by David Brin
Which brought Harry to the third, and most worrying, bit of news.
“Apparently, these recent convulsions are part of a natural catastrophe whose proportions have not been seen since the Gronin Collapse. And we will face far worse calamities during the duras and piduras to come.”
“H … how much worse?”
Wer’Q’quinn twisted several long, suckered tendrils around each other in a grasp strong enough to bend steel. The elderly sophont, normally as unshakable as a neutron star, seemed to shiver, as if it took strong will to utter the next words.
“It seems that our civilization may be about to lose a galaxy.”
Harry reached the anteroom still in a daze.
Wer’Q’quinn had indicated that he already had an assignment planned for Harry, whose promotion would take effect along with those new duties, starting tomorrow.
Something about a message, just recently broadcast from besieged Earth. A warning, aimed at all Institute outposts. Senior officials have squelched it, wherever possible, but rumors of its content are already spreading panic through several quadrants.
It all sounded fascinating. But right now Harry’s exhaustion showed even to his normally oblivious boss. His head was in a muddle, and Wer’Q’quinn had ordered him home for some well-earned rest before starting anew.
Entering the richly paneled outer chamber, Harry stood for a long time, blinking, wondering what was missing.
Dwer and Rety, he realized at last.
They were supposed to stay here, waiting for me.
He peered left and right.
They were gone!
Hurrying through the far portal, he stood on the topmost step of Navigation Institute headquarters, staring at the teeming crowds, wondering where the two humans might have run off to. Humans never before exposed to the intricate dangers of Galactic culture, with no idea what hazards lurked out there among several hundred temperamental species … many of whom hated Earthlings on sight.
Sara
IT ALL BOILED DOWN TO A MATTER OF LANGUAGE.
You can only contemplate what your mind is able to describe, she thought.
The system of organized Galactic dialects had helped oxy-races communicate with minimal misunderstanding for two billion years — a primly logical structure of semantics, syntax, grammar, and meaning. But now she figured it had a double purpose — to obscure. A sophisticated culture of technically advanced and deeply intelligent beings was channeled away from pondering certain topics. Certain possibilities.
This could be the real reason wolfling races wind up being annihilated, she thought. They may more readily look past the blind spots. See what mustn’t be seen.
That cannot be allowed.
Through a crystal pane, Sara glanced at swarms of gigantic, needle-shaped habitats orbiting a dense relic star at furious speed. Lined up along the radial path followed by escaping rays of light, their inner points seemed almost to brush the intensely bright surface. Anyone living down there — perched deep within the white dwarf’s steep gravitational well — would experience profound tidal forces, tugging and stretching every living cell.
Of course, that was the whole point of living here.
Unlike the Fractal World, mere hydrogen metal could not survive the glare or tortuous strain of this place. Hannes Suessi had tried to explain what kinds of field-reinforced materials might withstand such forces, but Sara’s mind only reeled at his cascade of obscure terms. The technology, far beyond her barbarian education, seemed altogether godlike.
Ah, but math … that was another story. Even back home, with just pencil and paper as her only tools, she had learned all sorts of clever shortcuts to describe the countless ways that space might fold, flex, or tear — analytical methods that lay outside the normal Galactic tradition.
Now, with some of Streaker’s onboard wizard machines to assist her, Sara found herself performing extravagant incantations. By word and gesture, she caused glorious charts and graphs to appear in midair. Tensors cleaved before her eyes. Tarski transforms and Takebayashi functions dealt handily with transfinite integrals at her merest whim, solving problems that no mere numerical processor could calculate by brute force alone.
Her little chimp assistant, Prity, helped by silently molding shapes with agile hands, fashioning outlines that became equations.
Equations portraying a cosmos under stress.
I wish Sage Purofsky could have seen this, Sara thought.
It was as if both calculus and computers had been waiting to achieve their potential together. Joined now under her direction, they were already making her old teacher’s dream come true, proving that the ancient concepts of Einstein and Lee had relevance, after all.
Perhaps experts on Earth had already accomplished the same thing, either openly or in secret. Still Sara felt as if she were exploring virgin territory. Those concepts cast light upon the future — revealing a calamity of untold magnitude.
Well, at least now we know — we weren’t at fault for what happened to the Fractal World. Gillian will find that comforting, I guess.
Dr. Baskin clearly felt guilty over contributing to the havoc that had struck the vast, frail shell of hydrogen ice, crushing billions of inhabitants when it collapsed. It had seemed to be a direct result of Streaker’s presence — like a snake corrupting Eden. But Sara’s evidence now pointed to natural phenomena, ponderously inevitable, as impersonal as an earthquake. Far more unstoppable than a hurricane.
No wonder so many other refugee arks joined our convoy. Delicate criswell structures must be shattering all over the Five Galaxies, forcing members of the Retired Order to choose quickly whether to rejoin oxy-civilization or transcend to the next level … or else stay where they are, and die.
Unable to bear even a brief separation from the Embrace of Tides, many chose to remain huddled next to their little red suns, even as the continuum shivered around them, crushing their brittle, icy homes into evaporating splinters.
Looking down at the brilliantly compact white dwarf, Sara wondered. Would the same worsening conditions also affect this crowded realm — where sparkling needle shapes whirled quickly around a superdense star? It was a far mightier place than the Fractal World, occupied by ancient, revered races, combining the best of hydrogen and oxygen cultures.
Surely members of the Transcendent Order must know what’s coming. We are like ants compared to such wise beings. They’ll have means of protecting themselves during the Time of Changes.
It was a reassuring thought.
Unfortunately, Sara could not keep from worrying.
She worried about the Buyur.
Her news got a sober reception at the next staff meeting. Even when Sara exonerated Streaker from the Fractal World tragedy, Dr. Baskin seemed more concerned with understanding what might happen next.
“You’re saying that all these disruptions are a natural result of the expansion of the universe?”
“That’s right,” Sara replied. “The spacetime metric — including the underlying ylem — stretches and weakens, eventually reaching a fracture point. Domain boundaries abruptly snap and reconnect. A bit like pressure building underground for release in a quake. So-called threads, or flaws in the original matrix, can be pinched off, turning transfer points into useless maelstroms, isolating whole sectors, quadrants, or even galaxies.”
The older woman shook her head. “Cosmic expansion has been going on for sixteen billion years. Why should all this come to a sudden head now?”
The Niss Machine interjected at that point.
“The simple answer to your question is that this occurrence … is not unique.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this sort of thing has happened before.
“Let me illustrate by asking a question, Dr. Baskin. Does this symbol have any meaning to you?”
Sara watched an image take shape above the conference table — a complex form with thirteen spiral rays and four ovals, all overlaid.
Gillian blinked for a moment. Then her mouth pinched in a sour expression. “You know damn well it does. Tom found it engraved on those strange ships we discovered in the Shallow Cluster … the so-called Ghost Fleet that got us in trouble the minute we laid eyes on it.”
Bowing its funnel of nested lines politely, the Niss Machine continued.
“Then surely you recall one possibility we discussed — that the Ghost Fleet might represent emissaries from an entirely different civilization? One completely apart from our five linked galaxies. Perhaps an expedition that had crossed hundreds of megaparsecs of flat, open space to reach us from a quite different nexus of life?”
The Niss waited for Gillian to nod.
“Well, I can now refute that guess. It is not true.
“Rather, those ships come from our past … a past when more than five galaxies made up this nexus-association.”
A water-filled tube ran along one wall of the conference room, where Akeakemai slashed his broad tail, causing a storm of bubbles to swirl around his sleek gray body. With Lieutenant Tsh’t under arrest, he was now the senior dolphin aboard — an honor that clearly made him nervous.
“M-mo-more? You mean there were once — sssseventeen galaxiessss?”
“Seventeen, aye. Of which several were elliptical types, as well as thirteen spirals. However, a while later — (the records are vague on exact timing) — there appear to have been eleven … and then seven … and finally the five we know today.”
Silence reigned. Finally, although his cyborg visage remained mirror smooth, Hannes Suessi stammered.
“But — but how could we not already know about something so … something so …”
“Something so huge? So epochal and traumatic? I believe your own state of shocked surprise is a clue. Each such loss would have struck hard at the normally placid, deeply conservative society of the time. In fact, the waves of disruption that Sage Koolhan just described must have been even worse in those earlier episodes, wreaking untold havoc and ruin. Survivors would have been busy for ages, picking up the pieces.
“Now suppose older, wiser spirits asserted themselves during the aftermath, taking control over the Great Library through those crucial centuries, it would not require much effort to erase and adjust appropriate archive entries … or divert blame for the chaos onto more mundane culprits. Say, the Zang, or criminal oxy-clans, or a breeding-explosion by machine life-forms.”
“But how could they conceal the loss of whole galaxies!”
“That may have been easier than it seems. The last time this happened on a large scale — the Gronin Collapse — there followed hardly any mention of lost territories, because the Migration Institute had already prepared by—”
Sara stood up.
“By evacuating them!”
She turned to address Gillian and the others.
“The Transcendents must have known in advance, two hundred thirty million years ago. They ordered abandonment of the two galaxies they were about to lose, before the rupture took place.” She stared into space. “This explains the mystery about Galaxy Four! Why all of that spiral was recently assigned fallow status, forcing all oxygen-breathing starfarers to depart. It wasn’t for reasons of ecological management, but because they sensed another split coming!”
The Niss hologram shrugged, as if it all seemed obvious now. The entity made no apologies for taking so long to catch on.
“Clearly, the higher orders of life have either confided in or manipulated senior officials of the Great Institutes, so the governing bodies of oxy-civilization would make preparations.”
“But there’s so much we still don’t understand!” Sara objected. “Why must the affected galaxy be emptied of starfarers? How does all this affect the other life orders? What does it—”
Gillian Baskin interrupted.
“I’m sure you will help us pierce those veils as well, Sage Koolhan. Meanwhile, this news is disturbing enough. When you said a galaxy was about to split off, I thought you meant the one containing Earth — the Milky Way. That might help explain why our planet was isolated for so long. And why we created such commotion when we finally made contact.”
The Niss answered with some of its old patronizing tone.
“With all due respect, Dr. Baskin, do curb your innate human tendency toward solipsism. Despite some petty excitement caused by this little ship, the universe does not revolve around your kind.”
Sara found the rebuke snide and unfair. But Gillian accepted it with a nod.
Suessi reported on efforts to cast off the ship’s transparent sheath, an armor layer that once had protected it against devastating weapons, but now seemed a death shroud. It had proved nearly fatal just two hours ago, when Streaker tried to depart the white dwarf’s funnel-like gravity well, sneaking away from the swarm of “candidates for transcendence.”
Unfortunately, the Jophur battleship, Polkjhy, lay waiting just above, swooping in to launch a new form of attack. Emitting complex pulses on a hyperspatial resonance band, the enemy stroked a response from the strange atoms locked in Streaker’s outer shell, turning the throbbing layer into a huge antenna, drawing a flux of energy from D Space! As the Niss predicted, temperatures soon climbed. The deck plates warmed steadily, with no apparent way to slough the mounting heat.
Lacking any effective means to fight back, Streaker could not even tear free of Polkjhy’s grasping fields to dive back amid the mob of craggy arks, spiraling inexorably toward the white dwarf star. If the assault continued, the Earthlings would have to surrender … or else broil.
Then, abruptly, a Zang globule approached from the swarm, beaming a recognition code that set the herd of Jijoan glavers baying loudly in the hold. With evident frustration, the Polkjhy released its grip and backed away as “deputy” vessels budded off the giant Zang, moving toward Streaker.
Relieved, the Terrans rendezvoused with the rescuing globules.
“I guess it’s time to say good-bye to our little friends,” Gillian Baskin had said. The glavers were about to meet a destiny mapped out for them long ago.
Willingly, the small troop of quadrupeds clattered to the airlock, where Sara bid them farewell.
May this bring the redemption that your ancestors sought, when they came to Jijo. A strange, but honorable goal. To unite what had been distinct. To bridge the gap, helping oxygen and hydrogen meld as one.
At last she understood how both civilizations had been able to coexist for so long, despite a fractious antipathy during their youthful, starfaring phase. Because they were fated for each other, like preordained mates, who only discover affinity on their wedding eve.
Moreover, this union explained why the known cosmos was never overwhelmed by machines. United, the hydro-and oxy-orders were more than a match for silicon and metal, preventing digital sapience from taking over and exploiting every scrap of matter in all five linked galaxies.
It seems so tidy, so perfect — even romantic, in a way. Almost as if the universe were designed with this in mind.
Watching the glavers go — carried by translucent, glowing bubbles — she envied their clear-cut role. Their obvious importance. At that moment, they were Jijo’s great success, valued participants in something inarguably noble, contributing their wise simplicity to help bring about glorious fusion.
Streaker seemed emptier when they were gone.
Suessi reported failure. The material covering the hull proved impossible to scratch by any means at his disposal.
“Whoever gave Streaker this coating not only saved our lives, back at the Fractal World. They also made sure we must stay with this convoy, all the way to the bottom.”
With Polkjhy orbiting above, ready to pounce if Streaker tried leaving, there seemed no choice but to accompany the candidates’ armada, spiraling toward the great, javelin-shaped habitats. Akeakemai sighed a resigned Trinary haiku.
Are we ready? Or not?
Yanked from blissful dreaming,
Hear the call of depth
s!
Emerson D’Anite laughed aloud, despite his crippled brain. But Sara had to consult her portable computer for a translation. Even so, she probably missed nuances of the quirky, intuition-based language.
Am I ready? To become transcendent?
Sara wondered what that meant, but all she could picture was an image of vast, cool intellects, in hybrid bodies stretched thin by tides, contemplating ornate wisdom that would make her beloved equations seem like the flagella flailings of some crude bacterium. Even if such beings found a way to incorporate humans and dolphins into their composite mind, she scarcely found the prospect attractive.
Anyway, this is probably just a trick played on us by the Old Ones — like reaming Emerson’s brain, or turning Hannes into a cyborg. A joke we’ll only get when we reach those glittering needles.
Accepting Suessi’s report, Dr. Baskin concentrated on practical matters.
“What physical threats do we face, as we approach the white dwarf?”
“There is strong ultraviolet radiation,” answered S’tat, one of Suessi’s engineers, from atop a walker unit at the far end of the conference table. “But our armor seems to handle it without t-trouble.”
“How about the intense gravity down there? Will our clocks slow?”
“Yessss. The field is intense enough to make a difference in the flow of t-time.” Akeakemai nodded, bubbles rising from his blowhole. “By lessss than one percent.”
Gillian nodded. “And the gravitational gradient?”
Sara had done the research.
“The tides are several orders bigger here than at the Fractal World. You’ll feel a tugging sense along the length of your body. I don’t expect them to be pleasant — though they say that older sapients find it irresistibly attractive.”
Gillian nodded.
“The famed Embrace of Tides. The more advanced a sophont species becomes, the more they crave it, and the less they can bear traveling where space is flat. That’s why we see little of transcendent life-forms. No wonder they’re considered a separate order.”