by David Brin
Sara and her mentor, Sage Purofsky, had nursed a suspicion. That shutdown was no accident.
“Then we concur,” said the Niss Machine. “Gillian Baskin clearly intends to lead the Jophur into a suicidal trap.”
Sara looked elsewhere in the big display, seeking the enemy. She found it several stellar radii behind Izmunuti, a yellow glow representing the hunter—a Jophur dreadnought whose crew coveted the Earthship and its secrets. Having abandoned the distraction of all the old dross ships, the Polkjhy had been racing toward the regular T-point, confident of cutting off Streaker’s sole escape route.
Only now, the sudden reopening of another gateway must have flummoxed the giant sap-rings who commanded the great warship. The yellow trace turned sharply, as the Polkjhy frantically shed momentum, aiming to chase Streaker past Izmunuti’s flames toward the new door in spacetime.
A door that’s not ready for use, Sara thought. Surely the Jophur must also have instruments capable of reading probability flows. They must realize how dangerous it would be to plunge into a newborn transfer point.
On the other hand, could the Polkjhy commanders afford to dismiss it? Streaker was small, maneuverable, and had dolphin pilots, reputed to be among the best in all five galaxies.
And the Earthlings were desperate.
The Jophur have to assume we know something about this transfer point that they do not. From their point of view, it seems as if we called it into existence with a wave of our hands—or fins. If we plunge inside, it must be because we know a tube or thread we can latch onto and follow to safety.
They’re obliged to give chase, or risk losing Streaker forever.
Sara nodded.
“Gillian and the dolphins … they’re sacrificing themselves, for Jijo.”
The tightly meshed Niss hologram appeared to shrug in agreement
“It does seem the best choice out of a wretched set of options.
“Suppose we turn and fight? The only likely outcomes are capture or death, with your Jijoan civilization lost in the bargain. After extracting information about Streaker’s discoveries in the Shallow Cluster, the Jophur will report to their home clan, then make their time organizing a systematic program for Jijo, first annihilating every g’Kek, then turning the planet into their own private breeding colony, developing new types of humans, traekis, and hoons to suit their perverted needs.
“By forcing the Polkjhy to follow us into the new transfer point, Dr. Baskin makes it likely that no report will ever reach the Five Galaxies about your Six Races. Your fellow exiles may continue wallowing in sublime, planet-bound squalor for a while longer, chasing vague notions of redemption down the muddy generations.”
How very much like the Niss it was, to turn a noble gesture into an excuse for insult. Sara shook her head. Gillian’s plan was both grand and poignant.
It also meant Sara’s own hours were numbered.
“What a waste,” the Niss sighed. “This vessel and crew appear to have made the discovery of the age, and now it may be lost.”
Things had been so hectic since the rushed departure from Jijo, that Sara was still unclear about the cause of all this ferment—what the Streaker crew had done to provoke such ire and determined pursuit by some of the greater powers of the known universe.
“It began when Captain Creideiki took this ship poking through a seemingly unlikely place, looking for relics or anomalies that had been missed by the Great Library,” the artificial intelligence explained. “It was a shallow globular cluster, lacking planets or singularities. Creideiki never told his reasons for choosing such a spot. But his hunch paid off beyond all hope or expectation when Streaker came upon a great fleet of derelict ships, drifting in splendid silence through open space. Moreover, samples and holos taken of this mystery armada seemed to hint at possible answers to our civilization’s most ancient mystery.
“Of course our findings should have been shared openly by the institutes of the Civilization of Five Galaxies, in the name of all oxygen-breathing life. Immense credit would have come to your frail, impoverished Earthclan, as well as my Tymbrimi makers. But every other race and alliance might have shared as well, gaining new insight into the origins of our billion-year-old culture.
“Alas, several mighty coalitions interpreted Streaker’s initial beamcast as fulfillment of dire prophecy. They felt the news presaged a fateful time of commotion and upheaval, in which a decisive advantage would go to anyone monopolizing our discovery. Instead of celebratory welcome, Streaker returned from the Shallow Cluster to find battle fleets lying in wait, eager to secure our secrets before we reached neutral ground. Several times, we were cornered, and escaped only because hordes of fanatics fought savagely among themselves over the right of capture … a compensation lacking in our present situation.”
That was an understatement. The Jophur could pursue Streaker at leisure, without threat of interference. As far as the rest of civilization was concerned, this whole region was empty and off-limits.
“Was poor Emerson wounded in one of those earlier space battles?”
Sara felt concern for her friend, the silent star voyager, whose cryptic injuries she had treated in her treehouse, before taking him on an epic journey across the Slope and eventually reuniting him with his crewmates,
“No. Engineer D’Anite was captured by members of the Retired Caste, at a place we call the Fractal World. That particular event—”
Suddenly, the blue blob halted its twisting gyration. Hesitating for a few seconds, it trembled before resuming.
“The detection officer reports that something significant has just been perceived.
“It appears that our instruments were too narrowly focused on the Jophur, and the new transfer point. Until this moment, we missed another phenomenon worth noting. One heretofore masked by the flames of Izmunuti.”
The display rippled, and abruptly, a swarm of orange pinpoints sparkled into view, residing amid the filaments and stormy prominences of Izmunuti’s roiling atmosphere.
Sara leaned forward. “What are they?”
“Condensed objects.
“Artificial, self-propelled spacial motiles.
“In other words, starships.”
Sara’s jaw opened and closed twice before she could manage speech.
“Ifni, there must be hundreds! How could we have overlooked them before?” The Niss answered defensively.
“Oh great Sage, one normally does not send probing beams through a red giant’s flaming corona in search of spacecraft. Our chief attention was rightfully turned elsewhere. Besides, these vessels were not using gravitic engines until just moments ago, when several began applying gravi-temporal force … in an apparent effort to escape these extravagant new solar storms.”
Sara stared in amazement. Hope whirled madly.
“These ships, could they help us?”
Again, the Niss paused, consulting remote instruments.
“It seems doubtful, oh Sage. They will scarcely care about our struggles. Indeed, these beings are of another order on the pyramid of life, completely apart from yours … though one might call them distant cousins of mine.”
Sara shook her head, at first confused. Then she cried out.
“Machines!”
Even Jijo’s fallen castaways could recite the Eight Orders of Sapience, with oxygen-based life being only one of the most flamboyant. Among the other orders, Jijo’s sacred scrolls spoke darkly of synthetic beings, coldly cryptic, who designed and built each other in the farthest depths of space, needing no ground to stand on, nor wind to breathe.
“Indeed. Although their presence here is unexplained, it seems certain to involve matters beyond our concern. In any event, the mechanoids will surely perceive us as dangerous, and avoid contact, out of cowardly self-interest.”
The voice paused.
Fresh data is coming in. It seems that some members of the flotilla are having a hard time with those tempests your Holy Egg lately provoked through Izmunuti’s out
er shell. In fact, some mechaniforms may be more needy of rescue than we are.”
Sara pointed at one of the orange dots.
“Show me!”
Using data from long-range scans, the display unit swooped giddily inward. Swirling stellar filaments seemed to heave around Sara as her point of view plunged toward the chosen speck—one of the mechanoid vessels—which began taking form against a backdrop of irate gas.
The blurry enhancement—stretching the limits of magnification—showed a glimmering trapezoidal shape, almost mirrorlike, that glancingly reflected surrounding solar fire. The mechanoid’s shape grew slimmer as it turned to flee a plume of hot ions, fast-rising toward it from Izmunuti’s whipped convection zones. The display software compensated for perspective as columns of numbers estimated the vessel’s actual measurements—a square whose edges were hundreds of kilometers in length, with a third dimension that was vanishingly small.
Space seemed to ripple just beneath the mechaniform vessel. Though still inexperienced, Sara recognized the characteristic warping effects of a gravi-temporal field. A modest one, indicated the display numbers. Perhaps sufficient for interplanetary speeds, but not enough to escape the devastation climbing to meet it She could only watch with helpless sympathy as the mechanoid struggled in vain.
The first shock wave ripped the filmy object in half … then into shreds that raveled quickly, becoming a swarm of bright, dissolving streamers.
“This is not the only victim. Observe, as fate catches up with other stragglers.”
The display returned to its former scale. As Sara watched, several additional orange glitters were overwhelmed by waves of accelerating dense plasma Others continued to climb, fighting to escape the maelstrom.
“Whoever they are, I hope they get away,” Sara murmured. How strange it seemed that machine-vessels would be less sturdy than Streaker, whose protective fields could stand full immersion for several miduras in the red star’s chromosphere, storm or no storm.
If they can’t take on a plasma surge, they’d be useless against Jophur weapons.
Disappointment tasted bitter after briefly-raised hope. Clearly, no rescue would come from that direction.
Sara perceived a pattern to her trials and adventures during the last year—swept away from her dusty study to encounter aliens, fight battles, ride fabled horses, submerge into the sea, and then join a wild flight aboard a starship. The universe seemed bent on revealing wonders at the edge of her grasp or imagining—giant stars, transfer points, talking computers, universal libraries … and now a glimpse revealing a completely different order of life. A mysterious phylum, totally apart from the vast, encompassing Civilization of the Five Galaxies.
Such marvels lay far beyond her old life as a savage intellectual on a rustic world.
And yet, a glimpse was clearly all the cosmos planned on giving her.
Go ahead and look, it seemed to say. But you can’t touch. For you, time has almost run out.
Saddened, Sara watched orange pinpoints flee desperately before curling tornadoes of stellar heat. In moments, several more laggards were swept up by the rising storm, their frail light quenched like drowning embers.
Gillian and the dolphins seem sure we can stand a brief passage through that hell. But the vanishing sparks made Sara’s confidence waver. After all, weren’t machines supposed to be stronger than mere flesh?
She was about to ask the Niss about it when, before her eyes, the holo display abruptly changed once more. Izmunuti flickered, and when the image reformed, something new had come into view. Below the retreating orange glimmers, there now appeared three sparkling forms, rising with complacent grace, shining a distinct shade of imperial purple as they emerged from the flames to cross near Streaker’s path.
“What now?” she asked. “More mechanoids?”
“No,” the Niss answered in a tone that seemed almost awed. “These appear to be something else entirety. I believe they are …”
The computer’s holographic personification paused, deforming into jagged shapes, like nervous icicles.
“I believe they are Zang.”
Sara’s skin crawled with an involuntary shiver. That name was fraught with fear and legend. Back on Jijo, it was never spoken in tones above a whisper.
“But … how … what could they be doing …”
Before she finished her question, the Niss spoke again.
“Excuse me for interrupting, Sara. Our acting captain, Dr. Gillian Baskin, has just called an urgent meeting of the Ship’s Council to consider these developments.
“You are invited to attend, oh Sage.
“Do you wish me to make excuses on your behalf?”
Sara was already hurrying toward the exit
“Don’t you dare!” she cried over one shoulder as the door folded aside to let her pass.
The hallway curved up and away in both directions, like a segment of tortured spacetime, rising toward vertical in the distance. The sight always gave Sara qualms of dizziness, whenever she ventured outside her quarters. Nevertheless, this time she ran.
GILLIAN
For some reason, the tumultuous red giant star reminded her of Venus.
Naturally, that brought Tom to mind.
Everything reminded Gillian of Tom. After two years, his absence was still a wound, an amputation that left her reflexively turning for his warmth each night. By day, she kept expecting his strong voice, offering to help take on the worries. The damned decisions.
Isn’t it just like a hero, to die saving the world?
A little voice within her pointed out—that’s what heroes are for.
Yes, she answered. But the world goes on, doesn’t it? And it keeps needing to be saved.
Ever since the universe sundered them apart at Kithrup, Gillian told herself that Tom couldn’t be dead. I’d know it, she would think repeatedly, convincing herself by force of will. Across galaxies and megaparsecs, I could tell if he were gone. Tom must be out there somewhere still, with Creideiki and Hikahi, and the others we left behind.
He’ll find a way safely home … or else back to me.
That certainty helped Gillian bear her burdens during Streaker’s first distraught fugitive year … until the last few months of steady crisis finally cracked her assurance. Without ever realizing when it happened, a transition took place, and she began thinking of Tom in the past tense.
He loved Venus, she pondered, looking across the raging solar vista that stretched beyond Streaker’s hull. Of course there were differences. Izmunuti’s atmosphere was bright, while Earth’s sister world had been dim beneath perpetual acid clouds. And the planet was microscopic compared to a giant red star. Yet, both locales shared essential traits. Harsh warmth, unforgiving storms, and a paucity of moisture.
Both provoked extremes of hope and despair.
“Isn’t this tremendous?” Tom once asked. “Have you ever seen anything so superb? This great endeavor proves, once and for all, that humans are capable of thinking long thoughts.”
She could see him now, stretching both spacesuited arms to encompass the panorama below Aphrodite Pinnacle, gesturing toward stark lowlands where lighting danced about a phalanx of titanic structures receding toward the warped horizon—one shadowy behemoth after another—vast new devices freshly engaged in the labor of changing Venus. Transforming hell, one step at a time.
Even with borrowed Galactic technology, the task would take humans longer to complete than the period they had known writing or agriculture. Ten thousand years must pass before seas rolled across the sere plains. It was a bold project for poor wolflings to engage in, especially when Sa’ent and Kloomap bookies gave Earthclan slim odds of surviving more than another century or two.
“We have to show the universe that we trust ourselves,” Tom said. “Or else who will believe in us?”
His words sounded fine. So noble and grand. At the time, Tom almost convinced Gillian.
Only now things had changed.
H
alf a year ago during Streaker’s brief, terrified refuge at the Fractal World, Gillian had managed to pick up the latest rumors about the Siege of Terra, taking place in faraway Galaxy Two. Apparently, the Sa’ent touts were now taking bets on human extinction in mere years or jaduras, not centuries.
In retrospect, the ferment and debate over terraforming Venus seemed moot, like all the other projects that were supposed to win a special place in the cosmos for humans and their clients.
We’d have been better off as farmers, Tom and I. Or teaching school. Or helping settle Calafia.
We should never have listened to Jake Demwa and Ceideiki. This mission has brought ruin on everyone it touched.
Including the poor colonists of Jijo—six exile races who deserved a chance to find their own strange destiny undisturbed. In seeking shelter from the cosmos on that forlorn, forbidden world, Streaker had only managed to bring disaster on the tribes of the Slope.
There seemed just one way to redress the balance.
Can we lure the Jophur to follow us into the new transfer point? Kaa will have to pilot a convincing trajectory, as if he can sense a perfect thread to latch onto. A miracle path leading toward safety. If we do it right, the big ugly sap rings will have to follow! They’ll have no choice.
Saving Jijo was good enough reason for the suicidal option, especially since there seemed no way to bring Streaker’s cargo safely home to Earth.
Another reason tasted bitter, vengeful.
At least we’ll take some of our enemies with us.
It has been said that the prospect of impending death clarifies the mind, but Gillian found that it just stirred regret. She shook her head. It would not do to carry such thoughts to the council meeting. She had a duty not to infect the others with pessimism.
I hope Creideiki and Tom aren’t too disappointed in me, she pondered at the door of the conference room.
I did my best. I really did.