DURING THE MEAL, Jeaves told them a little of what he had been up to. Being in a virtual state had both advantages and disadvantages. “Since I’ve been living in the network, I could do system-wide research through the iceline and other systems. It’s a pretty broad reach, and I’ve been skimming various channels to see what I could learn about general happenings on Shipworld. Oddly, I’ve found no reference of any sort to the Starmaker mission—or to you, me, or anything we’ve done, even though we saved more than a few worlds from extinction. It’s as if we were a stealth operation, and I’m not sure why that is so.”
“What about the people who sent you to find us and take us on the mission to Starmaker?” Bandicut asked. “Couldn’t you go to them and ask?”
“If only I could,” said the robot. “But they seem to have dropped out of sight. Lying low, you might say. I couldn’t talk to them, and couldn’t even find them.”
“But you at least know who they are, don’t you?” Li-Jared asked.
“Not with any certainty. I received my instructions through intermediaries. Those channels were valid authorities at the time, but their original sources were kept hidden. Those channels have now expired or been removed, so I no longer have even that access.”
Bandicut took a long swallow of amber liquid. He was on his second beer now. “Why don’t they want to talk to you?” he asked, setting his mug down carefully.
The robot was silent for a moment.
“Uhhl,” Antares murmured unhappily. “Do they have something to hide?”
Jeaves leaned forward and touched a finger to the shiny part of his face where his cheek should have been. “My guess is that there are disagreements in the high-level power structures of Shipworld. Now, before you ask, I know little about how those structures work. There is a ruling circle, but their interactions tend to be secretive.”
Bandicut sat back and exchanged glances with Antares. “You mean even you don’t know who’s running this place? Why should we pay attention to anything they ask us to do?”
Bwang. “Exactly,” Li-Jared said.
“You must make your own decisions about that,” Jeaves said. “But do consider: Haven’t the missions they’ve sent you on all been to the good? You saved the world of the Neri from disaster.”
“Yes, that’s true. But still—”
“And you kept the heart of the Starmaker Nebula from going hypernova at the hands of the Mindaru and subsequently incinerating hundreds of worlds.”
“Of course, but—”
“And before that, you saved Shipworld itself from calamity at the hands of the boojum.”
/// He does have a point. ///
Bandicut said with a slow sigh, “All those thing may be true . . .”
A flicker of light danced around Jeaves' headband. “Those were worthy and legitimate missions, were they not? Even if you don’t know exactly who authorized them?”
Bandicut shrugged, and saw Antares making a gesture of assent. Ik was clearly frustrated in trying to follow Napoleon’s translation, and Li-Jared was rubbing his fingertips together thoughtfully. Antares spoke next. “So, yes, we have been asked to do things that were good, and beneficial. Yes. We acknowledge that. But do they expect us to continue, uhhl, to operate blindly? Are there good authorities and bad ones? Why do they not show themselves?”
“That is a question I would like an answer to, as well,” Jeaves answered.
Bandicut raised his hands as if to ask a question, then dropped them, not knowing what to ask.
“Hrah!” Ik shouted suddenly, speaking aloud for the first time since they had started eating. He pounded the table with both fists, then smacked his chest once and pressed both hands to the table. He bowed his head and said something Bandicut couldn’t understand. Napoleon translated as, “Enough! No more!” Then Ik nodded sharply to Li-Jared, Bandicut, and Antares.
At that moment, the waiter-robot and several assistants swept in and deposited platters covered with small morsels. Dessert.
“So what,” Bandicut said, gesturing to the platters, “were you going to share with us by dessert at the latest?”
***
To everyone’s surprise, Jeaves actually was ready to share. He asked everyone to bring their food and drink, and led them through the back of the pub into a large, darkened room with work screens on the left wall and a large holo-wall on the right.
“What’s all this?” Bandicut asked, setting his beer on a ledge.
“This is where I can show you all the things I’ve discovered.”
Bandicut’s eyes slowly adapted to the gloom. “What things?”
“For starters, something called the starstream. I don’t expect that to mean anything to you yet—but it seems to have caught the interest of more than one ruling faction. Something important is happening there.”
Bandicut hmm’d.
“Hrah,” said Ik, listening to Napoleon’s halting translation. He looked bored and frustrated with all the hard-to-follow talk. He did not appear to be understanding much of it. He sauntered away, tapping the side of his head, to take a look at the work stations in the lounge. Antares and Bandicut watched him go. Maybe, Bandicut thought with a twinge of sympathy, he just wants to see if he can continue last night’s search. At a nudge from Antares, Bandicut turned his attention back to Jeaves.
“I’m going to start with some images,” Jeaves said. “We can catch Ik up on it later. The images pertain to matters concerning both your people, John Bandicut, and yours, Li-Jared.”
Li-Jared stiffened. “How’s that?”
“Observe,” Jeaves answered. The wall came to life, and they were suddenly gazing out into space. The glowing, misty spiral of the Milky Way stretched out before them. Bandicut’s breath went out involuntarily; he had seen this many times before, but the beauty of it never got old—nor did the punch to his gut at the reminder of his isolation from Earth and every human he’d ever known. “This view,” Jeaves said, “comes from a telescope camera just a few layers of wall away from us here.”
Bwang “We’re near the outer hull of this thing?” Li-Jared asked. “Of Shipworld?” His fingers crawled nervously on his chest.
“We are, yes.”
“So that’s a real-time image?”
“For the moment. But now we’re going to look at some cartography of features down inside the galaxy. This is imagery assembled from galactic probes.” Jeaves turned and bowed toward Bandicut. “Let’s start in human-inhabited space.” A tiny transparent sphere appeared, and the viewpoint zoomed in on it.
Bandicut shook off a wave of disorientation. “Are you serious? Is that my solar system?” He tried to suppress a rush of emotions. Sudden change in perspective. Homesickness. Longing. Detachment.
/// I’m pretty sure it’s not— ///
Charli began in his head, before Jeaves started speaking again.
“The solar system is in there,” Jeaves answered. “But that sphere represents an area of human-inhabited space not quite a thousand light-years across.”
“Uh—” Bandicut began.
/// Wait a minute. He’s saying— ///
“And what you’ve probably deduced by now is that we’re looking at human space in a somewhat later time frame than your time back home, John. We’re looking at space a few hundred years into what I imagine you may still think of as the future.”
Bandicut’s throat constricted; he could not respond.
“While you’ve been traveling, John, humanity has moved out and colonized the stars.”
His head was spinning, but he managed a small wave of protest. “Hold it . . . hold it. Are you saying this is the future—here, now—or are you saying that . . .” He had trouble finishing the question. He rasped in a painful breath, then finished his question in a papery whisper. “Just how many hundreds of years have gone by on Earth, while I’ve been . . . here?”
“To the best of my information, about five hundred years, Earth time. But you already knew that, or suspected it anyway, didn’t you?”
“Suspected, yes.” He was having trouble catching his breath. “But you told me before that you didn’t know. You weren’t sure how much time—”
“It’s true. I didn’t know. Not exactly. But I was created by humans during the period of the grand expansion—though parts of me have zigged and zagged a bit on the timeline, so it’s gotten rather difficult to explain easily.”
Bandicut was aware of Antares pressing close to him, offering her empathic support. “So everyone I knew is really gone—” Julie? Dakota? Georgia? Krackey?
/// John, we knew all that,
didn’t we? ///
/We knew it was likely. Okay, almost certain. But that’s different from having it confirmed, Charli. I’m not sure why it is, but it is./
Antares squeezed his shoulder, not speaking. He felt her comforting presence flowing over him. Antares knew about Julie, and understood that he had long since thought he was over her loss. But this was like gazing down at her gravestone for the first time. He wasn’t prepared for it, not really. He felt himself swaying where he stood.
Jeaves spoke again. “I’m not showing this to you to highlight your loss, John—but to show you something that your people have achieved in the meantime. Take a look.” The image zoomed in, until the stars within the volume of human habitation became visible. Then, from within that region, a thin, glowing thread emerged, stretching from a bright red star in the human-occupied realm, all the way out into unexplored space and straight toward the heart of the galaxy. “That line,” Jeaves said, “is called the starstream. It’s an interstellar n-space channel, anchored at one end by the black hole at the galactic core, and at the other end by a black hole where Betelgeuse used to be—”
“Used to be?”
Jeaves explained how a naturally occurring cosmic hyperstring had been transformed into a galaxy-spanning pipeline, an n-space stream that served as a high-speed route for interstellar travelers.
Bandicut was too stunned to speak.
Antares murmured, “Are you saying that Bandie’s people made this thing?”
“Indeed, they did,” Jeaves said. “With the help of friends from other worlds. In fact, I—or a version of me—was there when it happened. That particular ‘me’ didn’t survive the supernova to report back, but I imagine it was pretty spectacular.”
“I should think so,” Antares breathed.
Bwang. “But you said my people were involved, too,” Li-Jared reminded him. “Were they among the friends of the humans?”
“No, they weren’t there. But they have since become involved, I believe.”
“How? Have my people met Bandie’s people?”
“Not as far as we know. Your people have not yet explored their own solar system. But they have begun building in local space around your homeworld.”
Li-Jared did not look pleased. “We haven’t reached the stars yet?”
Jeaves rotated toward him. “Your timeline is different, and your people face a very different environment around your homeworld. Your people’s circumstances differ substantially from the ones John’s people faced.”
Li-Jared fumed. “Are you going to show us my people’s space?”
Jeaves turned back toward the wall. “I was coming to that.” He pointed to the thread he’d called the starstream. The view shifted, following the thread of light out of human-inhabited space, and inward into the galaxy. “Traffic moves down the starstream, as though down a river. Every so often, there is a node where natural vibrations of the cosmic hyperstring make it possible to exit and enter, and those are the places where ships tend to go exploring for new worlds to contact, or settle.” Jeaves moved the view a little farther down the starstream. “Here’s a node,” he said, pointing. “And here—” A tiny patch of light appeared to one side, not far from the node in the starstream. “This is the Karellian system. It’s embedded in an obscuring nebula, so I can’t show you an actual view of your star.”
Li-Jared made a soft bonging sound. Frustration. Disappointment.
“Now, you see how close Karellia is to the starstream? As far as I can tell, there has been no contact or discovery yet. Karellia is farther down the starstream than most of the human-connected activity has gone, though it appears there are a few human and human-friend colonies even farther down the stream. So there is some traffic in this part of the starstream. Still, the information I’ve been able to obtain is sparse, coming from a few probes sent to monitor the area.”
Bandicut tapped his teeth. “That’s interesting, but it’s not why you brought us here, is it?” /I have a feeling we’re not here to see good news. Want to bet?/
/// Nope. ///
“You’re right. The reason I brought you here is that something’s going on in the starstream at that point. Something that has our Shipworld masters worried. And I believe it may involve Karellia.”
Li-Jared bonged softly.
Antares stepped forward to take a closer look. “Something between Bandie’s people and Li-Jared’s?”
“I don’t think so,” Jeaves said. “I think it’s between Karellia and the starstream itself.”
“So, what?” Li-Jared asked. “Have my people found this starstream and started using it?”
“The situation is more subtle than that. And possibly more dangerous,” said Jeaves. “The information I found becomes rather sketchy at this point. But the rumblings, and the secrecy and guarded messages that mention Karellia . . .”
“Hold on,” Bandicut said, craning his neck to look around. “Shouldn’t Ik be hearing this? Where’d he go?”
Li-Jared turned. “Wasn’t he with Napoleon?”
“Napoleon’s right here,” Antares said, pointing to the robot standing behind her.
“I’m sorry,” said Napoleon. “I thought I should hear what Jeaves was say—”
Bandicut wheeled and strode out into the lobby, peering around for their Hraachee’an friend. “Ik! Where are you?”
“Bandie, come back!” Li-Jared cried behind him. “I want to hear this!”
***
Ik, weary of listening to a conversation he couldn’t follow, had wandered out of the room to a cluster of large work stations in the lobby. He found one display that seemed to offer images like the one he’d seen last night: scenes of places in Shipworld, or so he assumed. Thinking of the human female he had spotted, he decided to see what he could turn up. He was in such a fog! He should have tried to get Napoleon to interpret his story for Bandicut, but he had just been too far behind the mental curve to break into any of the conversations. He wasn’t even sure he could have expressed himself to Napoleon. But if he could find the human and show Bandie . . .
He fiddled with the controls, thumbing through a succession of views. Several reminded him of landscapes he had viewed last night, and he wondered if perhaps there was a menu that could bring the same views around. Unlike the room he’d been in last night, when a new scene appeared here, so did a pale, violet-glowing rectangular frame floating to the left of the work station. A transport portal, perhaps? When the display switched to a view of a busy concourse, thronging with a huge variety of folk, he felt a strong temptation to test the portal theory. Quick step through to have a look around, quick step back? That would be risky; it assumed the portal went in both directions.
While pondering the question, he got up and walked to where he could peer into the darkened cartography room and check on his friends still talking in front of a large star map. They weren’t going anywhere. Ik returned to his seat, still itching to try if the opportunity arose, but afraid. If he felt isolated now, how would he feel if he became permanently separated from his companions? He muttered to himself and touched the controls to sort through available views.
The image changed to gorges and canyons in a spectacular landscape. Ik sat back and glanced to his left at another work station, where a spindly sort of creature had come in quietly and sat down. Ik saw the being work for a moment, and then stand up and step through the glowing portal next to his station. It vanished in a glimmer of violet light.
Well, that settled the question of whether it was a transportation portal or just another kind of display. Thoughtfully, Ik turned back to his own display and studied the landscape of gorges. It seemed familiar. He thought he had seen it last night, but under different lighting conditions. Was the number of selections so limited that he had already returned to this one? Or, perhaps, had he accidentally bookmarked the views he had seen from the other control station?
He sat back and glanced again to his left, at the other work station. The portal to the left of that station gleamed back to life, and the tall, thin creature stepped back out. Round-trip transportation? The being did something at the controls again. His work station darkened, and without so much as a glance at Ik, the being walked away and disappeared down a corridor.
Hrrming to himself, Ik resumed his study of the controls in front of him. Did you have to do anything special to make the portal ready to bring you back once you’d gone through? Most of the equipment around here was pretty smart. It might happen automatically, perhaps for a period of time after stepping through. Ik sighed through his ears, wishing he could be sure.
If the station was remembering scenes from last night, might he be able to resume his search for other Hraachee’ans, and perhaps do it in a more organized fashion? Or, if John Bandicut came over here to help, to show him how he might find Bandicut’s fellow human? The trouble was, Ik didn’t really remember precisely what he had done last night; and in any case, the controls here were different. So it was back to blind luck. Expelling his breath through cupped hands, he touched the button that nudged the display to the next view.
To his astonishment, he stared into a meadow just like the one where he had seen the human female. The land seemed empty now. He gingerly touched a button that he hoped would pan the view from side to side. It did. “Hrah,” he whispered, as he glimpsed a krayket running to the right. He panned farther, to see where the creature was running. “Hrah!” There it, or she, was. The human. She was striding toward something—toward a pale, glowing rectangle. She appeared to be marching toward it with the intention of stepping through. “No!”
Ik turned his head and called hoarsely, “John Bandicut! Come quickly! John Bandicut!” His voice came out as a weak rasp. He looked back at the holo. The human in the viewer could be through that portal in a matter of seconds. Who knew where it would take her?
To his left, the portal beside him glimmered violet. Would it take him to that location—to the human? Could he use it to bring her back here? If his guess about the portal was wrong, the results could be disastrous.
The opportunity was nearly gone. He jumped up and shouted in the general direction of his friends, “I’ll be back!” Then he turned and plunged through the violet-rimmed rectangle. The light flared around him, and he felt a moment of dizziness before everything changed.