Sara had learned enough practical physics to know what fist was about to smite them. Each atom of oxygen and carbon in my body passed through a convulsion like this one … cooked in a sun, then spewed into great clouds, before condensing to form planets, critters, people.
Now her own Stardust might return to the cosmic mixing bowl, perhaps joining the life cycle of a new world, yet unborn. It seemed a dry consolation. But she knew another.
Lark.
I got his message—just as that shell closed around the Polkjhy, spreading its lambent tendrils, preparing to catch waves of hyperreality, the very moment when galaxies part company forever.
By now, his ship must already be punching through, catching a great tide of recoiling metric. Outward bound on a great adventure.
Ironies made her smile. Among Nelo’s three children, Lark alone never dreamed of leaving his beloved Jijo. Yet now he would see more of the cosmos than even the great Transcendents! An avowed celibate, he and his mate could sire a whole nation of humanity in some far galaxy.
Good-bye, brother. May Ifni’s Boss keep an eye on you.
Have fun.
Their escape tunnel loomed, a cave filled with eerie, unnerving spirals. She looked up at Emerson. Moments ago, as a final hail of crushed Old Ones fell on the white dwarf’s tormented surface, he had barked a single word—
“Dross!”
—and smiled, as if watching a deadly foe collapse in failure.
Someone counted subjective seconds till the matter-wave would hit. “… fourteen … thirteen … twelve …”
Meanwhile, Akeakemai crooned. “Almost there …” The pilot’s flukes thrashed, urging Streaker along to the refuge. “Almossssst …”
The suspense was so awful, Sara’s mind reflexively fled to a domain where she had some control. Mathematics. To a problem she had discovered recently—while Gillian dickered with the Transcendents to take Polkjhy, and let Streaker go.
Amid a maze of transfinite tensors, Sara had found a renormalization quandary that simply would not go away. In fact, it seemed essential to describe the chaos waves they had seen. Yet, according to the Transcendents’ own models, it made no sense!
I thought I knew the whole truth when I foresaw the galactic breakup, arising from the expansion of the universe. But now I can tell—some added force is driving things faster than expected.
It only made sense if she made a peculiar conjecture.
Something is coming in. Something titanic.
Details were vague, but she knew one thing about the intruding presence.
It won’t be found in any gravity well. We must look elsewhere, in flat space. Far from the Embrace of—
Streaker shook suddenly. Vibrations leaped in force and volume, shuddering her spine. Someone screamed.
“Matter wave!”
For an instant, time seemed to flicker—
Then, across the span of an eyeblink, Sara was surrounded by leaping, yelling figures. Emerson squeezed her as if it were the end of the world. And briefly, she thought it was.
Then she knew Prity’s gleeful screech, the dolphins’ whistled raspberries of joy, and her lover’s gasping laughter. Amid the tumult and confusion, Sara noticed—all the ominous rumblings were gone. Vanished! Replaced by a happy roar of unleashed engines.
The view screens were back on, showing vistas of strangely distorted ylem—the walls of a weirdly beneficent tunnel, sweeping them along.
“We made it!” Suessi’s amplified voice exulted.
We … did?
Sara realized with some chagrin that her math-trance had kept her from witnessing the moment of triumph and salvation.
Well, damn me for a distracted nerd, she thought, and threw herself into kissing Emerson with all her might.
E Space
HARRY’S PROFESSION ALWAYS SEEMED A LONELY one.
Now I know why Wer’Q’quinn sent solitary scouts on missions to E Space. Too many minds can be dangerous here. And embarrassing.
During earlier trips to the kingdom of living ideas, he sometimes had entered a new territory only to find the local matrix crystallizing around symbols that leaked from his own mind. Since there was seldom anyone else around but herds of local memoids, it hardly mattered what the shapes revealed about his subconscious.
This time, the station carried five strong-willed personalities, from four different races. Harry worried from the moment his vessel emerged through a drifting purple haze, striding on long, spidery legs.
The initial fog shredded, as if blown aside by his passengers’ curious scrutiny. Dwer and Kaa and Kiwei Ha’aoulin pressed the windows rimming the control chamber. Dwer had been in E Space before. The others were transfixed by their first visit to this famous, mythical province.
You wouldn’t peer about so eagerly if you’d seen what I have.
Still Harry refrained from closing the louvered blinds. This would be the last chance of their lives to see E Space.
And maybe my last trip, as well.
Soon, the mist cleared to reveal a vast landscape of cubes, pyramids, tilted planes, and other more complex geometric forms. At least, that was how the objects began.
The first time he looked closely at one, it started melting, congealing, taking on new, rounded contours. Soon he saw protrusions on both sides that resembled … ears! Then a flared nose. Moments later, a mouth full of yellowed teeth grimaced back at him, both unappealing and familiar.
He checked instruments. The memic-monolith stood over thirty pseudokilometers away! Apparently, he had just triggered the manifestation of a gigantic sculpture representing his own head, towering higher than the largest structures on Earth. Glancing left and right, he saw that Synthian, dolphin, and human-shaped statuary were coagulating in all directions. Replications of Kaa, Dwer, and Kiwei soon stretched as far as the eye could see.
“Well, well,” commented the delighted Synthian trader, with both hands folded across her belly. “Should someone wake Rety, so she might also partake in this opportunity for megascale immortalization?”
Harry shook his head while a mammoth sculpture mimicked his expression of piqued irritation.
“The poor kid is sleeping off a concussion, for Ifni’s sake. Anyway, this sort of thing generally doesn’t last. Most of these gross memes just fade back into the ylem, soon as the stimulating host mind leaves.”
“But occasionally they don’t fade? There is a chance this will be permanent?”
Harry shrugged, wondering why Kiwei cared.
“I’ve seen things—crypto-shapes and frozen images from the distant past. Wer’Q’quinn says reified memestuff can sometimes get more rigid than anything made of true matter, like the ideas that become permanently fixed in some living brains. I guess there are concept-objects in E Space that may outlast all the protons an’ quarks, an’ the whole sidereal universe.”
Kiwei gazed at a range of hillocks and mountains, most of them wearing her own smug, rounded countenance.
“Really?” Her sigh was wistfully hopeful.
Dwer and Kaa both chuckled. But Harry shook his head.
“Let’s get moving,” he said. “Before something else goes wrong.”
So far, little had gone according to plan.
First came that riotous muddle at the Kazzkark warehouse. While Dwer covered their retreat with a hail of arrows, Harry and Kiwei had managed to grab the unconscious Rety and carry her off without being ripped to shreds by the angry Tandu warrior. Nearby hallways clamored with sounds of reinforcements—more of the vicious creatures—charging to help their comrade wreak havoc while chaos waves shook the little planetoid from end to end.
With a backward glance, Harry caught the final moments of the Skiano missionary—hurled into an exploding globe-icon of Earth, the blue “martyr planet.”
Troubles followed them to the Institute Docks, where slabs of rock wall were already coming loose, toppling to crush vehicles parked at nearby wharves. Screeching alarms warned that a vacuum breach was
imminent. Harry hurried everyone aboard and got his station under way—with Kaa’s little corvette towed just behind—just before the ceiling started collapsing. By the time he reached the main airlock, there wasn’t much point going through emigration protocols. The obstructing wall dissolved, revealing fields of weirdly twinkling stars.
It took a while to dodge swarms of hazardous debris before they could make even a simple, short-range hyperjump. Meanwhile, chaos waves rocked the planetoid. Even if I make it back from this mission, there’d be no sense reporting here.
There are other Institute bases.
Anyway, they say it’s safer to be on a planet these days.
Finally, the chaos waves ebbed, though he knew worse was to come. As Kazzkark vanished from sight, Harry hoped Wer’Q’quinn, the old squid, would make it somehow.
Things got kind of blurry then. He gave coordinates to Kaa and let the expert space pilot take them through a dozen B-Level jumps, then into a small t-point that was already declared dangerously unstable.
Kaa’s innovative thread-jumping maneuvers somehow kept them from being torn, sliced, roasted, or vaporized. Still, it was a wild, nerve-racking ride. Harry spent half the time cursing cetaceans and their ancestors, all the way back to the Miocene.
At last, they reached his assigned entry point—a special place, darker than black, where the walls between reality levels were thin enough to pierce—and it was Harry’s turn to take over. Soon, materiality shimmered and they underwent transition to a realm whose physics let ideas have a life of their own.
It gladdened Harry to depart the province of giant statuary, entering a terrain covered by endless swaths of undulating orange “grass”—each blade consisting of some basic concept that thrived free of any language or host mind.
On close inspection, the prairie looked eroded, discolored. Large patches seemed broken or seared, as if raked by quake and fire. Apparently, E Space wasn’t immune to the tumult shaking five linked galaxies. Even the memoid herds were affected. He witnessed several great flocks darting to and fro, stampeding as both ground and sky rippled threateningly.
While his passengers stared in wonder, Harry set course for the Cosmic Path. He must find a portion that peered into Galaxy Four and set his instruments, as soon as possible. Fortunately, these new devices were disposable. He could leave them in place till they were destroyed. Their death cries would give Wer’Q’quinn’s people vital data about the Great Rupture. This time, his boss promised, the information would be broadcast widely, not kept in secret files for use by elder races and star gods.
That was the main reason Harry agreed to this mission. It might seem odd to worry about events a hundred million years from now. But for some reason he identified with people in that distant era. Maybe his efforts would spare those folks some of the ignorant terror now sweeping Five Galaxies. Even if, by then, the “gods” were distant heirs of chimpanzees, and the Navigation Institute of that future age was staffed by descendants of today’s lice. The kind infesting his fur right now, making him constantly yearn to scratch his—
“Captain Harms,” said a whirling circular shape that appeared uncomfortably near his nose. “I have news! Your goal should now lie in view. Congratulations! And may I add that it has been a real—”
Harry cut off observer mode holo with a curt head-shake. Hustling to a bank of windows, he peered past the ever-present E Space haze … and caught sight of a thin, sinuous glow, twisting across the countryside just ahead. “Well, something’s going right, for a change,” he murmured.
While laying his instruments, he would find an appropriate site along the Path, put Kaa and the others in the corvette, and shove the little vessel into normal space—hopefully within reach of their destination. Harry might then have barely enough time to get back home to civilization before the whole place rocked and rolled.
Rety was adamant.
From the moment she got up—stumbling into the control chamber with a hand pressed to her head and the other stroking her little urrish “husband”—Rety made one fact abundantly clear.
She was not returning to Jijo with Dwer and the others.
“You may be homesick for filth an’ a bunch of low-tech barbarians, but if I never hear o’ that place again, it’ll be too soon! I’m going back with Harry.”
That was it. No gratitude for saving her life. No mention of her erstwhile religion, or inquiries about her late guru. Just a fierce determination that defied all opposition.
Even so young, she is formidable. I’ve met some humans with personalities this strong. All were world-shifters—for well or ill.
But most had one trait Rety lacked. They knew the pragmatic value of tact. Of course, she’d been raised by savages. In civilization, she might learn social skills, forge alliances, achieve aspirations, and possibly even be liked.
There was just one problem with her plan.
“I’ll be honest, miss. There’s a good chance I can get you all to the right quadrant of Galaxy Four. Maybe even the sector. But my own odds of survival after—”
Rety laughed. “Don’t tell me odds! I ain’t worried ’bout odds since I was gored by a gallaiter, and given up by my own tribe for dead. Yee an’ I are gonna stick right by your furry side, if you don’t mind. And even if you do.”
The others were no help. Kaa used a spectral analyzer to peer into the Path—filled with dark nebulae and glittering stellar clusters—searching for the telltale blush of a particular stormy star. Kiwei occupied herself staring at the plain of memes, apparently trying to impose her will again, causing more shapes to appear.
Dwer’s sole response was a rolling of eyes. He had no aim to intervene in Rety’s life again.
“Oh, all right.” Harry sighed. “Just promise you’ll stay out of the way. And no whining about where you finally wind up!”
Rety nodded. “So long as it ain’t Jijo.”
A buzzer announced the dropping of another instrument package along the curving Path. With luck, Wer’Q’quinn’s devices would be positioned well before the biggest chaos wave of all. Then it would be a matter of dropping Kaa and the others off near a mapped t-point and wishing them luck.
He offered Kiwei a chance to withdraw.
“You don’t have to enter Galaxy Four. After the links snap, there’ll be no more travel between—”
She raised a meaty hand, chuckling. “Not more fairy tales about a permanent ‘rupture’ please! Scout-Major, you’ve been misled. The Five Galaxies have always been—”
The station abruptly jolted to a halt. A shrill squeal made everyone turn as Kaa used his tail flukes to thump the pad of his walker.
“C-come!” the dolphin urged. “Come and see thisssss!”
Harry and Kiwei hurried to join him at a bank of windows. Kaa used his neural tap to create a pointer ray, aimed toward the glittering Path.
“There it isss!” The pilot hissed clear, moist satisfaction. “I found it!”
Dwer asked—“Izmunuti?”
“Yesss! Just past that oblong cloud of ionized hydrogen. The spectral match is perfect. So are surrounding star formationssss.”
“Wow,” Dwer said. “I think I can even make out a familiar constellation or two. All twisted, of course.”
Kaa raised a sleek gray head, chattering happily. And though Harry’s Trinary was rusty, he caught the gist.
* It would be enough to do my duty,
* having helped the cause of Earthclan.
* It would be enough to rescue Peepoe,
* and to spend a lifetime with her.
* It would be enough to help save Jijo,
* and to taste those silky waters.
* All those things and many others,
* would have let me face death happy.
* But among those counted pleasures,
* this means I reclaim my nickname! *
Kiwei peered toward the vast sprawl of pinpoints.
“Then Jijo’s sun …?”
“Is right th-there!?
?? Kaa turned a dark eye toward Harry. “Major Harms, if you insert us here, how many paktaars would that leave us from—”
A sudden jab on the shoulder diverted Harry’s attention. He swiveled to see Rety, holding her urrish companion in the crook of one arm. The little creature—her “husband”—craned its long neck, peering at the Path.
“Uh, Major Harms, could we ask you a question?”
“Not right now, Rety. We’re making an important decision.”
She nodded. “I know. But yee just saw something you oughta look at.” She pointed along the sinuous tube, back the way they’d just come. “There’s stuff goin’ on in there.”
Harry straightened. “What do you mean?”
“I mean in the last few duras there’s been three or four really bright … There goes another one!” She winced as a sudden glare hit her eye. “Is that normal? Can stars get so shiny, all of a sudden? I figure you’d want to—”
“Observer mode!” Harry shouted. “Scan the Path for sudden stellar bursts. Are they E-Space illusions, or is something real happening in Galaxy Four?”
The hovering symbol whirled for only a moment.
“The outbursts have spectra and brightness profiles of unusually energetic, type SN1a supernova. Such explosions are known to affect the interfacial membrane that you call the Path.”
“I can see that!” Harry snapped. The mammoth tube’s stable sinuosity had started to move. It shivered and heaved near each sudden point of aching brightness.
“Safety parameters deem it prudent to retreat now from the boundary.”
Kiwei protested. “But supernovas do not happen this way! Each is an isolated astrophysical event!”
“I don’t like this,” Dwer added.
“Maybe we oughta do what the voice says,” Rety suggested. “Back off. Head for civilized space. Take shelter on some planet till all this blows ov—”