The words struck Omilov like an invisible knife. The next test would confirm whether a lance attack combined in some way with the quantum interfaces could work. If not, they must destroy the Suneater, which even he comprehended. But could they? The thought engendered a queer mélange of hope and dread.
SUNEATER
The Tarkans on guard outside the hyperwave chamber ignored Lysanter, their eyes ceaselessly scanning the scurrying techs and menials entering and leaving what Lysanter thought of as the nerve center of the Suneater.
Although I’m apparently the only one comfortable with that image, he thought wryly. Everyone else seemed more comfortable ignoring as much as possible the organic similes suggested by the flowing lines of Urian architecture—if it was architecture. Even Lysanter wasn’t sure that the distinction between built and grown made sense here.
At the entrance the scientist stepped aside as a pair of ordinaries pushed a float-gurney through the stasis-clamped opening and followed the swath of gray paint on the floor. They were careful not to step off of it, for the floor here, although as solid as any others in the Suneater, was entirely invisible. The stars shone beneath the feet of anyone who stepped off the painted paths webbing the floor—not that anyone but Lysanter ever stepped off the paths.
He walked in, straight into space. Pacing to the center, he enjoyed the atavistic thrill of having that infinite gulf underfoot, and surveyed the bustle of activity in the huge chamber.
High overhead a spindly structure suspended lights, imagers, and other sensors, just under the red-glowing ceiling, whose ordered jumble of organically arranged arches and domes swept down in ridged profusion to the graceful flowing shapes of the hyperwave nodules that knuckled out at wide intervals onto the invisible floor. Suspended above each nodule, a lens-shaped coruscation of light flickered, complex shapes and colors that no analysis had been able to correlate with hyperwave traffic, perhaps because input from all of the nodules was necessary for any communications at all to take place.
Each nodule linked with a bank of compute arrays via an explosion of wires springing from the quantum interfaces thickly plastered on them, and from the arrays armored cables snaked toward the entrance, carrying the ceaseless clamor of orders and responses to and from the forces of Dol’jhar and its allies.
Bori techs hurried from station to station, constantly adjusting the quantum interfaces in a susurrus of whispered consultations, shuffling feet, and rustling lab coats, which reflected the changing colors dancing above each nodule.
Techs completely surrounded one hyperwave nodule. The ordinaries positioned the gurney loaded with new quantum interfaces only recently delivered by the cims. The Bori began feverishly replacing the old ones; Barrodagh would tolerate only the briefest hindrance of hyperwave communications.
It’s too bad I can’t tell them that Barrodagh is probably in a good mood for once, and likely to relax his stringency a bit. For while most of the old interfaces would be used for exploration and monitoring in new areas of the station as they opened up—as seemed likely, judging from Vi’ya’s last effort—some would be reworked into stasis clamps, to satisfy Barrodagh and stop his interference. Well, not stop, but mitigate. Only death will halt his meddling.
Lysanter shook his head. The thought was too Dol’jharian. He was glad he’d refused to learn the language. He looked down between his feet, consciously relaxing. He visualized the poison of Catennach politics flowing down through his body and out the soles of his feet into the eternity of space.
The stars and wisps of nebulae shone unwinking beneath him. Lysanter had heard the Bori call this place balala-Sicoma: the Dreaming Eye. But what kind of eye was it, that looked into a creature’s own heart? Careful measurement had established that he now stood at one terminus of the vast well before the nascent throne in the Chamber of Kronos.
At the other end gleamed the stars, but an infinite distance away, for although the view oriented outward, the axis of the well intersected the black hole. All attempts to probe this strange conduit of fourspace had failed: in a bizarre transformation of relativistic effects, the temperature of probes sent down the well appeared to plunge to absolute zero, deranging their arrays and transforming their reports into gibberish. Lysanter suspected a kind of phase crystallization of fivespace intended to isolate the station from the singularity, but could prove nothing.
But while the stars might be infinitely distant from where he stood, outside the station they were considerably closer, and increasingly hostile. Somewhere out there, he knew, the Panarchists were massing. They were already harassing the Rifter pickets with zap-and-skip raids. Soon, he supposed, they would attack.
But Barrodagh’s worries about a lance attack were senseless. Lysanter’s measurements of the strength of Urian quantum-plast made it certain that such would fail, although the impact might be devastating to those inside. The potential asteroid attack was more of a threat, but he felt sure the Suneater had a means of dealing with those. It had been here for at least 10 million years without damage, in what was by any standards a fairly dirty system. It remained only to discover how it shielded itself and how it moved, for Lysanter was certain it was mobile.
Tatriman broke his thoughts by appearing on his right, gingerly stepping across the transparent floor.
Lysanter waved her back and walked to a painted observation pad. Technical communication was always better when the techs weren’t distracted by fear. Bori appeared not to mind being perched on the edge of emptiness, but they couldn’t tolerate standing over it.
“Tatriman,” he said, “I want you to check the arrays in the Arthelion correlators. There seems to be a bug in the log nodes.”
The Bori woman nodded silently, her eyes wary.
“Has Morrighon made more requisitions of your time?” he asked. “Need I intervene again?”
“No, Gnostor Lysanter, it does not interfere with my work.”
She had not answered the question, but realizing that she was, like him, an unwilling part of the incessant Catennach plotting, he forbore to press her. Her work was indeed quite satisfactory. He’d been able to relinquish oversight of much of the array maintenance and general computing to her—a fact he had carefully concealed from Barrodagh.
Eusabian’s secretary would not understand, would not care how much more basic research Lysanter was now able to do, even though it was this that had enabled him to create the improved interfaces and finally promise Barrodagh his precious stasis clamps.
“You had something to report?” he asked her, recollecting that she had sought him out.
Her eyes flickered to either side, her body tense. “Yes, gnostor. The correlation run you assigned me finished a few minutes ago. I thought you would want to see the results immediately.”
She held out her compad; Lysanter took it and breathed satisfaction at the data on its screen. As he had thought, following hints from his instrumentation, the tempath seemed to have triggered some automatic process in the station. Now its power was very slowly increasing.
He toyed with the idea of withholding this information for a time. He could always say that he had not wished to report lacking confirmation of such an important discovery. But it’s likely too slow for the Avatar, anyway. He need not worry that his experiments would be truncated.
ARES
Omilov watched as a manipulator unfolded from near the hyper-relay and extended its insectile arm toward it, bearing the flat disk of a quantum interface, which molded itself to the surface of the Urian machine. The gnostors of Energetics hoped to exploit the material’s information tropisms, which alone allowed control of the machine’s operation, to weaken it.
A shrill groan rang through the lab module. It sounded almost exactly like the huge gong one of the Kitharee had played with an animal-hair bow at the now-famous concert Brandon had given here on Ares, months ago.
“Test Two accomplished. Signal from hyperwave.”
From every hyperwave. What will the Dol’jharians
make of that?
The manipulator withdrew. Again the flash from the rail-gun, but this time veins of darkness writhed through the flare of energy, dimming it. There was no light from the port behind them. Portions of the hyperwave glowed with a wavering luminance like the marsh lights Omilov had once seen in a swamp; other parts lost the characteristic red glow of Urian machinery, looking curiously dead.
Cheering sounded from the screen imaging the naval test center.
It can be attacked.
And that unreeled a new set of questions: whether the Navy would hazard Marines on such a mission with the Panarch leading them.
SUNEATER
The floor trembled slightly.
Lysanter handed the compad back to Tatriman, hesitating at the fear blanching her face.
The shivering, uncanny howl that erupted from the station’s fabric plunged Lysanter into a brief and terrible memory of his indoctrination into the service of Dol’jhar. Mindripper! He would never forget what Barrodagh had shown him, long ago, to make clear the consequences of failure.
He shuddered reflexively, though he recognized it was not a human sound. All work ceased, the Bori techs paralyzed in fear.
The sound stopped.
His compad burred. Lysanter pulled it up from his side and thumbed an acknowledgment. Barrodagh’s voice ripped out of it, ragged with anxiety, “What was that?”
“I don’t know, serach Barrodagh,” Lysanter said, motioning to Tatriman to follow him as he hurried toward the exit. “I will begin analysis at once.” Had that sound been heard throughout the station, or had Barrodagh heard it through the spy-sensors he no doubt had in this chamber?
“See that you do. It would be best if you had an explanation before the Avatar asks for one,” Barrodagh snapped.
Ah! That implied general audibility, as the link Tatriman had given the Avatar was not real-time. More data! And there was an easy way to gain more time for his analysis.
“However, just before that event I confirmed that the tempath’s latest attempt appears to have triggered a very slow, apparently automatic ramp-up of station power. I am working to measure it accurately before I deliver a further report.”
Barrodagh actually smiled, although in doing so he looked much the same as someone else might in pain. “That is well. The Avatar will be pleased.” He cut the connection.
Lysanter promptly forgot the exchange in the excitement of this latest manifestation. What new mysteries might this reveal or elucidate? Was it another delayed effect of the tempath’s efforts? He began humming in anticipation, gratified in the expectation of new knowledge.
ARES
Eloatri and Jep Houmanopoulis withdrew, as the techs busied themselves with analysis. Omilov stood at loose ends until Osri approached, and stood beside him, gazing out the port. Omilov gave his son the quick, searching glance parents learn to use when their adult offspring’s attention is otherwhere. Osri seemed well, Omilov thought. Rested, less tense than he had ever seen him.
“Is there anything you want to add to my report?” Osri asked finally, sounding slightly embarrassed.
“No, son. Thank you. I will present my case at the main strategy session.”
Osri bowed wordlessly, surprising his father with the uncharacteristic Douloi gesture, and left.
It’s his relationship with the Kendrian heir, Sebastian thought. While the rest of us look as if we’ve aged a decade from the recent stresses, my son seems to have shed ten years. It was a mildly amusing thought, but only mildly. Omilov hoped that Osri had not inherited his own disastrous tendency for monogamy. There was no evidence in Fierin’s brief but spectacular public career on Ares to indicate she was any different from most Douloi. Omilov suspected his son did not have the experience to know his own heart; better to have inherited his mother’s restless taste for a variety of lovers than to live out a life having fallen in love once, forever, with the wrong person.
Omilov stared sightlessly at the console now echoing the view of the test site, where suited figures were erecting a lab module around the damaged hyperwave. Experiments would continue in a shirtsleeve environment, but still at a safe distance from Ares. He’d have little part in them now. A few minor tasks remained, but for the most part his work was done. The decisions were out of his hands—and he knew he had lost.
There are only two of us who want to preserve that station, he thought. Myself and Brandon. And he only wants to save it because Captain Vi’ya is there.
PART TWO
ONE
MBWA KALI: SUNEATER STAGING CLOUD
. . . the ship groaned and pinged around Mandros Nukiel as the merciless grip of the singularity slowly sundered its fabric. A wave of nausea boiled thickly inside him; the gravs shuddered and failed. Now the growing tidal forces plucked him out of the command pod, rotating him headfirst toward the singularity. He could feel the pull intensifying on head and feet, away from his solar plexus, as the black hole crucified him in a web of distorted fourspace.
Nukiel belched agony as his guts spasmed against the unnatural distortion; he gasped for breath as the pull on his diaphragm grew inexorably. His vision reddened, his scalp prickling as the blood pressure in his skull mounted toward the moment when his brains would explode through weakened cranial sutures.
On the main screen the accretion disk around the singularity flared in colors he could no longer name, long skeins of tortured matter writhing out in an aureole of hair around the crone’s face as she opened her mouth into a swelling black maw whose edges detonated around him . . .
Mandros Nukiel awoke paralyzed, his breathing harsh. After an interminable interval, the nightmare released him.
“Lights,” he croaked, sitting up slowly as dim illumination banished the shadows around his bed and oriented him in blissful normality. He swung his legs off the bed; the carpet pressed warm against his feet, a reassuringly familiar touch. Rubbing his hands over his face, he straightened up.
His conscious mind assured him that the hapless Rifter ship’s name was but a coincidence, but his unconscious insisted there was no such thing. Nukiel could not shake the memory of the vision that had summoned him to Desrien, the Goddess in her aspect as Crone destroying his Highdwelling home.
He padded to the console, absently pulling on his shanta-silk robe. The seat chilled his flesh through the thin fabric. The screen windowed up the message from Eloatri replying to his query about these dreams. He noted again with gratitude that she chose to speak to him from the garden of the Cloisters—the bright flowers and emerald grass a visual antinomy to the background of naked space that had framed her face in his vision. For the Goddess had worn the High Phanist’s visage.
Eloatri was neither minatory nor reassuring. “As I told you over Desrien, the Goddess gave us no message for you. But as you yourself noted, some of the quiddities of the vision that summoned you to us do seem proleptic of your present situation.”
She smiled wearily. “One thing only is certain: that neither you nor I can know in which aspect you will next encounter Her.”
He shook his head and let the rest of her now-familiar words wash over him, noting how the tianqi had shifted to a summery scent in response to the cues in her letter. Proleptic indeed! He could think of no better manifestation of the Crone, the Destroyer, than the ravening emptiness of a black hole.
When the High Phanist stopped speaking, the screen filled with an abstract interpretation of the Digrammaton. Nukiel tabbed it off and called up his own response to her, to finish it. The next courier would depart in less than six hours.
But before he could commence, his console pinged softly.
“Nukiel here,” he responded.
“Asawar reporting. The correlations on the stellar measurements are complete. You told me to notify you immediately.”
The waning sense of dread occasioned by the nightmare sharpened when Nukiel saw the tightness around the lieutenant commander’s eyes. The physics officer smiled wanly and nodded, apparently seeing t
he commodore’s reaction.
“As I feared, the diameter of the Suneater primary is expanding, thus increasing the flow of matter into the singularity. If the output of the Suneater correlates to that metric, their weapons power is increasing at the same rate.” Another window dilated, graphically representing Asawar’s message.
“It’s similar to the signature of a Cepheid,” continued the officer, “but it falls back to a slightly higher level on each cycle. Probably the result of similar mechanisms.”
“The tempath, do you think?” Nukiel’s voice came out husky. He cleared his throat. He was not comfortable with a technology capable of controlling the output of a star—less comfortable, perhaps, with the thought of a Rifter in turn controlling it.
The officer shrugged. “Who knows? But if the Avatar’s willing to wait a couple of months, he won’t need her anymore.”
“Assuming the rate of change doesn’t increase.”
The physicist smiled grimly. “What optimism, Commodore!”
Nukiel waved his hand, encompassing his quarters. “How else should I feel?” He forced a smile. “Good work. Make sure the complete report’s on the courier. I’ll attach a pointer to it.”
Asawar’s face vanished as Nukiel tabbed his console off. The commodore stared abstractedly at the screen, now displaying one of the pleasant evolving tesserae of the Iremqlaah school. He could imagine how this news would be received on Ares: new strength for the faction seeking to destroy the Suneater. Perhaps now they could make up their minds. His back channels on Ares reported a general sense of paralysis, as though there were some invisible force preventing a timely decision. He couldn’t imagine what that might be, and was glad not to have to.
He sighed and began dressing, mulling over the changes this new discovery called for in his report. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, and if he did, Telos alone knew what he’d dream.
The Thrones of Kronos Page 20