by Greg Bear
At the edge of the pit, standing as close as they could to the scaffold, the researchers, Yates, Prescient Oyu, Lanier and the image of Korzenowski stared down into the silent storm of the gate’s beginning.
The traction cup lifted the gate opener and Patricia a few meters.
Patricia became dizzy again, staring into the pregnant, whirling illusion of color and infinite possibility.
The illusion parted, an oily black circle forming at the center.
Ry Oyu handed the clavicle to Patricia. She took its grips firmly in her hands.
“Now feel the power of what is happening,” he said in English. “Learn the sensation of a correct opening.”
The clavicle was alive in her hands, part of her, connected with her by its constant picting. Ry Oyu’s instructions to her had been quite detailed and were now fixed in her head.
The power was exhilarating. She felt like laughing as the clavicle broadened the hole in the surface of the Way. Overhead, the incomplete cupola that had sheltered Ry Oyu’s work area now moved into position on its own, seeking the center of the disturbance.
“This is a dangerous-time,” Ry Oyu said to her. ”If it gets out of control, the cupola encloses us and smooths out the disturbance. If.that happens, we are forever lost to the Way. We go wherever the aborted gate takes us, and we cannot come back. Do you feel that potential?”
She did. Her exhilaration changed into a sensation of having something indescribably nasty and unfriendly by the tail.
She kept her eyes on the clavicle.
“That’s it,” Ry Oyu said. ”Olmy could not have been more correct. You’re more of our time than your own.”
The cupola’s sketchy, racing lines shrank into the familiar active bronze coloration they had seen at other gate sites. At the center of the pit, the vortex surrounding the black circle began to rise, and the traction field carried them higher still.
“Follow me,” Yates told Lanier as the researchers moved outward.
They regrouped about fifty meters from the scaffold, near the site of the gate opener’s work area. The ground around the pit was buckling, breaking up and forming a tumulus over the rising slope of the e.
The scaffold and traction lines remained level.
Ry Oyu resumed his grip on the clavicle. ”A hundred thousand possibilities here,” he murmured. ”Through the clavicle, I can feel them ... experience them. I learn about a hundred thousand worlds now, but I only want one. I listen for it... I know its character... I know the particular tangent it occupies. The clavicle controls its own probing, keeping its position steady, but I direct ... And find.”
His expression was exalted, triumphant. The oily black circle widened and became an intense cerulean blue. Around the circle, the bronze Way material again took on definition, forming a smooth-lipped depression with the blueness at its center. The depression deepened; Patricia could not avoid characterizing the process as space-time healing, growing accustomed to the unnatural intrusion.
Around the circumference of the blueness, she received a camera-obscure, fish-eye-lens view of something long, bright and flowing, surrounded by massive dark objects.
“The gate is opened,” Ry Oyu said, shoulders slumping.
He slipped the clavicle into its receptacle and stretched out his arms.
“Now we find out what lies on the other side.”
“Do we enter?” Patricia asked.
“No,” the gate opener said with a hint of amusement. ”We send one of our mechanical friends. It makes its report, and we make our decision without immediately risking our lives.”
The traction field cup brought them level with the steps at the top of the scaffold. Ry Oyu motioned for Patricia to precede him, and they joined the others near the work area.
A cubic monitor about half a meter on a side—large for such devices—floated up the new slope and passed through the bars of the scaffold. It slipped quietly into the depression and through the gate.
Yates activated a pictor and tuned it to the monitor’s signals, relayed by scaffold transponders.
To Lanier, Patricia’s stature seemed to have increased. She appeared more self-assured, calm. Taking his hand and squeezing it between both of hers, she smiled at him and whispered, “I can do it. I felt it. I’ll be able to follow through.”
The monitor image had not yet come into focus. Yates translated picts carrying information about the conditions on the other side.
“The monitor is in a high vacuum,” he said, “with a very low radiation count. If we are indeed in another section of the Way, the flaw is particularly inactive and stable.”
“There doesn’t seem to be any flaw,” Ry Oyu commented, squinting in concentration.
The visual image clarified.
“It’s enormous,” Senator Oyu said quietly.
At whatever point the gate had intersected the Way, the tube-shaped universe had expanded to a diameter of at least fifty thousand kilometers. ”Geodesic drift,” Patricia said.
“Well, that might account for it,” Ry Oyu said. ”But it may not be inherent.”
Lanier didn’t bother asking for an explanation; he doubted he could absorb it.
The Way was filled with cyclopean structures, dark crystalline masses thousands of kilometers long, some floating free, casting broad shadows against the opposite walls of the Way as they passed before an intense, meandering, snake-like plasma tube.
“Surface attraction is about one-tenth g,” Yates said. ”The parameters are substantially different, Ry. Do you suppose it’s another Way, not our own?”
“Do we have reason to believe anyone else would have made a universe like this one?” the gate opener asked.
“No,” Yates admitted.
“We imposed our own heritage on the shape of the Way when we made it cylindrical—I strongly doubt others would duplicate it. Not with the endless possibilities available.”
“Still, there’s a convenience to such a shape, a practicality if commerce is desired ... “ Ry Oyu agreed to that much with a curt nod.
He seemed angry, surveying the results of his work. ”It’s very strange there,” he said. ”No detectable flaw, and the plasma tube is highly irregular. I’d say it’s been tampered with.”
“By Jarts?”
“No,” the gate opener said. ”Those structures are very un-Jart-like. I’m not sure I can conceive any practical uses for them--they’re either distortions in the geometry, space-time extrusions and crystallizations, or ...” He shook his head.
“Or they’re beyond our comprehension. And besides, I doubt very much if Jarts could have progressed so far. This junction—if it is a junction—has to be beyond one ex fifteen—over a hundred light years down the Way.”
“There can’t he any gates there, then,” Patricia said.
Yates raised his eyebrows. ”Why not?”
“Because that’s beyond the end of our universe, in time. Gates would open onto...” She held up her hands. “Nothing. Null.”
“Not necessarily,” Ry Oyu said. ”But you have an interesting point. The Way is adapted to fit conditions in its epoch of origin. Where it surpasses those conditions--extends beyond them—it may naturally reach other accommodations.”
“Can the Axis City ever travel that far?” Prescient Oyu asked.
“I don’t know. If the flaw ceases to exist, they would have to make adjustments ... it would be difficult. And if there’s no flaw beyond a certain point—”
“The Way is self-sustaining,” Yates finished for him.
“It is indeed. It doesn’t require sixth chamber machinery or any connection with the Thistledown.”
“It looks empty,” Lanier said, unsure he should enter into the discussion. ”I don’t see any traffic—there’s no movement.”
Yates instructed the monitor to survey the region. The images became greatly magnified, revealing the cyclopean crystals in more detail.
The Way was filled with them—some soaring from one side to
the other across tens of thousands of kilometers, the plasma tube curving around them. All of the structures—even those floating free—were covered with cupola-like disks, each protecting the obvious blisters of open gates. The image magnified several more times.
Shimmering strands of light passed in thick nets between the densely packed gates. There was traffic--commerce of some sort--on an inconceivably vast scale, and of a different kind than they had ever witnessed.
More picts flashed beside the images. ”Definitely no flaw,” Yates affirmed. ”The Way at this point is completely stable and self-consistent.” Patricia appeared half-asleep. She was in the state again, Lanier realized. She was struggling to understand what was happening. It was completely beyond him.
“It’s causally connected,” she said thickly.
“Pardon?” Lanier asked, glancing at the others and cupping her elbow in his hand. She opened her eyes wide and stared at him.
“If the Axis City travels at near light-speed down the Way, this is what will happen—even before the journey begins. The Way lies essentially outside time and has to accommodate any event within its length. This is what will happen—especially if the Thistledown end is sealed off.”
“Yes? Please continue ... “Yates urged.
“She’s right,” Korzenowski said. ”It’s perfectly obvious. And you have somebody—not humans, not Jarts, not even of our universe—taking advantage of the adaptation.”
Ry Oyu smiled broadly. ”I’m afraid it isn’t obvious to us. Please go on.”
Patricia looked at the Engineer, and felt a stir of recognition. Herself ... something about herself. Korzenowski nodded to her.
“You’re doing fine,” he said.
“We’re looking at the results, carried along superspace vectors, of what is about to happen in the Way,” she said. ”I was thinking about this before we left for Tunbl, after the rogue came to my quarters. If the Axis City travels faster than one-third light-speed, it will twist the Way and create a space-time shock wave that will exceed light-speed, moving ahead of it. The shock wave will operate outside of time, arriving before its cause. The shock wave has already passed this point—perhaps centuries ago, perhaps even before the Way was opened. Something traveling at near light-speed on the singularity, the flaw, will strain it beyond its endurance. It will convert virtual particles into energy—radiate, evaporate.”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, seeing the mathematics being done even as she spoke. ”The Way has been forced to expand to a stable configuration. The flaw has vanished.”
Olmy said nothing, calmly listening to Korzenowski and Patricia.
He’s proud, Lanier thought.
“For several light-years, until the Way expands and the city’s shock wave dissipates, everything will be sterilized ahead of the city. Nothing will exist in these segments but the city. All features will be wiped out, all gates fused shut.” She pointed to the structures.
“Obviously, the Way has expanded here, and relativistic objects along its length won’t bother it quite as much.”
Lanier tried to puzzle out the flaw’s vanishing even before the construction of the object that would force its “evaporation.”‘ He quickly lost himself in contradictions, but the contradictions didn’t seem to bother Korzenowski or the gate openers.
“When we’ve prepared the documentation—you can do that, can’t you, soon?” he asked Patricia.
She agreed. ”With Set Korzenowski’s help.”
“—Then we will know most of what we need to know,” Ry Oyu said. “We can present our report to the President. His faction can do with it what they please.” He smiled. ”What, apparently, they must.”
Bright red picts appeared before the defense monitor, signaling an urgent message. Olmy went to receive them.
When he returned, his expression was jubilant—paradoxically so, considering what he said next. ”The Jarts have opened their gate. It’s a remote, at about one point five ex nine. They’ve cut off the last defense station. There’s a plug of plasma reaching top velocity—it’s about seven hours from us. We have to leave now.”
Prescient Oyu looked to her father. ”The Geshels will refuse to let the Jarts push them out,” she said.
“Then the President has no choice now, does he?” Ry Oyu said. “The Way writes his destiny, and so do the Jarts. He must take his precincts, and we must take ours, and follow our separate paths.”
Chapter Sixty-three
Mirsky and the three other “defectors” had been given small spherical quarters in the Central City Wald. Three Geshel homorphs—two females and one of uncertain sex—had been assigned to host them and guide their short-term education and accustomization.
Mirsky sat within his sphere, tuned to various channels of picted information--some translated for them by pedagog partials of their hosts.
He and Rodzhensky had accepted temporary implants to help speed tutoring and interpretation.
They watched and listened and said little. Rodzhensky stayed close to him, while Rimskaya—the American with the feminine name—kept aloof.
The others he paid little attention to.
They were very small ciphers in a huge mystery.
The hosts came to them, incarnate to minimize alarm, and taught brief, high density classes while their guests absorbed as much as they could.
The sense of urgency was thick in the air; except for their hosts, the Geshels paid little attention to the defectors. The Wald was almost deserted, most of its occupants taking new work positions to ready, the precincts for whatever might come.
The reports from the farthest-flung defense stations had reached the now-divided Axis City. The Jarts had opened a remote gate and allowed the deep interior plasma of a star to enter the Way.
It would take about seventy hours for the destruction to reach the end of the Way, but the occupants of the Geshel precincts of the Axis City had to decide their course of action quickly. If they wished to remain in the Way, and not give it over to the Jarts, they had to have their precincts up to at least one-third light-speed before encountering the plasma front.
With the entry of the star’s material into the Way, the plasma temperature would drop considerably below the level required for fusing, but would still remain in the neighborhood of nine hundred thousand degrees. The passage of the Geshel precincts would change that, however.
When they actually hit the front, their space-time shock wave would smash the superhot plasma into a thin film. The film, lining the Way after their passage, heated to temperatures far beyond those necessary for fusion, would then fill the Way with an even more powerful plasma.
In effect, the precincts would convert the plasma and the Way into a tube-shaped nova.
Mirsky, trying to keep track of the public discussions, thought their plans were deliriously, deliciously insane.
Whether he died or not seemed minor; he was in the middle of a grand scheme, far more ostentatious than anything he could ever have imagined.
The Geshel politicians, given their freedom by the secessionists, made frantic plans. There had to be sufficient shielding front and rear to prevent the precincts’ being flooded with hard radiation; that would place a heavy strain on the four main flaw generators left to them, which would be burdened enough with having to contact the flaw at such high velocities.
Could it be done?
Yes, the physicists decided. But just barely.
There would also have to be shielding along the flaw passage. The flaw itself would be emitting very high levels of lethal radiation.
Could all the required shielding be maintained?
Yes. But with even stronger reservations.
Despite the doubts, there was a surprising consensus among the precinct’s occupants. They did not wish to return to Earth; they looked to the future, not the past. And having fought Jarts for centuries, they were not about to give up the Way to them now.
Rimskaya, drifting through the woods outside his sp
here, avoided hearing all the details. He prayed devoutly, not caring who saw him or what their reaction was. His principal worry was, could God hear prayers spoken outside of normal space-time?
Would there come a moment when they were completely cut off from God?
His assigned host, a female homorph, kept her distance at his request, realizing there was little she could do to assure him.
For her, his questions fell into an extinct classification of knowledge, as meaningless as how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
Waiting for the news of the final plans to reach them, Rodzhensky and Mirsky floated a few meters from each other in the greenery. A macrame pattern of light-snakes brightened a deep three-dimensional glade beyond their quarters, casting leaf shadows over them.
Mirsky studied the young corporal carefully, noting the shine of his skin, the loose excitement around his lips, the way his eyes started from his face. The future is a drug for him, Mirsky thought.
Was it that way for himself, as well?
“I understand so little,” Rodzhensky confided, pulling himself along a branch closer to Mirsky’s position in a crook.
“But I feel I will understand—and they are so helpful! We are strange to them—don’t you feel that? But they welcome us!”
“We’re novelties,” Mirsky said. He did not want to exhibit his own misgivings to the corporal. His own heart beat faster each time he thought of what they faced.
The female homorph assigned to the morose American tracted toward them.
“Your friend worries me,” she said. ”We’re considering returning him to your people ... He won’t admit it, but I think he’s made the wrong decision.”
“Give him time,” Mirsky said. ”We’ve all left a lot behind. We’ll be very homesick. I’ll talk to him.”
“I will, too,” Rodzhensky said enthusiastically.
“No,” Mirsky said, holding up his hand. ”Just me. We talked when I negotiated with the Americans, and we volunteered together.”
Rodzhcnsky, abashed, agreed with a sharp nod.
Mirsky knocked on the pearl-colored translucent outer surface of the sphere. Within, Rimskaya answered, “Yes? What?” in English.
