Schild’s Ladder

"Can you turn your head back toward the Scribe? That might be quicker than me trying to put it into words."

Tchicaya twisted his neck. The border had formed a bellshaped hillock, forty or fifty meters high, that had completely swallowed the Scribe. As his rotation forced him to stretch even more, he stopped fighting it and twisted his neck the other way, hastening the sight’s return instead of trying to delay its departure.

The hillock was collapsing now, but as it did, a ring around it was rising up. Suddenly, Tchicaya noticed a whole series of lesser rings surrounding the first, like concentric ripples in water. They were undulating out from the center at great speed: the leading edge, the fastest component, in some kind of surface wave. The bulk of the wave was spreading more slowly. But it was still traveling faster than they were.

He searched for the shuttle, and found it, its exhaust a pale blue streamer against the stars. The thrust generated by the ion engine was very low; over time it could accumulate into a significant velocity, but the craft was about as maneuverable as a bathtub on ice. It might just reach them before the wave, and even accelerate away from the border again in time, but there’d be no margin left for any more surprises that might manifest themselves in the wake of Branco’s intervention.

Yann read his mind, and declared flatly, "They have to stay clear."

Tchicaya nodded. "Mariama?"

"No!" she hissed. "I know what you’re going to say!"

"It’s all right. We’re backed up, we’re calm. Don’t even think about it."

"It’s a wave. It’s a predictable phenomenon! I’ve computed a trajectory that meets all the constraints — "

"Predictable?"

"We can do it!"

"You’ve all voted on that, have you? Tarek? Branco?"

Branco replied laconically, "It’s all the same to me."

Tarek said nothing, and Tchicaya felt a pang of sympathy for him. No one could reasonably expect him to put himself at risk, merely to spare his two adversaries the loss of their replaceable bodies and a few hours' memories. Yet if he did, many people would respect him for it. You had to be a utilitarian zealot, rotted to the core by dogma, not to admire someone who was willing to jeopardize their own comfort and continuity to preserve another’s. Whether or not this required courage, at the very least it was an act of generosity.

Tchicaya said, "Stay clear! We can’t afford to lose the shuttle!" This argument made no sense — the Rindler's stock of raw materials had not been depleted, and there were parts of the ship itself that could be cannibalized anyway, if necessary — but he wanted to offer them an unselfish-sounding alibi. "You have to gather all the data you can," he added, a little more cogently. "With the Scribe gone, every observation you can make is invaluable." The Rindler itself had powerful instruments trained on the border, but some crucial detail might conceivably depend on the shuttle’s proximity.

Mariama did not reply immediately, but in the silence that followed Tchicaya knew that he’d swayed her.

"All right." Her voice was still strained, but there was a note Tchicaya recognized from their days on Turaev: a rare concession, not so much of defeat, as the realization that they’d been struggling over the wrong thing altogether. She understood the tradeoff, and she knew that he and Yann were resolved. "Peace, Tchicaya."

"Peace," he replied.

Yann said, "You handled that well."

"Thanks." Over Yann’s shoulder, Tchicaya could see the wave closing on them. It was dropping in height as it spread out from the point where the Scribe had been, but it wouldn’t fall far enough to miss them. Tchicaya wondered if Yann would want to be distracted, or to confront what was happening directly.

"So well that I almost hate to do this. How strong do you think your legs are?"

"What?" It took a moment for Tchicaya to understand what he was suggesting. "Oh, no. Please — "

"Don’t go squeamish on me; we don’t have time. It would be hard to decide who to save if we were from the same modes, but I can start from backup with no delay. You’d be out of the picture for months."

That was true. The Rindler had run out of bodies, and there were currently about twenty new arrivals waiting. Tchicaya would have to join the queue. Normally, a delay like that would mean nothing compared to the centuries he’d lost to transit insentience, but Branco’s experiment had just guaranteed that every day from now on would be unique.

"I’ve never killed anyone," he said. His stomach was knotted with revulsion at the thought.

Yann didn’t quibble over the hyperbole. "And I’ve never died, in a body. Sex and death, all in one day. What more could an acorporeal ask for?"