Empress of Eternity Read online

  He left the workroom and crossed the main room, then paused at the foot of the ramp that led up to the overly expansive second-level room that served as their combined bedchamber and private sitting room. Had he heard the wind howling, the precursor of an early storm or blizzard? His lips curled in amusement. How would he know? The oblong sections of the walls that approximated windows only transmitted light, not images or sounds—unless they were actually set in the open position, a position that they’d only hold for a third of an hour before automatically sealing. The walls blocked the sound of even the loudest of storms, and no outside vibration was ever transmitted to the interior of the station.

  With a shake of his head, he started up the ramp to rejoin Maarlyna. When tomorrow came, and the days to follow in Caelaarn, he would deal with what they brought. What other choice did he have?

  5

  8 Quad 2471 R.E.

  Eltyn’s virties focused on the external readings on the sandstorm that raged outside, another of the seemingly unending silicon tempests that continually assailed the station. Inside the ancient dwelling, he felt nothing, heard nothing. His bio-eyes took in the information on the local net not linked to RucheCom. The data readings on the small console showed no change in the surface temperature of the outer wall of the station or of the midcontinent canal walls at one-kay intervals over the fifteen kays to the east.

  Interrogative storm dust/sand density? came the question from the geosat continent operations monitor.

  Sampling sensors shuttered. Last data matched Category 8, Eltyn pulsed back to the GCMC. There was no point in leaving the samplers exposed, not with the wind velocity and sand/dust concentration bombarding the station and the southern walls of the MCC. Unlike the stone of the station, the unsealed sampling sensors would have been damaged by the sand granules propelled at storm velocities. The other—sealed—sensors continued to report temperature and pressure.

  Interrogative rationale for shuttering?

  Ruche MetCentre wanted a reason? They had the data.

  Eltyn pulsed back, Air mass velocity exceeds 400 kays. Estimated deposit 5k tonnes/hour/K2. Temperature stable at 64° S. Just a “mere” twenty-seven degrees above blood temperature, with enough fine sand to bury the southern side of the station halfway up the wall in a few hours. Farther than that if the storm remained in the area more than the projected six hours.

  The ancient building had conduits that accommodated cables and plumbing. There might be hidden passages. Neither he nor Faelyna had found any, but they had discovered and charted the ducts in the walls and floors that opened if human touch pressed against them, provided the outer wall wasn’t buried in sand or snow. The stone of those conduits flowed around cables and pipes to provide a seal against the weather…or any other intrusion. The western MCC MetStation hadn’t seen snow in centuries. There hadn’t been significant precipitation in the area for decades, despite the Ruche’s priority efforts on climate mods. As for the structure presumed to be the eastern station, no one had ever been able to enter it.

  Faelyna glanced toward him. Idiots. That was a private pulse, on the direct freq that Eltyn continually checked to assure it remained shielded from RucheCom monitoring. That was vital, given their project.

  Concur3.

  For a moment, neither looked at the other or pulsed. Then Faelyna asked, Progress on approach(8)?

  Testing of new installation to be complete by 1330 tomorrow.

  ?????

  Eltyn had kept the details to himself, very unRuchelike, even if no one from RucheCom was able to monitor his work that closely. Still…Faelyna might save him trouble by going over matters now that the system was in place. SysConfig…here.

  [Appreciation/understanding].

  Eltyn tried to ignore the feathery touch of her inspection by rechecking the latest data on the sandstorm. Even her comm touch was…He shook his head. That would have to wait. They couldn’t afford anything that would jeopardize the project. They were TechOversight professionals, working for the good of the Ruche.

  After several moments, Faelyna pulsed, Inquiry?

  Acceptable.

  DNA substrate positioning suggests fractionally post-pressure. Sensitive response system would register DNA prior to or simultaneous with contact pressure.

  Eltyn had considered that, but he hadn’t been certain of what interval might be best. The idea was to create an artificial method for opening the doors and ducts of the station. If he could accomplish that, it was logical that the results would provide guidance toward a more comprehensive system for uncovering other means of access to what lay beneath the eternal blue-gray stone. Suggested mod?

  A flow/power/response schematic appeared before his virties.

  Prelim, offered Faelyna.

  Eltyn considered it, then traced out the key elements, admiring its elegance as he did. 200 nanosecs closer? Measured response time on current doors…

  The hint of a frown hung behind the non-pulse before Faelyna replied, Point taken. 500 might be better.

  Mod will require rework of decision cortex.

  [Apology].

  Not required. Good observation. Still, accurate as her observation was, that meant another hour or so rebalancing the flows.

  As he set to work, he found himself humming under his breath. Perhaps he should have adopted sliding parameters based on the DNA substrate positioning time…but then…how much would the pressure change, and would the canal’s systems detect that differential?

  Possible differential required for each activation? Faelyna’s suggestion was pulsed oh-so-gently. Precise human pressure gesture not replicatable on nanoscale, even microscale.

  He couldn’t help but nod. She was absolutely correct. Even in the best of circumstances, even with the best of Ruche training and education, the precision of human entities lagged far behind that of their tools and systems.

  He hummed happily as he continued to improve the system. He did glance at Faelyna more than once.

  6

  10 Siebmonat 3123, Vaniran Hegemony

  Duhyle and Helkyria sat across from each other at the small table on the lower level. That was where he served all their meals. He preferred the wall-diffused more natural light of the main and upper levels, but not to the extent of carrying food, dishes, and utensils up the ramp…and then back down.

  He took a methodical swallow of the bergamot tea, then set down the silvered crystalline mug. When Helkyria didn’t speak, he did. “You worked late last night. You didn’t come to bed until past midnight.”

  She lowered her mug and nodded. She’d been holding it just below her chin and savoring the scent and vapor of the tea. Her irises remained their natural silver.

  “The environmental parameters…or the treasure hunt?” he pressed. “Or something else?”

  “The first drives the second. The latest reports from EnvCentre in Vaena aren’t good,” Helkyria admitted. “With essentially no compensating feedback on any subsurface systemic level, there’s just not enough planetary core radioactivity remaining. The solar cycle is at a minimum, and the projections are that it will be another ten thousand years, at a minimum, before received solar radiation returns to past estimated baselines.”

  “Past estimated baselines? How reliable are they?”

  “Not so reliable as we’d like. You know what happened when the Jhaenists tried entangled fermionic solar manipulation from Mercury…”

  “That’s still a theory. We don’t know.”

  “The results of whatever they were trying seared half the planet and disrupted the deeper solar processes enough to reduce the amount of solar radiation emitted,” replied Helkyria. “They succeeded, by chance or accident, or the sun just obliged them on its own, but that fractional reduction of radiation left us with less than we need for a stable envirosystem, and for the millennia since then we’ve been teetering on the edge of ice age after ice age.”

  “Where is global warming when we need it?” Duhyle added quickly, “Isn
’t that what the Aesyr would ask?”

  “They’ve asked it enough, without any real understanding. You know that, Kavn. Most important, the ancients burned so much of the Earth’s fossil fuels that we couldn’t replicate that even if we wanted to and if we could deal with the polluting by-products. The green house gases that we could create are too long-lasting, and we’d be back where the Jhaenists were. A compounding green house effect is almost always a runaway process over any length of time—something the most distant ancients didn’t understand, even with the obvious example of Venus. Neither did too many of their successors. That’s why the Jhaenists were so desperate. Life in the universe appears to be balanced on the edge of a very sharp and unforgiving blade, and in the end entropy will always win.” She offered a sardonic smile, enhanced by a momentary flash of green in her eyebrows. “But only eventually, and not until after the sun becomes a red giant.”

  “Not before Earth freezes solid again.”

  “That probably won’t happen. Unless we can discover something less catastrophic, the advocates of enhancing the green house effect will win out, backed by the Aesyr, and our descendants will face another seared Earth. This time, there’s not likely to be any way to recover.”

  “Haven’t scients said that before?”

  “When the clock finally stops, it’s usually the wrong time.”

  Duhyle didn’t ask about the applicability of that metaphor. She was convinced that the clock was all too likely to stop when it melted in the furnace of a runaway green house. From the recent comm-system disruptions staged by the Climate for People and the Warm Clean Earthers, both Aesyr fronts or sympathizers, it was also clear that too many humans wanted the ice gone—now. They wanted it to vanish without any untidy or unpleasant complications. That had never been possible, and it wasn’t likely to happen this time, either. That also was why his tech status had been reactivated and why Helkyria had been called up, again, as a scient-commander. He had asked if she’d really been assigned, but she’d always evaded the question.

  “What about terraforming Mars again?” he asked after a moment.

  “With what? It takes water, and the previous efforts scoured the easily available ices from the Kuiper Belt. Those remaining are farther out and smaller. That takes time, resources, and energy. We’re short on all three.”

  “Even if…?”

  “Enhancing thorium for a breeder program would require massive energy concentrations as well, and it’s politically unthinkable, except for the most radical of the Aesyr. Besides, even if we could do that, we don’t have the resources to move four hundred million people.”

  “The distant ancients numbered billions…”

  “When everything fell apart, most of those billions died. You’ve seen enough of the fossils and all the evidence of total societal collapse. The Hu-Ruche apparently evaded one collapse, and they’re the only ones who did…and that only postponed the inevitable.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Every simulation I can run predicts Iceberg Earth. So does every other simulation attempted by the Department.”

  “With no rebound?”

  “I wouldn’t say that the probability of no rebound is unitary, but it’s so close that…” Helkyria offered a sad smile, and the tips of her silver-gold locks flickered the off-blue of disappointment. Her eyebrows did not shift hues, suggesting that her discouragement was perhaps not so deep as her words conveyed.

  “That it might as well be,” Duhyle finished.

  “That’s why I’m here. The Stats center has calculated a ten percent chance that detailed study of the canal will reveal data or information not presently known.”

  “Based on what?”

  Helkyria smiled. “An array of inputs that would take far too long to even summarize over breakfast.”

  “How about one?”

  “The fact that the apparent density of the canal, as measured by indirect gravitational distortion, suggests a structure that could not hold itself together for more than fifty years, let alone millions.”

  “Indirect distortion?” He already knew the answer.

  “Do you know a direct way to measure something embedded in a planetary crust?” A faint twinkle of gold glittered from the tips of her eyelashes and eyebrows. “We did work out an even more indirect method, since the traditional means showed nothing at all.”

  “Indirection is everything,” bantered Duhyle.

  “No one’s ever measured the material of the midcontinent canal before,” Helkyria continued as if he had said nothing. “How could you measure or determine the properties of a substance you can’t sample? It’s essentially impervious to all forms of energy. It either reflects or scatters anything focused on it, or both, depending on the wave form and amount of energy involved.”

  “What did you discover?”

  Both her irises and the tips of her hair turned a blackish purple.

  Duhyle had never seen that, and he swallowed.

  A crooked smile followed. “The results were…mixed. It has no mass; it has the same average mass as the Earth’s crust; its mass is independent of the Earth.” She rose from the table.

  “How is your scanning project coming?” He also stood.

  “I’ll know when the last equipment arrives. It might work…and it might not. I’ll need your help with the equipment.”

  “You’re worried.”

  “They’re sending a spec-ops team and weapons with the equipment. They should be here tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  “Several days ago, the Aesyr extremists launched a stealth submersible from Urda—that isle under the northern ice. They’ve learned about the project, and they’re afraid our probing will unlock immense forces and devastate the entire globe.” Her laugh was soft, ironic, and bitter, and the tips of her curls flickered cold silver. “That’s a cover. They think that we’re doing weapons research. As if the ancients would have made all the effort to create and plant the canal into the crust just to leave a doomsday weapon for the future. If they’d wanted to destroy the world, they had far better options.”

  “The Aesyr don’t understand,” he temporized.

  “Extremists never have. That’s because they don’t want to.” She shrugged. “Time to get back to work.”

  “Refining the control programming while you wait for the rest of the equipment?”

  She nodded, offered a brief smile, and turned.

  As she left, Duhyle wondered if he’d ever understand more than the basic theory of fermionic ghost diffraction imaging. He certainly had had more than a little trouble when Helkyria had tried to explain quantum ghost imaging and the differences between it and fermionic diffraction imaging. As for fermionic ghost entanglement…and he was an electrical engineer. He shook his head and picked up her dishes.

  He’d have to take a midday meal up to her. She forgot to eat when she immersed herself in the depths of her work.

  Still…an armed stealth submersible sent to attack or infiltrate and take over a research installation on an ancient canal that hadn’t ever done anything to anyone or anything over the millennia?

  7

  35 Eightmonth 1351, Unity of Caelaarn

  Once more, Maertyn read over the dispatch that had come with the canal-runner that morning.

  From:

  Minister of Science

  Unity of Caelaarn

  To:

  Maertyn S’Eidolon

  Deputy Assistant Minister

  Subject:

  Pending Research on Climatic Impact of MCC

  I am looking forward to your presentation on the twenty-first of Ninemonth.

  You will be addressing the internal Ministry council. Your project has taken on a particular import, as you may have learned from the by-elections in Aracha, especially in Saenblaed. Difficult as it may be for some in the government to accept, there is growing popular pressure to resort to physical geo-engineering to deal with the situation. In this light, any insight you c
an offer on how the ancients may have employed the canal to avoid such extremes would be especially valuable, particularly in light of your request for additional equipment.

  Saenblaed, reflected Maertyn as he lowered the dispatch for a moment, was where the bulk of the refugees from Edelburg had settled. They always voted for the Returnist party and any scheme, no matter how improbable, that offered hope of reclaiming their lands. What the short dispatch had not said, but clearly implied, was that the strictly biologically based projects and research, always the strength of the Unity, were not turning out as planned, because of either star-high costs or technical problems, if not both.

  He couldn’t say that he was surprised. Biological means of providing the concentrated energy required by technological societies tended to be inefficient or to require significant additional processing and/or infrastructure to increase that energy concentration, effectively diluting the end-use efficiency. Also, efficiency declined in extremes of heat or cold, and the earth was definitely cooling.

  His thesis had been relatively simple. After scanning of the records of temperature observations taken at the east and west end of the canal and at selected points in between and cross-matching them, as best he could, to comparable observations within a kay or more away from the canal, but still within the same climatic area, there seemed to be a definite indication that the canal moderated temperatures more than could be accounted by all the known factors. In the year and a half since he and Maarlyna had been at the station, his own measurements had made that clear. He had yet to figure out why. The impervious blue-gray stone—although he doubted it was stone in any chemical or compositional sense—never changed temperature, regardless of how much sunlight fell or how chill the winters were. Did it somehow regulate its temperature instantly, or did its very composition insulate it from temperature changes?