Seldon stared at the gravidar for some sezuras. “I’ll be damned! Those can only be—”
“Be the jumpgates,” Siobhan completed the sentence for the major. “Exactly. Here’s a planet”—she tapped a shapeless accumulation of pixels that were in the midst of disintegrating—“here’s a jump gate, there another one. Got it?”
With flying hands, Seldon called a map of the star system from the onboard computer’s databanks, which he had projected over the gravidar to scale. Green lines marked the solar orbit of the jumpgates as recorded on the map, red the actual ones. “Impossible!” he snorted. It was unmistakable that the blips on the gravidar still followed their paths. “I’ll happy believe that these things survived the nova without active shields. But what keeps them in their orbit?”
“Black Hole Sun only had one planet. A gas giant, right? Yes, here.” Siobhan called up the information from the computer. “No settlements or any noteworthy installations, right?”
Seldon shook his head. “I don’t think so. We haven’t had access to this system for very long.”
“Don’t you find that odd, Major? A G2 star will go nova, even though it would remain in the main sequence for at least four billion jazuras. Strangely enough, there are no habitats in the sector. And, as luck would have it, it happens at exactly the same point in time where…” She winced as she suddenly became aware of a connection that she hadn’t thought of before. Her eyes grew wide and a knot formed in her throat. “Of course, the Xenon!”
Seldon stared at her as though she were a ghost. “No, that’s impossible!”
“Impossible, yes?” Siobhan yelled excitedly and jumped up. A part of her registered objectively how irrationally she was reacting, and that her anger was not real but based on insecurity and fear. She immediately lowered her voice. “What is this here? Impossible?” She pointed at the supernova and burning space. “Am I dreaming some of that out there? Don’t you know Kertsmanckbal’s Third Axiom, Major?”
Seldon shook his head silently.
Siobhan snorted and leaned on the console with her right hand. Her entire body still ached from the fall on the armrest. “It states that the limits of the possible always remain proportional to those of the imaginable.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry, Major. I didn’t mean that to be about you.”
“I know. The thought gives me a considerable amount of fright, too. Listen, Doctor—are you all right? You’ve been shoved around pretty good.”
Siobhan sighed. “Everything’s good again. A couple bruises will go well on my skin. Matches the hair.”
In the following stazuras, Siobhan started the rest of the camera drones in succession, to collect residual data from the supernova. After the last drone burned up, the scientist repeatedly checked the programming of the jump unit. Seldon, in turn, used the first two stazuras to analyze the image recordings of the AP Providence’s outer hull. There were some deep furrows on the port side and a few bumps in others, due to the collision; but on the whole, much less had happened to the test ship than the assortment of noises during the contact had suggested.
As the supernova lost heat more quickly from the gas it ejected far out into the star system than originally expected, the shield generators conserved large amounts of energy that flowed into the converters instead. Far fewer than ten stazuras after the disastrous jump, the jump unit was operational again. This time, the probabilistic calculation was on the test ship’s side: after the blue whirls subsided, the onboard computer announced the arrival in the familiar territory of the Argon Federation, where Ban Danna and the crew of the Argon One were already anxiously awaiting the return of Siobhan and Seldon.
Chapter 35
Left-hand birth, right-hand birth—who cares?
The main thing is a birth!
Gharland t’Hzzt,
Doctor
Ghinn was boiling with rage, and she was ready to kill. Not that she had ever had a major inhibition to it before. But she slowly became aware of the hopelessness of her situation. In her stomach, the little warrior moved restlessly, he would soon want out, and he didn’t care if he saw the light of this world or that of another. The Split woman knew perfectly well that she could no longer make it back to the Community in time under any circumstances, but she tried to suppress any such thought before it started. The alternatives were so frightening that she didn’t want to think about them. She had now wandered more or less aimlessly for over two stazuras already. At first she had found herself in the middle of a vast landing field under the eerie ghost of the nocturnal aurora. The spacecraft stood thickly here, many dozens of them, but not lined up in an orderly fashion as one would expect from a spaceport on a civilized planet, but criss-cross as if there were no landing beam directing the descending ships. It looked a little like a tent city of a Split Prince who was on a crusade in the dim and distant past. There was nevertheless a tiny spark of order: as irregularly as the vehicles were distributed, they always kept a safety perimeter of about a hundred or so lengths from one another.
Ghinn was confident that within the stazura she had spent on the field, she had seen the greater part, if not all, of the many ships resting here. She had tirelessly wandered from one vehicle to the next with growing fatigue and ever-increasing anger, on the lookout for a familiar shape, or legible lettering. But in vain. Not a single craft remotely matched a type of ship that would have been used in the Community. They all belonged here, at Ianamus Zura. There were no known Teladi ships. Where were they, all the pilgrims, who paid a visit to their so painfully missed home planet? Wherever they might be, they were not here in any case!
Later she found the edge of perimeter of the spaceport, dragged through the surreal outskirts, and reached a city that was bathed in the orange light of floating street lights. In the approaching twilight, everything seemed even more depressing to Ghinn. Her eyes missed simple, solid shapes, something you could latch onto: some rough-hewn stone blocks, for example, or a corroded gate of palatan, or at least a single animal carcass somewhere on the edge of the the wide boulevard. There was nothing like that here. The buildings stood sky-high like frozen waves of metal glass. Everything was squeaky clean. Nauseating, gentle lines tickled her eyes, made her wish she was in possession of an antimatter explosive device. The colors in the area tumbled together in the most disgusting pastel shades, one could hardly tell the difference between one another, and then one wished they had not looked so closely. Even street lamps that now faded didn’t change anything.
Ghinn extended the gesture for “eternal anguish and eradication” against a small building in the form of a yalfur tuft. There were no normal Teladi here, there weren’t any on all of Ianamus Zura! Indeed, the boulevards and paths in the sprawling city began to teem with life. Round, egg-shaped, elliptical, and other shapes shot around at several levels. But the Teladi who moved back and forth between buildings lacked the impression of sober crabbiness that was typical for their relatives beyond the jumpgate. They moved light-footed and relaxed; the waddling step that was expected of their kind had almost mutated into prancing for them. Perhaps the worst part was that they all wore colorful clothes in the most abominable colors imaginable. Even worse, they preferred clothing which other than them would make people imagine a jester. Or a Boron, if they dressed. Overall, it reminded her more of the disgusting Boron creatures from Kingdom End than a metropolis of saurian shopkeepers.
The saurians looked curiously at Ghinn over their blue, red, green, pink colored muzzles as she cut through a small gathering. The rising hisses and growls of the Teladi upset the Split woman, and she would have preferred to break the next of any of them just to vent her irritation. But she was far too exhausted, so she just gruffly pressed by some of the creatures. Two Teladi stumbled, one fell to the ground with a growl. The remaining members of the group respectfully yielded to Ghinn. But when a particularly courageous specimen came too close to her, Ghinn, in a sudden fit of rage, grabbed the blindsided saurian’s throat with both hands and shout
ed “The creature will speak with me! Immediately!” the Teladi’s breath rattled in his throat, his forehead ridges, greenish under white streaks of makeup, suddenly paled. His friends reacted with with fear. In fact they now hissed more loudly and seemingly desperately, but they didn’t come to the aid of their unfortunate species member. Some of them pranced away, a bit faster than one would have expected them to be capable of.
“You will speak so that I understand it,” Ghinn demanded. Everything went black for a moment; a knot tightened in her head. Swaying, she let go of the Teladi with one hand and ran it over her face, then the dizzy spell passed again. “I need passage to the Community of Planets. I will let the creature live if it helps me,” she said in a much calmer voice. The Teladi only stared at her hard. His rattling stopped as Ghinn held him by the shoulders and no longer by the neck. The gathering of saurians had since scattered. The Teladi didn’t seem to care if one of them was harassed or attacked and possibly injured. Cowardly creatures, the Split woman thought weakly. In this regard, the inhabitants of Ianamus Zura didn’t distinguish themselves from the saurians that she knew. Only a single Teladi with a brown-speckled muzzle and bright yellow leggings was still waiting for the outcome of the confrontation.
“The creature will speak with me,” Ghinn demanded again. As she shook the lizard a, barrage of incomprehensible hissing and growling sounds came out of the Teladi. Of course. No one here spoke the trading language of the Community of Planets. Ghinn let go of the Teladi, who rushed off at once, turning twice more to look back in fear before through the entrance of a half-melted, tall high-rise building. This planet had been cut off from the rest of the universe for hundreds of jazuras, and it was only possible to arrive here again for a few mazuras. It was no wonder that the population understood nothing more than their backwards growling!
“What does it want?” Ghinn snapped at the Teladi with the yellow leggings who was still eyeing her from what he felt to be a safe distance. She formed a complicated gesture of hatred with both hands, which was not really effective on the Teladi or anyone else it was meant for, and then she looked around. Over there, between two buildings that looked like molten ammonites at least a hundred lengths tall, the green top of a large plant, possibly a tree, swayed. Trimmed bushes obscured its trunk, even green grass seemed to be there, even though she couldn’t guess how much ground it covered from this angle. If there was nothing more she could do other than reveal her ignorance, return to Kho, and have Nopileos as probably the only interpreter on the planet, then she wanted to at least rest for a couple of mizuras. Here, in the middle of the morning bustle of the saurian city, that seemed impossible to her. She got moving.
Halfway to the supposed park, she was overcome with dizziness again. This time everything blurred before her eyes for sezuras, and she staggered forward without knowing in which direction she was headed. Her entire body began to revolt, arms and legs failing at their duties, but she forced one foot in front of the other with an iron will. Her heart pumped more blood into her veins, which intensified her dizziness. Then entire right side of her body ached, and suddenly felt bloated and terribly sensitive. Even the light touch of her clothes hurt like hell.
It would happen. Now. Here.
For a quick moment, she could see clearly again. She had almost reached the two Ammonite high-rises and stumbled onwards. A sudden crunch from within shot right through her. It started on her right side and spread from above her hips, through her abdomen and chest, then also rose up her throat with increasing pressure. She gasped for air. With her left hand, she felt what she already knew: from her hips down, her dress had been soaked with liquid, which now ran down her legs. A long bulge slowly rose, began a hands breadth below the armpit, and stretched to her hip; the surrounding tissue hardened like a severe cramp, a leathery crust was forming.
A right-hand birth, oh Thuruk, a right-hand birth!
Her legs gave way, she slumped down. Beneath the sensitive skin of her knees and shins, she felt something cool, yielding. She blinked: grass. Ghinn remained in that position for while, trying to regain control of her body. She knew only too well what had happened to her: the tirchrt had formed: the birth canal which would open on either the left or the right side of her body. It was an extremely unpleasant though not usually very painful process which was always accompanied by the partial loss of control over one’s own body. It wouldn’t be more than a stazura until the birth.
As Ghinn directed her gaze back ahead, she looked at the yellow leggings and alternating white and black painted claws. The Teladi from earlier had evidently followed her into the park. He looked at her open-muzzled, with a glow in his eyes that either mean he understood her behavior of some mizuras ago, or he was expressing sympathy. Ghinn wanted neither of the two. She tried to sit up, but didn’t succeed. “Go away,” she wheezed. “Just get away, creature!” The very last thing she needed right now was a spectator. Here, far from home, on the lawn of a public park, in a city full of crazy Teladi, she would give birth. Like an animal, like a slave.
The Teladi knelt down and looked into her face. He hissed something, but Ghinn didn’t understand. “Go away,” she repeated feebly. A gesture of defense stopped as it began, because she had to quickly put her hand back on the ground so as not to completely lose her balance. The Teladi stood up and disappeared. Ghinn didn’t still possess the strength to follow him with her gaze. She slumped down and rolled on her back without a glance or even the slightest interest in everything that was going on around her. The tiuchrt widened and more thick liquid ran out, but she barely felt it.
The sky was blue, but not as dark and unfathomable as Nif-Nakh’s, but nevertheless beautiful anyway. Paper lanterns in various colors surrounded her, or were they the colorful drop-shaped aircraft of the Teladi?
Ghinn closed her eyes. Everything became silent.
Chapter 36
What I really like about Dr. Norman is that she’s so intelligent and so pretty! I’m glad she’s a long-life, because that means she’ll be as beautiful as she is today when I grow up! And then we’ll draw up a marriage contract together!
Ion Battler,
ArgoNet :: AstroTalk 29/547
It proved impossible to keep the explosion of Black Hole Sun a secret from the Community of Planets. At first the news spread like wildfire throughout the Argon Federation, then reached the fringe territories with the speed of messenger drones at full throttle, and then spilled over to the planets of the Split, Teladi, and Boron. The assumption that the Xenon were responsible for the supernova was widely publicized by nearly all media and news networks as a proven fact before it could be scientifically ascertained. A decree of the Pontifex Maximus Paranidia, in which the message was—in connection with the nova—the first signal of victory in the war against the machines, did nothing to reassure the populace. While Split, Paranids, and even Borons kept a stoic calm, mass movements began in the Argon and Teladi sectors. Some more densely populated worlds enacted emergency regulations that prohibited the use of spacecraft without government approval, but not everyone abided by them. The military was activated. In the center of the Community, chaotic turmoil bubbled up and threatened to carry away the fringes.
Siobhan had been back on Argon Prime for one or two tazuras to oversee the repair of the AP Providence. She was astonished to find the main planet of the Argon Federation as calm as if it were the eye of a storm. But perhaps the relative serenity of the planet’s population was also related to the unmistakable military presence that was concentrated here, unlike any other Argon world.
Originally, the damage to the test spaceship was to be repaired in the dry dock of the Gonor temple, but once there, they could tell that they weren’t capable of repairing the extensive damage to the outer hull of the ship. By contrast, the planetside military shipyard in the Argonia City Spaceport was well equipped for such cases. While a swathe of repair robots were kept busy with the ship’s hull, Siobhan and Zakk Folkna busied themselves with a thorough an
alysis of the jump drive.
The next morning, when Ninu Gardna arrived from the temple, her half-brother was with her, but he was of course not allowed to attend the conference. Like Commander Ditta Borman and Major Jahn Seldon, the boy stayed at the shipyard, where he curiously presented questions to the technicians and computers. It hadn’t escaped Siobhan that Ion was crazy about her and never let her out of his sight, so she was glad not to have to endure the boy longer than was absolutely necessary. With a last greeting in the direction of Borman and Seldon, she followed Ninu, who was already on the hover platform, which took off shortly thereafter.
The conference room was not actually a room, but a full-blown hall. When Siobhan entered, she felt a brief impulse to turn and disappear, never to be seen again; the past forty jazuras, during which she had kept out of everything that was even remotely related to public affairs, was too deep in her bones. She resisted the reflex.
Colonel Danna approached her and assigned her a seat in the front row of the hall, there, where the speakers sat. “Just a few words about the operation and status of the partial jump drive,” he said. “And for the laypersons, if you know what I mean. But wait first for what lar Ptorenea has to say. And don’t get frightened.”
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
Externally, lar Ptorenea was indistinguishable from other Boron. Even though Siobhan knew that there were nuances in eye shape, number of feelers, and skin color which a practiced person could recognize, in any case that didn’t account for the milk-cloudy environmental membrane. When the Boron began with her small girl’s voice, those present immediately realized that the situation must be very serious, because lar Ptorenea spoke in pretty colorful but extremely brief sentences.
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