Sunborn (14 page)

    “Hrrm, is Antares—?”

   
What?
He looked up through blurry eyes. Ik was trying to say something.
Antares.

    He was kneeling over her, barely even seeing her. It was too late for Charlie. But Antares needed him now. “Antares—are you—?” His throat closed, choking off his words. With a trembling hand, he touched her cheek. Then he picked up her hand and squeezed it. “Antares, wake up.”
Charlie, wake up! Can’t you see I need help?

    “Rrrm, John Bandicut, are you hurt? You do not seem...well.” Ik towered over him, rubbing his long throat nervously. Like a tree crouching, he squatted down on the other side of Antares.

    Bandicut drew a ragged breath, and tried to force out, “Charlie—” He shook his head. His tongue felt thick; his voice didn’t want to work. “She’s...gone. Deep did something.”

    “Aaaiiii, I am sorry,” Ik murmured with feeling. He had been through more than one quarx death with his human friend before. He gazed at Bandicut, then gestured down. “What happened to Antares?”

    “I don’t know,” Bandicut whispered, brushing the line of her jaw with the backs of his fingertips. She was breathing, her chest undulating slowly, lower breasts then upper. He leaned closer.
“Antares?”

    This time she stirred slightly. After a moment, her lips parted and she expelled a soft breath: “Aaa—uuhhlll...”

    Bandicut swallowed against a rock in his throat. He seized her hand and held it tightly. “Antares!” he whispered. “Can you hear me?”

    An answering whisper:
“Hear you. Yesss...”

    “What happened? What did you see?”
What did you feel? Did you feel Charlie die? Can you feel what I’m feeling now?
 He squeezed her hand.

    Her eyes flicked open, and suddenly she was gazing up at him. “I saw...I
felt
...Deep. And then it—” she turned her head, as though trying to see the view out past the balcony “—it attacked the other...” She turned back to look up at Bandicut. “What was that thing?”

    “I don’t know,” Bandicut whispered, shaking his head.

    Antares nodded and closed her eyes. After a moment, she opened them again: wide, thin circlets of gold surrounding jet-black. “And then it—uhhl,
Charlie!
 She’s gone!”

    Bandicut nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

    With an effort, Antares lifted her hand and pressed her fingertips to Bandicut’s chest. “She went to Deep?” she whispered. “Earlier? Before she died?”

    Bandicut forced himself to speak. “Yes. Somehow. She came back, but she was
hurt.
” He hesitated, the final images from Charlene, from Deep, spinning in his head. “It was too wrenching, I think. Too much information, I don’t know. She couldn’t—she was already dying.”

    Antares gazed up at him. The images from Charlene were so intense, he barely felt Antares’s empathic touch. Finally he raised his own eyes. Ik was motionless, watching them, concern etched in his deep-set eyes. Li-Jared, however, was pacing back and forth at the front of the bridge, glaring into space. Muttering under his breath, he looked both frightened and angry. Delilah was bobbing in the air like a life raft on a storm-tossed sea, chiming softly and incomprehensibly.

   
“Can Charlie return from a death such as this?” Antares whispered.

    He let out his breath with measured slowness. “I don’t know. She lost a part of herself before she died, I think. It’s never happened like this. I just don’t know.”

    Napoleon stepped forward, swiveling his head. “Friends, I observed a violent encounter between the one you call Deep and a smaller source of n-space distortion. Deep appeared to both destroy and absorb the smaller. The readings were extremely provocative.”

    “Rrrm,
how?
” Ik asked.

    “It appeared there were differential time streams surrounding the object. I believe Deep may have torn it apart by subjecting it to a temporal shear zone.”

    That made Bandicut sit back. “Really.”

    Ik was more vocal. “Jeaves! Do you have something to tell us about this?”

    There was a momentary squeal of feedback, before the holo of Jeaves reappeared. “Sorry. I have been working with the AI on a check of our systems. I believe Napoleon has the right of it—and yes, we are safe for the time being. I also believe we have just witnessed a new chapter in a very old story.”

    Ik cocked his head, and Antares pushed herself to a sitting position. “What—”
bwang
 “—old story?” Li-Jared asked.

    “Before I get into that,” Jeaves said, “let me say that I believe Deep probably saved us from being destroyed, or at least seriously hindered in our mission.”

    “You mean by, hrrm, intercepting that—”

    “Device. Probably an ancient tool. Or weapon. Its appearance has provided us with some useful information. Its behavior matches certain old, recorded patterns. The hypergrav waves are not mentioned in the records. But they suggest that devices of similar origin may be involved in the crisis we have come to investigate.”

    “Devices that do
what?
” Li-Jared asked sharply.

    “We don’t know yet. But as Napoleon observed, one thing they can do is create distortions of spacetime. Specifically, of n-space.”

    “Why is that so alarming? Don’t
we
 create distortions in spacetime?” Li-Jared asked, gesturing around in a wide sweep. “Isn’t that how we fly?”

    “Indeed. But we don’t
project
our distortions destructively onto other bodies. Onto starships. Or, perhaps...stars.”

    “Are they the cause of what’s happening to Ed’s world?”

    “That remains to be seen,” answered Jeaves. “But I expect there are other such devices out there. And they may be causing greater harm than simply threatening our ship. This one may simply have been a sentinel.”

    Bandicut felt a chill. “So,” he said, the pain of Charlie’s death rising again in his chest, “Deep
was
acting to protect us when it...did whatever it did...to the thing.”

    “
I
 believe so. But I must be clear—we have not yet established real communication with Deep.” Jeaves rotated and gestured forward, toward the distant, dark wisp.

    If Deep was on their side, Bandicut wondered, why did it kill Charlie? Had Deep snatched the quarx, trying to take her by force? Or was her death purely an accident? Had Charlene been caught in a link with Deep and simply been unable to pull free? He caught Antares’s gaze, and saw his own pain reflected in her eyes.

    “Deep is proceeding ahead of us,” Jeaves said, “at what appears to be a safe distance.”

    “What, then?” Ik asked. “Is Deep, hrrrm, acting as a—”
rasp
“—
escort
 to us?”

    “Possibly,” Jeaves said. “But that is a question that must await communication.”

    “And if we can’t communicate with it?” Li-Jared asked.

    “Well, that is one reason you were asked to come along.”

    All four stared at Jeaves.

    “We knew Deep, or something like him, might be in the area. And we hoped
you
 might be able to establish communication.”

    “Uhhl, why us?”

    “Because you have been successful in the past. And you have translator-stones—which I, for example, do not. And you—” Jeaves spoke directly to Bandicut now “—had the quarx.”

   
“Right,” Bandicut said, fighting back the stab in his heart. “Right.”

    The robot image dipped its head in acknowledgment. “But before we pursue that question, there is some background that I now perceive is relevant to our situation. I believe I understand connections that I did not before. This may take some time, so why don’t we move to where you can be more comfortable. May I suggest the lounge?”

*

   
Whatever else, they were all hungry, and unanimous in their desire to get away from the bridge for a while. Napoleon and Copernicus remained on watch.

   
Once they were gathered in a semicircle with a table full of food, Jeaves floated to where they could all see him. “It’s time for some historical context.”

    “Whose history?” Antares asked, picking apart a pastry roll.

    “Really, the galaxy’s history,” Jeaves answered. “Because, if the device that Deep eliminated is evidence, then what’s going on in Starmaker may be related to events that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago, near the galactic center.”

    Ik broke off a food stick in his hard mouth and munched silently, waiting for Jeaves to continue.

    Bandicut found his thoughts turning to Charlie, who was the only one he knew who could even conceive of millions of years of real history.
You should be here now to hear this, Charlie.

    “There was a war,” Jeaves said. “A terrible war that lasted for many thousands of years. Our knowledge of that time is sketchy, and sources of information are scattered and difficult to evaluate. But we know that a sprawling complex of civilizations once lived in a large region of space, much closer to the galactic center. We know some of their names: Alenora, Coreselia, Lo-ko-hin, K’nent.”

    “Once lived?” Antares asked.

    “May still live. We don’t know for certain. Attempts to send star-spanner probes from Shipworld into the region have largely ended in failure. But we do know that some of their artifacts still live. And I might add that these civilizations not only took part in the most terrible war in the history of the galaxy, they also created some of the most beautiful works of art. John, you are familiar with the Horsehead Nebula?”

    Startled, Bandicut said, “Of course.” To the others, he explained, “It’s a nebula famous on my world. It has a distinctive shape. It looks just like the head of an Earth animal called a horse.”

    “That is correct. And galactically speaking, it is not far from where we are heading,” Jeaves said. “But the animal it actually represents is not a horse, it is an animal from another world altogether, called a
n’kelk.
 And that nebula is not a natural formation, it is a sculpture.”

    Bandicut opened his mouth, and closed it.

    “That, at any rate, is the legend,” said Jeaves. “Very few reliable records remain. But...we know that not all of the works of this civilization were so creative. Some were terribly destructive. And some apparently still exist, and remain dangerous. That was probably one such artifact that Deep saved us from.”

    “Rrrl, how can you be certain?” Ik asked.

    “I am far from certain. But there are stories with common elements, themes that have appeared on many widely separated worlds throughout the Sagittarius and Perseus spiral arms. Sometimes the stories take the form of old legends, or songs, or ancient scriptures. Tales of otherworldly peoples, sometimes called by names plausibly similar to Alenora, Coreselia, Lo-ko-hin, or K’nent. Also tales—much darker tales—of
void eaters, twisters,
and
angels of death
—all telling of entire worlds, even groups of worlds, being destroyed by marauders from the stars.”

    Li-Jared made a clicking sound. “That narrows it down.”

    Jeaves ignored the sarcasm. “Some of the records are true-memories, passed down telepathically through eons of generations. Those are considered most reliable. Others come through writing, art, or cybernetic storage. More than a few include images of attacks that are consistent with space itself collapsing, or somehow being twisted destructively. Images consistent with what
we
 felt as that object approached a short time ago, before Deep intervened.”

    Ik stroked the side of his bony, pale blue-white face.

    “Okay,” said Bandicut, “but isn’t it kind of a leap to assume that stories from a bunch of different worlds all over the galaxy all point to the same thing?”

    “It is. Some of these conclusions are speculative. But there is further evidence—a historical basis, which I would like to share with you. Please...eat. You might as well relax while you can.”

    Bandicut realized he had been holding a piece of bread the entire time and had not eaten a bite. He tore off a small piece and chewed, as Jeaves continued.

    “We—that is, the ship’s AI, Delilah, and I—believe that object may have been part of a cluster, because they are thought to have traveled in clusters—that came from an ancient war zone. Whether it has a new mission, or is still trying to carry out a war-related mission, we cannot say.”

    “Hrrm, like the Maw of the Abyss,” Ik muttered.

    Bandicut had exactly the same thought. The Maw of the Abyss, in the undersea world of the Neri, had nearly killed them, along with the Neri and Astari civilizations. It was a relic of an ancient civilization, still trying to carry out a long-since irrelevant mission.

    Jeaves had cocked his head at Ik’s words. “From your description of the Maw, I wonder if it could be from the same complex of civilizations. It is surprising how many places in the galaxy such remnants turn up.”

    Bandicut was chilled by a sudden thought. “You don’t suppose our
translator
 is related to those things, do you?”

    “I would be very surprised,” said Jeaves. “I do not know the story of the origin of the translator. However, I believe that its actions are more likely to be directed toward remediation of the war influence than in concert with it.”

   
*Correct, if an understatement,*
 the translator-stones muttered quietly in the back of his mind.

    “We do not know too much of the history of those ancient civilizations,” Jeaves said. “But we
do
know there was a war so devastating it severely diminished a major galactic culture, millions of years before any of
our
peoples were even a twinkle in the genome. It took place in a region of the galaxy that spanned thousands of light-years.” As the robot spoke, a holo-image of the galaxy appeared, floating above the table. A red glow highlighted a coin-sized region, a modest distance from the center of the galaxy. “The region is dense with stars, so the war zone probably encompassed hundreds of thousands of star systems.”