GEODESICA: DESCENT

by Sean Williams with Shane Dix

+Prelude

Anniversary 8: 2694 AD

"You told me, once," said a voice, "that you loved me."

Isaac Deangelis had been watching the ship decelerate with close attention, not overly alarmed by its lack of identification since its design was so antiquated. It came in three discrete chunks, each spherical and perfectly mirror-finished. Each chunk emitted no drive flame or electromagnetic radiation. They simply warped space as their velocity decreased, propagating strange ripples of starlight from their gleaming, curved surfaces.

He was duty bound to intervene should anyone attempt anything untoward near the entrance to Geodesica. Now, though, he had no idea what to do. The knowledge of who the voice belonged to and the shock of hearing it again momentarily overwhelmed him.

The voice belonged to Melilah Awad. Her ship was a Palmer Cell.

"Didn't you hear me, Isaac?"

"I heard you," he broadcast. There was no point pretending he hadn't, just as he'd made no effort to hide his identity from anyone bound in-system. He checked the Occlusion containment bubble, seeking an explanation for her appearance; it was quiescent, still sealed, as he had known it would be. "Where did you emerge? When?"

"I came out a long way from here, Isaac. As to when--well, if I told you, you wouldn't believe me."

He didn't know what to believe as the ancient vessel matched vectors with the observation platform he inhabited. It had been over a quarter of a millennium since Melilah disappeared into Geodesica. Who knew what she had seen and experienced in that time?

"I've been waiting for you," he said. "I knew you weren't dead. I knew you'd come back eventually."

"I know," she said, and he was surprised by the tone of her voice. He had studied her most closely of all the lost citizens of Bedlam. He read surprise in her, yes, and grief, obviously. But there seemed to be no anger there, even now, confronted with the ruins of her home and the man she could easily blame for its destruction.

He wouldn't begrudge her that. It had been his home, too, and he had no compunction in blaming himself. He had imagined her return many times--sweeping out of the Occlusion on a crest of fiery wrath, her righteous indignation fueled by whatever alien technology she had mastered inside the ancient artifact. Her revenge would be swift and justified, and, in all likelihood, he wouldn't lift a finger to stop her.

You told me, once, that you loved me.

He had never uttered those words in his life, to her or anyone.

"What happened to Palmer Eogan?" he asked. "You were together when the Catastrophe struck. He must have survived if you did."

"He stayed behind," she said.

"In Geodesica?"

"That's hard to explain." Again, he heard a strong note of grief in her voice. "It's probably best you don't ask me to try."

"But I want to know. I want to know how you avoided the replicators; how you got back; what you found; what it's like in there--everything."

"There's no point," she said. "You don't need to know."

"How can you say that? Nothing's been the same since Geodesica was found. People fought a war over it. I risked my life for it. I betrayed everything I believed in because of it!" He stopped, sucking on the memories as one would a bleeding thumb. "I want to know," he finished with more control. "I need to."

"I understand," she said, "but you did know. You saw it for yourself--the part of you who came with us."

He bit down on the urge to remind her that the fragment of him that had been caught up with her and Eogan's escape from Bedlam wasn't actually him, but part of the distributed self who had once been Exarch of the system.

"Was he the one who told you I loved you?"

"What difference does it make which part of you said it?"

"All the difference in the world. While he's not connected to the rest of me, he can feel and say many things that aren't representative of me, just as he can experience things I can't possibly know until we're reconnected."

She didn't deny that, but she didn't concede the point, either.

"Where is he, by the way?"

"I don't want to talk about it. It's not relevant."

"Is he still in Geodesica?"

"It's not relevant," she insisted.

He heard irritation in her voice, then, and perhaps the beginning of the anger he dreaded.

"I am not your enemy," he said, "and I am not your lover. But I have been waiting for you to come back for over two hundred and fifty years. Why not dock and we'll talk face to face?"

"What could we possibly have to say to each other, Isaac?"

Her skepticism saddened him. "Well, I can tell you what happened here, for starters."

"Yes. I notice that Ah Kong is gone," she said, referring to the system's former gas giant. "And the sun's spectrum looks weird."

"That's just the start of it. There's so much more. When I've finished, perhaps you can tell me your story."

"I can't do that," she said, stating bluntly for the first time what she had only suggested before.

"Then perhaps we can just talk." Perhaps, he thought to himself, you'll tell me if the feelings of my fragment were returned,

Her Cell didn't come any closer. "What's the point? It won't change anything."

"This is true, but it won't hurt, either. Come on, Melilah. You're safe now. The war is over." If she could be blunt, so could he. "This place is a grave. No one fights over a grave."

Her reply came not in words, but the sound of weeping over the communication link.

+1

Bedlam: 2439 AD

Bedlam burned. Palmer Horsfall warily approached the system the Exarchate called Lut-Deangelis, keeping a close eye on telemetry for any sign of nanotech attack as she came. The trade lanes had been seeded with dust, as they had been around Sublime, dramatically reducing deform ratings and forcing her to ply an alternate route through the heliopause. Thus far, that dust had been inert, devoid of any payloads more sophisticated than pure inertia, but it paid to be careful. She knew precisely what sort of risk she was taking.

From a distance the system looked little different to normal. Only closer did its absorption spectrum begin to show signs of Catastrophe. The vast, gleaming atmosphere of nanotech surrounding the star was extraordinarily diffuse--barely one particle per cubic meter--but it fed on the energy of the sun itself, riding the solar wind, and bred voraciously. Horsfall knew that very little within its aegis would have been spared. Asteroids, moons, whole planets had been consumed in the fire of its genesis, along with Palmer Cells, automated stations, and colonies. A world of people had died here--as had died in Sublime, along with her sister.

She remembered that day with perfect clarity. Eleven years earlier and seventeen and a half light-years away, it still burned in her mind. She had tried so long to quench it--along with the guilt and the anger and the regret. Now she knew better. She would fan those flames and set fire to all humanity. She wouldn't rest until Sol burned with her, and the smoke obscured the stars.

"Should we hail him?" she asked the monkey on her back.

Wait. The reply came as a whisper in her ears, as subtle and insidious as it had been the first time she heard it. It's likely he's already seen us.

"We're coming in quiet." The Cell Horsfall commanded had been modified to very specific requirements in order to minimize its emissions. They had coasted in deep cold for several hours past the system's bow shock, only booting up telemetry when they were confident of having slipped through the outer defenses.

Nevertheless. We want him to see us, remember?

She remembered. This was the part of the plan that bothered Horsfall the most. Everything hinged on how Deangelis would react. Would he swat them out of the sky as one would a mosquito, or would he hesitate long enough to listen? There was no way to guess. A man who had just watched his system die was inherently unpredictable.

Not a man, she reminded herself. An Exarch. There was a big difference.

The face of Bedlam's gas giant, Ah Kong, presented an unlikely swirl of colors as the Dreieichen navigated its many moons. She felt something akin to relief to be back in a gravity well after so long in the Dark. If she kept her eyes averted from the glowing sphere of the Catastrophe, Horsfall would almost pretend she was in an ordinary system, one untouched by the horrors she had seen, on an ordinary mission for Arc Circuit clients. The Dreieichen was designed to be crewless as well as quiet. Part of her longed for a new voice to talk to apart from the one in her head. In the station named after her sister, there had been communications from other systems, companions to talk to, even the occasional lover. For almost two years now, ever since word had come of the Mizar Occlusion, she had been utterly isolated. She hadn't even known what had happened in Bedlam until she had arrived on its fringes. The ghastly golden glow was faint but familiar.

Strength, the voice in her ears had offered her at their first glimpse. You're not alone in this. We will find peace together, either way.

The thought hadn't helped much. Horsfall knew that there was only one sort of peace she could hope for--and she wasn't religious; she didn't believe that her sister awaited her in some blissful afterlife. Death was just an end, not a solution, to the problem.

"Come on, Deangelis," she muttered as the Dreieichen assumed its parking orbit. "Put us out of our misery. I dare you."

As though the former Exarch of Bedlam had heard her, something broke cover from behind one of the icy moons and streaked towards her Cell.

No warning. No request for ID, even. Deangelis was touchier than Horsfall had expected. She triggered an automatic sequence prepared weeks in advance. The Dreieichen's individual components shrank to balls barely half a meter across and scattered in all directions. The breathing space around her collapsed, and she felt her body rearrange itself to accommodate the sudden constriction. Giddiness accompanied the abrupt shift in proprioception; she fought the urge to gag. Her senses stayed on the approaching weapon--burning white and fierce like a high-tech sparkler. She held her breath.

The weapon split into nine different parts, one for each of the components. It clearly meant business.

Horsfall's mind raced like quicksilver as she launched a second wave of defensive measures. The magnetic field of Ah Kong snapped and whipped as thousands of tiny flares detonated at once, sowing electromagnetic confusion around the Cell. Through the mess of noise, she could barely make out the nine lances of the weapon continuing to diverge, targeting the Cell's components with unchecked ease.

She knew then that anything she had prepared would be easily countered by the Exarch. They were as good as dead.

"If you've got an ace up your sleeve," she told the ghost riding her mind, "now would be the time to produce it."

She felt the Cell twitch around her as it took a single, brief phrase and broadcast it in all directions at once, in every available medium.

Isaac, don't, said the voice.

That was all. The brevity of the statement startled Horsfall, who had expected something a little more persuasive. There was time for more. They had at least a hundred microseconds before the first of the weapon fragments would hit. How could two words possibly deter Deangelis from fulfilling his deadly duty? It would take much more than that to stop her, surely.

Yet it worked. With a flash bright enough to drown out the Catastrophe, the weapon fragments simultaneously detonated. The Cell rocked in the vacuum, but was unharmed.

"Jane?" came a voice out of the Dark, its tone disbelieving, accusatory, but with a hopeful edge that made it sound almost pathetic.

The voice in Palmer Horsfall's head didn't reply.

Silence.

Horsfall waited in the swirling electromagnetic storm left in the wake of the weapon and her decoys. The Cell remained cautiously dispersed, adding to the gas giant's already large collection of tiny moons.

On one of those moons, a navigation beacon began to blink.

That's our cue, said the voice in Horsfall's ear. Take us in.

Horsfall swallowed her misgivings and brought the Dreieichen in to dock.

#

Bedlam burned. Its former Exarch stood in the fire and was not consumed. Yearn though he might for dissolution, the nanoagents that had destroyed his habitat and its citizens--and now drifted like lethal snowflakes on the solar wind within two astronomical units of the system's primary--had as much effect on him as dust. He felt like the Old Testament's burning bush. The voice of God spoke through him, but he was spared.

It was all relative, he supposed. He had been brought back from the dead in order to help his creator maintain the lie that ROTH booby traps in Geodesica had been responsible for the Catastrophe. Why Races Other Than Human would have done such a thing, exactly, awaited adequate explanation, but the lie was likely to stick better than the awful truth. Within days of the destruction of Bedlam, the Archon had sent a new tangler to the system from Jamgotchian-McGrath. When it had arrived, six months later, it received a wave of data transmitted from Earth and built Isaac Deangelis new bodies, an observation station and a raft of new sensors with which to study the Mizar Occlusion--all under cover of the pervasive haze of the deadly nanotech.

I belong here, Deangelis told himself. No one else should be here but me.

But he would rather be anywhere else in the universe than standing watch over the ruins of his home, colluding with the one who had destroyed it...

Isaac--

Now someone else had come. Not a survey vessel or a scientific scout. Plenty of those had grazed the system in the previous months, testing the nanotech hellfire and comparing it to that which had consumed Sublime eleven years earlier. He didn't turn those away, even though it meant enduring their closest scrutiny. The Catastrophe would burn them if they came too close, and there was no evidence of foul play elsewhere in the system. They came, saw, and left when they realized there was nothing they could do. Bedlam was finished. He was finished.

It had been scant comfort to him that he wasn't the only one in his position. Jane Elderton, Exarch of Sublime, had been left behind as watchdog, too, jealously guarding her own entrance to the hyperspatial network the Archon called Geodesica. Since returning to Bedlam, he had been unwilling to talk to her, just as he had not spoken to any of the other Exarchs. Some of them had helped him during the crisis; some had actively betrayed him; Jane Elderton had stood as an example of their worst nightmare--homeless, hopeless, and utterly isolated.

--don't.

And now she was in Bedlam, somehow, riding a Palmer Cell that slipped through his sensors like an eel in muddy water.

He didn't need to ask what she wanted. He knew exactly what to do in response.

The Cell slipped into dock on a tiny scrap of rock the former inhabitants of Bedlam hadn't bothered to name. It was a dark, heavily cratered place, completely overshadowed by its garish primary world but not so close as to be warmed by tidal flexure. Probes had found little more than ice and primordial rubble overlaid by a thick layer of organics, and the search for life and harvestable compounds had soon turned elsewhere.

Deangelis had christened the rock "Rudra," after an Indian god of storms. The installation he built there had never before been activated, not in all the long months he had waited for just such a moment. Deep in its heart, well hidden from the searchers and the curious, a pair of eyes opened for the first time.

Isaac Forge Deangelis, former Exarch of Bedlam and guardian of Geodesica, shifted his attention elsewhere.

#

Rudra-Deangelis's first steps took him gracefully across the chamber in which he had woken to a door set in the far wall. The air smelled of ancient stone and contained little oxygen. The latter was fine; he didn't need to breathe. What concerned him more was the shaft on the other side of the door. Something was coming down it from the surface of the moon, to him.

He took a full second to think things through. Imprinted memories reminded him of building the station, of placing a nascent part of himself deep inside it, then sealing it up like an Egyptian tomb, waiting not for the afterlife but for something much more substantial. That he had no further memories, and that he found himself inside the station with no sense of his higher self at all, suggested that he was that nascent self, bought into being to deal with an eventuality the rest of him had to avoid. His higher self was in regular contact with the Archon. Who knew what his creator could or could not read in the workings of his mind?

One of him would attempt what the whole could not. Small and alone he might feel, but he would be sufficient. He had to be. Bedlam wouldn't burn for nothing.

The door slid open, and a woman he didn't know stepped through it. She was compact and solid, with features that revealed nothing of her age. Her scalp and face were utterly hairless; her skin was so white it seemed translucent. Eyes the blue of Earth from space took him in with a single glance.

"You're Deangelis?" Her voice was gravelly and direct. "You look younger than I thought you would."

He didn't grace that with a reply. His appearance--that of a blond, somewhat sexless youth--was designed to avoid the traditional stereotypes of masculine power. Being taken seriously was something he earned, not expected.

"Where have you come from?" he asked. "Why are you here?"

"My name is Palmer Horsfall," the woman said. She jittered slightly in the low-gee, as though unused to even that small amount of gravity. "I've come from Sublime."

Her identity fell into place, then. The observation station around the first system to fall after the opening of Geodesica was named after Deva Horsfall, a vacuum physicist from Alcor who had died in the conflagration. The woman before him was, presumably, her sister, the Palmer who had delivered her to her death.

She wasn't the person Deangelis had expected to see.

"Why?" he repeated.

"We want the same thing," she said. Horsfall took him in with a sidelong cast, as though wary to look him full in the face. She stayed studiously close to the open elevator shaft. "Revenge."

"Against?"

"The Archon and Sol."

"For what reason?"

"Do I really have to spell it out?"

He nodded. Better that she voiced it first than him, in case it was some elaborate trap.

For destroying Sublime and Bedlam, said a voice that didn't come from Horsfall's lips. For taking in cold blood the lives of those we loved. For killing our homes.

His surprise was mitigated in part by relief. He knew that voice. The mind of Jane Elderton inhabited the body of the Palmer before him. She had come to help him fight.

Some of the tension left him, then. She wouldn't lie to him about this.

"You are both welcome here," he said. "What shelter I have to offer you is yours."

"Good," said Horsfall, looking only marginally eased by his offer. "If the Archon finds us here, we're dead."

"As am I." He nodded, instructing the previously inert walls to extrude two chairs for his guests and him. The door to the elevator shaft slid soundlessly closed. "By having this conversation, we are automatically committed to the cause."

No matter where it leads us? asked the fragment of Jane Elderton.

Rudra-Deangelis nodded. "You're not here to discuss the whys and what-ifs. Let's concentrate solely on how and leave those who follow us to do the rest."

"I'm pleased we don't have to convince you," said Horsfall, seating herself economically on the chair nearest her. "I'll admit that I was less sure than Exarch Elderton."

"Jane understands," he said, "just as I now understand her a little better."

Horsfall's bright blue eyes stared at him, and he wondered if he detected his old friend peering through them. They had known each other on Earth after their creation by the Archon. They had trained with other Exarchs such as Lazarus Hails, Frederica Cazneaux and Lan Cochrane for the Expansion that would see Sol reclaim humanity's outer First Wave colonies. They had been flung like seeds into the Arc Circuit, where they had taken root and prospered--before being cut down in their prime for no better reason than fear of a weed.

Horsfall didn't flinch from his gaze. Whether the steel he saw in them belonged to her or to Elderton, he was glad to see it.

They would fight the Archon and destroy it, or die trying. There was no possible alternative. That was precisely what he had been created for. He would not shirk from destiny.

"So where do we start?" asked Horsfall. "This might be a killer of an understatement, but it's a big job."

"Melilah Awad took the first step by broadcasting a message outlining the truth after Bedlam fell."

"She did?"

Deangelis nodded, appreciating for the first time just how long his visitors had been traveling, and remembering what the Archon had said about that message upon his resurrection on Earth: We have modeled the propagation of the truth as one would a disease. We will do what we can to spread counter- and misinformation, just as we did with White-Elderton. But some will remain dubious. This doubt, Isaac, must not be allowed to spread.

"We'll continue the work she started, exposing Geodesica for what it is and opening it up to the rest of the Exarchate."

"I have some thoughts on who to approach first, and how to coordinate the movement as it forms."

We can discuss them on the way. It would be best for us to move quickly. We are too close to the center of things here. One misstep and--.

Horsfall mimed an explosion.

"Perhaps not." Deangelis faced the combined stare of his old friend and the Palmer body she inhabited. "You should know that Bedlam is different to Sublime in one important respect. There were survivors."

"Who?" Resentment flashed in Horsfall's eyes just for a moment, and was quickly suppressed. "How?"

"Three people escaped the Catastrophe by diving into the Occlusion itself. They had the capacity to survive the stresses of the entrance, thanks to the research I had performed before the end. I did my best to prevent pursuit, once we returned to the system, but I was unable to do too without making the Archon suspicious."

Who were they, Isaac?

"Palmer Eogan, Melilah Awad, and me. That is: the last surviving fragment of my original self. Their present status is unknown, but I prefer to believe they are still alive."

Why?

"Because if they are, they have to come out somewhere."

He was sure he didn't need to spell out the significance of that statement. A slight widening of Horsfall's eyes confirmed that he was right.

+2

Geodesica interior: plus 2 seconds

Melilah Awad screamed a mixture of despair and agony as the golden-fiery universe vanished from sight. A flash of painful blue swallowed her then spat her out into darkness. Then all was cold and vacuum-sharp and bound up with a sensation of falling.

"Melilah? Are you all right?"

The voice barely penetrated her wail. She wanted nothing more than to drown herself in fear and bring an end to it all. She had lost everything--her home, her friends, the family she most cared about--and now she had lost herself. Her body had been tied into a knot and absorbed by the Cell Eogan had called Cowell in some perverse tribute to her ancestors. Only her mind remained, twisted up and twitching like one final, futile reflex.

"Melilah, snap out of it! We're through. We're alive. Look!"

She had no body that she could recognize any more, but she felt something brush her skin--and attempt to soothe her. She pushed the advance away. "Don't touch me. Don't ever touch me again."

Dominic Eogan retreated. If he was stung by her words, she didn't care. He was the bearer of the thing that had killed her world. He had earned her anger.

Another voice intruded on her rage-fueled misery.

"We have to put aside our differences," said Deangelis. "The limit of my exploration lies ahead. Beyond that point, we'll be in unknown territory."

A thick, raw emotion underpinned his words. The realization that someone other than her had reason to hurt--even if they, too, were partly responsible for what had happened--helped her see beyond herself, to finally notice the place they had entered.

The Cell component, radically reduced in size by the voracious appetite of the Catastrophe nanotech, was accelerating headlong down a tubular tunnel. Reflective khaki-gray walls rushed by in a blur. Ahead and behind, white points of light delineated where the parallel walls met at an illusion of infinity. The space around them was almost pure vacuum, with only the occasional molecular hit registering on the Cell's forward vanes. Each impact released enough energy to shake the Cell slightly, demonstrating just how fast they were traveling.

The light ahead suddenly ballooned before her. The Cell decelerated hard, then swung in a direction she couldn't quite comprehend--neither up nor down, nor left nor right, but somewhere completely different. Sparks trailed in its wake as it accelerated again, leaving the bright light of the junction far behind.

"Where are we going?" she asked, her voice sounding hollow to her own ears. "Why are we moving so fast? If we hit the walls at this speed we'll be killed!"

"We're perfectly safe," Deangelis reassured her. "The walls of Geodesica aren't composed of matter. They're spacetime loops. Push yourself into a tunnel, aligned so the loop twists clockwise around you, and you'll accelerate instead of continuing at a constant velocity. The twist reverses at the midway point, pointing anti-clockwise. The opposite inertia gradient slows you down at the far end so you don't slam headlong into the junctions."

"Okay--but what about that turn we took back there? Explain that!"

"Although the interior of Geodesica contains just three dimensions of space, individual tunnels can move in two extra dimensions. The junctions are points of discontinuity, where dimensions can swap. We don't have words for some of the turns available at the junctions. In a one-dimensional structure, all you need is left and right to say which way you're traveling. Extending this terminology to more dimensions gives us left-2 and right-2 in two dimensions, which we might call up and down; left-3 and right-3 are forward and back. What Geodesica gives us access to is left-4 and right-4, and left-5 and right-5, which we've never experienced before. Back there, we took a thirty-degree turn to left-5. Does that make sense?"

"It'll have to, I guess."

"Melilah, it's important you understand," he said. "Otherwise we're going to get lost very quickly!"

Deangelis was almost babbling. Melilah didn't try to stop him, assuming it was helping him deal with what had happened.

"So you step into a tunnel, kick off, and you fly magically to the end. Is that it?"

"Yes--although there's nothing magical about the process at all. The flexures seem to be a critical function of the tunnels: you couldn't have one without the other, like the cables holding up a suspension bridge. Traveling along the tunnels takes energy, which we have to provide."

"And we're using a lot of it," said Eogan as the bright light of another junction ballooned before them. "The Cell isn't magical either. At some point we're going to need something more substantial than vacuum to keep us going."

It amazed her that the Cell component was moving at all, considering how terribly battered it had been by the nanotech and its passage through the Occlusion's throat. Ten percent of its original mass remained, organized in a smooth, vaguely aerodynamic shape reminiscent of a Brazil nut barely one hundred and fifty kilograms heavy--including its passengers. Riddled with the complex micro- and nano-machines that provided flight systems and life support, it staggered on like a full-sized Cell in miniature. It could, theoretically, continue doing so with even more of its mass removed, but at some point it would reach a critical threshold below which it could no longer support the lives of its passengers.

She didn't want to know precisely how much of her own mass had been seconded to shore up its systems. Although she remained linked to its telemetry, she avoided looking at anything that would make her feel worse than she already did. Trying to move her arms and legs prompted a feeling of being trapped that made her want to start screaming again.

They braked hard at another junction and rocketed off along another corridor. Space warped and flexed around her. In the middle of a tunnel, as the inertia gradient tugged them along, either exit seemed to retreat to infinity. Only as they came close to the next junction did the ends snap back together, making her senses shake like a ruler flicked on a desk.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"I'm taking corners at random," said Eogan.

"Is that wise?"

"Better than standing still to argue while the Archon comes marching in after us."

"The Archon is dead. Killing it started the Catastrophe."

"Are you sure? We might only have killed part of it. The rest could be after us right now."

She couldn't argue with that. "I still don't think we should go too far. You said yourself that we don't want to get lost."

"True," said Deangelis. "But I'm afraid there might not be much we can do to avoid that."

"Meaning?" His surety was slipping, her alarm returning.

"I've sent hundreds of drones in here, and only a handful returned. Either something's picking them off or their guidance AIs couldn't cope with the topology."

"Remember Cobiac and Bray," added Eogan, referring to the two Palmers he had lost from his crew. "They went in just a few meters and never came back out."

Her head felt as though it was being squeezed in a vice. "This is too much." Numbness threatened to envelope her, and she fought it with what strength she possessed. She couldn't give up now.

They took another corner. Warped space gripped them and hurled them onward. Ahead was darkness, not another glowing speck of light.

"What--?" she started to ask.

"I'm not sure," Deangelis cut in. "A corridor of infinite length? A dead-end? Who knows?"

"Perhaps it's an exit," Eogan suggested.

An injection of hope revived her. "A way out, you think?"

"We won't know until we get there."

The darkness ahead of them was complete, giving her nothing. What if Deangelis was right and they were caught in an endless tunnel, accelerating forever with no destination in sight? That would be an ignominious end for the three survivors of the Bedlam Catastrophe.

Without warning, the looped space forming the walls of the tunnel suddenly switched direction. They began to decelerate as normal, although the way ahead was still black.

"Did you ever work out how to open the exits from the inside?" Melilah asked Deangelis.

"Yes. The procedure is relatively simple."

"I don't want to be a wet blanket," said Eogan, "but leaving isn't an option we currently have on the table."

"Why not?"

"The Cell isn't up to another trip like the last one. We'd be flayed back to nothing."

"You are kidding, right?"

"I'm afraid not. Sorry."

The surge of hope faded as the end of the tunnel came into view. It wasn't anything remarkable, just a tapering truncation that vanished to a point of discontinuity. It prickled the Cowell's senses, defying definition.

Deangelis confirmed it. On the far side of that point was a throat similar to the one they had followed from Bedlam. While not as hellish as the nanotech storm that had destroyed her home, it was still difficult to navigate. She believed Eogan when he said they wouldn't make it through. The coffin containing them was only paper-thin. It would erode to nothing at the slightest provocation.

A heavy sense of futility weighed her down. She wanted to sink to the bottom of the tunnel and die. What was the point of going on if there was no way out? If all they were going to do was get lost? If there was no chance of coming home at the end of it?

Don't do this, she told herself. Don't give up. It's not like you. You've never given up before.

But she had never been through anything like this before, either. She'd never had cause to give up.

Take it apart. You can't deal with everything all at once. That's your real problem. Break it down into small pieces and tackle them one by one. The ones you can't handle now, put aside for later. Otherwise you'll be overwhelmed.

She could see the sense in that. Even in the grip of black depression, she knew that being seduced by apathy was tantamount to letting the Archon win. She had to stay alive, and sane. She had to fight.

There was nothing she could do for Bedlam. She would have to deal with her grief at some point, but for now it was useless. She could, however, use her anger to fuel her determination. It could keep her going when everything else told her to stop.

Similarly, her fear of biomodifications was only getting in the way. She simply had to accept that she was part of the Cell and endure it for the time being. Fighting the necessary--horrible thought it was--would only make everything harder.

Her feelings for Eogan and Deangelis were more difficult to parcel up and ignore. Just prior to Bedlam's end it seemed that Deangelis might have been genuinely willing to cooperate, but she couldn't dismiss her warning instincts when they spoke to her of his motives. The same went for Eogan. Yes, it had seemed for a moment that they might be able to put their painful past behind them, but now they were further apart than ever. All she could do was to try to separate her emotional responses and stick solely to those reason told her were correct

Melilah felt whole parts of her brain metaphorically shutting down. A necessary coldness crept through her, separating her from the suffocating heat of despair.

"It looks to me like we don't have any choice," she said. "We have to go back to the last junction. Do you two agree?"

Deangelis's assent was immediate. Eogan supplied a non-verbal signal that was the Palmer equivalent of a nod.

"Let's do it, then."

She kept her eyes firmly forward as the Cowell came about and accelerated back the way they had come.

#

In order to reach the exit, the Cowell had taken a turn forty degrees to left-5, ninety-five to right-3 and one hundred twenty to right-2. In Palmer Eogan's mind, he abbreviated the data to a simple string of alphanumeric codes:

040L5 095R4 120R2

That didn't mean, however, that he truly understood the directions he and the Cell were following. His mind was specifically adapted to deal with navigation in three dimensions, expanding it from the Natural comprehension of just two. The notion of a turn through the fourth dimension was not beyond his theoretical comprehension, but he didn't instinctively get it. The addition of a fifth only compounded a problem hammered home with each wrenching, dislocating turn.

Eogan believed Deangelis completely when he said they were likely to get lost. There didn't seem to be any other alternative. He just didn't want to be lost and stranded, if they could avoid it. The Cell's nanomachines were only capable of running for so long without physical input. That input could come from the Cell itself--breaking down larger structures or cargo in order to release energy and raw materials--or it could come from outside. Eogan didn't have a problem with cannibalization per se, but it, too, could only go so far. Before long, vital macro-systems such as telemetry and neural networks would begin to fail--the most important of them being those of the three people aboard. In his grimmest scenario, they were stripped back to three frozen brains squashed into a tin can and cast adrift in the endless warren of Geodesica.

Melilah's patience wouldn't last that long. Her revulsion shone through every word. He didn't know what would happen if he pushed her too far.

010L4 170L3 010L2

Another turn, another impossible trajectory. Eogan couldn't afford to let his ignorance bother him. His job was simply to keep the ship flying; Deangelis would have to be the navigator, if anyone could be. Only the expanded brain of an Exarch stood a chance in such an impossible place.

"The manifold is exceedingly complex," Deangelis said. "I can't tell which of the prime geometries it's following, and until I do--"

"At the very least," said Melilah, "shouldn't we make sure that we can get back to Bedlam if we have to? We can backtrack through the turns we've taken. You've been recording them, haven't you, Eogan? "

He confirmed that he had as they took another.

075L5 070L4 080L2

"We won't need a ball of wool to trail behind us, at least," he added.

It was an unfortunate metaphor, bringing images of the Minotaur immediately to mind, and once voiced there was no taking it back. The question was: did the Minotaur originate in the Geodesica labyrinth or would the Archon send it in after them?

At the next junction, he brought the Cell to a complete halt. They floated in free-fall at the center of a sphere of crystalline blue light, surrounded by vacuum and the cracking discharges of complex energy fields. The junction appeared to be several meters across to his eyes, but different instruments reported different figures, depending on which direction they pointed. Its walls were made of nothing more substantial than twisted space--indeed the only massive objects the Cell had encountered thus far were occasional molecules of gas, drifting along the tunnels. But as he couldn't assimilate the data in any other coherent way, Eogan accepted the illusion of spherical walls for the sake of his sanity.

Dotted around the surface of the sphere were several circular exits, each one corresponding to a different tunnel, each one identical in size. This junction had six; previous had contained anything from two to eleven. They were scattered apparently at random, like black eyes on an alien face, in groups of three, two and one. There were no signposts, no warnings, no "Welcome To Geodesica" notices. There was no way, apart from geometry, to tell the entrances apart.

He picked one at random and nudged the Cell into it. Darkness enfolded them; an inertia potential he couldn't measure but could feel gripping them scooped them up and whizzed them off to the next junction.

035R5 060L4 105R2

"All the tunnels are the same length," he said. "Inasmuch as I can tell."

"I don't think we can tell," said Deangelis. "We take the same amount of time to travel along them, and the peak deformation seems about the same each time--but what does that really mean?"

"You tell us," growled Melilah.

"I can't. Believe me. This is like nothing the Exarch has ever encountered before. We're very much in the same boat, you and I."

Melilah's laugh was low and bitter. "First Minos. Next you'll be quoting Jerome K. Jerome. Why not the Owl and the Pussycat as well? 'Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long, yet we never can think we were rash or wrong--'" She cut herself off. "I'm sorry. It just seems farcical to me that we've got in here, where everyone's been trying to get for weeks, and now we don't know what to do about it. If we stand still we'll be caught; the same if we go back. But we can't move on without getting lost, and we can't leave. Have I forgotten something?"

"No," said Eogan, wishing there was anything he could do about the tight confines of the Cell and the way it affected her. Their bodies were stunted, twisted remnants, coiled around each other like triplets in an artificial womb. The full impact of that truth was buffered from Melilah's consciousness, but she wasn't an idiot. She would know. If he had the capacity to provide a virtual environment they could walk around in, he would give it to her gladly. As it was, it was all he could do to keep them functioning and sane.

The enforced intimacy granted him an unsettling insight into her efforts to remain calm. He felt her metaphorically draw a breath, hold it for a moment, then let it go.

"Of the four options," she said, "I vote for moving on as we are now. I'd rather be lost than caught or dead."

"I agree."

"Deangelis?"

The former Exarch, or part thereof, took a moment to reply. "My judgment is unreliable. Do as you wish. I won't stop you."

"Having second thoughts?" she asked, her tone sharp.

"I don't want to think at all," he said.

Deangelis said nothing else. Eogan considered forcing the issue, but decided to let it go. They didn't have the resources to split up.

"Let's keep moving, then," he said. "You never know what we might find."

A grunt of assent was the only response from Melilah as they sped along corridors of twisted spacetime.

#

"Having second thoughts?"

The mind of Earth-Deangelis shuddered all over.

I'm no longer capable of thought, he wanted to tell Melilah. I am incomplete, truncated, crippled. I'm no longer who I was. I am not.

Words could not convey, however, the utter disconnection he felt as the grim truth of his isolation finally hit home. His higher self had been destroyed with Bedlam. He would be forever alone.

"I don't want to think at all," he said. The more he tried to think, the more he confronted the ghastly stump where the rest of him had been.

Instead, he concentrated solely on the geometry of the space around him. Geodesica's complex topography was a godsend in that respect. His higher self could have lost himself for weeks in the data accrued so far, building models of the 5-D manifold and the 6-D space it surrounded. Even with the severely limited capacity available to him, he could see patterns forming, subtle cadences and rhythms that might expand out into coherent geometries as new data flooded in. He didn't dare hope, yet, that he had mastered the artifact's mysteries, but he could see how it might be possible, one day. Had his higher self been free to dive into the tunnels, using his multitudinous nature to its best advantage, he could imagine a map slowly forming, branching and spreading like nerve fibers through a human body, crossing and re-crossing in a vastly tangled network that might conceivably span the entire galaxy.

He could imagine it. He could dream of what might have been. But at the end of the dream, when he woke to cold reality, he remained an isolated fragment scrabbling to connect a few scattered pieces of a jigsaw whose final shape he couldn't begin to imagine.

What if they never escaped?

As hard as he tried to ignore the question, it wouldn't go away.

What if he was all that remained of him?

The thought was almost too much to bear. He had spanned a whole system, managed whole worlds, held the lives of thousands in his hands. And now he was just one man--less than that, really, given his present predicament. Melilah was right: it was ridiculous...

Eogan took them through several intersections, following no particular plan that Deangelis could discern. They encountered one other cul de sac, but didn't follow it to its end. The thought that freedom could be just moments away but for the limitations of the Cell was galling. Despite the artifact's immense volume, he was beginning to feel claustrophobic. He was just one mind when he had once been many. How could he hope to remain sane?

Enough, he told himself. He couldn't just give in. He owed it to himself--if not Melilah and Eogan--to persist. He didn't doubt that they would recycle his bodymass if he showed signs of becoming a dead weight, so he had to earn his right to survive. Despite everything, he wasn't quite ready to roll over and play dead.

There was one thing he could say with some degree of certainty, so far: Geodesica was, as Bedlam had been, a multiply connected network. Ten to fifteen percent of the junctions qualified as "nodes," major intersections that linked to many other junctions, possibly far across the network as a whole. By sticking to nodes wherever possible, they maximized their chances of confounding pursuit, and of putting the maximum distance between them and the Bedlam entrance. Assuming, of course, that they didn't inadvertently double-track over their own path, or accidentally run into one of their pursuers...

"I'm picking up something odd," said Eogan as they rocketed along their latest corridor.

Deangelis checked the dimensions of the tunnel, his enhanced synapses moving much more rapidly than those of his companions, and found them to be normal.

"That's the understatement of the millennium," Melilah said with a slight return to her usual spirit. "Odd how?"

"A lidar echo from up ahead. Normally the walls absorb our pulses, but now I'm getting something back. Can't tell what it is, but it's definitely solid."

"How big?"

"Smaller than us. That's about all I can tell at this stage."

"Is there any way to slow us down?"

"I'm already doing my best to decelerate, but we're like an ant trying to stop a rubber band from stretching. We have to ride it out before we can jump off."

Deangelis could feel Melilah thinking in long, inevitable steps. "We never stopped to wonder what we'd do if we met something coming at us along the same corridor. Is there no way to avoid a collision?"

"I don't know," said Eogan, "but this thing isn't moving. It's just sitting at the next junction, waiting for us."

"Alive or dead?"

"I'm not getting anything but the echoes. If it's alive, it's not broadcasting."

Deangelis studied the data as they hit turn-around and began to decelerate. The lidar image was poorly defined, thanks to the Cell's limited resources. The object had a triangular cross-section, indicating a possible pyramidal shape with curved corners. It rotated roughly once a second. He pictured a bucket-sized tetrahedron, tumbling in such a way that it could scan all the tunnel entrances arrayed before it.

A watchdog--or a mine?

He didn't need to tell Eogan to be careful. The Palmer brought them to a halt meters short of the tunnel exit and coasted them gently closer. The Cell rearranged its mass to present an armored foresection, from behind which sensors peered.

"It's a machine," Eogan pronounced, confirming what Deangelis had already guessed. New data revealed it to be a structure of slender rods with a solid core. There were no obvious drive or defense mechanisms.

"I recognize the design," said Deangelis. "It's one of ours."

"When you say 'ours'...?" Melilah prompted.

"I mean the Exarchate's. It's a survey drone, an old one. There could be a breeder in here somewhere, too. Jane Elderton might have sent one in from Sublime and let it roam."

"Could you read its data?" she asked.

"I don't see why not."

"Then--"

Before she could finish, the drone came to life. Tiny thrusters killed its tumble. Myriad miniscule sensors focused on them as they slowly approached through the tunnel. Eogan froze automatically.

"Don't let it--" Deangelis's warning came too late. An intense pulse of radio waves erupted from the drone's casing. "Stop it! It's calling for others!"

Eogan sent the Cell lunging forward, extruding sharp-tipped manipulators as he came. Sparks flew as the claws gripped the fragile casing and sent a powerful electrical current through it. The radio squawk died. Thrusters fired again as the drone fought to free itself.

Then they were moving. The Cell accelerated back up the tunnel they had left--the only one they were certain contained no more of the drones. The manipulators continued to snip until all the drone could do was wriggle. Then Eogan methodically cut its fuel lines and control circuits. By the time they had taken the next corner, in another random direction, it was little more than a small, autonomous brain in a dead body.

"Don't kill it," said Deangelis. "If we can work out how it got here, we might be able to find our way to Sublime."

"What good will that do?" asked Melilah.

"The Archon might not be expecting us there. Jane Elderton can help us get through the throat. She's in the same boat I am. I'm sure she'd help us."

"I'm not. She's an Exarch, and she never offered help before."

"Let's worry about that later," said Eogan. "All I care about is that we've found a way to build up our mass. One drone will lead us to another, and another. Even if we don't go as far as Sublime, we've found a way to get somewhere else."

The frame of the drone was already under attack. The Cell's manipulators snipped it into smaller fragments, which the Cell absorbed. Their combined mass increased slightly.

Deangelis agreed that looking too far ahead was problematic. He told himself to be relieved, for now, that the next junction was clear, as was the next. The drone was obviously just an outlier, not the first of a swarm about to descend upon them.

But the echo of the radio burst was still loud in his mind. If something had heard it, there might be worse things than drones on the way.

When you say 'ours'...

He felt Melilah's attention on him as they hurried away. Did she wonder if he was still working for the Exarchate, even though he had so clearly abandoned his duty after the Archon betrayed his trust? If so, he couldn't blame her. He was still unsure exactly where his fragmented loyalties lay.

Jane Elderton would help them. He was sure of it.

Earth-Deangelis thrust that thought to one side as Eogan's manipulator's cut into the drone's processing core and gave him access to its memories.