‘We had to evacuate the outer decks. You should have seen the hull, human beings swarming like flies on a piece of garbage, scrambling this way and that, fleeing the detonations. They hung onto weapons mounts, stanchions, lifelines, anything. We fear the falling, you see. I think some of the crew feared that more than the Xeelee. The life pods got some of them. We lost hundreds … Her face worked, and she seemed to reach for happier memories. ‘You know why the name “Sunrise”? Because it’s a planet thing. The Xeelee are space dwellers. They don’t know day and night. Every dawn is ours, not theirs - one thing they can’t take away from us. Appropriate, don’t you think? And you should see what it’s like when a Sunrise pilot comes on board.’
‘Like Hama.’
‘As the yacht conies out of port, you get a flotilla riding along with it, civilian ships as well as Navy, just to see the pilot go. When the pilot comes aboard the whole crew lines the passageways, chanting his or her name.’ She smiled. ‘Your heart will burst when you see Hama.’
I struggled to focus. ‘So the pilots are idolised. We aren’t supposed to have heroes.’
‘Lethe, I never knew I was such a prig! Kid, there is more to war than doctrinal observance. Anyhow what are the Sunrise pilots but the highest exemplars of the ideals of the Expansion? A brief life burns brightly, remember - Druz said it himself - and a Sunrise pilot puts that into practice in the brightest, bravest way possible.’
‘And,’ I said carefully, ‘are you a hero to your crew?’
She scowled at me. Her face was a mask of lines, grooves carved by years into my own flesh. She had never looked less like me. ‘I know what you’re thinking. I’m too old, I should be ashamed even to be alive. Listen to me. Ten years after this meeting, you will take part in a battle around a neutron star called Kepler’s. Look it up. That’s why your crew will respect you, for what you will achieve that day - even though you won’t be lucky enough to die. And as for the chop line, I don’t have a single regret. We struck a blow, damn it. I’m talking about hope. That’s what those fucking Commissaries never understand. Hope, and the needs of the human heart. That’s what I was trying to deliver …’ Something seemed to go out of her. ‘But none of that matters now. I’ve come through another chop line, haven’t I? Through a chop line in time, into the past, where I face judgement.’
‘I’m not assigned to judge you.’
‘No. You do that for fun, don’t you?’
I didn’t know what to say. I felt pinned. I loved her, and I hated her, all at the same time. She must have felt the same way about me. But we knew we couldn’t get away from each other. Perhaps it is never possible for copies of the same person from two time slices ever to get along. After all it’s not something we’ve evolved for.
In silence we made our way back to Dakk’s wardroom. There, Tarco was waiting for us.
‘Buttface,’ he said formally.
‘Lard bucket,’ I replied.
On that ship from the future, in my own future wardroom, we stared at each other, each of us baffled, maybe frightened. We hadn’t been alone together, not once, since the news that we were to have a child together. And even now Captain Dakk was sitting there like the embodiment of destiny.
Under the Druz Doctrines, love isn’t forbidden. But it’s not the point. But then, I was learning, out here on the frontier, where people died far from home, things were a little more complex than my training and conditioning had indicated.
I asked, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘You sent for me. Your future, smarter, better-looking self.’
Captain Dakk said dryly, ‘Obviously you two have - issues - to discuss. But I’m afraid I can’t give you the time. Events are pressing.’
Tarco turned to face her. ‘Then let’s get on with it, sir. Why did you ask for me?’
Dakk said, ‘Navy intelligence have been analysing the records from the Torch. They have begun the process of contacting those who will serve on the ship - or their cadres, if they are infants or not yet born - to inform them of their future assignments. It’s the policy.’
Tarco looked apprehensive. ‘And that applies to me?’
Dakk didn’t answer directly. ‘There are protocols. When a ship returns from action, it’s customary for the captain or senior surviving officer to send letters of condolence to cadres who have lost loved ones, or visit them.’
Tarco nodded. ‘I once accompanied Captain Iana on a series of visits like that.’
I said carefully, ‘But in this case the action hasn’t happened yet. Those who will die haven’t yet been assigned to the ship. Some haven’t even been born.’
‘Yes,’ Dakk said gently. ‘But I have to write my letters even so.’
That was incomprehensible to me. ‘Why? Nobody’s dead yet.’
‘Because everybody wants to know, as much as we can tell them. Would it be better to lie to them, or keep secrets?’
‘How do they react?’
‘How do you think? Ensign Tarco, what happened when you did the rounds with Iana?’
Tarco shrugged. ‘Some took it as closure, I think. Some wept. Some were angry, even threw us out. Others denied it was real … They all wanted more information. How it happened, what it was for. Everyone seemed to have a need to be told that those who had died had given their lives for something worthwhile.’
Dakk nodded. ‘After a time hop you see all those reactions too. Some won’t open the messages. They put them in time capsules, as if putting history back in order. Others take a look, find other ways to cope with the news. We don’t tell people how to react. But we don’t keep anything from them; that’s the policy,’ She studied me. ‘This is a time-travellers’ war, ensign. A war like none we’ve fought before. We are stretching our procedures, even our humanity, to cope with the consequences. But you get used to it.’
Tarco said apprehensively, ‘Sir, please - what about me?’
Gravely, Dakk handed him a data desk.
‘Hey, buttface,’ he said, reading. ‘You make me your exec. How about that. Maybe it was a bad year in the draft.’
I didn’t feel like laughing. ‘Read it all.’
‘I know what it says.’ His broad face was relaxed.
‘You don’t make it home. That’s what it says, doesn’t it? You’re going to die out there, in the Fog.’
He actually smiled. ‘I’ve been anticipating this since the Torch came into port. Haven’t you?’
My mouth opened and closed, as if I was a swordtail fish in the belly of a Spline. ‘Call me unimaginative,’ I said. ‘How can you accept this assignment, knowing it’s going to kill you?’
He seemed puzzled. ‘What else would I do?’
‘Yes,’ the captain said. ‘It is your duty. Can’t you see how noble this is, Dakk? Isn’t it right that he should know - that he should live his life with full foreknowledge of the circumstances of his death, and do his duty even so, right up to the final foretold instant?’
Tarco grabbed my hand. ‘Hey. It’s years off. We’ll see our baby grow.’
I said dismally, ‘Some love story this is turning out to be.’
‘Yes.’
Commissary Varcin’s Virtual head coalesced in the air. Without preamble he said, ‘Change of plan. Ensign, it’s becoming clear that the evidence to hand will not be sufficient to establish the charges. Specifically it’s impossible to say whether Dakk’s actions hindered the overall war aims. To establish that we’ll have to go to the Libraries, at the Commission’s central headquarters.’
I did a double-take. ‘Sir, that’s on Earth.’
The disembodied head snapped, ‘I’m aware of that.’
I had no idea how bookworm Commissaries on Earth, ten thousand light years away, could possibly have evidence to bear on this front-line incident. But the Commissary explained, and I learned there was more to this messages-from-the-future industry than I had yet imagined. On Earth, the Commission for Historical Truth had been mapping the future. For fifteen thousand years.
I said, ‘Things weren’t weird enough already.’
My future self murmured, ‘You get used to it.’
Varcin’s expression softened a little. ‘Think of it as an opportunity. Every Expansion citizen should see the home world before she dies.’
‘Come with me,’ I said impulsively to Tarco. ‘Come with me to Earth.’
‘All right.’
Dakk put her hands on our shoulders. ‘Lethe, but this is a magnificent enterprise.’
I hated her; I loved her; I wanted her out of my life.
III
It was all very well for Varcin to order us to Earth. The Navy wasn’t about to release one of its own to the Commission for Historical Truth without a fight, and there was lengthy wrangling over the propriety and even the legality of transferring the court of inquiry to Earth. In the end a team of Navy lawyers was assigned to the case.
We were a strange crew, I guess: two star-crossed lovers, court members, Navy lawyers, serving officers, Commissaries and all. Not to mention another version of me. The atmosphere was tense all the way from Base 592.
But at journey’s end all our differences and politics and emotional tangles were put aside, as we crowded to the hull to sightsee our destination.
Earth!
At first it seemed nondescript: just another rocky ball circling an unspectacular star, in a corner of a fragmented spiral arm. But Snowflake surveillance stations orbited in great shells around the planet, all the way out as far as the planet’s single battered Moon, and schools of Spline gambolled hugely in the waves of a mighty ocean that covered half the planet’s surface. It was an eerie thought that down there somewhere in that sea was another Assimilator’s Torch, a junior version of the battered old ship we had seen come limping into port.
This little world had become the capital of the Third Expansion, an empire that stretched across all the stars I could see, and far beyond. And it was the true home of every human who would ever live. I was thrilled. As our flitter cut into the atmosphere and was wrapped in pink-white plasma, I felt Tarco’s hand slip into mine.
At least during the journey in we had had time to spend together. We had talked. We had even made love, in a perfunctory way.
But it hadn’t done us much good. Other people knew far too much about our future, and we didn’t seem to have any choice about it anyhow. There could be no finer intelligence than a knowledge of the future - an ability to see the outcome of a battle not yet waged, or map the turning points of a war not yet declared - and yet what use was that intelligence if the future was fixed, if we were all forced to live out pre-programmed lives? I felt like a rat going through a maze. What room was there for joy?
I hoped I was going to learn this wasn’t true in the Commission’s future libraries. Of course I wasn’t worrying about the war and the destiny of mankind. I just wanted to know if I really was doomed to become Captain Dakk, battered, bitter, arrogant, far from orthodox - or whether I was still free, free to be me.
The flitter swept over a continent. I glimpsed a crowded land, and many vast weapons emplacements, intended for the eventuality of a last-ditch defence of the home world. Then we began to descend towards a Conurbation. It was a broad, glistening sprawl of bubble-dwellings blown from the bedrock, and linked by canals. But the scars of the Qax Occupation, fifteen thousand years old, were still visible. Much of the land glistened silver-grey where starbreaker beams and nano-replicators had once worked, turning plains and mountains into a featureless silicate dust.
The Commissary said, ‘This Conurbation itself was Qax-built. It is still known by its ancient Qax registration of 11729. It was more like a forced labour camp or breeding pen than a human city. It was here that Hama Druz himself developed the Doctrine that has shaped human destiny ever since. It is the headquarters of the Commission. A decision was made to leave the work of the Qax untouched. It shows what will become of us again, if we should falter or fail …’
And so on. His long face was solemn, his eyes gleaming with a righteous zeal. He was a little scary.
We were taken to a complex right at the heart of the old Conurbation. It was based on the crude Qax architecture, but internally the bubble dwellings had been knocked together and extended underground, making a vast complex whose boundaries I never glimpsed.
Varcin introduced it as the Library of Futures. Once the Libraries had been an independent agency, Varcin told us, but the Commission had taken them over three thousand years ago. Apparently there had been an epic war among the bureaucrats.
Tarco and I were each given our own quarters. My room seemed huge, itself extending over several levels, and very well equipped, with a galley and even a bar. I could tell from Captain Dakk’s expression exactly what she thought of this opulence and expense. That bar made a neat Poole’s Blood, though.
It was very strange to be in a place where a ‘day’ lasted a standard day, a ‘year’ a year. Across the Expansion the standards are set by Earth’s calendar - of course; what else would you use? A ‘day’ on Base 592, for instance, lasted over two hundred standard days, which was actually longer than its ‘year’, which was around half a standard. But on Earth, everything fit together.