He had come to another conclusion. Rhianna had helped ensure that no Zajinets or other Pilots remained on Molsin, thereby isolating Helsen and Ranulph, confining them to this world. It was better for the risk to be here, known and imminent, than on some other planet, unknown to those who lived there.
Roger did not want to die, but beyond that, he would have hesitated rather than risk Leeja’s life, even Tannier’s. Rhianna would have understood precisely what was going on; and he was sure that she would commit suicide before allowing darkness-controlled people to seize her ship … assuming she had one. Perhaps she was one of the Shipless (he dared not ask), requiring others to transport her. If anything, it might make her a better agent-in-place than Dad had been, always pining for his own ship.
Just as Roger missed his ship, child though she was, not big enough to fly for real.
‘We’ll make a true Pilot out of you,’ said Rhianna. ‘Back in Labyrinth, when this is over.’
He was getting used to her spooky manner of deducing thoughts. Then he processed the plural pronoun.
‘But you’re …’ Roger thought about it. ‘Dad was in place for decades. On Fulgor, I mean.’
‘I have to consider myself compromised.’ Rhianna popped open several holo-volumes. ‘Tannier is a good man, and I’m sure his superiors are good people. But someone will talk, even if the immediate group choose to protect me. Which I doubt.’
‘Not even if you move to another sky-city?’
‘Ah.’ Rhianna smiled. ‘I rather fancy living on Yukawa. But I think I’m done here.’
‘My fault.’
‘No, it’s the nature of the job. As you well know, and well done for keeping control of the conversation.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean’ – Rhianna caused the holos to grow and brighten – ‘you’re trying to avoid more maths.’
Roger smiled. ‘Maybe.’
‘Yeah, well. Start by telling me what these pictures have in common. Keep it easy and conceptual, and we’ll get to the hairy equations shortly.’
That suited him. One by one he checked the holos: fireflies pulsing in a forest, wind-rays billowing and brightening above paramagnetic sands, the planet Mercury and Earth’s moon in their respective orbits, a swaying rope bridge as a party of tourists marched along it—
‘Resonance,’ he said, without examining the rest. ‘Synchronization caused by feedback.’
It was a universal property in so many contexts, from the quantum realm to entire worlds, like Mercury whose orbit and axial rotation were phase-locked, its year and day identical. Put two pendulum clocks together and they alter their swings until they are in opposite lock-step. Let the same effect occur in cardiac cells and you have a heart that knows how to beat in rhythm.
‘Give me some more examples of negative feedback adjusting towards resonance.’
‘Well, there’s—’
‘With equations now,’ said Rhianna. ‘Come on.’
‘Oh. Right.’
Later they stared at a holo depicting Fulgor.
‘Here be dragons,’ said Rhianna. ‘The place no ship dares to approach.’
‘Shouldn’t we be doing some modelling?’ asked Roger. ‘You know, maths? Those equations I love to formulate?’
‘Feeling more confident, are we? Well, good enough. Cheek your elders and betters, why don’t you.’
The more Roger grew used to her bullying, the less she seemed to do it.
‘We don’t know how far the Anomaly can reach through the hyperdimensions,’ he said. ‘Is that it? We haven’t got a critical parameter for the model.’
‘Maximum range is of the order of tens of kilometres in the main three dimensions.’ Rhianna enlarged the holo. ‘No doubt the Admiralty will have posted ships beyond that range. And other observers at successive distances further out, just in case we got it wrong.’
Cold-blooded but sensible.
‘So we’re safe,’ said Roger, ‘as long as we quarantine the planet.’
‘Molsin was under quarantine, but the bastard Zajinets still appeared.’
‘They hate the darkness more than we do.’
‘Maybe they’re not the problem, though I hate to say so.’
Alone and with time to think, Roger pondered while flexing his hand. The forearm felt intact, thanks to Rhianna’s ministrations after her armbar technique had snapped the bone through. Long-molecule arrays formed of smartatoms were aggregated into a lattice that held everything in place, promoting and directing the healing process. As the new cells formed, the smartatoms would pull away, dissolving themselves.
Resonance, global synchrony from local feedback, enabled the aggregated arrays to work as if collectively intelligent. Whether the Anomaly functioned like that, resonating from one component to another like pendulums in step, no one knew for sure. But reasoning from mathematical principles, it seemed likely.
Can you use maths that way?
The history of computation had been an odd subject, taught in Fulgidi schools at age twelve standard. Centuries ago, early software had been cobbled together more than mathematically designed, even though symbolic logic and set theory were well understood long before the mathematics of cohenstewart discontinuities and other forms of emergent phenomena. It was a wonder the old systems had ever worked at all.
And while AI had been a success for more than a century, it became subsumed in other technology – such as quickglass – and largely forgotten (while a part of Roger’s mind noted that Ai had been the forefather of the race of serfs, just as Fathir and Mothir had produced the noble-born). Nowadays system studies tended towards the descriptiveness of ecoscience as much as the prescriptiveness of engineering disciplines.
What the Fulgidi educational system did not address was the study of war.
Labyrinth must be different.
Because the Aeternal word for tactic had structural similarities to the words schema and process, while military engagement had overtones of network and parallel sequential-process interactions. The word for war was almost identical to the term for global system architecture.
Warfare as a branch of mathematics.
For a moment it did not sit right with him, this notion. But that was the old Roger, the innocent whose world had not yet been torn to shreds. Now, nothing could be more important than revenge, to take the fight to the enemy.
For the first time, maths came totally to life in his mind.
Some three hours later, Rhianna looked over the phase-spaces, schemata, proof-trees and system diagrams, hanging in holos like a small orchard of tree-images, rich and complex and structured, artistic in its overall configuration.
‘I think I might have underestimated you, my young friend.’
‘No,’ said Roger. ‘You gave me motivation. And thank you.’
Rhianna nodded, but her face was grim.
It doesn’t matter.
As if she could see the changes taking place inside him, and wished there were another way for him to grow as a person.
Not your fault.
Helsen, and the darkness she allowed to control her, had created whatever he was becoming.
And they will regret it.
That was a promise.
Mum. Dad.
A promise to the loved ones the darkness had killed.
FIFTY-EIGHT
EARTH, 2147 AD
‘It’s not just the money,’ said Amber, her voice desperate, her expression of conflict and anguish clear, despite the metal eye-sockets that so often made her hard to read. ‘I mean, it’s not the economic need to work, or I’d find something on, on …’
‘Something on Earth,’ said Rekka. ‘In realspace.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
Beyond the restaurant window was the shopper’s paradise of Orchard Road, and the outdoor-sauna air. Rekka sat next to Amber, facing Angela and Randolf, whose voices were very careful, their conscious sympathy focused on Amber.