Part 13 (1/2)

panic attack The s.h.i.+p screamed. Its screens showed Mada that she was surrounded in threes.p.a.ce. A swarm of Utopian asteroids was closing on her, brain clans and mining DIs living in hollowed-out chunks of carbonaceous chondrite, any one of which could have mustered enough votes to abolish Mada in all ten dimensions.

”I'm going to die,” the s.h.i.+p cried, ”I'm going to die, I'm going to . . .”

”I'm not.” Mada waved the speaker off impatiently and scanned downwhen. She saw that the Utopianshad planted an ident.i.ty mine five minutes into the past that would boil her memory to vapor if she tried to go back in time to undo this trap. Upwhen, then. The future was clear, at least as far as she could see, which wasn't much beyond next week. Of course, that was the direction they wanted her to skip. They'd be happiest making her their great-great-great-grandchildren's problem.

The Utopians fired another spread of panic bolts. The s.h.i.+p tried to absorb them, but its buffers were already overflowing. Mada felt her throat tighten. Suddenly she couldn't remember how to spellluck, and she believed that she could feel her sanity oozing out of her ears.

”So let's skip upwhen,” she said.

”You s-sure?” said the s.h.i.+p. ”I don't know if . . . how far?”

”Far enough so that all of these drones will be fossils.”

”I can't just . . . I need a number, Mada.”

A needle of fear p.r.i.c.ked Mada hard enough to make her reflexes kick. ”Skip!” Her panic did not allow for the luxury of numbers. ”Skip now!” Her voice was tight as a fist. ”Do it!”

Time s.h.i.+vered as the s.h.i.+p surged into the empty dimensions. In threes.p.a.ce, Mada went all wavy. Eons pa.s.sed in a nanosecond, then she washed back into the strong dimensions and solidified.

She merged briefly with the s.h.i.+p to a.s.sess damage. ”What have you done?” The gain in entropy was an ache in her bones.

”I-I'm sorry, you said to skip so . . .” The s.h.i.+p was still jittery.

Even though she wanted to kick its sensorium in, she bit down hard on her anger. They had both made enough mistakes that day. ”That's all right,” she said, ”we can always go back. We just have to figure out when we are. Run the star charts.”

two-tenths of a spin The s.h.i.+p took almost three minutes to get its charts to agree with its navigation screens-a bad sign.

Reconciling the data showed that it had skipped forward in time about two-tenths of a galactic spin.

Almost twenty million years had pa.s.sed on Mada's homeworld of Trueborn, time enough for its crust to fold and buckle into new mountain ranges, for the Green Sea to bloom, for the glaciers to march and melt. More than enough time for everything and everyone Mada had ever loved-or hated-to die, turn to dust and blow away.

Whiskers trembling, she checked downwhen. What she saw made her lose her perch and float aimlessly away from the command mod's screens. There had to be something wrong with the s.h.i.+p's air. It settled like dead, wet leaves in her lungs. She ordered the s.h.i.+p to check the mix.

The s.h.i.+p's deck flowed into an enormous plastic hand, warm as blood. It cupped Mada gently in its palm and raised her up so that she could see its screens straight on.

”Nominal, Mada. Everything is as it should be.”

That couldn't be right. She could breathe s.h.i.+p-nominal atmosphere. ”Check it again,” she said.”Mada, I'm sorry,” said the s.h.i.+p.

The ident.i.ty mine had skipped with them and was still d.o.g.g.i.ng her, five infuriating minutes into the past.

There was no getting around it, no way to undo their leap into the future. She was trapped two-tenths of a spin upwhen. The knowledge was like a sucking hole in her chest, much worse than any wound the Utopian psychological war machine could have inflicted on her.

”What do we do now?” asked the s.h.i.+p.

Mada wondered what she should say to it. Scan for hostiles? Open a pleasure sim? Cook a nice, hot stew? Orders twisted in her mind, bit their tails and swallowed themselves.

She considered-briefly-telling it to open all the air locks to the vacuum. Would it obey this order? She thought it probably would, although she would as soon chew her own tongue off as utter such cowardly words. Had not she and her sibling batch voted to carry the revolution into all ten dimensions? Pledged themselves to fight for the Three Universal Rights, no matter what the cost the Utopian brain clans extracted from them in blood and anguish?

But that had been two-tenths of a spin ago.

bean thoughts ”Where are you going?” said the s.h.i.+p.

Mada floated through the door bubble of the command mod. She wrapped her toes around the perch outside to steady herself.

”Mada, wait! I need a mission, a course, some line of inquiry.”

She launched down the companionway.

”I'm a Dependent Intelligence, Mada.” Its speaker buzzed with self-righteousness. ”I have the right to proper and timely guidance.”

The s.h.i.+p flowed a veil across her trajectory; as she approached, it went taut. That was DI thinking: the s.h.i.+p was sure that it could just bounce her back into its world. Mada flicked her claws and slashed at it, shredding holes half a meter long.

”And I have the right to be an individual,” she said. ”Leave me alone.”

She caught another perch and pivoted off it toward the greenhouse blister. She grabbed the perch by the door bubble and paused to flow new alveoli into her lungs to make up for the oxygen-depleted, carbon-dioxide-enriched air mix in the greenhouse. The bubble s.h.i.+vered as she popped through it and she breathed deeply. The smells of life helped ground her whenever operation of the s.h.i.+p overwhelmed her. It was always so needy and there was only one of her.

It would have been different if they had been designed to go out in teams. She would have had her sibling Thiras at her side; together they might have been strong enough to withstand the Utopian's panic . . .no!

Mada shook him out of her head. Thiras was gone; they were all gone. There was no sense in looking for comfort, downwhen or up. All she had was the moment, the tick of the relentless present, filled now withthe moist, bittersweet breath of the dirt, the sticky savor of running sap, the bloom of perfume on the flowers. As she drifted through the greenhouse, leaves brushed her skin like caresses. She settled at the potting bench, opened a bin and picked out a single bean seed.

Mada cupped it between her two hands and blew on it, letting her body's warmth coax the seed out of dormancy. She tried to merge her mind with its blissful unconsciousness. Cotyledons stirred and began to absorb nutrients from the endosperm. A bean cared nothing about proclaiming the Three Universal Rights: the right of all independent sentients to remain individual, the right to manipulate their physical structures and the right to access the timelines. Mada slowed her metabolism to the steady and deliberate rhythm of the bean-what Utopian could do that? They held that individuality bred chaos, that function alone must determine form and that undoing the past was sacrilege. Being Utopians, they could hardly destroy Trueborn and its handful of colonies. Instead they had tried to put the Rights under quarantine.

Mada stimulated the sweat glands in the palms of her hands. The moisture wicking across her skin called to the embryonic root in the bean seed. The tip pushed against the seed coat. Mada's sibling batch on Trueborn had pushed hard against the Utopian blockade, to bring the Rights to the rest of the galaxy.

Only a handful had made it to open s.p.a.ce. The brain clans had hunted them down and brought most of them back in disgrace to Trueborn. But not Mada. No, not wily Mada, Mada the fearless, Mada whose heart now beat but once a minute.

The bean embryo swelled and its root cracked the seed coat. It curled into her hand, branching and rebranching like the timelines. The roots tickled her.

Mada manipulated the chemistry of her sweat by forcing her sweat ducts to reabsorb most of the sodium and chlorine. She parted her hands slightly and raised them up to the grow lights. The cotyledons emerged and chloroplasts oriented themselves to the light. Mada was thinking only bean thoughts as her cupped hands filled with roots and the first true leaves unfolded. More leaves budded from the nodes of her stem, her petioles arched and twisted to the light,the light . It was only the light-violet-blue and orange-red-that mattered, the incredible shower of photons that excited her chlorophyll, pa.s.sing electrons down carrier molecules to form adenosine diphosphate and nicotinamide adenine dinucleo . . .

”Mada,” said the s.h.i.+p. ”The order to leave you alone is now superseded by primary programming.”

”What?” The word caught in her throat like a bone.

”You entered the greenhouse forty days ago.”

Without quite realizing what she was doing, Mada clenched her hands, crus.h.i.+ng the young plant.

”I am directed to keep you from harm, Mada,” said the s.h.i.+p. ”It's time to eat.”