Schild’s Ladder

Stairs led down from the observation deck to a walkway. The ship was made up of sixteen separate modules arranged in a ring; the tethers joining them to the hub were not traversable, but there were umbilicals linking adjacent modules. Once they’d left the shelter of the deck behind, Tchicaya could see the engines sitting at the hub as dark outlines clustered at the zenith. They were unlikely to be used again for some time; if the border suddenly accelerated, it would probably move too fast for the Rindler to escape, and everyone onboard would evacuate the way they’d arrived: as data. Even if the ship was destroyed without warning, though, most people would only lose a few hours' memories. Tchicaya had instructed his Qusp to transmit daily backups, and no doubt Yann was doing something similar, having escaped from the Mimosan vacuum once already that way.

The view from the narrow walkway was disorienting; without an expanse of deck imposing a visual horizon, the rim of the border became the most compelling cue. Tchicaya began to feel as if he was walking inside a huge horizontal centrifuge, hovering an indeterminate distance above an ocean shrouded in white fog. Any attempt to replace this mildly strange hypothesis with the idea that he was actually keeping pace with a shock wave six hundred light-years wide did nothing to improve his steadiness.

"The factions have names now," Yann began.

Tchicaya groaned. "That’s a bad sign. There’s nothing worse than a label, to cement people’s loyalties."

"And nothing worse than loyalties cementing while we’re still in the minority. We’re Yielders, they’re Preservationists."

"Yielders? Whose idea was that?"

"I don’t know. These things just seem to crystallize out of the vacuum."

"With a little seeding from the spin doctors. I suppose it’s a step up from being Suicidal Deviants, or Defeatist Traitors."

"Oh, those terms are still widely used, informally."

Without warning, Tchicaya’s legs buckled. He knelt on the walkway and closed his eyes. He said, "It’s all right. Just give me a second."

Yann suggested mildly, "If the view’s that unsettling, why not paste something over it?"

Tchicaya scowled. His vestibular system wanted him to curl up on the ground, block out all the contradictory visual signals, and wait for normality to be restored. He spread his arms slightly, reassuring himself that he was prepared to take action to recover his balance at short notice. Then he opened his eyes and rose to his feet. He took a few deep breaths, then started walking again.

"Both stances remain purely theoretical," Yann continued. "The Preservationists are no more prepared to erase the Mimosan vacuum than we are to adapt to it. But the team working on the Planck worms has just attracted a fresh batch of recruits, and they’re running experiments all the time. If it ever does come down to a technological race, it’s sure to be a close one."

Tchicaya contemplated this prospect glumly. "Whoever first gains the power to impose their own view decides the issue? Isn’t that the definition of barbarism?" They’d reached the stairs that led up to the deck of the next module. He gripped the rails and ascended shakily, relieved to be surrounded by the clutter of ordinary objects.

They emerged at the edge of a garden, engineered in a style Tchicaya hadn’t seen before. Stems coiled in elaborate helices, sprouting leaves tiled with hexagonal structures that glinted like compound eyes. According to the ship, the plants had been designed to thrive in the constant borderlight, though it was hard to see how that could have required some of their more exotic features. Still, the embellishments did not seem overdone here. Purebred roses or orchids would have been cloyingly nostalgic in the middle of interstellar space.

There were more people in the garden than on the observation deck. When strangers caught his eye, Tchicaya smiled and offered whatever gestures his Mediator deemed appropriate to greet them in passing, but he wasn’t ready for formal introductions, sorting everyone into opposing camps.

"Isn’t there a level where both sides can still cooperate?" he asked. "If we can’t agree on the theory that’s going to underpin whatever action finally gets taken, we might as well all give up and join the wagon train to Andromeda."

Yann was apologetic. "Of course. Don’t let my moaning give you too bleak a picture. We haven’t reached the point of hostility for its own sake; we still pool resources for the basic science. It’s only the goal-directed experiments that make things a little frosty. When Tarek started scribing graphs at the border that he believed stood a good chance of being viable proto-worms, we cut him out of all the theoretical discussion groups and data sharing agreements — though none of us thought he was in any danger of succeeding. Since then, he’s backed off slightly, and agreed to limit himself to graphs that can test his hunches without running amok if they happen to confirm them."