Noumenon Infinity Page 22

  “My room?” he asked.

  She nodded firmly, reached up and kissed him hard. A moment later she backed away, leading him. “Come to bed with me,” she said, shuffling down the hall. “Please.”

  They both needed closeness, comfort. They needed each other.

  Vanhi Kapoor, I think I love you, he said to himself. The wonder of it, the tragedy, the emptiness and fullness of everything that had happened swept over him. Putting one foot in front of the other, he sighed, and followed her on weak knees.

  Chapter Four

  Jamal: The Spirits Three Shall Strive Within

  Convoy Seven

  Ninety-Nine Years Since the Convoys Split

  August 17, 224 Relaunch

  5811 CE

  Jamal Kaeden the Eighteenth sat in his quarters with the lights off. All of them. No indicator lights blinked, no power buttons shone—he’d even covered up the clock’s display.

  The only glimmer came through the porthole window near his bed. Outside, LQ Pyxidis and the Web were in full view, approximately fifteen light-minutes out. The megastructure swathed the star in a mesh-like matrix—many nodes connected through many lathes, creating a uniform geometric pattern through which only a fraction of the star’s true output seeped.

  Though he couldn’t see them from this vantage point, he knew the Seed (the one device that broke the pattern and was orders of magnitude bigger than the next largest node) and the gap (the incomplete portion of the structure, three AUs tall and half an AU wide) lay opposite each other.

  The Web orbited around LQ Pyx, and the empty gap caused the star to appear as though it strobed. That was why they’d come to investigate this star in the first place, all those many centuries ago.

  Now, Jamal glared at the star. He wished he’d taped a blanket over the porthole.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see his visitors, or that he didn’t want them to see him. Everything just felt more intimate in the dark. The encounters were warmer, closer, somehow free of time and space. Like sharing a womb.

  He listened closely to the sounds of his single-room quarters, leaning forward in his chair, eyes closed despite the darkness. There were nuances in their voices that helped him distinguish which was which. Of course, while their voices were nearly identical, their personalities couldn’t have set a harsher contrast.

  “I told you, you have to get Margarita on the job,” said one man. He sat on Jamal’s bed, back against the wall, knees brought up to his chest.

  “I don’t think so. You want to rely on a communications officer?” said the other. His voice came from the kitchenette. He always pretended to make coffee when he visited.

  “Her specialty is signals,” said the first man. “Or, at least, it was. Is she still a comms officer?”

  Jamal opened his eyes, shifting his gaze between the two dark silhouettes in his room. “Yes.”

  “Good. See? If it’s a signal interference problem, maybe she can help. Sometimes we have to look to other disciplines.”

  “I still think it’s a code problem,” said the man in the kitchen. “Something to do with the Web’s computer systems. It has to have a computer, right?”

  Jamal rubbed his eyes and sniffed. “Do I have to keep reminding you—?”

  “I know, you’re not in computers. But we—” he gestured between himself and the visitor on the bed “—are.”

  “You are,” corrected the other man. “I’m in Consumables.”

  “But you hate it.”

  A sharp buzz signaled someone was at the door. “Who is it?” Jamal called.

  “Toya.” There was a long pause. She seemed to be waiting for the door to open, but he was waiting for an explanation. “You didn’t show up in manufacturing,” she said after a time. “And your comm unit is off, so they called me.”

  He gave his guests an apologetic shrug. “I.C.C. was supposed to tell the team I’m busy. They can solve the problem themselves.”

  “They said I.C.C. confirmed you were on your way. Can I come in?” Her muffled voice sounded more concerned than annoyed.

  Ignoring her request, he invoked I.C.C. “Why did you tell them I’m coming? I have visitors. I can’t very well take them with me.”

  “I don’t think ignoring the summons is in your best interest,” I.C.C. said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because the problem is urgent. And . . . because you don’t have visitors.”

  “Just because you can’t see them—”

  “I cannot detect them in any way,” I.C.C. said bluntly. “You are registering as the only bio signs, and there are no anomalies. You are alone in your quarters.”

  Jamal studied the two men. He knew they weren’t there in a physical sense—their forms were somehow projected into his brain, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there at all. He couldn’t find a way to explain it to the AI, so he stayed quiet.

  The two men had first appeared a couple of years previous. For what reason, Jamal couldn’t say. He’d woken up one day and there they were—leaning over his bed, telling him to rise and shine.

  Sitting a comfortable seven years away from retirement at the time, he had chalked the visitations up to the wisdom and sensitivity of age. Lots of people got quirky in their later years. He wasn’t crazy—these weren’t voices in his head. They were . . . reflections, or vibrations, or something. Whatever they were, they were real, not the result of psychological trauma or neural chemistry gone wrong, as the doctors would have him think.

  “Hello,” Toya called from the hall. “Are you still in there?”

  Reluctantly, he went to the door.

  She took a step in, without an invitation. She was tall and slender, like Jamal, and was one of the few people who didn’t have to look up to meet his gaze. The laugh lines around her eyes and mouth were deep, though these days she was more likely to greet her brother with a charitable frown than a smile. “I thought maybe something bad . . . Why’s it so dark?”

  “I.C.C.?” The AI brought the lights up, revealing all the places where Jamal had thrown a blanket or a strip of electrical tape over minor light sources.

  To Jamal’s eyes, it also revealed the two men. Men who looked just like him, save in age and wear and tear. He affectionately referred to them as Three and Five, though “Five” insisted his number was inaccurate, since he hadn’t been born as a proper continuation of the line. They were two of the earliest Jamal clones, from so many centuries ago.

  The Third was young—late twenties or early thirties, whatever age he’d been when he’d died in his revolution. The Fifth appeared as little more than a boy, though he’d lived to see retirement. Seventeen—he was the same age as when he’d saved the convoy from self-destruction, when he and another Jamal clone had pulled them from the literal Pit. But Five didn’t behave like a teenager; he clearly remembered his full life. The ridge above his left eye sported a massive scar.

  Toya looked right through the both of them. “Are they here?” she asked, a skeptical twist pursing her lips.

  Jamal’s heart fluttered. Was it happening? Could she sense them? “Yes. You can feel it, can’t you?”

  “No.” She sighed. “I can tell by that look on your face.”

  “You should stop pushing her,” said Five from the bed.

  “They’re your line, too,” Jamal said to Toya, pulling out a chair at the table for her. Though the two clones had been raised as brother and sister, genetically they were father and daughter. “You would be able to connect to them if you’d just—”

  She sighed again, more heavily—loud and false enough to cut him off. With flippant movements, she took the proffered chair, as though she sat only to indulge him. “This is why—” She stopped herself and bit her bottom lip before continuing. “Ok, you’ve got imaginary friends. I’ve dealt with that for years now. I’ve tried to let it be. But when you start talking like that, like I should be seeing them, too . . .”

  Jamal grabbed her wrist imploringly. “You should
. It has something to do with our genetic code. I see them because we’re . . . because we resonate. I don’t know. It’s buried in the DNA, or the ships, or both, or something. I know if they can reach me they can reach you.”

  Blood is thicker than water, as the ancient saying went. Toya was a Kaeden, same as him. The eighth in her cloning line. She could see these echoes too, if only she’d try.

  She gave him the same annoyed scowl she’d used when they were kids. The kind of frown all sisters give their brothers when they discover their dolls have been used as combat vehicles.

  “You didn’t have a problem with me—or them—until you thought about getting remarried,” he said.

  “This has nothing to do with Kasun,” she said quickly, jutting out her sharp chin. “I want you to keep your . . . friends . . . to yourself, is all.” After a deep breath, she continued. “You’re good at your job, and you’re a nice guy, but . . . you can’t push this on everyone else.”

  “I told you,” Five said.

  “Shut up.”

  “What?” Toya said.

  “Nothing. It’s—”

  She shook her head. “I know exactly what it is. And that’s what I’m saying. First it’s me, then it’s your friends—real friends—next your engineering team, then what?”

  “No, you don’t understand. Just you.”

  “I don’t understand.” After a moment she stood again, coming to some sort of compromise internally. “Look, if you stop pushing this on me—no, if you stop talking about this altogether—I’ll stop pushing you to see the doctors, okay? Call them up and cancel all of your appointments, I won’t argue.”

  “That’s fair,” Five said sympathetically. “It’s a lot for someone to take in, Jamal. You remember how horrible it was for the three of us, trying to engage for the first time. Don’t make her try to struggle through that if she’s not open to it.”

  “You’re such a weak hull,” scoffed Three, exiting the kitchenette to roll his eyes at Five. “Don’t listen to that bleeding heart. He doesn’t care what’s good for people, just that they’re all happy with him.”

  Five let out a clipped ha. “Like you should be giving familial advice. Who in this room almost killed their own little sister? Oh, that’s right: you. Traitor.”

  “Sellout.”

  “That’s enough,” Jamal said, waving a curt hand in their direction.

  Toya’s expression softened. She reached out and cupped Jamal’s cheek, running her thumb lightly across his aging skin. “Focus, please. I’m not saying they have to go away. But it’s best if you pretend they’re not there when I’m around. And other people—when other people are around. What’s it going to be?”

  “So, it’s just for your peace of mind?”

  Her lip trembled, and he realized that might have been a poor choice of words. She certainly didn’t think his mind was at peace—in pieces, maybe. “Yes.”

  “Fine. Deal.” They shook on it.

  “You shouldn’t have told anyone about us in the first place,” said Three, hands in the pockets of his antiquated jumpsuit.

  The three of them walked down Mira’s halls, on the way to the shuttle bay and then Slicer. Jamal had agreed to look in on the manufacturing crisis, though begrudgingly; he never felt comfortable taking his ancestors out in public.

  “Hey, he was just trying to be honest,” said Five.

  “Oh, shut up. You want them to walk all over him like your crew walked all over you.”

  “Better than only looking out for my own needs, everyone else be damned.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “You even screwed over I.C.C. It takes a lot of jerk-off points to betray an infant AI.”

  Jamal rolled his eyes. He liked them, and he liked getting visits from the past, but sometimes they were both assholes. Two sides of the same coin. “Can you guys cut it out?” he mumbled out of the side of his mouth. “I thought you were here to help me.”

  “We are the ghosts of Christmas past,” Three said with an appropriately cheesy oscillation in his tone, waving his arms above his head.

  Jamal shot him a raised eyebrow. “What?”

  “Oh, come on, you guys don’t read Dickens in the, uh, whatever the hell century this is?”

  “That’s not what I meant. I . . . I don’t like thinking of you as ghosts. You aren’t, are you?”

  The two ethereal men shared a look. “No . . .” they said together.

  “I don’t know if we should get into all that—we’ve skirted the issue before, but I think it’s best if we just leave it a mystery,” said Five.

  “Mostly because we don’t really know,” said Three.

  “We’ve got an idea,” said Five. “It’s hard to explain and better left unprobed is all.”

  Three gave Jamal a pointed look. “We don’t know.”

  “It’s like a continuum,” said Five as they entered the shuttle bay.

  Jamal chuckled internally. Leave it to one to irritate the other into opening his big mouth.

  “Or like tree rings,” Five continued. “Yeah, that makes more sense. Tree rings build up. It’s like we’re two of your rings.”

  Jamal climbed aboard the shuttle that would taxi him to work. “And how come no one else is talking to their rings?” Jamal asked aloud. They—he—was the only passenger, and the partition between him and the pilot’s cabin was soundproof.

  Three shrugged, stretching out on one of the shuttle benches like it was a chaise longue. “Perhaps they’re not as in tune with the past. Lots of history on these ships. Lots of waves and signals and such passing through the walls, through I.C.C., through you . . . maybe it’s resonant brain wave patterns or something. We imprinted on the convoy, and something about your makeup lets us reimprint on you.”

  “So, you are real, but you aren’t here?”

  “Sounds right,” Three said with a sigh.

  “We shouldn’t have told him all that,” said Five.

  “Why? It’s not a secret.”

  “No, but . . .” He sat down cross-legged on the floor. “It’s just a theory. That we have. Which means it could be his theory, if you catch my drift.”

  “We’re not a hallucination,” said Three.

  “But do we know that?” asked Five.

  “Well I sure as space don’t feel like a hallucination.”

  “See,” Five said with a sigh, “This is why I didn’t want to talk about it. Jamal, if no one could see or hear you except one person, wouldn’t you—at some point—question your own existence? I do.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about it,” said Jamal.

  Both Three and Five looked at him, puzzled, coming out of their own little worlds. “No?”

  “No. I don’t care if you’re sure, or unsure, know or don’t. I know you’re real. You’ve told me things I couldn’t have known, which means you’re not just in my head.”

  Three bit his lip. “But how do you know you couldn’t have known? Couldn’t you not know that you knew? Or is it that if you know you don’t know—”

  “Stop that,” Five snapped.

  Amazingly, Three shut up.

  The antiquated shuttle touched down with its usual grind. Solidarity’s fabrication teams were supposed to be introducing a new model soon to replace these twelfth-generation death traps that were known as “rusted bolts” around the fleet. They couldn’t perform properly anymore, but it took a lot of grease to get rid of them.

  Political grease, that is.

  Since they’d arrived back at the Web nearly a century ago, the full force of their collective effort had been focused on reverse engineering. Earth had stopped communicating with them again, but what else was new? And they hadn’t heard from Noumenon Ultra in a decade, which could mean everything or absolutely nothing—the time dilation meant updates were few and far between anyway. Besides, completing the Web was far more important than communing with the home planet, or making sure their counterparts were safe, or ensuring that t
he matters of day-to-day convoy life were seen to in a timely manner.

  So what if the shuttle’s gyroscopes were imbalanced? As long as you can still get from ship to ship without a pressure leak, everyone can relax. So what if the tines on your forks are bent? So what if the lights in your cabin flicker? So what if you have to go to the mess for coffee because your maker’s shorted out? Go take five on Eden. We’ve got alien devices to build.

  Jamal feared they were losing something, had lost something, important. Like they were missing the point of life while compelling themselves to live it.

  If it wasn’t in service of the Web, it wasn’t worth an extra note. And with the vibrancy of his past at his beck and call, he’d started to wonder if that was a dark hole, sociologically speaking. Neither Three nor Five had seen the Web in person, and yet their lives had been so full.

  Not that he envied them. Tragedies were never enviable.

  Having alighted on Slicer—whose mountain’s worth of empty space gave the crew plenty of room to build the ship-sized devices that were the Web’s main components—Jamal and his two invisible companions headed toward the additive manufacturing division. Manufacturing took his team’s designs and printed working models. As long as all of the elements and alloys were flowing, usually everything worked out fine. The parts might not function as they’d hoped, but the printers did their part.

  The additive labs were lined with clean rooms filled with industrial-sized ovens. At the banks of three-dimensional projectors sat technicians laboriously converting schematics into working models for the printers. The hum and whir of the machines was normally punctuated by the light scent of burning dust and molten metal in the air.

  Today was not normal, though. Today, the place was in an uproar. Something had caused a buzz among the techies. And from the smell of it, something had caused a fire among the printers.

  In a clean room at the back of the lab, I.C.C. spewed flame retardant through a hose in the ceiling and onto an equipment bank.