A World Called Ocean Read online

  She went to a museum dedicated to the memory of the green wars and looked at the exhibits there, picked up a paper book on the early years of the Blight and its manufacture by secret government agencies, based on the information found on the Oort Station. The station the Cetis had left behind, along with the gateway to the stars.

  She had become more conscious of the thing growing in her head, but no more migraines came, and for a while she was plagued by no more perceptual shifts, which actually worried her more; they had told her she’d still be getting them, even when she arrived at Ocean.

  She wandered around exhibits showing the atrocities of the green wars, along with posters and interacs explaining the role Ceti tech had played in the second half of the 21st Century. The Africans and Asians, in particular, were sensitive about Ceti tech, because they had been amongst the worst hit. Nevertheless, they relied on the alien-derived technology just as much as her or anyone else on Earth. Looking at the exhibits made her think about her sister, and how hard it was to win arguments with her.

  Then the time came, and she boarded a vertical train that ran up the vacuum-pumped interior of the Spindle and found herself on board the Nairobi International Orbital Station within a few hours. Africa had turned back into a distant relief map. She waited a few more days—so much waiting—and boarded a deep space shuttle, waited while they gave her more tests, pumped her full of drugs, covered her in electrodes and dropped her in a tank full of gel along with three hundred others. Unfamiliar faces, men and women dressed in identical tech uniforms, watched while she faded from consciousness.

  It took her ship six months to reach the edge of the solar system, where it docked with the Earth Co-operative Singularity Station, a spidery framework of living units and holding bays built around the lumpy shape of a six million year old alien space station; it was roughly in the shape of a torus, an infinite blackness that held no stars trapped at its dead centre. And all this time Alis slept a dreamless sleep, even the filaments slowed to a bare crawl in their progress through the matter of her brain.

  She still slept when they dropped her and three hundred other human beings and their ship through the no-space between the stars, and found themselves in the light of another star on the far side of the galaxy.

  * * *

  Catalogue No:221445A (educ/internal)

  Description: interac cube

  Created: January 17th, 2321

  Text of interac follows:

  Blackness: a void that suddenly explodes into brilliant colour and light, like the birth of a universe. Perspective shoots forward and stars seem to stream by.

  Voice-over: The Lost Colonies. Out of contact for generations, lost in the deeps of space … until now.

  Galaxies flow past like tiny eddies in an infinite black ocean, until suddenly the speed drops, and a tiny white dot expands into a blue and white sphere that floats before the viewer’s perspective like a jewel resting in sparkling black velvet.

  Voice-over; Look here. This is Earth. A small world, far out on the rim of the galaxy. So alone.

  The picture expands again, taking in the rest of the galaxy. Voice-over: Here are the worlds beyond. (sequential visuals accompany following text) Cool grey Midas, orbiting a red giant on a vast elliptical orbit that keeps it in the cold frozen reaches of space for half a millennium at a time, experiencing a brief and riotous explosion of life from beneath its frozen wastes for a few short years on its closest approach to its sun.

  FADE to: graphic of HELLAS

  Voice-over: Here, on the far side of the galaxy; dead Hellas, its atmosphere long blown away, alien machinery eternally humming far below its airless surface, the ruins of some long gone, possibly Ceti-derived civilisation scattered across its mountains and valleys, all speaking of some terrible final conflict.

  FADE to: graphic of HEAVEN and HELL -

  Voice-over: Look towards the galactic core and consider the twin system of Heaven and Hell, a Sol-type star with a white dwarf companion, both basking in the intense radiation of the closely packed stars of the Centre. Graphic zooms in, to YUCATAN: Voice-over (contd.) A little way out from Heaven lies Yucatan, its only life a few meagre scraps of lichen.

  Zooms back out to show DIS:

  Voice-over: A few hundred million miles out, the enormous gas giant known as Dis. Dis, populated by sentient clouds that glitter with diamond-skinned insects, that race around the planetary circumference, forever, in vast unending swarms.

  FADE TO graphic: zooms in on OCEAN

  Voice-over: And look upon this star with its system of thirty worlds, most dispossessed moons of a long burnt-out dark companion, a single ring of rubble lying a light-year out. Look to the fourth world, a blue marble streaked with white, look to its land masses and see that it has none, a world of eternal ocean.

  All connected by the alien singularity stations, created by the race we know as Cetis.

  Chapter Four

  The island wasn’t much more than a ridge rising from the sea, the human population gathered on its steep shores, as if about to slide into the water. Salvation was literally only a few hundred yards away, separated by shallow coral and a steep-sided underwater crest.

  Sometimes, storms developed deep in the Great Empty, and the water level would drop several feet; at these times, it was said, you could walk from one island to the other. Everyone claimed to have known someone who had done it, but Alis couldn’t imagine anyone could be foolhardy or stupid enough to do such a thing. As far as she knew, when it did happen—which was rare—it usually meant one of Ocean’s enormous tidal waves was on the way, and everyone except those looking for a quick death got into the deep shelters and waited it out.

  But it was technically possible. The tidal waves only ever took place—or so she had been told—when there was an unusual amount of volcanic activity involved. All the islands of Ocean were part of a single long chain of subaquatic volcanoes, strung along an undersea fault. The chain ran halfway around Ocean’s equator, and constituted the only landmass on the entire planet. Everywhere else was underwater.

  Although the island of Salvation was a short distance away, it was a much greater distance in psychological terms. Placing the offworld base on an isolated island by itself was a tactic, someone had told her, designed to make it clear that they were, at best, tolerated. At worst, unwanted.

  It had now been a year and a half since Alis had left Earth; in her own subjective time, it had only been a few weeks. Outside of going to sleep and waking up, she remembered nothing. When she had awoken, she had found herself on board the Ocean Orbital, a spiderweb of gantries and docking bays much like the one that surrounded the Oort Station. A world of blue lay far below.

  It was hot, almost as hot as Nairobi had been. She looked around the quarters she had been given and pondered her situation. The room was narrow, perhaps fifteen feet by ten, pale, whitewashed walls. There were three quarter’s buildings, low, one-storey affairs crouched together at one end of the long beach that marked the landing point for the boats and small ships that brought visitors, or ferried away the island’s inhabitants. All the buildings had a Mediterranean feel, so that if it weren’t for the lower gravity—something in itself it was going to take Alis time to come to terms with—she might have thought she really was in the Mediterranean, olive-trees and small, ramshackle villages untouched by centuries of technology a short walk away.

  Or perhaps not, she thought, glancing out the single window. From a distance, the trees did look like trees, but when you got just a little bit closer they were more like thick-trunked seaweed that had found its way out of the ocean. She seemed to remember somebody telling her that the vast majority of the species on the islands were only marginally adapted variations on sea-life, which tied in to the fact that the islands were, themselves, a recent development, at least in geological terms. She hadn’t seen any animals, but sometime she thought she had seen eyes—or something like eyes—watching her from the woods as she had moved around the low buildings, becoming acquainted with the people and the town. No, the reality was, it didn’t take much investigation at all to realise you were on another world. Or some twisted, surreal take on the Mediterranean paradise that had briefly occupied her thoughts.

  There was the sun, too. If you just looked at the rocks, or at the beach, and even the sky, you could almost fool yourself. Almost. Until you noticed the trees. Or the size of the sun, nothing specific, just a sense of wrongness that told her this was not the sun she and her ancestors had walked under. Whatever the mind might wish, deep down she knew, always knew, that she was a long way from home.

  And then there were the waves. They rose high, towering up, dragged above the surface of the sea through a combination of lower gravity and the winds that regularly ripped across the islands, unimpeded by any land masses or mountain ranges. A world of storms.

  * * *

  Although it had been long ago in real time, the conversation with the security chief in Nairobi was fresh in her mind. Perhaps the heat was off Lian back home; by the time either of them returned, at least a couple of years would have passed.

  She sat on the end of the bed. It was made of wood, but had none of the familiar whorls and lines of wood on Earth. It had a more sponge-like appearance, dotted with tiny bubbles. What animal life did exist on Ocean’s sparse land area tended to be restricted to a few lichens, assorted Laughers, Diggers and glowbugs, and that was pretty much it. The mattress was thin and hard, and the blankets were made of some vaguely cotton-like substance that made her itch in her sleep.

  She had been on Ocean for a day, and had not yet even set her eyes on a native. The only other people around were from Earth, like herself. They had dropped her from the Orbital with several others in a small military shuttle, rattling its way down through the atmosphere and landing on a tarmac surface on another island so tiny you could run across it in less than five minutes, unpopulated except by the bat-winged Diggers and a few technical staff who manned the small comms building beside the landing pads. Then she had been taken by motor launch to the Collective’s headquarters here, on the island of St Brubaker.

  And here she remained until they decided what they wanted to do with her.

  Chapter Five

  She lasted one more day before she lost her patience. Hope was so near; she was on an alien world, and she longed to explore it, to Write it. St Brubaker was always busy, small launches cutting through the high waves and depositing men and women and people in uniforms at regular intervals throughout the day. She had not talked to any of the people who had been sent to Ocean with her, did not think she would be able to recognise them even if she saw them. She had been given no time to rest, either; first a brief orientation session that had lasted an hour with several other men and women she had never seen before. Who’d disappeared as soon as the meeting was over, leaving the room with a sense of purpose that left her with a strong lack of feeling of any such sense.

  There hadn’t even been sight of a Ship yet. She had overheard someone say one was on the far side of Salvation, which made matters even worse.

  Mostly, they did tests on her.

  She stomped up the hill to the Collective’s small hospital building—whitewashed stone, like everywhere else—and stepped inside. By the time she got there, she was out of breath, and had to sit down.

  “Are you all right?” said a nurse, not the same one who had been here in her three previous visits in the past twenty-four hours. This nurse, standing next to Alis where she slumped in a plastic chair, looked neat and artificial in her one-piece blue uniform. Alis nodded and mumbled, barely finding the energy to open her mouth in reply. She didn’t want anyone so much as taking her temperature. If she was coming down with some local bug, she’d rather let it have its way than endure one second more of prodding and poking.

  She lifted her head and leaned it back against the cool stone wall of the hospital. The nurse, still looking uncertain, went to a bright plastic console above her desk and pressed a button, speaking in muted tones that Alis couldn’t hear.

  The nurse glanced back at her. Alis smiled, in what she hoped was a reassuring fashion. But she feared she might collapse if she stood up. She kept herself fit, but the steep walk to the hospital, even in the low-g, had just about killed her.

  A doctor appeared a few moments later. She thought he was a lot like Dr Nakao; the same friendly but concerned expression, a sort of noncommittal look that said business as usual. The same practised professional manner.

  “Miss Dorican, I presume?”

  She nodded. “I just got here,” she croaked. “I came up the hill.”

  He peered at her face and put one hand to her forehead. “Come on,” he said, putting one arm under hers, gesturing to the nurse to take her other arm in much the same fashion, and together they lifted her up and out of her seat. She half-walked, half-stumbled into an examination room down a short corridor. One or two other people in medico uniforms glanced their way, but didn’t seem to think anything of it. Alis felt embarrassed at her weakness.

  Together, the doctor and the nurse helped her onto a palette; then the nurse left. “Whatever it is, doctor, I don’t want to know. I’d rather I just keeled over and never knew anything about it.”

  He grinned. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you. It’s a common reaction when people have been frozen down for a long time. It’s a big shock to your body when you get revived. You’re just weak from lack of exercise, that’s all. I’ll give you a glucose shot and you’ll be okay. Get a little exercise and build yourself back up.”

  “Thanks. Does this mean I still have to take more tests?”

  “‘Fraid so,” he said jovially. “Don’t worry, this shouldn’t take long.” He went over to a console like the one in the corridor outside and touched its smooth plastic surface. Information scrolled in primary colours, and Alis saw a small picture of her appear in one corner, along with her ID details. The doctor turned back to her.

  “Alis Dorican,” he said. “So you’ve had your implant in for nine weeks subjective?”

  She nodded. “They told me it would be slower while I was frozen.”

  “Mm. Any bad migraine headaches?” he asked. “The usual perceptual distortions?”

  “Not since I woke up in the Orbital,” she said, hoping she was giving the right answer.

  “That’s a good sign. Means it’s taking.”

  “What happens if it doesn’t take?” she asked.

  He glanced at her, but didn’t reply. “I want to take a look inside your head though. Nothing to worry about; it’s standard practice. Then you should get it looked at every six months to a year. Just to be on the safe side. Have you tried using a book yet?”

  “A few. They don’t make too much sense yet, but it’s getting better.”

  He nodded. “Fine, fine.” He picked up a device rather like a helmet and got her to put it over her head. He covered her eyes with his hand and clicked a small button somewhere, telling her not to move and to try and keep her mind clear. Then he took the helmet away. He put the device back on a shelf.

  “Encephalogram,” he said, as if she didn’t know. “I’d try some more books if I were you. It won’t do any harm even if the implant isn’t fully grown in yet.”

  “If it’s taken properly?” she asked, sitting on the edge of the bed as he gave her her shots.

  “It’ll take. They always do.”

  “Always?”

  “Always.”

  Chapter Six

  There were many who, in the end, decided against taking the implant. An implant is for life; that was what they always drilled into the students. You’d spend the rest of your life with the product of an alien technology intimately intertwined with the stuff of your brain. Something barely understood, something so new that there were doubts about the consequences of having one.

  If you had a problem with that, you didn’t go ahead. It was something personal, a commitment you had to be sure you wanted to take.

  At first, Alis had been sure. The singularity had been reopened five years before she had been born. Some of her earliest memories were of crowds waiting for the return of some deep space mission to one of the dozen colonies. Being an Observer—becoming, in some small way, alien, different. There had been an excitement to that, a feeling of participating in history, in the Grand Expansion, renewed after all this time.

  Now, she wasn’t so sure. Perhaps that was why she had asked the doctor if the implant might not work, if it might damage her in some way. Perhaps news had come from Earth that the implants were flawed, even deadly.

  Nonsense, she thought. She was looking for excuses to be worried. Any news from Earth would have come with her, through the Singularity.

  She opened the wardrobe in her room and picked through her luggage until she found the books she had been sent so mysteriously. They had come full circle with her now. They had come from Ocean, and now, they had returned to Ocean, their mysteries as yet unanswered. She found the box of chipcubes and shook them out, finding the one labelled Ocean and prising the black plastic casing apart.

  Inside the casing, instead of the translucent memory matrix of an interac cube, there were several books. Memory books, that could be used and understood only by Observers. Small, grey-green capsules, soft to the touch, but so powerful, so mysterious. She brought it to her nose, sniffed it. A familiar hint of cinnamon, or some vague analogue.

  She’d been warned they were on the lookout for contraband before she had even left Earth; they were especially unhappy about it on Ocean. But she was an Observer, and that made her a living example of Ceti tech. She created books as well as experiencing them. She had thought about declaring them openly, but what if there had been questions about their origin?