Sunborn

by Jeffrey Carver

  /// I don’t understand— ///

  /But I do!/ And to the robot: “Napoleon, I’ve got to go into silence-fugue! Watch my back.”

  “Cap’n?”

  “Trust me. Li-Jared—hang on! I’m trying to get Ed to help us!” As he spoke, Bandicut felt Charli reaching into his mind-space and undoing the work he had just done. He felt his mental control slipping away, as far in the distance, Li-Jared twanged in protest; he felt the wild yawing sensation of veering into perilous inner territories, and the looming presence of the Mindaru. He felt simultaneously a thrill of excitement and a wrench of fear...

  It wasn’t quite the same as the fugue of a few moments ago. The intelligence of the machine-world was whipping around him like glowing strands; but other things were stirring, too, in this altered world. There was a big oval of light—faint, transparent, but enormous—vibrating like the head of a drum. And through it, like a cascade of mirror images within mirror images, other disks of light just like it. They were all calling, calling to him, calling to anybody, to stop the shaking. Their calls were haunting him; it was hard to think in the din.

  One other thing came into focus, though, a whirling shape like a tornado of fire, emerging from some deeper dimension. Familiar, it was familiar. But he was dizzy in the midst of all this, and he couldn’t place it...

  It seemed to be calling to him.

  /// John, that’s Ed—and he is calling to you! ///

  Who? Ed? Oh yes, he remembered someone named Ed. But that person was a fried egg. /Why would I want to talk to a fried egg, Charli?/

  /// That’s why we’re here, John.

  Can you hear his voice?

  Can you? ///

  Voice...yes...he thought he could hear a voice...

  Dreamily.

  /// Focus, John! ///

  Calling to him for help?

  No. He wanted to ask Ed for help. /What did I want to ask him?/

  /// The dark matter flow.

  We need to change its course. ///

  /Of course I.../ But his thoughts were still reeling, he couldn’t help thinking of someone charging on a horse across a plain, lance leveled, assaulting a distant windmill.

  No, he realized with a start. His vision began to turn clear as crystal: dimensions opening up in space before him, square turning into cube, cube into tesseract, and tesseract into an n-dimensional jewel of light. And he began to glimpse the depths of Ed’s reach. In these dimensions, Ed was no longer a mere column or circle of fire, but a starfish radiating into a thousand dimensions with long, luminous arms; and his reach was long indeed.

  But Ed couldn’t see what Bandicut was seeing. He didn’t know what to do.

  “Great pain here...great peril. What can I...?”

  Bandicut felt a sudden jolt as he realized Ed could reach into places he, Bandicut, could not reach, and perhaps even place one of his long arms along the edge of a flow...

  /// Yes! That’s it!

  Even a subtle shift might be enough...///

  “Ed!” Bandicut cried. “Do you see a glowing river?”

  “Yes...”

  “Can you stop it, or deflect it?”

  “Don’t know...can try...will it stop the pain...?”

  “Maybe...maybe.” Bandicut was speaking not out of any certainty, but out of faith and hope. Looming storm clouds and the giant mechanized combine, bearing down on him; a dog darted across its path, triggering the collision-avoidance, and it veered, just enough to steer it past the boy hidden in the tall field. A tiny change, in this version; but it was enough. “Yes. Yes, I think so. Can you do it?”

  From the shimmering circle, a sighing voice. “I will try.”

  Bandicut nodded. Yes. Yes. They would try, they would do it, they would rule the stars.

  “What...should I do?”

  Think. Think. “Can you...somehow stretch across the stream and—” he windmilled his hands in the air, groping “—do anything to the space, change the flow of it—change its direction?”

  The Ed creature made a low humming sound. Bandicut grimaced, trying to focus; he was on a carousel, turning without moving, disoriented. He was trying to think how to explain the concept of bending space...

  There was a flash of light and a shudder in the continuum. Bandicut furiously tried to see what had just happened. Had the multidimensional creature simply placed a foot in the stream of dark matter?

  The stream shifted slowly as he watched; it was rechanneling itself.

  /// The stream is changing course, John. ///

  /Away from the other star?/ He could feel his thoughts unwinding and coming back together. The fugue was lifting.

  /// I can’t tell. ///

  “Napoleon?”

  The robot appeared confused. “John Bandicut, I don’t know what is happening, but I believe you have either diverted or blocked the stream.”

  “Good. Very good. Ed did it, you know.”

  The robot barely missed a beat. “Ed? Well, it looks as if he’s significantly altered the flow, Cap’n. Significantly.”

  Bandicut’s head was clear; the fugue was over. “Good. Then let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Chapter 31

  A Visit to a Star

  On the bridge, Li-Jared frantically wished for a clearer image of the black object that was coming toward them in the glow of *Thunder*’s atmosphere. Jeaves and Copernicus were certain it must be a sentry of some kind—but what would it do when it reached them? Did it carry weapons to vaporize them? Would it assimilate them, as that Mindaru graveyard had tried to do? Did they have any defense? Could they at least outrun it?

  He had a strong feeling that the answer to all of those was: Whatever’s bad for us.

  “Copernicus, anything from Bandicut or Napoleon?”

  “According to their last transmission, they were having difficulty finding the exit.”

  Bwang. “Damn!”

  “Li-Jared.”

  “What, Jeaves? Or do I already know?”

  “I think you do. Have you decided at what point you will leave them, if necessary—to save the ship, and the mission?”

  “I have not. I am going to play it by ear, as Bandie would say.”

  “Play it by ear?” Jeaves said. “Does that mean you are intending to make a snap decision? I appreciate your loyalty, but is that the best way to make a decision that affects the whole mission?”

  Li-Jared rubbed his chest with his fingers. “You don’t think so?”

  “It’s for you to decide, not me.”

  Li-Jared breathed deliberately several times before answering. “Well, Jeaves, that’s what I’m going to do. And if you think it’s wrong—tough shit, as Bandie would also say.”

  The robot was silent, but Li-Jared continued to fume to himself. He knew the robot was right. But he’d be damned if he’d decide right here and now that when x became y, he’d up and abandon his friends.

  He turned his scowl to Ik and Antares, still huddled unmoving off to one side. What was he going to do about them? They were almost certainly unaware of the situation. He closed his eyes for a moment to resynch his heartbeats. Then he strode over to crouch in front of them. “Ik! Can you hear me?”

  Ik’s only response was an incomprehensible mutter. He seemed to have heard, but his eyes were angled away from each other and up, as though he were looking deep into space at something no one else could see. Beside him, with one hand on Ik’s arm, Antares was rocking forward and backward, her eyes tightly closed. She looked as if she were in pain. Li-Jared spoke to Ik twice more, then Antares: “Can you hear me? Antares?”

  Her murmur was almost inaudible. “...In contact with the star...” Do not interrupt, her impassive expression said.

  Li-Jared paced back to Jeaves. “How far away is that thing?”

  “One light-hour and closing fast. I believe we have at most twenty minutes to initiate action.”

  “And have you come up with a recommended action?”

  “Getting out of
its way would be my recommendation.”

  Li-Jared rubbed his fingers together rapidly, in frustration. “Are you working on an escape route?”

  “We are,” said Copernicus. “But I just received another transmission from Napoleon. They have encountered something unexpected...”

  *

  Getting out had turned out to be as hard as Bandicut had feared. Napoleon came to a stop and turned to face him. “Cap’n, something’s wrong. I’m not seeing the same landscape we passed on the way in, and I can’t find any of the bread crumbs I left for us. I’m not sure we’re on the correct n-space level.”

  Bandicut kept his voice neutral, ignoring the chill in the back of his neck. “Are you saying you can’t find the way back?”

  “I can’t retrace our steps exactly, no. But I think we’re...” Napoleon’s voice trailed off as he floated a little ahead of Bandicut. “Cap’n, you’d better have a look at this.”

  That didn’t sound good. Bandicut caught up with the robot. “Oh, jeez.”

  “Yes.”

  Bandicut groped for something to hang on to. “What is this?” He was poised in an opening in another parapetlike wall. Beyond the opening was a sheer drop-off into the darkness of space. It looked like a wide loading bay high on the side of a vast skyscraper. Beyond it was space—but impossibly close by, a great orb floating in the void. It looked like a planet. Or no—it was glowing a sullen crimson, and there was a granularity in the fire. It was a star, alarmingly close up, viewed through a powerful filter. “Nappy? What is this?”

  “I think...that may be our hypernova star. I think it’s *Nick*.”

  Bandicut blinked hard. “I thought we were half a light-year away.”

  “We are, in normal space. But we’re embedded in n-space inside this thing, with all those channels. Distances may be very different. Look at those inflowing streams.” Napoleon pointed with a metal hand, first to one part of the dark sky, then to another.

  Bandicut squinted, at first seeing nothing. Then, gradually, he began to make out what Napoleon was talking about: a few thin, ghostly streaks of deep blue and violet, originating from somewhere out in deep space and converging on the star like threads of a tattered spider’s web. He thought he could guess what they were. As his eyes grew more accustomed to the lighting, however, his heart began to sink. There were not just a few, but dozens of the streams, and they all looped in from somewhere in the starry darkness to plunge into the great sullen orb. All except one, fainter than the others. That one originated in a vague and almost indefinable haze from the very structure upon which he and Napoleon were standing.

  “Are you thinking as I am, Cap’n, that the stream directly below us must be the one Ed has stopped up?”

  “It looks like he’s slowed it, but not eliminated it.”

  In his head, the quarx was recoiling. There was recognition in his fear.

  /// Look at all of those streams!

  It’s coming in from stars all over.

  We’ve barely touched the inflow.

  It’s just like...like...///

  Bandicut felt a powerful anxiety from Charli. /Is this...it’s not how your homeworld ended, is it?/

  /// I think it might be.

  I have a memory—can’t be sure—

  but I think it happened just this way.

  We tried, my people did, but

  we had no idea...///

  Bandicut shivered. To Napoleon, he said, “Charli’s homeworld...the same way. They thought they were stopping it, but...” His voice caught. “If that’s *Nick*, then we’ve hardly accomplished anything.”

  Napoleon ticked softly, not answering directly. “Do you suppose the central control for all those streams may be somewhere over there? Near *Nick*, where it all converges?”

  “I don’t know. You?”

  “I do suppose,” the robot said. “It’s the most central location.”

  Bandicut gazed across at the threatened star. It looked as if he could step out and float across to it. “If the control center is there, what the hell can we do about it?” He felt at his waist for the small cylinders, the n-space disrupter grenades. It felt pretty silly to think they’d be much help. “Could we blow it up?” /And probably us with it?/

  /// Probably. I’m willing to try, though. ///

  “Cap’n, if we attempt to blow anything up, we need to warn Li-Jared, so that he can get the ship out of the way. With us or without us.” Napoleon was carefully scanning every section of the view. “I think I may see a way over there.”

  “Yes?” Bandicut said cautiously.

  “It’s a little hard to see. You might have to trust me.”

  “I always trust you, Napoleon.”

  “Yes, of course. That minor untruth aside, I would like to present a possibility.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I suspect there is a pathway between us and the star. I cannot precisely image it. However, I believe that this view of the star arises from an n-space connection between this point and what may be a central control nexus, over there.”

  “And you think we could somehow—?”

  “Travel along the pathway, to reach the control nexus.”

  Bandicut drew a breath. “Which we would do by—”

  Tap. “By stepping off this ledge.” Tap tap. “That’s where you’d have to trust me.”

  Bandicut suddenly felt dizzy, ill, peering out into the vertiginous gulf with the sun hanging in the middle of the darkness...and beneath them, nothing but blackness and distant stars. “You want me to...step off into...nothing.”

  “As I said, you have to trust me.”

  /// Yes! Please. ///

  At that moment, the comm came alive, and Li-Jared’s voice filled Bandicut’s ears. “Bandie, are you almost out yet?”

  “Uh, we’re—” Bandicut’s voice caught “—uh, we’ve found something that may give us access to the central controls.”

  He could hear the anguish in Li-Jared’s voice. “Bandie, I have to move the ship soon.”

  Tightly, Bandicut said, “I know. But this could really be it. You should take the ship and go. Circle back for us later. In case we...survive.” The words left him feeling sick. Antares, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.

  “Bandie, I’m not sure we’ll be able to come back.”

  Struggling to draw a breath, Bandicut turned to Napoleon. He thought he was going to say, Do we really need to do this? But what came out was, “Can you explain to Copernicus what we’re trying to do? So he can explain it to Li-Jared?”

  “Already done, Cap’n.”

  “Then, I guess—let’s—” He stopped, then forced the words out. “How do you see this happening?”

  “I detect a curvature of n-space, Cap’n. I believe it is an indication of a pathway, and when we step off this ledge, we will find it. I hope it will carry us to...the other end.”

  “You mean, to *Nick*?”

  “Or near it. But in n-space, remember. I hope the conditions at the other end will be nonextreme.”

  “We won’t be burned to a crisp?”

  “Correct.”

  Bandicut closed his eyes, then opened them. /Crazy./ “All right. Whatthehell. Let’s go. Together?”

  “I should go first,” said Napoleon, flicking out some bread crumbs.

  “And leave me here, to try to find my way back alone? No thanks. We’ll risk it together. On three, before I lose my nerve. One...”

  “Very—”

  “Two...”

  “—well.”

  “Three.” They pushed themselves off the wall into space. Bandicut felt an odd sensation of falling and being lifted at the same time, as the vista of space distorted around him. The next sensation was of an odd disjuncture, a feeling that time had slipped by unaccounted for; and then the distortion was gone. He blinked hard, looking around.

  The place where he had been poised was gone. No, there it was—way over there, across the blackness. It looked like an enormous,
slab-sided building, dotted with lighted windows and beacons in the night. It reminded him, strangely, of that first view he’d had of Shipworld, as he’d approached it in his earthly ship, Neptune Explorer. He rotated, and drew a shuddering breath. His back had been to a wall of fire, a vast, glowing, undulating tapestry of fusion-fire. It looked now as if he could reach out and touch it, in all its terrifying glory. He glanced down to see what he was standing on—and he was standing now, not floating—and he wished he hadn’t. He and Napoleon were on a barely visible, glimmering ledge, without sides or features. He instinctively wanted to back up against a solid wall for safety, but there was no solid wall. Beside him, Napoleon was gathering information, his sensors flickering frantically.

  But they weren’t being consumed by fire. Napoleon had gotten that right.

  He swallowed, hard. “Nappy—?”

  The robot sounded distracted. “I imagine you are wondering where we are?”

  “Yeah.”

  “As near as I can tell, we’re in a pocket of n-space that’s very close to the sun, while protecting us from it. I think we must also be very close to the central control. I can feel that it’s here somewhere.”

  “Feel?”

  “I don’t know how else to describe it, Cap’n. I can sense that there are...data pathways...nearby. I can hear it like faint crosstalk in a circuit. But I can’t find access.”

  Bandicut squinted at the view of the sun, where the fires of destruction were being stoked hotter with each passing second. For a terrible moment he flashed ten years into the past, to the memory of a burning apartment building, where his friend was dying, beyond reach of firefighters. He felt the wrenching pain all over again, the horror of being unable to help his friend. Nick’s death in the fire had given him nightmares for a year. He pulled himself back with an effort. “If you don’t find access to that, there’ll be no way for us to turn off the flow of dark matter.” And we will have come all this way and failed.

  “I’m still searching, but...no. Not yet.”

  Bandicut nodded and forced himself to look away. He stared instead at the thin, ghostly streams of dark matter flowing into the sun. He felt Charli do something, and the view improved. Now he could see the streams more clearly against the darkness. He felt that he was standing in the center of a plasma globe, with a fantastic array of glowing whiskers of electricity streaming toward them, toward the central ball. They looked beautiful and harmless; they were killing the star.