike's low, soft voice. "Is your captain here?"
"Rue! Visitor!"
Rue paused, looked at her checklist, bit her thumbnail.
"Would you like a drink?" continued Rebecca. "Apparently Max hid some whisky nanospores here and Blair's been growing them in an aeration tube. We were just about to sample his first batch." Rue heard them moving into the kitchen area.
"Hardly a batch," said Blair. Rue moved to the open hatchway and peeked down at the kitchen area. Blair was holding out a small closed jar. A single large drop of amber liquid floated in its center. "I think there's enough for four people to get a taste."
Mike waved it away politely. "Please, go ahead. I was never a fan of whiskey."
Blair held out the jar to Rebecca, who also shook her head. "Your loss," he said with a shrug. He uncapped the jar and tossed the little ball into his mouth.
For a moment he floated there with an odd look on his face. Then, carefully but very quickly, he bounded in the direction of the cache's small bathroom.
Rebecca hung in midair with her hands on her hips, watching. "I guess it's not mature yet," she said.
Rue stifled a laugh and flipped herself down through the hatch. "Hi." She realized she should say something more and added, "Have you had dinner?"
"I ate before I came," he said. "I'm not good at eating in freefall, I'm afraid. Despite having done it a thousand times."
"Coffee?"
"Sure."
Rebecca shot Rue one of her annoyingly smug looks and went to make it, leaving her alone with Mike at the cache's standup table.
"What can we do for you, Mike?"
He grimaced. "I'm not sure I should be here at all. Admiral Crisler suspects me of being the saboteur, so he's made me wear this…" He pointed to his ear. Rue had noticed the little adornment there earlier, and had thought it odd that the austerely dressed Michael Bequith should wear jewelry.
"You're bugged?" She let go of the table in astonishment, then caught herself before drifting away.
"Yes, I thought you should know if I was to come aboard your ship." He looked Rue straight in the eye, and his expression held eloquent pleading.
"Give me that!" Rue reached out quickly and rolled the little bead off Mike's ear. She held it up to eye level. "Admiral, I should have been informed of this. Since I wasn't, I'll take it you were willing to let Dr. Bequith be your spy in my terrain. But the Envy is my ship, and I will not permit such devices to remain aboard. Rebecca!" She tossed the bead to her doctor. "Put that out the lock, will you?"
They watched as Rebecca cycled the lock. When that was done, Mike turned back to Rue, grinning apologetically. "Thanks. I—"
"I do not like being manipulated, Dr. Bequith," she said as icily as she could. "You came here to get me to do that, didn't you?"
He frowned, apparently tamping down on some anger of his own. "I can't go back to the Banshee now," he sat at last. "They'll arrest me. I came here to ask you for asylum."
"Oh, I like this less and less," she said. "You'd better have a good explanation for this. Otherwise I see no reason why I shouldn't let them arrest you. How do I know you aren't the saboteur, after all?"
He looked her in the eye again, quite confidently now. "I discovered something," he said. He didn't elaborate, just let the words hang there.
Rue hesitated. Behind Mike, Rebecca started to open her mouth; Rue waved her silent. "Tell me," she said.
Mike brought out a large black datapack and clipped it to the edge of the table. "It's about Blair's photos of the Lasa habitat," he said.
Blair had been watching from the door to the bathroom. Now he jumped over. "What's wrong?" he said, a bit indignantly. "I did a complete photomosaic last time we were here. I was very thorough." He hooked his feet into the floor loops under the table.
"Yes, I know. But I have reason to think your photos have been tampered with."
Rue was surprised, but not as much as she might have expected. As Mike's words sank in, she realized she had been waiting ever since the sabotage for something to happen— for some sign that the uneasiness about this expedition she felt was well-founded. Well, here it was.
"Ah, do you have a holo card?" asked Mike. "I can show you."
"Just a sec." Blair raced away to get one. When he returned, Mike put his hand on the card and downloaded something through its galvanic interface.
Some pictures appeared in ghostly transparency above the table. Blair squinted at them. "Yeah, those are mine."
"Do you have original copies of this data?"
Blair made a sour face. "I didn't have enough storage units to leave backups here when we went to Chandaka. The originals of all our data ended up in Crisler's hands— as partial payment for our rescue."
Mike brought up an annotation layer and pointed at the circled stars. "What does this mean?"
Blair examined the photos for a few seconds, then blinked in surprise. "Holy tholin, you're right. Somebody's screwed with my data."
Mike showed the extent of the changes and showed that they were connected somehow to Linda Ophir. Blair, the reporter, was visibly impressed by his detective work. Rue was pretty impressed herself.
It didn't add up, though. "But why…" she began.
"Because there's something written on the missing part that we're not supposed to know."
"We can just look at it through the telescope," said Evan, who had come up behind them silently.
"I thought of that," said Mike. "The problem is that the Lasa habitat's north pole is pointing at us. The missing stuff is on the south pole. But, we're going out to explore the habitat tomorrow. I came here to ask you to bring some cameras that aren't connected into the expedition's inscape system. We should insist on doing a new photomosaic then."
Rue nodded. "But what are we looking for?"
"Not sure. More Lasa writing, maybe."
"But we can't read Lasa, can we? And anyway, if this stuff has been deliberately hidden, won't we give away that we know about it? That could be dangerous, depending on who did the hiding…" She didn't mention Crisler's name, but then, she didn't have to. "Remember, Dr. Bequith, the Envy may be my ship, but it could be taken away from me at any time."
"Maybe we can find a more subtle way of taking the pictures," aid Blair. "We could throw a little mirror past the habitat, and aim the camera at that."
"Anyway," said Mike, "You're right that we can't read Lasa writing— not with the resources we have here, anyway. So until we get back to civilization, whatever's written on the hidden part of the habitat will remain obscure. Whoever hid it in the first place will know that."
"Why can't we read it?" asked Rebecca.
"Our AIs aren't smart enough," he said. "We could figure out the writing in denotative terms, but that wouldn't get us anywhere."
Rue raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, denotative?"
"Surface meaning— dictionary meaning. The problem is, most meaning is carried through context and implication; it's connotative. In the case of the Lasa, the context is so alien that even when we translate the words and know what they mean, we, well, don't know what they mean." That was a pretty thick description and it must have shown on her face, because he immediately said, "Imagine an alien trying to figure out what a Haiku poem means.
"If we had a context-switching AI we might be able to do it, but the nearest one's on Mars as far as I know. So, no, we don't really know what the writing means. Even so, somebody's gone to great lengths to hide a piece of it. Since you did such a good job with your photomosaic," he said to Blair, "nobody planned to do another. There didn't seem to be a need."
Rue leaned back, examining the ceiling. She was relieved that her worries had finally taken on a tangible form. "You suspect Crisler, don't you?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Not necessarily. However much I detest the man…"
"It's more than that," she said. "I don't know why he's here. Do you?"
Mike looked puzzled. "Surely, if there's a multispecies civilization nearby…"
"Isn't the fastest way to find it through FTL?" She watched him intently through the diaphanous panes of holo light. "Don't you think he'd have a dozen ships scouring the nearby lit stars? What if one of them found the alien homeworld while he was stuck out here? It doesn't make sense. I'll bet he'd already completed a search of those stars before he even hired you guys."
"Meaning…"
"Meaning he already knows where the Envy came from, or he knows that it's not from any nearby sun; either way there's no threat of the rebels finding the homeworld first, is there?"
"That's right," said Evan. "Unless Linda Ophir told the rebels about the Envy."
"And they planted a spy on board," finished Rebecca.
Rue shrugged. "I bet she did and I bet there is one," she said. "But how does that connect with the faked photos? And it still doesn't explain to me why Crisler is here and not waiting in High Space for us to send him information about the homeworld by message laser."
Rebecca passed some bulbs of coffee around. "Thanks," said Mike. "I… Rue, you think the missing writing tells where the Envy came from?"
She nodded. "It might. In which case, Crisler already knows… but then why not go straight there?"
"Unless it was Linda who faked the photos? Or the rebel?"
"This is getting us nowhere," laughed Rebecca. "No, I don't think the missing writing is about the homeworld. But you guys are going to bust a blood vessel trying to figure what it is. Why not wait until tomorrow?"
"So true," Rue agreed with a laugh. "We're just getting ourselves worked up."
They drank their coffee and the discussion drifted from topic to topic, though it always returned to Crisler and the sabotage. Rue liked having someone outside her tiny crew to talk to— Michael Bequith wasn't so stuck up as the rest of the scientific team. She supposed he wasn't on the career treadmill like so many of his colleagues on the Banshee. At least, not on the same one.
That reminded her of something. "Oh!"
They looked at her.
"You told me to ask you about NeoShintoism sometime," she said to him. "So… I'm asking."
Mike didn't look happy at the question for some reason. Maybe he'd been getting a lot of the same inquiries lately. "NeoShinto is simply a system for summoning and contemplating kami," he said.
Well, that sure explained it. "Kami?" she pressed. "Who're they?"
"Spirits of a place," said Evan. "Right?"
Mike nodded.
"Oh." It sounded a bit cultish.
"There's nothing metaphysical about it," Mike said quickly. He described a truly frightening set of neural implants he'd gotten when younger; having some bizarre AI altering your consciousness went way beyond any of the control mods Jentry had tried. Rebecca listened with particular (doubtless clinical) interest.
"…So I can record the stimulation pattern for this vision and literally e-mail it into the galactic inscape network. You see, it's a technology, not a mythology. NeoShinto is a branch of Permanence, which is a nonmetaphysical religion, like Buddhism would be if it stayed purely methodological and didn't keep holding onto ideas like karma and reincarnation. Permanence is a scientifically developed meditation program that is tailored to the individual; if you follow it properly you're very likely to reach a state of mind that used to be called 'enlightenment. We try not to label that state because everyone has different interpretations of it until they experience it and after they experience it they generally laugh at the idea of describing it in words." Mike sounded positively stuffy when he talked about this; the thought made her smile.
"NeoShinto is all about creating and capturing an artificially generated mystical experience, similar to our target state, so that people can 'visit' the state and decide whether they want to pursue the program."
"Hm." She understood, but played dumb because now that he was rolling, he obviously did enjoy talking about it. "It's like a oneness with the universe sort of thing?"
He nodded. "My particular task was to collect the kami of alien places. I undertook this task because we recognized that humans are spreading into some pretty inhuman environments and living in these makes it harder to commune with the Absolute. My kami give people a starting point, at least."
Rue sat back, thinking about the idea. She'd never heard of this sect, or these kami things. The idea of merging your identity with your surroundings was very seductive, though. It made her realize just how separate from the world she usually felt.
After all, she had been raised to disbelieve cults and religions. There was no transcendence to be found; this had been drilled into Rue from an early age, as if she needed any more proof than the limits of Allemagne and her own puny body.
The kami sounded wonderful; but they couldn't be real. "My mother always told us," said Rue, " 'believe what you want, but always put it to the test. »
"What test is that?" asked Blair.
"She called it 'the Supreme Meme, " said Rue. Now that she'd started talking about this, she was a bit embarrassed. Jentry's crowd scoffed at any metaphysical talk.
She pressed on. "It's what you call a thought experiment, a way to test whether something you believe is good for you or not. You know what memes are?"
"Memes are the genes of culture," said Evan promptly. "They are ideas and behaviors that use humans and our culture to propagate themselves. Religions are usually full of memes— ideas that don't mean anything, or serve any useful purpose, but are just so compelling that they get passed on generation after generation."
"Right. Well, the Supreme Meme is like a way of exploding all other memes— other ideas about life, you know? It has the power to destroy beliefs that are bad for you."
"And what is it?"
"Simple," she said. "We know the multiverse is infinitely old and spawns new universes in infinite amounts all the time. That means that infinitely far in the past and infinitely far in the future, there's a universe just like this one, where everything happened just the same way, with the same people; and you and I and this place and this conversation, all happened before and will happen again, not once, but an infinite number of times." Now she was sounding stuffy; she had recited this description from memory.
"Yeah, I've heard that idea," said Evan dismissively.
"Oh, that's not the idea," she said with a grin. "The idea is this: Say you had just died and the angels or kami or whatever asked you where you would like to go now— anywhere in the multiverse, any kind of rebirth or heaven you want. Here's the Supreme Meme: How would you have to feel about the life you've led and your universe, to say to that angel, 'let me come back to where I started and live this life over, exactly as it was, no detail spared. »
"Well, that's, just—" sputtered Evan.
"How would you have to feel? And could this or that religion or ideology that I believe give me that feeling— even in theory? That's the question and you apply it to the religions people try to sell you on. Because if a religion can't, well… sanctify… everything, even the crappy parts of your life, then it doesn't measure up."
Evan looked horrified.
Mike sat back, a bemused look on his face. After a moment he half-smiled. "And has anything ever measured up for you?" he asked.
"No," she said. There was an awkward silence. "Anyway, that's what my mother taught us," Rue said.
"I'll have to think about that," Mike said with apparent sincerity. "But for now… you never did answer my original question."
"What question?"
"Can I call upon you for asylum?"
"Oh! Of course."
"We've got a spare bunk if you'd like," said Rebecca, with a sidelong glance at Rue.
"Ah, well, I… Isn't Lake Flaccid part of your territory? That's where the science team is setting up, anyway."
"Of course," Rue said firmly. "I'll tell Crisler to keep his hands off you as long as you're anywhere in the Envy. I'll tell him I'm keeping an eye on you myself." Of course, Rue knew she had no power to enforce her orders. She had to assume that Crisler wouldn't feel too threatened by this. If he did… well, she had to try.
They left the table and Mike shook hands with each of them at the airlock.
After he was gone Rue scowled at Rebecca. "You're shameless. Haven't you got anything better to do than try to set people up?"
"Hey, matchmaking's an old and respectable tradition," she replied with a grin.
"Not on my ship it isn't." But they were all laughing at her and after a moment she joined in.
* * *
RUE COULDN'T SLEEP, so she drifted out into the common area. Rebecca was sitting up, talking through a holo window to one of the women from Crisler's security team. She noticed Rue and said, "Call you later," then closed the connection. Then she frowned at Rue. "Back whence ye came."
"I can't." Rue settled down at the table next to Rebecca. She clasped her hands in front of her and stared through the holos. "I'm glad Mike came over tonight," she said. It wasn't what she wanted to say, but she didn't know how to approach that.
Rebecca arched an eyebrow. "You like him, don't you?"
"Yes, but… It's just… I was starting to go seriously crazy worrying, when he showed up. He proved I was right about not trusting Crisler. But he also took my mind off things."
"What things?"
She shrugged angrily. "You know what's at stake tomorrow."
Rebecca sighed. "I know what you think is at stake."
"Rebecca, we haven't found anything like a control system anywhere else in the Envy. If it's not in the Lasa habitat, then maybe there isn't one. Not one we'd understand, anyway." All during their search for supplies to repair the stacks, Rue had kept an eye out for anything that might be a control surface. They hadn't opened all the habitats yet, but they'd certainly visited the biggest ones. For days a sense of helplessness had been growing in her and she'd confided in no one, until tonight she felt like bursting. "We've got to think about what happens if we can't control the Envy," she said.
Rebecca put a hand on hers, "Yes, Rue, we do need to do that. But we don't need to do it tonight. There's months to go before we reach our rendezvous with Colossus. Anything could happen in that time.
"Hmm." Rebecca looked at her appraisingly. "I remember when you showed up at Treya, all jittery and determined. You didn't seem to know what you were determined about, but you were determined." They both laughed. "But that's just it, Rue; have you asked yourself what you're going to do if we do find out how to control the Envy?"
Rue stared at her. The question was infuriating somehow, though she couldn't have said why. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Ah, I think you do." When she saw that Rue wasn't going to answer, Rebecca continued. "You know, Rue, you're one of the most driven people I know. But you don't think of yourself that way."
"I'm just trying to survive."
"By doing this?" Rebecca waved around at the habitat. "This is more than just survival. We could have settled down on Chandaka; I could have finished my education there, you'd have found something—"
"We'd have been poor! Worse than poor— indentured. Same as I was at Treya."
"Rue, you were perfectly happy working in the mountains and living hand-to-mouth. I remember it very well."
Rue shrugged angrily. "But I wasn't responsible for all you guys then."
"We can look after ourselves, you know." The words stung. "I'm not saying you're not a wonderful captain— you are— it's just that you've got to learn that your responsibility ends where our ability to think for ourselves begins. You're upset about Max putting himself in cold storage, aren't you?"
"Of course I am! I should have taken better care of him."
Rebecca shook her head. "You did all you could for him. After a certain point, how he takes the help you give him is up to him. Max's problems run too deep for you or I to help him. We can be supportive; and ultimately you were, when you allowed him to put himself on ice."
Rue sat back, absorbing the words. They were silent for a long time; then Rue said, almost against her will, "Then I don't know what it means to be captain. Rebecca, I don't get it."
"You will. Just… not tonight." Rebecca pointed imperiously in the direction of the staterooms. "Now go to sleep. I want to see you fresh in the morning."
"Yes, doctor," said Rue unhappily. "Beck, I… I'm glad you're here."
Rebecca hugged her and Rue sailed back to her room, feeling a little lighter, though no less confused.
Rebecca was right, though; Rue had no picture in her mind of what her life would be like after this expedition. No picture at all. Success or failure seemed the same to her— a blank.
She resented Rebecca's insight, so when she strapped herself into bed, Rue fought down all thought— since to think would be to think about the question Rebecca had raised— and soon fell fast asleep.