Singularity Sky

The Spacelike Horizon

The door to the study opened and a liveried footman entered. “Commodore Bauer to see the admiral,” he announced.

“Sh-show him in, then!”

Commodore Bauer entered the Admiral’s study and saluted. Seated behind an imposing hardwood desk in the center of the huge room (paneled in ferociously expensive imported hardwoods, with raw silk curtains and not a little gold leaf on the cornices), the admiral looked tiny: a wizened turtle sporting a walrus moustache, adrift on a sea of blue-and-silver carpet. Nevertheless, he was in good condition today, wearing his uniform, resplendent with decorations and ribbons, and seated in a real chair.

“Commmmmander. Welcome. Please be seated.”

Commodore Bauer walked toward the desk and took the indicated chair.

“And how is your father these days? It’s — it’s a while since I saw him.”

“He’s very well sir.” At least as well as he could be, considering he died four years ago. Bauer looked at his superior sadly. Once the sharpest saber in the New Republic’s arsenal, Rear Admiral Kurtz was rusting at a terrifying rate: they must already be planning the funeral. He still had periods of lucidity, sometimes quite extended ones, but forcing him to go on this expedition — and no officer could realistically refuse a royal commission and expect to continue to hold his post— was positively cruel; surely His Majesty must have known about his state? “May I ask why you summoned me, sir?”

“Ah — ah — ah, yes.” The Admiral jerked as if someone had just administered an electric shock to him.

Suddenly his expression tightened. “I must apologize, Commodore: I have too many vague moments. I wanted to discuss the flisposition of the — I mean, the disposition — the fleet. Obviously you will be in day-to-day command of the task force, and in overall tactical command once it arrives at Rochard’s World. The matter of planning, however, is one to which I feel I can make a contribution.” A wan smile flitted across his face. “Do you agree with this?”

“Ah, yes, sir.” Bauer nodded, slightly encouraged. The grand old man might be drifting into senility, but he was still razor-sharp during his better moments: if he was willing to sit back and let Bauer do most of the driving, perhaps things might work out. (As long as he remembered who Bauer was, the commodore reminded himself.) They’d worked together before: Bauer had been a junior lieutenant under captain Kurtz during the Invasion of Thermidor, and had a keen respect for his intellect, not to mention his dogged refusal to back down in the face of heavy opposition. “I was led to believe that the General Staff Directorate has some unusual plans for lifting the siege; is this what you have in mind?”

“Yes.” Admiral Kurtz pointed at a red leather folder lying on his desk. “Contingency Omega. I had a ha-hand in the first paper, ten years ago, but I fear younger minds will have to refine it into a plan of attack.”

“Contingency Omega.” Bauer paused. “Wasn’t that shelved, because of, ah, legal concerns?”

“Yes.” Kurtz nodded. “But only as a plan of att-att-attack. We are not allowed to fly closed timelike paths — use faster-than-light travel to arrive before war breaks out. Leads to all— all — sorts of bother.

Neighbors say God doesn’t like it. Blithering nonsense if you ask me. But we’ve already been attacked.

They came to us. So we can arrive in our own past, but after the attack began: I must confess, I think it is a bit of a pathetic excuse, but there we are. Contingency Omega it is.”

“Oh.” Bauer reached toward the red folder. “May I?”

“Cer-certainly.”

The Commodore began to read.

Accelerating to speeds faster than light was, of course, impossible. General relativity had made that clear enough back in the twentieth century. However, since then a number of ways of circumventing the speed limit had turned up; by now, there were at least six different known methods of moving mass or information from A to B without going through c.

A couple of these techniques relied on quantum trickery, strange hacks involving Bose-Einstein condensates to flip bits in quantum dots separated by light-years; as with the causal channel, the entangled dots had to be pulled apart at slower-than-light speeds, making them fine for communication but useless for transporting bodies. Some of them — like the Eschaton’s wormholes — were inexplicable, relying on principles no human physicist had yet discovered. But two of them were viable propulsion systems for spaceships; the Linde-Alcubierre expansion reciprocal, and the jump drive. The former set up a wave of expansion and contraction in the space behind and in front of the ship: it was peerlessly elegant, and more than somewhat dangerous — a spacecraft trying to navigate through the dense manifold of space-time ran the risk of being blown apart by a stray dust grain.

The jump drive was, to say the least, more reliable, barring a few quirks. A spaceship equipped with it would accelerate out from the nearest star’s gravity well. Identifying a point of equipotential flat space-time near the target star, the ship would light up the drive field generator, and the entire spaceship could then tunnel between the two points without ever actually being between them. (Assuming, of course, that the target star was more or less in the same place and the same state that it appeared to be when the starship lit off its drive field — if it wasn’t, nobody would ever see that ship again.) But the jump drive had huge problems for the military. For one thing, it only worked in flat space-time, a very long way out from stars or planets, which meant you had to arrive some way out, which in turn meant that anyone you were attacking could see you coming. For another thing, it didn’t have a very long range. The farther you tried to jump, the higher the probability that conditions at your destination point weren’t what you were expecting, creating more work for the loss adjusters. Most seriously, it created a tunnel between equipotential points in space-time. Miscalculate a jump and you could find yourself in the absolute past, relative to both your starting point and the destination. You might not know it until you went home, but you’d just violated causality. And the Eschaton had a serious problem with people who did that.

This was why Contingency Omega was one of the more sensitive documents in the New Republican Navy’s war plan library. Contingency Omega discussed possible ways and means of using causality violation — time travel within the preferred reference frame — for strategic advantage. Rochard’s World was a good forty light-years from New Austria; normally that meant five to eight jumps, a fairly serious journey lasting three or four weeks. Now, in time of war, the direct approach zones from New Austria could be presumed to be under guard. Any attack fleet would have to jump around the Queen’s Head Nebula, an effectively impassable cloud within which three or four protostellar objects were forming. And to exercise Contingency Omega — delicately balancing their arrival time against the receipt of the first distress signal from Rochard’s World, so that no absolute causality violation would take place but their arrival would take their enemies by surprise — well, that would add even more jumps, taking them deep into their own future light cone before looping back into the past, just inside the spacelike event horizon.

It was, Bauer realized, going to be the longest-range military operation in the history of the New Republic. And — God help him — it was his job to make sure it worked.

Burya Rubenstein whacked on the crude log table with a worn-out felt boot. “Silence!” he yelled.

Nobody paid any attention; annoyed, he pulled out the compact pistol the trade machine had fabricated for him and fired into the ceiling. It only buzzed quietly, but the resulting fall of plaster dust got everybody’s attention. In the midst of all the choking and coughing, he barked, “Committee will come to order!”

“Why should we?” demanded a heckler at the back of the packed beer hall.

“Because if you don’t shut up and let me talk, you’ll have to answer to Politovsky and his dragoons. The worst I’ll do to you is shoot you — if the Duke gets his hands on you, you might have to work for a living!” Laughter. “His living. What we’ve got here is an unprecedented opportunity to cast off the shackles of economic slavery that bind us to soil and factory, and bring about an age of enlightened social mobility in which we are free to better ourselves, contribute to the common good, and learn to work smarter and live faster. But, comrades, the forces of reaction are ruthless and vigilant; even now a Navy shuttle is ferrying soldiers to Outer Chelm, which they plan to take and turn into a strongpoint against us.” Oleg Timoshevski stood up with an impressive whining and clanking. “No worries! We’ll smash ‘em!” He waved his left arm in the air, and his fist morphed into the unmistakable shape of a gun launcher.

Having leapt into the pool of available personal augmentation techniques with the exuberance of the born cyborg, he could pose as a poster for the Transhu-manist Front, or even the Space and Freedom Party.

“That’s enough, Oleg.” Burya glared at him, then turned back to the audience. “We can’t afford to win this by violence,” he stressed. “In the short term, that may be tempting, but it will only serve to discredit us with the masses, and tradition tells us that, without the masses on our side, there can be no revolution.

We have to prove that the forces of reaction corrode before our peace-loving forces for enterprise and progress without the need for repression — or ultimately all we will succeed in doing is supplanting those forces, and in so doing become indistinguishable from them. Is that what you want?”

“No! Yes! NO!” He winced at the furor that washed across the large room. The delegates were becoming exuberant, inflated with a sense of their own irresistible destiny, and far too much free wheat beer and vodka. (It might be synthetic, but it was indistinguishable from the real thing.)

“Comrades!” A fair-haired man, middle-aged and of sallow complexion, stood inside the main door to the hall. “Your attention please! Reactionary echelons of the imperialist junta are moving to encircle the Northern Parade Field! The free market is in danger!”

“Oh bugger,” muttered Marcus Wolff.

“Go see to it, will you?” Burya asked. ‘Take Oleg, get him out of my hair, and I’ll hold the fort here. Try to find something for Jaroslav to do while you’re about it — he can juggle or fire his water pistol at the soldiers or something; I can’t do with him getting underfoot.“

“Will do that, boss. Are you serious about, uh, not breaking heads?”

“Am I serious?” Rubenstein shrugged. “I’d rather we didn’t go nuclear, but feel free to do anything necessary to gain the upper hand — as long as we keep the moral high ground. If possible. We don’t need a fight now; it’s too early. Hold off for a week, and the guards will be deserting like rats leaving a sinking ship. Just try to divert them for now. I’ve got a communique to issue which ought to put the cat among the pigeons with the lackeys of the ruling class.”

Wolff stood and walked around to Timoshevski’s table. “Oleg, come with me. We have a job to do.” Burya barely noticed: he was engrossed, nose down in the manual of a word processor that the horn of plenty had dropped in his lap. After spending his whole life writing longhand or using a laborious manual typewriter, this was altogether too much like black magic, he reflected. If only he could figure out how to get it to count the number of words in a paragraph, he’d be happy: but without being able to cast off, how could he possibly work out how much lead type would be needed to fill a column properly?

The revolutionary congress had been bottled up in the old Corn Exchange for three days now. Bizarre growths like black metal ferns had colonized the roof, turning sunlight and atmospheric pollution into electricity and brightly colored plastic cutlery. Godunov, who was supposed to be in charge of catering, had complained bitterly at the lack of tableware (as if any true revolutionary would bother with such trivia) until Misha, who had gotten much deeper into direct brain interfaces than even Oleg, twitched his nose and instructed the things on the roof to start producing implements. Then Misha went away on some errand, and nobody could turn the spork factory off. Luckily there seemed to be no shortage of food, munitions, or anything else for that matter: it seemed that Burya’s bluff had convinced the Duke that the democratic soviet really did have nuclear weapons, and for the time being the dragoons were steering well clear of the yellow brick edifice at the far end of Freedom Square.

“Burya! Come quickly! Trouble at the gates!”

Rubenstein looked up from his draft proclamation. “What is it?” he snapped. “Speak clearly!” The comrade (Petrov, wasn’t that his name?) skidded to a halt in front of his desk. “Soldiers,” he gasped.

“Aha.” Burya stood. “Are they shooting yet? No? Then I will talk to them.” He stretched, trying to ease the stiffness from his aching muscles and blinking away tiredness. ‘Take me to them.“ A small crowd was milling around the gates to the Corn Exchange. Peasant women with head scarves, workers from the ironworks on the far side of town — idle since their entire factory had been replaced by a miraculous, almost organic robot complex that was still extending itself — even a few gaunt, shaven-headed zeks from the corrective labor camp behind the castle: all milling around a small clump of frightened-looking soldiers. “What is going on?” demanded Rubenstein.

“These men, they say—”

“Let them speak for themselves.” Burya pointed to the one nearest the gate. “You. You aren’t shooting at us, so why are you here, comrade?”

“I, uh,” the trooper paused, looking puzzled.

“We’s sick of being pushed around by them aristocrats, that’s wot,” said his neighbor, a beanpole-shaped man with a sallow complexion and a tall fur hat that most certainly wasn’t standard-issue uniform. “Them royalist parasite bastids, they’s locked up in ‘em’s castle drinking champagne and ’specting us to die keeping ‘em safe. While out here all ’uns enjoying themselves and it’s like the end of the regime, like? I mean, wot’s going on? Has true libertarianism arrived yet?”

“Welcome, comrades!” Burya opened his arms toward the soldier. “Yes, it is true! With help from our allies of the Festival, the iron hand of the reactionary junta is about to be over-thrown for all time! The new economy is being born; the marginal cost of production has been abolished, and from now on, if any item is produced once, it can be replicated infinitely. From each according to his imagination, to each according to his needs! Join us, or better still, bring your fellow soldiers and workers to join us!” There was a sharp bang from the roof of the Corn Exchange, right at the climax of his impromptu speech; heads turned in alarm. Something had broken inside the spork factory and a stream of rainbow-hued plastic implements fountained toward the sky and clattered to the cobblestones on every side, like a harbinger of the postindustrial society to come. Workers and peasants alike stared in open-mouthed bewilderment at this astounding display of productivity, then bent to scrabble in the muck for the brightly colored sporks of revolution. A volley of shots rang out and Burya Rubenstein raised his hands, grinning wildly, to accept the salute of the soldiers from the Skull Hill garrison.

The Evening News bulletin. And now for today’s headlines. The crisis over the invasion of Rochard’s World by the so-called Festival continues. Attempts at diplomatic intermediation having been rebuffed, it now appears that military action is inevitable. Word from the occupied territory is hard to obtain, but to the best of our knowledge, the garrison under Duke Politovsky continue to fight valiantly to defend the Imperial standard. Ambassador Al-Haq of Turku said earlier on this program that the government of Turku agreed that the expansionist policies of the so-called Festival represent an intolerable threat to peace.

‘The woman who chained herself to the railings of the Imperial residence yesterday morning, demanding votes and property rights for ladies, has been found to have a long history of mental disorders characterized by paranoid hysteria. Leaders of the Mothers’ Union today denied any knowledge of her actions and decried them as unfeminine. She is expected to be charged with causing a public disturbance later this week.

“Baseless rumors circulating on Old Earth about the Admiralty’s planned rolling series of upgrades to our naval capability caused numerous extraplanetary investment companies to sell stocks short, resulting in a plummeting exchange rate and the withdrawal of several insurance companies from the New Republic market. No announcement has yet been made by the chairman of the Royal Bank, but officials from the chamber of trade are currently drawing up charges against those companies participating in the stampede, accusing them of slander and conspiracy to establish a trade cartel using the current defense alert as a pretext.

“The four anarchists hanged at Krummhopf Prison today were attended by—” Click.

“I hate this fucking planet,” Martin whispered, sinking deeper into the porcelain bathtub. It was the only good feature of the poky little two-room dockside apartment they’d plugged him into. (The bad features, of course, included the likelihood of bugging devices.) He stared at the ceiling, two meters above him, trying to ignore the radio news.

The phone rang.

Cursing, Martin hauled himself out of the bath and, dripping, hopped into the living room. “Yes?” he demanded.

“Had a good day?” A woman’s voice; it took him a second to place it.

“Lousy,” he said with feeling. And hearing from you doesn’t make it any better, he thought: the idea of being sucked into some kind of diplomatic scam didn’t appeal. But the urge to grumble overrode minor irritation. “Their list of embargoed technology includes cranial interfaces. It’s all crappy VR immersion gloves and keyboards: everything I look at now is covered in purple tesseracts, and my fingers ache.”

“Well, it sounds like you’ve had a really good day, compared to mine. Have you had anything to eat yet?”

“Not yet.” Suddenly Martin noticed that he was starving, not to mention bored. “Why?”

“You’re going to like this,” she said lightly. “I know a reasonable restaurant on C deck, two up and three corridors over from security zone gateway five. Can I buy you dinner?” Martin thought for a moment. Normally he’d have refused, seeking some way to avoid contact with the UN diplomatic spook. But he was hungry; and not just for food. The casual invitation reminded him of home, of a place where people were able to talk freely. The lure of company drew him out, and after dressing, he followed her directions, trying not to think too deeply about it.

The visiting officers’ quarters were outside the security zone of the base, but there was still a checkpoint to pass through before he reached the airlock to the civilian sections of the station. Outside the checkpoint, he stepped into a main corridor. It curved gently to the left, following the interior of the station’s circumference: more passages opened off it, as did numerous doorways. He walked around a corner and out onto the street—“Martin!” She took his arm. “So pleased to see you!” She’d changed into a green dress with a tight bodice and long black gloves. Her shoulders and upper arms were bare, but for a ribbon around her throat, which struck him as odd; something in his customs briefing nagged at his memory. “Pretend you’re pleased to see me,” she hissed. “Pretend for the cameras. You’re taking me out to buy me dinner. And call me Ludmilla in public.”

“Certainly.” He forced a smile. “My dear! How nice to see you!” He took her arm and tried to follow her lead. “Which way?” he muttered.

“You’re doing fine for an amateur. Third establishment on the right. There’s a table in your name. I’m your companion for the night. Sorry about the cloak-and-dagger bit, but you’re being monitored by base security, and if I were officially here as me, they’d start asking you questions. It’s much more convenient if I’m a woman of easy virtue.”

Martin flushed. “I see,” he said. The penny dropped, finally: in this straitlaced culture, a woman who displayed bare skin below her chin was a bit racy, to say the least. Which meant, now he thought about it, that the hotel was full of—

“You haven’t used the hotel facilities since you arrived?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Martin shook his head. “I don’t believe in getting arrested in foreign jurisdictions,” he mumbled to cover his discomfort. “And the local customs here are confusing. What do you think of them?” She squeezed his arm. “No comment,” she said lightly. “Ladies here aren’t supposed to swear.” She gathered her skirts in as he opened the door for her. “Still, I doubt this social order will last many more years. They’ve had to invest a lot of energy to maintain the status quo so long.”

“You sound like you’re looking forward to its collapsing.” He held out his card to a liveried waiter, who bowed and scurried off into the restaurant.

“I am. Aren’t you?”

Martin sighed quietly. “Now that you come to mention it, I wouldn’t shed any tears. All I want to do is get this job over with and go home again.”

“I wish my life were that simple. I can’t afford to be angry: I’m supposed to help protect this civilization from the consequences of its own stupidity. It’s hard to fix social injustices when the people you’re trying to help are all dead.”

“Your table, sir,” said the waiter, reappearing and bowing deeply. Rachel emitted an airheaded giggle; Martin followed the waiter, with Rachel in tow behind him.

She kept up the bubbleheaded pose until they were seated in a private booth and had ordered the menu of the day. As soon as the waiter disappeared, she dropped it. “You want to know what’s going on, who I am, and what this is all about,” she said quietly. “You also want to know whether you should cooperate, and what’s in it for you. Right?”

He nodded, unwilling to open his mouth, wondering how much she knew of his real business.

“Good.” She stared at him soberly. “I take it you already decided not to turn me in to base security. That would have been a bad mistake, Martin; if not for you, then for a lot of other people.” He lowered his gaze, staring at the place setting in front of her. Silver cutlery, linen napkin, starched tablecloth overflowing on all sides like a waterfall. And Rachel’s breasts. Her dress made it impossible to ignore them, even though he tried not to stare: woman of easy virtue, indeed. He settled for looking her in the face. “There’s something I don’t understand going on here,” he said. “What is it?”

“All will be explained. The first thing I’m going to say is, after you hear my pitch, you can walk away unless you decide to involve yourself. I mean it; I came on heavily earlier, but really, I don’t want you around unless you’re a willing participant. Right now, they think you’re just a loudmouthed engineer. If they look too closely at me—” She paused. Her lips thinned a little. “I’m female. I’ll get precious little mercy if they trip over me by accident, but they don’t really think of women as free agents, much less defense intelligence specialists, and by this time tomorrow, I should have my diplomatic credentials sorted out and be able to go public. Anyway: about what’s going on here. Are you going to get up and walk out right now, or do you want in?”

Martin thought for a moment. What should I do? The solution seemed obvious: “I’ll settle for some answers. And dinner. Anything’s better than being locked up in that pesthole of a base.”

“Okay.” She leaned back comfortably. “First.” She held up a gloved finger. “What’s going on? That’s actually a bit tricky to say. The UN has no jurisdiction here, but we’ve got enough clout to wreck the New Republic’s trade treaties with half their neighbors if the New Republic was, for instance, found to be breaking conventions on warfare or application of forbidden technologies.” Martin snorted. “Forbidden tech? Them?”

“Do you really think they’d pass up the chance to steal an edge? The royal family, that is?”

“Hmm.” Martin rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Okay, so they’re pragmatic rejectionists, is that what you’re saying?”

“In a nutshell.” She shrugged. Against his better judgment, Martin found himself staring somewhere below her chin: he forced himself to look up. “Our arms limitation arrangements have no authority here, but things are different closer to home, and a lot of the New Republic’s trade flows in that direction. There’s some recognition: once I get official accreditation, I’ve got diplomatic immunity, if they catch me and I live long enough to assert it. Two”—she held up another ringer—“the arms limitation controls are to protect people from provoking intervention by the Eschaton. And they work both ways. As long as people stick to boring little things like planet-busting relativistic missiles and nerve gas or whatever, the big E doesn’t get involved. But as soon as someone starts poking around the prohibited — for her coming-out party Daddy gave her an emerald this big!” She simpered, and Martin stared back, puzzled.

Then he smiled fixedly as the waiter deposited a bowl of soup in front of him.

The waiter finished up, poured glasses of wine, and disappeared; Rachel pulled a face. “Huh, where was I? You wouldn’t believe how fast the girly-girl routine gets tiresome. Having to act like a retarded ten-year-old all the time … ah yes, the big E. The big E disapproves strongly of people who develop autonomous, self-replicating weapons, or causality-violation devices, or a whole slew of other restricted tools of mass destruction. Bacteria: out. Gray goo: out. Anything that smacks of self-modifying command software: out. Those are all category two forbidden weapons. A planetary civilization starts playing with them, sooner or later the big E comes looking, and then it’s an ex-planetary civilization.” Martin nodded, trying to look as if all this was new to him; he nipped his tongue to help resist the temptation to correct her last statement. Her engagement with the subject was infectious, and he found it hard to keep from contributing from his own knowledge of the field.

Rachel took a mouthful of soup. “The big E can be extremely brutal. We’ve got definite confirmation of at least one atypical supernova event about five hundred light-years outside our — the terrestrial — light cone. It makes sense if you’re trying to wipe out an exponentially propagating threat, so we figure that’s why the Eschaton did it. Anyway, do you agree that it’s bad policy to let the neighbor’s toddler play with strategic nukes?”

“Yeah.” Martin nodded. He took a mouthful of soup. “Something like that could really stop you getting to claim your on-time completion bonus.”

She narrowed her eyes, then nodded to him. “Sarcasm, yet. How have you kept out of trouble so far?”

“I haven’t.” He put his spoon down. “That’s why, if you don’t mind me saying so, I was worried by your approach. I can do without getting myself slung in prison.” Rachel took a breath. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know if that’ll go very far with you, but … I mean it.

I’d just like to put it in a bigger perspective, though. The New Republic is only 250 light-years from Earth. If the big E decided to pop the primary here, we’d need to evacuate fifty star systems.” She looked uncomfortable. “That’s what this is about. That’s why I had to drag you in.” She looked down and concentrated on her soup bowl with single-minded determination. Martin watched her fixedly; his appetite was gone. She had done a robust job of destroying it by reminding him of why he was here. His parents, he didn’t much care for, but he had a sister he was fond of on Mars, and too many friends and memories to want to hear any more about this. It was easier to watch her eat, to admire the flawless blush of the skin on her arms and her dicolletage—he blinked, picked up his wineglass, and drained it in one. She looked up, caught him watching, grinned widely — theatrically, even — and licked her lips slowly. The effect was too much; he turned away.

“Shit and corruption, man, we’re supposed to look as if you’re buying me dinner as a prelude to taking me home and fucking me senseless!” she said quietly. “Can’t you at least fake some interest?”

“Sorry,” he said, taken aback; “I’m not an actor. Is that what we’re supposed to look like we’re doing?” She raised her wineglass: it was empty. “Fill me up. Please.” She looked at him peculiarly; he twitched upright then reached out, took the wine bottle, and poured some of its contents into her glass. “I didn’t want to put you off your appetite. Besides, you’re the only civilized company for a couple of thousand miles.”

“I’m a drive engineer,” he said, wracking his brain for something else to say. What am I getting myself into? he wondered desperately. A couple of hours ago he’d been going crazy from boredom and loneliness: now an intelligent and attractive woman — who just happened to be a spy — had dragged him out to dinner. Something was bound to go wrong, wasn’t it?

“I like working with machines. I like starships. I—” He cleared his throat. “I’m not so good with people.”

“And this is a problem?”

“Yeah.” He nodded, then looked at her appraisingly. Her expression was sympathetic. “I keep misreading the locals. Not good. So I holed up in my room and tried to stay out of the way.”

“And now, let me guess, you’re going stir-crazy?”

“After four months of it, that’s one way of putting it.” He took a mouthful of wine. “How about you?” She breathed deeply. “Not quite the same, but nearly. I’ve got a job to do. I’m supposed to avoid getting into trouble. Part of the job is blending in, but it drives you nuts after a bit. Really, doing this face-to-face isn’t recommended in the rule book, you know? It’d be safer just to drop an earbug off to relay you a message.”

“And you were.” He smiled faintly. “Stir-crazy.”

“Yes.” She grinned. “You too?”

“Anyone waiting for you back home?” he asked. “Sorry. I mean, is there anyone you’re waiting to get back to? Or anyone you can off-load onto? Write letters, or something?”

“Pah.” She frowned, then looked at him. “This isn’t a profession for someone who’s married to anything other than their job, Martin. Any more than yours is. If you were married, would you bring your family out to somewhere like the New Republic?”

“No. I didn’t mean it like that—”

“I know you didn’t.” Her frown dissolved into a thoughtful expression. “Just once in a while, though, it’s good to be able to talk freely.”

Martin toyed with his wineglass. “Agreed,” he said with feeling. “I got bitten by that last week.” He stopped. She was looking at him oddly, her face stretched into something that might be taken for a smile if he couldn’t see her eyes. Which looked worried.

“Smile at me. Yes, that’s fine: now hold on to it. Don’t stop smiling. We’re under surveillance right now.

Don’t worry about the microphone — that’s taken care of — but there’s a human operative watching us from the other side of the restaurant. Try to look like you want to take me home and fuck me. Otherwise, he’s going to wonder what we’re doing here.” She simpered at him, smiling broadly. “Do you think I’m pretty?” Her idiot grin was a mask: she inspected him from behind it.

“Yes—” He stared at her, hoping he looked adequately besotted. “I think you’re very pretty.” In the way that only a good diet and high-end medical care could deliver. He tried to smile wider. “Uh. Actually.

Handsome and determined is more like it.” Her smile acquired a slightly glassy edge.

Somewhere in the middle of the duel of the smiles, the waiter arrived and removed their bowls, replacing them with a main course.

“Oh, that looks good.” She relaxed slightly as she picked up her knife and fork. “Hmm. Don’t look around, but our shadow is looking away. You know something? You’re too much of a gentleman for your own good. Most of the men in this joint would have tried to grope me by now. It goes with the territory.”

“After about fifty or sixty years, most men learn to stop worrying that it’ll go away if they don’t grab for it with both hands. Trouble is, with no antiaging treatments here—” He looked uncomfortable.

“Yeah, and I appreciate it.” She smiled back. “Anyone ever tell you you’re cute when you grin? I’ve spent so long in this dump that I’ve forgotten what an honest smile looks like, let alone how it feels to be able to talk like a mature adult. Anyway …” he started. Her toe had just stroked the inside of his left leg.

“I think I like you,” she said quietly.

Martin paused a moment, then nodded soberly. “Consider me charmed.”

“Really?” She grinned and slid her toe higher.

His breath caught. “Don’t! You’ll cause a scandal!” He glanced around in mock horror. “I hope nobody’s watching.”

“No chance, that’s what the tablecloth is meant to cover up.” She laughed quietly, and after a moment, he joined her. She continued quietly, ‘To get the business over with so we can enjoy the meal, tomorrow you’re going to go back aboard the Lord Vanek and they’re probably going to ask you if you want to earn some more money in return for an extension on your contract. If you want to line your pocket and maybe help save several million lives you’ll say yes. I happen to know that the admiral’s staff is gping to be using the Lord Vanek as flagship, and I’m going to be along too—“

“You’re what? How are you going to do that?”

“As a diplomatic observer. My job is to make sure the Festival — and I wish I knew a bit more about who they are — don’t violate six different treaties. Unofficially, I want to keep an eye on the New Republic, too. There’s a bit more going on than anyone’s willing to admit; no, make that a lot. But we don’t want to let it get in the way of this meal, do we? If you agree, come home with me to a safe house, and I’ll fill you in on the rest, while the local Stasi will just think you’re making out like any other bachelor engineering contractor. So you’re going to go home with a nice fat paycheck, plus a big bonus paid by DeflntelSIG. Everything’s going to be just fine. Now, how about we forget business and eat our dinner before it gets cold?”

“Sounds okay to me.” Martin leaned forward. “About the cover story for the local Stasi.”

“Yes.” She picked up her fork.

“Does it extend to grabbing a bottle of wine on our way home? And chilling out together afterward?”

“Well I suppose—” She stared at him. He noticed that her pupils were dilated.

“You need someone to talk to,” he said slowly.

“Don’t I just.” She put the fork down. Under the table, out of sight, she rubbed his ankle again. Martin felt his pulse, felt his face flushing. She was focused on him, intent.

“How long has it been for you?” he asked quietly.

“Longer than four months.” Suddenly her foot was removed.

“Better eat up,” he said. “If you want our cover story to be any good.”

“Clear channel to Herman, PA.”

“Clear channel pending … connected. Hello, Martin. What can I do for you?”

“Got a problem.”

“A big one?”

“Female human-sized. Actually she’s from Earth, she’s gorgeous, and, uh, she does undercover work for the UN defense intelligence SIG. Specializing in causality-violation weapons, disarmament treaty infractions, that sort of thing.”

“That is interesting. Say more.”

“Name’s Rachel Mansour. Has what looks like genuine ID as a UN weapons inspector, and there’s no way in hell she’s a native or an agent provocateur — not unless they’re sending their female agents off planet for education. She says that New Prague is planning some kind of naval expedition to relieve this colony that’s under siege, and that she expects they’ll try to recruit me tomorrow to do wartime crisis work on the ships. What she wanted me to do — well, basically keep my eyes open for anything fishy or illegal. Strategic weapons violations, I guess. That’s an opening position. The question—”

“No forward-leaning analysis, please. Are you aware of any other UN inspectors in the vicinity?”

“Not directly, but she mentioned she has some kind of local backup and diplomatic credentials. She says she’ll be along on the expedition. I expect there’s a full-scale UN black ops team behind her, probably looking to do some low-key destabilization: it’s not as if the New Republic hasn’t been asking for it since they began the current naval buildup. I’m pretty sure she was telling me the truth about her mission goals, but only part of it.”

“Correct. On what basis did you leave her?”

“I agreed to do what she wanted.” Martin paused, unconsciously censoring his testimony, then continued,

“If you think it’s advisable, I’ll accept any offer of wartime work at hazard pay. Then I’ll do what she wants: keep my eyes open for illegal activities. Any objection? How bad do you think the situation is?”

“It is much worse than you think.”

Martin did a double take. “What?”

“I know of Rachel Mansour. Please wait.” His PA fell silent for almost a minute, while he sat in the dark of his rented room and waited anxiously. Herman never fell silent; like a machine running smoothly, his emollient debriefings made Martin feel as if he were talking to himself. Answers there might or might not be, but never silence …

“Martin. Please listen. I have independent confirmation that there is indeed a UN covert mission in the New Republic. Lead special agent is Rachel Mansour, which means they expect serious trouble. She is a heavyweight, and she’s been out of sight for almost a year, which implies she’s been in the New Republic for most of that time. Meanwhile, the agency representatives on Luna have bought out your personnel files and have been talking to MiG management about contracting you. Furthermore, they are substantially correct in their analysis. The New Republic is preparing to send the entire home fleet to Rochard’s World, going the long way around, where they intend to attack the Festival. This is a very bad idea — they obviously do not understand the Festival — but preparations appear to be too advanced to divert at this time.

“It is also quite possible that you will endanger yourself if you appear to be panicking. Given the current level of surveillance you are under, an attempt to cut and run to a civil liner will be seen as treason and punished immediately by the Curator’s security apparat; and Mansour is unlikely to be able to protect you even if she wants to. I emphasize, the New Republic is already on a low-key war footing, and attempting to leave now will be difficult.”

“Oh shit.”

“The situation is not irretrievable. I want you to cooperate fully with Mansour. Do your job and get out quietly. I will attempt to arrange for you to disembark safely once the fleet arrives. Remember, you are in more danger if you run than if you withdraw quietly.”

Martin felt a tension he’d barely been conscious of leaving him. “Okay. Do you have any backstop options for me if the UN screws up? Any ideas for how I can get out with my skin intact? Any information about this Festival, whatever it is?”

Herman was silent for a moment. “Be aware that this is now definitely a direct-action situation.” Martin gasped and sat bolt upright. “I want you on hand in case things, to use your own terminology, go pear-shaped. Millions of lives are at stake. Larger-scale political issues are also becoming clear; if the New Republic meets the Festival, it is possible that the resulting instabilities will catalyze a domestic revolution. The UN subscribing bodies, both governmental and quasi-governmental, have a vested interest in this for obvious reasons. I cannot tell you more about the Festival at this point, because you would incriminate yourself if you betrayed any knowledge of it; but it is accurate to say that the Republic is more of a danger to itself than to the Festival. However, in view of the nature of the situation, I am prepared to pay a bonus double the size of that promised by the UN inspectorate if you remain in place after completing their assignment and do as I request.”

Martin’s throat was dry. “Alright. But if it’s that likely to go critical, I want three times the bonus. In event of my death, payable to my next of kin.”

Silence. Then: “Accepted. Herman out.”

Rachel lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, and tried to pick apart her feelings. It was early morning: Martin had left sometime ago. She had a bad feeling about the business, even though it was clearly going well; something gnawed at her below the level of conscious awareness. Presently, she rolled sideways, laid her sleepless head back on the overstuffed pillow beside her, and drew her knees up.

It should have been a simple recruitment meeting: put the arm on a useful contact and brief him for a single task. Nice and objective. Instead, she’d found herself sharing a dinner table with a quiet but fundamentally decent man who hadn’t tried to grope her, didn’t treat her like a piece of furniture, listened with a serious expression, and made interesting conversation: the kind of man who in ordinary circumstances she’d have considered a pleasant date. She’d gone a little bit crazy, walking along a knife edge of irresponsibility: and he’d been stir-crazy too. And now she was worried about him — which wasn’t in the plan.

It had come to a head across the kitchen table as they finished discussing business. He had looked up at her with a curious expectancy in his eyes. She crossed her legs, let a foot peep out beneath her skirts. He studied her intently.

“Is that everything?” he asked. “You want me to keep my eyes open for clock-skew rollback instructions, carry the plug-in, notify you if I see anything that looks like a CVD — that’s all?”

“Yes,” she said, staring at him. “That’s essentially everything.”

“It’s ah—” He looked at her askance, sharply. “I thought there was something more to it.”

“Maybe there is.” She folded her hands in her lap. “But only if you want.”

“Oh, well,” he said, absorbing the information. “What else is part of the job?”

“Nothing.” She tilted her head, meeting his angled gaze, steeling herself. “We’ve finished with business.

Do you remember what I said earlier, back in the restaurant?”

“About—” He nodded. Then looked away.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing.” He sighed quietly.

“Bullshit.” She stood up. “Come on. Let’s talk.” She reached for his hand and gave him a little tug.

“What?” He shook his head. “I’m just—”

“Come on.” She pulled a little harder. “The parlor. Come on.”

“Okay.” He stood up. He was no taller than she was; and he seemed to be avoiding her eyes.

Uncomfortable, really.

“What’s wrong?” she asked again.

He chuckled briefly; there was no amusement in it. “You’re the first sane person I’ve met in the past four months,” he said quietly. “I was getting used to talking.”

She looked at him, steadily. “You don’t have to stop,” she said.

“I—” He froze up again. Why is he doing that? she wondered.

“Say something,” she said.

“I—” He paused, and she was afraid he was going to stop. Then he burst out, all at once. “I don’t want to stop. This place is squeezing me into my own head all the time — it’s like being in a vise! The only thing anyone wants of me is my work—”

Rachel leaned against him. “Shut up,” she said quietly. He shut up. “That’s better.” He was, she decided, really good at being leaned on. She put her arms around him; after a moment he hugged her back.

“Forget work. Yeah, you heard me. Forget the New Republic. Think you can do that for a few hours?”

“I—” she felt his breath shuddering. “I’ll try.”

“Good,” she said fiercely. And it did feel good: here was somebody who she could be sure about.

Somebody who seemed to feel the same way about this whole claustrophobic abortion of a culture as she did. He held her steadily, now, and she could feel his hands running up and down her back, exploring how narrow her waist was. “The parlor. Come on, it’s the next room.” Martin had stared back at her. “You sure you want this?” he asked. That was part of his charm.

“What’s to be unsure about?” She kissed him hard, exploring his lips with her tongue. She felt as if she was about to burst right out of her clothes. He gently pulled her closer and let her dig her chin into the base of his neck; she felt stubble on his cheek. “It’s been so fucking long,” she whispered.

“Same to you too.” He took some of her weight in his arms. “Been lonely?” She barked a hoarse laugh. “You have no idea. I’ve been here ages; long enough that I feel like some kind of deviant because I talk to strange men and have some role in life besides hatching babies. The way they think here is getting its claws into me.”

“What? A big strong government agent like you is letting something like this get to you?” he said, gently mocking.

“You’re damn right,” she muttered into his shoulder as she felt a tentative hand begin to explore below her waistline.

“Sorry. Just — six months alone in this dump, having to act the part? I’d have gone nuts,” he said thoughtfully.

“Been more than six months,” she said, looking past the side of his head. He has nice earlobes, she noted vaguely as she leaned closer.

“Let’s find that wine bottle,” he suggested gently. “I think you’re going a bit fast.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, automatically. “I’m sorry.” She tensed slightly. “No, you can keep your hands there. Let’s walk.”

They somehow made it into the parlor — overstuffed armchairs and a display cabinet full of crockery — without letting go of each other.

“At first I thought you were some kind of agent provocateur,” he said, “but instead you’re the first real human being I’ve met in this place.” He left the statement hanging.

“If all I needed was flesh, there are plenty of sailor boys in this port,” she said, and leaned against him again. “That’s not where my itch is.”

“Are you sure you should be in this job? If you’re so—”

“You were going to say vulnerable?”

“Maybe. Not exactly.”

She guided him in front of the sofa. “I wanted company. Not just a quick fuck,” she explained, trying to justify it to herself.

“You and me both.” He held her, gently turned her around so that she was looking into his eyes. “So what do you want this to be?”

“Stop talking.” She leaned forward closing her eyes, and found his mouth. Then events ran out of control.

They’d made love with desperate urgency the first time, Rachel lying on the parlor floor with her skirts hiked up around her waist, and Martin with his trousers tangled around his legs. Then they somehow migrated to the bedroom and struggled out of their clothing before making love again, this time gently and slowly. Martin had a thoughtful, considerate manner: talking afterward, he’d mentioned a divorce a few years ago. They’d talked for hours, almost until the artificial dawn, timed to coincide with sunrise on the planet below. And they’d made love until they were both sore and aching.

Now, lying awake in bed after he’d left, her head was spinning. She tried to rationalize it: isolation and nerves are enough to make anyone do something wild once in a while. Still, she felt nervous: Martin wasn’t a casual pickup, and this wasn’t a quick fuck. Just the thought of seeing him again made her feel an edgy hopeful excitement, tempered by the bitter self-disgust of realizing that mixing business with pleasure this way was a really stupid move.

She rolled over, and blinked: the clock on the inside of her left eyelid said it was just past 0700. In another two hours, it would be time to get confirmation of her diplomatic status, dress, and go kick some New Republican ass. Two hours after that, Martin would be aboard the Lord Vanek; it would all be over by 2200. Rachel sighed and tried to catch another hour’s shut-eye; but sleep was evading her.

She found herself wandering, seeking out pleasant memories. There was not a lot else to be done, in point of fact: there was a high probability that she would die if her guess about the New Republic’s intentions was wrong. And wouldn’t that be a grand way to end 150 years? Physically as young as a twentysomething, kept that way by the advanced medical treatments of the mother planet, she rarely felt the weight of her decades; the angst only cut in when she thought about how few of the people she had known or loved were still alive. Now she recalled her daughter, as a child, the smell of her — and what brought that back? Not her daughter, the political matriarch and leader of a dynasty. Not the octogenarian’s funeral, either, in the wake of the sky sail accident. And she couldn’t even remember Johan’s face, even though they’d been married for fifteen years. Martin, so much more recent, seemed to overlay him in her mind’s eye. She blinked, angrily, and sat up.

Stupid girl, she told herself, ironically. Anyone would think you were still in your first century, falling in love with a tight pair of buttocks. Still, she found herself looking forward to seeing Martin again tomorrow night. The edgy hopeful excitement was winning over age and cynicism, even though she was old enough to know what it meant. Complications …

The interorbit shuttle unlatched from the naval docking bay and edged outward from the beanstalk, its cold-gas thrusters bumping it clear of the other vehicles that swarmed in the region. Ten minutes after it maneuvered free, the pilot got permission from traffic control to light off his main drive; a bright orange plume of glowing mercury ions speared out from three large rectangular panels hinged around the rear cargo bay doors, and the craft began to accelerate. Ion drives were notoriously slow, but they were also efficient. After a thousand seconds the shuttle was moving out from the station at nearly two hundred kilometers per hour, and it was time to begin decelerating again to meet the ship that now lay at rest almost sixty kilometers from the station.

In orbital terms, sixty kilometers was nothing; the Lord Vanek was right on the beanstalk’s doorstep. But there was one significant advantage to the position. The ship was ready to move, and move fast. As soon as the dockyard engineer finished his upgrade to the driver kernel’s baseline compensators, she’d be ready for action.

Captain Mirsky watched the shuttle nose up to Lord Vanek’s forward docking bays on one of the video windows at his workstation. He sat alone in his quarters, plowing relentlessly through the memoranda and directives associated with the current situation; things had become quite chaotic since the orders came down, and he was acutely aware of how much more preparation was required.

Middle-aged, barrel-chested, and sporting a neat salt-and-pepper beard to match his graying hair, Captain Mirsky was the very model of a New Republican Navy captain. Behind the mask of confidence, however, there was a much less certain man: he had seen things building up for a week now, and however he tried to rationalize the situation, he couldn’t escape the feeling that something had gone off the rails between the foreign office and the Imperial residence.

He peered morosely at the latest directive to cross his desk. Security was being stepped up, and he was to go onto a wartime footing as soon as the last shipyard workers and engineers were off his deck and the hull was sealed. Meanwhile, full cooperation was required with Procurator Muller of the Curator’s Office, on board to pursue positive security monitoring of foreign engineering contractors employed in making running repairs to Lord Vanek’s main propulsion system. He glared at the offending memo in irritation, then picked up his annunciator. “Get me Ilya.”

“Commander Murametz, sir? Right away, sir.”

A muffled knock on the door: Mirsky shouted “open!” and it opened. Commander Murametz, his executive officer, saluted. “Come in, Ilya, come in.”

“Thank you, sir. What I can do for you?”

“This—” Mirsky pointed wordlessly at his screen. “Some pompous Citizen Curator wants his minion to run riot over my ship. Know anything about it?”

Murametz bent closer. “Humbly report, sir, I do.” His moustache twitched; Mirsky couldn’t tell what emotion it signified.

“Hah. Pray explain.”

“Some fuss over the engineering contractor from Earth who’s installing our Block B drive upgrade. He’s irreplaceable, at least without waiting three months, but he’s a bit of a loudmouth and somehow caught the attention of one of the professional paranoids in the Basilisk. So they’ve stuck a secret policeman on us to take care of him. I gave him to Lieutenant Sauer, with orders to keep him out of our hair.”

“What does Sauer say about it?”

Murametz snorted. “The cop’s as wet behind the ears as one of the new ratings. No problem.” The Captain sighed. “See that there isn’t.”

“Aye aye, sir. Anything else?”

Mirsky waved at a chair. “Sit down, sit down. Noticed anything out of the ordinary about what’s going on?”

Murametz glanced at the doorway. “Rumors are flying like bullets, skipper. I’m doing what I can to sit on them, but until there’s an official line—”

“There won’t be. Not for another sixteen hours.”

“If I may be so bold, what then?”

“Then …” The Captain paused. “I … am informed that I will be told, and that subsequently you, and all the other officers, will learn what’s going on. In the meantime, I think it would be sensible to keep everybody busy. So busy that they don’t have time to worry and spread rumors, anyway. Oh, and make damned sure the flag cabin’s shipshape and we’re ready to take on board a full staff team.”

“Ah.” Murametz nodded. “Very well, sir. Operationally, hmm. Upgrade security, schedule some more inspections, heightened readiness on all stations? That sort of thing? Floggings to improve morale? A few simulation exercises for the tactical teams?”

Captain Mirsky nodded. “By all means. But get the flag cabin ready first. Ready for a formal inspection tomorrow. That’s all.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Murametz left, and Mirsky was alone with his morose thoughts once more. Alone to brood over the orders he was forbidden to reveal to anyone for another sixteen hours.

Alone with the sure, cold knowledge of impending war.