Cosmic Tales - Adventures in Sol System

by T. K. F. Weisskopf

  "Centuries?" So this was not a new problem, Dawn realized. "I thought you people could do anything."

  "We cannot transcend our worldview, any more than you can."

  "Look," Dawn said, "how do you talk to the Multifold?"

  "Badly. To reach it we must step through the thicket of the Ur-human mind-set."

  "Thicket?" Dawn asked.

  Rin shifted uncomfortably. "A swamp is perhaps a better term. A morass ingrained in the Multifold's being."

  "It has some of us, dirty old Originals, in it?" Dawn laughed and felt a spurt of elation. This was at least some mark her kind had left in the great ruined architecture of time.

  "Look, I have to think about all this." Dawn reverted to speech in self-defense.

  Rin said, "There is no time for the kind of thinking you do. The moment is upon us."

  Dawn turned to Searcher. "What should I do?"

  Searcher held up a cautionary paw. "It is true, as the Supras say, that your innate abilities are much needed."

  "No, I didn't mean help with their fight. I want you to—well, tell them they're wrong. That they're treating my people like, like animals."

  "I am an animal. They do not treat me as you."

  "You're not an animal!"

  "I am not remotely human."

  "But you're, you're . . ."

  Searcher gave her a wolfish grin. "I am like you when I need to be. But that is to accomplish an end."

  "What end?" Dawn asked, her confusion deepening.

  "To bring you here at this time. You are essential to the struggle. And eventually to unite you with Ur-humans, as I promised—eventually." She glanced at Rin. "I knew the Supras would probably fail to do so."

  Across Rin's face flitted an expression Dawn could not read, but the nearest equivalent was a mixture of irritation and surprised respect.

  Rin said warily to Searcher, "It would have been simple to bring you here, had the Malign not managed to learn how to enter our ships. And you could not have known it would understand that so quickly, correct? Much less that it could find the Ur-humans among all the ships we have."

  "I could not?" Searcher grinned. "You presume much." Searcher turned to Dawn. "We must all fight now. That is what I have not told you—that none of us truly had any choice."

  * * *

  Dawn laughed, but at the back of her mind a growing tenor cry demanded attention. "Say, something's . . ."

  Searcher nodded. "Yes."

  She felt the Supras now in many cascading voices. They formed tight links, some in their ships, some in this Leviathan, others dispersed among Jonahs and Leviathans and the churning life-mats of the Jove system. A long, soaring chorus. Yet anxious, trembling.

  They all sensed it. Something coming.

  "How quickly does it approach?" Rin asked urgently. The earlier mood was broken, his doubts momentarily dispelled. Now he was all cool efficiency.

  "I can't tell." Dawn frowned. "There are refractions . . . Is it possible that the Malign can move even faster than light?"

  "That is but one of its achievements," Rin said, concern creasing his forehead. "We humans attained that long ago, but only for small volumes in warped geometries—for tunnels, for ships. The Malign was limited, as are the magnetic beings."

  "But it broke out . . . using what?" Dawn pressed. "Its Final Theory?"

  Rin nodded. "Somehow, yes. Until then, a single great fact—that the speed of light was a true limit—ordained that the linking of the natural magnetic minds proceeded slowly, all across the galaxy. Nothing large can move faster than light. Or so we thought. The Malign found a way. Somehow."

  "That's how the Malign finally got out of the galactic center, isn't it?" Dawn asked. She caught thin shouts of alarm in her mind.

  "It used the quantum vacuum," Rin said. His cheeks hollowed again with a cast of relief. He found it comforting, Dawn guessed, to be secure in his knowledge.

  Rin leaned forward, his eyes soft as he peered into the dying firelight. "On average, empty space has zero energy. But by enclosing a volume with a sphere of conducting plasma, the Malign prevented the creation of waves with wavelengths larger than that volume. These missing waves gave the vacuum a net negative energy, and allowed formation of a wormhole in space-time. All such processes are ruled by probabilities requiring great calculation. Yet through that hole the Malign slithered."

  "To our solar system," Dawn concluded.

  "Never before has a magnetic mind done this," Rin said. "It escaped from the prison of time—a feat on such a scale that even the Singular did not anticipate."

  Searcher whispered, "Coincidence, Rin?" This was the first time Dawn had ever heard Searcher use the name. There was a tinge of pity in the beast's voice, or what she took for that.

  Rin's head jerked up. He flicked a suspicious glance at Searcher. "The thought occurred to us, too. Why should the Malign emerge now?"

  "Just as you're getting free of Earth again?" Dawn asked.

  "Exactly," Rin said. "So we studied all the physical evidence. Observed the path of damage the Malign has wrecked as it left the galactic center." He hesitated. "And made a guess."

  Searcher said, "You found something and your discovery had unforseen effects."

  Rin's eyes shifted away from the waning fire, as though he sought refuge in the gloom surrounding them. "So you guessed. Yes, I found the Multifold."

  Dawn whispered, "And . . . ?"

  Rin's voice came to them in the twilight glow as a slow, solemn dirge. "The exuberance of the Multifold was so great at being discovered! That sent enormous magnetosonic twists echoing through the whorls of an entire galactic arm. These reached the Malign in its cage. To see ancient foes reuniting again sent it into a rage, a malevolence so strong that it exerted itself supremely. And forced its exit."

  They sat silently for a long moment. Dawn looked up and out, in search of some consolation. The inky recesses of the Leviathan were unrelieved by the distant promise of stars.

  Rin said hollowly, "If I hadn't been so curious. Hadn't searched the Library's records, the plots of magnetic fields throughout the galaxy. Hadn't sent the signals . . ."

  Dawn said finally, "You didn't know. Curiousity is built into us humans. And all the lore of the Library of Life did not warn you."

  He smiled mirthlessly. "But I did it. All the same."

  Dawn said, "That Singular of yours might have troubled their mighty selves to make a jail that held."

  Rin shook his head. "There is none better in this space-time."

  "Well, damn it, at least they shouldn't have just left it as a problem to be solved by us."

  Searcher lifted her sniffing snout, seeming to listen to something far away. She said, "Shoulds and mights are of no consequence. The problem has arrived."

  Dawn felt a light, keening note sound through her thoughts. She blinked. It was a hunting call, she knew immediately—a flavor that eons had not erased, as though from some quick bird swooping down through velvet air, eyes intent on scampering prey below.

  She glanced back at the smoldering glow of the galactic center. Against it were black shapes, angular and swift, growing. Not metal, like Supra ships, but green and brown and gray. "Call the Captain!"

  "I have," Searcher said.

  As Dawn watched the approaching sleek creatures she saw that they were larger than the usual spaceborne life she had known. It was far too late to avoid them, even if Leviathan could have readily turned its great bulk.

  Skysharks, Dawn thought, the word leaping up from her buried inboard vocabulary. The term fit, though she did not know its origin. They were elegantly molded for speed, with jets for venting gases. Solar sails gave added thrust, but the lead skyshark had reeled in its sails as it approached, retracting the silvery sheets into pouches in its side. Cupped parabolas fore and aft showed that it had evolved radar senses. These, too, collapsed moments before contact, saving themselves from the fray.

  Dawn gasped as they dove straight in. The first of them cam
e lancing into the Leviathan without attempting to brake. It slammed into the skin aft of the blister that held Searcher and Dawn. They could see it gouge a great hole in the puckered hide.

  Shrieks came through the foliage. Dawn's ears popped. Outside, the sleek skysharks banked and fought small defenders. A great head bit deep into a small opponent. Muscular, powerful jaws worked. Throats swallowed. Dawn watched the first few plow headlong into the mottled hide of the Leviathan and wondered why they would risk such damage merely for food. But then her ears popped again and a whoosh rushed through the air.

  "They're breaking the seals!"

  "Yes," Searcher said calmly, "such is their -strategy."

  "But they'll kill everything aboard."

  "Not all, no. They penetrate inward a few layers. This lets the outrushing air bring to them the smaller animals."

  Dawn watched a skyshark back away from the jagged wound it had made. A wind blew the backdrop of stars around, the only evidence of escaping air. Then flecks and motes came from the wound, a geyser of helpless wriggling prey. The skyshark caught each with its quick, wide mouth, seeming to inhale them.

  Dawn had to remind herself that these gliding shapes with their cool, soundless, artful movements were actually carrying out a savage attack, remorseless and efficient. Weightless vacuum gave even death a quality of silent grace. Yet the beauty of threat shone through, a quality shared alike by the grizzly, falcon and rattler. Her ears popped again. "If we lose all our air—"

  "We should not," Searcher said, though plainly she was worried, her coat running with swarthy spirals. "Membranes close to limit the loss."

  "Good," Dawn said uncertainly. But as she spoke a wind rose, sucking dry leaves into a cyclone about them.

  "That should not happen," Searcher said stiffly.

  "Look."

  Outside two skysharks were wriggling into older gouges. Waves rippled along their sleek torsos. Air had ceased to stream from them, so the beasts could enter easily. Others withdrew from the rents they had torn after only a few vicious bites. They jetted along the broad sweep of skin, seeking other weak points. In their tails were nozzled and gimbaled chambers. She saw a bright flame pucker and flare. Her inboards told her this was hydrogen peroxide and catalase, combining in shaped rear chambers. Puffs and streamers pushed the muscular bodies adroitly along the rumpled brown hide. It was a mad harvest. From the gaping gashes where skysharks had entered came fresh puffs of air. Some carried animals tumbling in the thinning gale, and skysharks snapped these up eagerly.

  "The sharks that went inside—they must be tearing up those membranes," Dawn shouted against the rising shriek. "Sucks out the protected areas."

  Searcher braced herself against the gathering winds. "A modified tactic. Even if those inside perish, their fellows benefit from the added game. Good for the species overall, despite the sacrifice of a few."

  "Not much consolation." Already it was getting harder to suck in a breath.

  "I am becoming concerned, yes."

  Searcher's calm exasperated. "Yeah, but what'll we do?"

  "Come."

  Searcher launched herself away, paws spread wide. Dawn followed. The air was alive with crosscurrents that plucked at her. Between bounces off trunks and bowers, Searcher curled up into a ball to minimize the pull of the howling gale. Dawn copied this, narrowing her eyes against the rain of leaves and bark and twigs that raked her.

  Searcher led her along a zigzag path. They bounced from bower to vine, just beneath the Leviathan's skin. Over the whirling winds she heard the yelps and cries of animals. Nearby a yowling catlike creature lost its grip on a tubular root and pinwheeled away. A triangular mat with legs caroomed off Searcher and ricocheted from Dawn, spitting, before whirling into the madhouse mist.

  They came twirling toward a system that looked like a blue-green heart, with veins and arteries stretching away in all directions. Fluids gushed here, fraying away into the thinning air. The wind moaned and gathered itself here with a promise of worse to come. The open wounds behind them were probably tearing further, she guessed, evacuating more and more of the Leviathan. For the first time it occurred to Dawn that even this colossal creature could perhaps die, its fluids and air bled into space.

  She hurried after Searcher. A gray cloud streamed by them, shredding, headed toward the sighing breezes. Dawn recognized them—a flight of the thumb-sized flyers that had made up the Captain, now streaming to defend its ship. There might even be more than one Captain, she realized, or an entire crew of the anthology-beings. Or perhaps the distinction of individual entities was meaningless.

  Ahead was a zone of gauzy, translucent surfaces lit by phosphorescent streaks. Searcher grabbed a sheet of the waxy stuff, sinking in her claws. The flapping sheet seemed to be a great membrane for catching pollen. Even in the chaos of drifting debris Dawn could see that this was part of an enormous plant. They were at the tip of a great pistil. Searcher was wrenching off a slab of its sticky walls, clawing energetically. Above this was a broad transparent dome which brought sunlight streaming into the leathery bud of the plant. Its inner bulb had mirrored surfaces that reflected the intense sunlight into bright blades, sending illumination deep into the inner recesses of the Leviathan.

  She took this in at a glance. Then Searcher yanked her into position on the bulb wall, where her feet caught in sticky goo. The wind lashed at her, but the goo held. Searcher barked orders and Dawn followed them. They fashioned the tough sheet into a pyramidal shape. Searcher stuck the edges together with the wall adhesive. She turned down the last side, leaving them inside the pyramid.

  Dawn got her bearings. They were drifting toward the transparent ceiling, moving on an eddy of the shrieking, building winds. Their pyramid smacked against the outer skin of the Leviathan.

  Searcher crouched at an apex of the pyramid. She touched the ceiling and quickly twisted the wall. "Here—help—"

  Dawn grabbed a waxy fold and torqued it opposite to Searcher. The Leviathan's hide puckered and parted—and pop!—they passed through, into naked space. The pyramid drifted in the slight breeze of escaping gas from the pucker, which was closing like a quick smile behind them.

  "We're out!" Dawn cried, delighted.

  "This will last for only a while," Searcher said.

  "Till we run out of air?" Dawn said.

  "If that long."

  The advantage of living construction material was that it grew together, if encouraged by an adhesive, becoming tighter than any manufactured seal. One side of their pyramid was so thin Dawn could see out through it, yet the film held pressure. Nature loved the smooth and seamless. She and Searcher helped it along with spit—Searcher had a lot of faith in her own fluids—and some muscle work. Soon their pyramid held firm and snug.

  They drifted away from Leviathan. Dawn hoped the skysharks would ignore them, and indeed the predators were nuzzling greedily at the raw wounds amidships. Around Leviathan swam debris. Into this cloud came spaceborne life of every description. Some were smaller predators who scavenged on whatever the skysharks left. Others spread great gossamer sheets, eager to catch the air that poured forth from the Leviathan's wounds. Small creatures billowed into great gas bags, fat with rare wealth. Limpets crawled eagerly along the crusty hide toward the rents. When they arrived they caught streamers of fluid that spouted irregularly into the vacuum.

  This was a riotous harvest for some. Dawn could see joy in the excited darting of thin-shelled beetles who snatched at the tumbling fragments of once—glorious ferns. The wounds created fountains from the Leviathan skin. These geysers shot motley clouds of plant and animal life into a gathering crowd of eager consumers, their appetites quickened by the bounty of gushing air.

  "Hope they don't fancy our taste," Dawn said.

  Her mouth was dry and she had long since passed the point of fear. Now she simply watched. Gargantuan forces had a way of rendering her pensive, reflective. This trait had been more effective in the survival of Ur-humans, she had long sus
pected, than outright aggression or conspicuous gallantry. It did not fail her now. Visible fear would have attracted attention. They drifted among the myriad spaceborne forms, perhaps too strange a vessel to encourage ready attack; even hungry predators wisely select food they know.

  "Do you think they will kill Leviathan?" Dawn asked.

  "Mountains do not fear ants," Searcher answered.

  "But they're gutting it!"

  "They cannot persist for long inside the mountain. For the spaceborne, air in plenty is a quick poison."

  "Oxygen?"

  "It kindles the fires that animate us. Too much, and—"

  Searcher pointed. Now curls of smoke trickled from the ragged wounds. The puffs of air had thinned but they carried black streamers.

  "The skysharks can forage inside until the air makes their innards burn." Searcher watched the spectacle with scholarly interest, blinking owlishly.

  "The sharks die, so that others can eat the Leviathan?"

  "Apparently. Though I suspect this behavior has other purposes, as well. The Malign has sent this little gesture, somehow—a feeler before the main assault."

  "All this pillaging is just a feeler? It's awful."

  "Yes. Many have died. But not those for whom this raid was intended."

  "Who's that?"

  "Us. Especially, you."

  In the end it was like nothing she had expected or feared.

  She lay on a vine mat in the Leviathan, alone, eyes closed. She felt nothing of it, or of her body.

  And then she suddenly could not face the confrontation. Not this way. Not as a mere doormat.

  She got up and fled the comfy confines the Supras had arranged. Moved silently through the Leviathan's thick, ropy jungles, using the forest way she had learned as a girl. Probed with her Talent. Avoided a hovering swarm that looked like a partial Captain. Sneaked by a few preoccupied figures, hunched over their devices.

  Where was Searcher? The Talent could find nothing.

  Softly she moved through fretted shadows. One of the transparent capsules hung on the Leviathan's pebbled wall. They were a lot like the pyramid she and Searcher had used to escape into space. She felt along the capsule's waxy surface, found an edge. Using the skills she had seen before, she unzipped the inner skin. It pried open, and a smartvoice said, "Welcome. Which use do you—" and she cut it off as she squeezed in.