Just as he passed out, he felt tiny fingers of singing fire burn their way through the interface socket in his neck into his dying brain.
No strength, not even to scream his despair.
Part II
Cold Logic
CHAPTER ONE
There is a deeper Reality beneath the comfortably obvious.
Space is neither empty nor limitless. The cosmos only seems to stretch forever, from the blackened husks of long-dead stars to the incandescent fury of quasars blazing within far distant galactic clusters. Even the yawning emptiness between such objects is not truly vacant, but hums and keens with the ancient melodies of ionized gas and magnetic fields. The bare vacuum itself roils with fertile acts of creation and destruction, of particles and anti-particles born from nothing and returning to oblivion, all within the thinnest shaved shards of time itself.
Yet it was not always so.
There was a time, incomprehensible to minds constrained by time's invariant arrow and a mere three dimensions, when nothingness reigned supreme. Not emptiness.
Nothingness.
Before there was a reality, how could there be existence? Yet time does have a starting point, a beginning. Cosmic symmetry argues an Alpha Time must balance an Ultimate Omega Point. Whether by accident, natural law, or purposeful Design, something appeared where once there was nothing.
Of that mystery, nothing is truly known. Whatever the First Cause, timeless vacancy blossomed into an all-consuming inferno of creation, a totality of what would someday be called matter and energy: a universe.
The first ticks of that time were a blaze of unthinkable energies and infinitesimal motes of mass. Even light was too weak to exist unsundered and free within such an inferno. It was a time of new-birthed reality's seeming raw and unfettered rage against nothingness, an enormous beacon attempting to fill an infinite darkness.
But then as now, all things that burn must eventually cool. Entropy remains the final judge and arbiter of this reality. The bright and implacable All immediately began to expand and cool, as it would forever after that first tortured moment.
Photons at last slipped free of creation's incandescent forge, and fled tirelessly across the face of that new reality. A subatomic menagerie met and merged into new and exotic arrangements. Matter was born, and vied with energies both subtle and gross for supremacy; each won in different regions of the expanding space-time continuum.
The new-birthed universe continued to grow, still many times hotter than the core of a sun, but ever cooling. It stretched like the surface of some cosmic balloon under hurricane-driven inflation. Yet the fabric of space-time is not infinitely resilient, nor was the expansion uniform. Under unthinkable stresses, reality itself strained and groaned with the aftermath of creation's bright birth. Ripples and cracks formed in the very substance of space-time.
As fissures form in water rapidly freezing from the liquid state to ice, so was it with the very nature of reality.
These fissures, spiderweb cracks appearing in the expanding cosmic egg as it hatched, were tiny but powerful. Each crack was far thinner than an atom's thickness, yet stretched for many light-years.
The primordial cracks and fissures thrummed and writhed with raw energies and potential. Their tortured movements struck nearby concentrations of hot matter like a fist. Electromagnetic fields crackled and roared along their lengths, inducing strange and intricate patterns in local clouds of glowing gas.
Some of these cracks in creation joined, building gigantic networks of frantic topology. Still others split into smaller fissures, radiating powerful gravitational waves that spread across the new-formed universe like ripples in a pond.
The expanding universe was distorted unevenly by these tangled knots of space-time, a cosmic fork stirring the stuff of stars. Some large networks acted as gravitational foci; seeds for the aggregation of coalescing matter into what would eventually become great seas of stars. These vast stellar whirlpools would someday be called galaxies.
But that lay many eons in the future.
Most of the fissures and cracks in space-time vanished, their substance and power leached away into loud peals of gravitation tolling across the universe. The furious expansion of reality slowed, and the new universe's grand structure unfolded.
Yet some tangles in space-time remained, diminished in glory and potency. Minds which eventually came into being within our universe gave these remnant structures of anguished topology a host of names, in as many languages. Humans would someday call them cosmic strings.
But they are not strings.
They are windows.
The knots and tangles of space-time were tiny connections between the new universe and an entirely different space-time continuum. Minds roamed in that other reality, on businesses unknowable. Such minds were not constructed of the building blocks basic to this particular space-time. The equivalents of their flesh and blood were not composed of quarks and quanta, electrons and protons and neutrons. They were not subject to the forces and natural laws which bind our reality, linking past and present and future. Flavor and charm were not distinguishing characteristics of even their smallest components.
Though strangeness of a comparative sort was implicit in their nature.
However alien, the entities on the other side of the cosmic strings had minds and possessed something much like curiosity. Eventually, they discovered the distorted windows into our reality which are the tattered remnants of creation's first moments of birth. The entities learned that such twists in the fabric of space-time could transmit information.
The minds, completely foreign to any entity living within this space-time continuum, peered dimly through these humming cracks into our own reality. Their curiosity was piqued by this strange place so unlike their own home. That interest kindled and grew as they caught glimpses of a different universe, new modes of existence. Eventually, they wished to explore this alien place, so close and yet so distant.
They could not enter this space-time continuum, any more than a human being could enter and live within a printed page. But they possessed a drive to explore — even by proxy.
The entities investigated this space-time continuum in the only manner they could. Tentatively, they reached out to the cracked windows at the border of their own reality.
And beyond, into our own.
Call the minds that moved in that other universe They Who Pass.
CHAPTER TWO
They were approaching the Outsider ship, and he was so very afraid.
The frightened puppeteer's name was a beautiful symphony of music that flowed from the mouths at the ends of his twin necks. It literally meant 'He Who Gentles Difficult Truths into the Hindmost's Wise Ears', but could be shortened to 'Diplomat'. His lips, knobbed with the delicate projections his race used as fingers, quivered with jangled nerves.
He ignored the pilot of the Wisdom of Retreat's sardonic question for a moment, making a concerted effort to control his breathing. He tried to calm himself by breathing alternatively through his necks. The puppeteer's three hearts pounded in terrified syncopation.
There was drugcud in his personal medical pouch, but he knew better. The Wisdom of Retreat's pilot would not approve.
Diplomat had seen the reports about the vessel they approached during his too-short emergency briefing at the Hindmost's Fortress. The numbers and the reality they represented still burned in his mind like wildfire sweeping across a dry plain.
He fluted agreement to the pilot, steeling himself at last for what he would see with both of his eyes. The pilot snorted amusement and turned back to the command console.
With a single low note of command, the pilot cleared the hullscreen in front of the puppeteer, revealing the strange Outsider vessel. It was worse than Diplomat had expected; a terrifying space-going nest of unknown threats. He fought a yawning sense of unreality and fear. The reports and holograms had not done the frightening artifact justice.
It was almost too much
for Diplomat's brain to encompass. Noticing the metric markers the shipboard computer projected next to the image of the other ship, he was again unnerved at the scale of the looming object. It grew visibly on the hullscreens at extreme magnification.
The Wisdom of Retreat's gravity planers performed an unexpected looping course correction, and the startled Diplomat shrieked a siren alarm call. He folded himself instinctively into a protective ball within his forceweb and quivered. Diplomat's mind fled the Outsider threat into comforting darkness.
The peace was interrupted by a lancing pain at the base of his necks. The force of the blow made him see sparks fleeing in all directions.
Not again, Diplomat thought, squeezing his eyes shut and pulling his neck and legs tighter against his midsection. The pain shot through him again, still more intense. Diplomat clenched blunt vegetarian teeth, knowing the blows would not stop until he emerged.
A voice filled with harsh martial music blared a curse in the small lifebubble. Diplomat could feel the electric tingle of the pilot's forceweb being released. There was a clump and snap as the pilot's articulated boots left the control consoles. He could sense the pilot standing over him.
The comforting smell of the Herd emanating from the ventilators was replaced by a stench of dominance and barely harnessed rage. Diplomat gulped and tried to breathe through his mouths to avoid it.
It was the smell of the Wisdom of Retreat's pilot, only stronger and more angry. Diplomat had kept his distance during the voyage, even within the tiny lifebubble of the Wisdom of Retreat. There were limits to the ability of the airscrubbers to remove the pilot's distinctive odor, redolent with attack pheromones.
Besides, the pilot liked 'the smell of battle', as she called it.
The frightened puppeteer wished fervently he was back in the hospital burrow, his tired brain soothed by the psychists' overlay induction devices. Had Diplomat not just returned from his final embassy to the Q'rynmoi? Had not the psychists bluntly stated that he was not ready for another mission? He tightened his necks around his midsection.
Diplomat could hear the angry duet of the pilot's whistling breath above him. She sang an offkey command, and his forceweb vanished instantly. Diplomat was left with an itchy feeling of residual static charge and insecurity.
“Stand up and control yourself, you miserable coward.” The pilot's tones were rich with a symphony of contempt. It made a word honored among the puppeteer race sound like an insult.
“Chew your courage drugs if need be,” her voice continued in disdainful tones. “You are to carry out a task for the Hindmost and the entire puppeteer race. This is more important than your shameful and obvious lack of a notochord.”
The pilot's words stung Diplomat more than the pain at the base of his necks. He prided himself on his rare ability to work with dozens of alien species; why could he not deal as well with a member of his own race?
At least Diplomat thought the pilot was a member of his race.
The frightened puppeteer breathed deeply; it was no use postponing the inevitable. He unwrapped his necks. Opened his eyes one at a time. Moving gingerly, he stood in the small lifebubble. The scent of the pilot prickled angrily over Diplomat, like a swarm of stinging insects.
“No,” he said carefully in measured tones, shoving his fears away as best he could. “I will not be needing the drug at this time.” Diplomat was unsure of the truth of that statement. He looked at neither the hullscreen nor the pilot.
There was a splat of dismissive music.
“Then look at me, Diplomat.” A chord of hard-edged humor entered the pilot's voice, irony dripping from the title. “If you cannot look at me, how will you complete the Hindmost's Commands, let alone look the helium-beasts in the face?”
There was a meditative pause.
“That is,” she continued, “if they can be said to actually have faces.” The pilot hummed and whistled another musical note to her command console. “The hull is opaqued. Control your fear.”
Diplomat finally raised his heads, blinking, and looked up at the pilot of the Wisdom of Retreat.
And up.
The Hindmost's Guardian stood well over two meters in height. Impact armor covered the giant puppeteer's midsection completely. Each of her necks bore gleaming mirrorplate able to turn a beam of coherent light. Traditional battle helmets with razor-tipped talons rested on each head, and the pilot's eyes burned with emotions alien to Diplomat. Her legs were as armored as her necks, and holsters hung in instant reach of either mouth. Because Guardians were also deft with their three hooves, each was encased in space-ready magnetic boots, equipped with manipulators, cutting tools, lasers, projectile weapons, and Great Burrower knew what other horrors.
The Guardians were one of the most closely kept secrets of the puppeteer race. This warrior caste was small in number, bred and trained from birth for the necessary occasional insanity of aggression and combat. The Hindmost spoke for all puppeteers, and the Hindmost's Guardians carried out the Will of the Those Who Lead from Behind. They enforced treaties among puppeteer groups, advised the Deepest Council, designed and built safety devices and weaponry, and — from time to time — were called upon to defend puppeteer interests more directly.
Such as the present situation, reflected Diplomat, a tingle of repressed fear scurrying down both necks.
This Hindmost's Guardian held one head high and cocked to the side, the other low near her left leg holster. It was standard caution in what a Guardian would consider potentially dangerous situations; in other words, all of the time. The Hindmost's Guardians always expected danger, altercation, and even the obscenity of fighting. Relished it, it was said.
That alone made the pilot more alien to Diplomat than the barbaric Q'rynmoi and their breeding colonies.
“Better,” hurrumphed the pilot. “Perhaps you will have your uses after all.”
“How long until we rendezvous with the Outsider ship?” Diplomat asked, gesturing with one head toward the opaqued hullscreens.
“Too soon for you,” she replied, her song flippant and breezy. The Guardian's two heads suddenly reared up and looked at one another in a flash of rare humor, then returned to normal posture.
Diplomat paused and straightened. It was time to firmly grasp the issue with both mouths. “Please show me the Outsider craft again, Guardian.” The giants may have had individual names within their own caste, but in puppeteer society, the Hindmost's Guardians were simply addressed as Guardian.
The only other choice of name a Guardian accepted was the grotesque puppeteer obscenity of 'Warrior'.
Diplomat was too well bred to use such a word.
“A little talker like yourself,” the Guardian crooned, “can suddenly regain courage? And without drugs! I am somewhat impressed.”
Before Diplomat could reply, the pilot had moved back to her control console and sang the hullscreen to clarity once more. He settled in his own crashweb and, swallowing past dry throats, looked outward.
The Outsider craft looked more like a biological construct than spacecraft. Diplomat forced himself to crane his necks one at a time, trying to gain a sense of perspective. The space vessel was the size of a small moon, but not solid. Complex tangles of oddly colored metal gleamed in the starlight. The bent and twisted topology of the thing made Diplomat's eyes ache to the roots of his necks. Platforms and oddly formed objects extruded from the tangles here and there. Points of brilliant light drifted around the ship, as if in long, slow orbits. Tiny motes glittered and darted above, below, and within the Outsider vessel.
A nest of threatening vermin, indeed, thought Diplomat, hooves tapping. He stuffed his autonomic flight psychotropism into the shadows of his deeper mind.
“What is your assessment, passenger?” the pilot rumbled with a grating melody. “Excuse me, I meant to sing Diplomat.”
He ignored the pilot's insult. “I have never seen such an Outsider craft before,” Diplomat replied, the fear looming once more. One of his heads dipp
ed toward his medical pouch.
“Nor have any of the Deep Council. We have our theories, even as you quake to your hooves over things which are new.”
Diplomat flutter-blinked in veiled irritation.
“It appears that this Outsider craft uses hyperdrive,” he mused aloud to his pilot. The coldlife traders generally did not travel faster than light, preferring relativistic travel. The appearance of the Outsider vessel from hyperspace had set off alarms throughout the Homeworlds.
The Guardian puppeteer clacked her left set of molars in agreement. “It is exceedingly rare. The clan of helium-beasts with which our Race does business is known to use the hyperdrive in emergencies.”
The phrase made his neck pelts stand up. “What could constitute an emergency to such beings?” The Outsiders had little to do with the concerns of carbon-based, sunward forms of life. What could be an emergency to an Outsider? The thought chilled him.
“Perhaps their liquid helium is too warm,” whistled the pilot sourly.
Diplomat understood the basic aggressive paranoia of the Guardian caste — much of it made sense in a hostile universe — but the Outsiders were long-term partners of the puppeteer race.
“Are the Outsiders not our allies?” he asked as diplomatically as his title. “Have they not given our Race help in the past?”
“Again you grasp truth with one mouth only,” the pilot hummed. “We owe the helium-beasts much, but that dependency in turn leads to a threat to our Race.”
How like a Guardian, Diplomat thought, to view the gifts of the Outsiders as threats. The coldlife sentients had provided the puppeteers with many technological marvels, including the Mover of Worlds that had saved the puppeteer race so long ago. All the Outsiders had asked in return was that Diplomat's race observe and study other life-forms and occasionally report that information back.
Selling the many technological miracles of the Outsiders to other warmlife races had enriched the puppeteers for thousands of years.
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