Tides of Light

by Gregory Benford

  We can perhaps survive this one passage. But another, and another?—so on, ad infinitum?

  “There must be a way out.”

  Killeen said this with absolute conviction, even though he had no knowledge of the physics underlying Arthur’s colorful display. Even if a gargantuan alien had made this incinerating rattrap, it could have made a mistake, left some small unnoticed exit.

  He had to believe that or the panic which squeezed his throat would overwhelm him. He would die like a pitiful animal, caught on the alien’s spit and roasted to a charred hulk. He would end as a cinder, bobbing endlessly through the central furnace.

  We might possibly try something at the very high point, when the hoop begins to curve over far above the pole. We should come to rest there for a brief instant.

  “Good. Good. I can maybe pump some this cooling stuff—”

  Refrigerant fluids, yes, I see. Use them in our thruster. But that would not be enough to attain an orbit.

  “How about the hoop? Maybe I could bounce off it up there, where it’s spinning. I could pick up some vector, get free.”

  Killeen felt Arthur’s strangely abstract presence moving, pondering, consulting Ling and Grey and some Faces, as though this were merely some fresh problem of passing interest. Falling in absolute blackness, he felt his stomach convulse. He clamped his throat shut and gulped back down a mouthful of acid bile.

  Now a strange sound came to him. Beneath the ratcheting whuum-whuum-whuum of the revolving hoop he heard bass gurglings and ringing pops.

  We are picking up the whorls of the planetary magnetic fields in the core. They sound remarkably like organ notes.

  The long, strumming, hollow sounds broke Killeen’s attention. He imagined they were majestic voices calling out to him, beckoning him into the utter depths of this world….

  No. He shook himself, gasped, and switched the lightpipe image into his left eye.

  The walls outside bristled with incandescent heat, cherry red. Globs of scorched red churned in the walls.

  “Stop your calculatin’ ! Give me an answer.”

  Very well. The idea might be marginally possible. I cannot estimate with certainty. However, it would require that we be close enough to the hoop-formed wall. The cyborg has placed us exactly in the center of this tube, as I measure. We need to move perhaps a hundred meters before we will be within the pressure shock wave of the hoop as it turns.

  “How far’s that?”

  About as far as you, ah, we can throw a stone.

  “That’s not so hard. I can use that cooler stuff—”

  Extract it now and we will die in seconds.

  “Damnall. I’ll do it when we’re clear, then.”

  That is tempting, but I fear it would not be effective. The tube opens as it rises toward the surface. Here the tube wall is only a stone’s throw away. By the time we are clear of the core, the walls will be too far to reach in time—unless we begin to move now.

  “Yeasay, yeasay—how?”

  Even a small pressure applied now would give us enough push to reach the wall during the rise out.

  “Pressure…”

  Killeen frowned. The claustrophobic suit filled with the sound of his own panting, his sour sweat, the naked smell of his fear. He felt nothing but the clawing emptiness of perpetual falling, of weightless anxiety. He squinted at the tiny image that came through the lightpipe.

  The walls outside were flooded with fire. The nickel-iron core only a short distance beyond raged and tossed with prickly white compressional waves. He flew close to livid pink whorls that stretched for tens of kilometers, yet passed in a few seconds of harsh glare. The hoop’s constant whuum-whuum-whuum stormed in his teeth and jaws with grinding persistence.

  For a crawling moment he remembered a similar time long ago on Snowglade. He had gone flying with his new wife, Veronica, and Abraham. Near the Citadel there had been an ancient tunnel through a mountain, dug during the High Arcology times. The prickly desert wind swept through it and funnels artfully increased the gale speed. Where the tunnel turned abruptly vertical the wind could support a man with wings. He had cast off into the roaring stream and circled around the tunnel’s wide oval bore. Veronica followed, grinning and wide-eyed. By canting their wings they could soar and plunge and bank about each other. Abraham then came swooping down, his yells swept away in the howl. They had labored against the battering wind and then harvested its incessant pressures, merrily spiraling around one another, aloft on the moment…

  All gone, a time lost forever…

  Now…

  His tongue seemed to fill his throat. Searing air bit in his nostrils. His suit was close to overheating. He realized he was nearing the point where his grip on himself would slip. He would do something rash to escape the heat and he would die.

  But something Arthur had said plucked at his memory. Even a small pressure…

  “The light. You said something about it pushing us.”

  Yes, of course, but that acts equally in all directions.

  “Not if we turn some of the silver off.”

  What? That would—Oh, I see. If we slightly lessen the silvering on the front of us, say, by robbing the autocircuits there of power…yes, then the light will reflect less well. We will be pushed in that direction by the light striking us from behind.

  “Let’s do it. Not much time.”

  But the heat! Lessening the reflection heightens the absorption.

  Killeen had already guessed that. “Show me how to taper down the silver on my chest.”

  No, I don’t—The temperature outside, it’s 3,459 centigrade! I don’t—I can’t take—

  “Give the info. Now.” Killeen kept his mind under tight control. This was the only way, he felt sure of it, and seconds counted.

  Not now, no! I’ll—I’ll think of something—something that will work—yes, work when we get through the core. I’ll review my back memories, I’ll—

  “No. Now.”

  He felt the Aspect’s fear, surging now nearly as strongly as his own. So the chip-mind had finally broken, revealed the fragments of its residual humanity.

  Deliberately he reached within himself and smothered Arthur’s objections. It called plaintively to him in a small, desperate whine. Killeen clamped down, forced Arthur back into a cranny.

  “Now.”

  FOUR

  Beq’qdahl’s ribbed pores flared a deep, angry yellow.

 

  Quath quickly peered ahead, using the sharp infrared. Motes were spreading away from the outline of the approaching station.

 

 

 

  Quath bristled.

 

  Quath said as mildly as she could,

 

  Quath watched the shuttles speed away, spreading like fragments of an explosion. A nice escape. Already some swept in close to the glow of the cosmic string, which was rotating on a test run, to try new magnetic flux generators at both poles. The test would last only a bit longer, and would not suck more metal from the core unless there was a pressure failure. The string would keep the Noughts from reaching the upper atmosphere, but as she watched the shuttles they mingled with the great slabs of freeze-formed nickel-iron that laced the high orbits.

  Clever pests! She hungered to crush them.

  Amid that complex stockpile they could hide quite well, and no doubt planned to do so. These were no mere ground-grubbed Noughts, no. As soon as the cosmic string slowed, they would slip into the planet
’s atmosphere and air brake. With each working of the Syphon quakes rocked the planet, but that would scarcely prevent their landing. Once down, they could find easy refuge in the jumbled countryside.

  Beq’qdahl said ponderously.

  Quath spat back,

 

  Such a measure might not carry significant weight with the elders of the Hive, but Quath was determined to try.

  Beq’qdahl paused, obviously reconsidering. Their ship cruised along its approach orbit. The station ahead seemed inactive now. Its bays yawned empty, shuttle ships gone.

  A mech-slave signal peeped forth on the main board before Quath. A large craft hung near the station, probably the Noughts’.

  Beq’qdahl said.

  Quath said.

 

 

  Beq’qdahl said judiciously.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Quath decided not to challenge this small lie.

 

  Quath relaxed somewhat. She watched one of the fleeing shuttlecraft on the horizon, where it took up orbit above the aura of the Cosmic Circle. Alarm shot through her.

  Beq’qdahl ratcheted her pods in disbelief.

  Quath cried in frustration.

  Beq’qdahl’s electro-aura seethed with malice.

  Acrid hormones flooded the cabin as both of them suffered involuntary embarrassment. Their bodies acted to rid their lymph chambers of the corrosive chemicals generated by their sudden, spiky emotions.

  Quath said darkly,

 

 

  Beq’qdahl saw Quath’s threat. Her head swiveled and turned indigo in confusion.

 

  Bitter cadences of violent color washed over Beq’qdahl.

  Quath said.

  Beq’qdahl said sourly.

  Quath recalled. It had seemed a small matter at the time they received their orders.

  Beq’qdahl added sharply. She still seemed to take that past battle as a personal affront.

  Quath answered diplomatically.

  Beq’qdahl fretted.

  Quath did not relish the prospect of having to run down one of the quick, darting shuttles, then pry it open and rummage inside for a sample Nought. They might easily squash them all and then have to go after yet another shuttle. All that, in full view of the thermweave crews who worked in preparing the great metal-mountains. Was there some other way…? She poked at her subminds, rummaging for any notion that might help. They chorused their partial visions.

  Beq’qdahl said,

  Quath said brightly.

  FIVE

  The yellow-white hell soared away above Killeen’s head. The walls nearly seeped a sullen red, but even this was a relief after the incandescent fury that dwindled now, a fiery disk fading above him like a dimming, perpetually angry sun.

  Killeen panted deeply, though it seemed to do no good. Prickly waves washed over him, bringing him unbearable itches that moved in restless storms across his skin. His lungs jerked irregularly. His arms trembled. Muscles and nerves fought their private rebellions and wars.

  But he had managed to keep his arms and legs straight. The light pressure would not have forced him in only one direction if he had spun or tumbled.

  Had it been enough? The long minutes at the core had crawled by, bringing agonizing lungfuls of scorched air.

  Now the searing ebbed slightly.

  We are, after all, just another radiating body. We can only lose heat by emitting it as infrared waves. So we must wait for cooler surroundings before this intolerable warmth can disperse.

  His Arthur Aspect seemed remarkably collected, given the hysteria which had beset it only minutes before. “How…how ’bout that cooling thing?”

  You mean our refrigerator? It can only function by ejecting waste heat at a cooler sink. As yet there are no colder surroundings, as you can see.

  “So we wait till we get out?” It seemed an impossibly long time. Between his boots he could see the blackness of the planet’s mantle, thousands of kilometers of dead rock they must shoot through before regaining the dark of space itself. And there he would somehow have to make good this attempt, or else he would slow and pause and then plunge again. He wished again that he had saved his thruster fuel. It would give him some freedom, some hope of being something other than the helpless, dumb test particle in a grotesque experiment.

  We do have some fluids we could eject, but…

  “But what? Look, we try everything. Got no hope otherwise.”

  The refrigerant fluids. We could bring them to a high temperature and vent them.

  “Think it’ll help much?”

  To lose the coolant meant he would have no chance whatever if he failed up ahead and fell back into the tube. He would fry for sure.

  I cannot tell how much momentum we picked up from that maneuver. Pushing a large mass such as ourselves with mere light pressure…

  Killeen gave a jittery laugh. “I’m the mass here—you weigh nothin’ at all. And don’t you worry ’bout calculatin’ what’ll happen. Time comes, up at the top of this hole, I’ll have to grab whatever’s in sight. Fly by the seat of my pants, not some eee-quation.”

  Then I should vent the refrigerant fluids?

  “Sure. Bet it all!” Killeen felt small icy rivulets coursing along his neck as he let the Aspect take fractional control of his inboard systems.

  I am warming the poly-xenon now.

  “And when you spray it, just use the spinal vents. That’ll give us another push in the right direction. Could make the difference.”

  Oh, I see. I did not think of this possibility.

  “Trouble with you Aspects is you can’t imagine anythin’ you haven’t seen ’fore.”

  Let us not debate my properties at quite this time. We are rising toward the surface and you must be ready. I believe the wall you face is nearer now. Notice the sparkling?

  “Yeasay. What’s it mean?”

  That is where the mantle rock is forced by sidewise pressure against the passing cosmic string. It is disintegrated on impact. I cannot see whether it is somehow incorporated into the string, or whether it is simply forced back. For whatever reason, the rock is held back. Clearly, the cyborgs must relax this hoop pressure somehow, down in the core, in
order to fill this tube with the liquid iron we saw before.

  “Maybe they just slow it down some? Let the iron squish in a li’l ’fore the next time the string comes whizzin’ by?”

  In the midst of techtalk he lapsed back into the short, clipped speech of his boyhood in the Citadel. The carefully assumed veneer of Cap’n rubbed away under the press of action. Killeen fumbled with the suit refrigerator controls. He knew he had to understand more about the hoop.

  Possibly. Clearly the rotating string exerts great pressure against these rocks.

  Killeen watched the quick flashing in the walls. For him to see these sparks at all, they must be enormous, since his speed took him by kilometers of the ruby-red rock in an instant. He had no bodily sensation of speed, but knew from the 3D simulation Arthur ran in his left eye that he was rising toward the surface, slowing as gravity asserted itself.

  He had to find a way to escape the tube, but no idea came to him. He had nothing he could throw to gain momentum. The coolant jet throbbed behind him, but relative to the blur of motion in the walls he could not tell whether it did any good. It occurred to him that if he was too successful he would crash into the speeding wall and be torn to pieces in an instant. Somehow the abstract nature of these things, the dry, distant feel of science, frightened him all the more.

  The tube is flaring out. We are approaching one side of it, but I cannot judge our velocity well. As we rise, the hoop curves away to make its great arc outward. The majesty of it is impressive, I must say. No mechtech I have ever heard of matches this. Grey says the historical records suggest even greater works near the Eater.

  “Forget that. What can I do?”

  I am trying to see how we can use our situation, but I must say that a solution continues to elude me. The dynamics—

  “We’re gettin’ close. Come on!”

  The rock around him had already ceased glowing. Beyond the walls lay complete darkness. He could not understand how he could be moving up from the center of New Bishop and yet still feel that he was falling. No matter; science was a set of rules to him, and this was simply a rule he did not comprehend.