Spy nodded. “True and not true. There’s only one shortest line between the two points, but there are many geodesics. It gets complicated if you have gravity and acceleration.”
“But there’s no magic wand,” Paul said. “You’re talking about going from here to there, a really long distance, with no time elapsing. That’s not possible, no matter how fast you go.”
I think that was the only time I ever saw Spy laugh. “Tell that to a photon. Or tell it to me tomorrow. Which will be twelve years from now, after a trip of no duration.”
“Unless we refuse your offer,” Namir said.
“Like the bird refusing to enter the elevator? I’m afraid you’re already in the net. As I said, I could ask the Other-prime to set you free, but at least two of you do want to take the shortcut. How about you, Carmen?”
“Wait. What if something goes wrong en route? The hydroponics spring a leak or the ship’s guidance system lets a pebble through? We won’t be able to deal with it.”
“Nothing will happen—literally nothing, because with no duration there are no events. If there were two independent events, there would be a measurable time between them.”
My head was spinning. “There’s no hurry, is there? I want to hear Paul’s take on it, and Namir’s.”
“Paul’s argument is based on ignorance and Namir’s is just fear of losing control. But no, there is no hurry. Just let me know when you’ve made up your mind.”
“Whereupon you will do whatever you want,” Namir said. Spy smiled and turned to go. “Won’t you?”
“Just let me know,” Spy repeated. Paul followed him, to operate the air lock, and nobody spoke until he came back.
“Spy’s wrong,” Namir said. “It’s not about control. It’s just about understanding what’s going on.”
“Which is apparently impossible for mere humans,” I said.
“What do you think, Paul?” Meryl said.
He sat down heavily and picked up his drink and stared into it. “I think we’d better get ready for an elevator ride.”
Ultimately, even Namir agreed that going along with Spy and the Other-prime would be the wisest course, not only to maximize our own chances for survival, but also to establish a record of cooperation before we met the Others. And abandoned ourselves to their mercy.
We went through the habitat getting things ready for zero gee; Spy had warned us that we would be in orbit, not accelerating, when the “elevator ride” was over.
Paul led us through the seldom- used corridor that connected the lander to the rest of ad Astra, basically two air locks with a silver corridor in between. A handy metaphor for any number of things—birth, rebirth, death. Perhaps robotic excretion, the life-support system that had sustained us for years expelling us with relief.
We got all strapped in and sat in a stew of collective anxiety, thick enough to walk on. Paul fussed with his controls and came back to crouch next to me, holding hands, for a couple of minutes. He was able to smile, but then he’s an official hero figure, and has to.
He returned to his place and strapped in, and in a few minutes said over the intercom, “We should be about a minute away.” Then, “Let’s count down the last ten seconds together. Ten, nine, eight…”
We never got to seven. The ship was suddenly flooded with sunlight, from the right—and on the left, my porthole was filled with a nearby planet, resembling Mars but more gray.
I felt gray.
There was no physical sensation as such. Only what you had to describe as deep loss, or longing, or sorrow. Some people were weeping. I bit my lips and kept tears away, and tried to sort out what was happening.
I unbuckled the harness and looked back down the aisle. Familiar faces contorted with all-consuming grief.
Except for two. Moonboy’s expression was blank, catatonia.
So was Namir’s.
10
RAMPAGE
Elza’s face kept swimming out of darkness, into focus, then I would fade back to Tel Aviv, reliving the worst time of my life in every dreadful detail. It seemed like weeks of nightmares, but it was less than a day.
I was in my room, surrounded by images from the Louvre. Watteau’s Jupiter and Antiope, Regnault’s The Three Graces, Corot’s Woman with a Pearl, and Gericault’s terrible The Raft of the Medusa. That one persisted, all the dead and dying.
Elza had just given me a shot, and she was cutting away a tape that bound my left wrist. My right one was sore.
“You’ll be all right now?”
“What’s… the wrists?”
“You were hurting yourself. Pulling out hair.”
My hand went to my head. Almost bald, sore in places.
“All that loose hair in zero gravity. It was a mess; I used the vacuum razor. You’re a little bit tranquilized. I didn’t think you wanted to sleep anymore, though.”
“No. Please.” I felt my head. “The razor with the vacuum attachment?”
“It looks nice. Evened up.”
“Was everybody… no. Other people can’t have been affected as strongly as I was.”
“Nobody. Well, you can’t tell about Moonboy. But nobody else passed out. It could be your age.” She caressed my head. “Spy supposedly didn’t know what caused it, but it wasn’t just a human thing. Both the Martians were uncomfortable.”
I took a squeeze from her water bottle. “Memories. I felt trapped inside memories.”
“You have some sad ones. Worse than the rest of us.”
“Not sadness.” I had to be honest with her, of all people. “It was guilt. Murder.”
She was quiet for a moment. “You mustn’t feel guilt for being a soldier. We’ve gone over that pretty well.”
“Not that. Long after that. I… never told you.” I hesitated, aware that the drugs were loosening my tongue. Then it came out in a rush.
“It was right after Gehenna; right after I found my mother dead. I raced back into Tel Aviv, putting a list together in my mind.
“My Working Group Seven had been formed in response to a persistent rumor that a large-scale act of terrorism was imminent, one that couldn’t be traced to a single political or geographical entity because it was not centralized at all. We had a couple of chemically induced confessions that indicated the group was large but divided into small independent cells.
“Anti-Semitism doesn’t have borders, and in fact some of the people we were looking at were Jews themselves, with strong opposition to the current power structure. Current at that time, liberal.
“I privately suspected that two or even three of the people in my office were moles, making sure that we were distracted by false leads. The one woman in whom I had confided this was the first person I saw die, a few minutes after we heard the bombs that were the second phase of the poisoning.
“As I raced down alleys and bumped across playgrounds and parks—none of the regular roads were passable—I was making a list of people I had to talk to that day.
“Because anyone who was not stunned that day was guilty. Ipso facto. And… there were so many dead bodies lying around that a few more would not raise any suspicions.”
She was behind me, rubbing my shoulders. “How many, Namir?”
“Eleven that day. I tracked them down one by one, along with seven or eight I looked at and spared.”
“You just shot them in cold blood?”
“No. Bullets would look suspicious. I got them alone and strangled them. Then they looked pretty much like all the other corpses.”
“There were more than those eleven? Other days?”