The Commonwealth Saga Page 3

  CST had opened their planetary station on Gralmond over twenty-five years ago. About the time Dudley was getting his colorful OCtattoo, in fact—an irony that hadn’t escaped him. The planet had done well for itself during its first quarter century of human history. Farmers had set their tractorbots and herds loose on the land. Urbanites brought prefab buildings that they lined up in neat grids and called cities in homage to the great metropolises they hoped would one day evolve from such humble beginnings. Factories were imported, riding in on the strong tide of investment money; hospitals, schools, theaters, and government offices multiplied fruitfully around them. Roads expanded out from the population center, sending exploratory tendrils across the continent. And as always, the trains came after them, bearing the greater load of commerce.

  Dudley’s Carlton drove along the side of the Mersy rail route as he neared CST’s planetary station. A simple chain-link fence and a plastic safety barrier was all that separated the dual lane highway from the thick lines of carbon-bonded steel rails. The Mersy rail route was one of five major track lanes that had so far been laid out of the station. Gralmond’s population was rightly proud of them. Five in twenty-five years: a good sign of a healthy expanding economy. Three of the rail routes, including the Mersy, led away to vast industrial parks squatting on the outskirts of Leonida City, while the remaining two stretched out into the countryside, where forking again and again, they connected with the principal agricultural towns. Goods flowed in and out of the CST planetary station day and night, slowly increasing in quantity as the years progressed; circulating money, material, and machinery across fresh lands, advancing the human boundary month by month.

  A big freight train grumbled alongside, going only slightly faster than the Carlton. Dudley looked over at the sound, seeing long olive-green wagons rolling along steadily, the sulfur-yellow lettering on their sides faded from age and sunlight. There must have been fifty of them linked together, all pulled along by a giant twenty-wheel engine. It was one of the GH7-class engines, he thought, though which particular marque he wasn’t sure; those brutes had been in use for nearly eighty years, a thirty-five-meter body filled with superconductor batteries, powering massive electric axle motors. Gralmond wouldn’t see anything bigger until the planet reached full industrialization status, in maybe another seventy years or so.

  Already, such a monster trundling through the flourishing city seemed slightly incongruous. This district still contained a lot of the original prefab buildings, two- or three-story cubes of whitened aluminum with solar cell roofs. Redevelopment was hardly necessary on a world where the government gave land away to anyone who asked for it. Gralmond’s total population barely reached eighteen million, nobody was crowded here. The prefabs, however, remained as useful housing and commercial centers for the newest and poorest arrivals. But many city blocks of the shabby metal boxes had been torn down and replaced by new stone or glass-fronted buildings as the local economy bootstrapped itself upward. More common was the encroachment of drycoral, a plant originally found on Mecheria. New residents planted the genetically tailored kernels along the bases of their houses, carefully tending the long flat strands of spongy pumicelike stone that grew quickly up the walls, broadening out to form a sturdy organic shell around the entire structure, with simple pruning keeping the windows clear.

  The passenger terminus was only a small part of the ten square kilometers that was the CST planetary station; most of the area was given over to marshaling yards and engineering works. At one end was the gateway itself, sheltered from the weather beneath a broad arching roof made from crystal and white concrete. Dudley could barely remember it from his arrival eleven years ago, not that it would have changed.

  The Carlton drew up at the departures rank at the front of the terminal, then trundled off home as soon as he stepped out with his luggage. He walked into the station to find himself immersed in a throng of people who seemed to be going in every direction but the one he wanted. Even though it was relatively new, the concourse had an old-fashioned look to it: tall marble pillars held up a high glass roof; franchise stalls lurked in the cathedral-style archways; the short stairways between levels were implausibly wide, as though they led to some hidden palace; statues and sculptures occupied deep high alcoves, every surface covered in bird droppings. Big translucent holographic projections hung in the air, crimson and emerald signs that backed up the train timetable information for anyone who didn’t have an interface with the local network; little birds zipped through them continuously, hooting in puzzlement at the trail of sparkles their membranous wings whipped up.

  “The Verona train is leaving from platform nine,” Dudley’s e-butler told him.

  He set off down the concourse toward the platform. Verona was a regular destination, with a train leaving every forty minutes. There were a lot of commuters from there, middle management types from the finance and investment companies who were involved with setting up and running Gralmond’s civil infrastructure.

  The Verona train was made up of eight double-decker carriages hooked up to a medium-sized PH54 engine. Dudley shoved his cases into the baggage compartment on the fifth carriage and climbed on board, finding an empty seat by one of the upper deck windows. Then there was nothing to do but try to ignore his growing tension as the timer display in his virtual vision counted down toward departure time. There were seven messages for him in his e-butler’s hold file; half of which were from his students containing both data and audio clusters.

  The last five months had been extraordinarily busy for the small university astronomy department; even though there had been no stellar observations made in all that time. Dudley had declared that the state of the telescope and its instruments was no longer acceptable, and that they’d been neglecting the practical side of their profession. Under his supervision, the tracking motors had been dismantled and serviced one by one, then the bearings, followed by the entire sensor suite. With the telescope out of commission, they also had the opportunity to upgrade and integrate the specialist control and image analysis programs. At first the students had welcomed the chance to get their hands dirty and improve the available systems. But that initial enthusiasm had long since faded as Dudley kept finding them new and essential tasks that delayed recommissioning.

  Dudley hated deceiving them, but it was a legitimate way of suspending the whole Dyson Pair observation project. He told himself that if he could just secure the evidence, then the impact it would have on their department and its budget would more than justify the small subterfuge. It was only during the last couple of months as he put up with all their complaints that he’d begun to think of the effect a verified envelopment might have on his own career and fortunes. Failure to back up the observation would have ruined him; success, on the other hand, opened up a whole new realm of prospects. He could well progress far beyond anything the Gralmond university could offer. It was a pleasant daydream to lose himself in.

  The train started moving, pulling away from the platform and out into the spring sunshine. All Dudley could see through his window was the industrial landscape of the station yard, where hundreds of tracks snaked across the ground, crossing and recrossing like some vast abstract maze. Single wagons and carriages were being moved about by small shunting engines that coughed out thick plumes of diesel exhaust. The only visible horizon seemed to be made from warehouses and loading bays, where a spidery gridwork of gantry cranes and container stackers wove through every section of the big open structures. Flatbed carriages and fat tankers were being readied or unloaded within the mechanical systems that almost engulfed them. Engineering crews and maintenancebots crawled along several tracks, performing repairs.

  Traffic began to increase on the tracks around them as they headed for the gateway; long cargo trains alternating with smaller passenger carriers. All of them snaked their way over junctions with sinuous motions, arrowing in toward the final stretch of track. On the other side of the carriage, Dudley could see a near-conti
nual stream of trains emerging from the gateway.

  There were only two tracks leading to the gateway: one inbound, one outbound. The Verona train finally slotted onto the outbound stretch, fitting in behind the passenger train for EdenBurg. A freighter bound for StLincoln slotted in behind them. A low warning tone chimed through the carriage. Dudley could just see the edge of the curving gateway roof ahead of them. The light dimmed fractionally as they passed underneath. Then there was just the wide shimmering amber oval of the gateway dead ahead, so reminiscent of an old-fashioned tunnel entrance. The train slid straight into it.

  Dudley felt a slight tingle on his skin as the carriage passed through the pressure curtain that prevented the atmospheres of the two worlds from mixing. Even though it spanned a hundred eighteen light-years, the wormhole itself had no internal length. The generator machinery that created it had a considerable bulk, however; most of which was tucked away in the massive concrete support buildings behind the roof. It was only the emission units that were contained in the great oval hoop of the gateway, measuring over thirty meters thick. Given the speed the train was traveling, even that flashed past in a second.

  Glorious copper twilight streamed in through the carriage windows. Dudley’s ears popped as the new atmosphere flooded into the carriage through the rooftop vents. He looked out at the massive expanse that was CST’s Verona station. There was no visible end to it, no glimpse of the megacity that he knew lay beyond. One edge of the station was a solid cliff of gateways, sheltering under their curving single-span roofs, each oval framing a slightly different colored patch of haze depending on the spectral class of the star whose world they reached. But for the rest of it, as far as the eye could see, trains and tracks were the sole landscape. Behemoth freighters rolled along, their engines dwarfing the GH7s that had so impressed Dudley; nuclear-powered tractor units pulling two-kilometer chains of wagons. Sleek white passenger expresses flashed past pulling dozens of carriages with multiworld commuters whose routes would take them through twenty or more planets as they rushed from gateway to gateway on a never-ending circuit. Simple little regional trains like the one Dudley was on shuffled between their larger, grander cousins. Verona station had them all.

  As Earth was the junction world for all the planets in phase one space of the Intersolar Commonwealth, so Verona was the major junction for this section of phase two space, with gateways leading to thirty-three planets. It was one of the so-called Big15; the industrial planets established out along the rim of phase one space, a hundred or so light-years from Sol. Company-founded, company-funded, and company-run.

  Verona station boasted seven passenger terminals; Dudley’s train pulled into number three. Again the scale of the place hit home. This terminal alone was five times the size of Gralmond’s planetary station. Verona’s thicker atmosphere and slightly heavier gravity contributed to his feeling of triviality as he wandered along the packed concourse in search of the Tanyata service. He found it eventually on platform 18b, three single-deck carriages pulled by a diesel-powered Ables RP2 engine. His luggage went on an overhead rack, and he sat on a double seat by himself. The carriage was less than a third full. There were only three trains a day to Tanyata.

  When he arrived, he could see why there were so few scheduled services. Tanyata was very definitely a frontier planet; the last to be established in this sector of phase two space. It simply wasn’t commercially practical to build wormholes that reached any farther. Verona would link no more Human-congruous planets; that honor now fell to Saville, which was less than ten light-years from Gralmond. CST was already building its new exploratory base there, preparing to open wormholes to a new generation of star systems: phase three space, the next wave of human expansion.

  The CST Tanyata station was just a couple of hurriedly assembled boronsteel platforms under a temporary plastic roof. A crane and a warehouse comprised the entire cargo section, backing on to a vast muddy yard where stacked metal containers and tanks formed long rows on the badly mowed vegetation. Wagons and trucks grumbled along the aisles, loading up with supplies. The settlement itself was a simple sprawl of standardized mobile cabins for the construction crews who were laying down the first stage of the planet’s civil infrastructure. Quite a few prefabs buildings were being integrated, with men and big manipulatorbots slotting together reinforced aluminum modules inside a matrix of carbon beams. The biggest machines were the roadbuilders, tracked mini-factories with big harmonic blades at the front chewing up soil and clay. A chemical reactor processed the material into enzyme-bonded concrete that was squeezed out at the rear to form a flat level surface. The thick clouds of steam and fumes swirling out from around the units made it virtually impossible to see them fully.

  Dudley stepped out onto the platform, and immediately reached for his sunglasses. The settlement was somewhere in the tropics, with a clammy humidity to go with the burning blue-tinged sunlight. To the west, he could just see the ocean past a series of gentle hills. He pulled his jacket off and fanned himself. His skin was already sweating.

  Someone at the other end of the platform called out Dudley’s name and waved. Dudley hesitated in the act of raising his own hand. The man was just over six feet tall with the kind of slim frame that marathon runners cherished. Physical age was difficult to place, his skin was heavily OCtattooed; patterns and pictures glowed with hazy color on every limb. Gold spiral galaxies formed a slow-moving constellation across his bald head. A perfectly clipped, graying goatee beard was the only real clue to late middle age. He grinned and started to walk down the length of the platform; his kilt flapping around his knees. The tartan was a bold pattern in amethyst and black.

  “Professor Bose, I presume?”

  Dudley managed not to stroke his own OCtattoo. “Uh, yes.” He put his hand out. “Er, LionWalker Eyre?” Even the way he pronounced it was wrong, like some kind of disapproving bachelor uncle. He hoped the heat was covering any blush to his cheeks.

  “That’ll be me. Most people just call me Walker.”

  “Er. Great. Okay. Walker, then.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Professor.”

  “Dudley.”

  “My man.” LionWalker gave Dudley a hearty slap on his back.

  Dudley started to worry. He hadn’t given any thought to the astronomer’s name when the datasearch produced it. But then, anyone who had enough money to buy a four foot reflecting telescope, then ship it out to a frontier world and live there with it, had to be somewhat eccentric.

  “It’s very kind of you to allow me a night’s observation,” Dudley said.

  LionWalker smiled briefly as they headed back down the platform. “Well now, it was very unusual to be asked such a thing. Got to be important to you, then, this one night?”

  “It could be, yes. I hope so.”

  “I asked myself: why one night? What can you possibly see that only takes up such a short time? And a specific night as well.”

  “And?”

  “Aye, well that’s it, isn’t it? I could not come up with a single thing; not in terms of stellar events. And I know there are no comets due, either, at least none I’ve seen, and I’m the only one watching these skies. Are you going to tell me?”

  “My department has an ongoing observation of the Dyson Pair; some of our benefactors were interested in them. I just want to confirm something, that’s all.”

  “Ah.” LionWalker’s smile grew wise. “I see. Unnatural events it is, then.”

  Dudley began to relax slightly. Eccentric he might be, but LionWalker was also pretty shrewd.

  They reached the end of the platform and the tall man suddenly twisted his wrist and pointed a finger, then slowly drew a semicircle in the air. The OCtattoos on his forearm and wrist flared in a complicated swirl of color. A Toyota pickup truck pulled up sharply in front of them.

  “That’s an interesting control system,” Dudley commented.

  “Aye, well, it’s the one I favor. Sling your bags in the back, will you?”
br />   They drove off along one of the newly extruded concrete roads, heading out of the busy settlement. LionWalker twitched his fingers every few seconds, inducing another ripple of color in his OCtattoos, and the pickup’s steering would respond fluidly.

  “Couldn’t you just give the drive array some verbal instructions?” Dudley asked.

  “Now what would be the point in that? My way I have control over technology. Machinery does as I command. That’s how it should be. Anything else is mechanthropomorphism. You don’t treat a lump of moving metal as an equal and ask it pretty please to do what you’d like. Who’s in charge here, us or them?”

  “I see.” Dudley smiled, actually warming to the man. “Is mechanthropomorphism a real word?”

  LionWalker shrugged. “It ought to be, the whole bloody Commonwealth practices it like some kind of religion.”

  They quickly left the settlement behind, driving steadily along the road that ran parallel to the coast, just a couple of kilometers inland. Dudley kept catching glimpses of the beautifully clear ocean beyond the small sandy hillocks standing guard behind the shore. Farther inland the ground rose to a range of distant hills. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, nor any breeze. The intense light gave the tufty grass and coastal reeds a dark hue, turning the leaves almost jade. Small scrub trees grew along the side of the road; at first glance similar to terrestrial palms, except their leaves were more like cacti branches, complete with monstrous red thorns.

  Fifty kilometers clear of the settlement the road curved inland. LionWalker gave an elaborate wave with his hand, and the pickup obligingly turned off, heading down a narrow sand track. Dudley wound the window down, smelling the fresh sea air. It wasn’t nearly as salty as most H-congruous worlds.