Bailey's home was part of a jumble of tumbling rocks located between
the fourth and fifth planets orbiting a yellow dwarf star on the inner edge
of the Milky Way Galaxy's Orion arm, about two-thirds of the way from the
galactic center. A quiet little backwater. Sure, Bailey's asteroid was in
the same planetary system as the ancestral home of the human race, the planet
Earth, but few interstellar travelers had much interest in that. And Bailey's
home was far from the wormholes that had been mapped and were used for interstellar
travel, which made visiting it inconvenient and time-consuming.
Bailey was a norbit, and norbits as a group didn't care much about interstellar
travel. In the centuries since people had left the planet Earth, the human
race had scattered, traveling many light years from their home system and
colonizing planets hundreds of light years away. But few norbits had ventured
away from the Solar System.
Norbits liked where they lived, preferring the comfort of the known to the
wild adventures that could be found elsewhere in the galaxy. Thousands of
years ago, their ancestors had left the planet Earth and settled in the
asteroid belt. That adventure (which was comfortably in the distant past
and did not interfere with their daily business) had been, most of them
felt, quite enough.
The norbits extracted water, metals, and minerals from the asteroids around
them. They grew their own food in greenhouse rocks, glassed in with silica
glass manufactured using solar energy and silicate rock mined locally.
They made their way from one asteroid to the next in rockets that used the
simplest possible technology. Basically, a mirror focused sunlight on a
water-filled chamber. The water boiled and the high-temperature steam was
vented through a rocket thrust chamber. The steam went one way; the rocket
went the other.
Simple and effective. The norbits called them solar thermal rockets. Among
interstellar travelers, marveling at the quaint customs of these simple
people, they were known as tea kettle rockets. But it didn't really matter
what you called them-they got norbits from one rock to another for business
or social gatherings (of which they had many, being gregarious people who
liked to eat and drink and play games and solve puzzles and tell stories
and laugh as frequently as possible).
Over the centuries, norbits had evolved to suit their life style. As a group,
they tended to be rather short and stout, a body type well-suited to living
in low-gravity and confined spaces. (Bailey, a well-to-do norbit who had
the respect of his community, was a few inches shy of five feet all with
a girth that suggested he was rather fond of meals.)
The word "norbit" came from the adventurous days right after people
took up residence in the Asteroid Belt and started hollowing out the rocks
to make their homes and farms. The colonists on Mars called themselves Martians,
reasonably enough, but the belt dwellers didn't have a name for themselves.
Legend had it that the word "norbit" had been conceived at a party
where much of the output from a recently constructed solar still had been
consumed. Some said the name was derived from the phrase "in orbit."
Say it fast with a drunken slur, and "in orbit" easily becomes
"norbit."
Others claimed a more erudite origin for the term, citing "orb"
as an archaic term for Earth. These pundits suggested that a scholarly belt-dweller
had tacked an "N" on the front of "orb" to imply the
negative-not from Earth any more. And since "norb" sounded vaguely
insulting, someone had added "it" to the end of the neologism,
creating "norbit."
Whatever the origin of the term, it had stuck. Norbits called themselves
norbits and other people called them that as well.
Not being bound by the strictures of a spinning planet with the illusion
of a rising and setting sun, the norbits defined day as the 24-hour period
during which one had at least five meals: breakfast, morning tea, lunch,
afternoon tea, and dinner. Oh, yes-and a snack before bedtime, but that
hardly counted as a meal. And sometimes a snack before or after a nap, but
those didn't count either.
A few years after he found the message pod, Bailey was finishing breakfast,
one of his favorite meals of the day. The previous day, while out checking
on a few of his automated mining stations, he had visited a thriving orbital
farm and had traded a basket of figs from his greenhouse for a dozen quail
eggs. So that morning he breakfasted on fig bread and spore cakes and quail
eggs and apple juice from the apples in his greenhouse.
Since you've probably never visited a norbit (few people have), let me tell
you a little about Bailey's home. The Restless Rest was an M-type asteroid,
composed primarily of meteoritic metal, roughly spherical, with a diameter
of about two kilometers and a mass of about 30 billions tons. Bailey lived
in a cylinder measuring about 50 meters in diameter, drilled through the
center of the asteroid. The asteroid spun around the central axis of this
cylinder to produce an artificial gravity equal to about 1/5 that of earth.
Now maybe you think that a cylinder carved in an asteroid wouldn't be a
very comfortable place to live. Well, you'd be wrong. Chances are you're
imagining a smooth metal cylinder divided with gleaming walls of metal and
glass, all slick and cold and polished to a high shine. That's not what
it was like at all.
True, the Restless Rest was a cylinder carved in a rock and lined with metal
melted from that same rock, but there was nothing slick and cold about Bailey's
home. Partitions slicing across the cylinder divided it into sections. Some
of those sections had only two walls-the partitions that divided the cylinder-and
a single curving floor which followed the cylinder's circumference. In these
sections, you could stand on the floor and look up at the floor on the far
side of the cylinder, 50 meters over your head. That's a nice thing if you
want a large airy space--a workshop where you can repair a robot arm, construct
a solar panel, or repair a steam rocket--or even paint a picture, weave
a tapestry, program a computer, or write a story.
Other sections were layered with lofts connected by winding stairways. As
you walked up the stairways toward the center of the cylinder, you grew
lighter and lighter as the artificial gravity decreased. In those sections
were bedrooms and parlors and places to settle down with a book and places
to settle down with a snack and places to settle down with a friend for
a long chat on a comfortable couch and pantries and kitchens and gamerooms.
The parlors and bedrooms were decorated with paintings and weavings and
sculptures and photographs, made by Bailey's mother (who had liked to paint)
and his father (who had liked to weave) and by his many relations who were
artistically inclined. The Restless Rest was the home of a norbit, which
meant that it was a comfortable and cozy sort of place.
On that particular day, years after he had tucked that message pod into
the storeroom and forgotten all about it, Bailey was eating breakfast in
the solarium. Located at the end of the cylinder oriented toward the sun,
this section had windows that admitted sunlight, filtering it to remove
ultraviolet radiation.
The solarium was Bailey's favorite room, a fine place to have a bite to
eat and look out at the universe from a comfortable chair. Through the windows,
he could see the sun-a bright spot in a black sky. Positioned at the center
of the asteroid's axis of rotation, the sun appeared to remain stationary
as the distant stars and nearby asteroids wheeled around it in a spectacular
light show.
Above Bailey's head, a glass divider ran lengthwise down this section of
the cylinder, separating him from the greenhouse, where a riot of leaves
pressed against the glass. From where Bailey sat, this divider was a ceiling,
high overhead. The air in the solarium was rich with oxygen, piped in from
the greenhouse, and it had a wonderful scent of greenery.
That morning, as Bailey savored his breakfast and contemplated what he might
do that day, he noticed a note, pinned with a magnet to a metal file by
the communicator screen. He didn't remember writing the note, but he must
have, since it was in his own handwriting. "Eadem mutata resurgo,"
it said. Beneath that was a spiral. And under the spiral, there were three
more words: "Harvest the figs."
How odd. He didn't remember writing the note. The words at the top meant
nothing to him. Some foreign language. He'd seen the spiral before-it was
the symbol of the College of Pataphysicians. He had heard of the Pataphysicians
but he had never met one and he didn't know why he would have drawn their
symbol and tacked it to the noteboard. Fortunately, the last line made sense.
The figs were ripening fast-he had noticed that the other day-and he really
should harvest them.
So he put the note in his pocket, put his breakfast dishes in the washer,
which would rinse them clean and use the water for the plants in the greenhouse.
He strolled up the curving floor, to where it met the glass that divided
the solarium from the greenhouse. He was walking the circumference of the
cylinder and down was always the direction in which his feet were pointing.
The floor curved to meet the glass divider that ran the length of the cylinder,
and as Bailey approached, it ceased being a ceiling and became a wall. He
stepped through a door in the wall into the greenhouse.
He had gathered three baskets of figs, had made three loaves of fig bread,
and was just taking them out of the oven when his hailer chimed, indicating
that an approaching ship was calling with an urgent communication. He answered
immediately. He wasn't expecting company, but it could have been one of
his many relations was stopping by for a cup of tea and a chat.
"Calling Restless Rest," an unfamiliar voice on the hailer said.
"Calling Restless Rest. Brita, are you there?" Bailey's great
grandmother, Brita Beldon, had hollowed out and named the asteroid. She
had died when Bailey was very young. He remembered her as a frail old woman
with an unnerving tendency to bark orders. "Brita, come in. This is
Gitana, aboard the Jabberwock."
Gitana! I could tell you many stories about Gitana and there are many more
that no one but Gitana knows to tell. Some said she was a pirate; some said
she was a scavenger; some say she was an adventurer, in search of glory
and profit. If you asked her, she would just smile and shrug and say that
she was a seeker of truth. And maybe she was. But wherever she went, adventures
followed.
Her description was the stuff of legend. She was a tall woman with blonde
hair cut short, in the fashion of the old-time spacers who had no time to
spare for grooming. Viewed in profile from the right side, she looked like
a beautiful woman from Old Earth. Thin face with high cheekbones. Smooth
curve of skull beneath that crewcut blonde hair, so short it begged to be
stroked. Her right eye was a brilliant blue, a blend of glacial ice and
tropical seas. Blonde eyelashes against fair skin. Natural, organic, warm.
From the right, she looked honest and warm-hearted, a person to be trusted,
a person to be treasured, a person to be cared for. You could fall in love
with that profile.
From the left, you got a very different view. The same thin face, the same
smooth curve of skull. But her left eye was capped in black. She had, decades
before, dedicated that optic nerve to input from her ship's sensors.
Surrounding the cap were blackwork tattoos. A streak of black lightning
crossed her eyebrow and ran up onto her scalp, its dark pattern visible
through her pale hair. A gentle curve flowed downward beside her nose, then
spiraled clockwise on her left cheek, rising high on the cheekbone and circling
inward like a coil of rope or a chameleon's curling tail. A pattern of fine
lines radiated from the eye cap, as if a spider had been spinning a gossamer
web of black against her pale skin. Such facial tattoos had been the fashion
some forty years back, inspired by the Maori and the blue men of Morocco,
part of a wave of nostalgia for the ways of Old Earth. The fashion had passed,
but Gitana had never opted to have the tattoos removed.
From the left, she looked exotic and sinister, touched with shadow. Powerful.
Not necessarily evil, but not necessarily good. Tricky and confusing. Her
beautiful face was patterned in darkness.
"Gitana?" he said, pushing a button to activate the view screen.
Gitana's face filled the screen, and Bailey smiled at her nervously. According
to family legend, his great grandmother had been traveling with Gitana when
she made her fortune. But Bailey's mother had not told him much about that.
Great grandmother Brita had not been entirely respectable. "My great
grandmother passed away many years ago."
"So soon?"
"She was over 200 years old when she died," Bailey said. Having
no unifying orbital period of their own, the norbits continued to use Old
Earth years as a unit of measurement.
Gitana glanced off screen, consulting her instrument panel. "I've been
gone longer than I realized," she said. She studied him again. "And
you must be at least 50."
"Fifty five," Bailey said.
"I see," she said, regarding him steadily. Her gaze was disconcerting-one
blue eye and one mechanical sensor (jet black with a faint red sheen), fixed
on his face. "So you sent the message to the Farrs. You've got a message
pod for them. I need that. And I'm looking for someone to share in an adventure
I'm arranging."
"That last won't be easy," Bailey said. "Most people around
here aren't looking for adventures." Her scrutiny was starting to make
him nervous. He tried to sound brisk and businesslike. "But I'm sure
I have the message pod. It's in the storeroom." He scratched his head,
trying to remember when he had seen it last. "Why don't you come aboard
and I'll get that pod for you. And you can join me for lunch."
He figured he would get her the pod and have an entertaining lunch during
which she would tell him about adventures. He liked to hear about adventures-things
could get very interesting out in the great universe. Her stories would
be a big hit at the next party he went to; everyone liked to hear about
other people's adventures. After lunch, he would send her on her way. It
seemed like a plan.
When Gitana stepped out of the airlock, Bailey began to wonder if it had
been a good plan. Gitana unsnapped her helmet and slipped out of her space
suit, leaving them on the rack by the airlock. She was an imposing woman.
She studied him with unnerving intensity, then smiled an ambiguous smile.
"Not looking for adventures?" she said. "And why not?"
Flustered, Bailey didn't know what to say. "Well, not just now, anyway,"
he managed at last. "I'm very busy harvesting the figs. But do come
in."
She followed Bailey into the solarium. "Your great grandmother and
I were good friends, you know. I would have recognized you as her great
grandson anywhere. By the way, the others will be meeting me here quite
soon."
"Others?" he said, startled.
"From the Farr family," she said. "I advised them that this
was a message that would interest them greatly."
"Of course." He nodded, as if a visit from one of the galaxy's
most powerful families was an everyday occurrence.
"I trust you will invite them to lunch." She smiled. "I remember
how proud Brita was of norbit hospitality."
"Oh, yes. Lunch. Of course, of course. It depends, of course, on when
they get here," Bailey began, thinking he might plead urgent business
elsewhere, but before he could finish his sentence, the communicator chimed.
"Allow me," Gitana suggested, and before he could move she was
chatting on the communicator with two women named Poppy and Jasmine. "Come
on in, " she said. "We were just going to fetch the message pod."
Bailey watched through the solarium windows as another deep-space craft
locked onto the asteroid beside Gitana's scout ship. This one was larger
than Gitana's, and decorated with the Farr clone's colors.
"Poppy Farr and Jasmine Farr," Gitana introduced the two women
who entered through the air lock. They were the same height. They had the
same broad face, the same high cheekbones, the same hazel eyes with a hint
of an epicanthal fold. Poppy had a well-padded body that suggested a love
of good food; Jasmine ("call me Jazz," she said immediately) was
muscular, with a build that made Bailey think painfully of how rarely he
used the exercise equipment in his recreation room. Poppy had dark hair,
tied back in a single braid and Jazz's hair was as short as Gitana's and
colored a startling shade of gold. Jazz's nose had been broken years ago,
from the look of it, and hadn't been set quite right.
"Poppy is the expedition's cook and general housekeeper. Jazz is the
chief engineering officer," Gitana said.
Bailey wondered vaguely about Gitana's use of the word "expedition,"
but decided not to ask about where they were headed. It really wasn't his
business, after all.
"We were just going to fetch the message pod," Bailey began, but
the chime of the communicator interrupted him again. Another deep-space
craft and two more members of the Farr clone: Heather and Iris. The same
face again, but more variations in hair and dress. Heather's hair was very
short and curled in tight knots; Iris' golden hair was in two long braids.
"Heather is navigator; Iris is weapons officer," Gitana explained.
"At your service," they greeted Bailey politely. "Hello,
sibs!" they called to Poppy and Jazz.
"At yours and your family's," Bailey managed, though the solarium
was feeling a trifle crowded and he had started wondering if he had enough
fig bread and spore cakes to feed this crowd. "Gitana told me that
you're here for the message pod. If you'll follow me...."
Again, the communicator chimed. "Not so fast," Gitana called to
Bailey. Poppy and Jazz and Heather and Iris were laughing and talking to
each other. "It's not hospitable to rush your guests."
A deep-space cruiser, larger than the other crafts, docked, and three more
Farr sibs came through the airlock and into the solarium: Lily and Lotus
and finally Zahara. Bailey glanced at them: Lily's hair was brilliant red
and cut in a crest; Lotus had tied her dark hair into dozens of tiny braids,
decorated with beads.
Zahara looked considerably older than the others. Her head was shaved clean,
no trace of hair of any color. .
"Lotus is the expedition's anthropologist and expert on the Old Ones.
Lily is head of computing, and Zahara, of course, is the Captain."
Having learned, Bailey greeted the three and said nothing of going to the
storeroom.
"What are we waiting for?" Zahara asked. "We are all eager
to see the message pod."
In some confusion, Bailey led them through the Restless Rest to the storeroom
at the far end of the cylinder.
The storeroom housed castoffs of the last three generations of Bailey's
family--some packed in carefully labeled boxes and some scattered helter
skelter. Broken mining equipment that could be cannibalized for spare parts;
solar panels that Bailey's father had somehow never gotten around to installing;
a portrait of Bailey, lovingly completed by his mother, that had never seemed
to him to be a good likeness; toys abandoned by generations of norbit children.
Bits and pieces, odds and ends--all stored on a series of lofts, connected
by ladders.
Bailey found the message pod on the third level up, tucked between his first
steam rocket (an antique now, but one that he kept for sentimental reasons)
and an unattractive sculpture created by one of his cousins. The Farr sibs
gathered around the pod while Zahara entered the code to open it and Lily
prepared to download the message from the central unit into her belt computer.
Bailey stayed back with Gitana, studying the group. "I've never met
any of the Farr sibs," he said softly to Gitana. "I thought they
would all be the same."
"Same genetic material," Gitana said. "But they try very
hard to be different from their sibs. Myra Farr, the original, was a very
independent woman. She wanted to continue herself, but not necessarily to
duplicate herself. They all feel the same about that. And they love to argue."
"Look," Lily said. "You all get out of here and let me handle
this."
"I don't know," Poppy said. "I think...."
"Better that Lily handle it," Zahara said. "She has the most
experience. And didn't Gitana say something about lunch?"
So they ended up in Bailey's best parlor, lounging about on pillows and
sofas, eating all of his fig bread and drinking his best wine, and waiting
for Lily to return with the message. The lights were dim-Gitana had turned
them down.
Bailey, in his anxiety, had drunk several glasses of wine. Now he was feeling
more excited than nervous, listening in on conversations as his visitors,
all of whom seemed to know each other rather well, shared news about where
each of them had been and what adventures had transpired.
"...trading in spices and whiskey and of course we got roaring drunk,"
Jazz was saying to Iris. "I made a tidy profit, but...."
"...met up with an expedition of Pataphysicians. Nice enough folks,
though dreadfully fond of word games. Don't play Scrabble with them, or
if you must, don't wager. I almost lost my ship, but then..."
"...took the wormhole through to the Scorpio Centaurus Association.
Nasty war, out that way."
"...told me that the sector near Fomalhaut is crawling with Pirates.
You'd be wise to route any messages around it."
"...just a small war really. But still, a sector to avoid. You see,
one side is in league with the Resurrectionists, and...."
"...he found an artifact from the Old Ones. Couldn't figure out what
it might do, so he traded it to a Pataphysician and...."
As he listened, Bailey's heart beat faster. He imagined dodging Pirates
and diving down worm holes and trading in whiskey and playing word games
with Pataphysicians.
Lily returned from the storeroom and the group fell silent, turning their
attention to her. "Ready to go," she said, and inserted a disk
into Bailey's holographic projector.
The woman who appeared in the center of the group, sitting at ease in a
command chair, had a face like Zahara's, like Poppy's, like Lily's. Decorated
with tribal tattoos, but essentially the same. She was, as near as Bailey
could tell, about Zahara's age.
"That's Violet," Gitana said, identifying her for Bailey.
"Greetings, sibs," said the holographic projection of Violet,
gazing at a point between Gitana and Zahara and smiling at no one in particular.
"I'm sending this message by way of three pods-two by conventional
routes and one by a new route. I hope one of them gets through. If you've
been talking to Gitana, you know that I found a very interesting artifact.
Ask Gitana about it." Her smile widened. "It's the sort of thing
that would interest you all greatly. Now I could use some help. I've reached
my destination, but my ship is sadly in need of repairs. Come as fast as
you can. This will show you the way."
The face disappeared and the space that Violet had occupied was suddenly
filled with brilliant points of light, connected by glowing golden arrows.
"What is it?" Zahara said, her voice taut with excitement.
"It is, perhaps, the ultimate Snark," Gitana said evenly. "Violet
believes it's map of the wormholes."
As Bailey leaned in to look more closely, he caught the flash of a reflection
from a transparent surface-the pattern of lights was contained in a cube
of transparent material at least two meters across. The sibs on the far
side of the parlor were inside the cube, surrounded by glowing arrows and
points.
As Bailey studied the holographic projection, he realized that the cube
was not quite complete. One corner of the cube and one edge had been broken
away. But that shattered edge did not hold his attention.
At the center of all the lights and arrows was a translucent silver sphere
that held a translucent golden cube filled with points of light, a tiny
replica of the cube that filled Bailey's parlor. Mesmerized, Bailey stepped
into the holographic projection to study that golden cube.
Perhaps it's time to tell you a few things. It's a bewildering universe
and you need to know a little about it. Hang on-this is going to be a crash
course in the history of humanity. No details, just the big picture.
Thousands of years ago, humans left the planet Earth-first establishing
orbital colonies, then ranging out to colonies on the Moon, on Mars, and
among the asteroids. A few hundred years after people had settled Mars,
a consortium of engineers on Mars developed the Hoshi Drive, which propelled
ships at near-light speed. With the Hoshi Drive, it became possible for
humanity to spread even farther, journeying first to the trinary dwarf system
of Alpha Centauri, just 4.3 light years away, and then farther, to Barnard's
star at 6 light years distance, Sirius, at 9 light years, and Procyon at
11 light years. The explorers found planets, some of them habitable, and
distant colonies were established.
Though people were traveling distances that were minuscule on a galactic
scale, the malleability of time quickly became apparent. Cruising at 99.50%
light speed, the travelers experienced just one year while ten years passed
back on earth. Travelers who went to Procyon and back spent two years on-board
ship and came back to a world that had aged 20 years. And the messages that
they brought from the new colonists were ten years out of date.
As humanity spread to nearby stars, communication became more and more of
a problem. No information can travel faster than light. Not a carrier pigeon,
not a radio signal, not a human brain. No way. So if you want to send a
message back to earth from your colony on the third planet orbiting Procyon
A, it'll take 11 years to get there. And it'll take 11 years for a reply
to reach you, putting you a bit out of touch.
Things got even more interesting when Aidlan Farr, an early member of the
Farr clone, dove down a wormhole, while on the run from a Resurrectionist
ship. Some fifty years later, she showed up at Farr Station, having traveled
back from Aldebaran.
What's a worm hole, you ask? Where have you been? A worm hole is a passage
through the space time continuum. You say that doesn't help much? Well,
then try this: take a strip of paper and bring one end to the other, making
a loop. Now put a half twist in the loop, so that the top surface of the
strip meets the bottom surface of the strip. Voila! You have a Mobius strip-a
two-dimensional piece of paper.
A Mobius strip has only one side. Start at any point on the strip and draw
a line, following the length of the strip. Without picking up the point
of the pencil, you'll go around the loop twice and end up back where you
started. The line will go all around the inside of the loop and all around
the outside of the loop-even though you never picked up the pencil to change
sides. That's because a Mobius strip has only one side.
Now suppose, just suppose, you punch a hole through a Mobius strip. You
might think that hole goes from one side of the strip to the other--but
the strip only has one side. So where does the hole go from and to?
It goes from one location on the one-sided strip to another location on
the one-sided strip. If you were a two-dimensional Flatlander, this hole
could provide startling short cut to a distant location (a spot that the
Flatlander would ordinarily have to trudge a long way to reach). That short
cut goes through the third dimension, something that a Flatlander living
on the strip might have a tough time visualizing.
That brings us, at last, to wormholes. A wormhole is a short cut through
the fourth dimension that connects one location to another. It's a black
hole and a white hole, hooked up with exotic material to keep the passage
between them open. It leads from one place to someplace else-and the someplace
else can be 4 light years away or 400. The distance between the points doesn't
make any difference to your travel time.
But here's the difficulty: as Aidlan discovered, a wormhole takes you from
here to there, but it's a one-way trip. For reasons having to do with black
holes and gravity and the space-time continuum, you can't dive back down
that wormhole and come out back where you started. It just doesn't work
that way.
So Aidlan's Surprise, as it came to be named, can take you from near Alpha
Centauri to Aldebaran. But to get back, you have to either take the long
way through the regular universe, as Aidlan did. Or you could take your
chances and try another wormhole. You might end up closer to home or-the
universe being a very large place and odds being what they are-you might
end up a few hundred or a few thousand or a few million light years farther
away. You just didn't know.
A few adventurous souls dove down other wormholes to see where they went.
They were never heard from again, and that discouraged other would-be explorers.
The Farr clone took a different approach, one that seemed sensible enough
to patient folks willing to take a long view of time. They chucked a radio
beacon or two down every worm hole they could find, established a listening
post on Farr Station, and began waiting for some results.
Why does this require patience? Remember--information can't travel faster
than the speed of light. Suppose the beacon you tossed down a wormhole travels
to the vicinity of Beta Centauri, one of the brightest stars in Earth's
sky. Beta Centauri is about 300 light years from Earth. That means you'll
be listening for 300 years before you hear a peep out of that radio beacon.
By galactic standards, Beta Centauri is a relatively close neighbor. Suppose
the radio beacon popped out somewhere near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy,
some 30,000 light years from Earth. Suppose the worm hole led to the Magellanic
Cloud, the closest galaxy to the Milky Way Galaxy. That's about 150,000
light years away.
To find out where some of those beacons went, you're going to be listening
for a long, long time. Fortunately, Myra Farr and her sibs didn't mind taking
the long view. That's where it helped to be a clone-they could take the
long view of time. Though each member of the Farr clone knew that her particular
body wouldn't be around for the results, she knew that a version of her
would. Over the next few thousand years, the Farrs listened and charted
the wormholes that led to nearby locations. They sent explorers out through
those wormholes and established colonies hundreds of light years away. Those
colonies tossed radio beacons down more worm holes and listened for the
returning signals.
Eventually, a radio beacon tossed down a wormhole by a Farr colony located
some 200 light years from home popped out just two light years from the
Farr Station. Farr Station read the glyphs on the beacon and sent a messenger
ship to the colony, establishing a way back for those colonists.
One more thing, before we move on. Wormholes were, as near as anyone could
figure, artificial constructs, created by an alien civilization that had
apparently visited our galaxy a few million years ago. Explorers had found
other strange artifacts left behind by these aliens. The fragments of the
vanished civilization were known as Snarks and the folks who sought them
were called Snark hunters, after an ancient bit of verse from Old Earth.
But the most useful artifacts that the Old Ones had left behind were their
wormholes, shortcuts across the galaxy.
All this takes us to where we are now: the universe is riddled with wormholes
that let you travel from one place to another with no ensuing travel time.
But each wormhole is a one-way street. The Farr clone knows where a hundred
or so wormholes go. But all of the other wormholes lead to unknown destinations.
Dive down one and you don't know where you'll end up-or how you could get
back.
When we left our company, the sibs were studying the holographic projection
in Bailey's parlor, while Gitana sipped her brandy. "I recognize the
patterns," Zahara said. "There's Alpha Centauri...." She
pointed at three dots near one wall of the cube. "...And that...."
She indicated a golden arrow that led to two dots. "...is Aidlan's
Surprise, which leads from Alpha Centauri to Aldebaran's binary system.
But this. And this." She reached into the projection and ran her fingers
through the cat's cradle of golden arrows criss-crossing the pattern of
stars. "All new routes for us to follow."
"This one...." Gitana's finger indicated an arrow. "...leads
from near the galactic center to a previously unmapped white hole less than
a light year from here. That must be how the message pod got here. Violet
told me she was going to follow this route." Gitana ran her finger
over a series of arrows, following a route that led from near Alpha Centauri
to the galactic center. "Heading for this." She touched the silver
sphere at the center of the pattern.
Bailey leaned close, interested despite himself. He had always been fascinated
by maps and puzzles and ciphers, and he fancied himself rather good at them.
"Where did Violet come by this?" Jazz asked.
Gitana looked grim. "This is an enlargment and replica of a cube that
I gave her. I obtained the original in the hold of a Resurrectionist ship,"
she said. "It was entrusted to me by one of your sibs. I did not get
her name-she did not remember it herself by that time. She had been there
for sometime."
All the sibs shuddered, imagining what happened to a person in the hold
of a Resurrectionist ship. The name of these space pirates came from an
eighteenth century term for the bodysnatchers who exhumed bodies for dissection
by surgeons. The space-faring Resurrectionists harvested human brains and
nervous systems and used them in the construction of cyborg control systems
for space ships, mining stations, automated prospecting probes, and the
like. Their philosophy was one of aggressive individualism, and they disliked
clones, regarding the sibs as spare parts. In the hold of a Resurrectionist
ship, a clone would be kept alive, but just barely, as the Resurrectionists
used her body as a source of spare parts to maintain their cyborgs.
"What were you doing there?" Zahara asked Gitana.
"I was finding things out, as usual. A nasty and dangerous business.
And having learned what I could, I was leaving as quickly as possible. Even
so, I barely escaped, and I could not save your sib nor find out her name
nor find out the details of how she had obtained this map. I learned only
that she had found it on an exploratory trip."
"But I did what I could. I promised your sib that I would give this
map to her family. So I gave it to Violet."
"And Violet went off adventuring on her own," Zahara said, with
an edge in her voice. "Not stopping to ask Myra's permission."
"And I'd guess you would have done the same in her position,"
Gitana said, smiling for the first time since they had played Violet's message.
"A family trait, this going off on adventures. She went off and sent
back this message pod and of course I got wind of it and let you know. And
so we are here and you are all eager to go off adventuring yourselves. It's
a wonder there's ever anyone in Farr Station."
"But what was she looking for?" Zahara asked.
"The source of the map, of course," Gitana said. She reached out
and touched the silver sphere that had caught Bailey's attention. "This
was her destination. She thought she might find more maps there-and she
figured there would be some interest in a detailed map of the wormholes."
Gitana grinned wolfishly. A map of the wormholes would be beyond price,
and everyone knew it. Not only would it open up areas of the galaxy, it
would provide travelers with routes to take around troubled sectors. The
known wormholes functioned a bit like mountain passes along trade routes
on Old Earth: a good spot for banditry and interception. Travelers taking
the known wormhole routes were likely to encounter Resurrectionists, postal
pirates (who intercepted message pods and sold them to their intended recipients
or sometimes to higher bidders), and any number of other undesirables.
While the sibs chattered about the value of such a map, Bailey peered at
the glowing lines in the hologram. He studied the broken place, wondering
what had happened there.
"We could follow her route, but I don't like the look of a few things,"
Zahara was saying.
"Yeah," said Jazz. "That path takes us near Epsilon Eridani.
Not a good place to be just now."
"Here," said Poppy, running her finger along another possible
route. "Look at this."
"No good," Lily was saying. "That sector's crawling with
Resurrectionists."
Bailey ignored them, studying the pattern of arrows as the sibs continued
to argue. It was an interesting puzzle, requiring a different sort of focus.
It didn't matter how far you traveled on the golden arrows, since all jumps
were the same length, regardless of the distance traveled. What mattered
was the distance between the end of one golden arrow and the next one you
caught. That was what took the time.
"Over here," he said at last, tapping on an arrow that led to
the one wall of the cube and on another arrow that led back. "Through
here and here and here. And we're there."
Zahara leaned closer. "Not bad. We're clear until here, where we go
through a bad patch, over here. After that, the trouble will begin. But
otherwise, not too bad."
Zahara and the others were still studying at the map, but Lily was examining
Bailey with narrowed eyes. "What do you mean-we?" she asked.
Bailey hadn't meant anything by it, but Gitana spoke before he could say
that. "Zahara asked me to choose the final individual for your team,
and I've done so," she said.
Gitana was, among other things, an expert practitioner of jen chi, a system
of interpersonal dynamics that involved balancing energy and personality
to create an ideal working team. Developed more than a hundred years ago
by Su Orenda, a businesswoman and mystic from Groombridge 34, the system
employed psychological profiling developed on Earth during the twentieth
century as well as modified versions of two ancient Chinese astrological
systems. Its proponents compared it to feng shui, the Chinese discipline
designed to establish a harmonious environment. But jen chi differed from
feng shui in one very important respect: practitioners of jen chi did not
always seeks to create a harmonious group, since harmony was not always
the ideal working situation. Rather, they sought the perfect balance of
order and chaos, of wild intuition and careful focus.
"For very good reasons, I've chosen Mr. Beldon as the final member
of your party, exactly the fellow you need along on this adventure."
Zahara was looking up now, frowning. Seven pairs of identical hazel eyes
regarded Bailey with suspicion. The Farr clone had never been noted for
its willingness to accept outsiders. In fact, they tended to be clannish
and distrustful of those who were not part of the clone, always concerned
that they might be cheated and often driving a hard bargain as a result.
"I suggest," Gitana continued, "you offer him a share in
the adventure."
"I don't know," Bailey began. "I think...."
"Mr. Beldon has talents that will prove quite valuable-I'm confident
of that," Gitana said, interrupting Bailey and speaking to Zahara as
she filled her glass and Bailey's with brandy. "I think some of you
knew his great grandmother."
"Yes, yes," said Iris, "but we're talking about this fellow,
not his great grandmother."
"That's right," Gitana said, "but blood will tell, and I'm
saying that you need this fellow along."
Bailey was about to protest that he did not really want to go along, when
Lily let out a breath with an exasperated sound. "That's all very well
for you, Gitana, but we don't have any room for dead weight on this expedition."
"Dead weight?" Bailey said, glaring at Lily and drawing himself
up to his full height. He was offended now-these people were in his home,
drinking his brandy, and dismissing him as if he were nothing. "I think
you should reconsider that statement."
Lily shrugged. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have no experience
outside this sector. You've probably never been farther than Old Earth."
Bailey did not bother telling her that he had never even been as far as
Old Earth. "What does that have to do with it?" he said. "I
found your message pod. I've shown you a route far better than the one your
sibs found."
"Have done with it," Gitana said suddenly, just as Bailey was
trying to think of another contribution he had made. "You asked me
to chose the final member of your expedition and I have. If any of you believe
that I have chosen incorrectly, then you may do as you like. Go as you are
and remain out of balance. Or go home to Farr Station and give up. Your
choice, but you will have no more help from me. I've told you that Bailey
Beldon will be a valuable addition to your group and that should be enough."
Gitana glared at the sibs--her blue eye cold and steely, her mechanical
sensor glowing red. Bailey decided that it would be best not to raise an
objection to this plan just then; Lily leaned back in her chair and said
nothing more.
"It's enough," Zahara said. "Consider it done. He'll come
along, then. And now, we need more brandy and we need to make our plans."
More brandy and more talk and more brandy and Bailey wasn't sure when talk
of Resurrectionists and postal pirates and alien artifacts gave way to dreams
of the same, where he was wandering through a long tunnel, following a glowing
golden arrow, and wondering why he had ever left his comfortable asteroid
behind.