Some stars didn’t last even that long. Massive, bloated, these monsters would burst as supernovas almost as soon as they formed, leaving behind remnants: neutron stars – or even black holes, stellar-mass objects. Even Chandra couldn’t break open a black hole, but it would gobble up these babies with relish. When a black hole hit Chandra, so it was said, that immense event horizon would ring like a bell.
It was towards one of these satellite black holes that the Ask Politely now descended.
Dropping into the accretion disc was like falling into a shining cloud; billows and bubbles, filaments and sheets of glowing gas drifted upwards past the ship. Even though those billows were larger than planets – for the accretion disc, as Poole had noted, was as wide as a solar system itself – Futurity could see the billows churning as he watched, as if the ship was falling into a nightmare of vast, slow-moving sculptures.
The approach was tentative, cautious. Captain Tahget said the Shipbuilders were having to be bribed with additional goodies; the swarming creatures were very unhappy at having to take their ship into this dangerous place. This struck Futurity as a very rational point of view.
In the middle of all this they came upon a black hole.
They needed the observation lounge’s magnification features to see it. With twice the mass of Earth’s sun, it was a blister of sullen light, sailing through the accretion clouds. Like Chandra’s, the dark mask of its event horizon – in fact only a few kilometres across – was hidden by the electromagnetic scream of the matter it sucked out of the universe. It even had its own accretion disc, Futurity saw, a small puddle of light around that central spark.
And this city-sized sun had its own planet. ‘Greyworld,’ Mara breathed. ‘I never thought I’d see it again.’
This asteroid, having survived its fall into Chandra’s accretion disc, had been plucked out of the garbage by the Ideocrats and moved to a safe orbit around the satellite black hole. The worldlet orbited its primary at about the same distance as Earth orbited its sun. And Greyworld lived up to its name, Futurity saw, for its surface was a seamless silver-grey, smooth and unblemished.
To Mara, it seemed, this was home. ‘We live under the roof,’ Mara said. ‘It is held up from the surface by stilts.’
‘We used to call this paraterraforming,’ Poole said. ‘Turning your world into one immense building. Low gravity lets you get away with a lot, doesn’t it?’
‘The roof is perfectly reflective,’ Mara said. ‘We tap the free energy of the Galaxy centre to survive, but none of it reaches our homes untamed.’
‘I should think not,’ Poole said warmly.
‘It is a beautiful place,’ Mara said, smiling. ‘We build our houses tall; some of them float, or hang from the world roof. And you feel safe, safe from the violence of the galactic storms outside. You should see it sometime, Michael Poole.’
Poole raised his eyebrows. ‘But, Mara, your “safe” haven is about as unsafe as it could get, despite the magical roof.’
‘He’s right,’ said Tahget. ‘This black hole and its orbital retinue are well on their way into Chandra. After another decade or so the tides will pull the planetoid free of the hole, and after that they will rip off that fancy roof. Then the whole mess will fall into Chandra’s event horizon, and that will be that.’
‘Which is why Greyworld had to be evacuated,’ Futurity said.
‘The latest Kard is known for her humanitarian impulses,’ Tahget said dryly.
Poole said, ‘All right, Mara, here we are. What now? Do you want to be taken down to Greyworld?’
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘What would be the point of that?’ She seemed faintly irritated. ‘I told you, Michael Poole. My Sharn isn’t on Greyworld. She’s there.’ And she pointed to the glimmering black hole.
Tahget and his crew exchanged significant glances.
Futurity felt a flickering premonition, the return of fear. This journey into the heart of the Galaxy had been so wondrous that he had managed, for a while, to forget the danger they were in. But it had all been a diversion. This woman, after all, controlled a bomb, and now they approached the moment of crisis.
Poole drew him aside. ‘You look worried, acolyte,’ he murmured.
‘I am worried. Mara is still asking for the impossible. What do we do now?’
Poole seemed much calmer than Futurity felt. ‘I always had a philosophy. If you don’t know what to do, gather more data. How do you know that what she wants is impossible?’ He turned to Tahget. ‘Captain, how close can you take us to the satellite black hole?’
Tahget shook his head. ‘It’s a waste of time.’
‘But you don’t have any better suggestion, do you? Let’s go take a look. What else can we do?’
Tahget grumbled, but complied.
So the ship lifted away from Greyworld, and its retinue of Kardish greenships formed up once more. Mara smiled, as if she was coming home at last. But Futurity shivered, for there was nothing remotely human about the place they were heading to now.
Slowly the spiteful light of the satellite black hole drew closer.
‘Acolyte,’ Poole murmured. ‘You have a data desk?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then start making observations. Study that black hole, Futurity. Figure out what’s going on here. This is your chance to do some real science, for once.’
‘But I’m not a scientist.’
‘No, you’re not, are you? You’re too compromised for that. But you told me you were curious, once. That was what drove you out of the farm and into the arms of the Ecclesia in the first place.’ He sighed. ‘You know, in my day a kid like you would have had better opportunities.’
Futurity felt moved to defend his vocation. ‘I don’t think you understand the richness of theological—’
‘Just get the damn desk!’
Futurity hurried to his cabin and returned with his data desk. It was the Ecclesia’s most up-to-date model. He pressed the desk to the observation lounge blister, and checked it over as data poured in.
‘I feel excited,’ he said.
‘You should,’ Poole said. ‘You might make some original discovery here. And, more important, you might figure out how to save all our skins, my Virtual hide included.’
‘I’m excited but worried,’ Futurity admitted.
‘That sounds like you.’
‘Michael Poole, how can a human child survive in a black hole?’
Poole glanced at him approvingly. ‘Good; that’s the right question to ask. You need to cultivate an open mind, acolyte. Let’s assume Mara’s serious, that she knows what she’s talking about.’
‘That she’s not crazy.’
‘Open mind! Mara has implied – I think – that we’re not talking about the child in her physical form but some kind of download, like a Virtual.’
Futurity asked, ‘But what information can be stored in a black hole? A hole is defined only by its mass, charge and spin. You need rather more than three numbers to define a Virtual. But no human science knows a way to store more data than that in a black hole – though it is believed others may have done so in the past.’
Poole eyed him. ‘Others?…’ He slapped his own cheek. ‘Never mind. Concentrate, Poole. Then let’s look away from the hole itself, the relativistic object. We’re looking for structure, somewhere you can write information. Every black hole is embedded in the wider universe, and every one of them comes with baggage. This satellite hole has its own accretion disc. Maybe there ...’