Vernor Vinge - Across Realtime 3 - Marooned in Realtime

349 Pages·2016·0.66 MB·English

by  Vinge Vernor

Dougal Dixon, After Man, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1981.
Christopher Scotese and Alfred Ziegler, as described in "The Shape of
Tomorrow," by Dennis Overbye, Discover. November, 1982, pp. 20-25.
ONE
On the day of the big rescue, Wil Brierson took a walk on the beach.
Surely this was one afternoon when it would be totally empty.
The sky was clear, but the usual sea mist kept visibility to a few kilome-
ters. The beach, the low dunes, the sea-all were closed in by faint haze that
seemed centered on his viewpoint. Wil moped along just beyond the
waves, where the water soaked the sand flat and cool. His ninety-kilo tread
left perfect barefoot images trailing behind. Wil ignored the sea birds that
skirled about. He walked head down, watching the water ooze up around
his toes at every step. A humid breeze carried the smell of seaweed, sharp
and pleasant. Every half minute the waves peaked and clear sea water
flooded around his ankles. Except during storms, this was all the "surf" one
ever saw oil the Inland Sea. Walking like this, he could almost imagine that
he was back by Lake Michigan, so long ago. Every summer, he and Vir-
ginia had camped on the lakeshore. Almost, he could imagine that he was
returning from a noontime stroll on sonic very muggy Michigan day, and
must have noticed him by now. In past weeks, they would have disap-
peared into the sea at the first sight of human or machine. Now they stayed
ashore. As he approached, the younger ones waddled toward him. Wil
went to one knee and they crowded round, their webbed fingers searching
curiously at his pockets. One removed a data card. Wil grinned, tugged the
card from the monkey's grasp. "Aha! A pickpocket. You're under arrest!"
"Forever the policeman, eh, Inspector?" The voice was feminine, the
tone light. It came from somewhere over his head. Wil leaned back. A re-
mote-controlled flier hung just a few meters above him.
He grinned. "Just keeping in practice. Is that you, Marta? 1 thought you
were preparing for this evening's `festivities.' "
"I am. And part of the preparation is to get foolish people off the beach.
The fireworks won't wait till night."
"What?"
"That Steve Fraley-he's making a big scene, trying to argue Yelén into
postponing the rescue. She's decided to do it a little early, just to let Steve
know who's boss." Marta laughed. Wil couldn't tell if her amusement was
directed at Yelén Korolev's irritation or at Fraley. "So please to move your
tail, sir. I have some other people to harass yet. I expect you back in town
before this flier."
"Yes, ma'am!" Wil gave a mock salute and turned to jog back the way
wondered briefly how far Marta would have to chase them to get them
2
into a safe area. He knew she was equal parts soft-heartedness and
practicality. She'd never scare the animals away from the beach unless
there was some chance they could make it to safe haven. Wil smiled to
himself. He wouldn't be surprised if Marta had chosen the season and the
day of the blow-off to minimize deaths to wildlife.
Three minutes later, Brierson was near the top of the rickety stairs that
led to the monorail. He looked down and saw that lie hadn't been the only
person on the beach. Someone was strolling toward the base of the stair-
way. Over half a million centuries, the Korolevs had rescued or recruited
quite a collection of weirds, but at least they all looked fairly normal. This
. person . . . was different. The stranger carried a variable parasol, and
was naked except for a loincloth and shoulder purse. His skin was pale,
pasty. As he started up the stairs, the parasol tilted back to reveal a hair-
less, egglike head. And Wil saw that the stranger might just as well be a
she (or an it). The creature was short and slender, its movements delicate.
There were faint swellings around its nipples.
Brierson waved hesitantly; it was good policy to meet all the new neigh-
inhabitants. Wil's Indian friends wanted to call it Newest Delhi. The gov-
ernment (in irrevocable exile) of New Mexico wanted to call it New Albu-
querque. Optimists liked Second Chance, pessimists Last Chance. For
megalomaniacs it was the Great Urb.
Whatever its name, the town nestled in the foothills of the Indonesian
Alps, high enough so that equatorial heat and humidity was moderated to
an almost uniform pleasantness. Here the Korolevs and their friends had
finally assembled the rest
Town Korolev was built on a scale to accommodate thousands. At the
moment the population was less than two hundred, every living human
being. They needed more; Yelén Korolev knew where to get one hundred
more. She was determined to rescue them.
Steven Fraley, President of the Republic of New Mexico, was deter-
mined that those hundred remain unrescued. He was still arguing the case
when Brierson arrived. ". . . and you don't appreciate the history of our era,
madam. The Peacers came near to exterminating the human race. Sure,
saving this group will get you a few more warm bodies, but you risk the
survival of our whole colony, of the entire human race, in doing so."
Yelén Korolev looked calm, but Wil knew her well enough to recognize
the signs of an impending explosion: there were rosy patches on her
cheeks, yet her features were otherwise even paler than usual. She ran a
hand through her blond hair. "Mr. Fraley, I really do know the history of your
era. Remember that almost all of us-no matter what our present age and
experience-have our childhoods within a couple hundred years of one an-
other. The Peace Authority"-her lips twitched in a quick smile at the name-
"may have started the general war of 1997. They may even be responsible
for the terrible plagues of the early twenty-first century. But as governments
go, they were relatively benign. This group in Kampuchea" -she waved
toward the north-"went into stasis in 2048, when the Peacers were over-
That base was their secret ace in the hole. If they hadn't screwed up their
stasis, they'd've come out in 2100 and blown us away. And you probably
wouldn't even have been born-"
Yelén cut into the torrent. "Hell-bombs? Popguns. Even you know that.
Mr. Fraley, getting another hundred people into our colony will make our
settlement just big enough to survive. Marta and I haven't spent our lives
setting this up just to see it die like the undermanned attempts of the past.
The only reason we postponed the founding of Korolev till megayear fifty
was so we could rescue those Peacers when their bobble bursts."
She turned to her partner. "Is everybody accounted for?"
Marta Korolev had sat through the argument in silence, her
dark features relaxed, her eyes closed. Her headband put her
in communication with the estate's autonomous devices. No
doubt she had managed a half dozen fliers during the last half
hour, scouring the countryside for any truant colonists the
Korolev satellites had spotted. Now she opened her eyes. "Everybody's
accounted for and safe. In fact"-she caught sight
of Wil standing at the back of the amphitheater and grinned
- "almost everyone is here on the castle grounds. I think we
can provide you people with quite a show this afternoon." She
either hadn't followed or-more likely-had chosen to ignore
tence of the Inland Sea. Even on the rare, clear day when the sea mists
lifted, the Kampuchean Alps were hidden beyond the horizon. Neverthe-
less, the rescue should be visible; he was a bit surprised that
5
vaguely on Angkor Wat-had been built half a thousand years earlier, then
left for mountain rains to wear at, for moss to cover, for trees to penetrate.
Afterwards, construction robots hid all the subtle machinery of late twenty-
second-century technology within the "ruins." Will respected that technol-
ogy. Here was a place where no sparrow could fall unremarked. The own-
ers were as safe from a quiet knife in the back as from a ballistic missile
attack.
"As Mr. Fraley says, the Peacer bobble was supposed to be a secret. It
was originally underground. It is much further underground now-somebody
blundered. What was to be a fifty-year jump became something . . . longer.
As near as we can figure, their bobble should burst sometime in the next
few thousand years; they've been in stasis fifty million years. During that
time, continents drifted and new rifts formed. Parts of Kampuchea slid deep
beneath new mountains." The display behind her lit with a multicolored
transect of the Kampuchean Alps. The surface crust appeared as blue,
shading into yellow and orange at the greater depths. Right at the margin of
orange and magma red was a tiny black disk-the Peacer bobble, afloat
against the ceiling of hell.
Inside the bobble, time was stopped. Those within were as they'd been
at that instant of a near-forgotten war when the losers decided to escape to
the future. No force could affect a bobble's contents; no force could affect
The Korolevs proposed to raise the bobble to the surface, where it
would be safe for the few remaining millennia of its duration. Yelén waved
at the display. "This was taken just before we started the operation. Here's
the ongoing view."
The picture flickered. The red magma boundary had risen thousands of
meters above the bobble. Pinheads of white light flashed in the orange and
yellow that represented the solid crust. In the place of each of those lights,
red blossomed and spread, almost-Wil winced at the thought-like blood
from a stab wound. "Each of those sparkles is a hundred-megaton bomb. In
the last few seconds, we've released more energy than all mankind's wars
put together."
The red spread as the wounds coalesced into a vast hemorrhage in the
bosom of Kampuchea. The magma was still twenty kilometers below
ground level. The bombs were timed so there was a constant sparkling just
above the highest level of red, bringing the melt closer and closer to the
surface. At the bottom of the display, the Peacer bobble floated, serene
and untouched. On this scale, its motion towards the surface was imper-
ceptible.
Wil pulled his attention from the display and looked beyond the amphi-
theater. There was no change: the northern horizon was still haze and pale
blue. The rescue site was fifteen hundred kilometers away, but even so,