by David Brin
Roused by that low resonance, Dr. Baskin turned and glanced at my vibrating throat sac. I am told that starfaring humans do not like hoons very much, but Sara Koolhan whispered in her ear and Gillian nodded approvingly.
Clearly, she understood.
A few duras later, after I finished, the little spinning Niss hologram popped into place, hovering in midair nearby.
“Kaa reports that we are about ten minutes away from t-point insertion.”
Dr. Baskin nodded.
“Are there any changes in our entourage?”
Her digital aide seemed to give a casual, unconcerned twist.
“We are followed by a crowd of diverse vessels,” the machine voice replied. “Some are robotic, a majority house oxygen-breathing refugees, bearing safe-passage emblems of the Retired Order of Life.
“Of course, all of them are keeping a wary distance from the Jophur battleship.”
The Niss paused for a moment or two, before continuing.
“Are you absolutely sure you want us to set course for Tanith?”
The tall woman shrugged.
“I’m still open to other suggestions. It seems we’ve tried everything else, and that includes hiding in the most obscure corner of the universe … no offense, Alvin.”
“None taken,” I replied, since her depiction of Jijo was doubtless true. “What is Tanith?”
The Niss Machine answered.
“It is a planet, where there exists a sector headquarters of the Library Institute. The one nearest Earth. To this site Captain Creideiki would have taken our discoveries in the first place, if we had not fallen into a cascade of violence and treachery. Lacking other options, Dr. Baskin believes we must now fall back on that original plan.”
“But didn’t you already try surrendering to the Institutes? At that place called Wakka—”
“Oakka. Indeed, two years ago we evaded pursuit by merciless battle fleets in order to make that attempt. But the madness sweeping our civilization preceded us there too. Sworn monks of the monastic, bureaucratic brotherhoods abjured their oaths of neutrality, choosing instead to revert to older loyalties. Motivated in part by ancient grudges — or else the huge bounties offered for Streaker’s capture by various fanatical alliances — they attempted to seize the Earthship for their blood and clan relations.”
“So the Institutes couldn’t be trusted then. What’s different this time?”
Dr. Baskin pointed to a smaller display screen.
“That is what’s different, Alvin.”
It showed the Jophur battleship — the central fact of our lives now. The huge oblate warship clung to us like a bad smell, following closely ever since their earlier assault failed to disable Streaker. Even with Kaa at the helm, the dolphin crew thought it infeasible to lose them. You’d have better luck shaking off your shadow on a sunny day.
“Our orders are clear. Under no circumstances can we let one faction snatch our data for themselves.”
“So instead we shall go charging straight into one of the busiest ports of Galaxy Two?”
The Niss sounded doubtful, if not outright snide. But Dr. Baskin showed no sign of reacting to its tone.
“Isn’t that our best chance? To head for a crowded place, with lots of traffic and possibly ships big enough to balance that imposing cruiser out there? Besides, there is a possibility that Oakka was an exception. An aberration. Maybe officials at Tanith will remember their oaths.”
The Niss expressed doubt with an impolite sound.
“There is a slim chance of that. Or possibly sheer surprise might prompt action by the cautious majority of Galactic clans, who have so far kept static, frozen by indecision.”
“That’s been our dream all along. And it could happen, if enough synthians and pargi and their allies have ships in the area. Why wouldn’t they intercede, in support of tradition and the law?”
“Your optimism is among your greatest charms, Dr. Baskin — to imagine that the moderates can be swayed to make any sort of decision quickly, when commitment may expose them to mortal danger. By now it is quite clear to everyone that a Time of Changes is at hand. They are pondering issues of racial survival Justice for wolflings will not take high priority.
“Far more likely, your abrupt appearance will provoke free-for-all combat above Tanith, making Kithrup seem like a mere skirmish. I assume you realize the armadas who are currently besieging Terra lie just two jumps away from Tanith? In less than a standard day they would likely converge—”
“Abating the siege of Earth? That sounds worthwhile.”
The Niss hologram tightened its clustered, spinning lines.
“We are dancing around the main problem, Dr. Baskin. Our destination is moot. The Jophur will not allow us to reach Tanith. Of that you can be sure.”
Sara Koolhan spoke up for the first time.
“Can they stop us? They tried once, and failed.”
“Alas, Sage Koolhan, our apparent invulnerability cannot last. The Jophur were taken by surprise, but by now they are surely scanning their onboard database, delving for the flaw in our wondrous armor.”
They referred to the gleaming mantle now blanketing Streaker’s hull. As an ignorant Jijoan, I couldn’t tell what made the coating so special, though I vividly recall the anxious time when swarms of machine entities sealed it around us — dark figures struggling enigmatically over our fate, without bothering to seek consent from a shipload of wolflings and sooners.
The final disputants were two sets of giant repair robots, those at the stern trying to harvest carbon from Streaker’s hull for raw materials, and the other team busy transforming the star soot into a layer that shimmered like the glassy Spectral Flow.
Lightning seemed to pass between the groups. Meme-directive impulses, the Niss identified those flickering bursts, advising us not to watch, lest our brains become somehow infected. In a matter of duras, the contest ended without any machines being physically harmed. But one group must have abruptly had its “mind changed.”
Abruptly united in purpose, both sets of robots fell to work, completing Streaker’s transformation just in time, before the first disintegrator ray struck.
“Who says there has to be a flaw?” Dr. Baskin asked. “We seem to be unharmable, at least by long-range beams.”
She sounded confident, but I remember how shocked Gillian, Sara, Tsh’t, and the others had seemed, to survive an instant after the attack began. Only the crippled engineer, Emerson d’Anite, grunted and nodded, as if he had expected something like this all along.
“There are no perfect defenses,” countered the Niss. “Every variety of weapon has been logged and archived by the Great Library. If a technique seems surprising or miraculous, it could be because it was abandoned long ago for very good reasons. Once the Jophur find those reasons, our new shield will surely turn from an advantage into a liability.”
The humans and dolphins clearly disliked this logic. I can’t say I cared for it myself. But how could anyone refute it? Even we sooners know one of the basic truisms of life in the Five Galaxies—
If something isn’t in the Library, it is almost certainly impossible.
Still, I’ll never forget that time, just after the big construction robots finished their task and jetted away, leaving this battered ship shining in space, as uttergloss as any jewel.
Streaker turned to flee through the great hole in the Fractal World, and suddenly great spears of destructive light bathed her from several directions at once! Alarms blared and each ray of focused energy seemed to shove us outward with titanic force.
But we did not burn. Instead, a strange noise surrounded us, like the groaning of some deep-sea leviathan. Huck pulled in all her eyes. Pincer withdrew all five legs, and Ur-ronn coiled her long neck, letting out a low urrish howl.
All the instruments went crazy … and yet we did not burn!
Soon most of the crew agreed with the initial assessment of Hannes Suessi, who decreed that the disintegrator beams must be
faked.
A showy demonstration, they must be meant to frighten off our enemies and let us escape. No other answer seemed to explain our survival!
That is, until the Jophur pounced on us a short time later, and their searing rays also vanished with the same mysterious groan.
Then we knew.
Someone had done us a favor … and we didn’t even know who to thank. Or whether the blessing cloaked more misfortune, still to come.
A voice called over the intercom.
“Transfer point insertion approaching in … thirty ssseconds.”
Those in the Plotting Room turned to watch the forward viewer, looking ahead toward a tangled web of darkness — first in a series that would carry us far beyond Galaxy Four to distant realms my friends and I had barely heard of in legend and tales about gods. But my hoonish digestion was already anticipating the coming nausea. I remember thinking how much better it would suit me to be aboard my father’s dross ship, pulling halyards and umbling with the happy crew, with Jijo’s warm wind in my face and salt spray singing on the sails.
Back at the hyperwave display, I found another person less interested in where we were going than the place we were leaving behind. Emerson, the crippled engineer, who wore a rewq over his eyes and greeted me with a lopsided human smile. I answered by flapping my throat sac.
Blurry and wavering, the image of the Fractal World glimmered like an egg the size of a solar system, on the verge of spilling forth something young, hot, and fierce. Red sunlight shot through holes and crevices, while cruel sparks told of explosions vast enough to rock the entire structure, sending ripples crisscrossing the tormented sphere.
Emerson sighed, and surprised me by uttering a simple Anglic phrase, expressing an incredible thought.
“Well … easy come … easy go.”
Mudfoot chittered on my shoulder as Streaker’s engines cranked up to handle the stress of transfer. But our attention stayed riveted on the unlucky Fractal World.
The globe sundered all at once, along every fault line, dissolving into myriad giant curved shards, some of them tumbling toward black space, while others glided inward to a gaudy reunion.
Unleashed after half a billion years of tame servitude, the little star flared exuberantly, as if celebrating each new raft of infalling debris — its own robbed substance, now returning home again.
Free again, it blared fireworks at heaven.
My throat sac filled, and I began umbling a threnody … a hoonish death requiem for those lost at sea, whose heart-spines will never be recovered.
The chilling words of Gillian Baskin haunted me.
“You’ll get used to this after a while.”
I shook my head, human style.
Get used to this?
Ifni, what have the Earthers already been through, to make this seem like just another day’s work?
To think, I once gazed longingly at the stars, and hankered for adventure!
For the very first time, I understood one of the chief lessons preached by Jijo’s oldest scrolls.
In this universe, the trickiest challenge of all is survival.
PART THREE. THE GREAT HARROWER
TO OUR CUSTOMERS ACROSS THE FIVE GALAXIES—
THE Sa’ent Betting Syndicate has temporarily suspended accepting wagers concerning the Siege of Earth. Although we still predict imminent collapse by the affiliated forces defending the wolfling homeworld, conditions have once again become too fluid for our dynamical scrying engines to project reasonable odds.
For those already participating in a betting pool, the odds remain fixed at: twenty-to-one for the planet’s conquest within one solar orbit (three-quarters of a Tanith year); fourteen-to-one for surrender within one-quarter orbit; five-to-two in favor of a “regrettable accident” which may render the ecosystem unstable and lead to effective organic extinction for the wolfling races; seven-to-two in favor of humans and their clients being forcibly adopted into indenture by one of the great clans currently besieging the planet, such as the Soro, Tandu, Klennath, or Jouourouou.
Despite these deceptively steady odds, several fluctuating factors actually contribute to a high level of uncertainty.
1) Betrayals and realignments continue among the mighty clans and alliances now pressing the siege. Their combined forces would have easily overwhelmed the human, Tymbrimi, and Thennanin defenders by now, if they could only agree how to distribute the resulting spoils. But instead, violent and unpredictable outbreaks of fighting among the besiegers (sometimes incited by clever Terran maneuvers) have slowed the approach to Earth and made odds-scrying more difficult than normal.
2) Political turmoil in the Five Galaxies has continued to flux with unaccustomed speed. For instance, a long-delayed assembly of the Coalition of Temperate Races has finally convened, with a remarkably abbreviated agenda — how to deal with the unbridled ambition shown lately by more fanatical Galactic alliances. Having dispensed with preliminary formalities, the League may actually file official warnings with the War Institute within a Tanith year! Assembly of their coordinated battle fleet may commence just a year after that.
In addition to the League, several other loose confederations of “moderate” clans have begun organizing. If such haste is maintained (and not disrupted yet again by Soro diplomacy) it would demonstrate unprecedented agility by the nonzealous portion of oxy-society.
Naturally, this will come about too late to save Earth, but it may lead to rescue of some residual human populations, after the fact.
3) No one has reported sighting the infamous dolphin-crewed starship for half a Tanith year. If, against all odds, the fugitives were somehow to safely convey their treasures to an ideal neutral sanctuary — or else prove the relics to be harmless — this crisis might abate before igniting universal warfare throughout oxygen-breathing civilization. This would, of course, end our present policy of accepting bets only on a cash-in-advance basis.
4) Commercial star traffic, already disrupted by the so-called “Streaker Crisis,” has lately suffered from “agitated conditions” on all interspacial levels. At least thirty of the most important transfer points have experienced thread strains. While the Institutes attribute this to “abnormal weather in hyperspace,” some perceive it as yet another portent of a coming transition.
5) The continued upswell of socioreligious fanaticism — including sudden resurgence of interest in the Cult of Ifni — has had a deleterious effect on the business of bookies and oddsmakers all across the Five Galaxies. Because of added expenses (defending our own settlements from attack by fleets of zealous predeterminists) we have been forced to increase the house cut on all wagers.
Even the Sa’ent Betting Syndicate cannot continue business as usual in the face of a prophesied Time of Changes.…
Harry
UH-OH, HE THOUGHT. THIS IS GONNA BE A rough one.
Harry nulled the guidance computer in order to protect its circuits during transition. Window covers snapped into place and he buckled himself in for the shift to another region of E Space. One that had been declared “off-limits” for a very long time.
Well, it serves me right for volunteering. Wer’Q’quinn calls this a “special assignment.” But the farther I go, the more it seems like a suicide mission.
At first nothing seemed to be happening. His official instruments were useless or untrustworthy, so Harry watched his own little makeshift verimeter. It consisted of an origami swan that shuddered while perched on a tiny needle made of pure metal that had been skimmed directly from the surface of a neutron star. Or so claimed the vendor who sold it to him in the Kazzkark bazaar. Nervously, he watched the scrap of folded paper twitch and stretch. His mind could only imagine what might be going on outside, with objectivity melting all around his little survey ship.
Harry’s jittery hands scratched the fur of his neck and chest. The swan quivered, as if trying to remember how to fly.…
There came a sudden dropping sensation. The contents of his stomach
lurched. Several sharp bumps followed, then violent rocking motions, like a boat swept by a storm-tossed sea. He gripped the armrests. Straps dug fiercely into his lap and shoulders.
A peculiar tremor jolted the deck under his bare feet — the distinct hum of a reality anchor automatically deploying. An unnerving sound, since it only happened when normal safety measures were strained near their limits. Sometimes an anchor was the last thing preventing random causality winds from flipping your vessel against shoals of unreined probability … or turning your body into something it would rather not be.
Well … sometimes it worked.
If only there was a way to use TV cameras here, and see what’s going on.
Alas, for reasons still not fathomed by Galactic savants, living beings entering E Space could only make sense of events firsthand, and then at their own considerable risk.
Fortunately, just as Harry feared his last meal was about to join the dishes and cutlery on the floor, the jerky motions began damping away. In a matter of seconds things settled to a gentle swaying.
He glanced again at the improvised verimeter. The paper swan looked steady … though both wings seemed to have acquired a new set of complex folds that he did not remember being there before.
Harry cautiously unbuckled himself and stood up. Shuffling ahead with hands spread wide for balance, he went to the forward quadrant and cautiously lifted one of the louvers.
He gasped, jumping back in fright.
The scout platform hung suspended — apparently without support — high over a vast landscape!
Swallowing hard, he took a second look.
His point of view swung gently left, then right, like the perspective of a hanged man, taking in a vast, blurry domain of unfathomable distances and tremendous heights. Gigantic spires, sheer and symmetrical, could be dimly made out beyond an enveloping haze, rising past him from a flat plain far below.
Harry watched breathlessly until he felt sure the surface was drawing no closer. There was no sense of falling. Something seemed to be holding him at this altitude.
