Heaven's Reach (39 page)

T
HINGS GOT PRETTY COMPLICATED RIGHT
after
Streaker
began navigating the snarled innards of the transfer point.

From his liquid-filled chamber next door, Kaa thrashed muscular flukes, churning a foamy froth while protesting aloud.

“It'sss too damned crowded in here!”

Sara knew he wasn't complaining about
Streaker's
cramped bridge, but the twisted labyrinth outside the ship—a maze of stringlike interspatial boundaries, looping and spiraling through every possible dimension, like the warped delirium of some mad carnival ride designer.

The t-point nexus
was
rather crowded. During any normal transfer, one might glimpse a few distant, glimmering dots amid the gnarled threads, and know that other ships were plying the same complex junction linking far-flung stars. But this time it felt like plunging through a tangled jungle, with countless fireflies strung out along every branch and vine.

Instrument panels flared amber warnings as Kaa repeatedly had to maneuver around large vessels moving ponderously along the same slender path. Margins were narrow, and the dolphin pilot skimmed by some giant cruisers so closely that Sara caught brief, blurry glimpses in a viewer set to zero magnification. Turbulent ship wakes made
Streaker
buck like a skittish mount. Her straining engines moaned, gripping the precious thread for dear life.

Sara overheard Gillian's awed comment.

“All these starcraft
can't
be running away from the Fractal World!”

The Niss Machine answered, having managed to regain some of its accustomed saucy tone.

“Obviously not, Dr. Baskin. Only about a million other vessels are using trajectories similar to ours, fleeing the same catastrophe that drove us into panicky exodus. That is but a small fraction of the population currently thronging this dimensional matrix. All the rest entered from other locales. Library records show that this particular thread-nexus accepts inward funnelings from at least a hundred points in normal space, scattered across Galaxy Four.”

Sara blinked at the thought of so many ships, most of them far bigger than poor
Streaker
, all in an Egg-blessed hurry to get wherever-whenever they were heading.

“I—I thought Galaxy Four was supposed to be deserted.”

That was the image she had grown with. An entire vast galactic wheel, nearly void of sapient life. Hadn't her own ancestors come slinking this way in camouflaged sneakships, evading a fierce quarantine in order to settle on forbidden Jijo?

“Deserted, yes. But only by two of the great Orders of Life, Sage Koolhan. By machine intelligences and oxygen-breathing starfarers. The migrational treaty did not require evacuation by members of other orders. And yet, from what we are witnessing right now, it would not be far-fetched to suggest that a more general abandonment has commenced.”

Sara let out a soft grunt of comprehension.

“The inhabitants of the Fractal World—”

“Were officially members of the Retired Order, basking in the gentle tidal rub of their carefully tended private sun, quietly refining their racial spirits in preparation for the next step.

“A step that some of them now seem ready to attempt.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gillian.

“It is best illustrated visually. Please observe.”

One of the major screens came alight with a wavering
image—greatly magnified—of several dozen ragged-looking vessels flying in convoy formation, skating along the shimmering verge of a transfer thread. As the telescopic scene gained better focus, Sara noted that the ships' rough outlines resulted from their jagged coverings—a jumble of corrugation and protruding spikes. The very opposite of streamlining.

So, the fractal geometry of the fallen criswell structure carries on, even down to the small scale of their lifeboats
, she realized.
I wonder how far it continues. To the flesh on their bodies? To their living cells?

The portrayal magnified, zooming toward the bow of the lead vessel. There, Sara and her companions in the Plotting Room saw a glyphic symbol that seemed to shimmer in its own light—consisting of several nested, concentric rings.

Even a Jijoan savage quickly recognized the sigil of the Retired Order.

“Now watch what I have observed several times already. These refugees from the Fractal World are preparing to declare a momentous decision.”

Sara felt Emerson approach to stand close by. Quietly unassuming, the tall wounded man took her left hand while they both stood watching a fateful transition.

The foremost craggy-hulled ship appeared to shudder. Wavelets of energy coursed its length, starting from the stern and ultimately converging toward the bright symbol on its prow. For a few moments, the glare became so intense that Sara had to shield her eyes.

The glow diminished just as rapidly. When Sara looked again, the glyph had been transformed. Gone were the circles. In their place lay a simple joining of two short line segments, meeting at a broad angle, like a fat triangle missing its connecting base.

“The sign of union,”
pronounced the Niss Machine, its voice somewhat hushed.
“Two destinies, meeting at one hundred and four degrees.”

Gillian Baskin nodded in appreciation.

“Ah,” was all the older woman said.

Sara thought,
I hate it when she does that.
Now it behooved her to ask for an explanation.

But events accelerated before she could inquire what the mysterious change in emblems meant. As the camera shifted, they witnessed several more refugee ships undergoing identical transformations in rapid succession, joining the leader in assuming the two-legged symbol. All these separated from their erstwhile companions to form a distinct flotilla that began edging ahead, as if now eager to seek a new destiny. At the next transfer thread junction, they flared with ecstatic levels of probability discharge and leaped across the narrow gap, bound for Ifni-knew-where.

The remaining refugees weren't finished changing and dividing. Again, ripples of light shimmered along the hulls of several huge ships, which began losing some of their jagged outlines. Hulls that had been jumbles of overlapping spikes seemed to melt and flow, then recoalesce into smoother, more uniform shapes … the familiar symmetrical arrangement of hyperdrive flanges used by normal vessels in the Civilization of Five Galaxies.

Like before, each metamorphosis concluded in a dazzling burst at the foremost end. Only this time, when the glare faded, Sara saw another symbol replacing the nest of concentric rings—a rayed spiral glyph. The same one
Streaker
carried on her bow.

“These others, apparently, do not consider their racial spirits advanced enough yet for transcendence. They, too, have chosen to surrender their retired status, but this time in order to rejoin the society of ambitious, fractious, starfaring oxygen breathers.

“Perhaps they feel there is unfinished business they must take care of before resuming the Embrace of Tides.”

Gillian nodded soberly.

“That unfinished business may be us.”

She turned toward the bridge. “Kaa! Be sure to stay away from any ship bearing a Galactic emblem!”

From the water-filled control room came a warbling sigh in complex Trinary—the expressive, poetical language of neo-dolphins that Sara had only just begun to learn. Rhythmic squeals and pops seemed to voice
resigned irony, and several of those in the Plotting Room chuckled in appreciation of the pilot's wit.

All Sara made out was a single elementary phrase—

*
… except the one biting our tail! *

Of course. There was already one ship—bearing the rayed spiral crest—that wouldn't be shaken easily. Sticking to the Earthling vessel like a shadow—far closer than most navigators would call safe—the Jophur dreadnought loomed in the rear-facing viewer. Without the new, dense layers coating
Streaker
's hull, Kaa might have unleashed his full suite of tricks, evading the battle cruiser in a mad dash among the twisting threads. But that wasn't possible with
Streaker
weighed down this way, maneuvering as sluggish as an ore freighter.

Well, without the coating, we would have fried the first instant those disintegrator beams struck
, Sara thought.
And we'd be easy prey for the Jophur. So maybe it evens out.

Turning back to the main magnifier screen, she watched the refugee flotilla break up once more. Those that had reclaimed the spiral galaxy symbol began peeling off, aimed toward heading back to the vigorous goals and passions of a younger life phase.

“From this t-point nexus, there are several routes leading eventually to the other four galaxies. The beings piloting those vessels are no doubt planning to rendezvous with former clan mates and clients.”

Gillian sniffed.

“Like Grandpa and Grandma coming home from Happy Acres to move back in with the kids. I wonder just how welcome they'll be.”

The whirling hologram halted briefly, its expression perplexed.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Never mind.” Gillian shook her head. “So we've seen a retirement home shatter before our eyes, and its residents divide in three directions. What about those?” She pointed to the craggy ships remaining in the flotilla,
the ones who retained their original emblem of concentric circles. “Where will they go?”

The Niss resumed spinning.

“Presumably to another criswell structure. Truly retired species cannot long abide what they call the ‘shallow realm.' They dislike space travel and crave instead the feel of solar tides. So they prefer hunkering deep within a gravity well, next to a tame star.

“In fact, I am picking up considerable short-range traffic right now … intership communications … inquiring if anyone in the area knows another fractal community that has spare volume and insolated—”

“In other words, they want to find out which other retirement homes have vacancies, to replace the digs they just lost. I get it.”

“Indeed. But it seems they are having little luck. A majority of the vessels we glimpse now, streaking across the nexus, are asking the same question!”

“What? The ones coming from other entry points? They're also looking for a place to live? But I thought there were tens of thousands of other retirement habitats, each of them huge enough to—”

“Please hold awhile. Let me look into this.”

Silence reigned while the Niss delved deeper, coiling its mesh of spinning lines ever tighter as it listened acutely. When it finally reported again, the synthetic voice was lower, sounding somewhat astonished.

“It seems, Dr. Baskin, that the catastrophe we observed at the Fractal World was not an isolated incident.”

Another long pause followed, as if the Niss felt it necessary to check—and then double-check—verifying what it had just learned.

“Yes,”
the machine resumed at last.
“The bizarre and tragic fact is confirmed. Criswell structures appear to be collapsing all over Galaxy Four.”

It was hard for Sara to imagine. The devastation she had witnessed—a fantastically enormous edifice, an abode to quadrillions, imploding before her eyes—that could
not possibly be repeated elsewhere! And yet, that was the news being relayed in sputtery flashes by refugee ships blazing past each other along the Gordian twists and swooping arcs of the transfer point nexus.

“But … I thought all that fighting and destruction happened because of us!”

“So I also believed, Sage Koolhan. But that may be because my Tymbrimi makers filled my personality matrix with some of their own exaggerated egotism and sense of self-importance. In fact, however, there is another possible interpretation of the events that took place at the Fractal World. We may have been like ants, scurrying beneath a burning house, convincing ourselves that it was happening because our queen laid the wrong kind of egg.”

Sara grasped what the Niss was driving at, and she hated the idea. As awful as it felt to be persecuted by mighty forces, there was one paranoiac consolation. It verified your importance in the grand scheme of things, especially if all-powerful beings would tear down their own great works to get at you. But now the Niss implied their suffering at the Fractal World was
incidental
—a mere sideshow—spilling from events so vast, her kind of entity might never understand the big picture.

“B-but … b-but in that case,” asked the little, crablike qheuen, Pincer-Tip. “In that case, who
did
wreck the Fractal World?”

Nobody answered. No one had an answer to offer—though Sara had begun ruminating over a possibility. One so disturbing that it came to her only in the form of mathematics. A glimmering of equations and boundary conditions that she kept prim and passionless … or else the implications might rock her far too deeply, shaking her faith in the stability of the cosmos itself.

Tsh't, the dolphin lieutenant, intervened with a note of pragmatism. “Gillian, Kaa reportsss we're nearing a junction that might take us to Galaxy Two. Is Tanith still your aim?”

The blond woman shrugged, looking tired.

“Unless anyone sees a flaw in my reasoning.”

A sardonic tone once more filled the voice of the Niss Machine.

“There is no difficulty perceiving flaws. You would send us charging toward violence and chaos, into the one part of the universe where our enemies are most numerous.

“No, Dr. Baskin. Do not ask about flaws.

“Ask instead whether any of us has a better idea.”

Gillian shrugged.

“You say the Jophur could figure out how to defeat our new armor at any moment. Before that happens, we must find sanctuary somewhere. There is always a slim hope that the Institutes—”