engineers could have dissected the pod, doctors could have studied the tracery of tracks in my flesh; and the patterns they found could have been unscrambled.
Perhaps we would never decipher it all. Perhaps much of it would be meaningless to us. I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. For the existence of the ark was itself the quagma datum, the single key fact:
That they had been here.
And so the ark serves its purpose.
sWyman fell silent.
I drifted away from the buckled walls and began to curl up. There was a band of pain across my chest; the air must be fouling.
How long since I’d dropped out of Susy-space? Had my four days gone?
My vision started to break up. I hoped sWyman wouldn’t speak again.
Something scraped the outside of the pod.
“Luce?” sWyman whispered. “What was that?”
The scrape went the length of the pod; then came a more solid clang over the mid-section. “I’d say someone’s trying to get hold of us.”
“Who, damn it?”
I pressed my ear to a smooth patch of hull. I heard music, a bass harmonization that rumbled through the skin of the pod.
“Of course. The Ghosts. They’re right on time.”
“No.” There was a bray in his voice. “They’re too late. Our Susy-drive took the Xeelee by surprise, but if the Ghosts try to get any closer to the quagma you can bet they’ll be stopped.”
“But—” I stopped to suck oxygen out of the thick air. “The Ghosts don’t need to get any closer. The quagma data is stored in the scarred fabric of the pod itself. So if they take the pod they’ve won…”
Then, incredibly, I felt a glimmer of hope. It was like a thread of blue oxygen.
I tried to think it through. Could I actually live through this?
To Lethe’s waters with it. I’d been a passive observer through this whole thing; now, if I was going to die, at least I could choose how. I began stripping off my scorched coverall. “sWyman, listen to me. Is there a way you can destroy the pod?”
He was silent for a moment. “Why should I want to?”
“Just tell me.” I was naked. I wadded my clothes behind an equipment box.
“I could destabilize the fusion torus,” he said slowly. “Oh. I get it.”
“I presume the Ghosts have been monitoring us,” I said breathlessly. “So they’ll know that my flesh, my clothes, the fabric of the pod, contain the information they want.
“But if the pod’s destroyed… if everything except me — even my clothes — has gone… then the Ghosts will have to preserve me. Right? My body will be the only record.”
“It’s a massive gamble, Luce. You have to rely on the Ghosts knowing enough about human physiology to keep you alive… but not enough to take you apart for the quagma secrets. So they’d have to return you to Earth, to human care—”
“I don’t perceive too many alternatives.” I grabbed the frame of the pod window. “Will you do it?” More scrapes; a judder sideways.
“It means destroying myself.” He sounded scared.
I wanted to scream. “sWyman, your original is waiting for word of us, safe on Earth. If I get through this I’ll tell him what you did.”
He hesitated for five heartbeats.
Then: “Okay. Keep your mouth open when you jump. Godspeed, Michael—”
Grasping the frame with both hands I swung my feet at the window. The blistered stuff smashed easily and the fragments rushed away. Escaping air sparkled into ice. Sound sucked away and my ears popped with a wincing pain.
Snowflakes of air billowed from my open mouth, and gas tore from my bowels.
I closed my freezing eyes and felt my way around the hull. Then I kicked away as hard as I could.
I waited five seconds, then risked one last look. The Ghosts’ moon ship was a silvered landscape, tilted up to my right. A thick hose snaked up to the ripped-open pod. Chrome spheres clustered around the pod like bacteria over a wound.
I saw the flash through closed eyelids.
I tumbled backwards. The pain in my chest passed into a dull acceptance. Those Ghosts would have to move fast.
A cold smoothness closed around me.
There was light behind my eyes. I opened them to an airy room. A window to my left. Blue sky. The smell of flowers. A nurse’s concerned face over me.
A human nurse.
Behind him, a Ghost hovered.
I tried to speak. “Hello, Wyman.”
A footstep. “How did you know I was here?” His pinched expression made me smile.
“You’re looking a lot older, Wyman, you know that?” My voice was a croak. “Of course you’re here. You’ve been waiting for me to die. But here I am, ready to collect my fee.
“I expect the doctors will spend the next year scanning me on all wavelengths, mapping out the quagma scars and working out what they mean. I’ll be famous.” I laughed; my chest hurt. “But we’re going to get the treasure, Wyman. A message from another realm of creation.
“Of course we’ll have to share it. Humans and Ghosts… but at least we’ll get it.
“And you’ll have to share the profits, won’t you? And there’s my fee as well. You didn’t budget for that, did you, Wyman? I’d guess you’re about to become a lot poorer—”
He walked out, slamming the door.
“But,” I whispered, “we must put the interests of the race first.”
There was a bit of blue sky reflected in the Ghost. I stared at it and waited for sleep to return.
Planck Zero
Recently I’ve been poring over theoretical physics texts. My friends — those who can still stand to see me, since the Ghosts rebuilt me — can’t understand it. Okay, they say, you were almost killed by the Ghosts’ Planck Zero experiment. It was terrible. But isn’t it all over now? Why brood? Why not walk — or rather, fly — out into the sunshine, and enjoy what’s left of your life?
…But I have to do this. I need the answer to a specific question.
Is there any way out of a black hole?
When I heard of the Ghosts’ experiment I made a lot of noise. Eventually their Sink Ambassador agreed to meet me — but they insisted the venue had to be the exposed surface of the Moon. Earth conditions wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference to a Silver Ghost, of course; it was all part of the Ghosts’ endless diplomatic gavotte. As chief administrator of the Ghost liaison project, it was my precise job not to find such matters irritating.
I guess age — and Eve’s death — were making it harder for me to stomach the pettiness of interspecies diplomacy.
Into Lethe with it.
I rode out on the Sahel Cable, then took a flitter to the Moon. We were to meet outside Copernicus Dome; I suited up and walked out briskly. If the Ambassador had been hoping that my sixty- five years would keep me at home it had another thing coming.
The Silver Ghosts’ Ambassador to the Heat Sink floated a yard off the crisp Lunar regolith; the reflection of Earth was a distorted crescent sliding over its midriff.
We met without aides, as I’d requested, and spoke on a closed channel.
I came straight to the point. “Ambassador, I’ve asked to meet you because we suspect you are conducting unauthorized experiments on quagma material.”
It bobbed up and down, a child’s balloon incongruously dispatched to the airless Moon. “Jack, I would like to see evidence to support your allegation.”
I was prepared for that. “I’ll download the dossier to you. As soon as I’m satisfied you are being just as honest with me.”
“Perhaps you are speculating. Perhaps this is a—” Pause. “ — a shot in the dark? You are trying to extract valuable information from me on the threat of evidence which does not exist.”
I shook my head. “Ambassador, think it over. Your race and mine have contacts at many levels, right down to the one-man traders. Security measures between our species are as porous as human flesh.” A charming Ghost simile.
“Perhaps.” Its bobbing evolved into a complex shimmering. “Very well. Jack Raoul, we have grown to know each other, these past decades, and I am aware that you are an honest man… if not always an open one, despite your present posture as an injured party. Therefore I must accept that you have such evidence.”
I felt a surge of satisfaction. “Then you are conducting a covert project.”
“Covert, perhaps, but not intentionally so from our human partners.”
“Oh, really?…” I let it pass. “Then from whom?”
“The Xeelee.”
I studied the Ambassador with a sneaking admiration. “I’ll be impressed if you manage to keep secrets from the Xeelee. How are you doing it?”
The Ghost began to roll gently. “All in good time, Jack Raoul. We cannot be sure of secure communications, even here.”
