Heaven's Reach u-6

by David Brin

  And not only Streaker. On all sides of us, arrayed in long neat rows, were ranks of other starships! Most of them much larger. All apparently waiting in still silence for something to happen.

  Belatedly, the Niss hologram finally popped back into existence among us. Its mesh of fine lines looked tense, anxious.

  “I see just one common feature among all these vessels,” it said. “Every one of them bears the Sign of Unity. The symbol consisting of two line segments, joining at one hundred and four degrees. The Emblem of Transcendence.”

  Now, looking at the white glow, we could tell that it was somehow sorting through the vessels that it plucked up from the travel threads. Some — a majority — were conveyed around its shimmering globe and set back on their way. These vanished swiftly, as if eager to make good their escape to other galaxies.

  But every hundredth or so vessel was pulled aside. The white glow seemed to examine each of these closely, then brought most of them over to join our phalanx of selected …

  Selected what? Prisoners? Samples? Candidates? Hors d’oeuvres?

  To our relief, that last notion was disproved when we saw a nearby starship abruptly pulse with soft fire, undergoing a reversal of its earlier transformation. In moments, the two-legged symbol had changed back into a nest of concentric circles. At once that vessel began slipping out of formation, wobbling as it jetted toward the flow of departing refugees.

  “Chickening out,” diagnosed Huck, as always charitable in her evaluation of others. The same thing happened several more times, as we watched. But the white glow kept adding new members to our ranks.

  Emerson d’Anite began fiddling with the long-range display, and soon grunted, pointing to his discovery — that our bubble of local spacetime wasn’t the only one! There were at least a dozen other assembly areas, and perhaps a lot more. Some of them contained spiky, fractal-shaped spacecraft, like those nearby. Others seemed filled with blobby yellow shapes, vaguely spherical, that sometimes merged or separated like balls of grease.

  “Zang,” identified Emerson, clearly proud to be able to name the lumpy objects aloud, as if that single word helped clarify our confusion.

  “Um …,” Sage Sara asked. “Does anyone have any idea what we’re doing here? Have I missed something? Have we just been mistaken as members of the transcendent order of life?”

  Lieutenant Tsh’t tossed her great, bottle-nosed head.

  “That-t would be q-quite a promotion,” she commented, sardonically.

  “Indeed,” added the Niss. “Most oxygen-breathing species strive for many hundreds of thousands of years — engaging in commerce, Uplift, warcraft, and starfaring — before at last they feel the call, seeking a tame star near which to wallow in the Embrace of Tides. Having joined the Retired Order, a species then may pass another million years until they feel ready for the next step.”

  Ur-ronn made a suggestion.

  “Should we consult the Livrary Vranch you have avoard this shif?”

  The whirling Niss shivered.

  “The Galactic Library does not contain much information about the Retired Order, since our elders often say that such matters are none of our business.

  “As for what happens beyond retirement … well, now we are talking about realms of religion. Most of the great cults of the Five Galaxies have to do with this issue — what it means for a race to transcend. Many believe the Progenitors were first to pass this way, bidding all others to follow when they can. But—”

  “But that doesn’t answer Sara’s question,” finished Gillian Baskin. “Why have we been plucked out to join this assembly? I wonder if—”

  She stopped, noticing that the mute former engineer, Emerson d’Anite, was gesturing for attention again. He kept tapping his own nose, then alternately pointing forward, toward the window separating the Plotting Room from Streaker’s bridge. For a few moments, everyone seemed perplexed. Then Tsh’t made a squeal of realization.

  “The nose of the sh-ship! Remember how a faction of Old Ones and machines reworked our hull, giving us our strange new armor? What if they also changed the WOM watcher on our bow? None of us has had a good look since it happened. Maybe the symbol is not a rayed ssssspiral anymore! Maybe it’ssss …”

  She didn’t finish. We all got her drift. Perhaps Streaker now wore an emblem identifying its inhabitants as something we’re definitely not.

  Others seemed to find this plausible … though no one could imagine why our benefactors would want to do such a thing. Or what the consequences might be, when we’re found out.

  Toward the front of the crowd, I watched Gillian Baskin’s face and realized she wasn’t buying that theory. The woman obviously had another idea in mind. Perhaps a different explanation of why we were here.

  I was probably the only one close enough to overhear the one word she spoke then, under her breath, in a tone I took to be resigned sadness.

  I’m writing the word down now, even though I have no idea what it means.

  Here was all she said.

  “Herbie …”

  So, that’s how we wound up parting company.

  It looks as if Streaker may have found sanctuary after all … of a sort. At least the Jophur battleship is no longer in sight, though who knows if it might show up again. Anyway, Dr. Baskin has decided not to fight this turn of destiny’s wheel, but instead to ride it for a while and see where it may lead.

  But we Wuphonites won’t be going along. We’re to climb aboard an old Thennanin star boat — which still has the rayed spiral symbol on its prow — and have Kaa pilot us to safety in Galaxy Two. It’ll be hard, especially having to latch on to a rapid transfer thread from standstill in this weird space bubble. And that will be just the beginning of our difficulties as we try to find a backwater port where no one would much notice us slipping into the Civilization of Five Galaxies.

  Once there, if Ifni’s dice roll right, we’ll endeavor to act as Gillian’s messengers, deliver her vital information, and then maybe see about finding something to do with the rest of our lives.

  Like Huck, I have mixed feelings about all this. But what else can we do, except try?

  Tsh’t has finished loading all our supplies in the hold. Kaa is in the dolphin-shaped pilot’s saddle, thrashing his flukes and eager to be off. We’ve all received hugs and good-luck wishes from those we’re leaving behind.

  “Make Jijo proud,” Sage Sara told us. I wish she was coming along, so we’d have her wisdom, and so our group would have a representative from all Six Races of the Slope. But if anyone from our little hidden world ought to go see what transcendent creatures are like, and have a chance of understanding, it’s her. Things are the way they are, I guess.

  Tyug, the traeki alchemist, is venting sweet steam. The aroma soothes our fears and qualms at parting. I guess if a traeki can be serene about entering a universe filled with Jophur, I should be open-minded about meeting long-lost cousin hoons — distant relatives who’ve spent all their lives with the power and comforts of star gods, but who’ve never read Conrad, Ellison, or Twain. Poor things.

  “We need to name this thing,” Pincer-Tip insists, banging the metal floor of the boat with his claw.

  Ur-ronn nods her sleek urrish head.

  “Of course, there can ve only one that fits.”

  I agree with a low umble. So we turn to Huck, whose eyestalks shrug, conveying some of the unaccustomed burden of responsibility she now carries.

  “Let it be Wuphon’s Dream,” she assents, making it unanimous.

  Gillian Baskin waits by the hatch for me to hand over the copy disk from my autoscribe. So I must now finish dictating this entry — as unpolished and abrupt as it is.

  If this is where my story ends, dear reader, it means Streaker somehow made it, and we didn’t. I have no complaints or regrets. Just remember us, if it pleases you to do so.

  Thanks, Dr. Baskin. Thanks for the adventure and everything.

  Good luck.

  And good-bye.
r />   Harry

  SOMETHING WAS TERRIBLY FAMILIAR ABOUT this region of E Space, ever since he first stared across the prairie of twisted, fuzzy growths toward narrow spires that climbed to meet a vast, overhanging plane. The back of Harry’s neck kept tickling unpleasantly — the way a neo-chimpanzee experiences déjà vu.

  Now he regarded the same scene from another vertiginous angle, as his scout vessel clung to a gigantic sheer cliff amid a blurry haze. Innumerable reddish blotchy patterns repeated symmetrically across the smooth vertical surface, like footprints left by an army of splayfooted monsters.

  “Well,” he commented, his voice scratchy with surprise. “I never did this before. Who’d’ve thought the rules here would let a big machine climb straight up, like a spider on a w—”

  Harry stopped. Realization left him mute as his jaw opened and closed.

  It can’t be!

  He stared at the cliff’s repetitious markings, then the distant spires, nearly lost in shrouding mist. A mental shift of scale made it all clear.

  I … would’ve sussed it earlier, but for the blurry vision in this crazy place.

  He felt cosmically stupid. Harry moaned aloud.

  “By Cheetah’s beard an’ Tarzan’s hernia … it’s a room. A room in somebody’s goddam house!”

  Awareness lent focus to his tardy perception.

  The prairie of fuzzy growths?

  Carpet!

  The tall, narrow spires?

  Furniture legs. And that huge flat plane I fell from before must be a table.

  The blotchy pattern on this “cliff” was probably wallpaper, or some tasteless counterpart. From this close, he had no clue if the motif was Earthling or alien.

  This zone of E Space has so few visitors, it was probably in a raw, unmanifested state when I dropped in. The whole megillah may have coalesced around some image from my own subconscious mind!

  He had been thinking about the station format, equipped with long legs from his last mission, comparing it to a spider. Perhaps that thought helped precipitate this eerily personal subcosmos.

  Unless I’m actually dreaming it all, and my body’s really lying in crumpled delirium somewhere, smashed under tons of debris where the station fell, an instant after I arrived.

  Either way, it showed just why most sophonts thought this part of E Space especially dangerous.

  Perhaps this was how insects saw things inside a house — everything a blur. Harry wondered if there were pictures on the walls, a bowl of fruit on the table, and a humongous kitten purring on some sofa, just across the way.

  Maybe it was better not to know, or force E Space to reify too much.

  Just one thing spoiled the impression of a quaint, gigantic drawing room — the Avenue — a slender, sinuous tube of radiance that emerged from the misty distance, wound its way across the floor, then pierced the wall below Harry’s vantage point. A place called Reality, dominated by matter and rigid physical laws.

  “I sense vibrations approaching,” the station announced. “From the point of connection-rupture.”

  In other words, from the mouse hole where the Avenue plunged toward another zone of E Space. Three interlopers had taken that route before, leaving distinct traces. A small vessel squeezed through first, about a year ago … followed by a pursuer who carelessly blasted a wider path. Both left spoor signs of oxy-life. A third, more recent craft, shed mixed clues before entering the narrow route.

  Now something was coming the other way.

  Harry checked the station’s weaponry console and found several panels lit up … meaning they were able to function here, though in what fashion remained to be seen.

  “Let’s see if we can try that other trick again,” he murmured.

  Taking manual control, he sealed the station’s reality anchor to the adjacent wall with an audible “thunk.” Then, nervously, he detached each clinging foot from the wall, until his vessel dangled high above the ground. “Lower away!” he said, causing the cord to stretch, halting just two ship lengths above where carpet met wall. The Avenue lay just a little to his left.

  Whatever’s coming out … it can’t be much bigger than this station. And most starships that visit E Space aren’t well designed for it. I’ve got advantages, including surprise.

  It seemed logical. Harry almost had himself convinced.

  But logic was a fickle friend, even back in his home universe. In E Space, it was just one of many games you could play with symbols and ideas.

  One of many ways to fool yourself.

  “Here it comes!” announced pilot mode, as something began nosing out of the dark tunnel.

  It looked pathetic — absurdly long and barely narrow enough to fit through the tunnel. The intruder comprised a chain of hinged segments carried on stiff, articulated legs. It scuttled out of the dark passageway rapidly, then swerved aside, crouching along the wall as tremors ran from section to section. Watching from above, Harry’s impression was of something wounded and frightened, cowering as it tried to catch its breath.

  He did not have to engage observer mode to know at once, this entity was a machine. Its rigid formality of movement was a dead giveaway. More significant was the fact that it did not change very easily. Upon entering a new region of E Space, any other kind of life-form would already have flexed and throbbed through some sort of transition, adjusting its self-conception, its gestalt, to suit the new environment.

  In this realm, believing often made things so.

  Yet, by their very natures, machines were supreme manifestations of applied physical law. Consistency was a source of their power, back in Reality. But here it had crippling effects. Faced with an imperative need to adjust its form, a machine could only do so by carefully evaluating the new circumstances, coming up with a design, then implementing each change according to a plan.

  Zooming in with a handheld telescope, Harry saw the mech’s body swarm with smaller motile objects — repair and maintenance drones — laboring frantically to alter its shape and function by cutting, moving, and reattaching hunks of real matter. In the process, bits and pieces kept falling off, crumbling or dissolving into big strands of carpet. Harry’s atom sensor showed a veritable cloud of particles billowing outward … debris that would start attracting scavenging memes before long.

  Clearly, this thing had once been a spacefaring device, a dweller in deep vacuum and darkness. It was amazing the machine could adapt to this environment at all.

  A sensor flashed anomaly readings. Some of the pollution consisted of oxygen, nitrogen, and complex organic compounds — telltale signs of quite another order of life.

  Wait a minute.

  Harry had already been suspicious. Now he felt sure.

  This was the third entity he had been tracking.

  “Must’ve bumped into something it disagreed with,” he surmised. “Something scary enough to make it run away.”

  Pilot mode soon confirmed this.

  “I am detecting more bogeys, approaching the rupture boundary from the other side, following this one at a rapid pace.”

  Harry narrowed down the source of the abnormal gas emissions to a sealed swelling near the middle of the caterpillar-shaped machine. A habitat. A container for atmosphere and other life-support needs. Some glassy shimmers might be windows, though the interior was too dim to see anything.

  Clearly the machine knew time was short. Reconfiguration work accelerated, but little drones broke down from the frantic pace, overheating and tumbling to the carpet, which began waving toward the commotion, showing unnerving signs of animate hunger. Atoms were rare in E Space, and did not last long. Many simple meme creatures found bits of matter useful as trace nutrients, lending a bit of reality to living abstractions.

  “Thirty duras until arrival of the newcomers,” confirmed pilot mode.

  Though its work was unfinished, the caterpillar-machine decided there was no more time to spare, and began hurrying away next to the glowing Avenue.

  I wonder why i
t doesn’t try a dive back into normal space by jumping into the Avenue. Sure, it might emerge almost anywhere, and need centuries to find its way to a decent hyperspatial shunt, but don’t machines have plenty of time?

  He could think of several possibilities.

  Perhaps it’s too badly damaged to survive reentry.

  Or maybe its organic cargo can’t afford to spend centuries drifting through space.

  The awkward machine suffered dire problems. Metal-hinged legs began freezing in place, or snapping and falling off. Harry pictured a wounded animal, struggling on with its last strength.

  He turned to watch for the pursuers. A burst of light heralded their emergence, shining from the tunnel. Carpet strands quailed in response. Then the first creature appeared.

  Harry’s impression was of an armored earthworm, with a glistening head consisting of shiny plates. A beast of dark holes and airless depths. But this quickly changed. In a speedy metamorphosis, the entity adjusted to this different realm. Eyelike organs sprouted above, while pseudopods erupted below, until it stood gracefully atop myriad delicate tendrils, like a millipede.

  Or megapede, Harry decided.

  Only one kind of creature could adjust so quickly in E Space. One that was native to it. A sophisticated meme-carnivore. An idea — perhaps the very idea — of predation.

  As the first one transmuted to fit the ad hoc rules of a gigantic parlor room, several more crowded from behind, members of a hunting pack, eager for a final dash after their helpless prey.

  It’s none of my business, Harry thought, pulling anxiously on both thumbs. My first duty is to collect Wer’Q’quinn’s instruments. My second is to track and deter interlopers … but the memes will take care of this one by themselves.

  But Harry’s indecision was stoked by a sudden memory of the last time he had listened to the Skiano missionary preach its strange creed from a makeshift pulpit, beneath a slowly turning hologram of crucified Earth. With both light and sound, the evangelist sermonized that each sapient individual should look to the deliverance of his or her own soul.