Eternity's End (66 page)

Jamal shouted,
You're damn right my fears are speaking. And they're saying, don't go into that thing!

Deutsch called on a series of authority-routines to deepen his voice and projection.
We can't NOT go into it. The question is, are we going to fly in like riggers, or drop like stones? GENTLEMEN, I NEED YOUR ASSISTANCE!
His words rang in the net like a gunshot across a valley.

Jamal's voice was muted, frightened.
You don't suppose the dreams were telling us we have to go meet it, do you, Pop? You think Legroeder mighta' been right?

Deutsch held his breath, as Poppy wailed wordlessly—and after gulping a few times, finally calmed down enough to say,
You really think so—?

Maybe. 'Cause we're goin' down, anyway,
said Jamal.
Shall we go out in glory?

Deutsch began to breathe again. Whether it was his words or the calming effects of the alpha-field, the two riggers seemed to be finding the foothold they needed to climb out of their hysteria.
Excellent, gentlemen. Now, let's see if we can get this ship under control
...

If they were going to do anything, they would have to do it fast, Legroeder thought. The quantum flaw was a
lot
closer now, their movement toward it visible to the eye.
Cantha—are you getting
any
information on what to expect?

Pretty fragmentary,
Cantha said from the top gun position.
But I believe the flaw has a greater than infinitesimal aperture, which I take as a hopeful sign
.

Jesus, Legroeder thought. If that's what you call hopeful...

It may be,
said Cantha,
that we can fly
through
it. It's possible that the flaw itself is the exit path we're looking for. I don't see any other hope
.

Legroeder blinked in fear. He turned to Palagren, who was watching the growing thread of fire.
Let's see if we can close the range with Impris
.

Are you in contact with Freem'n?
Palagren asked.

Legroeder could hear little sputters of static from his implants. He shook his head as he asked,
(Anything—?)

// Getting stronger fragments of transmission now... //

The net flexed alarmingly as Palagren stretched it, trying to find a shape that would give them better control. It was like trying to steer in a waterfall. But if they could at least converge on a course with the other ship...

Let's see if we can reach across, link the nets again,
Legroeder said.

At that moment, his implants found their signal lock, and he felt sudden input from Deutsch's streaming in.
(Freem'n—can you hear me?)

(Right here. Are we going down into that thing, then?)

(We seem committed. Cantha thinks maybe we can go through it and out. Otherwise we die. We should go in formation or God knows where we'll be scattered. Can you extend your net toward us?)

(I'll try. Let me see if—hey, watch it, Poppy!)
Deutsch's voice suddenly went elsewhere.

Legroeder swallowed hard. But he saw a tendril of light stretching out toward them from
Impris
.

Legroeder focused on flying
Phoenix
, as Palagren and Ker'sell stretched their end of the
Phoenix
net toward
Impris
. It was still too long a reach. But the ships were drawing closer. Could they link in time?

Below, the quantum flaw was growing faster than ever, its diamond-white glare brightening. Legroeder clicked in a filtering routine and peered at the flaw through darkened glass. If they were going to fly headlong through it, was there any way to control the outcome? Was it all up to Nature and the structure of the flaw? Maybe not. This was the Flux, and if there was any chance of influencing their passage by changing their entry, it was now or never.

Legroeder felt a tremor, and looked up to see a tenuous link between the two ships. Palagren and Ker'sell were slowly reeling in the joined net.

Cantha spoke up.
I recommend going in one after another. These readings are all very strange, my friends. I don't know what's going to happen, but I feel it's going to be interesting
.

Interesting!

If you can't hold it together,
Cantha called to Deutsch,
then fall in behind us and break contact just before we enter. Try to follow as precisely as possible
.

Are you going in and leaving us here?
Poppy screeched.

No one's leaving anyone,
Cantha answered.
But our time perceptions may give us a better chance to find the way
.

I approve of your plan,
said another voice. It took Legroeder an instant to recognize Captain Friedman. He had almost forgotten about the captains. Not that any orders from them could make much difference at this point.

Everyone prepare,
Legroeder called,
to enter the quantum flaw
.

From somewhere deep within the strained fabric of the net came the rumbling voice of Captain Glenswarg:
Permission granted. Godspeed, gentlemen
...

The quantum flaw dominated the sky now, nearly encircling them. It was no longer a smoothly curved line, but a finely jagged thing, fractal in nature. Deep within Legroeder's implants, a furious analysis of the flaw was taking place. Was it a relic of the primordial universe, like a cosmic string of normal-space? It was a discontinuity in the structure of spacetime, for certain. One moment, it looked like an opening across half the universe; the next, it was a one-way passage into oblivion.

The answers would soon become clear.

With
Impris
swinging around behind them, the joined nets were becoming more difficult to control. The attraction of the flaw was beginning to fluctuate as they drew near. Were they feeling the effects of its fractal shape?

Cantha looked increasingly worried. He peered across the net at Legroeder, his face lit by the ghostly glare of the quantum flaw.
Uncertainty-readings are off the scale. Even if you find a way to maneuver, I can't give you any guidance on a course
.

Legroeder nodded.

The fractal nature of the flaw was becoming increasingly pronounced, as finer and finer details of jaggedness came into view. Would their passage be determined by how they intersected with those jagged elements at the boundary? How could he possibly control that? But there had to be a way to influence their passage. It was not a matter of evidence, but of faith.

The Narseil were peering this way and that. What were they seeing in the tessa'chron? His own sense of time and reality was singing and twanging like a violin string.
If any of you sees a way through this, don't be shy about telling me. Freem'n—can you still hear me?

Like you're at the end of a tunnel. You ready to go through?

Ready,
Legroeder lied. He could feel the other ship pulling from side to side like a boat in tow.
It'll be soon now. If we get separated going through
...

I'll be looking for you on the other side. Tell Palagren to have one of those Narseil beers ready for me
.

Yah,
said Legroeder, wishing he could think of something more to say.

Palagren suddenly exclaimed,
By the Three Rings, would you look at that!

And then the bottom fell out from under Legroeder, and he could feel the net suddenly stretching ahead like a spiderweb in a breeze, and one particular fractal angle in the flaw blossomed. And in a single, strangely prolonged instant of time, the flaw yawned open and swallowed them.

The net was turned inside out. The Narseil voices distorted into a sound like an electronic malfunction, and Legroeder's stomach went into freefall. His head felt distended like a child's soap bubble. As he brought his gaze around behind, to where
Impris
was following, he glimpsed a flicker of silver and a crazed opening in the sky. He heard Deutsch's voice—a heart-rending shriek, tearing off into silence. Then the jagged opening closed, with a blinding flash that billowed out in slow motion.

That had been...
Impris
... enveloped by the blinding flash.

Legroeder cried out:
Frrreeemm'nnn... Faarrrraaeeeemmmmaaauuuu
...

His voice was incomprehensible, even to him. Focusing inward, trying to reconnect with Deutsch through his implants, he found instead an enormous inner vista of space, spangled with stars and galaxies. He tried to draw breath; he could not; dizzily he searched for the implants; they were circling him like flickering stars, doing he knew not what. There was no connection left with
Impris
.

His vision ballooned out again. Where the flash had been there was now a coiling darkness, webbed with lines of force.

Dear Christ! he whispered, and his voice moaned out into the net, joining with the incomprehensible groans of the Narseil. Had they just watched
Impris
die?

Palagren's arms were stretched out, distended and transparent; all the riggers were turning transparent. All of their voices were dying away; but new sounds were rising...

An impossibly deep rumble... a thrum of incredible power... and, it seemed, sadness. Legroeder was hypnotized, unable to turn his attention, as the thrum filled with deeper and deeper harmonics. It was a choir of unimaginable size and proportion, a choir of space and time, and yet seemingly almost a living thing.

Was he hearing the shifting and creaking of the very fabric of spacetime itself? He was stunned, awed, terrified. For a moment, he wondered: was
he
even still alive? The quantum flaw could have wrenched them apart into constituent particles, puffing them out of existence in a cloud of neutrinos and gamma rays. Were these the dying thoughts of a haze of neutrinos, soon to dissipate like the morning dew?

They had lost
Impris
. Deutsch. Legroeder wanted to experience all that he could before he too vanished. Maybe it was pride. Or longing. Or grief. Or stubbornness. He focused all of his being on trying to perceive the sounds that welled around him. If only he could form a picture from them.

As if in response, coiling out of the darkness came distorted lines of force, turbulent traceries of fire, the body of the quantum splinter, surrounding them. Before them stretched a long, jagged avenue of fire and darkness, reaching out into the deeps of space... from infinity at one end to infinity at the other.

He stared at it and thought dumbly, it's either the road to Heaven or the road to Hell...

He viewed its majesty through sound, an embryonic music of the spheres, heartbreakingly mournful. But this was not just the music of a handful of stars and star clouds. This was something very different, something far, far greater...

...wheeling majestically in space...

...enveloped by the sound of an expanding universe...

...very close to the instant of its origins... the sound of an infant spacetime continuum struggling to establish itself in the... place?... time?... where there had been no place, no time, nothing at all.

Through his astonishment, Legroeder knew... if he could reach out just a little further, he might hear the sound of the Genesis Moment itself. There was a sound coming at intervals: a great
CLUNGGGG
ringing through the choir of origins, like a vast bass string being struck with percussive force. He thought he knew what that was: fractures forming in the expanding continuum, splinters, flaws in space and time... fractures forming in the deep quantum structures of reality.

How he knew all this, he did not know. But he was aware of the perceptions of the Narseil overlapping his own, like layers of transparency. What they saw, he saw, in shimmering shadows.

And in his head, the implants were furiously recording.

Before him now was a broad ribbon of fire, reaching jaggedly, with streamers and fractal fingers, in both directions. It was not simply a blaze of light through a fracture, but something roiling with inner chaos and change, like a long window into the surface of a sun. It hurt the eye to behold; something about the perspective was all wrong. This was not Einsteinian space or even Chey-Kladdian... it was something different...

And then he knew what it was. This was the heart of the temporal discontinuities. This aspect of the flaw stretched through
time
rather than space, deep into the past at one end, and impossibly far into the future in the other. Stretching toward its birth... and its death.

The birth and death of the
universe?

Legroeder was dumb with awe and terror, gazing down a rent in spacetime that stretched from one end of existence to the other. Would he next gaze into the face of God? Surely he would fall dead even if the flaw itself did not kill him...

But stirring in him now were other strange and wonderful and frightening emotions, emotions not human; and yet contained within them were human feelings—joy and determination and rage and reverence. It was the Narseil emotions; they were seeing this as he was—the terrible beauty and peril of the quantum flaw, the groans of birth and death, linked together in a single instant.

It was changing, though, sparkling at the edges, splinters of light streaming out into infinity... and at the same time, turning his thoughts inside out...

Visions of places he had been... present... past... future... Outpost Ivan... DeNoble... Maris and Jakus and Harriet... his mother carrying him as a small child, crying, in a shopping valley on New Tarkus... Tracy-Ace/Alfa standing with YZ/I, proposing a mission... in flight, speeding toward fabulous clouds of stars...

All these images gathered and then blew away like smoke, leaving him staggered by the vastness around him, the power of cosmic creation. What meaning could
his
existence have here, where elemental forces flowed like rivers? What possible influence could he have?