Schild’s Ladder

Zyfete addressed the Scribe. "Execute that."

With no perceptible delay, the Scribe began to answer with the results. Tchicaya’s skin tingled; he’d had no time to remind himself between risk and reprieve, but they’d just tickled a tiger that might have responded by raking the four of them into geometric quanta, swallowing the Rindler a fraction of a millisecond later, and redoubling its efforts to devour all their distant backups and more prudent friends.

Kadir started cursing, his Mediator politely tagging the words with a cue that would shut off translation for anyone inclined to be offended. Zyfete watched him, anguished but silent.

When the tirade stopped, Tchicaya asked cautiously, "Not what you were hoping for, but did it tell you anything?"

Kadir kicked the stylus housing, the recoil driving him back to hit the window behind him with a thud. Tchicaya couldn’t help wincing; however robust the participants in these collisions, precision machinery, living flesh, and windows facing interstellar vacuum all seemed to merit gentler treatment.

Zyfete said, "This sequence was meant to confirm a previous experiment, but it didn’t yield the same results as the last time we ran it. Our model can’t explain the discrepancy, either as a statistical variation, or any predictable change in the novo-vacuum."

Kadir turned and blurted out, "Either you genocidal traitors have corrupted this machine, or — "

Yann pleaded, "Or what? Give us the more likely alternative!"

Kadir hesitated, then smiled grimly. "I think I’ll keep that hypothesis to myself."

Tchicaya was dismayed, though he was prepared to put the outburst down to frustration, rather than genuine contempt. Both sides were equally helpless. If this went on, no one was going to get their own way, and no one was going to forge a compromise. The novo-vacuum would simply roll on over them.

Halfway back to the Rindler, Kadir apologized. Tchicaya didn’t doubt his sincerity, though the words were more formal than friendly. Yann tried to joke with him, making light of the incident, but Kadir withdrew from the conversation.

When they reached the dock and disembarked, the group broke apart. Yann wanted to observe some tests on a new spectrometer package that were being conducted in a workshop higher up in the same module, but Tchicaya didn’t feel like tagging along, so he headed back toward his cabin.

He hadn’t expected to witness a breakthrough on the trip, let alone gain some kind of dramatic insight himself from mere proximity to the border; he might as well have hoped to learn the secrets of the ordinary vacuum by gazing into thin air. Nevertheless, he felt a pang of disappointment. Before he’d arrived, there’d been an undeniable thrill to the notion of cruising just beyond reach of the fatal shock wave, and then compounding the audacity by turning around and studying it. Dissecting the danger, laying it bare. It was like a legend his mother had told him: in the Age of Barbarism, when humans had rained bombs on each other from the sky, people called Sappers had dived from airplanes to fall beside them and defuse them in midair, embracing the devices like lovers as they reached into their mechanical hearts and seduced them into betraying their malign creators. But if aerodynamics rendered this romantic fable unlikely, at least no one had expected the Sappers to teach themselves nuclear physics from scratch as they fell, then reach inside each atom of fissile material and pluck out the destabilizing protons one by one.

Zyfete caught up with Tchicaya on the stairs leading down to the walkway. She said, "Kadir’s home is this far away from the border." She held up her hand, thumb and forefinger almost touching. "Nine thousand years of history. In less than a year, it will be gone."

"I’m sorry." Tchicaya knew better than to respond with platitudes about history living on in memory. He said, "Do you think I want to see Zapata destroyed?" She didn’t need to name the planet; everyone knew the awful schedule by heart. "If we can halt the border without wiping out the entire novo-vacuum, I’ll back that. I’ll fight for that as hard as anyone."

Zyfete’s eyes flashed angrily. "How very evenhanded of you! You’d let us keep our homes, so long as there was no danger of you losing your precious new toy!"

"It’s not a toy to me," Tchicaya protested. "Was Zapata a toy nine thousand years ago, when it lay on the frontier?"

"That frontier spread out from Earth, and it was made up of willing settlers. It didn’t incinerate anyone who dared to stay put." She scowled. "What do you think you’re going to find in there? Some great shining light of transcendence?"