Heaven's Reach u-6

by David Brin

  Themselves.

  At least that’s how Sara relayed the legend to Gillian and the rest of us, speaking breathlessly while time bled away and the glavers howled and we plunged ever closer to a vast, threatening space leviathan.

  Piecing together what was happening, I realized the glavers weren’t actually talking to the Zang. After all, they’ve reached redemption and are now presapient beings, nearly bereft of speech.

  But the Zang have long memories, and our glavers seemed instinctively — maybe at some genetically programmed level — to know how to yowl just one meaningful thing. One phrase to let their ancient creditors know.

  Hey! It is us! We’re here! It’s us!

  To this identifying ululation, all the Niss Machine had to add/overlay was a simple request.

  Kindly get those Jophur bastards off our butts.

  Help us get away from here.

  Anxious moments passed. My spines frickled as we watched the Zang loom closer. I felt nervous as an urs on a beach, playing tag with crashing waves.

  Then, just as it seemed to be swooping for the kill, our would-be destroyer abruptly swerved! A climactic screech came over the loudspeakers. It took the Niss several duras, consulting with the Library unit, to offer a likely translation.

  Come with us now.

  Just like that, our nemesis changed into an escort, showing us the way. Leading Streaker out of Izmunuti’s angry chaos.

  We took our place in convoy as the Zang ship gathered the surviving harvester machines, fleeing toward the old transfer point.

  Meanwhile, one of its companion vessels turned to confront our pursuers.

  Long-distance sensors depicted a face-off between omnipotent titans.

  The showdown was awesome to behold, even at a range that made it blurry. I listened to Lieutenant Tsh’t describe the action for Sara.

  “Those are hellfire missiles-s-s,” the dolphin officer explained as the Jophur battleship accelerated, firing glittering pinpoints at its new adversary.

  The sap-rings must want the dolphins awful bad, I thought. If they’re willing to fight their way past that monster to get at Streaker.

  The Zang globule was even bigger than the Jophur … a quivering shape that seemed more like gelatin, or something oozing from a wounded traeki, than solid matter. Once, I thought I glimpsed shadowy figures moving within, like drifting clouds or huge living creatures swimming through an opaque fluid.

  Small bits of the main body split off, like droplets spraying from a gobbet of grease on a hot griddle. These did not hasten with the same lightning grace as the Jophur missiles. They seemed more massive. And relentless.

  One by one, each droplet swelled like an inflating balloon, interposing its expanding surface between the two warships. Jophur weapons maneuvered agilely, striving to get past the obstructions, but nearly all the missiles were caught by one bubble or another, triggering brilliant explosions.

  From her massive walking machine, watching the fight with one cool gray eye, Tsh’t commented. “The Zang throws parts of its own substance ahead, in order to defend itself-f-f. So far, it has taken no offensive action of its own.”

  I recall thinking hopefully that this meant the hydros were of a calm nature, less prone to savage violence than we are told by the sagas. Perhaps they only meant to delay the Jophur long enough for us to get away.

  Then I reconsidered.

  Let’s say this help from hydrogen breathers lets Streaker make good her escape. That’s great for the Earthlings — and maybe for the Five Galaxies — but it still leaves Jijo in a mess. The Jophur will be able to call reinforcements and do anything they want to the people of the Slope. Slaughter all the g’Kek. Transform all the poor traeki. Burn down the archive at Biblos and turn the Slope into their private genetic farm, breeding the other races into pliable little client life-forms.…

  Gillian’s earlier plan, to draw the battleship after us into a deadly double suicide, would have caused my own death, and that of everyone else aboard — but my homeworld might then have been safe.

  The trade-offs were stark and bitter. I found myself resenting the older woman for making a choice that spared my life.

  I also changed my mind about the Zang.

  Well? What’re you waiting for? Shoot back!

  The Jophur were oxygen beings like myself, distant relatives, sharing some of the same DNA that had spread around the galaxies during a predawn era before Progenitors arose to begin the chain of Uplift. Nevertheless, right then I was cheering for their annihilation by true aliens. Beings from a strange, incomprehensible order of life.

  Come on, Zang. Fry the big ugly ring stacks!

  But things went on pretty much the same as distance narrowed between the two giants. The globule spent itself prodigiously to block missiles and gouts of deadly fire from the great dreadnought. Yet despite this, some rays and projectiles got through, impacting the parent body with bitter violence. Fountains of gooey material spewed across the black background, sparkling gorgeously as they burned. Waves rippled and convulsed across the Zang ship. Still it forged on while the glavers yowled, seeming to urge the hydros on.

  “T-point insertion approaching,” announced a dolphin’s amplified voice. It had a fizzing quality that meant the speaker was breathing oxygen-charged water, so it must be coming from the bridge. “All hands prepare for transition. Kaa says our guides are acting strange. They’re choosing an unconventional approach pattern, so this may get rough!”

  Gillian and Sara gripped their armrests. The dolphins in the Plotting Room caused their walkers’ feet to splay out and magnetize, gripping the floor. But there was little for me and the glavers to do except stare about with wild, feral eyes. In the forward viewer, I now saw the starscape interrupted by a twist of utter blackness. Computer-generated lines converged while figures and glyphs made Sara murmur with excitement.

  I watched the ship ahead of us, the first Zang globule, shiver almost eagerly as it plunged at a steep angle toward the twist.…

  Then it fell in a direction I could not possibly describe if my life depended on it.

  A direction that I never, till that moment, knew existed.

  I glanced quickly at the rearward display. It showed the other hydro vessel shaking asunder before repeated fierce blows as the Jophur battle cruiser fired desperately with short-range weapons. The two behemoths were almost next to each other now, matched in velocity, still racing after us.

  A final, frantic hammering ripped through the Zang ship, tearing it into several unraveling gobs.

  For a moment, I thought it was over.

  I thought the Jophur had won.

  Then two of those huge gobs curled, almost like living tendrils, and settled across the gleaming metal hull. They clung to its surface. Spreading. Oozing.

  Somehow, despite the distance and flickering haze, I had the sense of something probing for a way in.

  Then the image vanished.

  I turned back to the main viewer. Transition had begun.

  Kaa

  THERE WAS A FINE ART TO PILOTING A STARSHIP through the stretched geometries of a transfer point. No machine or logical algorithm could manage the feat alone.

  Part of it involved playing hunches, knowing when to release the flange fields holding you to one shining thread and choosing just the right moment to make a leap — lasting both seconds and aeons — across an emptiness deeper than vacuum … then clamping nimbly to another slender discontinuity (without actually touching its deadly rim) and riding that one forward to your goal.

  Even a well-behaved t-point was a maelstrom. A spaghetti tangle of shimmering arcs and folds, bending the cosmic fabric through multiple — and sometimes partial — dimensions.

  A maze of dazzling, filamentary imperfections.

  Stringlike cracks in the mirror of creation.

  For those wise enough to use them well, the glowing strands offered a great boon. A way to travel safely from galaxy to linked galaxy, much faster than using hyperspa
ce.

  But to the foolish, or inattentive, their gift was a quick and flashy end.

  Kaa loved thread-jumping more than any other part of spaceflight. Something about it meshed with both sides of neo-dolphin nature.

  The new brain layers, added by human genecrafters, let him regard each strand as a flaw in the quantum metric, left behind when the universe first cooled from an inflating superheated froth, congealing like a many-layered cake to form the varied levels of real and hyperspace. That coalescence left defects behind — boundaries and fractures — where physical laws bent and shortcuts were possible. He could ponder all of that with the disciplined mental processes Captain Creideiki used to call the Engineer’s Mind.

  Meanwhile, in parallel, Kaa picked up different textures and insights through older organs, deep within his skull. Ancient bits of gray matter tuned for listening — to hear the swishing structure of a current, or judge the cycloid rhythms of a wave. Instruments probed the dense tangle of fossil topological boundaries, feeding him data in the form of sonar images. Almost by intuition, he could sense when a transfer thread was about to play out, and which neighboring cord he should clamp on to, sending the Streaker darting along a new gleaming path toward her next goal.

  Thomas Orley had once compared the process to “leaping from one roller coaster to another, in the middle of a thunderstorm.”

  Creideiki had expressed it differently.

  Converging nature

  Begins and ends, lives and dies,

  Where tide meets shoal and sky …

  Even during the expedition’s early days — when the captain was still with them and Streaker’s brilliant chief pilot Keepiru handled all the really tough maneuvers — everyone had nevertheless agreed that there was nothing quite like a t-point ride with Kaa at the helm — an exuberance of daring, flamboyant maneuvers that never seemed to go wrong. Once, after a series of absurdly providential thread jumps let him break a million-year-old record, taking the crossing from Tanith to Calafia in five and a quarter mictaars, the crew bestowed on him a special nickname.

  “Lucky.”

  In Trinary, the word-phrase meant much more than it did in Anglic. It connoted special favor in the fortune sea, the deep realm of chance where Ifni threw her dice and ancient dreamers crooned songs that were old before the stars were born.

  It was a great honor. But some also say that such titles, once won, are hard to keep.

  He started losing his during the fiasco at Oakka, that awful green world of betrayal, and things went rapidly downhill after that. By the time Streaker fled to a murky trash heap beneath Jijo’s forlorn ocean, few called him Lucky Kaa anymore.

  Then, in a matter of days, fate threw him the best and cruelest turns of all. He found love … and quickly lost it again when duty yanked Kaa away from his heart, sending him hurtling parsecs farther from Peepoe with each passing minute.

  At the very moment she needed me most.

  So he took little joy from this flight through a labyrinth of shimmering threads. Only grim professionalism sustained him.

  Kaa had learned not to count on luck.

  Behind him, the water-filled control room seemed eerily silent. Without opening his eyes or breaking concentration, Kaa felt the other neo-fins holding tense rein over their reflex sonar clicking, in order not to disturb him.

  They had cause for taut nerves. This transfer was like no other.

  The reason gleamed ahead of Streaker — a vast object that Kaa perceived one moment as a gigantic jellyfish … then like a mammoth squid, with tentacles bigger than any starship he had ever seen. Its fluid profile, transformed for travel through the t-point’s twisted bowels, gave him shivers. Instinct made Kaa yearn to get away — to cut the flanges and hop any passing thread, no matter where in the universe it might lead — just to elude that dreadful shape.

  But it’s our guide. And if we tried to get away, the Zang would surely kill us.

  Kaa heard a faint caterwauling cry, coming from the dry chamber next door — the plotting room. By now he recognized the wailing sound of glavers, those devolved creatures from Jijo who had voluntarily returned to animal presapience. That alone would be enough to give him the utter willies, even without this bizarre affinity the bulge-eyed beasts seemed to have with a completely different order of life. That understanding offered Streaker a way clear of the dreaded Jophur, but at what cost?

  Saved from one deadly foe, he pondered. Only to face another that’s feared all across Galactic Civilization.

  In fact, such dilemmas were becoming routine to the dolphin crew. The whole universe seemed filled with nothing but frying pans and fires.

  They’re getting ready, Kaa contemplated as a gentle throbbing passed along the tentacles of the squidlike shape ahead. Twice before, this had just preceded a jump maneuver. On both occasions, it had taken all his skill to follow without slamming Streaker into a nearby string singularity. The hydros used a thread-riding style unlike any he had seen before, following world lines that were more timelike than spacelike, triggering micro causality waves that nauseated everyone aboard. Nothing about the Zang method was any more efficient. Each jarring maneuver — and churning neural reflex — made Kaa want to swerve back and do it in a way that made more sense.

  I could probably get you there in half the time, he thought resentfully toward the squid-shaped thing. If you just told me where we’re going.

  True, the resonances had changed since he last used this t-point, back when Streaker fled the horrid Fractal World, attempting Gillian’s last desperate gamble … the “sooner’s path,” seeking a hiding place on far-off Jijo. When that second singularity nexus reopened near Izmunuti, it must have jiggered this one as well. Still, there must be an easier way to get where the Zang wanted to go than—

  Sonar images merged into focus. He perceived a bright cluster of threads just ahead … a Gordian tangle with no spacelike strands at all.

  Ugh! That ghastly clutter has got to be where the hydros are aiming, damn them.

  And yet, listening carefully to the transposed sound portrait, he thought he could sense something about the knotty mess.…

  You know, I’ll bet I can guess which thread they’re gonna take.

  Kaa’s attention riveted. This was important to him. More than duty and survival were at stake. Or the vaunted reputation neo-dolphin pilots had begun to earn among the Five Galaxies. Even regaining his nickname held little attraction anymore.

  Only one thing really mattered to Kaa. Getting the job done. Delivering Gillian Baskin and her cargo safely. And then finding a way back to Jijo. Back to Peepoe. Even if it meant never piloting again. He triggered an alarm to warn the others.

  Here we go!

  The “squid” uncoiled, preparing for its final leap.

  Alvin’s Journal

  I AM AT A LOSS TO DESCRIBE EVEN A SINGLE MOment of our time inside the t-point.

  Comparisons come to mind. Like a Founders’ Day fireworks display. Or watching a clever urrish tinker throw sparkling exploser dust during a magic show, or …

  Give up, Alvin.

  All I really recall from that nauseating passage is a blur of dazzling ribbons waving across every monitor screen. While Sara Koolhan shouted ecstatically, watching her beloved mathematics come alive before her eyes, the more experienced Gillian Baskin kept grunting in dismayed surprise — a sound I found worrisome.

  The gravity fields pitched and fluxed. Sparks flew from nearby instrument banks. Neo-fin crew stomped their walker machines close, dousing hot spots with inert gas. All told, this first-time space traveler figured we were experiencing no typical passage.

  In fact, I soon felt too miserable to notice much of anything. I just spread my arms in a wide circle so the glavers could huddle inside, mewling pathetically. But the shrieking cry of Streaker’s engines tore through all my efforts to umble reassuringly.

  Without any doubt, it was among the worst couple of miduras in my life, even when I compare it to the awful time wh
en my friends and I fell off the edge of a subsea cliff in our broken Wuphon’s Dream, with icy water jetting at my face as we tumbled toward the cold hell of Jijo’s Midden.

  At one point a dolphin cried out—“Here we go!”—and things rapidly got a whole lot worse. My second bowel did a lurch against my heart. Then I found I couldn’t breathe as every sound around me abruptly ceased!

  For a long, extended moment it felt like being swaddled in a dense bale of bec cotton, as if I were being torn from the universe, looking back at it from the end of a long tunnel, or from the bottom of a deep, deep well.

  Then, just as suddenly, I was back! The cosmos swarmed around me again. A great weight seemed to lift off my vertebral spines, allowing me to inhale sharply.

  We Jijoan boons love our sailing ships, I thought, fighting off waves of queasiness. We never get sick at sea. But our star traveling ancestors must’ve been throwing up all the time, if this was bow they bad to get about. No wonder legends say they were such grouches.

  Glancing up, I saw that Gillian and Sara were already on their feet, moving tensely toward the big display. Tsh’t and the dolphin staff piloted their walkers to crowd just behind the humans, peering over their shoulders.

  A bit shaky, I stood and joined them. On the main screen, all the roiling colors were dissipating fast. Streaker’s roaring engines dropped to a soft mutter as the ripple-swirls parted like folds of a curtain, revealing …

  … stars.

  I gazed at strange constellations.

  Stars that are some damn Ifni-incalculable distance from the ones I know.

  How is one supposed to feel when a long-held, impossible dream comes true?

  Alvin, you are now a long, long way from home.

  While I mused on that marvel, Streaker slowly turned. The shining skyscape flowed past our gaze — strange clusters, nebulae, and spiral arms whose light might not reach Jijo for thousands or millions of years — until at last we caught sight of our escort, the huge Zang ship-entity.