Terminator rolls around Mercury just like its sunwalkers, moving at the speed of the planet’s rotation, gliding over twenty gigantic elevated tracks, which together hold aloft and push west a town quite a bit bigger than Venice. The twenty tracks run around Mercury like a narrow wedding band, keeping near the forty-fifth latitude south, but with wide detours to south and north to avoid the worst of the planet’s long escarpments. The city moves at an average of five kilometers an hour. The sleeves on the underside of the city are fitted over the track at a tolerance so fine that the thermal expansion of the tracks’ austenite stainless steel is always pushing the city west, onto the narrower tracks still in the shade. A little bit of resistance to this movement creates a great deal of the city’s electricity.
From the top of the Dawn Wall, which is a silvery cliff forming the eastern edge of the city, one can see the whole town stretching out to the west, green under its clear dome. The city illuminates the dark landscape around it like a passing lamp; the illumination is very noticeable except at those times when high cliffs west of the city reflect horizontal sunlight into town. Even these mere pinpricks of the dawn more than equal the artificial lights inside the dome. During these cliffblinks nothing has a shadow; space turns strange. Then the mirrors are passed; that light fades. These shifts in illumination are a significant part of the sensation of movement one has in Terminator, for the glide over the tracks is very smooth. Changes in light, slight tilts in pitch, these make it seem as if the town were a ship, sailing over a black ocean with waves so large that when in their troughs, the ship drops into the night, then on high points crests back into day.
The city sliding at its stately pace completes a revolution every 177 days. Round after round, nothing changing but the land itself; and the land only changes because the sunwalkers include landscape artists, who are out there polishing mirror cliffs, carving petroglyphs, erecting cairns and dolmens and inuksuit, and arranging blocks and lines of metal to expose to the melt of day. Thus Terminator’s citizens continuously glide and walk over their world, remaking it day by day into something more expressive of their thoughts. All cities, and all their citizens, move in just such a way.
SWAN AND ALEX
The next day Swan returned to Mqaret’s lab. Again he was in his office staring at nothing. Suddenly Swan realized it was a relief to have something to be angry at.
Mqaret roused himself. “How was your trip out with Wahram?”
“He’s slow, he’s rude, he’s autistic. He’s boring.”
Mqaret smiled a little. “Actually it sounds like you found him interesting.”
“Please.”
“Well, I can assure you Alex found him interesting. She spoke of him pretty often. A few times she made it clear they were involved in things she thought were very important.”
This gave Swan pause, as it was meant to. “Gran, can I have another look around her study?”
“Of course.”
S wan went down the hall to Alex’s room at the end, entered, and closed the door. She went to the one window and looked out at the city, all roof tiles and greenery from this vantage point.
She wandered around the study, looking at things. Mqaret had not yet changed anything. She wondered if he would, and if so, when. All Alex’s things, scattered as always. Her absence was a kind of presence, and again grief stabbed through Swan’s middle and she had to sit down.
After a while she stood and began a more methodical examination. If Alex had left something for her, where would she have put it? Swan could not guess. Alex had wanted always to keep her business offline, out of the cloud, unrecorded, live only, in real time only. But if she had done anything like this, she would have to have figured out some kind of method. Knowing her, it might be a purloined-letter type of thing: a paper note, for instance, right there on her desktop.
So Swan hunted through small stacks of paper on her desk, still thinking it over. If she had had information she wanted Swan to pass along, without Swan necessarily knowing what it was… if there were a lot of data… possibly it would be more than a paper note. And possibly she would want only Swan to find it.
She began to wander the room, talking to herself, and looking closely at things. The room’s control AI would know the room was occupied by only a single person and, with voice and retina, could certainly be set to identify the person.
There was a little toilet room attached to the study, with a sink and mirror, so now she went into it. “I’m here, Alex,” Swan said sadly. “I’m here if you want me.”
She looked into the wall mirror, then into a little oval mirror on a stand next to the sink. Sad Swan’s bloodshot eyes.
A jewelry box next to the oval mirror fell open; Swan jumped back into the wall, then collected herself. She looked in the box. Jewelry tray; take it out; and under it were three small white paper envelopes. All had written on one side In Case of My Death; on the other sides they were marked For Mqaret, For Swan, and For Wang on Io.
Hands trembling, Swan took the one marked for her and tore it open. Two little data tabs fell out. One of them was murmuring, “Swan, Swan, Swan.” Swan put it to her ear, her teeth clenched, tears starting to her eyes.
“My dear Swan, I am sorry you are hearing this,” Alex’s voice said. It was just like hearing a ghost, and Swan clutched her hands over her chest.
The little voice went on: “Very sorry, in fact, because if you’re hearing this, it means I’m gone. My room AI has heard about my death, and it knows to open this box if you come in here alone. It’s the best plan I could think of. Sorry to intrude on you like this, but it’s important. This is kind of an insurance policy, because I’ve got some things going on that need to continue even if I die, and I don’t want to tell anyone else here about them. And really at our age you can go any time, so I’m setting this up. If you’re hearing this, I need your help. Please take the envelope for Wang out to Io and give it to him in person. Wang and I and a few others are working on a couple of very important projects together, and we’ve been trying to keep completely offline with them, which is very difficult to do when we live so far apart. You can help me hugely by taking him his envelope. But please keep the matter entirely to yourself. Also, if you would let your Pauline read the other chip in your envelope and then destroy the chip, that would serve as a secure backup. They both are one-reads. I hate to do even this much. But I know you don’t usually link Pauline to other qubes, and if you would keep it that way, it would be better for our plan. Wang will explain more to you, as will Wahram from Titan. Good-bye, my Swan. I love you.”
That was it. Swan tried to listen to it again, but it was inert.
She put the other tab up to Pauline’s membrane, in the skin at the base of her neck. When Pauline said “Done” she put the inert tabs and the two remaining envelopes into her pocket and went to find Mqaret.
He was in his office, poking around in a 3-D image of what looked like a protein. “Look what I found,” Swan said. She explained what had happened.
“That box was locked,” Mqaret said. “I knew it was her jewelry, and I figured I would run into the key some time or other.”
He stared blankly at his envelope, seeming in no hurry to open it; possibly even a little afraid of it. Swan let him be, went out of the room. “Pauline,” she said after she left, “you got the contents of that tab?”
“Yes.”
“What was on it?”
“I am instructed to convey the information to Wang’s qube, on Io.”
“But tell me just generally what’s on it.”
Pauline did not reply, and after a while Swan cursed her and turned her off.
Both tabs were now inert; Alex’s ghost had departed. Swan was not entirely sorry. The shock of hearing Alex’s voice speaking to her was still causing her to tremble.
She went back into Mqaret’s office. He was white-faced, his mouth a little knot. He looked up at her.
“She gave you something to take to Io?”
“Yes. Do you know what it’s about?”
