Dark Orbit Read online

  “We are uncertain as yet,” Gossup said. “If the planet is inhabited, then it is at such a primitive stage that evidence of it cannot be detected from orbit. But we are inclined to be skeptical.”

  After soaring, Sara’s hopes sank back. To be a member of a First Contact team would have been the reward of a lifetime.

  “But the planetary system has other attributes that make it extremely interesting. You may recall from your elementary physics that some ninety-six percent of the universe is comprised of something we cannot detect.”

  “Dark matter—or was it dark energy?”

  “Both. We can only observe their effects on the four percent of the universe we can see, but we know virtually nothing of their nature. ‘Dark matter’ is a misnomer; it is probably not matter. It interacts with nothing we can see, except on the largest scale. You cannot shine any light on it, because it interacts with no form of energy we know. You cannot build a detector, because it does not collide with normal particles. It casts no shadow on our world. Gravity is the only reason we know it exists, for we can detect its cumulative warping effect on the shape of space. But that tells us nothing of its nature.

  “It seems that this new planet is embedded in a region of space that contains an odd concentration of dark matter. We know this because the light from a distant galaxy is very slightly bent, or lensed, in passing through the space around this otherwise unremarkable star. And also because the questship seems to have encountered something on its approach—a gravitational anomaly which gave it a good deal of trouble. We are still analyzing the data to reconstruct the circumstances.”

  “But the ship is still functioning?”

  “Oh yes. Its internal diagnostics indicate that it is quite intact. A lucky thing, because as you might expect, the physicists are very eager to get out there and begin their research.”

  Yes, Sara could imagine that. They would go, even though the lightbeam receiver on the ship was centuries old, the ship itself in questionable condition, the space around it full of anomalies. There would be no shortage of volunteers. It was the mysterious power of this driving will to know.

  Knowledge is our wealth, our honor, our sacrament, Sara thought. It drives us to give up family, home, and place in time for its sake. Would we also sacrifice our lives, like ancient martyrs longing to see the face of God? Is knowledge that sacred to us?

  “Would you go, if you had the chance?” Gossup asked, and then Sara knew the answer.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “It is fifty-eight light-years away,” he said.

  Farther than any other discovered planet. A 116-year round trip to be deducted from her life. Exile—but exile on a new planet. “I’ll still go,” she said. “If you need an exoethnologist. But if there is no native population…”

  There was a secretive look on his face, and she knew that was not what he wanted her for. “All right,” she said, impatient with his Vind indirection, “what is it?”

  “Epco won the contract and is assembling an expedition now—”

  “Epco? You’re recruiting for an Epco expedition? Is that the third party you’re working for?” The rivalry between the two great infocompanies, WAC and Epco, was legendary, and Gossup had always been on the WAC side. Come to think of it, they were sitting in the heart of WAC headquarters now. No wonder he had activated the security screen.

  “No,” he said. “The third party is…” He paused, searching for the right words. “Myself. I have a personal favor to ask.”

  Being able to do a personal favor for a member of the Magisterium was not a bad position to be in, not bad at all. Sara waited, afraid to ruin it with an incautious word.

  “I have a young relative who is to be on the expedition team. She has been through a bad time recently, and I would like someone to be there to look after her, and keep me informed as to her well-being. Her name is Thora Lassiter.” He glanced at Sara to see if she had any reaction to the name, but it rang no bells.

  “What did she do?” Sara said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well, a Vind of the ruling caste—one of the Ral lineage, no less—being sent to the far edges of the universe … I’d say you were trying to get rid of her.”

  For a moment he looked like he was going to deny it, but then thought better of it. “She was an emissary to Orem when she suffered a health crisis, a mental breakdown. The place where she was posted was too primitive to diagnose her correctly; when she heard voices, they imagined she was receiving revelations from a god. In such isolation, she came to believe it, too. There was a mystical sect that embraced her as a prophet, creating a religious revival and a volatile political situation. You can find out the details if you are curious. Suffice it to say, there was turmoil and backlash, and we had to evacuate her in such a way as to convince the Oreman faithful that she was dead. Since then, she has undergone reconstructive treatment and is quite cured. But now we are in negotiations with the new Oreman regime, and her story complicates the diplomacy considerably. Altogether, it is safer and simpler to have her out of the picture.”

  “Wow.” When Vind elites got in trouble, they really got in trouble. Sara already liked this renegade. She wondered if the woman herself had had any choice in the way the situation had been handled. Probably not; Vinds of that status were created to serve. Still, why didn’t they just ship her back to their home planet of Vindahar? Sending her fifty-eight years into the future seemed a rather permanent way to get rid of a temporary problem. Almost like a punishment. Or a cover-up.

  Sara wanted to know more, but she was not going to learn more by asking. It was extraordinary that Gossup had told her this much, and was willing to put her in a position to learn the rest, as he must know she would try to do. Any glimpse into the closely guarded world of Vind power politics was too enticing for a Balavati to pass up. Not to mention that scandalous information about a powerful family could be sold for a lot of money. Enough to finance a retirement.

  Sara looked at her patron’s face, silhouetted against the rosy ersatz sky. Could she betray him? She had always considered herself cheerfully amoral, culturally relative to the bone. Conscience needed to adapt; morality was contextual. Yet she had never had a temptation that really mattered. She had never owned information that could transform her from a gypsy outsider into a player, a person who could reach the levers of true power.

  “Do you trust me?” she asked.

  He considered carefully before answering. “I trust you to act in the way I think you will.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “If I told you, it would affect the outcome.”

  He was deep water under a glassy surface: an intricate mind, complexities turned in upon themselves. Perhaps betrayal was already part of his plan.

  “All right,” she said. “So what’s my cover story?”

  It turned out that her contract would be with the Magisterium, though only she and the director of the expedition would know that. Her secret reports would be sent by instantaneous transmission directly to Gossup; but in the meantime there would actually be some useful work for her. “Epco wants an independent observer to assess the internal dynamics of the research team,” Gossup told her.

  Hugely amused, Sara said, “I get to study the interactions of a bunch of scientists locked up together on a questship?”

  “I thought it might interest you.”

  It was a topic she had some experience with. Exoteric science was her specialty. She had studied all sorts of scientific traditions—all but her own. “It’s as good as a pass into the locker room.”

  With a warning glance, Gossup said, “Epco needs useful managerial analysis.”

  “I’ll bone up on some management theory,” Sara promised, but her grin belied her show of sincerity.

  They settled on a handsome price for Sara’s services, and Gossup gave her the name of the Epco recruiter who would accept her application without question. From now on, she would appear to be an Epco e
mployee.

  When Sara rose to leave, Gossup asked, “Where are you staying?”

  She remembered the world outside then. It was easy to forget in here, cradled by wealth. “I don’t know,” she said. “The hotels seem to be requiring résumés these days.”

  “My secretary will get you a room,” Gossup said. “Just give him your identity chit.” Sara shrugged quizzically and held up her hands. Gossup shook his head with professorial impatience. “Sara, you can’t go around arbitrarily disobeying rules. Some of them are for your own good.”

  “I didn’t realize the planet had adopted universal surveillance.”

  “It’s the price we pay for a free society. Here, give me your thumbprint and I’ll get you a chit.”

  Hopelessly caught, Sara pressed her thumb against the scanpad.

  Before long the security man returned, carrying her new chit and her backpack—probably well searched by now, Sara thought. As she was about to step out the malachite door, a tug of reluctance made her pause and glance back, her hand on the ebony doorjamb. It was then that it struck her: the interview had been stage-managed with a feather touch to manipulate her. All her life, Sara’s declared persona had been as an iconoclast, a disputatious romantic, a brave enemy of elitism. She had studied the exercise of power in order to expose its flaws and inner contradictions, those channels by which to subvert it. And yet, in the end, access to the inner sanctum appealed to her immensely. It wasn’t just the power; she savored the aesthetics, the refinement, taste, and civility. She enjoyed being in this patrician world—not of it, mind, not taken in—but as participant observer. And Gossup had known she would jump to seize the slightest thread of access to it. Every detail of this interview said so.

  Sellout, she thought to herself. But it was without youthful rancor. Her patron was watching. “What is it, Sara?” he asked.

  “I was thinking that I dwell in moral ambiguity.”

  “A fairer house than prose,” Gossup replied obscurely.

  “Maybe for you it is.”

  “I have not asked you to do anything compromising.”

  “It’s not what I’m doing,” Sara said. “It’s knowing why I’m doing it.”

  chapter two

  from the audio diary of thora lassiter:

  Iris, they have called it: the rainbow planet.

  It is an enigma clothed in light.

  As we orbit over the night side, the world below is dark and featureless—none of the spider-web nets of illumination that humans throw across the faces of other planets. Then, as the ship sweeps toward dawn, the pageant of day on Iris begins. Random, rainbow glints appear out of the darkness, growing in number. As the sun rises, the continent ignites into a shimmering mass of light. It is like looking at a world encrusted in gems, glistening so bright you can see no coasts, no mountains, just an endless play of reflection. Dazzled, I watch it till my eyes water. When I look away, rainbows play across my vision, clothing the drab bulkheads in color.

  Iris, my lovely, quicksilver planet, you hide who you are under a cloak of light. Just as I veil myself in false serenity.

  Parts of me feel oddly alive, for someone they took such pains to kill. The curators packed my brain like a fragile trinket in a cotton batting of calm. To prevent my hearing those disembodied voices, they muffled everything—colors, pain, beauty. For weeks I floated a foot above the world, never touching down in the dirt of existence. I could observe, but not experience. Nothing was acute. But now I can feel a tingling inside, like limbs deprived of blood, waking. Underneath the blanket of calm, sharp things are clashing. I now think I have become a patchwork of dead and alive, a chimeric woman.

  Perhaps something changed during the years that I flashed across the parsecs encrypted in a lightbeam. For the barest moment after I arrived here, a memory hung unformed, smokelike, in my mind—as if, somehow, I had been aware. In quiet moments, that memory still comes back to me, and I feel filled again with brightness. Light flows in pure currents through my body, until I shine, an illuminatus, a life-form made of photons. They tell me it is impossible, that I had no brain, and therefore could not think. And yet, all I am was in that lightbeam, every mistake and memory. I was still a human being, though reduced to pure signal. How could anyone be certain I didn’t have a soul?

  Light is supposed to illuminate, but on Iris it conceals. On the ship, we use light to carry all our information, but on the planet, light is a random babble. Up here, we trust it to encode our bodies in its clarified beams. Trapped in optic fibers, it is our docile servant, but down below us it rebels, it riddles with us, uncapturable. I want to escape into it.

  * * *

  Sara was practically the last one to arrive aboard the questship. When she sat up on the slab in the translation chamber, she found that she was in zero-G, and would have pitched headfirst into the room but for the webbing. A strong, dry hand grasped her wrist and brought her back down to the slab.

  The doctor—for that was what he was—handed her a squeeze-bulb full of electrolyte solution, and when she had drunk it he quickly performed a variety of simple neurological tests. Reflexes, coordination, sensation in the extremities. Gradually, Sara’s body was coming back to her, connecting piece by piece.

  Done, the doctor pocketed his instruments. He had blue eyes and a lean face under a trim gray beard. He looked like a man of quick intellect, ironic, competent. Sara liked him immediately.

  “Welcome to the new century, Magister Callicot,” he said. “Happy fifty-eight birthdays.” He had a dry way of speaking, as if mocking his own words.

  “Did you have to remind me?” Sara said.

  He held out a hand. “David Gennaday,” he introduced himself. “You’re my last arrival today. Do you want to rest, or shall I show you the good ship Escher?”

  It would have been Plantlike to act as if a mere lightbeam journey merited rest, so Sara said, “Sure, give me the tour.”

  The doctor launched across the room toward a hatch in what seemed like the ceiling when they started toward it, and like the floor when they arrived. Sara came to rest a yard from the spot she had aimed at, thrown off by the rotation of the ship. The polymer composite bulkhead she landed on was pitted as if by the bombardment of centuries.

  “This must be one of the early questships,” she said. “It seems old.”

  “Yes,” he said. “They’ve had a devil of a time getting it running. We’re pushing the endurance limits of the technology. It’s a credit to the workmanship of the ancestors that the old fossil could be waked at all.”

  Sara had been aboard questships before, preserved as historic sites. They were all spindle shaped, like long accretions of crystals clumped around a central axis, but inside, each one was different. As the doctor led the way downward and outward from the hub, Sara began to understand why he had called this ship the Escher.

  “The architect must have been demented,” David said over his shoulder, “or he wanted to drive us that way.”

  The ancient designer had taken playful advantage of the fact that in the spin-gravity created by the ship’s rotation, down was always the outside of the ship, which formed a 360-degree arc. Instead of tactfully hiding that disconcerting fact for the comfort of the inhabitants, the builders had left open atriums and skylights where you could catch seemingly impossible vistas of other residents walking on walls or drinking coffee at tables affixed to the ceilings. Not content with that, they had deliberately created rooms turned sideways, so that you walked on the wall with the ceiling lights to your right and the carpeting on your left; or they had distorted spaces to play havoc with perspective. As David and Sara walked along one corridor, the ceiling and walls suddenly converged, forcing them to exit through a door into another corridor that was slightly tilted from vertical.

  So far, there was none of the individuality an inhabited ship acquires: no wall murals or friendly clutter of bulletin boards, no cartoons on the doors, no smell of personality. That would come soon, Sara thought. From the
increasingly firm contact of her feet against the floor, she guessed that they had come close to the craft’s perimeter, but it was difficult to tell, since no corridor was on any particular level.

  The refectory was always the social center of a ship, and so David led the way there. “There are some people here you know—or at least, they know you,” he said.

  That didn’t surprise Sara; in fact, she had expected it. The people qualified and willing to go on long-distance missions formed a strange sodality out of time, a troupe of intellectual hunters and gatherers. Outsiders derisively called them Wasters, and they called the rest of the human race Plants. For a Waster, time seemed like a mere convention—an arbitrary way of sorting events into a sequence, no more. Their lives consisted of fragments snatched from other people’s histories, separated by long gaps of travel. Over and over, they outlived all they knew. Their homes were torn down between visits, their siblings became their elders, they would meet and strike up friendships with the descendants of people they had known. At every stop, they plunged into new trends, new attitudes, new inventions. They saw governments change, companies rise and fail. Each time they leaped off into the void it was an exercise in faith—faith that the equipment would still be operating to receive them at the other end, that people would still remember, that people would be there at all.

  Sara had known Wasters who had tried to give it up. They became weary with the constant feeling of being out of synch, of having no cultural referents (or the wrong ones), of being strangers. They wanted to rest in one place for a while. But even that was hard. What did a Waster have to say to people who had never seen by the light of another star, who had existed in a single sequential time frame? To Plants, their own time, their own place, was of universal importance. Sara sometimes thought that planetary gravity warped the imagination, bent perspective till the horizon was uncomfortably close, and everyone had a uniform myopia. And so the Wasters would set off again, searching for places without horizons.