Schild’s Ladder

Mariama said, "I don’t know what she’s thinking. That they’ll crucify her outside, if she dares to emerge without a solution? Or maybe it’s more personal. Either way, I don’t think she can hold out that long. It’s too open-ended, and she’s taking it all too personally. She’s already been through enough. Will you try to talk some sense into her?"

"Sure."

"Thanks." Mariama smiled. "It’ll come better from you. I’d sound too much like someone who’s simply angling for her job."

Tchicaya wondered for a moment if he’d misunderstood her, but she’d managed to be oblique without the slightest hint of ambiguity.

"Why do you want her job?" he said.

"I’m ready for this," Mariama declared. "It’s exactly what I came to the Rindler to do."

"You came to the Rindler to work with Tarek on Planck worms!"

"I came to the Rindler to give people a choice," she said. "There are limits to the way that can be achieved, complications that I never anticipated, but working with the Colonists to find the solution would be an entirely honorable compromise."

Tchicaya shook his head in mock admiration. "So you get to live exactly like a Yielder, while retaining your Preservationist credentials? Very slick." He made it sound like a joke, but he was angry. He could forgive her the almost tongue-in-cheek self-serving spin. What he hated was the fact that she’d set her sights so far beyond his own, again.

He wasn’t ready to stay. He couldn’t live among the Colonists with her, when the arrival of every other near-sider was an eternity away. He’d planned to meet Rasmah on the other side of the border. He needed to see the stars at least one more time.

"You’ll go mad," he said.

Mariama laughed. "That’s what my mother used to say, about travelers. Wandering from planet to planet, until they could no longer remember their own names."

"Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? No wonder you couldn’t resist." Tchicaya’s anger was fading, but the ache beneath it remained. He reached out and put his arms around her. There would never be an irrevocable parting, so long as they were both alive, but the gulf she was planning to create between them was the widest and the strangest he’d ever faced.

"What will I tell the version of you next to my kidney? She’ll think I made you walk the plank."

"She’ll understand. I’ll give you a messenger for her."

He pulled away, and held her at arm’s length. "What is it with you, that you always have to go further than anyone else?"

"What is it with you, that you always have to tag along?" Mariama ran her hand over his scalp, then she stood and walked to the doorway.

She stopped and turned back to face him. "Before I go, do you want to make love?"

Tchicaya was speechless. She had never once spoken of the possibility, since he’d willed an end to their first chance on Turaev.

"Now that I’m more your type," she said, spreading her arms wide, as if showing off some enhancement to her appearance.

"More my type?" he replied stupidly. He couldn’t detect any change in her.

Mariama smiled. "Acorporeal."

Tchicaya threw his pillow at her. She retreated, laughing.

He lay back on the bed, relieved. Nothing could have lived up to four thousand years of waiting. Except perhaps an original theorem.

Cass stood on the observation deck, listening patiently to Tchicaya’s appeal. Mariama had made herself scarce, and even the Colonists had finally noticed that their living legend began to emit incomprehensible streams of vendeks if they didn’t give her an occasional day off.

She’d done enough, he said. No sane person blamed her for her lack of omniscience. The Mimosans' plan to accelerate the far side had been ingenious, and she’d struggled valiantly to try to make it work, but the rules had changed, the prize she’d been reaching for had retreated into the distance. Other people could carry on in her place; the end result would be the same. And if she needed personal redemption, couldn’t that come from passing on her knowledge of the far side to someone rested, someone fully prepared for a second long haul?

Cass appeared calm, even slightly distracted. Tchicaya wondered if she’d taken in his words, if he should repeat himself from the beginning.

"I want to go swimming," she said suddenly.

"Swimming?"

Cass nodded earnestly.

"All right."

Tchicaya began to gesture at the scape, but she grabbed his arm. "In real water," she insisted fiercely. "Real molecules of water."

Tchicaya unclenched her grip on him, and held her by the shoulders. "Okay. As soon as we get out, you can do that."

"I swim in real water; that’s who I am." Her face contorted, and she emitted a long, anguished moan. "I didn’t want to be changed this much!"

"I’ll help you," he promised. "I’ll get you out of here."