Analog Science Fiction and Fact - 2014-03 Read online

  There was a momentary silence; Corva and Halen glanced at each other. Then Corva sighed. "How do you want to do it? I mean, you're going to reveal yourself at some point. Right? So when? And how?"

  Toby's bravado collapsed. He'd actually been trying not to think about that, just as he'd been trying not to think about how his brother and sister had changed, seemingly overnight, from familiar friends to hostile strangers.

  "What happens when I do?" he asked, spreading his hands. "I have no idea. You have to tell me." And I have to trust you. But could he?

  "Well," said Corva. "Some people think the world will end. You'll bring us all to paradise, because your return will be the fulfillment of time itself." She saw his expression and looked down quickly. "I know, it's crazy. But even the mildest interpretations... you have to understand, according to all our traditions—the stories, the religious orthodoxy, and about a billion books and stories—you're the heir. The eldest son of the McGonigals, and the original designer of the lockstep system."

  "Which I'm not," he pointed out. "Kenani said that Mom created it."

  "But who knows that, other than a few people like him?" She shook her head. "It doesn't matter, Toby: you're the heir. The Creator and Savior of the locksteps. If people thought you'd returned, they'd turn away from your brother and sister instantly. Many would follow you without question. And some..."

  When she didn't continue, Halen nodded to her, as if she'd just agreed with something he'd said. "Some would follow Thisbe out of the lockstep."

  "Not some," said Corva flatly.

  "A lot. Many. Most, maybe. Would you let that happen?"

  Toby shrugged; he had no idea.

  "More importantly, would Peter let it happen without a fight?" Halen sat back, frowning at Toby. "Come with us to Thisbe and see what people really think of the McGonigals. Then tell us what you want to do. Though, I warn you, you might not like what you see there."

  "I don't like any of this," said Toby. There was no question he was trapped. With Peter and Evayne after him, he had nowhere else to go. Even so, the idea of pretending to be the messiah the legends said he was, was profoundly disturbing.

  He sighed. "I'll go."

  "But not as Toby McGonigal."

  13

  Toby stepped onto the soil of Thisbe, stopped, and began to cough. Tears filled his eyes and he had to step away from the others and cover his face for a moment. Orpheus climbed up to perch on his shoulder and said, "mrrt?"

  It was years since he'd breathed the dust-laden, mold-and-bug filled air of a real planetary biosystem. It was like fire in his lungs. There was more to the shock than that, though.

  Blazing sunlight sent waves of heat into his face. The air was hot, and felt free of the heaviness of the subsurface domes and close metal passages he'd been condemned to after they left Earth. When he squinted his eyes open again, he beheld a wilderness of rolling hills, green grass, and trees nodding in the breeze. Blue sky presided over it all, where white clouds reached for and overtopped one another. He could smell the grass, and wild flowers. The buzz of insects sounded from nearby. It was all so beautiful and overwhelming, so like Earth.

  "Wh-where are we?"

  The sun flickered and went out. Toby blinked and ducked with a shout of surprise. "Damn," he heard Halen say.

  Then the light came back on, only now it was a lurid, monochromatic blue. Everything was suddenly electric and strange, the trees pale parodies of themselves, the sky white. "What the hell—?"

  Corva glanced up and shrugged. "Glitches. They happen. You'll see. I don't actually mind the blue ones. It's the red I hate."

  Toby put his hand up to his face—but no, he hadn't absent-mindedly donned his glasses. This was no virtual world. He could still feel the heat of the strange sunlight on his face, and smell the f lowers. The bugs were still zizzing in the warm air. "That's not a sun?"

  Jaysir and Shylif were with them, and now Jay laughed. "Welcome to the Laser Wastes. Or, at any rate, their slummy edges."

  Behind them the Traveler's Rest was a long low building on the edge of a fairly conventional, if overgrown-looking, spaceport. A few bots were struggling to cut down young trees that were blocking some of the buildings' exits, and only one runway was clear; the others sprouted grass and more small trees through cracks in the pavement.

  In the other direction, past the hills Toby could now make out the towers of a sizable city. "I don't understand," he said, shading his eyes and peering upward. The light source was as bright as the sun, but was a tiny dot, too intense to look at. "What is that?"

  "About eight thousand years ago some civilization or other built this shell of energy-harvesters around Proxima Centauri. That's the nearest star to Earth," Jay said.

  "I know that."

  "Right. Well, a few thousand years after they died off, one of the locksteps made a devil's pact with the things that had inherited the harvesters in return for a little fraction of that power. They built thousands of these asteroid-sized lasers—red, blue, and green, to make white, you know?—and aimed them at some of the nearer nomad planets. Like this one."

  "Wait—we're, how far from Proxima Centauri here?"

  "Oh, a good two light-years away. You couldn't even see it with the naked eye. But the laser light reaches us, and it's enough to heat the whole planet to livable temperature."

  Toby knew he was staring, slack-jawed, at the sky. He couldn't help himself, his mind had gone blank. Finally Orpheus head-butted him in the cheekbone and he stammered, "O-okay. How many worlds did you say?"

  "Thousands. But they're not lockstep worlds—well, except for a few discards like Thisbe. They're too hot. Too fast." He nodded at the overgrown runways.

  Corva nodded in agreement. "They've gone strange, a lot of them. Alien and dangerous, and they don't communicate with the outside world anymore. The Wastes, that's what we call them."

  "And Thisbe is...?"

  She shrugged and jabbed a thumb at the sky. "Far out on the edge—and glitchy. So, not worth the effort for your average self-respecting civilization. Perfect for us, though."

  "... And with that, here's my ride," said Jay. He waved at an older man and middle-aged woman who were strolling toward them across the landing field. The man was accompanied by a cargo bot like Jay's, which balanced an impossibly tall pile of machinery on its back. The woman was surrounded by a... Toby squinted... a flock of some kind of glittering metallic things. Behind her stalked a tall, willowy, and sinuous bot, not quite human-formed but beautiful.

  "Makers?" said Toby. Jaysir nodded.

  "We're not loners, you know. There just weren't any on Wallop. We love to get together, we just refuse to engage in social relations that are based on material inequity. Anyway, I've got a lot to talk about with these guys. About what we should do next."

  "You're not going to tell them who—"

  "—You are? Not until you give me the all-clear." Jaysir grinned at him. "But you understand, I need to... set them up for it, so it's not a complete shock when you do. And you'll probably want to know whether we can help, when you make your move."

  "I don't know that there's any moves to be made, Jay."

  "You just keep thinking that." With a cheerful wave, the maker walked off to meet his kinsmen.

  Halen had flagged down an empty aircar, and they piled their few belongings into it and set off for the city. A few minutes into their flight the "sunlight" went from psychotic blue to eerie green. It stayed that way for a minute, then flipped back to yellow-white.

  Now that he could properly see, Toby realized that their car was part of a regular stream converging on the core of the city; the awakened passengers from a dozen ships were on their way into town. The sky would probably have been dark with aircars, he supposed, if it weren't for the blockade.

  As the shock of seeing and feeling sunlight faded, Toby remembered his nervousness upon awaking today. He and Orpheus had used cicada beds on the flight out, so woke refreshed; and he'd been instantly
aware of the ordeal that was to come.

  Today, he was going to meet Corva's parents.

  It didn't help that Shylif was guesting with them as well. Corva had invited him to stay at her parents' place until the Thisbe courts heard his case against Sebastine Coley; at first he'd been reluctant but had finally agreed just this morning. Toby was simultaneously cheered and uneasy that he'd accepted; after the incident on Wallop, he wasn't entirely comfortable around the man anymore.

  Having Shylif there when he met Corva's parents might help to deflate the tension. On the other hand, it made Toby seem like yet another possibly disreputable member of her rogue's gallery, and he was eager to counter this impression. He rehearsed his words as buildings of alien architecture, and occasionally the Consensus style, flicked past below. "Pleased to meet you, sir, ma'am," he'd say, or something like that. "Yes, I saved your son," or, "No, I didn't save anybody, your daughter saved my life."

  Or, maybe, "Hi, I'm the brother of the man who's oppressing your entire planet."

  "Am I Garren Morton today? Or Toby Mc-Gonigal?" he'd asked Corva before they went into hibernation—last night, or so it felt like.

  She'd frowned. "Let's start with Garren and work our way up," she'd said.

  "Ah, Orph, what do I do?" He put his face next to the denner's, and scratched the fur between his ears. Orpheus made a bouquet of smiley-face emoticons to go with the purr he gave off. He seemed quite unconcerned with the strangeness of this new world. Toby wasn't so comfortable.

  Corva's brother was some kind of revolutionary. They'd talked a few times while he and his older, gray-haired companions from the ship had worked to secure them a ship back to Thisbe. That wasn't the only ship they were after: more than half the men and women Toby had rescued from Wallop's frozen clouds were on their way to other worlds, where they claimed to be intent on doing "business."

  Ammond had been doing "business," too. Even if the strange quarantine of Thisbe was unjust, Halen and his friends seemed to be doing more than just trying to undo it. Halen, at least, hated Peter's lockstep. You could hear it in his voice when he said even the most innocent thing about it. He wanted to take down Peter's world.

  So, should Toby help him do it? The towers of the city swept slowly by below them. The place looked post-apocalyptic: the building facades were cracked and vine-choked, the streets overgrown with grass and trees. Various big machines were struggling to cut it back, and bots were working to fix the damage to the buildings. Still, the place looked busy, with crowds of people in the streets and lots of aerial vehicles hopping between the districts. The aircars from the spaceport thinned out, most landing on this or that downtown platform. Theirs was one of the few that kept on into the forested suburbs.

  "The city's not under a dome or anything," he suddenly realized. "Do you get any winter here?"

  Halen shook his head. "It stays subtropical most of the time—except when the sun has an outage. Those can last for weeks, and then the whole world'll freeze over. It's brutal. The rest of the time, everything's constantly growing, so while we're hibernating it just takes over." He nodded at the grass-choked streets. "Normally that all gets cleaned up before we wake, but the bots can't keep up with the blockade schedule. Too many turns too close together; they're breaking down."

  "Home," said Corva. Her voice was tense.

  The aircar settled on the overgrown lawn of a fairly modest-looking stone house. The place was ringed with trees, and only narrow paved foot-paths wound between those to the neighbors and beyond. Apparently, out here in the suburbs they'd given up on keeping the streets clear of invading vegetation.

  Toby stared at the trees. He hadn't seen so many in one place since he'd left Earth. They made him want to cry and he felt a pang of intense envy for Corva and her family, who were lucky enough to live among them. Although, they probably never had time to get used to them. A sapling this month would be a stout adult after just one turn, and dead after a few more.

  People were coming out of the house. Halen pushed up the aircar's canopy and bounded out. Corva followed, but as she approached her family her footsteps slowed, and then she stopped. Suddenly she burst into tears.

  "You're older!" A man and a woman rushed over to her, along with a young man and woman. She let her parents embrace her, but pushed away the other two.

  "No! It's terrible, it's terrible!" With a sob she burst past them and ran into the house.

  Toby sat in the aircar, clutching Orpheus and feeling sick. Finally Halen seemed to remember him and called, "Garren! It's okay, come meet Mom and Dad!"

  He didn't want to get out of the car, but Orpheus squirmed out of his grasp and leaped down to the grass, where he proceeded to roll back and forth in delight. Toby put a shaky hand on the canopy bed and climbed out. With slow steps he walked up to Corva's family. They were debating who should go after Corva.

  "—Rescued us from the timelock! He won't say how he did it, but he agreed to come with us." Halen was grinning, but his eyes were cold as he looked over at Toby.

  His parents weren't like that; in fact, they were practically in tears themselves. Corva's other brother and sister looked to be about Halen's age; all seemed older than Corva, but a sinking feeling in Toby's stomach told him that, no, she must be the eldest.

  "I'll go to her," said Corva's sister.

  "No," Toby heard himself say.

  Halen's grin froze. "What?" he said in a slightly strangled tone.

  "I'm sorry." Toby bowed quickly. "I'm Garren Morton, Corva and I are just friends, but, the thing is..."

  "What?" Halen said again. His smile was gone.

  "It happened to me, too," Toby blurted. "Having years stolen like—like's happened to you. I know how she feels. My own brother and sister are... well, they're a lot older than me now. And my parents are dead. For me, they were alive just a couple of months ago, but it's been..." Halen's eyes widened in warning, and Toby shrugged. "An impossibly long time.

  "I know you want to run to her," he said to Corva's sister. "She looks the same to you, but for her, you're an entirely new person. It's going to take her a while to get over that shock."

  Her father sighed. "It's what I said would happen. The same thing would have happened to you," he said to Halen. "You shouldn't have risked it all like that, son."

  Halen was now the target of their attention. With another quick bow, Toby moved around them and entered the house, where alert bots offered him orange juice and biscuits. He stared at them, sidled past, and called out, "Corva?"

  He hesitated, but didn't really feel like he had to tiptoe about; the household bots were there to protect the privacy of the family and would simply bar him from anywhere he shouldn't go. Or so he supposed, until he saw that half the butlers were sitting silent in dusty corners: broken down, like so much of the city.

  He started up the stairs, and they didn't stop him.

  She was face-down on a bed in one of the bedrooms. This was a girl's room, its walls tuned to shifting washes of yellow and peach; pictures of family, places, and people tumbled and sailed slowly up and back in that dimensionless space. There were wooden boxes under the bed and chests of drawers whose tops overflowed with jewelry and dozens of toys, some of which had broken down and sat forlornly while the rest all crowded at the edge of the surface, watching Corva weep with concern on their tiny faces.

  "Evayne's room looked like this," said Toby from the doorway. Corva stiffened, then turned her head enough to say, "You've got to be kidding."

  "She's my little sister, Corva. At least, she was last time I saw her."

  Corva lay very still for a long time. Then she rolled over and sat up. She wouldn't meet Toby's eye. "I was hoping to totally redo this room before I showed it to any young man. I haven't lived here in years."

  "You were at school."

  She nodded. "Studying architecture! How to design buildings to last thousands of years. Ruin design, it's called." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Suddenly, something seemed
to occur to her, and now she did send Toby a puzzled look. "What about you? You got lost because you were away from home for some reason. There's a billion stories about why, but most of them are ridiculous— "

  "We had to seal our claim to Sedna by visiting all its moons. One was stupidly far away. Rockette, we called it. I got lost on the way there."

  It was strange. What had been his immediate experience yesterday was something he could talk about as being in the past; it was a story he could tell. He grinned and shrugged. "That's really all there was to it. I didn't want to go, but Mom and Dad weren't home, and Peter and Evayne weren't old enough."

  Corva frowned, thinking. "That must have been tough on all of you."

  "Toughest on Peter. He hates change, he's afraid of his own shadow. He cried for days when he found out Mom and Dad were going."

  "What about when you left?"

  Toby shrugged. "We had this gameworld we shared, called Consensus. I promised I'd meet him in it every day. He was fine with that."

  Corva gave him a long measured look. "Are you sure about that?"

  His heart was suddenly hammering again. He shook himself angrily, and scowled at her toys. They backed away, all except for a little warrior with a sword who stood bravely with his thumbnail-sized weapon raised.

  "We can't talk about any of this without tripping over it, can we?"

  "Tripping over what?" He thought he knew, but he wanted her to say it.

  "The change. How we slept, and overnight they got older. And... how it's all around us all the time. These cliffs of time you could just fall over accidentally at any moment. Lose a day, lose a century... I hate it."

  He was surprised. "You want to leave the lockstep?"

  "That would be worse. To be stranded in realtime? Left behind by everybody you ever knew?" She shuddered. "No, it's just so unfair how a year can be snatched away from you like that. Or, or, a whole life."

  He found himself sitting on the bed next to her, and she leaned into him. As he had so many times with Evayne, he put his arm around her; but this was different and he knew it. Corva buried her face in his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said, voice muffled.