Green Sky Press

The expedition traveled south for another month without incident. The banner caught glimpses of the natives, always mounted and armed with bows, and knew that word of their passage must be spreading through the south, though they had no way of knowing yet how the southerners lived, or in what tribes or nations. The distance the natives kept gave some idea of how far their bows could shoot, assuming they kept just outside the range of their own weapons, and assuming they believed the northerners' rifles had the same range as their bows.

If they thought they were out of rifle range, they were mistaken. But Saru's mission wasn't to start a war, and he knew that the natives might be keeping at a distance that was actually inside the reach of their bows, either to fool him into misjudging that range, or to show defiance or contempt for his force. The banner held its fire, as long as the southerners didn't edge nearer and nearer, or attack.

As they left the equator farther behind them, they encountered rain more often. None of the brief showers did more than inconvenience them. But the rain, and the frequent streams they splashed through, hastened the wear on the pair of uniforms each trooper had. Patches began to appear, and were approved as long as they were square and neatly sewn. Before they got back to civilization they'd all be wearing buckskin, no doubt.

A white bump on the southern horizon resolved into a snow-tipped mountain, the peak and northern edge of a small range curving away east and south. Juho smiled when he saw it. "That's the center of Îštûn's orbit," he told Corporal Dasa. Now that the southerners were shadowing the banner, the doctor no longer rode out with only a pair of troopers, one little more than an idiot. A squad of riflemen escorted him now, usually Dasa's first squad, second platoon, since privates Korva and Suko were in it.

Corporal Dasa was a fair-haired trooper from Mena, with feathery eyebrows and almost colorless eyes. He didn't mind escort duty, but neither was he a budding naturalist like Korva. He spared the mountain a glance, then the southern horizon a quick scan, before returning his attention to making sure his squad stayed alert and kept watch. "So?" he said. "Where's the city, then?"

"It flew in a circle a hundred miles across, centered on that peak," the doctor said. "The nearest point on that circle would be just in sight now, if the ground were flat here. But, as you may have noticed, these southern lands tend to be furrowed west to east by rivers, with swells between the valleys. Things can be invisible until you're right on top of them."

"A hundred miles across?" the corporal said. "And we have to search the whole route? How big is that, sir?"

"The ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is 3.1416," Master Ĵetao said. "A circle a hundred miles across is just over 314 miles around."

"I know," Juho said, laughing. "Fortunately, we don't have to. The cities wanted to be found, if they couldn't make it to Elarâń. Each of them made an emergency plan, and every city had copies of them all. I got a copy of Îštûn's from the Library at Anθorâń. It said, (1) go straight to the north face of Mount Hârob, and (2) proceed directly to Sitašai, for as far as you can fly safely."

"According to our map," Juho said. "I won't trouble you with the geometry, but Îštûn's planning means that if the city could fly even 50 miles after the pole star vanished, it will be on a line between Sitašai and that mountain. Every mile closer to the mountain we get, the fewer the places the city could have started from, and the smaller the distance it was able to travel before it landed or fell."

"If we reach the northernmost point of the orbit without finding the city, it travelled less than 110 miles. If we get all the way to Mount Hârob and haven't seen the city, it travelled less than 50 miles, and started from the southern half of the orbit."

"So then we'd only have to search half the area?" Dasa said. "It's still too much."

"No, no," said Juho. "They thought of that. The rest of Îštûn's plan said, (3) if you can't go 50 miles, land in the best spot you can safely reach, and (4) put a sign at the mountain saying where you are."

"So we go to the mountain, and if we don't find the city on the way, we'll find directions to it," the corporal said.

"Which will be within a hundred miles, even if they went fifty miles the wrong way before coming down," Juho agreed.

"I just hope they were able to follow the plan," Dasa said. "If there's no sign, some later expedition may have to find them."

"My own worry," said the doctor, "is that they might not have anticipated how long it would be before anyone came looking. Wind, rain, or rockslide might have ruined what they left."

The next morning turned bright and fresh after a brief dawn sprinkle. The men got up, washed themselves, fed, and packed things away in anticipation of the order to break camp. Mount handlers traded off, and the new handlers fed and watered their charges, combed and brushed them, checked hooves and tack. The civilians slept late, had a little whiskey to try to settle the hangover from the night before, played cards, or read, according to their inclinations.

Assembly and Full Kit cried the tubas, instead of Break Camp. No one needed to say "hurry!" The cursing troopers dumped their kit and threw it back together for a bugout; then did the same for their mates who were breaking down half the tents and squad gear, leaving the rest in place. Then everyone shrugged into the packs, grabbed rifles and ammo, and ran to the square.

The only common soldier who didn't hurry was Sergeant Seidu. He'd happened to overhear enough of what was said between Saru and Paran, Saru and Deni, and Deni and Juho to guess what was coming. He didn't pass a quiet word to his squad so they could prepare in advance and look good, as, say, Corporal Stâzo of First Platoon, Fourth Squad would have done. Nor did he get his own gear ready in secret and then stand ready to help out his squad, as Corporal Dane of Third Platoon, First Squad would have done. Instead he stood by his pack, holding his rifle, and watched his squad struggle. Then, with the scornful smile they hated so much, he put on his pack and strolled along behind his men as they ran to the assembly.

Cornet Saru and Sergeant Paran watched him saunter into place, long moments after his red-faced men had fallen in. He wasn't the last person to arrive, but he was the only one who wasn't sweating. The acting legate and acting banneret exchanged glances that agreed totally in their assessment of Seidu's style of "leadership."

"You break them, you bought them," he said in an Eokantos shopkeeper's singsong.

Her mouth twitched, but she said only, "I'll bear that in mind, sir," before executing a perfect about-face.

Out the east gate of the camp she led them, then they turned left and headed north. Behind them, the cooks finished their cleanup, the sentries of the day stood their watch, and the mount-handlers tended the banner's riding animals, happy that it wasn't a real bugout. If the emergency had been real, everything still in the camp would have been abandoned, down to the cookpots and the mounts; the troopers in camp, and Saru and Juho, would have left with the others; and the civilians would've had to pack and catch up as best they could, or seize the mounts and flee in another direction if that seemed wisest to them.

"This is crazy!" snarled acting-corporal Rama. "Does she really expect us to march all day in the wrong direction? To cover the 60 miles we rode yesterday, on foot?"

"Quiet in the ranks, Rama!" snapped Sergeant Paran. "Better yet, shut up entirely!"

Sergeant Rama glared at the acting banneret, but didn't reply. Once the moving column had passed out of Paran's hearing, however, the ranking survivor of Eagle Banner began muttering to himself. "Uppity Ĉundē piece of shit ... kill the fucking bloodsucker," Trooper Bore heard. The ex-sailor raised an eyebrow at Trooper Muho beside him; just saying such things in the navy would've gotten Rama flogged. Muho, who was Orkē Banner from recruitment, just shrugged.

On the banner marched, shadowed by curious southerners on their wiry řobēθ. Êstâz's army was neither wholly infantry nor wholly cavalry. Every man had to be able to ride and march all day. They fought on foot as often as mounted, even now when sword and shield and armor had been replaced by Anθorâńai rifles. When they stripped to bare necessities, the riding beasts were set free to look after themselves.

After four hours Cornet Haθa halted them and let them fall out for a half-hour break. They sat down, ate from their packs, and drank from their canteens. The more experienced troops ate and drank only a little, suspecting that a hard run was coming next.

But the cornet took Saru's advice to go easy on them. What came next was an hour of drill: march and countermarch, flank and echelon, forming squares and then returning to column. At the end of that, they fell in by squad and platoon, facing east and at attention.

"So far, so good," Cornet Haθa told the troops. "But supper is 20 miles that way," she said, pointing to her left, which was south. "Can we get there before the cooks throw it out?"

"Bitch bitch bitch," cursed Corporal Jani, formerly of Eagle Banner, as the column executed a right turn, and began to run. "Bitch bitch fucking slut — OW!" he said, putting his left hand, the one not holding his rifle strap, to the back of his head.

"Next time it'll be the butt of my rifle, not my hand," Sergeant Paran said. "Keep your ugly mouth shut, Jani!"

In the late afternoon the sentries saw the banner running towards camp, covered with sweat but breathing evenly, accompanied by the scouts. The Ŧulańē had joined the banner almost as soon as it started back; a 20-mile run was an everyday thing to them, about as noteworthy as a farmer's wife walking out to the barn to collect eggs, or a city wife walking to the market. Herâk ran on the left side of the column, Surâk on the right, while Pâka, his knife wound of a month ago healed to a scar, was running circles around the whole formation.

Saru walked up to the north gate before the sentries could send him a message, and watched the column coming. The sky was bright and clear, and flocks of birds flew in all directions: some sailing without effort down the merry breeze, some flapping strongly against it. Split-tailed lapwings darted this way and that after incautious insects exposed by gusts of wind, and a hawk swooped out of the sky onto some small prey: too far away to hear its squeak, or to guess whether it got away.

Cornet Haθa draw a deep breath. The wind was full of the smell of southern grasses and southern flowers, a myriad of scents unknown to her. Juho could probably identify some, and make a guess at the others, she thought, and smiled tenderly.

As if the thought had summoned him, Master Ĵetao walked up beside Saru just as that moment. In contrast to the dark blue tunic over grey robe over white under-robe of the banner's uniforms, Juho was today in a puce tunic over a white robe over a light yellow under-robe. The braid around the neck, sleeves, and hem of the tunic was an undulating vine with leaves alternating on one side, then the other, embroidered in white. Another band of the same braid encircled the high crown of his straw hat, and a sprig of southern prairie grass was jammed between hat and hat band. He nodded to Saru, who smiled a welcome.

Seeing the doctor in his robes and tall hat, Deni felt her heart lurch. Why, I do love him, she marvelled, and suddenly felt like singing. She broke into the cadence being called by the sergeants:

Now come and be glad, boys,
Why glum now, my bad boys?
The hawk and the swift's a-wing,
So lift up your hearts and sing!

No one was sure how to answer her improvised verse. Singing and playing various small portable instruments was a popular entertainment in the evenings, but her song wasn't a part of the marching repertoire, and even the tune was new to them. But Trooper Voimo of Second Platoon, Second Squad was moved to protest, "Hey, I can sing!" on a rising note.

"Well, I can—", "I can—", "I can—", and "I can!" sang the troopers of Third Platoon, Third Squad, who often harmonized together. "And so can I," added acting-corporal Pâta in his deep, deep voice.

—he sang to Deni, pointing to Pâta and to Gama, one of the others in his squad,

That's sad, boys, too bad, boys,
But try and be glad boys,
The lark and the dove's a-wing,
Even if you poor lads can't sing!

Master Ĵetao looked at all the shining faces as the column came to a halt before the gate. "Great, now they'll all be in love with her," he muttered.

"You poor fool," Saru said to his friend. Juho started, then flushed; he hadn't realized he'd spoken out loud.

"Didn't you know they already were?" the cornet said softly, before walking forward to return Cornet Haθa's salute.

Sixteen experimental creatures gathered outside the universe, where no one and nothing could interrupt them. All were ten feet tall, blue-skinned, with three fingers and a thumb on each hand, three big toes and a spiked heel on each foot. There were five neuters, in floor-length robes with big flaring sleeves, hairless not only on their heads but everywhere on their bodies: Ĉuli, Zîvu, Ťora, Sisu, and Pašo. There were six females, in dresses that fell below their knees, and long straight hair: Lara and Mera, Koriu and Lańa, Kristu and Susa. The other five were males, with short hair, wearing short pleated kilts and collared, sleeveless shirts: Vîda, Êstâz, Ĵuha, Persu, and Dâka.

Lara looked at her siblings, her people; and they looked back at her. All of Verē history, all of human history, led to this point, this moment waiting for them to speak. The universe hung below them like a planet seen from polar orbit, the spots they'd discovered a month before like islands on an ocean world.

"All right," Lara said. "First we make sure we all understand our choices, then we'll decide what to do."

"I think we're mostly in agreement," Lara said. "But let's make sure everyone understands and agrees."

"After all," Pašo said softly, "we've all the time there is." Y looked at the spots on the "skin" of the universe, and others, following ys gaze, nodded one by one.

Pašo shook ys head, still looking down. With a glance at ys colleague, Zîvu said, "They're real, and they're what we guessed. The creatures of the Long Time apparently can't travel outside universes. So instead of leaving their own universe, and entering ours, they make the two touch, so they can cross over."

"Not at all," said Zîvu. "In one sense, the universe is nothing but a collection of nodes of data. It takes no more energy to link nodes of one set to nodes of another, than it does to speak your name. Knowing how is the key: the protocols for each data set, and the design of the interface between them."

When Pašo said nothing more, Zîvu patted ys shoulder and said, "It's a bit more complicated than it sounds; we can do it, now that we've studied what they did, but I don't know whether we'd have come up with it ourselves. And as y said: Why would anyone want to?"

"They're not growing," said Zîvu. "They've neither grown nor shrunk detectably in the time we've observed them. But, by examining space-time around and among them, we can tell that each group of spots was originally a single larger spot. This broke up almost at once and the spots began to shrink; but they do so more and more slowly."

"Not from these," Pašo said. "These will die out. But if the creatures did this a lot, that would be another matter. Enough spots could change the whole universe's entropy. Or if they made the connection, and didn't break it, the whole universe would be ..."

"Take two glasses, one full of water, one empty," suggested Zîvu. "Put a siphon between them, and they'll both end up half full. Or put a red-hot stone in a bowl of ice, and everything becomes the same temperature."

"So we're not talking about mutual annihilation," Vîda said. "Both universes would exist, same as before?"

"They'd exist," said Zîvu, "but they might not be habitable any more. If the red-hot stone were inhabited by creatures of fire, and the bowl of ice had ice people, all of them would perish when the temperatures equalized."

"So if we linked the two universes permanently, all the creatures who murdered our people would die, in both of them?" Êstâz asked.

"No," said Lara. "We couldn't keep them linked. The inhabitants of both universes would come to undo our work, and we still can't face the creatures of the Long Time."

"And even if we could, they might escape," Zîvu said. "The universes won't equalize instantly. Some of the killers from our universe might duplicate our ability to travel between universes, with technology. And the creatures of the Long Time need only link to a third universe and cross to it to be safe."

"Because their universe shows the same number of 'new' spots as ours does 'old' spots," Zîvu reminded her. "If they'd linked to another universe any time recently, that event would have left its own marks."

"So what can we do?" Êstâz said. "Is there some way to use this information to avenge our people, and let none of their killers escape?"

"I do!" Pašo said. "It was my idea. The responsibility is mine. The least I can do is explain it clearly."

"We can link points on our universe to other points on the 'opposite side' of the universe; and we can do that to the Long Time universe as well," Pašo said.

"So nothing," said Pašo, "if the universe were static. But both universes are expanding. The linkage should destroy them instantly."

"At the deepest level," Zîvu answered, "mis-linking the information points will corrupt the data inherited from each ancestral node. Information points will suddenly inherit data from two or more ancestors. A given point may adopt any of those values, or a product of them, or a random value; theory doesn't say, and we can't exactly experiment."

"Heh," Zîvu said. "The point is, all the affected information points should randomly adopt different values. Since the smallest particle of mass/energy is transcribed across many information points, mass and energy will disintegrate. There's some question whether time and space will fall apart first, or whether all mass and energy will disintegrate before that can happen. But in either case, it will be too quick for anyone to react."

"In fact," said Pašo morosely, "since time and space are part of the universe, the whole thing should happen in no time at all."

"We're sure," Zîvu said. "There's some question about how this will destroy the universe, but none about whether it will."

"What choice do we have?" said Koriu. "We are who we are. Do we just forgive the murder of all our people, and the destruction of the home world itself?"

Êstâz, sitting beside Koriu, put a hand on her shoulder as he said, "And even if we did — Even if we went to another universe entirely, where no one knew our ancestors, and made a life for ourselves — What's to keep the monsters of the Long Time from spreading there? If they aren't stopped now, then when? After they've spread through ten universes? A hundred? A thousand?"

"But what about the moral issues?" said Ťora. "Every person in this universe, on every world of every starsun system of every galaxy; every person in the Long Time universe; how can their murder be justified? All but the tiniest imaginable fraction of them never heard of our people, let alone had anything to do with their deaths!"

"Is it murder?" said Êstâz. "If I understand aright, time is the separation between generations of information points. If we destroy these two universes, their time is destroyed with them. Their inhabitants, innocent and guilty alike, will never have existed. There will be no time for them to have existed in."

"But irrelevant to the moral question," Ťora said. "They exist now. How can we live with ourselves if we destroy them?"

"Oh, if that's your objection, rest easy," said Pašo. "We're part of this universe. If we do this, we won't survive, either."

"We won't?" said Sisu. Y exchanged a glance with Ťora. "I thought we'd be doing this with telekinesis, from outside the two universes. Why would we be affected?"

"That's one way of describing it," said Pašo. "But distance means separation in space, and space exists within the universe. Action at a distance still requires us to be part of the universe to affect the universe. So when we destroy it, we destroy ourselves at the same time."

"A better definition of telekinesis is direct action," Zîvu told the group. "Ordinary action is indirect: our minds use our brains to send signals to our muscles, which contract to move our bones. All the tissues of our bodies are made of atoms, whose states and locations are written in the information points of the universe. Action and movement are reflected in changes to the information points through time, through successive generations of information points."

"Telekinesis, on the other hand, is the direct action of the mind upon the data in the information points, without the intermediary of mass acting upon mass. The consequences are the same. To make a change from one moment to the next, we must be part of the universe's time for those moments. So we destroy ourselves along with the universe."

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Table of Contents
Chapter 1	Chapter 2	Chapter 3	Chapter 4	Chapter 5	More soon ...
Glossary			Personae

Crown of Starsuns

Chapter 5
Finding Îštûn

Crown of Starsuns

Chapter 5 Finding Îštûn

Chapter 5
Finding Îštûn