*Best translation: the entity describes its species as ‘Those whose appearance is to the real self as the tip of a cone is to the wide, round base.’*
/Huh?/
*The precise meaning is still emerging.*
/It looks like a fried egg. What does that description have to do with a fried egg?/
Charlene explained.
/// The egg is the tip of the cone.
Its real self, its real being if you could see it,
is much fuller, more complexly dimensioned.
The base of the cone. ///
/It doesn’t look even remotely like a cone./
/// Not literally, perhaps. ///
The quarx detoured into a brief discourse with the stones. Finally it spoke again.
/// The stones believe it is a hyperdimensional cone.
What we see is merely a cross-section of its body
where it intersects our spacetime continuum. ///
/You got all that out of what we just heard? This thing is a living...hyperdimensional?...cone? What does that mean? Does it have a name?/
/// The stones are still working on that. ///
Bandicut nodded dizzily. He wondered if his friends were seeing these tortured landscape images, too. Were his translator-stones communicating with theirs, conveying all that they were unraveling? He saw new movement in the jagged mountain landscape—twinkling movement, of indistinct shapes. Other hypercones? He heard something like...a buzz of conversation? There was a rhythm to the sound, and to the movements. The pulse of life on this being’s world?
The hypercone spoke again, and now he managed to make out some of the sounds. Its voice was like sand flowing down a series of resonating steps, changing pitch with each step: “Ehh-h-hed...g-gonn-nn-t-to-g-get-t-t hhh-helll-ellp-p-p-p.”
Bandicut blinked. /Did you catch that? It sounded like—/
/// Ed-gone-to-get-help? ///
/Yes. Is that its mission?/
*Attempting clarification,* whispered the stones.
Bandicut closed his eyes, trying to focus. Then:
*We have refined the translation. That is its name. You may try to speak.*
Bandicut blinked his eyes open. The hypercone’s outer rim was now blue. What do you say to a fried egg? “Hello...Ed-gone-to-get-help. Would it...be okay if I called you ‘Ed’?”
The cone shivered faintly. “Eh-hd. Yeh-hss. Long-ng naaame difffff-icult-t.”
Bandicut drew a slow breath. “Yes. My name is...John.”
“Johhhnnn.” The cone sounded like a French horn, full of harmonics, as it repeated Bandicut’s name. Its outer portion shimmered.
“That’s right.” Bandicut paused. So much to ask. What first? “Where...do you come from, Ed? And what is it you came to speak about? To ask help for?”
The cone started to quiver. “S-sshowww...”
The visual images became steadier, but at the same time began to glow more brightly. The dull orange and maroons of the mountains turned luminous, becoming intense with heat, difficult to look at. Fire licked at the sky overhead. The beings twinkling along the rock faces, beings whose shapes he could not comprehend, were moving more quickly now. There was a dissonant buzzing in the air.
/// I sense distress. ///
/Definitely. But why? /
/// Uncertain...///
Bandicut became aware of Antares whispering, “There is great fear. I don’t know of what. But those...whatever they’re called...”
“Cones. Hypercones.”
Antares’s eyes suddenly filled with concern; her hazy gold irises dilated into a thin gold ring surrounding large, jet-black pupils. “They fear for their lives.”
Ed began changing color again. The quivering beneath Bandicut’s hand intensified. The deep blue of the outer ring was developing a magenta swirl. Ed spoke again, breathily, with a sound like a large pot of thick liquid boiling. “Day-hay-hayn-jerr. Dayn-jerr.”
“Danger?” Bandicut asked. “What kind of danger?”
“Dan-gerr ffrom the s-skyyy.”
Bandicut felt Antares’s hand tighten on his arm, as the sky behind the mountains flickered and danced. He glimpsed what looked like a sun, roiling and fuming. That doesn’t look too stable, he thought.
“Ed? Is that sun a danger to your homeworld?”
The cone trembled. “Alll...alll in dangerr. S-s-sun sh-shaking-ng. Many-y-y suns-s-s.”
“Why? Why is your sun shaking?”
The creature made a rumbling sound. “Intrrrud-errrs!”
“And you came—?”
“Seek-k help-p.”
Bandicut shook his head. “I don’t understand. What can we do to help? We don’t even know where your world is.”
Ed rumbled again, but the sound was softer, and Ed was becoming thinner under Bandicut’s hand. “Neeed-d help-p.” And then he twinkled and vanished.
Bandicut straightened up, blinking. He rubbed his tingling hand. “Did you all see—?”
“Ed is gone,” Antares said quietly. “I no longer feel his presence.”
“That’s because it—he—whatever—was making a stretch to become visible here, and he couldn’t do it for long,” Li-Jared said, blinking like an owl.
A pale column of light appeared, and turned into Jeaves. “Your suppositions are correct. Now that you’ve met Ed-gone-to-get-help, you probably have even more questions. May I try to explain?”
Bandicut drew a deep breath. “All right. Let’s have it.”
The robot’s gaze took in each of the company. “Please sit.” Jeaves gestured, and behind them, a glint of blue light expanded horizontally, then vanished. In its place was a flat bench. “Let’s start with the long view...”
*
Jeaves displayed Starmaker, the Orion Nebula, overhead. “Under any circumstances, a stellar nursery is a dangerous place. The birth of a star releases enough energy and radiation to destroy just about any inhabited world in the vicinity. Of course, there usually aren’t civilizations in stellar nurseries—not by your standards, where biolife such as you would have evolved. Ed’s world may be exceptional; we think it is located in the Starmaker Nebula. But it is apparently in grave danger.”
“Is that why you got involved with the nebula?” Bandicut asked.
“Not initially. Long before we encountered Ed, or started experiencing hypergrav disturbances here, we knew that something out there was killing stars. It was happening deeper in the galaxy, and has been marching steadily outward.”
“Killing stars?” Antares echoed. “How can you kill a star? And what’s killing them?”
“We don’t know. But when you kill a star in a nursery like this—well, let me show you.” The image changed slightly. “This is a recording made about three hundred years ago.” Jeaves’s pointer moved to the edge of the nebula, where a star suddenly flared to a brilliance that turned the sky to daytime.
“Hrahh, supernova,” murmured Ik.
“Exactly. A young star named Blue Hope died, hundreds of millions of years before its time. And then—” Jeaves pointed out smaller, cascading explosions “—it took several other stars with it. And who knows how many planets with fledgling life, in outlying areas.”
Antares squinted in puzzlement. “You speak of the stars as if they were...uhll...what exactly do you mean by...star life?”
“What do I—?” Jeaves’s gaze flickered for a moment. “Oh, dear. You know, don’t you—that stars, most of them, are living beings?”
Antares shook her head.
Jeaves’s gaze swept the company. “Living—sentient—?”
“Okay, hold on,” Bandicut said. “Just wait a minute, okay?” He looked around at the others, then back at Jeaves. “Are you saying, sentient, like thinking? Like we could communicate with a star?”
Jeaves seemed to consider his words carefully. “In principle, yes. Communication would be very difficult. However, I myself did once, under most extreme circumstances, brush the living thought of a star. It was an astonish
ing experience.”
Air hissed from Antares’s lips, as Bandicut whispered to the quarx, /I feel you twitching, Charlie. Do you know something about this?/ Was he about to tap into the crazy-quilt of the quarxian memory? Charlie/Charlene existed in a series of brief, closely connected lives, and his/her memory was at times a patchwork of ancient quarx-memory and recent history.
/// I may have...once.
This is bringing back echoes. ///
Bandicut felt the universe shifting beneath him again. Echoes of stars as living, thinking beings?
“This—” said Li-Jared with a bonging sound “—is not so surprising.” He gazed at the others, his eyes vertical gold slivers, with bright bands of electric-blue across the middle. He appeared energized by the subject.
“It is, hrrm, to me,” said Ik.
“Why is it not surprising to you?” Antares asked Li-Jared.
“Because—” bong “—stars are such layered and energetic creations,” the Karellian said. “They are defined by exceedingly complex and turbulent electromagnetic fields, and contain long-lived internal structure. It would almost be surprising if intelligence did not evolve there. Plus—” he waggled his hands in traceries through the air “—the highly energetic sky of my own world has shown possible signs of awareness, and it is less complex than a star.”
Good Lord, Bandicut thought. He turned back to Jeaves. “So you’re saying the star we just watched going supernova was a sentient star?”
“Indeed,” said Jeaves. “And there could be more coming. My friends, the severity of that last quake has me worried. We may have less time than I’d thought. Would you mind if I brought in some friends to augment the learning process? It could make all of this go much faster.”
Bandicut closed his eyes and thought wistfully of the respite he had been hoping for.
“I am willing,” he heard Antares say. He sighed, opened his eyes, and along with Ik and Li-Jared said, “Okay.”
The desert surroundings faded into the background, and two intersecting arcs of smooth stone wall became highlighted by hidden light sources, creating a focused space around them. “Prepare yourselves for contact,” Jeaves said. “This will require the help of your translator-stones.”
Antares’s hand went to her throat, Ik’s to his temples, Li-Jared’s to his chest.
Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!
The alarm sound came from overhead. Three rings of golden light soared into view, skating across the sky. They grew to meter-wide haloes, then descended, orbiting one another, making a sound like wind chimes. One halo turned ruby, one pale emerald, and the third shimmering aquamarine. After a few moments, the blue one glided to the center and floated directly over their heads, making a sound like a steel hoop whirling around a pole.
/Charlie? Char?/
/// I’m not sure...
they’re alive, I know that. ///
*Establishing contact. Translating now,* muttered the stones in his wrists.
The hoop sound dropped away, and Bandicut felt himself blinking as he slipped helplessly into a dream-state. He seemed to fall through emptiness as the voices of the haloes, like soft-spoken angels, told him about the life and death of stars in a nebula called Starmaker...
*
The story was almost incomprehensibly old, in human terms. Yet in other ways it was familiar: birth and life, life and death. But in this story, the players were different; the story spoke of the birth of stars, the life and death of stars. Some were wise, some foolish, some noble, some dull, some none of those things.
In the beginning, in the deepness of time, there were no players; only cold gas and dust, and coiling magnetic fields, and clenching gravity wells. No one spoke; none were alive. For a long time, there was only endless rotation of gases in the cold, and slow contraction. But as the matter condensed, compressed, and heated, there came a dull reddish glow. It was not yet life, but it was the crucible from which life would emerge.
Even so, true life might never have appeared in most of the clumps of gas, were it not for a few particularly massive balls that crushed inward and burst into fusion-fire. These first stars burned bright, burned fast, died violently as supernovas—and in death sent cataclysmic shock waves crashing through the gathering medium. From those compression waves new fusion-fires ignited, new stars kindling in the darkness.
These stars lived and died; and in their convulsions of birth and death, yet more shock waves cascaded through the nebula, creating still newer life from death.
And eventually, there were some stars who awoke. Not just to heat and light, but to more.
Some who thought.
Who felt.
Who knew.
According to the stories passed down through the ages, the first to achieve consciousness were named *Dazzle* and *Glare*—not by themselves, but by others who followed. They lived brightly and died brightly, in new supernovas that salted the clouds with heavy elements to enrich the worlds to come. None lived now who remembered *Dazzle* and *Glare* firsthand, but the story of their lives had not been forgotten. Thought by some to be more myth than reality, they nevertheless remained—whether actually or symbolically—the progenitors of their race.
Generations followed, one upon another.
In time, knowledge turned into wisdom, and the community of stars prospered through the long, slow turns of the galaxies.
Until much later, when the change came, with the arrival of the intruders...
*
Antares found it all rather hard to follow, but she understood clearly that there were not just living, sentient stars in this story. There were families—histories—of sentient stars. It reminded her of her own people, except on a vastly greater scale. These histories wound their threads through billions of years, with creatures she could barely comprehend—living stars! And there were so many of them, with such rich lives.
But something had gone terribly wrong. And that something had come from the outside.
At first it seemed only a strain in the sea of dust and energy in which they lived. But existence in the nebula was practically defined by strains, by shock waves, by enormous turbulences that gave life and took life away. Many eons passed before the changes were noticed. But there was a presence here that no sun had ever felt before. Changes were occurring in newborns—some emerging as lifeless balls of fusion-fire, others aware but dangerously unstable. Some of the older stars were growing confused, possibly psychotic.
That was how it started. Then came premature supernovas—which, as often as not, took not just one life, but many. And not just the lives of stars, but of worlds hundreds of light-years away, scoured sterile by the radiation—inhabited worlds, worlds filled with people. Not Thespi, maybe—but people.
Antares found the stories strange, yet also moving. But what, she wondered, could it have to do with the four of them here? It was one thing to hear about sentient stars, but quite another to think they could actually interact with them.
And as for helping them...
She empathized; given her nature, she could not help doing so. But what could they possibly do?
Chapter 4
Food for Thought
By the time Jeaves called a halt, the haloes had filled Bandicut’s head with enough background information to leave him reeling. He was feeling numb when Jeaves suggested they return to the lodge where they had spent the previous night. “You could all use a good night’s rest.”
“You think?” Bandicut muttered.
“You need time to absorb the information. A ship is being prepared. But it isn’t ready for departure yet, in any case.”
“Ship?” Ik boomed as they trooped together up the desert trail. “What ship? Who’s preparing it?”
“Exploratory vessel. The shadow-people are modifying it. They provide maintenance for the entire station.”
“The shadow-people I trust. I’d like to know more about this ship, though. Do we have time to think about your, hrrm...request?” Ik asked.
<
br /> “We’ll talk in the morning,” said Jeaves.
They approached what looked like a hanging bead curtain, with waves of heat shimmer rippling up its strands. Was this the same transport device they had come through during their walk-around tour of the station this morning? Bandicut hesitated, but when Jeaves ushered them through, he let the curtain part around him. He felt a slight warming and stepped, followed by the others, into a now-familiar forest clearing. In the center of the clearing stood the lodge. The building, with gray stone walls, wooden beams, and a shingle roof, reminded Bandicut of Earth. Wood smoke issued from a wide, brick chimney. Last night, bringing them here, Jeaves had explained that he’d designed the look of the lodge himself, trying his best to make it comfortable. But, he’d admitted, he had more knowledge of human architecture than of Thespi, Karellian, or Hraachee’an. He’d gotten the exterior right, anyway, Bandicut thought.
Antares, Li-Jared, and Ik entered through a heavy wooden door. Bandicut paused for a last word with Napoleon and Copernicus, who would spend the night reconnoitering the area. “See what you can find out, all right?”
“Wilco,” said Napoleon.
“And be careful.” Finally, Bandicut followed the others inside. The interior seemed to owe more to human medieval fantasy than to anything Bandicut had ever encountered on Earth itself. The main common room was a broad, dimly lit, low-ceilinged area, with flames cracking from a log in a huge fireplace set in the far wall. Wisps of smoke hung in the air above a cluster of benches, sofas, and low tables near the fire. This was where they’d dined last night and this morning. It already felt a little like home.
Ik and Li-Jared had made their way to the fireside sofas, with Antares right behind them. Soon they were all sitting before the log fire, with plates piled with food, and a variety of drinks: a mug of ale for Bandicut and another for Ik, who wanted to see what Bandicut’s favorite beverage tasted like. Antares had a reddish nectar in a tall glass, and Li-Jared held a milkshake-like concoction. One or two of the living haloes floated in and out of the darkened room, not speaking to them but making a kind of music that sounded like a blend of steel drum and harp.
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