Mara’s fate was an example. Wignerian diplomatic links had been used to set up a reasonably safe passage for Ideocracy refugees from the Core. Thus at places like Base 478 refugees like Mara were passed off from one authority to another, following a chain of sanctuaries out of the Core to their new homes in the remote gloom of the rim.
Poole seemed cynical about this. ‘A service for which you charge a handsome fee, no doubt.’
Futurity was stung. ‘We’re not a rich world, Michael Poole. We rely mostly on donations from pilgrims to keep us going. We have to charge the refugees or their governments for transit and passage; we’d fall into poverty ourselves otherwise.’
But Poole didn’t seem convinced. ‘Pilgrims? And what is it those pilgrims come to see on Base 478? Is it the shrine of the great messiah? Is it me? Have you dug up my bones? Do you have some gibbering manikin of me capering on a monument, begging for cash?’
Futurity tried to deny this: not literally. But there was truth in Poole’s charge, he thought uncomfortably. Of course Poole’s body had been lost when he fell into the wormhole to Timelike Infinity, and so he had been saved from the indignity of becoming a relic. But as the Wignerian religion had developed the Ecclesia had mounted several expeditions to Earth, and had returned with such treasures as the bones of Poole’s father Harry…
Poole seemed to know all this. He laughed at Futurity’s discomfiture.
The Captain called them. They had arrived at 3-Kilo, and Tahget, in his blunt, testing way, said his passengers might enjoy the view.
Poole was charmed by the clustering stars of 3-Kilo. To Futurity these spiral-arm stars, scattered and old, were a thin veil that barely distracted him from the horror of the underlying darkness beyond.
But it wasn’t stars they were here to see.
Poole pointed. ‘What in Lethe is that?’
An object shifted rapidly against the stars of 3-Kilo. Silhouetted, it was dark, its form complex and irregular.
Poole was fascinated. ‘An asteroid, maybe – no, too spiky for that. A comet nucleus, then? I spent some time in the Kuiper Belt, the ice moon belt at the fringe of Sol system. I was building starships out there. Big job, long story, and all vanished now, I imagine. But a lot of those Kuiper objects were like that: billions of years of sculptures of frost and ice, all piled up in the dark. Pointlessly beautiful. So is this a Kuiper object detached from some system or other? But it looks too small for that.’
Futurity was struck again by the liveliness of Poole’s mind, the openness of his curiosity – and this was only an incomplete Virtual. He wondered wistfully how it might have been to have met the real Michael Poole.
Then Poole saw it. ‘It’s a ship,’ he said. ‘A ship covered with spires and spines and buttresses and carvings, just like our own Ask Politely. A ship like a bit of a baroque cathedral. I think it’s approaching us! Or we’re approaching it.’
He was right, Futurity saw immediately. He felt obscurely excited. ‘And – oh! There’s another.’ He pointed. ‘And another.’
Suddenly there were ships all over the sky, cautiously converging. Every one of them was unique. Though it was hard to judge distances and sizes, Futurity could see that some were larger than the Ask Politely, some smaller; some were roughly cylindrical like the Politely, others were spheres, cubes, tetrahedrons, even toroids, and some had no discernible regularity at all. And all of them sported gaudy features every bit as spectacular as Politely’s. There were immense scoop mouths and gigantic flaring exhaust nozzles, spindly spines and fat booms, and articulating arms that worked delicately back and forth like insect legs. Some of the ships even sported streamlined wings and fins and smooth noses, though none of them looked as if they could survive an entry into an atmosphere. These glimmering sculptures drifted all around the sky.
Poole said, ‘Quite a carnival. Look at all that crap, the spines and spikes and nets and fins. It looks like it’s been stuck on by some giant kid making toy spaceships. I can’t believe there’s any utility in most of those features.’
Futurity said, ‘It’s also ugly. What a mess!’
‘Yes,’ said Poole. ‘But I have the feeling we’re not the ones this stuff is supposed to impress.’ He pointed. ‘And that one looks as if it wants to get a bit more intimate than the rest.’
A huge ship loomed from the crowd and approached the Ask Politely. It was a rough sphere, but its geometry was almost obscured by a fantastic hull-forest of metal, ceramics and polymers. Moving with an immense slow grace, it bore down on the Ask Politely, which waited passively.
At last the big sphere’s complex bulk shadowed most of the observation lounge’s blister. A jungle of nozzles and booms slid across the window. Futurity wondered vaguely how close it would come before it stopped.
And then he realised it wasn’t going to stop at all.
Captain Tahget murmured, ‘Brace for impact.’ Futurity grabbed a rail.
The collision of the two vast ships was slow, almost gentle. Futurity, cupped in the Ask Politely’s inertial-control field, barely felt it, but he could hear a groan of stressed metal, transmitted through the ship’s hull. Two tangles of superstructure scraped past each other; dishes were crashed and spines broken, before the ships came to rest, locked together.
Translucent access tubes sprouted from the hulls of both ships, and snaked across space like questing pseudopodia, looking for purchase. Futurity thought he saw someone, or something, scuttling through the tubes, but it was too far away to see clearly.
Poole gazed out with his mouth open. ‘Look – here’s another ship coming to join the party.’
So it was, Futurity saw. It was a relative dwarf compared to the monster that had first reached Ask Politely. But with more metallic grinding it snuggled close against the hulls of the two locked ships.
Poole laughed. ‘Boy, space travel has sure changed a lot since my day!’
Captain Tahget said, ‘Show’s over. We’ll be here two days, maybe three, before the swarming is done.’
Poole glanced at Futurity questioningly. The swarming?
Tahget said, ‘Until then we maintain our systems and wait. Let me remind you it’s the night watch; you passengers might want to get some sleep.’ He glanced at Poole. ‘Or whatever.’
Futurity returned to his cabin, and tried to sleep. But there were more encounters in the night, more subtle shudderings, more groans of stressed materials so deep they were almost subsonic.
This experience seemed to him to have nothing to do with spaceflight. I am in the belly of a fish, he thought, a huge fish of space that has come to this place of scattered stars to seek others of its kind. And it doesn’t even know I am here, embedded within it.
V