Karl Schroeder
Lockstep
Prologue: Barsoom
TWO BRIGHT MOONS CHASED each other across a butterscotch sky. Down on the plain, something big was galloping, its feet touching down only once a second. It was too far away to make out what it was, but the broad-shouldered man on the balcony could see each puff of dust it left and the long line of them leading away.
Whatever it was, it was drawing that line at an angle to a much bigger mark—an ancient canal, dry now for thousands of years, that swept in from one horizon, passed this lonely peak with its crumbled towers and collapsed stairs, and exited the scene over the opposite horizon. Dunes were trying to erase the canal, but they’d never succeed.
The gray-haired man smoothed his hand along the stone banister. It had amused him to leave its ancient worn stone intact when he renovated this palace. He’d done the same with the rest of the mountain peak—balcony, tower, and dome had all been preserved where they could be. The result was a jarring mix of sharp new edges and worn, almost natural curves, but he liked that.
His moment of contentment was interrupted by approaching footsteps. It was easy to tell by their nervous, clipped gait that it was his most trusted adviser, Memorum. Normally Memorum simply said what was on his mind, but this time he stopped and didn’t even clear his throat.
“What?” He turned to shoot a bemused look at the man. “Did somebody die?”
Memorum didn’t answer, and for a moment the gray-haired man wondered if somebody had. He stepped away from the rail. “Is she—”
“They found him.”
“Ah.” He turned back to the view, reaching deliberately for the stone to steady himself. “Ah. Really.” It took him awhile to work up the courage for the next question.
“Alive?”
“Yes, sir, as best we can tell.”
He shook his head in wonder. “We built ’em good in the old days.”
“It’s been forty years.”
“I think we can agree it’s been longer than that.” He ran his hands along the balustrade again.
There was a long silence, then Memorum said, “What do we do now?”
“What do we do? You know what to do, Memorum. He can’t be allowed back.”
“But—sir!”
“You heard me. Send him on if he’s still wintering over, or kill him if he’s not. Either way … he can’t be allowed back.”
“Sir, it’s not my place, but he’s still—”
“It’s been forty years, Memorum. He’s nothing to me.”
“And what is he to her?”
He glared at his servant. “That’s none of your business!”
“But she’s waited so long—”
“She can continue to wait.”
He walked away, across flagstones so old they were worn from the generations of feet that had crisscrossed them.
“She made her choice to wait for him rather than stay with us. Let her wait till the end of time, for all I care.”
Memorum left, and after the servant’s footsteps had faded, the gray-haired man staggered to sit on an ancient stone seat that looked out over the plain. With no one to see him do it, he hugged himself and bent forward, gasping.
He knew he would always remember this: the quality of the brass-lit sky, the puffs of dust from that running beast on the plain, how the red stone of the balcony rail had felt under his fingers just before he heard the news.
And he knew he would always remember, and always wish he could forget, how he felt about himself right now.
One
TOBY WYATT MCGONIGAL AWOKE to biting cold and utter silence. When he opened his eyes he saw nothing, only a perfect black.
“Hello?” His voice was a rough croak, its sound so surprising to him that he coughed. He tried to put his hand to his mouth, but it moved only a few centimeters before striking some flat surface.
A lid, covering him where he lay.
A momentary panic took him, but as he banged his knees, hands, and forehead against the cold curved substance, he realized something else.
He was weightless.
With that realization, all his muscles relaxed; he let all the air out of his lungs in a whoosh, then laughed. Of course he was weightless. He wasn’t on Earth, buried alive in some coffin. He was in space. He was on his way to do something, for the family, for his brother, and if he was awake now that meant he’d reached his destination. Hibernation time was over.
That single moment of panic had worn him out, but hibernation was like that; he remembered the weakness from last time. It should pass in a few hours.
Gradually his fluttering pulse slowed, and when he felt more in control he groped until he found his glasses, which he’d stowed at his side when he’d gotten into his little ship’s cicada bed, weeks—or was it months, now?—ago.
He slid on the augmented reality glasses, wincing at the icy cold against his temples.
“Ship, give me a status report,” he said. Nothing happened. “A little light, at least?”
Maybe the glasses’ batteries had drained. Considering how long he’d been out, that was likely. It was stupid that he hadn’t thought of that, though; he relied on them as his interface to everything—ship, communications, and the all-important gameworld, Consensus, where he spent most of his time.
Who knew what Peter had gotten up to in Consensus while he was asleep? His brother would have had time to invent whole new civilizations, colonize new systems—who knew what? Knowing what had happened in the game while he was asleep was nearly as important to Toby as making sure he’d arrived at Rockette on time.
Everything was still black; the ship hadn’t replied. “Glasses, load Consensus,” Toby said. Maybe there was a communications problem; since Consensus was local to the glasses, it at least should boot up if they were online at all.
Weak flickers of light appeared at infinity, then resolved into words: POWER CRITICALLY LOW. Toby had never seen that message before, but it was obvious what it meant.
“Consensus … load me some personalities. Sol? Miranda? Can you hear me?”
There was no answer from any of them, and suddenly panic had him shaking the cicada bed’s exit handles. An alarm buzzed and finally there was light outside of the glasses; more glowing letters had appeared in the translucent materiaclass="underline" VACUUM DETECTED. “Crap!” Something was wrong, the ship’s systems had failed, he was stuck here with no way out—
“Toby.” It was Miranda’s voice, coming through his glasses’ earpiece. “There’s an emergency suit under your mattress. Put it on and the bed will open.”
He felt around until he had the suit’s glove in his hand. He gave it a squeeze and the thing climbed over his body, its pieces snapping into place with reassuring precision.
When the helmet had built itself over his face, it signaled the bed, and with a sucking sound the canopy opened. Toby drifted off its surface and into a place he should know but which, as he looked around, had become frighteningly strange.
His headlamp showed him to be in a round room about thirteen meters in diameter. The place was full of jumbled shapes. Most were turning slowly in midair in zero gravity; all were covered with white, fuzzy hoarfrost.
The suit seemed to have power, so he ordered it to recharge his glasses. Then he said, “Miranda? Can you embody?”
“Yes,” she said, then a moment later, Sol added, “On my way, boss.”
Two headlamps snapped on off to his left, and moments later two space-suited figures were bumping their way through the debris, the cones of light flicking off now this, now that odd shape. The jumbled stuff was mostly butlers and grippies—bigger and smaller robots that could conspire with your glasses to pretend to be other people or walls or trees or furniture in a virtual world like Consensus. The little grippies could change their shape and texture and pretend to be anything you might pick up. Combined with the glasses’ visual and auditory illusions, they’d made this cramped little ship tolerable for Toby on the flight out. At least until he’d gone into hibernation.