Pirius suddenly saw a new element in his relationship with the Commissary — or at least his FTL twin’s. This old man was fond of him, Pirius thought with a queasy horror. His unwelcome twin, Pirius Red, had allowed this ridiculous old man to form some kind of sentimental bond with him. Surely it wasn’t sexual. But he knew Nilis had a “family background.” Perhaps it was as a father might feel for a son, an uncle for a nephew, or some similarly unhealthy, atavistic tie. What a mess, he thought.
Nilis’s Virtual was of the highest quality. In the jargon, it was an avatar.
The avatar’s job was to live out this chapter of Nilis’s life on the original’s behalf as fully as was possible. The avatar was a fully sentient copy of the real Nilis, with identical memories up to the moment when this copy had first been generated. Here in Quin Base, Virtual Nilis couldn’t touch anything, of course; those data desks on the table were as fake as he was. But while here, for authenticity of experience, he would have to live according to human routines. He would eat his Virtual food, sleep, even eliminate his unreal waste. He could even smell, he said, and he declared that Quin Base stank of something called “boiled cabbage.” And when his visit was done, his records would be sent back to Earth, where they would be integrated into Nilis’s own memory.
Nilis had wanted to take home as rich an experience as he could, the better to shape his subsequent decision-making. But he would always have the odd feeling that he had lived out these ten days twice, once in his garden on Earth, and once here at the Galaxy’s crowded heart.
Pirius tried to concentrate on the mission. He could see its value. “But — why me? I haven’t even flown since the magnetar.”
“Because I know you.” His big watery eyes were still fixed on Pirius. “Because we’ve already proven we can work well together—”
“You’re still talking about my twin.”
“But your twin is you — he has all your talent, all your potential — save only that in you that potential has begun to be realized. And besides,” he said with disarming honesty, “how many frontline pilots do I actually know? Oh, come, Pirius! You know, in your shoes I would be galvanized by curiosity. We may be skirting a deep scientific mystery here, Pirius, something that could tell us a great deal about the nature of our universe, and our place in it.”
Pirius could hardly deny that. But when he thought about leaving here, about leaving Tili Three and Burden and the others, he felt deeply uneasy. He already felt guilty at having survived on Factory Rock, where so many had fallen; how could he justify walking out on them now?
Nilis leaned forward, made to touch Pirius’s shoulder, remembered it was impossible. “Pirius, you’re hesitating, and I don’t know why. You’re wasted here!” he said. “All these drone kids, their endless digging, digging. You’re meant for better things, Pilot.”
Pirius stood up. “And every one of those drone kids” he said, “is better than you, Commissary.” Nilis said nothing more, and Pirius left the room.
Pirius Blue talked it over with Cohl.
“The whole thing’s insane,” he said. In three thousand years, there had of course been many scouting missions beyond the Front and into the Cavity, deep into the nest. That complex place, crowded with stellar marvels as well as the greatest concentration of Xeelee firepower in the Galaxy, was known to every pilot as a death trap. “We’d be throwing our lives away.”
“We?”
He sighed. “If I have to do this, I’d want you with me. But it’s academic, because nobody’s going anywhere.”
“Because it’s insane?”
“Correct.”
“Well,” she said, “not necessarily.” She was lying on her bunk, her hands locked behind her head; she seemed undisturbed by the usual barracks clamor around her. In fact, she had something of Nilis’s remoteness. But then, Pirius thought with loyal exasperation, Cohl was a navigator, and most navigators were halfway to double domes anyhow.
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe it could be done. There’s a lot of junk in there, you know, in the Cavity. Astrophysical junk. Plenty of places to hide.” She rolled over. They had no data desks here, no fancy Virtual-generation facilities, and so she started sketching with a wet finger in the dirt on the floor. “Suppose you went in this way…”
The Cavity was a rough sphere some fifteen light-years across at the center of the Mass, bounded by the great static shock of the Front. It was called a “Cavity” because it was blown clear of hot gas and dust by Chandra and the other objects at the very center. But it was far from empty, in fact crowded with exotic objects. As well as a million glowering stars, there was the Baby Spiral, three dazzling lanes of infalling gas and dust. And the Baby, like everything else in the Cavity, was centered on the Prime Radiant itself: Chandra, the supermassive black hole, utterly immovable, the pivot around which the immense machinery of the inner Galaxy turned.
Cohl said, “There are lots of ways in. You could track one of the Baby’s arms, for instance. Even so you’d have to take some kind of cover.”
“Cover?”
“Other ships. Rocks, even.” She glanced at him. “Not everybody is going to get through; you have to take enough companions with you to make sure that somebody makes it. It’s a question of statistics, Pirius.” She rubbed her chin. “Of course the navigation would be tricky. You’re talking about finding your way through all that astrophysics, and keeping a small flotilla together…”
He saw she was losing herself in the technicalities of planning such an ambitious jaunt. But technicalities were not uppermost in his own mind.
After a while she noticed his silence. “You’re not happy about this, are you?
“Am I supposed to be?”
She said, “It won’t make any difference, you know. To them. Whatever we do.”
“To who?”
“To the dead ones.”
Pirius looked at her. “I thought it was only me who had thoughts like that.”
“You ought to talk about it more. You’ll just have to make up your own mind about the mission, Pirius. But I’ll follow you, whatever you decide.”
He was moved. “Thank you.”
She shrugged. “What’s to thank? Without you, the Xeelee would have fried me already — twice. And as for the guilt, maybe you should go talk to This Burden Must Pass. He’s always full of philosophical crap, if that’s what you need.”
That made him laugh, but it seemed like a good idea. But when he went to find Burden, Nilis had got there before him.
Virtual Nilis, reluctantly fulfilling the nominal purpose for his projection here at Quin, was interviewing Burden in his small office.
Pirius wasn’t the only visitor. Perhaps a dozen cadets and privates had gathered outside the office’s partition walls. They sat on bunks, or storage boxes, or just on the floor, and they stared into the room with steady longing.
Nilis seemed relieved to close the door on them. “They’re coming in relays,” he whispered, shocked.