Climbing that ladder had taken almost the entirety of Gedron’s life, and, now that he had arrived at the top, he felt as if he should be more satisfied with his achievement than he actually was. As he considered the choices he had made to sit in the sapphire throne a parade of images flashing through his mind: Family events he had missed, friends he had ignored, holes left in his heart by stillborn memories that now could never be.
And now, Garin was missing.
Trielle had done her best to assure Gedron and his wife Dyana that Garin had left for completely legitimate reasons, but the lack of specificity in Trielle’s words, coupled with her barely concealed discomfort as she delivered them, left Gedron with the clear impression that she was holding something back. Garin was of age, and the laws of the Conclave afforded him the right to take his life in whatever direction he desired, but Gedron still wished that he had at least said goodbye before departing. Still, he was not surprised.
If my father had missed as much of my life as I have of Garin’s, I’d have done the same thing myself.
The writhing streaks of fire within the Great Psychochryst began to flare as the device performed its initial calibration. Gedron took a deep breath, striving to calm his mind in anticipation of the other Hierophants’ arrival. It would not do to show weakness when their minds were linked in Conclave, not given the task that lay ahead of them.
A few moments later Erskilion of Garuda, the Photocanth, entered the chamber. His golden breastplate bore the Crest of the Dual Waves, and his headpiece was adorned with a clear crystal pillar that crackled with trapped lightning. The Heirophant of Electromagnetism, the Photocanth was responsible for maintaining the Conclave’s power and entertainment networks. His throne was hewn from a single topaz, inscribed with the equations governing light and radiation.
The Chromatocron, Heirophant of the Strong Nuclear Force, entered next. His breastplate was of a deep red, bearing the Insignia of the Hexapolar Chromatic Field. Upon his head was a great shimmering disk that shifted between a spectrum of all colors and a pellucid whiteness. His throne was carved from three rubies of differing hue, each inscribed with the gauge equations describing the chromodynamic interactions that were the source of matter’s fundamental cohesion. The philosophical leader of the Conclave, he was responsible for both the psychological forces that bound society together and the ongoing vitality of the Three Suns themselves, the physical heart of Conclave space.
Human by descent, his name was Tauron of Latis. Once Gedron had counted him a friend, but after Tauron’s elevation to hierophant their relationship had soured. Now they subsisted in a weary competition, circling each other like moons in slowly decaying orbits, each waiting for the other to fall from the sky. Gedron sighed. Given the subject of today’s deliberations, it would be impossible to avoid working with him.
Immediately following him was a small, furtive gelasian named Silindii, the current Ouranos Radii, Heirophant of the Weak Nuclear Force. As the representative of the cosmological force of transformation, the Ouranos Radii was the ultimate overseer of commerce, trade, and the biocomputational sciences. Strangely enough he also was responsible for the maintenance of the suns, as the fusion reactions that sustained them resulted from an interplay between both Strong and Weak Nuclear Forces. He entered the chamber wearing the emerald breastplate of his office upon which the Gem of the Four Transformations glistened with churning, clashing colors. Upon his head was a dull crown edged by two sharp spikes of transparent crystal, a shimmering energy field that split and shifted the ambient light like a desert mirage dancing between them. He crossed the chamber quickly and ascended his throne, shaped from a curious amalgam of emeralds and gold and inscribed with the equations of nucleonic transformation.
Finally the last Heirophant entered the chamber. Known simply as the Entrope, he did not dress in the same manner as the others but instead wore a long black robe unadorned by any symbol or device. A dark cowl covered his head, partially concealing the gaunt and withered deathmask of his face, and in his hand he carried a bone-white staff whose tip burned with sickly green holographic fire.
Representative of Entropy, the relentless cosmic force of disorder that one day would sweep the works of the Conclave into the abyss, his position carried with it no societal responsibility. Rather, his role was to gaze, day after day, into the entropy clouds and draw from their chaotic violence some principle of guidance with which to direct the Heirophants’ deliberations. Even his throne was built to embody that chaos, a throne not of gems, but of polished white bone inscribed with a scrawl of philosophical notations that embodied the essence of pure meaninglessness, the eventual state of all things.
Unlike the others, who had attained their positions through personal merit, no one knew from whence the Entrope came. Gedron had heard rumors from the others: rumors of a secret chamber beneath the Omegahedron where even now a child was slowly being prepared as the Entrope’s successor, rumors of a pool of green fluid that suspended the faculties and poured information gathered from the entropy clouds directly into the brain, allowing the Entrope to commune directly with the destructive forces within them.
Gedron shuddered as the Entrope ascended his throne, remembering times in conclave when the Entrope had seemed to reach through the Great Psychochryst into his mind, infecting it with bleak, meaningless thoughts that had threatened to shred the very foundations of his sanity. While he knew abstractly that dissolution was the ultimate destiny of the universe, something within him still fought back and refused to accept it. Yet the Entrope seemed to embrace and glory in that dissolution. Gedron disliked the other Heirophants to some degree, but at least he understood their ambitions and motives. The Entrope, however, was incomprehensible, even frightening, to him.
The psychochryst flashed one last time and Gedron felt the collective thoughtspace of the Heirophants form around him, veiling his perceptions in a mist of pure information. As he watched, softly gleaming halos that pulsed with rippling bands of color condensed from that mist around each of the Heirophant’s heads, their emotions and thoughts given visible form. In the strange half-light cast by the halos each face seemed to unfold with new dimensions and nuances of meaning. Only the Entrope remained inscrutable, his face as still as a deathmask, his halo a featureless black.
“Colleagues, let us join our minds in conclave!”
Transmitted through the Great Psychochryst, the Chromatocron’s call echoed in Gedron’s head like a memory of thunder. It was soon followed by a rustling murmur of assent from the other Heirophants. Satisfied, the Chromatocron raised his right hand and the infographic surfaces within the chamber flashed, caught fire, and lit up with holographic radiance. The walls of the Omegahedron seemed to unfold around them. There was a sense of immense velocity, a vision of the blackness of space rushing past them like a dark wind, and then, brilliance.
The five thrones now appeared to stand on a ring of polished obsidian that slowly rotated at the very center of the three suns’ orbits. Gedron was unsurprised; this was the typical place where deliberations began. But as the dark lifeless corpse of Vai slowly rotated into view an involuntary chill passed down his spine, and the color of his halo turned icy blue.
“You are disturbed, I see.”
The words of the Chromatochron slid into his mind.
“And you are not?” answered Gedron, injecting a strong note of confidence into the transmission.
Focusing his attention inward, he forced the unease from his mind. As he did so his halo shifted in response, a deep red hue creeping along its outer rim and replacing the blue. It was time to take charge. Gedron turned his head, silently acknowledging the other Heirophants, and began his report.
“As is painfully clear to everyone, Vai has suffered a catastrophic failure of stellar energy production. I have spend the last few days examining the stellar corpse with all available instrument arrays, and our infochrysts quickly determined that the cause is at once simple, devastating, and, unfortunately
, not unexpected. Given its current mass, Vai simply does not have enough fuel left to sustain fusion.”
As Gedron finished transmitting his thoughts, his halo began to shine a deep gold, a color denoting both the gravity of the subject matter and the control he was now gaining over the attention of the Heirophants.
The Photocanth glared at Gedron, his halo a shifting combination of irenic green and accusatory vermilion.
“And how, might I ask, has this occurred?” he transmitted. “Prior to this event I, and the peoples of the Conclave, had understood that the three suns had enough fuel to last for centuries at the least.”
Gedron sighed, his halo shifting to a dull silver as he steeled himself for what was to come.
“Unfortunately,” he transmitted, “that has never been true. We have known that this event would occur within decades for some time now.”
Though he transmitted no thoughts in response, the blush of fiery reds and cold blues that swept through the Photocanth’s halo betrayed his shock and confusion. His face remained impassive, but his eyes swept about the room, surveying the unchanged halos of the Chromatocron and the Ouranos Radii.
“You should not be surprised that you were not told this,” transmitted the Chromatocron, his halo shifting to a pleasant green tone. “After all, yours is not the force that powers the suns. Indeed, we made certain that you did not know. How else could we be sure that knowledge of this was kept from the populace?”
The Photocanth was silent, his warring emotions sending brief slivers of sharp color through his halo.
“Very well,” he transmitted curtly after a few moments. “And yet I will ask again. How is this possible? After all, surely you know the projected natural lifecycle of main-sequence stars. Long before Vai’s fuel was exhausted it should have undergone the visible alterations brought about by helium fusion.”
The Photocanth gestured briefly and a small, furiously burning model of a main-sequence star sprang to life in the center of the chamber. Another gesture and its evolution was accelerated a billionfold, the bright yellow orb rapidly swelling into a dull red giant before evaporating into a tiny, dense white dwarf.
“Vai,” he added softly, “did not die in this way. Rather, it seems to have been snuffed out all at once, like a candle.” As the Photocanth transmitted those words the white dwarf flickered and vanished like a flame assailed by the wind.
“You assume much.”
The words had a peculiar quality, seeming at once uncertain and forceful. Gedron turned slighty and saw the halo of the Ouranos Radii spark with muted tones of white and violet.
“Surely you have been aware of the way in which these stars have been manipulated, their cores stirred by gravitic beams to generate an even mix of fuel. You must know this for it is your energy production needs that this process serves. Surely you know of the stellar mining, the removal of rich elements from the star’s core for the development of the Conclave’s outer worlds. How could you expect these things to have no effect on stellar evolution? No, my friend, there is nothing natural about these stars. Not anymore.”
“Indeed,” transmitted the Photocanth, his halo now shifting all the way to an angry vermillion. “I am well aware of this, but still fail to see how this could effect the lifespan of the star so profoundly.”
The Photocanth gestured again and a web of complex calculations appeared in the air. The primary equations described the thermal equilibrium of Vai, the point at which gravity’s inward pull was counterbalanced by the heat generated by fusing hydrogen at the star’s core. A number of ancillary equations were arrayed around it, feeding historical statistics about the various elements mined from Vai’s core over its lifespan into the main argument. The results were clear. The effect of this mining on Vai should have been minor.
Gedron raised his hand in response and a final term inserted itself into the equations. Variables shifted and numbers slid as the model integrated the new data until finally a new balance was struck, an equation that described a star with a vastly shorter life.
“Neutronium,” transmitted Gedron flatly, his halo flashing with gold-streaked blackness. “The missing variable is neutronium. It forms the core elements of all laridian rings. Where else could we have obtained it except the cores of the three suns? Ever since we won our independence from the Alapsari, our society has depended on a small but constant supply of neutronium forged from stellar plasma. Observe!”
Gedron issued a mental command and the cold, lifeless orb of Vai erupted into brilliant light. He again raised his hands, this time bringing them apart in a quick motion, and the now blazing sun swelled to gargantuan size, the four neutronium forges that orbited its equator quickly becoming visible. Spherical metallic constructs the size of small moons, each forge contained the compression vessels used to turn stellar plasma into primary fluid neutronium as well as the pion phase reactors needed to convert this unstable substance into its longer-lived crystalline form. A titanic laridian ring was affixed to the starward surface of each forge, its gravitic beam continually siphoning dense material from the star’s radiative layer and feeding it to the compression vessels.
“I have returned this image to a point over three millennia ago,” transmitted Gedron. “As we have extracted more and more plasma the overall mass of the star has diminished, decreasing the pressure at the core.”
Gedron brought his right hand down in a slow cutting motion and half of the star fell away to reveal Vai’s inner structure, a thin shell of convecting gases surrounding a much thicker layer of near-solid plasma denser than gold with an orb of fusion-fire throbbing at its heart. It was immediately apparent that this burning core was slowly shrinking.
“If Vai had been allowed to age via natural processes,” he continued, “the neutronium mining would have already lead to its death. The mass limit needed to sustain helium fusion was crossed two hundred years ago. To prevent this the College of Gravitists initiated a process of stellar agitation using the neutronium forge mass drivers to distribute the helium ash across the body of the star, providing more raw hydrogen to burn.”
As he spoke the image of the star responded, hydrogen and helium gradients now highlighted in hues of red and yellow. As the core fires shrank almost to the point of extinguishment, the neutronium forges shifted, releasing their columns of stellar plasma to fall back to the star’s surface. A few moments later, beams of spiralling blue force stabbed downward from each forge, driving deep into the stellar core, mixing the hydrogen and helium throughout the bulk of the star. As the gradients dissipated, the fires in the star flared and burned anew.”
“Yes,” snapped the Photocanth, his halo a mix of boiling red hues. “Even the children know this. But it does not explain the current crisis.”
Gedron’s halo flared blue and gold, but he did not reply. Instead he gently pointed toward the image of Vai. Despite the now near-even distribution of hydrogen throughout the star, the fires had again begun to burn lower. Though more of the stellar hydrogen was now available for burning, the inevitable buildup of helium could not be halted. The Heirophants watched as the helium to hydrogen ratios inexorably rose and the core fires shrank in response until, finally, they died entirely and the star went dark.
All understood. A threshold had been passed from which there may be no return.
“What of the other stars?” asked the Ouranos Radii. “How close are they to a similar fate?”
“Closer than I would like to comtemplate,” replied Gedron solemnly, “but they may have as many as two hundred years left. They are smaller stars, but are younger overall, and were not as heavily mined for neutronium as was Vai. Thus their mass has not suffered the same rate of depletion.”
“And what do the infochrysts say as to the possibility of reignition?” asked the Ouranos Radii.
“The lesser infochrysts were silent regarding this,” transmitted Gedron, “and so I brought the matter to the Rhamachrond device.”
At this the other Heirophants i
mperceptibly leaned forward, their halos flushing with inquisitive blues and greens.
“While it could not offer certainty,” continued Gedron, “the device indicated a small but real possibility that Vai’s energy output could temporarily be restored if we were to launch a massive circumferential gravitic volley from the Conclave’s largest ships. Such a blast would almost certainly hypercompress the core and initiate helium fusion. Once the compression is achieved, there is a chance, but only a chance, that the Neutronium Forge mass drivers alone could sustain the compression and keep the star burning. There is considerable uncertainty as to the exact hydrogen to helium ratio at the core, and small variances drastically affect the outcome. There is also,” he added, “the issue of enhanced entropic activity. This would be the largest single discharge of gravitic energy since the Philosoph War, and we would do well to remember the cost. The backlash might even be great enough to overwhelm the influence of the other suns, perhaps even the Guard.”
“But if the ignition were successful,” transmitted the Photocanth, his halo shifting to a hopeful, pastel mauve. “If Vai’s radiation pressure could be restored…”
“Yes,” transmitted Gedron, his halo fading to a deep, almost black, shade of grey. “But success is far from certain, and failure will cost us even more worlds then Vai’s demise.”
“As will a failure to act,” replied the Chromatocron crisply. “Do not think that our society’s current complacence will last if we do not move swiftly.”
The Chromatocron’s halo grew in brilliance as his thoughts echoed throughout the chamber, a filigree of golden threads shot through with darkness. “I too have consulted with the infochrysts, running patterns and models of the social ramifications of both possibilities. The processing load was great, and even great Nagmochron was slowed by the noetic burden of the simulations, but, unlike the data you have presented, High Gravitist, the results were clear.”
The Sovereign Road Page 7