Port Sol, mankind’s greatest GUT-technology interstellar harbour, was a Kuiper object: a two-hundred-kilometre ball of friable rock and water-ice that circled the sun beyond the orbit of Pluto, along with uncounted companions. As Stillich’s flitter dipped low over a crystalline landscape, on its way to the wormhole transit to Earth, the work of humanity was clear. The primordial ice was gouged by hundreds of craters: deep, regular, these were scars left after the supply of ice to the great interstellar GUTships for reaction mass. There were buildings too, housing for dock workers and ship crews, even a couple of hotels, with domes, pylons and arches exploiting the architectural possibilities of microgravity.
But many of the buildings were closed, darkened. Frost coated their surfaces, and some of the domes were collapsed. GUTships hung all around this little world, as if jostling for a place to land.
‘Lethe,’ said Pella. ‘Something bad happened here.’
Now the flitter lifted away from Port Sol, and swam towards a cluster of wormhole Interfaces, giant tetrahedra built of struts of electric-blue light. The wormholes to the stars had been cut, but the ancient fast-transit routes within the Solar System itself still connected Port Sol to the rest of the System. Without hesitation Stillich’s flitter thrust itself towards the largest of the wormholes, the gateway to Earth, only minutes away. Pella watched nervously.
Stillich was paging through a data desk, looking for information about Port Sol’s recent history. ‘Some kind of “industrial accident”, it says here. A GUTship blew up in dry dock. It’s put the construction facilities out of action for a decade, and the maintenance facilities are stretched. The incident was heavily classified, which is why we never heard of it before we got here.’
One shimmering triangular face grew huge in their view, an electric-blue frame that swallowed up the flitter. The ship shuddered, buffeted, and blue-white light flared around them.
‘And guess where that lethal GUTship came from? Alpha Centauri. Of course Alpha is a pretty common port of origin. It might be coincidence.’
‘You’re suggesting this was a deliberate attack, sir?’
It would fit the wider pattern Stillich was beginning to suspect. He said, ‘Certainly it’s a possibility that might not have occurred to anybody here. I think we have a duty to raise it. Get some images, Pella, and dig around in the data mines. See what else you can find on this.’
‘Sir . . .’
Stillich looked up. Pella was gripping her data desk, trying not to cower from the light storm outside the hull. Stillich took pity on Pella, and let her endure the rest of the transit without distracting her further.
The flitter burst out of the destination Interface, amid a shower of sparks and exotic particles. Now they were among another cluster of wormhole terminuses, even bigger, even more crowded with jostling ships. This was Earthport, the System’s central transit hub, positioned at a stable Lagrange point in lunar orbit. In contrast to the desolation of the outer System, Stillich had a powerful, immediate impression of bustle, prosperity, activity.
And there, beyond the drifting tangle of exotic-matter tetrahedra, Stillich made out Earth, broad and lovely, like a slice of blue sky.
The flitter shot out of the mob of ships around Earthport, swept through a layer of defence stations, and within minutes was beginning its descent. Above a green-blue horizon, huge fusion stations sparkled in their orbits. The planet itself was laced with lights, on land and sea. And in the thin rim of atmosphere near the north pole, Stillich could just make out the dull purple glow of an immense radiator beam, a diffuse refrigerating laser dumping a fraction of Earth’s waste heat into the endless sink of space. The restoration of Earth after the industrialisation of previous millennia had been the triumph of the generations before Michael Poole, and much of this transformation had been achieved with support from space. Now Stillich tried to imagine this fragile world under attack, from the children it had sent to the stars.
The flitter slid briskly through the atmosphere, and descended towards the east coast of America. They were making for New York, a great city for three thousand years and now the capital of the Empire of Sol; the Shiras’ world government had revived some of the apparatus of the ancient United Nations.
They came down on a small landing pad near the centre of Central Park, close to a cluster of small buildings. Stillich and Pella emerged into the sunshine of a Manhattan spring. Flitters darted between the shoulders of ancient skyscrapers at the rim of the park. The sky above was laced by high, fluffy clouds. And beyond the clouds Stillich could see crawling points of light: the habitats and factories of near-Earth space.
A hovering bot met them, done out in the imperial government’s golden livery. They followed it to the nearest of the buildings. This, Stillich knew, was a portal to the complex of bunkers built into the granite keel of Manhattan, far beneath the green surface of the park; this was the gateway to the Empress’s palace.
Pella was peering about curiously. ‘So this is the future.’
Stillich asked, ‘So how are you feeling?’
‘Not as disoriented as I expected. Twenty-seven years on, things look pretty much the same.’ They watched a couple walking with their hands locked together, a young family playing with some kind of smart ball that evaded laughing children. Pella said, ‘Maybe the clothes are different. The trim on that flitter parked over there.’
Stillich shrugged. ‘There’s a kind of inertia about things. Much of this building stock is very ancient; that won’t change short of a major calamity. Technology doesn’t change much, on the surface; innovations in Virtual tech won’t make much difference to the user interfaces, which optimised centuries ago. But fashions in clothes, vehicles, music and arts – they are mutable. The language shifts a little bit too; that might surprise you. But the fundamentals stay the same . . . Of course, AS helps with that.’
AntiSenescence treatments had been available to everybody on the planet for millennia, but long lives hadn’t led to social stasis. In practice most people abandoned AS after a few centuries, if you were lucky enough to avoid misadventure that long. After seeing four or five or six generations grow up after you, you felt it was time to make room. So in among the smooth faces of the elderly there were always the true-young, with new thinking, new ideas, a self-adjusting balance between wisdom and innovation.
To Stillich it was striking, though, that recruits to the armed services were always the very young. Only the young thought they were immortal, a necessary prerequisite to go to war; despite AS technology the old knew they were not. But for the young, twenty-seven years away from home was a long time.
‘Have you spoken to your family yet?’ he asked Pella.
Pella grimaced. ‘My mother looks younger than I do. My father had the decency to age, but they divorced, and he has a whole new family I never met. I did answer the mails, but . . . you know.’
‘It’s hard to make small talk.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You have the orientation packs from the ship. They should help. And the Navy has counsellors. The main thing to remember, and I know this is a bad time to say it: don’t just hide away in work.’
‘As you do, sir.’
Stillich grimaced. Well, that was true. But his excuse was he had no family, outside a son who he had never really got along with, and who had now actually lived more subjective years than he had. ‘I’m not necessarily a good role model, Number One.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m sure I’ll be able to adjust to the time slip just fine,’ Pella said dutifully.
‘Glad to hear it, Commander,’ came a gruff voice from the shadow of the portal. ‘But the question is, are you up to meeting an admiral?’