by Janet Morris
The door to his suite obediently drew back in response to his touch. Croft stuck his head and shoulders out into the penthouse hall. He looked to the right, and then the left. No burly guardsmen stood there, ready to restrict his movements. No white-coated strangers lurked with dripping syringes to tranquilize him. In fact, everything seemed normal, peaceful, and even friendly.
Feeling flushed, Croft slunk back to his bedchamber and through it. A shower was what he needed. A hot shower, followed by ice-cold water. Then coffee and something to eat. He wasn't going to let Remson spook him.
The water in his shower ran fierce and steamy, softening the image of the tired, haggard man in the mirror before him. Had he lost sight of the UNE's best interests? Was he reacting from personal biases? Was he irrational?
Stepping into the hot spray, he was sure he could handle Remson. Vince would come to heel once Mickey demonstrated firm resolve and a clear agenda. But Croft must not let Remson see that there was distrust on his side, that he was afraid of Remson, or even of the Unity aliens. Because he mustn't be afraid.
And yet, when Croft closed his eyes in the shower, he saw the black-in-black, sad eyes of the Unity's Interstitial Interpreter regarding him with pity and disdain. Or was it apprehension?
Even the coldest of pummeling sprays from his shower massage couldn't wipe away that image. It haunted him as surely as the self-replicating images of the Interpreter and his honor guard had haunted his psychometric modeler.
Why wasn't Remson concerned? Remson had seen the Unity aliens close at hand. Remson had been inside the Unity Embassy, which was nowhere near the physical coordinates it occupied in Earth's solar system. Remson had been touched by the Unity aliens, and even had touched Riva Lowe and her cohort when Croft's human ambassador had stretched out a hand to him across a gulf of continua.
Didn't Remson have the sense to realize that the Unity was a superior culture, scientifically, technically, and therefore militarily? But of course Remson did. Vince's agenda included asking for a Unity point of contact of equal rank to a military attaché that Croft must now appoint.
So if Remson understood, then perhaps Vince wasn't trying to maneuver events to suit some shadowy purpose. Unless, of course, the Unity aliens had gotten to Remson during Remson's visit to the embassy. When Croft had arrived there, Remson was standing straight and tall with the Unity diplomatic contingent, watching Mickey through wise, pale eyes. .. .
When the door chimed, Croft was nearly ready for visitors.
He gave his tie one final tug and strode purposefully to greet them at his door. Exude power, calm, compassion, and control. Don't let them see your doubts.
But when the door retreated, there was Riva Lowe on Remson's arm. The two of them seemed to Croft to be equally changed, creatures of Unity machination, simulacra, pod people, objects of demonic possession, or worse. He stared at them wordlessly, horrorstruck.
"Mickey? We're sorry to disturb you so late, but we've brought all the documentation you asked for," Vince said smoothly, covering for Croft's lapse of courtesy.
"Of course. Come in, come in. Good to see you, Madam Ambassador."
Riva Lowe's face seemed pinched, her movements jerky and ill-timed as she paced him into the reception room. She took a seat when he did, watching him too closely.
Remson came over and handed him a notepad to scan. He waved Vince away with a flick of his fingers and pretended to read.
Whatever was written on the notepad's screen would have to do. He scrolled through it, saying judiciously, "Yes, yes," and finally, "Splendid. We'll just send these orders out immediately." He pushed his thumb in the signature block and laid the notepad aside on the table.
Remson came to take the documents and whispered, "Mickey, you've got to appoint the military attaché, remember? The short list?" To minimize the awkwardness, Remson found the relevant list and proffered the notepad once again.
There were only three names that Croft recognized: Granrud, J., Major General (UNECSC/A); Reice, T.D.. Lt. Col (UNECS); Smith, E.E., Dr. (UNESI). He appointed them all to serve as points of contact and consular attachés for their respective services and handed the accursed notepad computer back to Remson, saying, "Don't stick that thing in my face again, Vince. Use a little initiative, for heaven's sake."
Then he returned to Riva Lowe, perched uncomfortably on the edge of a chair. "Ambassador, Vince tells me you believe we can contact the Unity directly, from here, and forestall any confusion or unfortunate suppositions that might otherwise arise from the abrupt leavetaking of the object we call the Unity Ball."
"Yes, sir," she said. "I'm ready to do that, if you're ready to authorize it."
"Why wouldn't I be?" Mickey said expansively, as if Ambassador Lowe had just given him the best of all gifts. "Proceed immediately, and let me know of your results as soon as you're done."
"Immediately?"
"Immediately," Croft confirmed. Out of one corner of his eye, Mickey saw Remson's brow furrow and his Chief of Staff give a hand signal advising caution.
Lowe was reaching into her briefcase, pulling out a handphone.
The unit was so quotidian, so low-powered, and so innocuous that Croft didn't understand what was happening until Lowe put the handset to her lips and said, "Patch me to my Preset Three coordinates."
Before Mickey could move to stop her, the reception room behind her disappeared. The walls fell away. The floor melted in on itself. A howling vortex spun behind her head in midair. Spiral arms came out of it, spreading a miasma of color and light. Then, from the center of the vortex, a spark flew with a snap and a jolt that raised Croft's every hair.
For an instant he was flash-blind, as if a photographer had gotten him right in the face. White balls of light centered his vision. Around them, at the edges of his sight, bits of his reception room could still be seen. He clutched his chair desperately, refusing to move, refusing to react visibly. He blinked, and blinked, and blinked again.
As the balls of light obscuring the center of his sight faded, an alien vista loomed in their place. It was as if a tunnel had been dug from his reception room into the Unity Embassy. The vista of recurved purple plains and impossible angles jolted his nerves. A thousand strands of light glowed in a serpentine flux that appeared and disappeared above the head of the Interstitial Interpreter, who had his hands in his sleeves and was looking compassionately at Croft.
Behind the Interpreter, smoking pots swung from invisible arms.
Sometimes Mickey wondered if the Interpreter he encountered each time was the same being. But not this time. He could already smell the cloying incense of the smoking pots, leaking out of the hole punched in his quarters, straight into the Unity Embassy. On one side of the hole, calm as could be, sat Riva Lowe, as if posing for some Victorian photo. On the other side, Remson stood, facing the Interpreter.
Mickey wondered what would happen if he got up and pushed Remson into the hole? Would Vince take one step and find himself in Unity space?
But Croft did nothing of the kind. He was the Secretary General of the United Nations of Earth and he must maintain decorum at all times. He would, unless the Interpreter, uninvited, took one step into Mickey's parlor. If that happened, he would not warrant what he might do.
The Interpreter cocked its conical head at him. Its harelip worked. Its mouth opened and smoke came out. The smokey breath of the Interstitial Interpreter said, "We offer assistance in the matter of acquiring a safe passage nowtime through the notime. In the alltime, everything is prepared for your safe arrival. Fears unfounded, but Unity provides safe passage, nowtime, as well as notime, as it is written in the alltime. Accepting is required."
Accepting is required? Croft's head ached, a sudden, blazing pulse that sent zigzags of light across his peripheral vision, as if a migraine might be coming on.
"I'm sure that any help from the Unity in safely acquiring our new orbit will be gratefully accepted by our engineers and astrogators," Croft said dully. "Meanwhile, we m
ust discuss the matter of the disappearance of your Ball from our space."
"Ball in good human hands, we, Unity, agree. Our pleasure serving human spacetimers growing up nowtime. Mickeycroft, Ball not gone from space, just spacetime locus. Sorry for distressing thoughts. Not destroyed, never, no-time. Pasttime locus no good, now. To make talking in no-time, spacetimers need persons in the alltime. Reice human say, 'ready, willing, and able,' nowtime, anytime. Ball will be with Threshold, soontime, guiding. Okay Mickeycroft? Fears all go bye-bye now?" The Interpreter bared its teeth in a human indication that it was pleased with both its speech and the speech's context.
The smell was getting to Croft. The smoke was curling into his nostrils, trying to choke him. He coughed softly, cleared his throat, and said, "I beg to differ. I don't believe we had anything to do with your Ball's disappearance. But we're pleased to learn that we have no problem."
The Interpreter took a step back, into the smoke. It seemed as though it conferred with the honor guard. It then stepped forward again, just as Remson caught Mickey's attention with a cautionary wave.
So Remson wasn't as cocksure of the Unity aliens' intentions as he'd pretended. Good. Every time Croft encountered a Unity alien, he was more and more certain that these short conversations had greater meaning to the Interpreter and his staff than to Croft and his.
The Interstitial Interpreter seemed to sway back and forth, saying, "Mickeycroft, problems with wanting-to-destroy humans not possible. Unity not allow destroying. Unity wanting Mickeycroft find peace in the alltime, courage soontime. Future assured okay. No problems, only no-time transit to soontime accomplish. Mistakes, possible. Spacetimers come grow up with us, nowtime, soontime, sometime. We see this in the alltime. You want come Unity nowtime, rejoin habitation later, avoid danger? Interpreter bring you by self, so safe and sound forever, through the alltime."
And the Interstitial Interpreter held out his hand, with its wrongly-numbered digits, as if Croft could take that hand, step into Unity spacetime on the arm of the Interstitial Interpreter, and from there go wherever he pleased.
Didn't these Unity beings credit anything but direct contact? Couldn't Lowe have arranged a simple vidphone call, an electromagnetically transmitted message? Did half of his reception suite need to be dematerialized, and the rest physically mated to another spacetime?
Croft pushed back in his chair, keeping his distance from the outstretched hand, which wanted to translate him into another dimension. "I think I should be here, with my people, especially if there's any chance of a 'mistake' in the voyage. You just go back where you came from. Feel free to aid us however you wish. Tell your Ball pilots or any other astrogators, we'll be glad to cooperate." But get your intrusive presence out of my goddamn personal spacetime.
The Interstitial Interpreter dropped the outstretched hand as if it heard thoughts as well as words. It took one step back into the swirling colors of its embassy—or its homeworld. Croft saw the mist part, and clouds of gold and fuschia in a lavender sky. Then the sky disappeared, to be replaced by a spiral-armed pinwheel of stars that spun the mist and the smoke and the Interpreter and his honor guard in on themselves, until all that was left amiss in Mickey's reception room was a vortex of crackle and light, spinning in midair.
Then that, too, disappeared, as if it had never been.
"Well," said Remson into the silence in which Mickey was composing something scathing to say to Ambassador Lowe. "I think we must assume that we've solved at least the most pressing of our problems, and that we've now got help during the jump, if we need it. I must admit I personally feel better, knowing that the Unity is going to be right there with us, smoothing the way for this historic journey."
"I'm glad you're reassured, Vince," said Croft dryly. "And I must congratulate Ambassador Lowe on her quick action in this regard. I'm sure we all are agreed that a 'mistake' during this crossing is something that none of us can afford. Now, if you two don't mind, it's still the middle of the night, and your Secretary General would like to get some sleep."
Remson and the ambassador both got hastily to their feet, apologizing. Vince tried, as Mickey saw them to the door, to explore Croft's feelings about Unity aid during the spongespace jump.
Mickey Croft refused to be questioned. The Unity had declared that nothing was going to be allowed to stop mankind's voyage to destiny. So be it. Whether on Mickey's watch, or someone else's, contact with a race whose invitation could hardly be refused was about to commence.
When Riva Lowe and Remson were safely beyond Mickey's closed door, he slumped against it, exhausted and not sure what to hope for. Mistakes were still possible, it seemed. Even the Interstitial Interpreter was not infallible.
If Threshold, as the Unity believed was possible, had trouble during the jump, and was destroyed, would the result be better for humankind as a whole? Would a disaster put off this contact for enough years to matter?
The Interstitial Interpreter didn't seem to think so.
For Croft's part, he was content now to throw in his lot with the other spacetimers of Threshold who were about to grow up, Unity style. For better or for worse.
CHAPTER 29
Flying the Ball
Reice was willing to bet that he'd seen things today that nobody of his pay grade had ever seen before. It was one thing to see the Ball open up, its spherical mass rippling like the disturbed surface of a pool; to see a purple wave run across it like the edge of night over a planetary surface, or an atmospheric shock wave seen from orbit. It was something else again to see those colors trying to tear themselves apart, a whirlpool of calm opening in their center to swallow your spacecraft whole. . .
A few other guys had seen the Ball do its stuff from outside and lived to tell about it. There'd been some reports.
Reice knew that for certain because he'd made one, when the Cummings kids disappeared, stolen freighter and all, sucked by the Ball into a gravity well or worse.
You knew South had seen the Ball do its stuff before.
Maybe the SecGen had, as well. Up among the Secretariat's privileged elite, they had access to lots more information than Reice did. Than he used to have, he corrected himself, pacing back and forth along STARBIRD's antique flight deck.
Three paces to the left. Stop before you hit the bulkhead wall. Turn. Three paces to the right. Stop before you exited the cramped flight deck entirely. Turn. Don't look out the realtime viewscreen, at the interior of the Ball beyond.
Not yet.
Had anybody but South and Reice ever been inside the Ball? Reice was willing to bet nobody had. Had anybody even seen inside the Ball? He could make a fortune going on vid shows once this was over, telling about his experiences. If the Secretariat and ConSec would let him talk about it. If anybody'd believe him when he tried describing what he was seeing.
Reice was running a log of everything that happened out there, because otherwise nobody was ever going to believe him. Now Reice understood how Keebler, the white-hole scavenger who'd found the Ball in the first place, had felt.
The Ball was more than an alien artifact. It was more than a construct of an alien civilization possessed of advanced science. It was a portal. A gate. An arch of lions with gaping jaws. A curve of dragons whose spread talons kneaded the threads of spacetime into a universal order.
And it was a ship. South hadn't been kidding. South was a Relic of humanity's past, the pilot from the dawn of time, and Reice had learned not to take the twenty-first-century man too seriously. But the Ball into which South had steered them was really an alien craft, just like South said.
Now STARBIRD was parked in the slipbay of a huge, circular ship with command stations and view stations into . .. everywhere, it seemed. And Reice was huddled inside STARBIRD, waiting like some maiden aunt for South to return from a dangerous voyage.
Reice wasn't trained to sit around and wait for somebody else to do his job for him. But it was spooky out there. Somebody had to bear witness to what was happening. Somebody
had to stay alive to make a goddamned cogent report about what it was like out there.
The last thing Reice wanted to do was set foot outside this nice, antique but functional, human-made vessel. There were alien things out there, and not the run-of-the-mill lower life-forms of your typical colonized planet, either.
Beside STARBIRD's ancient hull were breathing, phosphorescent hulks that South called "plasma shuttles," as if Reice should have known. As if all this was familiar territory.
"In your dreams, Relic," Reice muttered aloud. The sound of his own voice startled him. He'd better get hold of himself. But how did you do that, considering what was happening here? Considering what was happening out there?
He stopped in mid-stride, turned and resolutely faced the realtime viewscreen, quadranted to give him 360 degrees of exterior coverage.
Beyond STARBIRD's bulkheads, beyond the plasma shuttles snoring softly in their slipbay berths, was a huge and busily humming ship full of lights with streaming tails and unfathomable machines happily at work generating colored pulses and prismatic waves he could feel coming up through his boots.
If you watched the colored waveforms too long, your eyes began playing tricks on you. You began seeing salmon clouds and white temples on green hills. You saw lavender skies alive with disembodied alien eyes. You saw planetary rings gleaming like cotton candy in the ruddy sunlight. You saw plasma shapes cavorting among crystalline mists in impossible aerobatics.
You saw places, faces, spaces familiar and yet completely strange. You saw the boundaries of your own perceptions and beyond. You saw gates to everywhere, and nowhere, all displayed in eleven-space matrices as if access was as easy as taking a step, throwing a stone, making a choice.
Reice didn't want any part of a universe in which two dimensions of time and nine of space made up the local rulebook. His eyes ached and began streaming tears from trying to make sense out of what he saw in STARBIRD's viewscreens.