The Infinity Link (41 page)

* * *

She sat hunched over her instrument panel, a few meters above the asteroid's surface. The creamy, clotted band of the Milky Way was revolving slowly overhead. She hardly noticed. Her attention was focused on the fiery viewscreen hanging just above the asteroid's horizon. The scene it displayed was relatively quiet now, only a few Talenki drifting past the stationary camera. Earlier there had been a crowd, jostling and poking like school children to get a look at the strange metal craft.

She had come to, literally, in the middle of it, her subconscious even in her sleep drawn to the inputs from the probe. It was like awakening in the center of a cocktail party; and she'd hastily retreated, repairing to her captain's chair high in the heavens, where she could be alone with her thoughts. Almost as a relaxation exercise, she had checked the spacecraft over, spoken briefly with Mother Program, who was sullen and sluggish and unsociable, linked briefly with Homebase—and only then put the Talenki images on her viewscreen.

She had no idea what to make of their visit to this strange rock in space. There had been no shortage of fascinating sights. But where was the formal welcome? Was that what the concert had been? Where were the Talenki leaders, to address themselves to Earth's emissaries, to state their intentions in visiting the solar system and, presumably, planet Earth? She had considered striking up a conversation, but decided to wait for Kadin to rouse himself from his meditations. Having notified the Talenki of their need to rest, it seemed wise to wait until they were both alert before resuming contact.

Meanwhile, she observed the Talenki observing the probe.

The other pilot seat remained empty. After a time, she looked inward for Kadin. He was withdrawn, silent but not sleeping. (David? The Talenki are waiting,) she said softly.

Kadin made a murmuring response, undecipherable.

(David? Do you hear me?)

Hesitation. (Yes . . .)

What was wrong with him? The strain? The confusion? Exhaustion? He did not experience exhaustion the same way she did, perhaps, but he felt it nonetheless—the overload of sensations and information and memory, all needing to be processed and categorized and stored. And his was the more difficult position. He was in command.

(David, I've reported to Homebase, given them what we've seen so far.)

(You have.) Kadin stirred, seemed to perk up. (Did you describe our reactions? Our feelings?)

(I gave them the facts, and the pictures. I don't even know what my feelings are. And I didn't want to speak for you.)

(No.) Kadin stretched and slowly emerged. (As well that you didn't, I suppose. No point in alarming them.) He quietly explored the ship's extremities and tested the link with the probe. He was moving, Mozy thought, like a tired old man. He looked at her with a sort of dull attentiveness. (I suppose,) he murmured, (we ought to get on with the job.)

Mozy opened the link.

It took a few calls before the Talenki responded. Apparently they, too, slept—or redirected their attention to other matters. For the first time, it occurred to Mozy that perhaps the Talenki direct-linked with
their
Homebase, as she and Kadin did with Earth.

She decided to ask.

The question seemed to confuse them. (
THIS
IS OUR HOME.)

(But surely you have come from another world?)

She heard some whickering noises, and a stuttering grumble. (MANY WORLDS,) they answered at last.

(But—originally—another star system—another planet?)

Three voices got in one another's way, answering. (DIFFICULT—) one voice said. (ALL—) said another. (—IN TIME,) said a third. (YOU WILL SEE,) added the first.

Several Talenki were prancing around the probe, now, with a gracefulness that reinforced her impression of them as fawns. One put its face before the camera, peering into the lens—and now it looked more like a slender-faced dog, tilting its head in curiosity. Its ears were large and canted forward, and its eyes were luminous gold, with no pupils recognizable as such, but with streaks of liquid flame radiating from dark red stars slightly outside of center in each eye.

A whistling sound echoed in the chamber, and the Talenki staring into the camera suddenly backed away, turned, and vanished as though it had folded itself into a fourth-dimensional pocket. The others pranced about the probe, gesturing anxiously. A moment later, they, too, vanished—and another appeared in a doorway. It stepped forward, whistling softly, and tapped the bubble of the probe. It left a smudge on the clear surface.

What Kadin did next startled Mozy more than it did the Talenki. He activated a previously unused circuit; and the probe spoke, aloud, with a synthesized voice.
"Are you to be our guide?"
Kadin asked.

The Talenki raised its ears higher and looked at the probe with evident curiosity. It spoke, in a low whistle. Kadin repeated his question. The Talenki whistled again.

(Can you translate that?) Kadin asked.

Mozy hesitated. (It's a different sort of problem. It'll take me some time.) And it was quite likely, she realized, that their hosts would be puzzling over the same problem. They knew how to reproduce English, in electronic form, but they had never before heard the
sound
of a human voice, synthesized or real.

(It might assist learning, if we speak aloud, as we transmit,) Kadin said. (Will you tell them?)

Mozy did. The Talenki did not exactly respond, but asked them to follow the creature standing before them.

Kadin rolled the probe forward. The Talenki walked through the nearest wall, and the probe followed.

* * *

Image upon image:

Peering into a room filled with Talenki, and silence. A place of meditation, perhaps. A feeling of quiet tension, and reflection, and connection with other things, other memories. Mozy sensed these feelings, opening herself again, momentarily, to direct contact with the Talenki. The feelings were clear, but specific facts and knowledge eluded her.

A slender stone catwalk over a clamoring place. Talenki at work below, doing things that were hard to follow with tools and materials that were hard to identify. To what end? Impossible to tell. It was too confusing visually, and too frenetic to open herself directly to the sensations.

A ledge, looking down into a small glade. Trees; a running brook. A
sky
, light blue.

A lapping seashore.

Stars.

* * *

It was some time before Mozy realized that the probe had not moved in a long while, and the windows that were opening for them were, in effect, an almost cinematic imagery. Kadin hadn't mentioned it, had become so entranced that perhaps he had not even noticed that the images were now coming to him; he was not driving to them.

Their Talenki guide remained nearby, presumably orchestrating the tour.

But were these real scenes from the present, or remarkably clear holograms of elsewhere, or elsewhen?

Mozy tried to ask. Four Talenki answered, all at once. (IT IS AS REAL—) (—AS SOLID—) (—AS YOUR VISION—) (—AS YOU ALLOW IT TO BE.)

(But—are these things here? Now? My head is spinning.)

(MAY WE—) (—LOOK?)

(Huh?) She blinked mentally. Look? In her head? (Are you asking to touch me directly again?)

(HOWEVER YOU SPEAK IT.)

She quieted herself. (Very well.)

Fingers, silent fingers entered her mind, and voices yammered in the back of her head, her own voices, and Talenki voices.

And then consciousness left her for a time.

* * *

She came out of it, dizzy, but with a curious feeling of
satisfaction
. Her feeling? Or the Talenki's? Kadin was nearby, aware of what was happening, but not speaking. The probe seemed to have moved. Where it seemed to be, now, was in a chamber with dull red glowing-ember walls.

In the center, a dozen or more Talenki were clustered around a formation of lumpish objects, which Mozy at first thought to be large boulders, but on second glance decided looked more like meter-high mushrooms, or toadstools. The image was distorted by a momentary rippling, and then steadied. None of the Talenki were moving. In fact, they were all facing the toadstool objects and, Mozy realized, touching them with their fingertips, as though in homage.

Or as though in a séance.

Mozy squeezed as far into the probe link as possible. Kadin seemed hypnotized; he barely moved aside for her. She felt an energy here, a power that touched her despite the distance imposed by the link. Her feet were in the spacecraft; her head was in the probe, looking out through a camera lens.

Nothing moved. Nothing seemed to be happening. The Talenki in the room were silent.

Before she could pose a question, their hosts spoke again through the link. (WELCOME TO THE HEART OF OUR MIND,) said a voice that was almost human. (THIS IS WHERE WE LIVE.)

Pause.

(WHERE WE SPEAK.)

Pause.

(WHERE WE SING.)

Blue hospital walls. Pale, cool, soothing. Sunbeams rippling through curtains that flutter in the breeze over the ventilator. Footsteps constantly in the hallway, chimes and paging bells, announcements over the intercom: "Will Doctor Rodowsky please call OR-Four." "Mr. Savoy, you are wanted in pathology."

It is still a fresh sensation to see and hear clearly again, without pain. Still, the internal images persist in returning. So hard to keep them away, keep them at bay.

It could happen again. The headaches, the shimmering vision, the loss of control.

No, trust the doctors. You must trust. They have done well, replaced the chips, fine-tuned the circuits in your skull that gave you sight where once there was only blackness and sunbursts and shooting stars.

Think of bandages coming off. Think of vision. Painless vision. Blue walls and rippling curtains.

Think of poor old Mrs. Martinsen and her cat Armax and her bronchitis.

Think of sunshine and fresh air.

Think of keeping faith. And prayer.

Think of that friendly nurse, Josephine.

Think of Mozy.

* * *

A kind of muzzy feeling—lost somewhere between contentment and boredom, halfway into sleep, drifting downward from a state of meditative wakefulness. The doctor has come and gone, an impatient nurse on his heels, and then quiet again.

Quiet. Time to think, to reflect. But the drowsiness carries him downward and away.

Floating downstream.

Images of cascading water, cool and clear and dark. An intricate maze of fountains and runnels and flat spillways, water lapping and chuckling as it overflows step after step. A pyramid, carved with a thousand crisscrossed channels, water erupting at the top and tumbling, dashing in the sun, down the channels.

Electrons dashing, foaming in an interlocking system of memories and cores.

Think of Kadin.

The mind fills with systems of movement and flow. Solar prominences and streamers, coronal plasmas looping and diving back into the sun. Convection currents, magnetic lines intertwining and altering one another.

Think of Mozy.

Molecular holographic memory cells, electrons changing state in bits and patterns, an addition here reverberating there, overload spilling unexpectedly into new interference patterns that echo and amplify. Growth and learning, cells extending themselves and transmuting, turning into something that never was, or was expected.

Think of Mozy and Kadin.

Nuclear interaction proceeding faster than the mind can follow. Neutron flux that staggers the imagination, nuclei colliding, splitting, reforming. Mass vanishing. New particles erupting into the flux. Cascading reaction: atoms pelted by neutrons, splitting, breeding more neutrons. Reaction rate jumps as fissioning materials come together.

Critical mass. Inconceivable hail of shattering atoms, volcano of photons and atomic debris. Fantastic heat, expanding in a fireball.

* * *

Hoshi blinks his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Pale blue ceiling, the paint a little crazed and cracked in one corner. A horrible realization is expanding, cracking his placid state of mind.

A program structure unfolds in his mind like unraveling origami, each twist and convolution revealing itself to his trained inner eye. The system architecture rotates in space, exposed from all angles, distinct from the tangled spiderweb of the program. The heuristic functions, the learning systems, the self-adapting memory cells, the consciousness control points, all are luminous and clear. Flow paths shifting, reconnecting. Limits adjusting, readjusting.

Intelligence spills into the system like wine, and instantly begins to metamorphose, crystallizing and growing in unexpected directions,
altering the program structure as it grows
. Mutating structure expands in an architecture of finite resiliency.

A second intelligence threads its way into and through the first, separate and yet a part of the whole. The mutation process accelerates, straining the architecture, which shunts and reroutes overloads, tolerating the mutations as long as possible. But not long enough. Disorder grows in ripples and waves.

Hoshi blinks, as the realization crackles through his mind.

The back of his mouth is dry with a craving thirst, a thirst that water will never quench. He blinks again, swallows. The only moisture is in his eyes.

Overload. Failure of central processing architecture. He should have seen it before.

It cannot endure. The system is doomed to collapse, and Mozy and Kadin with it.

* * *

It is an eon before the doctor approves the removal of the bandages. An argument ensues about releasing him, about the need to keep seeing the vision therapist, but finally they agree to let him continue as an outpatient. He may go home tomorrow.

Home, indeed. He must go to the institute at once. Talk to Jonders. Jonders must be told, while time remains.

(
Mozy . . .)