Swallow the Sky: A Space Opera (11 page)

The next morning Carson staggered into the apartment’s small kitchen. He was unsure whether he would ever
walk fully upright again. The previous evening he and Aiyana had ended up at a
campus tavern called The Twelfth Dimension where they had met Naadira, a
charming graduate student currently working on her doctorial thesis on early
colonial art. Carson had been amazed at the ease with which Aiyana conducted
the negotiations, although Naadira joked that she had her own reasons.

“Anything to get away
from the Pissoir for a night. You should try being in my room in a gale, it’s
like living on a ten meter boat in the middle of the ocean.”

Whatever her motivation,
their tryst had been a splendid success, although this morning Carson envied the prehistoric male’s inbuilt performance limits. One thing he knew for
certain: for the rest of his life, whenever he thought of that statue in the
garden on Kaimana, he would smile.

Aiyana crept into the
kitchen.

“Where’s Naadira?”

“She left already – early
morning seminar.”

“What a nice young woman!
We must get together with her again.”

“Give me a couple of
months to recover first.”

“More like a couple of
hours you randy old thing”

“I wish. Meantime, we’ve
got more urgent business. Sometime during last night’s festivities a reply
finally came through from Kalidas. He wants to meet this afternoon.”

“That’s great – do you
have any plans for this morning?”

“I thought I’d access the
University Library and –”

“Carson…”

Oh no, the smile!

“Couldn’t we visit the Great Museum? I mean, you said we could jump the lines with your super privileged access
and everything”

After the previous
night’s tryst he was in no mood to refuse her and they were soon heading
towards the historic buildings.

“Oh, it’s all so small!”

Aiyana pressed her face
to the transparent wall that enclosed the ancient settlement. Inside the
hermetically sealed space was a bizarre mixture of buildings: composite
prefabricated modules, log cabins, stones houses, and improvised brick.

After eight thousand
years everything except the composite structures were in an advanced state of
decay. Millennia ago the entire compound had been sealed off from the
environment and the atmosphere replaced with inert helium, but the ages had
already taken their toll.

A private channel was
telling each visitor about the structure that they happened to be looking at.

“The plastic modules
were brought from New Earth aboard the Yongding. It is believed that the
original plan was to house all the colonists in this type of building and that
the colony would be provisioned incrementally by means of multiple round trips
to Old Earth. Of course, the original population was envisioned as being much
smaller than The Thousand that were eventually crowded onboard the starship.”

The village illustrated
the chaos of the first decades far better than any dramatic re-enactment. Cissokho,
realizing in the last panic stricken hours that they were embarking on a
one-way journey, had packed the ship with every single person on the Chu Jung
Orbital Facility who was willing to go. It was an extraordinary decision that
had undoubtedly saved the human race, but the pathetic remains of those first
buildings showed the price of survival.

Like most visitors, Aiyana
was silent as she walked away. The debt that she and everyone present owed to
those first colonists was overwhelming. Eventually she stood with Carson outside in the warm spring sunshine.

“Can we go to the
Memorial Fire?”

Adhiambo Cissokho’s
funeral pyre was larger than Aiyana had imagined. Originally it had been a
simple mound of burning wood, but now it was neatly hemmed by a low
heat-retardant wall to allow visitors to approach safely. Every few minutes a
uniformed attendant added more fuel. Worlds from all over the galaxy sent
timber to be added to the flames.

Aiyana reached into her
bag and pulled out her own small packet of wood. She closed her eyes and held
the bundle close to her body, then tossed it into the fire. On either side
people were performing the same homage.

After standing quietly
for a few minutes she unfastened the front of her jacket, reached into her bag
and took out the small pair of silver tongs that she had bought from a souvenir
stand. Carson realized what she was intending and gripped her free hand. Aiyana
used the tongs to root around in the blaze for a few moments then pulled out a
small glowing coal. Before she could change her mind she pressed the ember to
her bare flesh, over her heart. Her nails bit into Carson’s skin.

Aiyana held the fire to
her body for ten seconds then with a cry returned it to the flames. The mark
would remain with her for the rest of her life. Carson released her hand and
silently opened the top of his jumpsuit to show her his own scar, made by him as
a young man on that very spot, seven hundred years ago.

Cissokho’s pyre had
burned for almost eight thousand years, through the desperately hard times of
the early settlements, through the Little Ice Age, through the triumphal
colonization of the galaxy, lighting the pathway for all of humankind, for you
and for me, and for all our children.

Kalidas lived in a shabby tree-lined street on the
outskirts of Hawkins. The large houses had once belonged to members of the
University’s faculty but now they had been divided and subdivided to meet the student
demand for cheap accommodation.

“This guy is likely to be
eccentric” Carson had warned Aiyana “but we have to deal with him – he’s the
key to nailing Juro.”

Even with this warning
Aiyana still let out a gasp as the door swung open. Kalidas was a tall man
whose clothes hung from his body in a way that suggested he had lost a lot of
weight. His undernourished persona was reinforced by the dull hair that hung
down to his chest. But it was his eyes that were truly alarming – they were
totally black, like two opals set into a skull.

Carson, who had seen a
good many strange people in his time, recovered first.

“Good afternoon honored
scholar, I’m Carson.”

Saying nothing and
ignoring Carson’s upheld right palm, he gestured the two to follow him into the
house’s interior. Kalidas’s second floor apartment was crowded with the
paraphernalia of academic research – multiple consoles and arrays, snowdrifts
of papers and academic journals, and a chaotic assortment of experimental
equipment.

The windows were set for
maximum opaqueness but the dim light failed to hide the detritus of dust,
abandoned memory nodes, and discarded food packets. Carson was not surprised to
discover that access to the outside world had been severed as soon as they
entered.

Kalidas rummaged in a
draw to retrieve a portable identification scanner.

“I have to be very
careful”

He gave the scanner to
Carson who placed the tips of his fingers into the green circle and handed it
back. Kalidas held it for a few moments, downloading the results, then nodded.

“Very well”

He swung round to Aiyana
“Who are you?”

“This is Aiyana” said Carson, and in a moment of inspiration added “of clan Aniko”

“I thought Shin was
accompanying you.”

“He was unavoidably
delayed.”

Kalidas waited as she
took her turn with the scanner.

“You’re clan Aniko
alright” he said “but Juro’s database says you are a mining engineer.”

Aiyana leaned forward and
smiled into the cadaverous face.

“What would you prefer it
say honored scholar – Special Operative?”

Kalidas finally appeared
to relax.

“Yes, yes, of course. I
apologize if I appear over-suspicious, there have been so many problems… Do you
know that the University authorities are actually trying to deport me?”

That helped explain why
Juro was so desperate to enlist another conspirator. Kalidas put away the
scanner and gestured for them to sit down.

“What have you been told
of my work?”

“Only that you had made
progress on discovering some new pre-colonial material” Carson replied.

“Progress – yes, progress
indeed, but at a high price. Tell me, how familiar are you with the Teng
Archives?”

“I know them pretty well
– I have the complete set of recordings.”

Kalidas snickered “You
think you do.”

He placed his hand on a
console and projected a rapid stream of tabular data.

“The standard catalog of
the Teng material – this set displays a sequential list of contents. Note the
columns on the far right – they show the location of each item. Now see what
happens when we go to the end.”

The display accelerated
to a blur, then halted. The right-hand columns looked different.

“Teng used a nanoionic
recording device – state of the art for the period – for the vast majority of
his audio records, but towards the end of the project he ran out of storage
space. According to his personal journal he then turned to an
already-obsolescent apparatus called a ‘tape recorder’. You, Carson, are one of
the very few people familiar with this technology.”

Carson shrugged. “Marginally”
he said “I did publish a paper a long time ago. My primary interest was the
construction of the batteries. As you know, I deal in ancient devices; I was
less interested in the machine itself. There’s no market – Teng had the last
one is existence. God knows where he got it.”

“But you know the
principles upon which it functioned?”

“Sure” he continued,
mainly for Aiyana’s benefit, “data was recorded by changing the magnetic alignment
of microscopic particles embedded in a long strip of emulsion-coated plastic. It’s
one of those prehistoric devices that makes you wonder how it ever worked. It’s
believed there was once a similar technology involving spinning metal disks, if
you can imagine something that bizarre.”

“But you never personally
studied the underlying principles of the recording mechanism? I thought not. In
fact, very few historians have. I had to dig up the work of a third Millennium
academician named Fahim to find a really good analysis.”

Kalidas conjured up a new
display from the console. It was the text of one of Cissokho’s speeches to the
Covenant Assembly.
“Artificial intelligence is difficult to define”
it
began
“and we must be careful how we classify its limits.”

“That’s the transcript. Here’s
the matching audio”

Aiyana’s back
straightened as the famous voice filled the room. The Ancient English was
heavily accented but still comprehensible across the centuries.

“This is one of the
recordings made using the ‘tape recorder’ and it is always reproduced in the
way that you just heard.
Except it’s not correct
. The audio was
transferred from the tape recorder to a more modern storage device about one
hundred years after Teng’s death, but sometime later it was edited. Here’s what
the original sounded like.

“Not that-”
began
a male voice that was abruptly cut off by Cissokho’s initial words.

“It was technically
possible to use the plastic strip, the
tape
, more than once, and that is
exactly what Teng must have done – he overwrote his first recordings.”

Kalidas was becoming
agitated “I imagine Cissokho insisted – she was never very enthusiastic about
his project and no doubt felt the Covenant Assembly took priority.”

Carson still did not
understand Kalidas’s excitement.

“Okay, so whatever was on
there the first time was lost…”

Kalidas cut him off.

“What do you know of the
physics of layered magnetic ferrous substrates?”

Carson laughed. “Nothing,
honored scholar”

“Neither does anyone
else. It was virtually a dead technology by the time the Yongding fled Old
Earth and the colonists certainly had no use for it.

“I have spent over a
decade studying the subject. Even so, I made meager progress until Juro
increased the resources at my disposal. The technical details are too arcane to
discuss today, but the essence is this: all modern data storage is based on
changing the quantum characteristics of a single electron, but each bit of
information recorded on Teng’s ancient machine required the crude magnetic
alignment of tens of millions of iron atoms. It’s a totally different concept.”

Kalidas walked across the
room a pulled the covers off a small box-shaped machine.

“Juro’s engineers
constructed this for me. It is the first working tape recorder to be built in
eight thousand years, although it has more sophisticated capabilities than
Teng’s device.”

Carson could see that
Kalidas was actually enjoying himself. He must have wanted to share his
findings for years.

“Let me give you a
demonstration.”

Like a magician he pulled
out a small rectangular box.

“This is a Teng
tape
cassette.
”

Seeing Carson’s expression Kalidas added “It is a reproduction”

He fed the cassette into
the machine and turned to Aiyana.

“Would you like to say
something that I can record?”

Aiyana said “
I am sitting
in a house in the city of Hawkins.
”

Carson laughed to
himself. Kalidas wasn’t the only one who could show off – Aiyana’s Ancient
English was perfect.

Kalidas touched the
machines console and played Aiyana’s recorded voice.

“I will now reposition
the tape so that the next recording will overwrite the first. If you could say
something else of about the same length…”

“The Yongding was the
first viable starship”

Kalidas played the new
recording.

“Each time it operates the
machine erases earlier recordings by re-aligning the iron particles in the
tape’s emulsion. However – and this is the essence –
a significant number of
those particles maintained their original alignment!
”

He fiddled with the
console for a few moments, then Aiyana’s voice declaimed

“
I am sitting in a
house in the city of Hawkins.
”

It was Aiyana’s first
recording. The voice was slurred, but perfectly comprehensible.

“You realize what this
means!” Kalidas cried

Carson did. “My God, Teng’s
erased recordings could still be there.”

He sat down shaking his
head.

“Kalidas, this is
wonderful! There must be what – two hundred hours on those tapes – so
potentially there is two hundred hours of new material. It’s the greatest
historical discovery in centuries!”

Kalidas was actually
smiling – a frightening sight.

“But honored scholar”
said Carson “why the subterfuge? You have done marvelous work. Why not share it
with the world? I’m sure the Archives Council would be –”

Kalidas’s smile vanished.

“Those idiots! Do you
know what would happen if I approached them? First, they would take a year to
think about it, then they would say ‘Thank you Kalidas, we’ll run the project
from here but we’ll be sure to mention you in a footnote’.”

Sadly, he was right. Carson
knew that the Archives Council was a notoriously closed organization – a fact
that had led to innumerable disputes. There was no chance that they would let a
disgraced academic participate in the work of analyzing any new recordings.

Kalidas stepped up to Carson and gripped his arm

“I need those cassettes. I
will analyze them and publish, then let Council do their damndest!”

“You want me to steal
them for you.”

The smile returned.

“Not steal, honored
colleague, just borrow”

“And why would I do
that?” Carson doubted that Kalidas knew much about Juro’s machinations.

“We will collaborate on
the investigation and publish the results as joint authors. You will share the
glory.”

Carson had no faith in
Kalidas’s offer, but it furnished the cover he needed to press ahead.

“How do you propose that
I ‘borrow’ them? Didn’t you already try?”

“Yes, in my excitement I
made a clumsy, foolish attempt. Fortunately, our patron has provided us with
more subtle means.”

Kalidas went into the
next room and returned wearing surgical gloves. In his hands was a
battered-looking academic case, the sort used by scholars since the beginning
of time. He placed the case down, opened it and carefully took out two more
Teng cassettes.

“These are precise
replicas of the two cassettes in the archives. They fit into a secret
compartment in the bottom of the bag which cannot be detected by any scanner
operated by the Museum. All you have to do is to ask to examine the originals –
I’m sure you can manufacture an adequate reason – and affect a switch.”

Carson thought hard. He
knew it would come to this but the idea of risking his hard-won privileges was
horrific. Zhou had assured him that she would square things with the
authorities, but suppose they refused to be mollified? Finally the excitement
of discovery overwhelmed his caution. Kalidas might be reckless but he was
offering the chance to participate in an incredible archeological find.

“Alright” said Carson, “I’ll give it a try. But tell me Kalidas, what’s in this for Juro? All this must
have cost him a fortune.”

Kalidas drew himself up.

“Like you and I, honored
scholar, Juro is a lover of history. He is outraged by the behavior of the
Keepers of the Archives, and seeks only to share this discovery with the
world.”

Carson nodded.
If you
believe that I’ve got a solid gold asteroid you might be interested in buying
.

A few minutes later he
and Aiyana were hurrying down the street in the cool evening air. Juro’s bogus
case was wrapped in an anonymous package under his arm.

“Oh my God” Aiyana said
“that has to be the creepiest person I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, I’ve been checking
with my valet. That kind of eye-wear has been adopted by a cult called the
Brotherhood of the Secret. It seems that Kalidas is even crazier than we
thought. The Brotherhood thinks that the failure to find another space-faring
species is a conspiracy – that they really exist. What a guy to have as a
partner!”

“Does he really believe
that stuff about Juro? That he’s some kind of benefactor?”

“God knows, but I was
asking him a real question. What
is
in it for Juro? He couldn’t sell the
cassettes without a believable provenance. I suppose they’d be some money to be
made from publishing new Teng material, but this entire operation must have
cost a fortune. He’d be lucky just to recoup his outlay, and no one breaks so
many laws just to uncover ancient history.”

“But you’re really
planning to steal the cassettes?”

“I don’t think I have a
choice, not if we ever want to get Juro off our backs. If I went to the
authorities right now they’d throw the book at Kalidas and maybe sweep up Shin,
but the Old Man is too far removed. No, I’ll be at the Archives first thing in the
morning, God help me.”

“We’ll be at the
Archives.”