Vacuum Diagrams

Sura reached out and, with one finger, touched the framework cube. The screen blanked and filled up with a magnified image of the cube; Sura snatched back her finger, startled.

Erwal laughed. “Don’t be afraid. The panels won’t hurt you.”

“The box is the Eighth Room.”

“That’s right.” Erwal touched a blank part of the image and the circles returned. “I think this shows where the Room is, you see. It’s following this circular path around the bright light. And here’s — something else — following the sixth circle.”

“What’s the bright light?”

“I don’t know.”

Sura touched the bright point; it expanded to show a dim globe, yellowing and pocked by huge dark spots. “Do you think we should go there?”

Erwal shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Sura restored the image of circles and counted. “Nine circles. We’re on the third, and this other marking is on the sixth. But the other circles are empty. I wonder why.”

“I don’t know,” Erwal said. “Maybe there were things there originally, which were destroyed. Or taken away.”

“What could they have been?”

“Oh, Sura, how should I know?”

“I’m sorry.” Sura studied the picture. “Well, then; there seems to be only one place to go.”

“The sixth circle?”

“Yes. But how do we get there?”

Erwal smiled at her, slid her hands into the mittens once more, and flexed her fingers. A feeling of power, of release, swept over her. “That’s the easy part,” she said slowly. “I just close my eyes—”

The ship had waited a million years for this.

It spread its sycamore-seed wings wide and soared through the wreckage of the Solar System, barely restrained by the tentative will of the woman at the controls.

Erwal and Sura felt waves of motion-echoes. It was, thought Erwal, like being a child again and riding the shoulders of a lively mummy-cow.

Sura laughed and clung to Erwal’s neck.

Within minutes the voyage was over; the ship, cooling, folded its wings.

The women stared up at the view panels.

At the heart of the sixth-circle complex was a single, immensely large, flattened sphere of gas. Much of the gas glowed a dull red, the color of burnt wood, although here and there fires still raged within the atmosphere, blurred patches of yellow or white. Three smaller globes, equally spaced, circled the center sphere; their panel images bristled with detail. Further out there was a ring of debris, broad and softly sparkling; Erwal wondered if there had once been still more of these globes, now long since destroyed.

She bade the ship slide around the limb of the fireball. She watched the burning landscape unfold beneath her, and shivered with a sudden sense of scale. “Sura, that thing is immense.”

“What is it? Is it a sun?”

“Perhaps. But it is far bigger than our Sun ever was. And it seems to be nearly burnt out now.”

“Perhaps it lit up the smaller globes,” Sura said brightly. “Perhaps people lived on the other globes, and set fire to this one to give them warmth. Erwal, is that possible?”

“Anything’s possible,” Erwal murmured.

The ship had dipped so close that it had flattened into a landscape of glowing gas. Erwal felt a sudden thrill of apprehension. Without hesitating she pulled the ship up and away from the Sunworld.

“Let’s go see the smaller globes,” she said to Sura.

Beneath Saturn’s ruined atmosphere, ancient defense systems stirred.

Erwal brought the ship to the nearest of the globes. Soon the little world filled a panel; from pole to pole it was encrusted with detail, so that its surface reminded Erwal of fine leatherwork — or, perhaps, of a cow-tree overrun with lichen and moss. She spread her wings and swooped close over the surface: a miniature landscape rushed with exhilarating speed beneath her bow.

Sura clapped her hands, childlike.

Erwal studied the panel. Now she saw that the surface was coated with buildings: they were all about the scale of the Eighth Room, but they came in every shape Erwal could imagine — domes, cubes, pyramids, cylinders and spires — and there were bowls and cup-shaped amphitheaters lying open to the sky. Arcs and loops of cable, fixed to the buildings, lay draped over the landscape, knitting it all together like some immense tapestry.

Nowhere did Erwal see an open space, a single blade of grass. And nowhere did she see any sign of people.

With immense care she bade the ship settle to the top of one of the broader buildings. Sura wanted to climb out and explore — perhaps see what was inside the mysterious buildings — but the ship’s door would not open.

“I think the ship knows what’s best for us,” Erwal said. “Maybe we shouldn’t go outside. It might be too hot — or too cold — or perhaps it’s dangerous for us in some other way we can’t imagine.”

“But it’s so frustrating!”

Erwal frowned. “Well, perhaps there’s something I can do about that.” She slid her hands into her mittens. “Here’s something I found a few days ago. Come and see.”

The panel over the control table showed the blank exterior of a bubble-shaped building; a circular door led to an intriguing — but darkened — interior. Now Erwal moved her thumbs, raised her wrists — and the field of view of the window panel moved forward. It was as if the darkened doorway was approaching.

She felt Sura clutch the back of her chair. The girl said, “Erwal, are we moving?”

“No,” Erwal said slowly. “But the picture is. Do you understand?” She waited nervously for the girl’s reaction. Oddly, of all the miracles Erwal had encountered, she had found this one of the most difficult to absorb. So she was in a craft that traveled through emptiness: well, birds flew through the air, did they not?… And it was well known that humans had once built such crafts as routinely as Damen now built a fire. Even the Friend’s visions were reminiscent of dreams she had endured before, particularly since the final disappearance of Teal. So these phenomena were just extensions of the familiar.

But a window was just a hole in a teepee, with a flap to gum down when the wind rose. Obviously every time you looked through a window you would see the same scene.

The idea that a window, without moving, could show different scenes — so that it was as if she were looking through the eyes of another — was beyond comprehension.

But Sura stared at the unfolding image, eyes empty of wonder. She said: “Very nice. Can you make it go any faster?”

Deflated, Erwal sighed. Maybe she should give up trying to work these things out, and accept the windows, as Sura evidently did, for what they were.

Useful magic.

For the next hour and more they roamed vicariously through the abandoned streets of the city-world. This had obviously once been a world of people — they recognized chairs, bedrooms, tables, all clearly human-sized. But there was no sign of humanity: no pictures on the walls, no decoration anywhere, no curtains or rugs beyond the severely functional. And building after building was filled with huge devices, quite unrecognizable to the two women: vast cylinders lying on their side or pointing through apertures at the sky, and rooms full of gray, coldly anonymous boxes.

Everywhere was darkness and — Erwal felt — coldness. The building-world had been left neat, perfect — not a chair overturned — and quite empty.

Sura, squatting on the floor, wrapped her arms about herself and shivered. “I don’t think I would have liked to have lived here.”

“Nor I.” Erwal wondered about the purpose of all these banks of machines and boxes. The devices lacked the simple, human utility of the lockers she had found on the ship; these machines were brooding, almost threatening. Perhaps this was a world of weapons, of war.