A Deepness in the Sky

The surreptitious probing of blankets paused for a moment. A sneer flickered across the old man’s face. “It’s only fifty light-years away, Sammy. The nearest astrophysical enigma to Human Space. And you ball-less Qeng Ho wonders have never visited it. Holy profit is all your kind ever cared about.” He waved his right hand forgivingly, while his left dug deeper into the blankets. “But then, the whole human race is just as bad. Eight thousand years of telescope observations and two botched fly-throughs, that’s all the wonder rated….I thought maybe this close, I could put together a manned mission. Maybe I would find something there, an edge.Then, whenI came back— “ The strange glitter was back in his eyes. He had dreamed his impossible dream so long, it had consumed him. And Sammy realized that The Man was not a fragment of himself. He was simply mad.

But debts owed to a madman are still real debts.

Sammy leaned a little closer. “You could have done it. I understand that a starship passed through here when ‘Bidwel Ducanh’ was at the height of his influence.”

“That was Qeng Ho. Fuck the Qeng Ho! I have washed my hands of you.” His left arm was no longer probing. Apparently, he had found his handgun.

Sammy reached out and lightly touched the blankets that hid The Man’s left arm. It wasn’t a forcible restraint, but an acknowledgment… and a request for a moment’s more time. “Pham. There’s reason to go to OnOff now. Even by Qeng Ho standards.”

“Huh?” Sammy couldn’t tell if it was the touch, or his words, or the name that had been unspoken for so long—but something briefly held the old man still and listening.

“Three years ago, while we were still backing into here, the Trilanders picked up emissions from near the OnOff star. It was spark-gap radio, like a fallen civilization might invent if it had totally lost its technological history. We’ve run out our own antenna arrays, and done our own analysis. The emissions are like manual Morse code, except human hands and human reflexes would never have quite this rhythm.”

The old man’s mouth opened and shut but for a moment no words came. “Impossible,” he finally said, very faintly.

Sammy felt himself smile. “It’s strange to hear that word from you, sir.”

More silence. The Man’s head bowed. Then: “The jackpot. I missed it by just sixty years. And you, by hunting me down here… now you’ll get it all.” His arm was still hidden, but he had slumped forward in his chair, defeated by his inner vision of defeat.

“Sir, a few of us”—more than a few—“have searched for you. You made yourself very hard to find, and there are all the old reasons for keeping the search secret. But we never wished you harm. We wanted to find you to —“To make amends? To beg forgiveness? Sammy couldn’t say the words, and they weren’t quite true. After all, The Man had been wrong. So speak to the present: “We would be honored if you would come with us, to the OnOff star.”

“Never. I am not Qeng Ho.”

Sammy always kept close track of his ships’ status. And just now… Well, it was worth a try: “I didn’t come to Triland aboard a singleton, sir. I have a fleet.”

The other’s chin came up a fraction. “A fleet?” The interest was an old reflex, not quite dead.

“They’re in near moorage, but right now they should be visible from Lowcinder. Would you like to see?”

The old man only shrugged, but both his hands were in the open now, resting in his lap.

“Let me show you.” There was a doorway hacked in the plastic just a few meters away. Sammy got up and moved slowly to push the wheeled chair. The old man made no objection.

Outside, it was cold, probably below freezing. Sunset colors hung above the rooftops ahead of him, but the only evidence of daytime warmth was the icy slush that splashed over his shoes. He pushed the chair along, heading across the parking lot toward a spot that would give them some view toward the west. The old man looked around vaguely.I wonder howlong it’s been since he was outside.

“You ever thought, Sammy, there could be other folks come to this tea party?”

“Sir?” The two of them were alone in the parking lot.

“There are human colony worlds closer to the OnOff star than we are.”

Thattea party. “Yes, sir. We’re updating our eavesdropping on them.” Three beautiful worlds in a triple star system, and back from barbarism in recent centuries. “They call themselves ‘Emergents’ now. We’ve never visited them, sir. Our best guess is they’re some kind of tyranny, high-tech but very closed, very inward-looking.”

The old man grunted. “I don’t care how inward-looking the bastards are. This is something that could… wake the dead. Take guns and rockets and nukes, Sammy. Lots and lots of nukes.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sammy maneuvered the old man’s wheeled chair to the edge of the parking lot. In his huds, he could see his ships climbing slowly up the sky, still hidden from the naked eye by the nearest tenement. “Another four hundred seconds sir, and you’ll see them come out past the roof just about there.” He pointed at the spot.

The old man didn’t say anything, but he was looking generally upward. There was conventional air traffic, and the shuttles at the Lowcinder spaceport. The evening was still in bright twilight, but the naked eye could pick out half a dozen satellites. In the west, a tiny red light blinked a pattern that meant it was an icon in Sammy’s huds, not a visible object. It was his marker for the OnOff star. Sammy stared at the point for a moment. Even at night, away from Lowcinder’s light, OnOff would not quite be visible. But with a small telescope it looked like a normal G star… still. In just a few more years, it would be invisible to all but the telescope arrays. Whenmy fleet arrives there, it will have been dark for two centuries… and it will almost be ready for its next rebirth.

Sammy dropped to one knee beside the chair, ignoring the soaking chill of the slush. “Let me tell you about my ships, sir.” And he spoke of tonnages and design specs and owners—well, most of the owners; there were some who should be left for another time, when the old man did not have a gun at hand. And all the while, he watched the other’s face. The old man understood what he was saying, that was clear. His cursing was a low monotone, a new obscenity for each name that Sammy spoke. Except for the last one—

“Lisolet? That sounds Strentmannian.”

“Yes, sir. My Deputy Fleet Captain is Strentmannian.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “They… they were good people.”

Sammy smiled to himself. Pre-Flight should be ten years long for this mission.That would be long enough to bring The Man back physically. It might be long enough to soften his madness. Sammy patted the chair’s frame, near the other’s shoulder.This time, we will not desert you.

“Here comes the first of my ships, sir.” Sammy pointed again. A second later, a bright star rose past the edge of the tenement’s roof. It swung stately out into twilight, a dazzling evening star. Six seconds passed, and the second ship came into sight. Six seconds more, and the third. And another. And another. And another. And then a gap, and finally one brighter than all the rest. His starships were in low-orbit moorage, four thousand kilometers out. At that distance they were just points of light, tiny gemstones hung half a degree apart on an invisible straight line across the sky. It was no more spectacular than a low-orbit moorage of in-system freighters, or some local construction job… unless you knew how far those points of light had come, and how far they might ultimately voyage. Sammy heard the old man give a soft sigh of wonder.He knew.

The two watched the seven points of light slide slowly across the sky. Sammy broke the silence. “See the bright one, at the end?” The pendent gem of the constellation. “It’s the equal of any starship ever made. It’s my flagship, sir… the Pham Nuwen.”

PART ONE

ONE HUNDRED SIXTY YEARS LATER—

ONE