“It's like burning ants with a magnifier,” Conrad said. But apparently no one else onboard had ever done that, or understood what he meant.
“Three minutes to closest approach,” Feck warned, gripping the sides of his navigation console. “Give or take ten seconds. Conrad, can you increase the power?”
“Not without killing us, no.”
“They appear to be killing us,” Xmary said. “A fine attempt, at any rate. Conrad, boost your duty cycle, please. Can you do fifteen percent?”
“No!” he shouted back. “If I do thirteen percent those sails are going to explode!”
“Do twelve,” she instructed. “Now, please.”
“Aye, ma'am,” he said reluctantly. “Pulse width increased to one hundred twenty milliseconds.”
A few seconds later, they were rewarded with a really big flash of light, easily twenty times brighter than the popcorn explosions of the antimatter mines.
“And there they go,” Xmary said matter-of-factly.
“Canceling program,” Conrad added, hurriedly tuning the system back to its normal propulsive mode.
“Canceling evasion,” said Feck.
The heaving of the bridge subsided, and even Bascal's ghost fell silent, his holographic face falling into an expression of surprise and defeat as the “Fuck You Song” trailed away.
“Goddamn, that was close,” Conrad said to no one in particular. Then, more reflectively, “We just killed Ho and Steve. Our childhood buddies.”
“They were backed up,” Xmary assured him.
“Maybe,” Conrad agreed. “But what about their crew? Twenty people, was it?”
“All volunteers. Probably all mean bastards. We're saving twenty-five thousand here, Conrad.”
There was a great deal more to be said on the subject, but the sails, overtaxed by their ordeal or perhaps struck by some inert but invisible projectile, chose that moment to tear along three separate axes, folding outward and forward like tissue paper in a strong wind. The broken thread monitor shot right off the scale, its alarms blaring madly, and with the full fierce pressure of Barnard's light upon it and its structural integrity gone, the remaining wellstone fabric was ionizing, its captive electrons blasting away into space, into the plasma storms of Barnard's chromosphere.
Not going to make it, Conrad had time to think, though not to say out loud. It's reverting; it can't possibly withstand this heat. And he was right: once ripped and parted, the sail took less than a second to rend itself into dark gray tatters which burned away into vapor and were gone.
Feck and Xmary exchanged a look, and then shared it with Conrad.
“The sail!” Eustace exclaimed.
The sail, yes. Responsible for more than three quarters of the starship's total impulse. Was gone.
“What does it mean?” she asked, although from her tone it was apparent that even she knew the answer. The journey ahead, already longer and more arduous than anything human beings had previously attempted, had just . . . quadrupled.
Bascal's image began to laugh.
Chapter twenty-five.
The bridge of years
“Life is nasty, brutish, and long,” Bascal's image was telling them. “For your sins, you'll spend ten lifetimes aboard this ship. And consider this: if we're truly immorbid—and there's been nothing so far to disprove it—then most assuredly you people will come face-to-face with myself sooner or later, and this betrayal will be called fully to account. I will find you, one way or another. Or do you intend to return to Barnard? A thousand years hence, perhaps, with a bellyful of fax machines?”
“I hadn't thought that far ahead,” Conrad moped. “This is plan B-and-a-half. Nothing we've prepared for. And we have quite a while to think about it, eh?”
They were all in Newhope's observation lounge, sprawling wearily on the couches, having abandoned the bridge and engine room—unwisely, perhaps—to automated systems and luck. The main danger was juking to avoid obstacles, but this was as safe a place as any to weather that particular storm. Anyway, with such a low departure speed, well out of Barnard's ecliptic plane where the planets and asteroids spun, there was not so much debris to be dodged, and what little serious hazard there was could generally be detected with several minutes' advance warning. This was the advantage of traveling slowly: the jukes were neither violent nor closely spaced.
“How did we come to this?” Feck wondered aloud. “As a society? Was there a single mistake, a failure point we should have known about?”
“No,” the king's image told him. “Definitely not. If there had been, would the Queendom's analysts have approved the exile? We had everything we needed: the tools and materials and talent. There've been some isolated fuckups along the way, but that's to be expected. Any robust plan allows for those, and our plans were robust. Our failure—if such it is—has been in the dynamics. Numerous actions, individually correct but summing to something . . . unanticipated.”
“Like the ecology,” Conrad said.
“As complex as that,” the image agreed. “As slippery. As damnably perverse, yes: almost gravitating toward failure. Toward some optimized state unrelated to our hopes and dreams and back-breaking labors. We're simply dragged along, like ants on a tablecloth.
“Still, it's the pointlessness of your response that astounds me most of all. Grand theft and treason are the least of it; you're facing seven hundred years of, shall we say, significant inconvenience. And for what? To save one percent of one percent of the children who will die on Sorrow? That's not even a dent in the overall suffering. Statistically speaking, that's no effect at all, except to worsen the morale of those who remain behind.”
“It has effect on these,” Xmary said sternly, waving a hand in the direction of the floor or, more properly, aft toward the cargo holds, where the Cryoleum pods were attached. “If they don't thank us, if they're not pleased at their uprooting and resurrection, then we will pack them into quantum storage and return them to Barnard as soon as possible. I, for one, will sleep soundly in the coming centuries, knowing that however little we've managed to accomplish, at least we've done something.”
“Implying that I have not?” Bascal's image asked, amused. And angry, yes, with that impotent sort of anger people have when facing faits accomplis. “It's very easy for you, Xiomara, darling, to critique my performance. But I have also done my best, or rather King Bascal has, and considering his heritage and education, I would say his best is no small thing. You're welcome to disagree, but it is history, and not yourself, that will judge the greater good. And history is long, my dear. Very long. If you live to eat your words, I pray that His Majesty is there to see it.”
Conrad flashed an obscene gesture at the recording and said, “Thank you so much for stopping by, Bas. You know the way out, I trust? Your labors here being at an end, you can send yourself back to yourself, reply paid.”
“He can't,” Feck said. “That sail was also our high-gain antenna. Without it, we're restricted to low-power, low-bandwidth, short-range communications. And our departure hyperbola doesn't pass anywhere near P2, or a suitable relay station. The king's ghost is stuck here with us, and we with him. Does this amuse you, Sire?”
The imaginary king took three imaginary steps toward Feck, and mimed as if to pat him on the cheek. “Feck, my boy, who could have guessed that a soft little berry like you would grow into such a fine, formidable fellow? Not I, certainly. I assumed you'd be running a puppet theater or writing Hedon programs for deep-tissue massage. But I've been wrong before, ah? And shall no doubt be wrong again.”