Ilium

53 The Equatorial Ring

Daeman was only a little surprised to see that the Prospero hologram can stand and walk. The magus picked up his staff and walked slowly to the dome-window of the room. When he lifted his face to watch the stars march by, the pale light emphasized the wrinkles on his throat and cheeks. All this onslaught of old age in recent days made Daeman queasy—and even queasier considering what they’re discussing at that moment. He tried to imagine a world in which his friends and he—his mother!—grew old like Savi, like this mottled and wattled hologram. The horror of it made him shudder.

Then he remembered the horror of the tanks, the blue worms, and Caliban’s dining table.

Wouldn’t it be easier just to kill the monster? Leave the firmary intact?

No, Daeman realized through his hunger and fatigue. This place was an obscenity any way one looked at it. The entire belief system of the Five Twenties was based on the conviction that people went to the rings after one hundred years, joining the post-humans up here in comfort and immortality. Daeman thought of the gray, half-eaten corpses floating out there in the thin, stale air, and could only snort a laugh.

“What is it?” asked Prospero, half turning from the view.

“Nothing,” said Daeman. He felt like weeping or breaking something. Preferably the latter.

“How can we destroy the firmary?” asked Harman. The taller, older man was shivering from his illness. His face was even paler than Daeman’s and sheened slick with sweat.

“How indeed?” asked Prospero. He leaned on his staff and looked at them. “Did you bring explosives, weapons—other than Savi’s silly little pistol—or tools?”

“No,” said Harman.

“There are none up here,” said Prospero. “The post-humans had evolved themselves far beyond wars and conflicts. Or tools. The servitors did all work up here.”

“They’re still working,” said Daeman.

“Only in the firmary,” said the magus. He crossed slowly back to the center console. “Have you given thought to the hundreds of human beings floating helpless in the firmary tanks?”

“My God,” whispered Harman.

Daeman rubbed his cheek, feeling the beard there. It was an oddly satisfying sensation. “We can’t use the faxnodes in the healing tanks to get back to Earth,” he said, “but presumably those people already in the tanks could be faxed back to the portals from which they came.”

“Yes,” said Prospero. “If you can convince the servitors to do so. Or if you were to take over the fax controls yourselves. But there’s a problem with that.”

“What?” said Daeman, but even as he asked the question he saw the problem clearly.

Prospero smiled grimly and nodded. “For those who’ve just been faxed up to the tanks, or those finished with their blue-worm healing process, fax return is possible. But for those hundreds midway in the healing process . . .” His silence said everything.

“What can we do?” asked Harman. “There will be new people faxing in and healed ones faxing out, hundreds in the process.”

“If Prospero’s right and we can take over the fax controls,” said Daeman, “we could shut off the incoming, then continue to fax down the healed as the process is finished, until all the tanks are empty. We’ve both been in the tanks. How long does the Twenty healing usually take—twenty-four hours? Forty-eight for serious injuries like being eaten by an allosaurus?”

“You weren’t being ‘healed’ for that,” said Prospero. “They were rebuilding you from scratch, using your updated memory codes from the fax grid banks, stored DNA, and organic spare parts. But you are correct, even the slowest healing cases require no more than forty-eight hours.”

Daeman opened his hands and looked at Harman. “Two days from the time we take over the firmary.”

“If we can take over the firmary and control the fax process,” Harman said doubtfully.

The magus leaned on the back of his chair. “I can do nothing, but I can give information,” said the old man. “I can tell you how the fax controls work.”

“But we won’t be able to fax down ourselves?” Harman asked again. Obviously the thought of using the sonie worried him.

“No,” said Prospero.

“Can we reprogram the servitors to handle the faxing?” asked Daeman.

“No,” said the magus. “You will have to destroy or disable them. But they are not programmed for conflict.”

“Neither are we,” laughed Harman.

Prospero stepped around his chair. “Yes,” he whispered. “You are. With human beings, no matter how civilized you may appear, it is just a matter of reawakening old programming.”

Daeman and Harman looked at one another. Harman shivered again in his blue thermskin suit.

“Your genes remember how to kill,” said Prospero. “Come, let me show you the instrument of destruction.”

Prospero’s hologram couldn’t manipulate the virtual controls in the center console himself, but he showed Daeman and Harman how to use their hands on and in the complex glowing toggles, shunts, slides, switches, and manipulators.

An image misted into solidity above the console, then rotated in three dimensions for their inspection.

“It’s one of those big e-ring devices we saw on the way in,” said Daeman.

“A linear accelerator with its wormhole collection ring,” said Prospero. “The post-humans were so proud of these things. As you saw, they made thousands.”

“So?” said Harman. “Are you saying that the fax system on Earth is controlled by these things?”

Prospero shook his brow-heavy head. “Your fax system is terrestrial. It doesn’t move bodies through space and time, only data. But these wormhole collectors are the spiders in the center of the post-humans quantum teleportation web.”

“So?” said Harman again. “We just want to go back to Earth.”

“Grip that green controller and squeeze the red circle twice,” said Prospero.

Daeman did so. On the holographic display of the orbital linear accelerator, a small quad of engine thrusters pulsed twice, sending a tiny silver cone of crystallized exhaust into space. The long array of girders, tanks, columns, and rings began to rotate ever so slowly. Counter-thrusters fired just as briefly, and the long accelerator stabilized. The fifty-meter-wide shimmering wormhole at its end, centered within the huge and gleaming collection ring, had not turned with the accelerator. Daeman leaned close to the holographic image of the accelerator and saw that the collection ring was on gimbals. He reached a finger into the image, touched different elements, and saw the vid image shift into diagrams and descriptive lettering—return line, injector, quad thrusters. He removed his hand and the real-time image reappeared. The words had, of course, meant nothing to him.

“Attitude control, orbital translation thrusters,” said Prospero. “This asteroid is in stable orbit—it would be a possible species-extinction event if it fell onto the Earth—but the wormhole collecting accelerators and the Casimir mirrors were constantly being moved around.”

“From here,” said Daeman.

Prospero nodded. “And from the other asteroid cities.”

Harman and Daeman looked at each other again. “There are more post-human cities?” asked Harman.

“Three more,” said the magus. “One other on this equatorial ring. Two on the polar ring.”

“Are there living post-humans there?” asked Daeman. He suddenly saw an alternative to all this destruction and the end of the Five Twenties way of life.

“No.” Prospero sat in his high-backed chair. “And there are no other firmaries, either. This city was the only one that bothered itself with the affairs of you modified old-styles down there.” He waved a mottled hand toward the Earth rising on the right curve of the dome. The room was suddenly brightened again by Earthlight.

“All the posts are dead,” repeated Daeman.

“No, not dead,” said Prospero. “Gone elsewhere.”

Daeman looked at the limb of the Earth rising and the blackness of space above the shimmering curve of atmosphere. “Gone where?”

“Mars, to begin with,” said the magus. He looked at their quizzical expressions and chuckled. “Do either of you modern men have any idea where Mars is? What Mars is?”

“No,” said Daeman without embarrassment. “Will the posts be coming back from there?”

“I think not,” said Prospero, still smiling.

“Then it doesn’t matter, does it?” said Harman. “Prospero, were you suggesting we could use this . . . particle accelerator wormhole thing . . . as a weapon?”

“As the ultimate weapon against this city,” said Prospero. “Common explosives or weapons would have little effect on the crystal city or its asteroid. These towers are made to withstand actual meteor impact. But three kilometers and more of heavy-mass exotic materials with a wormhole on its snout, under thrust, will have a definite impact, especially if you target it directly on the firmary.”

“Will Caliban survive?” asked Daeman.

Prospero shrugged. “His tunnels and grottoes have saved him before. But perhaps such a collision will provide a Caliban-species extinction event here of its own.”

“Can he escape before it hits?” asked Harman.

“Only if he learns of the sonie and takes possession of one of your thermskin suits,” said Prospero. Then he smiled disconcertingly, as if such a prospect was not totally improbable.

“How long will it take for this accelerator-monstrosity to get here?” asked Daeman. “Until impact?”

“You can program it to arrive as quickly or slowly as you wish,” said the magus, rising and walking into the center console, his lower body disappearing into the metal and virtual panels. He raised one arm, the robe slid back a bit, and the skinny forearm and bony finger pointed to the end of the accelerator away from the wormhole ring. “Right here,” said Prospero, “are the plane-change thrusters—the most powerful engines. I’ll show you how to activate them and to aim this weapon.”

The two followed his instructions on rotating the accelerator and programming what Prospero called its trajectory coordinates and delta-v. Daeman’s finger hovered above the initiate virtual button. “You didn’t tell us how long we have until impact,” he said to Prospero.

The hologram steepled its fingers. “Fifty hours sounds right. An hour for you to get to the firmary and take control. Forty-eight hours to allow the new arrivals to heal and to fax them all back intact. An hour then to find your way to the sonie and escape before this little world ends.”

“No time to sleep?” said Harman.

“I would advise against it,” said Prospero. “Caliban will probably be trying to kill you every minute of that time.”

Harman and Daeman exchanged glances. “We can take turns napping and eating and keeping watch at the controls there,” said Daeman. He hefted the pistol and then set it back in Savi’s pack. “We’ll keep Caliban at bay.”

Harman nodded doubtfully. He looked very, very weary.

Daeman looked at the real-time image of the linear accelerator again and set his thumb above the thruster initiate button again. “Prospero, you’re sure this won’t end all life on Earth or anything?”

The magus chuckled. “All life as you know it, yes,” he said. “But no flaming asteroid from the sky species-extinction event. At least I don’t believe so. We’ll have to see.”

Daeman looked at Harman, whose own hands were wrist-deep in the virtual panel. “Do it,” said Harman.

Daeman pushed the button. On the display above the holographic projector, eight huge thrusters at the end of the linear accelerator lit up with solid, continuous pulses of blue-ion ignition. The long structure shuddered slightly and began to move slowly—directly toward Daeman’s and Harman’s faces.

“Good-bye, Prospero,” said Daeman, grabbing Savi’s pack and turning toward the semipermeable exit.

“Oh, no,” said Prospero. “If you make it to the firmary, I’ll be there. I wouldn’t miss the next fifty hours for the world.”