Iron Sunrise

MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR

More than a year earlier, in the middle of a field mission that was rapidly falling apart in all directions simultaneously, Rachel had struck a bargain with the devil. She’d made a deal with something that was indeed perfectly capable of destroying worlds: and much to her disquiet, she discovered afterward that she did not regret it.

In the wake of the singularity, the Eschaton had apparently vanished from the Earth, leaving behind a crippled network, depopulated cities, the general aftermath of planet-shaking disaster — and three commandments engraved on a cube of solid diamond ten meters on a side:

1. I am the Eschaton. I am not your god.

2. I am descended from you and I exist in your future.

3. Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.

Some people claimed to understand what this meant, while others said they were imbeciles or charlatans. The First Reformed Church of Tipler, Astrophysicist, battled it out in the streets with the Reformed Latter-Day Saints. Islam mutated out of recognition, other religions curled up and died. Computer scientists — the few who were left; for some reason the Eschaton seemed to select them preferentially — came out with crazy hypotheses. The Eschaton was a chunk of software that had, by way of who-knew-what algorithm, achieved computational sentience. It had rapidly bootstrapped itself across the Internet, achieving in minutes or hours as much thinking time as a human might attain in a million years. Then it had transcended, achieving a level of intelligence that simply could not be speculated on, an intellect that compared to human thought as a human might compare to a frog. What it did then, it did for motives that no human being was likely to guess, or understand. How it opened macroscopic wormholes in space-time — something human scientists had no clue how to do — remained a mystery.

Bizarre references to the light cone made no sense at all for more than a hundred years, until the first successful construction of a faster-than-light spacecraft. Then it began to fit into a big picture. The universe was seething with human-populated worlds, the dumping grounds where the Eschaton had deposited the nine billion or so people it had abducted in the course of a single frantic day. The wormholes covered immense distances in time as well as space, opening a year back in time for every light year out in distance. Astrophysicists speculated blatantly about the computational implications of causality violation, until silenced in a bizarre jihad by a post-Christian sect from North Africa.

The human consequences of the singularity reverberated endlessly, too. The exiles hadn’t simply been dumped on any available world; in almost all cases, they’d been planted in terrain that was not too hostile, showing crude signs of recent terraforming. And the Eschaton had given them gifts: cornucopias, robot factories able to produce any designated goods to order, given enough time, energy, and raw materials. Stocked with a library of standard designs, a cornucopia was a general-purpose tool for planetary colonization. Used wisely, they enabled many of the scattered worlds to achieve a highly automated postindustrial economy within years. Used unwisely, they enabled others to destroy themselves. A civilization that used its cornucopia to produce nuclear missiles instead of nuclear reactors — and more cornucopias — wasn’t likely to outlast the first famine, let alone the collapse of civilization that was bound to follow when one faction or another saw the cornucopia as a source of military power and targeted it. But the end result was that, a couple of hundred years after the event, most worlds that had not retreated to barbarism had achieved their own spacegoing capabilities.

Military strategists puzzled endlessly over the consequences of being able to attack an enemy with total surprise, until reminded of the third commandment. One or two of them, it transpired, had tried just that; the typical consequence was that a bizarre accident would befall whoever planned such an attack. Interestingly, even the most secretively prepared attempts to use time travel as a military tactic seemed to be crushed, just before they could actually take place.

Rachel had discovered the hard way just why this was the case. The Eschaton was still a factor in human affairs; reclusive and withdrawn it might be, but it still kept a watchful eye open for trouble. It intervened, too, for its own reasons. Causality violation — time travel — if allowed to flourish without check, offered an immediate threat to its existence; sooner or later somebody would try to grandfather it out of history. Various other technological possibilities also threatened it. AI research might generate a competitor for informational resources; nanotechnology developments might achieve the same results through alternative pathways. Hence the third commandment — and the existence of an army of covert enforcers, saboteurs, and agents of influence working on its behalf.

Two years before, Rachel had met one of those agents. She’d been politically-compromised, a witness to his activities: a fifteen-microsecond induced error in a clock which sealed the fate of a fleet and the interstellar empire that had dispatched it to recapture a planet that hadn’t been lost in the first place. She’d stayed quiet about it, tacitly accepting the abhuman intervention in diplomatic affairs. The Eschaton hadn’t destroyed a civilization this time; it had simply caused an invasion fleet to arrive at its destination too late to alter history, and in so doing had triggered the collapse of an aggressive militaristic regime. It was the job she’d been sent to do herself, by her controllers in the Black Chamber.

In fact, it had been a very happy coincidence from her point of view, because not only had she met an agent of the Eschaton: she’d married him. And sometimes, on good days, on days when she wasn’t being hauled over the coals by bureaucratic harridans or called in to deal with hideous emergencies, she thought that the only thing she was really afraid of was losing him again.

On good days …

Rachel had been lying in bed for an hour, showered and bathed to squeaky cleanliness and dosed up with a wide-spectrum phagebot and a very strong sedative, when Martin came home.

“Rachel?” she heard him call, through a blanket of thick, warm, lovely lassitude. She smiled to herself. He was home. I can come down now, she thought, if I want. The thought didn’t seem to mean anything.

“Rachel?” The bedroom door slid open. “Hey.” She rolled her eyes to watch him, feeling a wave of semisynthetic love.

“Hi,” she mumbled.

“What’s—” His gaze settled on the bedside stand. “Oh.” He dropped his bag. “I see, you’ve been hitting the hard stuff.” The next moment, he was sitting beside her, a hand on her forehead. “The polis called,” he said, face clouded with worry. “What happened?”

Time to come down, she realized reluctantly. Somehow she dredged up the energy to point at the A/D patch sitting by the discarded wrapper. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, harder than wrapping her fingers around -

“Oh. Yeah.” Nimble digits, far nimbler than hers, unpeeled the backing and smoothed the patch onto the side of her neck. “Shit, that’s strong stuff you’re on. Was it really that bad?”

Speech was getting easier. “You have no idea,” she mumbled. At the edge of her world a tidal wave of despair was gathering, ready to crash down on her as the synthetic endorphin high receded before the antidote patch. Dosing herself up had seemed like a good idea while she was alone and his flight was in plasma blackout on the way down, but now she was coming out from it she wondered how she could have done something so stupid. She reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Go. Fetch a couple of bottles of wine from the kitchen. Then I’ll tell you.”

He was gone a long time — possibly minutes, although it felt like hours — and when he came back he’d shed most of his outerwear, acquired a bottle and two glasses, and his face was pale and drawn. “Shiva’s balls, Rachel, how the fuck did you let yourself get roped into something like that?” Clearly the media had caught up with him in the kitchen. He put the glasses down, sat beside her, and helped her sit up. “It’s all over the multis. That fucking animal—”

His arm was round her shoulders. She leaned against him. “Lunatic squad,” she said hoarsely. “Once in, never out. I’m a negotiator, remember? There was nobody else here who could do it, so—” She shrugged.

“But they shouldn’t have called you—” His arm tensed.

“You. Listen.” She swallowed. “Open the bottle.”

“Okay.” Martin, wisely sensing that this wasn’t a good place to take the conversation, shut up and poured her a glass of wine. It was a cheap red Merlot, and it hadn’t had time to breathe, but she didn’t want it for the flavor. “Was it true you were the only one they could call? I mean—”

“Yes.” She drained the glass, then held it out for more. He poured himself one, then refilled hers. “And no, I don’t think there was anyone else who could do the job. Or any other way. Not with the resources to hand. This is a peaceful ’burg. No WMD team on twenty-four-by-seven standby, just a couple of volunteers. Who were on a training course in Brasilia when the shit hit the fan.”

“It was—” He swallowed. “There were camera flies all over the place. I saw the feed downstairs.”

“How was Luna?” she asked, changing the subject pointedly.

“Gray and drab, just like always.” He took a sip, but didn’t meet her eyes. “I’ve … Rachel, please don’t change the subject.”

“No?” She stared at him until he looked away.

“At least try to give me some warning next time.”

“I tried to get a message to you,” she replied irritably. “You were in re-entry blackout. It all blew up really fast.” She pulled a face, then sniffed again. “Jesus, I’m crying,” she said, half-disgusted. “This isn’t like me.”

“Everyone does that sooner or later,” he said. She put the glass down, and Martin stroked the side of her arm, trying to soothe her.

“Asshole thought he could use me as a public convenience,” she said quietly. “Someone holds a gun to your head and tells you to fuck, most legal codes call that rape, don’t they? Even if the gun is actually a bomb, and you get to use your hands instead of your mouth or cunt.” She took a deep breath. “But I’m not a victim.” She held out her glass. “Give me a refill. The fucker’s sleeping with the donor organs tonight, while I shall be getting drunk. All right?” She took another deep breath. Everything was getting easier, now Martin was here, and the alcohol was taking effect. “Because when I walked through that door I had a good idea what could happen, and I also knew what was at stake, and I did it of my own free will.” Stray drops of wine fell on the comforter, spreading out in a wide stain. “I’ve been in worse situations. And in the morning I will be sober, and he’ll still be fucking ugly. And dead.” She giggled. “But y’know what I want right now?”

“Tell me?” he asked, uncertainly.

She sat up, throwing the comforter on the floor. “I want another bath,” she announced. “With my favorite bath toy: you. Lots of oil, foam, and stuff. Some good wine this time, not this crap. And I want one of your back rubs. I want to feel your hands all over me. And once I’m relaxed I want to hit up a couple of lines of something to turn me on, and then I want to fuck you until we’re both exhausted. And raw.” She sat up, unsteadily, and leaned on Martin as she tried to get out of bed. “Then tomorrow, or sometime whenever, I’m going to go and piss on the fuckwit’s grave. You coming with me?”

Martin nodded, uncertain. “Promise me you’ll try to get your name off the register?” he asked.

’Til try,” she said, abruptly sober. She shuddered. “Whether I’ll succeed is another matter, though. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. And most people are too smart to volunteer in the first place.”

She returned to consciousness slowly, half-aware of a pounding headache and a nauseated stomach, in conjunction with sore leg muscles and crumpled bedding. A feeling that she was far too dirty to have just had two baths preoccupied her for a moment until another thought intruded — where was Martin?

“Ow,” she moaned, opening her eyes. Martin was sitting up on the other side of the bed, watching her with a quizzical expression. He seemed to be listening to something.

“It’s George Cho,” he said, sounding puzzled. “I thought you had your phone blocked?”

“George?” She struggled to sit up. “What time is it?” An icon blinked into view, hovering in front of the wardrobe. “Oh shit.” Three in the morning. What does George want with me at three o’clock? she wondered. “Nothing good … pass the call?”

“Rachel? No video?”

“We’re in bed, George,” she said indistinctly. “It’s the middle of the night. What the hell did you think?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” A picture blinked into view on the flat surface of the wardrobe. George was one of the few mainstream career diplomats senior enough to know what her real job description was. Normally dapper, and cultivating a bizarre facsimile of old age that some of the more primitive polities seemed to mistake for distinguished, George currently looked worried and unkempt. “It’s a code red,” he said apologetically.

Rachel sat up as fast as she could. “Hold on a minute,” she said. “Where’d you put the hangover juice, Martin?”

“Bathroom, left cupboard, top shelf,” he said.

“Give me a minute,” she told George. “Okay?”

“Er, yes indeed.” He nodded, looking worriedly at the pickup.

It took her one minute precisely to grab a bathrobe, a glass of water, and the bottle of wakeup juice. “This had better be good,” she warned George. “What’s the hurry?”

“Can you be ready to move in half an hour?” asked Cho, looking nervous. “It’s a full dress team op. I’ve been trying to get through to you for hours. You weren’t at the office this afternoon — what happened?”

Rachel glared at the camera: “You were too busy to notice some asshole trying to blow up the whole of Geneva?”

“You were involved in that?” George looked astonished. “I assure you, I didn’t know — but this is far more important.”

“Don’t.” She yawned. “Just spill it.”

“I’ll be giving everybody the full briefing en route—”

“Everybody? How many people are you bringing in? What do you mean by en route — and how long is this going to take?”

George shrugged uncomfortably. “I can’t tell you that. Just plan for at least a month.”

“A month. Shit.” Rachel frowned at Martin’s expression of dismay. “This would be out-of-system, then?”

“Er, I can’t confirm or deny, but that’s a good guess.”

“Open-ended.”

“Yes.”

“Diplomatic. Black-bag. Or you wouldn’t want me along.”

“I-can-neither-confirm-nor-deny-that. At this time. Obviously.”

“You bastard!” she breathed. “No, not you, George.” She shook her head. “You realize I’m due about six years’ sabbatical, coming up in three months? Do you also realize I got married a couple of months ago and we’re planning on starting a family? What about my partner?”

George took a deep breath. He looked unhappy. “What do you want?”

“I want a—”

Rachel stopped dead for a moment. Code red, she thought, an icy sense of dread insinuating itself into her tired head. That’s really serious, isn’t it? Code red was reserved for war alerts — not necessarily ones that would bring the Security Council into play, but the code didn’t get used if shots weren’t about to be fired. Which meant …

“—I want a double berth,” she snapped. “I come back from a year-long clusterfuck in the New Republic, get hauled over the coals by some harpy from head office because of the hospitality budget, have to deal with the mess when some lunatic is visited by the Plutonium Fairy and tries to landscape downtown Geneva by way of an art happening because he can’t get a handjob, and now you want to drag me away from home and hearth on a wild goose chase into the back of nowhere: I figure a double berth is the least you can do for me.”

“Oh.” George held up his right hand. “Excuse me, just a moment.” His eyes flickered with laser speckle as some urgent news beamed straight onto his retinas. “You haven’t registered a change of status. I didn’t realize—”

“Damn right you didn’t realize. No long solo postings anymore, George, not for the foreseeable and not without planning.”

“Well.” He looked thoughtful. “We need you right now. But…” He rubbed his chin. “Look, I’ll try to get your husband or wife a diplomatic passport and a ticket out to, er, the embassy destination on the next available transport. But we need you, now, no messing.”

Rachel shook her head. “Not good enough. Martin comes along, or I don’t go.”

Across the bedroom, Martin crossed his arms, shrugged, miming incomprehension. Rachel pretended not to see.

“If that’s your final word,” George said slowly. He thought for a minute. “I think I can manage that, but only if your husband consents to sign on as a staff intern. There’s a fast courier ship waiting in orbit; this isn’t a joyride. Are you willing to do that?”

Rachel glanced sidelong at Martin. “Are you?”

He raised an eyebrow, then after a moment he nodded. “It’ll do. I’ve got nothing coming up in the next month, anyway. If you think … ?”

“I do.” She forced herself to smile at him, then glanced back in-field at George. “He’ll take it.”

“Good,” George said briskly. “If you can be ready to travel in an hour, that would be good. No need to bring clothing or supplies — there’s a budget for that en route. Just bring yourselves. Um, this child — it hasn’t been fertilized yet? Neither you nor your husband is pregnant, I hope?”

“No.” Rachel shook her head. “You want us in one hour? You can’t even hint what this is about?”

For a moment Cho looked haggard. “Not until we’re under way,” he said quietly. “It’s a maximum-security issue. But … about today. How many lives did you save?”

“Um. Three hundred kilotons would be … all of Geneva, if you want to look at it like that. About half a million people. Call it half of them dead, the other half homeless, if our little friend had got his shit together. Why?”

“Because about a thousand times that many people will die if we don’t pull this one off,” George said with quiet vehemence. “And that’s just for starters…”