Sunborn (24 page)

   
It was hitting
*
Brightburn
*
 in the belly. She felt the pain and weakness there the most.

       
Is this the time ?

           
the end ?

       
I must try at the last

           
must share

   
The small ones and the strange one were all turning and fleeing, and she did not blame them.

    But she must try one last time to tell them. Show them.

Chapter 15

Out of the Star

    Antares was in pain, and struggling, and she didn’t know why. Everything was coming apart around her, all of space and time, and was
she
supposed to hold it together? Her mind was spinning with forces and threads of life she could not understand. Deep was doing something, and the star was doing something...there were
voices,
 all verging on comprehensibility. She felt Ik struggling beside her.
   
Voices...who are they speaking to?
 /Stones, help me!/ But the stones could not.

    She felt intensely alone.

   
I must hear this star...something it is trying to tell me...

   
But they were moving away now.

    “John Bandicut?” she whispered. Was the sun getting smaller? She closed her eyes, breathing deeply, then looked again. Yes, definitely smaller.

    “Antares? Can you hear me?” John’s voice was close; he wanted her to turn. She was afraid to, afraid she would lose the last remaining connection with the star.

    But it was too late; it was vanishing, like a fog burning away. Except she thought she
understood
 something now, some understanding from the star. She stared at the fiery orb, trying to grasp the thought before it could slip away. Something about Deep. But then it was gone, like a memory of a dream.

    She fell into John’s arms with a gasp and pressed her face to his shoulder, unable to talk, as John murmured over and over, “We’re moving away now, we’re moving away...”

*

   
Deeaab could feel the instability growing, and he shifted course to move as quickly as possible out of the body of the sun. At the same time, he felt something else—an upwelling that was not physical, but coming rather from the star’s mind or spirit, as if it were trying consciously to reach out, to convey something. Deeaab had not sensed this particular star’s thoughts directly before, though he had felt the unmistakable
presence,
as they’d passed into it. This star had felt mute, but now shadowy images were rising from it. Was
*
Brightburn
*
 trying to speak?

     <<< Look, do you see it? >>>

   
See what?

     <<< I see a shape. It’s communicating.

    
It looks like...the shape reminds me of Starmaker. >>>

   
The cloud?

     <<< Do you not see the shape of the nebula?

    
And in the center, past the four bright stars

    
that Bandicut calls the Trapezium,

    
I see a knot of turbulence.

    
And that is— >>>

   
Where the trouble is located? Where we are to go?

     <<< Where the one called N-ck-ck-ck-ck lives,

    
and perhaps the thing that is attacking Ed’s world. >>>

   
Deeaab could only just make out the shadowy impression of images, but he could see what the Charlene-echo part was saying, and was willing to trust that part of himself to interpret.

    But in the meantime, he could feel something else happening inside the bubble of time that surrounded the star. It was another series of shock waves from the distant disturbance. They were hitting the star, hitting the region of time-fusion, where Deeaab had compressed the star’s time to allow communication with the ephemerals. As the shock waves entered the time-bubble, they were concentrated and amplified—and to Deeaab’s horror, they were extinguishing the star’s inner fires.
*
Brightburn
*
 was dying.

    The Charlene-echo part of Deeaab was momentarily confused.

     <<< Why is it happening so fast?

    
Because of the change to the time-stream? >>>

   
Yes.
*
Brightburn
*
 was beginning to swell outward at an accelerated rate. And the tiny ship carrying the ephemerals was only beginning to turn away.

*

   
Bandicut was immensely relieved to see the star receding. It felt far less threatening as a glowing basketball than it had as a wall of fire. He and Li-Jared had managed to get both Ik and Antares sitting down, and were now trying to calm them enough to talk.

    Ik was the most shaken, but he was starting to find his voice, a bare rasp. “I don’t—
hrah
—don’t know what happened to me. I don’t know
why
—” He brought his hands up, pressing his opposing pairs of thumbs together, then suddenly jammed a knuckled fist to each side of his head. He drew a hissing breath. “I’ll be...fine. Give me...a moment.”

    “All right,” Bandicut said softly, and turned back to Antares. “How are you doing?” he asked, bending to see her face.

    “I’m not sure,” she whispered. She seized his hand and squeezed it. “John, I...
felt
...the mind of the star.
I felt it.
” Her eyes, bright gold and black, met his—and for a moment, he felt a fierce, electric connection. Then her focus shifted, and she was suddenly far away. But the emotion of her encounter with the star continued to reverberate through him like the sound of a bell. She was awestruck, terrified, and moved by what she had felt.

   
/// Find out what she learned! ///

   
/I’m trying./ Bandicut leaned closer to Antares. “Can you tell me
what
you felt? Or heard? Was there
communication
?”

    Antares ran her hands through her thick hair. “Not precisely. But
voices.
I heard voices. I don’t know exactly what they were saying. But it...the star sensed
me,
 John. I know it did. And it was trying to say something to me.”

    “What about Deep? Was Deep part of the communication?”

    Antares’s eyes seemed to haze over. “Deep was there, doing something that made it all possible. Stretching
time,
somehow, I think. I couldn’t feel Deep’s thoughts, exactly. But I’m sure Deep and the star, Deep and
*
Brightburn
*
, exchanged some knowledge.”

    Bandicut’s hand tightened on her. “Do you know what kind of knowledge?”

    “No, I—” She struggled for a moment. “Wait.
Yes.
There were images. I believe Deep knows the way to
*
Nick
*
now. I’m almost certain
*
Brightburn
*
 showed him the way.”

    For a moment, everyone was silent, looking at Antares—even Delilah, who’d dropped down from the ceiling to hover nearby. The deck continued to shake beneath them, but it was becoming an almost familiar sensation, like the engine of a boat. Jeaves spoke over it, to make an announcement. “Deep has left the star’s atmosphere, and is accelerating on a course very close to ours, heading toward—
wait a moment!
”

    Everyone stiffened, waiting for him to continue.

    The next thing they saw was the viewspace blossoming with crimson light, and
*
Brightburn
*
 swelling rapidly from a distant ball of fire to a sphere of glowing gas that once more filled the view. “Are we falling back in?” Bandicut asked, trying not to shout.

    “No,” Jeaves said in a tight, quiet voice. “
*
Brightburn
*
 is undergoing rapid expansion to supergiant phase.”

*

   
Antares felt two distinct, but simultaneous, waves of fear. One was her own at the sun that was exploding right behind them. The other was
*
Brightburn
*
’s presence suddenly in her mind again—
*
Brightburn
*
, in shock and fear at what was happening.
*
Brightburn
*
 was dying, and in rapidly advancing stages. The star’s fear and sadness were far clearer now than the feeling she’d had before; the emotions were stark in her mind. Whatever Deep had done to enable their connection was not over; it had rejoined with greater strength.

   
*Brightburn* knows she is dying, and she doesn’t want to, not yet.

   
Antares’s own fear was insignificant in comparison. Her thoughts quaked with the star’s outcry:

       
Waves

           
waves

               
waves

           
cannot resist

               
longer

   
The words were a bewildering orchestration in her thoughts. Most of it she couldn’t understand. But an unmistakable fact came through: this star was being overwhelmed by a force too great even for its massive size and power.

    Antares’s thoughts ballooned with images and thoughts. She felt plunging pain in her core, where the last of the fires were guttering, snuffed by the hypergrav shock waves. She felt a searing pain just below her skin, where the fusion-fires still burned, and were now pushing the outer shells of the sun farther out still; she felt the heat of those fires expanding to incinerate anything in their path. She felt a warm, cottony breath exhaling from her skin, blowing into space, puffing out an enormous shell of gas, an exhalation of surrender—not to death just yet, but to time and inevitability.

    Antares watched the staggering energy billow from the dying star’s core, time clearly distorting as she followed the progress of the star’s death-explosion. Its dying cry reverberated...

       
Why-y-y

           
y-y-y-y

               
y-y-y-y-y ?

   
And then it could no longer speak.

    Antares felt a sadness such as she had never felt before. She wept for the star, for the life taken too soon. And she burned with anger at the cruelty of its being taken by a distant and cold interloper, its name and purpose unknown.

    Not all of the life was gone yet; she felt other images flickering out of the star’s failing consciousness: the flares of thought of other suns, the memory of stars bursting forth into life, and of some of them sputtering into an early death. She saw, through a sight very different from her own, the contours of Star Home stretching away into the distance, its great glowing clouds, and its clusters and chambers of stars; and deep within that place where even now new stars were coming into being, she was aware of the deadly pull of the star-killer. She knew little of it; but she
felt
 it, like a cancer eating at the heart of this place that was her home.

    All of this wheeled around Antares’s head like a landscape out of control; she felt as if she were falling, spinning. And then it all began to go out of focus, and to fade. She tried to hold on to the images, to see more—but it was no use.
*
Brightburn
*
 was finally, irrevocably, fading from her reach.

*

   
Bandicut saw Antares’s eyes blink and move about rapidly, like a human in REM sleep, and then flick open to stare at him. “I—” she began, and then immediately sank, as her knees weakened.

    Bandicut supported her. “What is it? What happened?” he asked, steadying her as another tremor passed through the ship. “Was it
*
Brightburn
*
again?” As he said it, his gaze shifted to the swollen sun. It wasn’t getting visibly larger, but that, he thought, was because they were hurtling away from it at reckless speed, through n-space.

    “Yes,” Antares whispered. “
*
Brightburn
*
 is dying, but I felt her much more closely this time. And I saw images in her thoughts.”

   
Bandicut listened, stunned, to her description.
My God.
Shakily, he drew a breath. “Well, I...right now, I’m wondering if we’re going to be swallowed up in that fireball—or are we going to get out of here so all that information can do some good.

    For a moment, that question hung in the air. Then Jeaves spoke. “We will not be engulfed,” he said. “We are accelerating rapidly through n-space as we speak, and we can outrun any expansion of the star, barring unexpected problems.”

    That stopped Bandicut. “Barring—what? What kinds of problems?”

    “
Unexpected
 problems,” Jeaves said impatiently. “Which means, I don’t expect them.”