Heaven's Reach (73 page)

Flashing labels identified the targets.

Streaker was the first. Gillian felt its hull shudder as the beam struck.

The Jophur battleship was next.

Finally—one of the globelike “candidate vessels,” now wrapped in a fuzzy mass of special fabric.

All three were being drawn inward.

Then, as if with a surgeon's delicate lancet, the light beams started carving all three vessels apart.

“X”

C
AN YOU FEEL IT NOW, MY RINGS? AND MY
other little selves?

How about you, Lark?

And you, Ling?

Can you sense how
Mother
—the macro-entity we all joined—writhes with uncertain fear as blades of force cut through
Polkjhy
's hull? Can you sense distant walls and bulkheads separate, spilling air, liquid, and creatures into vacuum? For a few moments, it seems our time of destruction has arrived.

Our/My/your end has come, at last.

BUT NOTE! CAN YOU SENSE A SUDDEN CHANGE IN MOOD?

Mother rejoices, as we/I/all realize the truth.

These are
scalpel rays
, slicing rapidly, selectively. Only a few small segments are being removed from
Polkjhy!

Likewise, instruments tell us that just one or two prim holes are being drilled in the Earthship
Streaker.

But the third victim seems less lucky!

The nearest mighty globule-vessel—a giant candidate-craft, already prepared for its epic journey—has been torn open and gutted! Horrified and awed at the same time, all our rings and segments watch as the contents are sacrificed … thousands of sapient-hybrid beings, cast aside like the entrails of some fresh-caught fish … leaving behind only a lambent shell of glimmering tendrils.

A living shell that now moves rapidly toward
Polkjhy!

AND NOW, ATTENTION TURNS TO THE LIVID SUN.

How long did it spin in peace? A remnant of this galaxy's earliest days, the dwarf star had long ago finished its brief youth and settled down to placid retirement. Left alone, it might have spent another twenty billion years slowly shrinking as it eked out a flickering white surface flame. Lacking a nearby stellar companion, it would never obtain the sudden infusion of mass required for a more ecstatic death.

Only now that mass infusion comes!

Like pilgrims to a shrine, millions of starships recently answered the Great Harrower's summons. They came to this place, arranging themselves in polite, crisscrossing spiral queues, seeking redemption and advancement … only to find death on the very threshold of transcendence. Their corpses, compressed into compact balls, now rain upon the star, inciting new ferment, taking its matter/energy balance close to a special value.

An acute point of no return.

MY RINGS … MANY OF YOU ONCE WERE MEMBERS OF ASX, THAT WISE OLD TRAEKI SAGE.

Back on Jijo, you had no need to contemplate such things. Instead of Chandrasekhar limits and radiative opacities, we/you/I used to adjudge disputes among local villages and tribes. We offered marriage counseling to fractious urrish, human, and qheuen families. We would squat for days on some aromatic mulch pile, happily arguing among ourselves.

Now, Mother obligingly makes available vast stores of information, offering free access to
Polkjhy
's onboard Library, lately captured from the remnant Jophur.

So it is that I/we/you know all about
critical thresholds
and the
catastrophic collapse
that will soon occur, followed by a tremendous “bounce,” expelling much of the poor star at high fractions of light speed.

First will come a burst of neutrinos. Not so many as in a “type two” supernova. But enough so that those phantom particles will impart heat and momentum into any
body within ten Jijoan orbits. (We are much closer than that!) X rays and gamma rays will follow … and then other forms of light. So much that the wave-fronts will carry their own palpable gravitational fields as they plunge through this point in space with the brightness of one trillion suns.

Finally, if anything remains of poor
Polkjhy
, it will be struck by the shock wave of protons, neutrons, electrons, and ions, imparting accelerations of one hundred thousand gravities.

No wonder the Transcendents feel this event will rip holes in the cosmic
ylem.
Apparently, that is their desire. To kindle a pyre. One bright enough to propel seeds across the greatest desert of all.

DO YOU HEAR THE LATEST, MY RINGS?

Lark and Ling report what they have learned by tapping into the Transcendent Mesh.

An explanation of the recent violent surgery by flashing scalpel rays!

Apparently, the high ones have decided on a last minute change in plans.

Quick improvisation is not their normal habit, but now they labor furiously, redesigning. Reconfiguring.

AND WE ARE OBJECTS OF THEIR SUDDEN INTENT!

Transfixed, we all watch as two slim plugs of matter slide smoothly out of the Earthship and head this way, leaving holes that seal quickly behind them. These slender tubes race toward
Polkjhy
 … even as the gutted shell of the third vessel approaches us from the other side, shimmering and alive.

Dolphins
, Ling says, identifying the contents of the cylinders taken from
Streaker. About a dozen of them. Volunteers, coming to join us, along with some gene stores, and cultural archives.
 …

With breakneck speed, the tubes slide into slots prepared for them.
Just in time
, as the rippling shell wraps around
Polkjhy
and seals shut with a blaze of energetic union.

All of Mother's components—even the newly captured
Jophur officers—stagger briefly from psychic shock as that mass of luminous tendrils takes hold of our transformed vessel—bonding and penetrating—turning it into a throbbing, vibrating whole.

Something eager. Coiled and ready for what comes next.

CAN YOU SENSE THE NEARBY AGONY OF DYING GODS?

The needle-gateway writhes and flickers as it draws
Streaker
toward it. Glowing and collapsing inward, the transcendent nexus
flexes
, creating powerful fields, causing space to warp straight through its innards, generating a tunnel. A lean passageway.

An improvised escape route for the Terrans to strive for.

Will they make it in time?

AND NOW COMES IGNITION OF THE BRIGHTEST COMPACT DETONATION IN THE UNIVERSE.

Perhaps it will not be our knell of extinction, after all.

A poll has been taken, among Mother's many members. Nearly all agree.

This is what we would have chosen if the Transcendents had asked. (Indeed, with their mighty simulations, perhaps they did.)

Our merged union is a distillation. A combination of life orders. A mélange, filled with hybrid vigor. Laced with special flavors from Jijo and Earth, our community may have the right mix that it takes to succeed at last, where so many others failed.

To bridge what was unbridgeable.

To help unite what was separate.

To bring the cosmos more diversity … and make it one.

We can feel
Polkjhy
's new tendrils reaching out, clasping the fabric of space, awaiting the moment when a chaos wave next strikes.

The biggest chaos wave of all.

The Great Rupture.

Have the Transcendents timed things right? Do they really have the skill to trigger their explosion at precisely the moment, so
Polkjhy
can catch that wave?

Yes, my rings and other selves.

I/we/I/you can hardly wait to find out.

THE WHITE DWARF TREMBLES.

It is just ten thousand kilometers across. Ignition will flow at the speed of sound—a few thousand kilometers per second. That means it should take less than a dura.…

STREAKER
LABORS MIGHTILY, STRIVING TO REACH THE ESCAPE TUNNEL.

Go, Sara!

You can make it.

Go!

Each passing second seems an eternity, as the Earthship struggles toward that flickering sanctuary.

ABRUPTLY, OUR SUNWARD SENSORS CATCH A BRILLIANT LIGHT!

A blinding flare that flows and ripples with mad speed across the tormented stellar surface, like the sudden striking of a match.

Then—

CAN YOU FEEL THEM, MY RINGS?

Neutrinos in the wax.

What a strange sensation! Like remembering tomorrow.

And now, here we go—

Galaxies