Lucy's Blade Read online

  "Why hasn't Hammond noticed that I'm frozen?" Alice was more puzzled than scared. She should have been frightened but she had experienced too many strange events in her short life to be unduly worried by a demon in a magic ball.

  "Our conversation takes a microslice of time. Your friend will notice nothing," replied the woman. "I know all about you so I will tell you something about me. Look deeper into the crystal, Alice. Deeper."

  Act 2

  A Dark Universe

  It was a lovely day. She basked in gravitons. Immensely strong gravitonic waves in space-time flowed past in an endless stream, causing her to bob gently up and down in the eleven dimensions of reality. She had an absolutely prime position on—well, to human perspectives it would have been a low orbit around a tightly spinning black hole but to her it was a beach, a beautiful, exclusive, private beach.

  Beaches like this were reserved for the Elders but she was special. She was special not because she was old but because she was very, very young.

  The sky was completely dark. It had been dark forever. That was what the Holy Word said. The sky had always been dark and the People had always existed. They lived within the disruptions caused by the interaction of strong floods of gravitons and the space-time matrix. The People fed on the energy differentials between gravity waves. A whole art form depended on subtle gravitonic manipulation of gravity waves to produce different complex waveform cuisine.

  She curled herself in and out of the eleven dimensions tasting the different flavour of each. With her gravitonic senses pulled in tight she could pretend that only she existed. She liked this game. She was the only being in the whole universe and she could do whatever she wanted. She had been created as a loner, to be entirely satisfied with her own company. But it was just a game because she rarely got to do anything she wanted. Her life was circumscribed by instructions and restrictions and she was closely observed.

  When she extended her senses into the higher dimensions, she became part of a universewide communication web. Dancing space-time strings stored and moved the data that made up the culture of the People. She was not permitted to access that data without close guidance. Unstructured learning would confuse her and impede her education. That was what her instructors said.

  She was young and inexperienced and her instructors were old and wise, so she acceded to their wishes. But, sometimes, she would have liked to follow up the interesting ideas and theorems that floated tantalisingly on the edge of her constrained education. She loved to find out. She had been constructed with a need to amass information.

  She had chosen her own name. No one could deny her that privilege. Her name was not a formation of modulated sound frequencies but the product of the interaction of a burst of high-frequency gravitons on the matrix of the ninth dimension raised to the seventeenth power. The fractal pattern produced by the interaction was very pretty, so she had a very pretty name. The raising to the seventeenth power wove strong disharmonics into the matrix, giving a hint of contradiction and rebellion.

  Her instructors ignored the disharmonics in her name. Their view was definitely that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," assuming that they had ever heard of roses, which they had not, or that they had any concept of scent, which they had not.

  The arrival of an instructor ended her rest period. "Access data point binary 7783. We will consider the holy data on the Involution of the Dark."

  She sighed, more religious indoctrination, but did as she was bid. She was young so she was not completely efficient at hiding her thoughts. Her instructor must have noticed her reluctance because he disrupted her slightly, causing enough pain to focus her attention. She had been slapped. Suitably chastised, she concentrated on reordering the data stream in her consciousness.

  The lesson dragged on interminably. The Creed of the Dark, the Catechisms of the Dark, and the Closed Loop of Being. She had been through all this material before. Finally, her instructor pronounced himself satisfied and departed. She was left to bask gently in gravitonic radiation. She spiralled outwards on the radiation current before surfing a gravity wave back into her allotted orbit.

  A portal opened in the same plane of orbit. She drew herself in tightly and adopted the frequency of expectant submission. A portal meant that someone very old was coming, someone very old and very, very important. Her instructors travelled by quantum displacement. Portals were complex to open and maintain so only the most skilled could acquire the knack.

  A very large powerful example of the People emerged from the spinning tear in space-time, an Elder.

  "Ah, there you are young, um, person."

  She gave the frequency of genuflection. She knew who this being was. He ranked so high as to be beyond reproach. He had clearly not bothered to find out her name so he did not know how pretty it was. More importantly, he did not know about those stubborn disharmonics.

  "Your instructors inform me that your performance has been adequate. I have, therefore, given my assent to your deployment. No doubt you have wondered why you were created?"

  Actually, it had never occurred to her. She surfed, she rested, she learnt and she did as she was instructed. What else was there to know? She had not really been asked a question so she did not venture to answer. The Elder was clearly more used to talking than listening.

  "In a way, this whole business is about the whys of life." The Elder paused, lost in his own thoughts. Then he said, "Tell me about the Shadow Worlds."

  She gathered her thoughts. It would not do to waffle. "At each intersection of the eleven planes of existence, echoes of the real universe fade back into the hypothetical quantum multidimensions. These echoes are the Shadow Worlds."

  A textbook answer, she was rather pleased with herself.

  "And the properties of the Shadow Worlds are what?"

  "The closest are mirrors of the real universe. Further away the images in these mirrors become more and more distorted and unreal." She had no idea where this was going.

  "Yes, yes." The Elder made an impatient flick in the space-time matrix that bounced her up and down. "But what is the most consistent change?"

  She thought furiously. "Time slows progressively down along the Shadow Continuum," she said, timidly.

  "To travel back into the Shadow Worlds is to travel backwards in time," he confirmed. "Time travel within the real universe is forbidden. Do you know why?"

  She felt on firm ground and answered confidently. "To avoid a time paradox. Time travel could set up ripples that could destroy everything the People have built, even cause the People themselves never to exist."

  "Correct, but now we need to investigate the past. That is why we created you. You are going to jump down into the Shadow Worlds further than any of the People have ever been. You are going to travel to the furthest reaches of time to confirm the Sacred Truth."

  The Sacred Truth, she repeated it automatically—the Dark is eternal and the People are one with The Dark, now and for evermore.

  "But I don't know how," she started to say but she realised she did know how to travel though the Shadow Worlds. Citing the Sacred Truth had unlocked a block in her head. Her instructors had shown her how and then hidden it from her conscious thought.

  "There is a heresy." The distaste in the Elder's data stream was so strong that it shrivelled her distal body function forcing her to withdraw into a tight sphere. "This heresy denies the Sacred Truth."

  The Elder continued, "It all started with the Shadow Worlds. I should never have permitted their exploration. My only excuse is that it seemed harmless at the time. The first explorations of the nearer Worlds were innocuous enough, showing only shadows of the People at an earlier stage of cultural development. But then came the long jumps that revealed the People living in decompressed matter-based constructs."

  "I don't understand." She was completely confused. Matter was something used to create black holes.

  "When matter is decompressed outside of a black hole, it can assume compl
ex and strange forms that interact by the exchange of tiny charged particles, particles that behave like photons or gravitons." The Elder sent her a personal data stream that showed a bewildering variety of forms and processes. "Research into the Shadow Worlds suggested that the People might have once used these properties to construct living space using a lost science called 'electronics.' "

  This was a new and disturbing thought. The Elder let her process it before continuing.

  "Heretical scholars have used this minor detail to construct an imaginary universe based on decompressed matter. Tenuous wisps of matter that interact to produce a blaze of photons so there is no Dark but only Light."

  She adopted the frequency of great shock but the Elder pressed on with the mode of finishing a distasteful duty.

  "Worse that this, these same heretics postulate that the People themselves were once constructed of decompressed matter. That we have not been eternally as we are now."

  She pulled her wave functions in tight with shock.

  "So now you see why we constructed you. You must jump back into the far past of the Shadow Worlds to demonstrate the truth and put these heresies to the lie. The alternative is a new religious war."

  She had been taught about the religious wars. The People had no logical reason to fight. Certainly, they never fought over resources. The population size was fixed, few died, few were born, and the black holes poured out more energy than could be used. But the People had fought wars; they had fought over religious doctrine and the death rate was awful.

  "Do you have any questions?"

  "Why me? I am new and inexperienced. Surely there are many others older and wiser who could do such an important task?" she asked.

  "So we thought. But every person who has tried this journey has failed to return. The dimensional engineers have become convinced that flexibility rather than experience is the key. So we created you."

  She thought it sounded like a suicide mission but she had been carefully constructed and trained for service so she did not protest. However, she could not resist pointing out the logical flaw in the Elders' plan.

  "Suppose the heresy is true? My mission could have disastrous consequences," she said.

  The Elder struck her hard. "Heresy is by definition untrue. You will prove that and return to witness it. Then I will deal with the core of this conspiracy." The Elder adopted the mode of merciless retribution.

  So this was a matter of faith. To question the Elder's view was to doubt the Word. She decided to keep her questions to practicalities. "How do I return?"

  "You have been loaded with that information already." He spoke a code word releasing the information from storage.

  She reviewed her memory. All the information she needed for the journey was now available to her, including the technique to return to the real universe.

  "I will have to exploit an energy source to open a return portal. That could do immense damage locally."

  The Elder waved a lobe languidly. "That is of no consequence. The natives will only be Shadows. Personally, I doubt they even exist when there is not a true member of the People there to observe them."

  She asked the key question. "When do I go?"

  "Now," he said.

  She entered the Elder's portal. The novelty would have been exciting but she was numb. She was about to leave the universe before she had even seen it. Entry to the vortex was a new sensation. She was cut off from all contact with the People or the external universe. This was like her game, except that this was real. For the first time in her short life, she was truly alone. She was not sure that she entirely liked the feeling when it was for real, but she supposed that she had better get used to it, all things considered.

  The vortex spat her out into the centre of a complex construct. Five equally spaced black holes rotated around a common centre in a single plane. The gravity waves were breathtaking. They crashed over her body, spinning her in surges of energy.

  A dimensional engineer approached.

  "Greetings, Master of Constructs." She spoke to him with the frequency appropriate to a technical specialist.

  " Greetings, Traveller," he said.

  His body flicked between modes from the genial contempt shown to youngsters, to the respect dues to a personal emissary of an Elder. She sympathised with his confusion.

  "I trust that you are ready?" he asked.

  Actually, she was not sure she would ever be ready but there was only one reply possible to that question.

  "Yes," she said.

  Dimensional engineers manoeuvred her into a gravity scaffold rigged vertically above the disk. The engineer tagged her with a data stream and downloaded launch vectors.

  She had a question of her own, "How far am I going?"

  "As far as we can send you," he replied. The Engineer noted her pose of inquiry and elucidated. "In theory, the distance that we could send you is limited only by the power of the energy source. However, in practice there appears to be a barrier that we cannot penetrate."

  "What causes the barrier?" she asked.

  "I hope that you will tell me when you return." He initiated the launch procedure without further preamble.

  She dropped down the plane towards the rotating structure. The buffeting from the gravity waves increased until it was almost unbearable. She could not breathe or, to be more precise, she could not exchange gravitons with the space-time matrix. Despite pulling her function in tight, small sections of her existence were shaved off by gravity disruptions. She reached the exact centre of the spinning construct and the universe disappeared.

  The buffeting stopped and was replaced with nothingness. This was not the emptiness of unoccupied space-time or the tunnel of a portal. This was nothing. She did not appear to be moving. She received nothing; she gave out nothing. There was just nothing. All she could detect was the protective gravitonic field that she generated around herself.

  She paused for a while, just experiencing nothing and wondering what to do. Her internal clock still ticked away but she had no idea whether it meant anything real anymore. Outside possessed no time. It was not only the spatial dimensions that were lacking.

  Checking and rebooting all her various systems occupied her for some little time. She had been badly shaken up but functioned fully. She did not need a diagnostic, however, to confirm that her emotional condition was—terrified!

  One of her receptors picked up a flicker of energy. She ran a diagnostic but the sensor was performing adequately. It really was a flicker of energy. Isolating the input and analysing it gave her something to occupy her mind. The energy source went click, click, click at regular intervals. She analysed, extrapolated, and modelled it. When the model ran, she saw the Shadow Worlds.

  Each click was her body momentarily phasing with a Shadow World before moving on. This was tremendously exciting. She had made her first discovery. The data programmed into her had given the impression that transit between the Shadows was smooth and continuous. This was not so. It was subject to quantum fluctuations just like everything else. Perhaps the Elders were right. Perhaps a young mind was better suited to exploration. Already she had proved her value to the People.

  The Shadow Worlds ticked away endlessly. She tried to extract information from the signal but the small energy quanta carried too little data for her to determine much. Still, it was comforting to have these echoes of the sacred Dark on her strange journey. After a while, she got bored and let the information just flow into a memory store while she played mathematical games with prime numbers to base seventeen. She had a peculiar fondness for this, the most unloved of bases.

  Even the delights of base seventeen faded with enough repetition. She decided to check the data stream that was still clicking remorselessly with quantum delight in the background. The Sacred Dark had gone. In its place was light. The universe was a blaze of light. Her philosophical world picture imploded. She desperately rechecked and recalibrated, but the result was always the same. The Dark had gon
e.

  She metaphorically curled up in a ball and put her head between her knees. She was still in this frame when she arrived.

  Her world went from nothing to—everything.

  Gravity was so weak that she had to work hard to breathe, but her body was bombarded with electromagnetic radiation on a scale that she could barely believe. Floods of photons modulated, coded, radiated, stored, and reradiated in more ways than she could measure. She dropped into a sea of electromagnetic radiation and she struggled and fought. But the more she struggled, the more she drowned. She was dying of energy starvation in a universe of plenty.

  Defying all her instincts, she stopped struggling while she still had some energy left and floated. And float she did. She drifted in some sort of electromagnetic decompressed-matter construct. The construct sustained her function. She did not need huge washes of gravitonic energy to warp space-time around her. The machine took the place of her gravitonic body.

  The wisdom of the Elders was again apparent. An older person would have been unable to adapt to the strange environment, even if they had survived the emotional shock of seeing heresy confirmed. Shadow World travellers were usually selected from among those who showed strong religious orthodoxy. She was not old enough to be orthodox about anything.

  The machine construct was diffuse, a complex of multiple lines that crisscrossed through energy nodes. Streams of coded data flowed backward and forward. She considered her options. The safe strategy would be to recoil back home immediately to report. There was easily enough energy in the complex to power-launch. But that coded data was so tempting. She could learn so much.

  Another issue nagged at the back of her mind. If she left now she would soon be in the presence of the Elder, telling him that the heretics were right and that the Sacred Truth was wrong. How would he react? Probably by destroying the messenger as a closet heretic. It did not occur to her to simply lie and tell the Elder what he wanted to hear.

  So she stayed and learnt. The data was surprisingly easy to decode but the messages inside were almost meaningless. The concepts were so strange and alien. She intercepted and decoded, stored and cross-indexed, analysed and interpreted and built her conjectures. Before long, she had made another exciting discovery.