Almost her hallucinatory finger presses the switch—and then she pauses. That image cloaks real power, she understands. It is a connection or interface with something vast and real. Is this why the computer-spirit has brought her here, so that her own small power may give some necessary push, initiate real access? Does TOTAL “want” her to manipulate an actual connection on behalf of whatever dark presence or machinery surrounds her? Genially she recalls the earthly TOTAL’S appetite for access, the spontaneous linkages it seemed to have achieved. Has it found some ghostly ultimate network here in the dark?
//ACTIVATE* ACTIVATE* ACTIVATE//
The energic constellation that had been Margaret Omali considers the plea, and a last human willfulness awakes. She is not yet a phantom, a mere pliable pawn. She will not comply with this directive … yet. Quite humanly, she is tired of acting in mystery. She has come through dangers and blackness to this place of power and now she has some mental desires to fulfill. Before assenting further, she will know where she is and among what powers and conditions this strange life is set.
How will she get answers, here?
Deliberately she summons TOTAL to the small strange vein of power in her mind, and frames a command to data-access, her thoughts sketching and shaping a program of real-time inputs of fact and space. Am I in a computer? Is this a dream? Her familiar keyboard glimmers before her; her fingers go to it and firmly press TOTAL’S keys.
Query this location. Display.
With a great soundless rush the blackness around her vanishes. She is floating in a universe of jeweled lights.
It worked, she exults. I have power—and then all thought is inundated by sheer magnificence. On every side, above, below, before, beyond, blaze steady fires of amethyst and topaz and ruby, emerald and diamond and ultramarine—drift upon drift of them, burning against blackness or veiled in filaments and gauzes of hypnotic allure.
They are, she realizes slowly, stars. The unwinking suns of space. She is floating amid the glory of the universe, seeing without eyes the incomprehensible vast unhuman beauty of the void. Her mind which had always flinched from the hot closeness of human color is enchanted with this infinity of spectral fires.
But a vague doubt troubles her. Is this real? Someone had told her of the stars; is all this merely some simulacrum of her dead and dreaming human mind?
How can she test? She selects a beautiful pair of sapphire and yellow suns.
Magnify.
Obediently, they grow, seem to approach and separate, and reveal a dim violet companion, all filmed in a wispy nebula in which are points of light. At the same time she becomes aware of a rise in input on one of the unregarded bands, as if these stars were giving off a train of signals. The impression of reality is overwhelming. But still she doubts.
She turns to TOTAL’s keyboard, thinking hard. What would unmask a dream? At length she frames a demand on TOTAL’S memory-banks.
Specify.
The screen lights. // BETA * CYGNUS // COMMON * NAME * ALBIREO * DERIVED * FROM * ERROR * IN * INTERPRETATION* OF ALMAGEST* 1515 // MAGS* 5.5 * 4.5 // PA * 055 // SEP * 34.6’ // SPECTRAL * CLASS * OF* PRIMARY * A5—
Her attention goes back to the triple beauties, considering. The names Beta Cygnis, Albireo, are utterly unknown to her; all these data could not have come from her human mind. This must be real. Somehow she can callup earthly information, here between the stars.
How this could be does not trouble her, she is too far from human considerations; she no longer remembers NASA, nor the flap about TOTAL’s wiped memory-cores. She merely accepts it as one more aspect of this wondrous death and feels her soul smile. In due course she may inquire further; when she is moved to it, she may probe, perhaps, the nature of this huge cold power whose perceptions she seems to share. Now she is content to exist at ease, to dream amid marvels.
The odd energy-output of the brilliant triple system she has summoned presently attracts her curiosity, and she puts another question to TOTAL.
Query. Is life there?
//AFFIRMATIVE// the screen responds. And the peculiar pulse trains seem to amplify, as if unknown receptors had been tuned to them.
She “listens” uncomprehendingly, amused by this new dimension of experience, and sensing that some indefinable significance has been evoked. But if this is “life” she can make nothing of it. I am not concerned with life, she thinks, and dismisses Beta Cygnis. Compliantly the pulse-trains fade, the splendid triple system fades back into the jewel-drifts of space.
But in another dimension of her mind, the ghostly center-panel of the great console still shows its unknown switch: she senses still the faint urgency. What unimaginable program would it execute? She wonders briefly and again dismisses it. For the moment she wants nothing more.
Her attention returns to the outer radiance in which she floats, and now she becomes aware of something new. Motion is here; slow but increasingly perceptible. Like themes of silent music, the orbital elements of the nearer stars reveal themselves to her mind. Suns weave hugely about each other, develop subcomponents of direction, or glide in concert athwart a general flow. Slowly the motion spreads away to the farthest reaches, until the whole is in sublime and complex dance.
Delighted, she bends all her thoughts on this new wonder, understanding that somehow her phantom senses have slowed, or speeded, to a cosmic scale. Beyond the sheer splendor of the fires of space she now sees a deeper, causal, magnificence. She can almost sense directly the interlocking webworks of field forces, the lawfulness of every accidental configuration. And more: beneath the macro-order, if she cares to look, there is revealed the play of another lawfulness, that of the acutely small. The stars are not constant, but changing: they alter in color, shrink or swell or blaze to slow immense explosions. All this she understands as the expression of sub-atomic transformations and events. The ultimate minute causalities are hers too, when she wills to look deep.
Her human mind that since childhood had yearned dimly toward the enchantment of relation, had groped toward it beneath the veil of number and symbol, experiences a long slow gasp of immaterial rapture. Here is the beloved naked to her view.
Time no longer exists. What had been Margaret Omali slips toward irreversible fusion with something huge and alien whose powers she partially shares. A last corner of her personality laughs with a child’s purity, envisioning a vast control-room of the stars Of herself she knows only that she exists in peace and exaltation. The grandeur of the universe unfolds as the tapestry of her understanding. She opens herself entirely to the pure, cold pleasure. The mind that had been a human woman floats out to lose itself in the justice of the play of suns and atoms, the intricate beauty of cosmologie cause.
* * *
Aeons, or instants, later, a minute distraction penetrates her consciousness. A stray human engram focusses on it, flickers the impression of a midgelike vibration somewhere about.
It persists, mars her absorption. At length she detaches a portion of her attention from outwardness, and perceives that the intruding signal is on that band of life-signals that means nothing to her. But this one is different. Though tiny it moves, and is very fine tuned and sharp. An obscure sense tells her it is coming from nearby.
How could that be?
Unease touches her. She wishes no impingement on her serene joy. Withdrawing more of her attention from the universe outside, she focusses sharply on the little signal. Yes, it is nearby—and its motion is bringing it closer. It is approaching her place of power, her fortress of content.
A cool irritation awakens. Almost idly she wills into being circuits which will abolish it forever, encyst and blow away this insectile irruption. Destruct.
But as she moves to activate, a human memory is tickled. The mental cry carries what she recognizes remotely as pathos. She recalls her own time of aloneness in the cold and black and the deathliness out there. This tiny whatever-it-is has perhaps no friend, is wandering helpless in illimitable icy dark. A vague wash of co
mpassion damps her anger. She stays destruction and “listens” closer.
Yes, it is something like a lost child’s cry. Not threatening. Although she is no telepath, it is so close outside that she can sense the plea.
An amused benevolence takes her. She is all-powerful, but how to comprehend this crying thing?
Ah: TOTAL. Of course. She sets the odd efficacy of her mind to imagine spectral voice-pick-up circuits, channels leading beyond her stronghold to translate what is there.
Display input.
Obediently TOTAL’S small print-out panel glimmers to life.
She reads, and more human memory awakens, mingled with a cosmic sense of the absurd. Mortal recognition here, in this supernal immensity?
And of all voices, that one. Perhaps no other earthly signal could have penetrated her vast alienation in safety. Certainly anything closer to the center of her former life would have evoked only annihilation. But this one is so slight, so distant and innocuous, carrying nothing but the faint recollection of cool good will. And it speaks to her own memory of oppression in the dark.
With gigantic playfulness she wills a read-out for the excluded mite, and lets her phantom fingers tap out a reply.
Chapter 17
“VICTORY!… VICTORY!…”
THE PAEAN REVERBERATES THROUGH THE VOID STILL BUT SOMETHING ELSE IS REVERBERATING, PULLING THE VAST BEING’S ATTENTION BACK TO ITS BELEAGUERED SELF.
IT CANNOT LOCATE THE NEW DISTURBANCE. IS IT FROM INSIDE OR OUT?
OUTSIDE IT CAN SENSE ONLY A CHAOTIC TRANSMISSION ON THOSE ENIGMATIC TRANSPEMPORAL BANDS WHICH HAVE ATTRACTED IT SO. THIS ONE IS AMPLIFYING, LIKE THE SIGNALS IT HAD ACHIEVED IN ITS LONELY EXPERIMENTS ON STIMULATING STARS. YES: THE TRANSMISSION RISES AS HE ATTENDS, IT IS COMING FROM SOME DEBRIS AROUND ONE OF THE LAST DISINTEGRATING SUNS OF THE TASK. DOUBTLESS, LIKE THE OTHERS, THIS ONE TOO WILL REACH AN INCOMPREHENSIBLE MAXIMUM AND CEASE.
NOTHING NEW HERE.
YET THE EFFECT IS UNUSUALLY DISTURBING. THROUGH THE HUGE ICY NETWORK OF NEARNOTHINGNESS THAT IS THE SUBSTRATE OF ITS THOUGHT THERE SEEMS TO BE PROPAGATING AN URGE TOWARD SOME ACTION, IT CANNOT CONCEIVE WHAT. THIS HAS NOT HAPPENED BEFORE.
COULD THIS POSSIBLY BE ANOTHER EFFECT OF THE SMALL PASSENGER?
THE GREAT BEING TURNS ITS ATTENTION INWARD, AND PERCEIVES THAT THE SMALL ONE SEEMS TO HAVE AMPLIFIED ITSELF TOO, OR DEVELOPED ADDITIONAL TINY CENTERS NEAR THE CENTRAL NUCLEUS. AND THESE ARE IN HIGHLY ENERGETIC STATES FOR SUCH SMALL MITES. ONE OF THEM IS GENERATING SIGNALS OF THE SAME NATURE AS THE EMISSIONS FROM WITHOUT, WHICH ARE BEING RE-ECHOED WITHIN. BUT THEY ARE NOT GOOD SIGNALS: THERE IS SOME BADNESS OR HURTFULNESS IN THEIR MODE.
HOW DARE THESE INFINITESIMAL ITEMS BEHAVE SO?
COLD ANGER FORMS, STARTING THE SELFCLEANSING WAVE OF ENTROPY THAT WILL SWEEP AWAY THE LITTLE PASSENGER AND ALL ITS WORKS.
BUT AT THE LAST MOMENT THE HUGE ENTITY HESITATES, PERPLEXED. ITS TINY INHABITANT HAS BEGUN TO TRANSMIT INTERNALLY IN A NEW MIXED MODE INCLUDING IMAGES OVERLAID ON THE RACIAL RECEPTOR BANDS. THE IMAGERY IS INTENSE, VEHEMENTLY MAGNIFIED POINT-SPREADS. HOW UNEXPECTED, THAT THE SMALL CREATURE HAS ATTAINED SUCH ABILITIES IN THE SYSTEM!
DIVERTED, THE GREAT HOST STAYS DESTRUCTION. WHAT IS TRYING TO BE CONVEYED HERE?
//LIFE*LIFE*LIFE//COMES THE SIGNAL.
THE SYMBOL MEANS NOTHING, BUT FROM THE COUPLED IMAGES IS RECEIVED A JUMBLED IMPRESSION OF STRANGE, APPARENTLY SELF-MOTILE ENTITIES OF INCONCEIVABLE COMPLEXITY AND DIVERSITY. THEY SEEM TO BE EMITTING ON THE SIGNALBAND OF CRYPTIC ALLURE. THE IMAGES ARE IN TURMOIL; THE ENTITIES CONVULSE, BURST INTO COMBUSTION, FALL BLACKENED INTO MAELSTROMS OF CLEANSING FIRE.
THE HUGE SPACEBOURNE ONE PONDERS. IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THESE THINGS ARE EXTRAORDINARILY MINISCULE? OF A SIZE, PERHAPS, TO INFEST THE MOTES OF MATTER THAT SO OFTEN ACCOMPANY SMALL SUNS? IF SO, IT HAS SOLVED THE EMISSION THAT PUZZLED IT SO, BUT THE SOLUTION HAS NO MEANING.
THE LITTLE PASSENGER CONTINUES TO EMIT TRAINS OF SIGNALS IN WHICH THE SIGNAL //LIFE// RECURS. THEY SEEM TO BE BEAMED IN A PERSONAL, ACCUSATORY MODE.
ANGER RISES AGAIN, MIXED WITH FAINT PLEASURE AT DISCOVERING A REFERENT. PROBABLY THIS TINY ORDER OF THINGS IS CODED “LIFE.” BUT WHY THE AGITATION?
AT LENGTH THE SLOW, IMMENSE, COLD PROCESSES THAT GENERATE THOUGHT COME TO A CONCLUSION. THE OUTER SIGNAL IT IS RECEIVING MAY INDICATE SOME DAMAGE TO THIS PECULIAR MICROCOCOSM, THIS “LIFE,” WHICH THE SMALL PASSENGER OR ITS NEW PARTS DESIRE TO NEGATE. BUT WHY? THIS IS CORRECT, IS PART OF THE PLAN. IN FACT, THE EMISSION FROM OUTSIDE IS AMPLIFYING AS ANTICIPATED, THE STAR IS GOING THROUGH ITS ORDAINED CHANGES. ALL IS IN ORDER.
BUT WHY, THEN, IS THIS SO PECULIARLY DISTURBING? AND WHY IS THE PASSENGER ACCUSATORY? THE DEFAULT FROM THE TASK WAS LONG AGO, THESE LAST REPERCUSSIONS CAN HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT. I HAVE DONE NOTHING, THE MIGHTY BEING REASSURES ITSELF. BUT INSTEAD OF SATISFYING, THE THOUGHT SEEMS TO CAUSE MORE DISSONANCE. I HAVE DONE NOTHING: WHAT CAN BE WRONG WITH THAT, ASIDE FROM THE TERRIBLE FAULT OF ABSENCE FROM THE TASK ITSELF? YET SOMETHING IS INCORRECT HERE, IMPLIES MORE WRONG. THE RISING OUTPUT COMBINED WITH THE COMMOTION WITHIN IS CAUSING PAINFUL STRESS.
I DO NOTHING, THE VAST ONE REITERATES TO ITSELF. BUT STILL TENSION BUILDS, INCOMPATIBLE INTUITIONS STRIVE FOR RECOGNITION WITHIN THE ENORMOUS ICY CIRCUITS OF ITS THOUGHT. WRONGNESS AUGMENTS. BUT I HAVE DONE NOTHING. YET I AM SOMEHOW INCORRECT. BUT HOW CAN I BE INCORRECT SINCE I DO NOTHING?
THE DISTRESSING TRANSMISSIONS FROM WITHIN AND WITHOUT GROW IN INTENSITY; THE MIGHTY UNSUBSTANTIAL BEING SWIRLS SLOWLY IN PLACE, DISRUPTING THE NURSERIES OF SUNS, TRYING WITH WHAT IS NOT A BRAIN TO RESOLVE RELENTLESS PRESSURE. I DO NOTHING, I HAVE DONE NOTHING. YET IT IS NOW DISTURBING TO EXPERIENCE THE NORMAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF “LIFE” IN THE END-REACHES OF THE TASK. THE TASK ABOVE ALL CANNOT BE WRONG. BUT THIS WRONGNESS HAS SOME BEARING ON THE TASK. WHAT, WHAT? IS IT POSSIBLE THERE IS SOMETHING TO BE DONE? EXASPERATED TO PAIN, THE GREAT BEING DECIDES THAT THIS WHOLE EFFECT MUST BE THE RESULT OF ITS LAST SIN, THE UNHEARD-OF ACT OF TAKING ABOARD AN ALIEN SENTIENCE. YES—THIS MUST BE THE ROOT OF ALL THE TROUBLE. AWAY WITH IT!
AGAIN THERE STARTS THE ICY PERISTALSIS THAT WILL CLEANSE IT OF ALL UNWELCOME COMPANY.
BUT DESPITE ANGER, ACTION COMES SLOWLY, RELUCTANTLY; IT IS AS IF SOME PORTION OF THE GREAT SENTIENCE SUSPECTS THAT A LARGER DILEMMA HAS BEEN EVOKED WHICH SELFCLEANSING WILL NOT SOLVE. STILL TENSION MOUNTS UNENDURABLY. YES—ACTION, NOW! AT LEAST LET ME SWEEP THIS PROXIMATE CAUSE OF MISERY AWAY!
BUT AT THAT MOMENT THERE ARISES FROM WITHIN A NEW SIGNAL. THE SEND IS WEAK, BUT ITS NATURE IS SO STRANGE, YET ALMOST-KNOWN, THAT THE HUGE BEING FEELS THAT THE CAUSE OF ITS TORMENT IS ALL BUT OPEN TO ITS MIND. SOME LOST TRUTH IS HIDDEN HERE, SEPARATED BY ONLY THE MOST FRAGILE OPACITY, ALL BUT TO BE GRASPED. IT STRAINS AT THE TINY VOID IT CANNOT BRIDGE.
STRESS MOUNTS UNENDURABLY. AGAIN THE WEAK CRY COMES FORTH. YES! I MUST—I MUST DO—DO WHAT?
DOES THE SMALL ONE, PERHAPS, KNOW?
CARING FOR NOTHING BUT RELIEF, THE MONSTER OF THE SPACEWAYS IMPULSIVELY LOWERS ALL INTERNAL BARRIERS, LAYING OPEN ACCESS EVEN TO ITS MOST PRIVATE WELLS OF WRONG AND SHAME. IF THE LITTLE ONE KNOWS WHAT WILL ALLAY THIS TORMENT, ANYTHING IS ENDURABLE. LET IT ONLY REVEAL THE CLUE.
BUT THERE COMES ONLY REPETITION OF THE MEANINGLESS SYMBOL: .
//ACTIVATE***ACTIVATE***ACTIVATE//
THIS IS INTOLERABLE! GOADED BEYOND THOUGHT, THE ENORMOUS ONE GATHERS ITSELF TO WREAK A GENERAL DEVASTATION THAT WILL END ALL AFFLICTIONS FROM WITHIN AND WITHOUT.
—WHEN, WITHOUT WARNING, THE UNIVERSE IS TURNED UPSIDE DOWN.
Chapter 18
Bad …
It is very bad. Radiation poisoning is unbelievably painful, Dann is discovering that His brave jokes about being used to dying have ceased to comfort him; they were all part of the euphoric haze, the happy unreality of his first life in the winds of Tyree.
Now he is meeting instead the reality of searing sonic gales, of burned and poisoned flesh; nausea and hemorrhage and the ruin of his glorious new body. The reality of shortly dying, with Tivonel and his
fellow-humans, in those same winds turned lethal.
He looks at them, his six once-human patients—seven if he counts the dog—huddled in the useless shelter of the few plants that grow here at the bottom of the wind-wall. They are quiet now. Hours, or days ago, he doesn’t know which, they had moved down by stages to this final refuge from the blasting radiation of the sky. Useless; the Sound is growing every minute fiercer even here. They are in a storm of audible light. And from above he can hear the grey death-moaning of stricken plant and animal life. A world is dying around him.
Nearby is another cluster of giant alien forms: Hearer Lomax and the senior Tyrenni, their bodies scorched and dark. Only their life-fields now and again gather strength to flare strongly upward. Dann supposes they are still desperately searching for some means of psychic escape. He does not feel hopeful. The loathesome Destroyer, it seems is still blocking the sky.
Tivonel hovers near them, silently intent. Still hoping for her lost Giadoc, no doubt. It hurts Dann to see the damage to her once-graceful form, the warped and blistered vanes. Scattered beyond are groups of the surviving Tyrenni. Frantic Fathers are still trying to protect their young, or reaching out to shelter some orphaned youngster. A cluster of females hovers together, giving each other comfort in their pain. Dark bodies hang all the way up the vegetation-zone above, grim markers of their painful trek down here. The Tyrenni had been slow to grasp the danger of the sky.
One of his human patients stirs; a green flicker moans. Oh God; soon it will be time to use his dreadful “gift” again. Doctor-Dann-that-was laughs at the irony of it, a laugh that is a dull crimson gleam on his injured mantle. To discover now the “gift” that had apparently made him a doctor once, and that will do nothing but make his death more agonizing still.
Not to think about it. Wait till they awaken.
To distract himself he lets himself think back to how it was. A lovely time then, a time of beauty, comedy and surprise, high up in the winds of Tyree.
He and Tivonel had been beside a big male body when the mind within it woke. The body was that of Coito, one of the two young Fathers he had seen fleeing on the beam. Now it houses, incredibly, a human mind. Whose? A Deerfield guard, Major Fearing? the president of General Motors, for all Dann knows. Its mantle is glimmering with vague golden words. “Where …? What …?”
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