Branegate Read online

“What is it?” asked Leonid, and Grandma pointed at the screen. At first it looked like a globular cluster that had been flattened out and compressed. Dozens of white dots on a green screen.

  “The great crusade of The Church, and there it sits, just waiting for orders to make the transition. Must be a hundred ships there: freighters, cruisers, troop ships. Can’t tell the difference from here. Know of any worlds that can stop a fleet of this size?”

  “Military use of space hadn’t really begun when we left,” said Leonid, “but there was a lot of talk about it.”

  “You’d better hope it’s more than talk, now. If those ships go through the Grand Portal your universe will belong to The Church, or should I say a handful of Bishops. Nothing will stop them.”

  “If they go through,” said Leonid, and Grandma Nat looked at him sharply.

  “You have an idea?”

  “The Grand Portal depends critically on a specific mass distribution on both sides. Deviate even slightly from the equilibrium mass distribution, and the portal becomes unstable. I don’t know about this side, but on the other side there are constant corrections to the positions of several black holes to even keep the portal open.”

  “I never understood any of it,” said Nat. “You think it’s possible to close the portal?”

  “Yes, or at least make it unstable enough to prevent a safe transition. But even one ship working the masses is the size of a terran planet. We’d need an army to take just one of them.”

  “We don’t have an army, Leonid, so think of something else.” She dismissed the idea with a wave of her jeweled hand.

  “Raise an army and fight them, then. If they wait long enough to invade, it might be possible. Once through the portal it’ll take up to sixty years to reach the first manned outpost we know of on the other side. The first populated systems are a few light years beyond it. There isn’t much interaction between systems, with a few exceptions, and those are based on commerce. Mostly dictatorships, a couple of democracies, military and police units large enough to control limited population centers on a planet.

  “How large?” asked Nat, still watching the vast cluster of light points on the screen. Some were slowly moving.

  “Up to tens of thousands, I suppose,” said Leonid. “They’ve been pretty much isolated their entire history, Nat. There hasn’t been any need for an interplanetary force, let along interstellar. Only older civilizations like ours have become that paranoid.”

  Grandma Nat laughed. “How true. But I think they’ll become paranoid enough when their skies are filled with the warships of The Church.”

  “The Church is there, Nat, on every planet we worked on. We went there to preach freedom and democracy, and it seemed like The Church was right behind us every step of the way. Some of our aids must have spread the first literature. The only religions on any of those planets were humanistic to begin with. They worshipped no higher power. Whatever happened was quick, too. By the time we left each planet, small churches were already springing up. Some flowered, others were driven underground by dictators who tolerate no religions other than the worship of themselves. But The Church is there, Nat, everywhere. If the skies are filled with ships come in the name of The Source on a mighty crusade, the people might welcome them with open arms.”

  “And spend the rest of their days living under extremist dictates of Bishops in another universe,” said Nat.

  “Still possible,” said Leonid. “I’m telling you, Grandma, we won’t be able to fight them. The only way to stop the invasion is to destroy the Grand Portal, or make it very dangerous to use.”

  “We need an army to do that, too, you said.”

  “Maybe not. We had some good people with us, most of them in second or third lifetimes when we left. They were working on some things. By the time we get back to them it might be possible to control the Grand Portal with ships far smaller than planets. Our own son was working on it before we made transit and got ourselves arrested. I should be able to contact him as soon as we’re on the other side.”

  “Why not now?”

  “Something about the brane separating our universes. The field that connects us doesn’t permeate it.”

  “Well, it won’t be long. Try to contact him tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? We’re days from the portal.”

  “Ordinarily, yes. Didn’t you wonder why we didn’t stop at Port Angel?”

  “I wondered, yes. I assumed all the clearances had been arranged in your usual, efficient way.”

  “Well, it was a bit more complicated this time. Our clearance was radioed ahead to the portal three days ago. We have to catch up to it, so we’re going to make a small jump in a few hours, just before Port Angel might pick us up on their scanners. You might want to take a nap then.”

  Leonid gave her a wry smile. “You are a devious person, Grandma Nat.”

  “So I’ve been told,” she said, and patted his cheek with a heavily veined hand.

  Asleep in their plas-steel cocoon, they didn’t feel the jump. Both had taken a sleeping pill with a glass of wine and remained conscious long enough for some very pleasant moments in bed. Many years before, Leonid had been forced to experience a jump during a mechanical emergency that had trapped him in his cabin. Distracted, he’d forgotten to prepare himself and when the moment came it was as if the world was fluid and pliable. Everything was suddenly distorted, swimming rapidly about him, and flickering in and out of a strange darkness. His inner ear spun like a top, and he’d thrown up all over his cabin floor. Never again. He took the pill and the wine, enjoyed pleasures with Tatjana, and went soundly to sleep.

  When they awoke, the walls of their tiny room were gently vibrating in short bursts. The vernier engines were on, maneuvering the attitude of their ship. It could only mean they were nearing the portal.

  They dressed quickly and went back up to the bridge. Grandma Nat was there in her special chair, sipping a cool drink and watching the big viewing screen over the control console. At first there was only blackness, but then the great cats’-eye of the portal swung into view and centered itself on the screen. If this was normal magnification, Leonid guessed they were still hours away from transit.

  Nat saw them then. “Finally you’re up. You’ve seen this before, of course, but for me it’s a first time experience in making a transit. It’s rather exciting.” She smiled, and sipped her drink.

  “You must feel badly about leaving your universe,” said Tatjana, and knelt by the throne of the matriarch.

  “Actually I don’t. Life is meant to be an adventure, my dear.”

  “Everything going smoothly?” asked Leonid.

  “Oh, there have been inquiries. A picket ship challenged us earlier and gave us a bit of a scare, then apologized when they found our earlier clearance in their archives. It didn’t come the usual way, so I think they’ll look into that, and we’re hurrying right along. A couple of picket ships are trailing us from a distance, so we’ve been noticed. I don’t suppose it’s possible to make a jump through the portal?”

  “It’s not the same kind of space, has a higher dimensionality. It could be suicide to try it,” said Leonid. “Either that, or nothing would happen.”

  “Maybe on the other side,” said Grandma, and then grinned at them. “You children might want to go back to bed.”

  “Grandma!” said Tatjana, and gave her a playful tap on the arm.

  Leonid didn’t laugh; he was thinking. “The brane has an extra dimension,” he said, “but maybe the portal interior doesn’t. The regular, four-dimensional spaces of the two universes might mix together in there. Folding one might fold the other. Interesting.”

  “All I know is, if those picket ships try to close with us we’re not going to hang around to answer questions; we’ll make a run for it, one way or another,” said Nat.

  Grandma turned away from them, then, gave instructions to her captain, and was on the earphones a while with the captains of the rest of her little fleet.
/>   Leonid and Tatjana enjoyed the view. The portal itself was lovely, a glowing, flickering cloud in red, blue, yellow and green. The folds of its interior, where transition would occur, seemed solid from where they were. Deep red. An extra dimension there, theory said, the brane itself of unknown composition and invisible to the eye, yet connecting the two universes at every point in space. Only extreme stress caused by any of the four fundamental forces could open up a string-sized point to a portal large enough to accommodate a ship. The original discovery, three hundred years ago in their home universe, had been accidental, during the first experiments in recovering vacuum state energy.

  There was somehow a link between the brane and the origin of vacuum state energy, for hadn’t one universe originally come from another? And then there were all those exotic particles which hadn’t yet been seen, but which must exist.

  They knew how to stabilize a tunnel in the brane, knew how to open it up under the right conditions, and travel routinely through it, yet they did not understand one bit of the fundamental physics behind it. Even Leonid knew this was a dangerous thing. Nature might abhor a vacuum, and do something to fill it up, but it also had no tolerance for ignorance.

  Grandma Nat sat next to her captain and murmured into her throat mike. There was a thump. The main engines had cut in and they were moving ahead more quickly now, the Grand Portal noticeably growing in size. They were getting close. Tatjana stood just in back of her grandmother, Leonid a pace behind her. Suddenly, Grandma grabbed Tatjana’s arm, whispered something and released her.

  Tatjana turned, said, “Find recliners. We’re supposed to strap in. The picket ships started closing in as soon as we picked up speed. They’re calling on us to stop for inspection. We’re moving into an echelon formation and making transit together.”

  The floor lurched, and they stumbled. Leonid went to one knee. Rows of recliners were in the back of the bridge, could hold twenty passengers during normal shuttle operations, but this was definitely not normal.

  They strapped themselves in. The top and bottom edges of the portal were now off the screen. The red of its interior was now flecked with vortices in green and blue, and there was a faint, dark patch at its center.

  “Closing,” called a man at the end of the curving control console. “They say they’ll open fire or ram us.”

  Grandma suddenly shouted, “We have clearance to travel, and we’re going through. If you inflict any damage on us I promise you’ll answer for it personally to the Bishops. They have authorized our passage!”

  She jabbed her hand rapidly in the air. There was another thump; they were picking up speed, and the portal was now rushing towards them. Again the beautiful display of swirling colors, the patch at the center black, then a kind of purple with threads of red, then—

  The room swirled around them, images coming in bursts, and it seemed Leonid’s head continued to turn, twirling on his shoulders. He was suddenly nauseous, and swallowed hard. He looked at Tatjana. Her eyes were closed, a strange pallor on her face.

  As suddenly as it began, it was over.

  “Where are they?” asked Grandma.

  There was a long pause.

  “Well? They were right behind us when we entered.”

  “They’re not there,” said the captain. “They’re not anywhere. Nothing came out of the portal behind us.”

  “I don’t hear anything, Ma’am,” said another officer. “They’re not there.”

  “Then we lost them,” said Grandma. “Good. Now find out where we are.”

  “I don’t think we lost them. They’ve disappeared. Their ships didn’t make it through the portal. We made a space fold there, and something happened to them,” said Leonid.

  “We were just coming out of transition,” said the captain. “It was a two minute jump, and that’s where we ended up, see?” He pointed at the observation screen.

  Indeed, the great portal barely filled the screen top to bottom. Two black spheres crawled across it, planet-sized ships doing their work to keep it stable and open, correcting some small perturbation.

  “Something happened,” mumbled Leonid again.

  “We’re here, and nobody is chasing us, that’s the point,” said Grandma Nat. “Now that we’re here it would help if you could point us in the right direction, dear.”

  “I have the charts we brought with us. If you’re willing to make a lot of jumps we can make the frontier in thirty years, even less.”

  “Another reincarnation,” grumbled Grandma. “I should come back as an infant this time. Can’t we do it faster than that?”

  “With sub-light speed and power for jumps under five light-years it is. We’re doing galactic travel, not interstellar between nearest neighbors. That’s what Anton, our son, was working on when we left. I doubt a lot of progress has been made in such a short time.”

  “So call him and find out. We’re in his universe, now. There are no time delays in the fields that bind us.”

  She was right, so Leonid tried. He tried hard to contact his son by calling him to the place where they’d met before on rolling hills covered with flowers. Tatjana went with him and also called, a loving invitation for Anton to meet them, but there was no answer, not even a whisper.

  No one was there to answer them.

  CHAPTER 26

  The meeting of the Trustees’ Board was somber. Ten men in expensive suits took notes on recorders while Meza sat at the head of the conference table and lied like he’d never lied before.

  “I admit it’s a huge setback for us, but our founder’s instructions must be obeyed. Trae’s body was picked up the morning after his death and went out by freighter yesterday. He’s going home.”

  “Surely they’ll clone him,” said Thos Hyeran, the board president. Bald and slight, he was a fragile looking man. “Wasn’t a residual scan done?”

  “Yes, but not by our people. Trae’s bodyguard had his own security team; they took charge right after the shootings. I approved it, according to the wishes of Leonid Zylak. This was an event he knew was possible. He said the entire family was to leave if it happened, and return to the home universe. I can show you his letter, if you like.”

  “Please,” said Thos.

  Meza called the letter up on his recorder, and shared it with them. There was a long silence as they read it.

  “He seems to have become disenchanted with us,” said Thos.

  “Not at all. He’s disenchanted with the futility of political solutions, and threatens a strong force to protect his interests. He’s an angry man. Can you blame him? His only son has been assassinated twice, apparently on the orders of different people. The Emperor of Gan is dead. Who do we blame this time? We have no extremists here. The killers were hired by a man called The Bishop. Gan and Galena are the only two planets with a church structure formal enough to assign Bishops.”

  “It could be just a title used to confuse things,” said Thos. “It could also be industrial sabotage by a competitor. Trae worked on important projects, and was clearly a prodigy.”

  “But who? We have no competitors, not in transportation or communications technology. Everyone sub-contracts from us.”

  “Maybe someone wishes it otherwise,” said Thos, and a few heads nodded in agreement.

  “We’re exploring the possibility. The perpetrators will be found and punished, no matter who they are. In the meantime we salvage what we can. Trae’s abilities are lost to us in the future, but we have his residual scan and it includes an important testing sim he’d just finished. For the present, at least, the project will move swiftly. We’ll soon test a shuttle-sized ship in opening a gate large enough to retrieve vacuum state energy. Wallace has the details in a file he calls ‘Anton R’, but it’s quite technical. And scaling up to produce a gate large enough for ship transition remains a project for the future.”

  The subject then changed to marketing matters. Meza bored them for half an hour, and the meeting broke for lunch. He went back to his offi
ce, passing Wallace’s on the way, and knocked softly on the door.

  “Come!” An anxious voice; Wallace was expecting him.

  Meza closed the door, spoke softly. “Watch closely. I think it’ll happen soon.”

  “I have markers on every machine in the building. Everything going out is being recorded, too.”

  “I won’t tell you who I think it is. I don’t want to bias your surveillance.”

  Wallace nodded, then, “Anything new on the cloning front? I really need Trae’s help here, and Myra’s efficiency has dropped to nothing. Just seeing him alive will pick her up. She’s the best model maker I have.”

  “He could have a new persona,” said Meza.

  “She knows that. Just get him back here. Myra needs his presence, but I need his brain, and so does the project.”

  “He’s in the tank. Better part of a year. Focus on the field tests for now.”

  Meza left Wallace there, and went to his office, past Trae’s old cubicle. Myra was still there, working on Trae’s machine. Her shoulders were hunched over, her chin resting in the palm of her hand. She stared at a geometrical simulation on the screen, the same picture she’d been looking at since early that morning. Nothing on the screen had changed.

  A cold sandwich awaited him in his office. He ate it quickly while sending a pile of notes answering morning mail, then went back to the Board Room.

  Everyone was there, and Thos Hyeran greeted him with a faint smile. “Perhaps we can hear some better news this afternoon,” he quipped.

  “Absolutely,” said Meza with a big smile at Thos. Make your move, you old bastard, and I will nail your body to the wall.

  He was wrong.

  The man he was after did indeed make his move, only three hours after the Board meeting had ended and most of the staff was down in the cafeteria for dinner. But it wasn’t Thos Hyeran.

  Wallace called him to his office, and Meza joined him there for more whispers behind a closed door. Myra didn’t even notice him, and hadn’t gone down for dinner.