Analog SFF, December 2007 Read online

  Kushri picked up Majnu's bookslate. “What're you reading?"

  "Probably about supernovas and singleton blisters,” said the brother. “Reading about them won't help you, not this time."

  Majnu's face darkened. “We'll have edit lessons...."

  "Idiot. You'll need more than cortex memories, conscious memories. You'll need kinesthetic memories, too, body memories."

  "You haven't been in a blister either, Gojraan,” shot back Majnu.

  "We'll see who survives.” Gojraan kicked at the sand with his foot. “It's hot out here. I'm thirsty.” He looked directly at Kazo. “Get us some juices."

  "Oh, don't be rude,” Majnu said, frowning. To Kazo he said, “Sorry."

  "I can say what I like,” Gojraan said. “You can't stop me."

  Kushri rolled her eyes and said to Kazo, “Forgive my brother, he doesn't pretend to have manners when Father is not around. He doesn't care about the supernova, except that Father wants us to go.” She leaned forward. “He doesn't know whether this pilgrimage means Father values us highly or not at all. What do you think, Sundshri?” The other sister said nothing, her face hard and cold as a block of ice. Kushri laughed. “Well, I don't care. I'm looking forward to it, and I think Majnu is, too."

  "Are you?” Kazo asked Majnu.

  He nodded, his face very serious. “Yes, of course. When do we start practicing?"

  Kazo brushed sand from one foot, wiggled her sandal back, then looked up at the sun in the sky. “Tomorrow."

  * * * *

  "The cosmos inhabited by humans and stars,” began Haisho's lecture aboard the Umialik, “is but a thin slice of all that is, a brane tucked between tiers of a universe richer than we can see. Humans move, breathe, love, and die in three spatial dimensions (and drift inexorably along the current of Time), but there are more dimensions, uncountable dimensions. Most are knotted tighter than the waistband of an electron, but a handful extend the width of a hair, and three, attask,marruk, and pingayuk, stretch out to infinity. Back in the start of history it took humans hundreds of years to get this story right...."

  Gojraan sighed impatiently.

  "There are an uncountable number of forces, but only four are strong enough over any distance to make a difference in human life. Of those four, three transmit exclusively across the taut surface of the brane. The last, Old Man Gravity, is not really a force at all, at least not like the others, and he can reach beyond the surface of the brane; this is gravity's power but also, fortunately, the cause of his weakness...."

  Another sigh, louder.

  "Be quiet,” Kushri murmured from behind her brother.

  "But I know all this already,” Gojraan said in a loud voice. “It's the same principles as star-drive. Is boring us supposed to help?"

  Haisho stopped. Silence draped across the room, then tightened. Gojraan crossed his arms in front of her chest. Finally Sundshri said, “Why not let Nagaan finish? After all, Father paid her an enormous sum to teach us. He would be disappointed if we were ... impolite to her.” She turned and gave a shallow bow to Haisho, who bowed deeply in return. After a long silence Haisho continued.

  "The decay of a knotted anomaly displaces a pocket or blister of the brane off into one of the extranormal dimensions. To drive between the stars one must cast off into the deep void of attask or one of the other Great Dimensions, where one slides from star to star like a child down a snowy hill....” For the task of tourism in the more dangerous corners of the cosmos, Haisho explained, and in particular this pilgrimage, however, the brane blister is shifted ever so slightly into one of the Lesser Dimensions, less than the thickness of an insect's wing. Shifted just far enough that inside the calm of the blister the densest matter and the fiercest fires of the normal universe, even the implosion of a supernova, are but ghostly shadows.

  Although a brane blister can pass through the dense material of a ship, Haisho told the Samraatju siblings, and even through the impossibly hot and dense matter at the core of a star as if it were not there, in compensation the weak nuclear force is stronger and in fact one interacts mostly with neutrinos on the normal brane.

  "You will sail on neutrino winds. With practice you can gain considerable control. The brane-shifted blisters Captain Apilak spins out are spheroidal, with an oblate deformation. They are not rigid, but sensitive to the electrostatic field of your body. You control the blister through your body: by stretching out you increase the oblateness and thus the area of the blister, catching the local neutrino flux...."

  Haisho explained how one must not move too violently within the blister. A brane blister can resist any force from the normal brane. But from the interior the blister is surprisingly fragile. Quick or abrupt motion can start an instability that will grow, ripples which will tear apart the blister, “and you do not want that to happen deep inside a supernova,” Haisho said, a grim iron smile fixed upon her face. “This is a supreme test of your concentration and control. At the supernova you will be awake for almost five weeks and in constant control, and at the moment of implosion you must remain calm, dispassionate, or else you will die with the star."

  She also warned them that although brane-shifted blisters pass easily through ordinary matter, they are not invulnerable to each other. They can even collide and set off instabilities. “So watch the beacons attached to each of you—it serves as both communication and tracking. Do not turn off your beacon."

  When the lectures were over Haisho led them through the first exercises, based very much upon ta-ichi meditative dance, moving limbs slowly in the microgravity of the drifting ship. To Kazo's surprise, Gojraan picked it up quickly.

  The younger sister, Kushri, was flailing much too fast. Kazo drifted over to her, caught her wrists, and moved her arms through the exercise. Kushri said nothing, closed her eyes, and then moved her arms and legs slower. Then she turned to her brother Majnu, who had been watching her with his dark, intense eyes.

  "Show me,” Kazo said.

  Majnu nodded and began the cycle of movements. “I'm not very graceful,” he murmured. “Gojraan spends all his time in the fighting arts, that's why he picks it up quickly."

  Kazo watched him. “Not bad,” Kazo said, “but it's flat, which means you might let down your guard. You must clear your mind, be calm—I don't care about the state of your soul, but if you don't, disaster follows. I say this, and I don't even like to meditate."

  Majnu nodded and moved again. “How's that?"

  "Better, but don't do it for praise. It must feel like your hand is following a grooved path, a geodesic. It must feel like the most natural thing in the world."

  Pearls of perspiration appeared on Majnu's forehead, despite the slight chill in the air. “How does anyone survive?” he asked.

  "Most tourists, pilgrims in this case, have an electrostatic generator strapped to their waist that expands and contracts the blister."

  "Why can't we?"

  "Because then you would be just a piece of meat trapped inside a blister. You are a human being, in control of your destiny. Anyway, it's the oblateness. Apilak is one of the few skilled enough to produce oblate blisters. Most are spherical and can only expand larger or smaller, with very little control: you can only rise or fall. With Apilak's you can pitch and yaw and actually soar and sail. It's fun.” Kazo smiled and Majnu smiled back.

  "Is he doing any better?” Kushri asked.

  "No,” blurted Majnu. “I'll have to practice."

  "Good, because tomorrow you learn to damp out instabilities. That's harder.” When Majnu's eyes widened, showing white against his dark skin, she added, “And necessary for your survival."

  * * * *

  They practiced for three days as the Umialik slid inward toward the yellow white star Kitna. The night before their first trial run, Kazo returned to her private cabin. For the moment she was glad to be away from people, away from everyone. Gojraan had been particularly insufferable, insisting he need not practice anymore. “Your father will be displeased
with us if you should die on a practice flight,” Haisho had said quietly.

  "Yes, yes, that'll be too bad for you, won't it?” said Gojraan. “He'll probably find a way to banish you to the most impoverished, crowded, stinking planet there is. You should pray your little kak prayers that I don't die.” His sisters just looked away.

  The cabin door closed behind Kazo. The room was silent and dark, and though she felt a strange twist of loneliness in her gut, she kept it unlit. Her mother would have preferred the three of them to share a single cabin. Haisho seemed to think lack of privacy built moral character and family solidarity, and she told stories of her own childhood, growing up in a tiny apartment with her uncle's crowded family on Saruna—exactly the kind of world Gojraan had threatened them with. Haisho openly despaired of the fragmentation of the family, but on this trip the Umialik was nearly empty, and Kazo and Kumko simply moved into empty cabins.

  Still, as Kazo lay down on her bunk, simultaneously exhausted and too upset to sleep, she would have liked to talk with her sister, or even her mother. Or maybe Apilak. The ship's captain was busy preparing for the first flight, but disembodied, she never tired, was always patient and thoughtful.

  Kazo had sat up, readying herself to call Apilak, when her door quietly chimed. She frowned. It wasn't Haisho or Kumko's chime. It had to be one of the Samraatju. She tensed. Gojraan, wanting to rape her?

  "Yes?"

  The voice was soft and shy. “Kazo? It's Majnu."

  Kazo hesitated for a moment. Majnu was still a Samraatju. He might still have come to rape her. Sometimes you had to be most careful with the quiet ones.

  But Apilak had surveillance programs, and Kazo didn't think Majnu sufficiently skilled to overwhelm them. So she let the cabin door slide open. “Yes?"

  Majnu stood in the doorway, a slice of shadow. He looked down and away from her, his loose hair falling on either side of his face like a curtain of night. He stood there without speaking, so long that Kazo was about to order the door shut. At that moment he murmured, “I'm not ready."

  "Pardon?"

  Majnu lifted his head and glanced up and down the corridor, glanced up above. “I'm not ready for tomorrow. I need more practice."

  Kazo started to roll her eyes at this transparent excuse when Majnu shifted and light fell on his face, illuminating his sorrow and worry. “Oh, all right,” she sighed. “Shall we go to the exercise room?"

  "I don't want my brothers to find out. They have spy programs—"

  Kazo snorted. “I doubt that. Apilak has probably already crippled them. She doesn't like spies running through her ship."

  "I wouldn't be too sure. Gojraan is more clever than he acts."

  Kazo went on: “And you should know, her own surveillance subprogram keeps a close eye on me. In case you have any ideas."

  She went to the back of her cabin, felt around for her exercise tunic, and in the dark quickly dressed. Majnu stayed at the doorway, outlined by the corridor light. “I don't have any ideas, I promise."

  "Promise all you want, but I have dealt with the superrich for years. You think you hire us, you hire our bodies for whatever you want."

  "What, has Gojraan propositioned you? You should know, the last time he propositioned a hire-servant, er, Father threatened to castrate him and not regenerate his testicles for ten years.” Kazo laughed at the image. Majnu continued: “So don't let him bully you."

  She walked into the corridor, blinked in the light. “I don't let anyone bully me.” They walked in silence for a while. The ship was quiet: everyone, except Apilak, asleep. Kazo said, “You don't have to be afraid. At least not tomorrow. It's not very dangerous, if you don't panic."

  "I'm not afraid."

  "But you come to me in the middle of the night to practice."

  "Not afraid of dying, I mean."

  "What are you afraid of, then? Of looking bad to your father?"

  Majnu thought on this for a while. “I think, if we are at least acceptable, he does not think much upon us. Only if one of us, usually Gojraan, acts badly, which reflects badly upon him, does he care. I don't think I could do anything well enough for him to be impressed."

  "Then what?"

  They arrived at the exercise room. “I don't know.” He turned and looked at her. His eyes were the color of darkest tea, just a thin rim of white around the irises. “Do you always know the reasons in your heart?"

  She smiled and went through the exercises with him. He did much better without his family. After two hours Kazo was impressed with Majnu's determination. Perspiration pooled on his brow from the effort.

  "Stay relaxed tomorrow,” she said. “You'll be in a closed blister, you don't want to overheat."

  He smiled shyly. “Hard to imagine not overheating, skimming just beneath the surface of a sun."

  Kazo felt a drop of sweat on her own face. She grabbed a loose towel and wiped her face and then, upon a sudden impulse, reached over and gently dabbed at Majnu's face. The tip of her fingers grazed his moist skin, and her heart suddenly boomed in her chest. She was taken aback at her own boldness, touching without permission, without need, the son of such a powerful house. But he just closed his eyes, his lips curled slightly upward. “You'll do fine,” she said quietly, softly, against the loud bang of her own pulse in her ears. “I'll be with you tomorrow."

  "Will you?” he asked, looking her direct in the face.

  "Yes,” she said. “I promise."

  * * * *

  A few hours later, they were falling toward the star.

  In the ghostly realm of brane blisters the star was a pale glowing flux of neutrinos, while each brane blister appeared as a faint shadow and the bright neutrino beacon that doubled as a comm link. Kazo kept a close eye on Majnu's blister, and when she saw a ripple of an instability she coached him through stabilization.

  Good, she said to him over the link.

  It was a short maiden flight for the inexperienced group. The hardest part came at the end, as retrieval of brane blisters is much harder than deployment. Ironically it was not Majnu who had difficulty—he correctly destabilized the blister on cue and appeared in an eye blink inside the Umialik's equipment hold—but Kushri. After nearly an hour of trying, she finally tumbled into the normal brane, wan and exhausted. The Umialik began to accelerate away from the star, and every one in the central hold gently fell to the wall under the light gravity.

  As they trooped out of the equipment hold, Majnu turned and faced Kazo. “Thank you,” he said softly.

  "You did well."

  He shook his head so that his black hair waved from side to side, and he bowed to her. Then he stood and looked her full in the face with his deep brown eyes. Kazo blushed, even as he turned away and walked quickly after his sister.

  Kazo went back to her cabin. Her stomach tumbled round and round: the aftereffect of the brane blister, but more. She kept seeing Majnu's face, the slight curl of a smile on his lips, his eyes like coals aflame.

  * * * *

  For three more weeks they practiced at Kitna, dipping deeper and deeper. Kazo marveled at the expense of so many knotted anomalies.

  The practice was needed, especially by Majnu. On longer excursions he got tired and had difficulty focusing. Kazo marveled that Gojraan, who on the normal brane seemed so easily bored, had little difficulty; a shame, as Kazo secretly hoped he would have an accident, never mind the consequences.

  In the third week they went all the way through the star and out the other side. Kazo kept a close watch on Majnu, staying less than half a kilometer away from him as they descended deeper and deeper into the star, the neutrino flux grower brighter and brighter. Gojraan looped around them, crying out, Look, Majnu and his nanny! Majnu and his nanny! Did she bring milk for you to suckle?

  Kumko glided close to Kazo and said quietly, Let me watch him for a while.

  No, I can, really. The brother doesn't bother me....

  "The brother” bothers Majnu, though. Let me watch him.

&nbs
p; Reluctantly Kazo broke away. Far away, against the dawn-bright shine of neutrinos, she saw Gojraan's beacon. With a sigh she tucked her limbs in and plunged toward them. Gojraan was looping up and down rapidly, making himself as small as possible and hurtling downward, then spreading wide his arms and legs and abruptly sailing up.

  When Kazo got close, he looped up and corkscrewed around and past her. Be a show-off, she thought to herself. Be a show-off and kill yourself.

  Gojraan wheeled around and rocketed past Kazo again, his beacon flickering rapidly, transmitting a whooping stream of high-spirited yells. She pulled her limbs in tight and dropped out of the way just in time. A collision between brane blisters at high relative velocity can set up instabilities dangerously difficult to damp out.

  They didn't have any more trouble until they had passed through the core and were on their way out.

  Around the twentieth hour of the excursion Majnu began to slip farther and farther behind. Despite the drugs they all received to keep alert, exhaustion made it difficult for him to keep aligned. I'll coach him, Kumko murmured to Kazo, and she dove down and gently spiraled around Majnu, coaxing and encouraging him.

  The rest of us will ascend on schedule, said Haisho. Kazo bit her lip and floated upward, but she kept glancing down. Majnu and Kumko fell farther and farther behind: ten kilometers, twenty, fifty, a hundred, two hundred, until she could barely make out the bright specks of their beacons. Kumko had turned down her beacon so that no one could listen in to her coaching, but Majnu's transmissions were clear for all to receive.

  I can't, I can't, cried Majnu. Presumably Kumko said something in return, but Majnu called out, I'm falling, I'm falling. Kazo! Please help me, Kazo!

  Kazo's head jerked around and she looked down into the dull haze of the neutrino flux, saw the flickering dot of light that was Majnu's beacon, calling her name, pricking her heart. Her body tensed, but her mother's voice cut in sharply: Leave it to Kumko. She can deal with him. We have the others to watch.