Exultant (62 page)

Dark and light matter passed like ghosts, touching each other only with gravity. But the pinprick gravity wells of the new baryonic stars were useful. Drawn into these wells, subject to greater concentrations and densities than before, new kinds of interactions between components of dark matter became possible.

In this universe, the emergence of life in dark matter was inevitable. In their earliest stages, these “photino birds” swooped happily through the hearts of the stars, immune to such irrelevances as the fusion fire of a sun’s core.

What did disturb them was the first stellar explosions—and with them the dissipation of the stars’ precious gravity wells, without which there would be no more photino birds.

Almost as soon as the first stars began to shine, therefore, the photino birds began to alter stellar structures and evolution. If they clustered in the heart of a star they could damp the fusion processes there. By this means the birds hoped to hurry a majority of stars through the inconvenience of explosions and other instabilities and on to a dwarf stage, when an aging star would burn quietly and coldly for aeons, providing a perfect arena for the obscure dramas of photino life. A little later the photino birds tinkered with the structures of galaxies themselves, to produce more dwarfs in the first place.

Thus it was that humans found themselves in a Galaxy in which red dwarf stars, stable, long-lived and unspectacular, outnumbered stars like their own sun by around ten to one. This was hard to fit into any naturalistic story of the universe, though generations of astrophysicists labored to do so: like so many features of the universe, the stellar distribution had been polluted by the activities of life and mind. It would not be long, though, before the presence of the photino birds in Earth’s own sun was observed.

The Xeelee had been troubled by all this much earlier.

The Xeelee cared nothing for the destiny of pond life like humanity. But by suppressing the formation of the largest stars, the birds were reducing the chances of more black holes forming. What made the universe more hospitable for the photino birds made it less so for the Xeelee. The conflict was inimical.

The Xeelee began a grim war to push the birds out of the galaxies, and so stop their tinkering with the stars. The Xeelee had already survived several universal epochs; they were formidable and determined. Humans would glimpse silent detonations in the centers of galaxies, and they would observe that there was virtually no dark matter to be observed in galaxy centers. Few guessed that this was evidence of a war in heaven.

But the photino birds turned out to be dogged foes. They were like an intelligent enemy, they were like a plague, and they were everywhere; and for some among the austere councils of the Xeelee there was a chill despair that they could never be beaten.

And so, even as the war in the galaxies continued, the Xeelee began a new program, much more ambitious, of still greater scale.

Their immense efforts caused a concentration of mass and energy some hundred and fifty million light-years from Earth’s Galaxy. It was a tremendous knot that drew in galaxies like moths across three hundred million light-years, a respectable fraction of the visible universe. Humans, observing these effects, called the structure the Great Attractor—or, when one of them journeyed to it, Bolder’s Ring.

This artifact ripped open a hole in the universe itself. And through this doorway, if all was lost, the Xeelee planned to flee. They would win their war—or they would abandon the universe that had borne them, in search of a safer cosmos.

Humans, consumed by their own rivalry with the Xeelee, perceived none of this. To the Xeelee—as they fought a war across hundreds of millions of light-years, as they labored to build a tunnel out of the universe, as stars flared and died billions of years ahead of their time—humans, squabbling their way across their one Galaxy, were an irritant.

A persistent irritant, though.

Chapter
56

The seven surviving greenships of Exultant Squadron formed up into a tight huddle. In the sudden calm, the crews gazed around at the extraordinary place they had come to.

Of all the Galaxy’s hundreds of billions of stars, SO-2 was the one nearest the black hole. And now they were within its orbit. This central place, a cavity within a cavity light-weeks across, was free of stars—because any star that came closer than SO-2 would be torn apart by black hole tides. It was filled with light and matter, though, with glowing plasma, but Pirius’s Virtual filters blocked that out. It was as if the seven of them hovered within a great shell walled by crowded stars, like flies inside a Conurbation dome.

And at the very center of this immense space was a pool of light. From this distance it was like a glowing toy, small enough to cover with a thumbnail held at arm’s length. It was a floor of curdled and glowing gas, as wide as planetary orbits in Sol system. This was the black hole’s accretion disc, the penultimate destination of debris infalling from the rest of the Galaxy—the place where doomed matter was compressed and smashed together, whirling around the hole like water around a leak in a bucket, before it fell into the black hole.

Of the monstrous black hole itself Pirius could see only a pinpoint spark, an innocent light like a young sun, set in the center of the disc. Somewhere in there was an event horizon that would have engulfed ten Sols side by side; indeed, in Sol system it would have stretched to the orbit of the innermost planet, Mercury. The glow was the final cry of matter, compressed and heated as it fell into the hole, the flaw in the universe into which the Galaxy was steadily draining.

And it was Pirius’s target.

Cabel was studying magnified images of the accretion disc. He found a bright arc, traced across the churning surface of the disc, glowing brightly. “What’s that?”

“I think it’s a star,” Bilson said. “A star that came too close. Lethe, there is still fusion going on there.”

Cabel said slowly, “A
star,
being torn to pieces. Lethe, what a place we’ve come to.”

Blue called, “Heads up. Take a look at your tactical displays.”

Pirius Red’s Virtual maps of the region lit up with virulent crimson sparks, the locations of Xeelee concentrations. Most of them were around the rim of the accretion disc itself.

Blue reported, “The good news is that I don’t see any nightfighters or other combat ships in this region—none within the orbit of SO-2. So the feint with the grav shield worked. The Xeelee really didn’t anticipate we would get this far, and their reactions are slow. We have some time. But those red points in the accretion disc are Xeelee emplacements, Sugar Lumps, probably used as flak batteries. They are static—they aren’t going to come after us—but they pack a punch.”

So, Pirius thought, studying his display, to get at the black hole his greenships were going to have to fly through a hail of Xeelee flak, as well as pushing through the hazardous zone of the accretion disc.

“Let’s get it done before they wake up,” he said. “I’ll go in first. Engineer? Navigator? Are you with me?”

“Ready, Pilot,” Bilson said, his voice tight with tension.

Cabel called, “It’s what we came here to do.”

“Prep the weapons.”

Pirius worked through his checklist quickly, trying to set aside his own doubts, his fear. He knew they only had a few chances to make this work. Each of the ships carried only one pair of black-hole bombs: they would be able to deliver just one blow each. And this first run, with the Xeelee totally unprepared, was their best chance of all. If he succeeded on this very first strike, they could go home. He desperately hoped he could make it happen.

The other crews were quiet as they worked. He didn’t want to speak to Torec: he felt it would help neither of them. But he couldn’t forget she was there. Even if he got himself killed, he told himself, if he did his job, nobody else had to die today—
she
wouldn’t have to die.

It occurred to him he hadn’t heard a word from This Burden Must Pass since they had arrived in this cathedral of stars. It was a troubling, niggling thought, but he had no time to deal with it.

Green flags lit up. The ship was ready for the attack run. Pirius said, “Let’s do it.” He clenched his fists around his controls.

With Cohl and the rest of the final evacuees from Orion, Enduring Hope was lifted to Arches Base. The journey took two hours, so Hope arrived six hours after the greenships had been launched—when, he realized, Pirius should be arriving at Chandra.

Hope’s feelings were complex. The weeks he had spent preparing for the moment of the launch were over. He felt a great sense of relief, even anticlimax, that he had managed to get his ships away with only one major foul-up, only one ship lost; it had been better than he had expected, in his heart of hearts. And he was pleased to have been able to pull a few strings to get Cohl off Orion.

And yet frustration was knotting up inside him. He was after all a flyer, and his crewmate from the last, fated mission of
Assimilator’s Claw
was at this moment flying into a pit of Xeelee fighters at the center of the Galaxy, and
he,
Hope, wasn’t there. He was stranded here on Arches Base, and until and unless those ships came home, there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

Some consolation his creed was now, he thought dismally. He did believe intellectually that all he lived through was just one road among many, all to be resolved at the confluence at the end of time. But it certainly didn’t
feel
like that, not at moments like this. He wished he could talk it over with This Burden Must Pass—but Burden too was fighting at Chandra.

Lacking a better alternative, Enduring Hope made his way to his barracks. Perhaps he could get some sleep. He had a duty to keep fresh; when the ships came limping home again, the skills of himself and his engineering crews would be crucial.

But at the barracks a runner found him. He was to report to Officer Country. Hope was even more surprised when the runner led him to Arches’ main operations room.

He stood in the doorway, mouth agape. The room was a broad, deep arena, with walkways on several levels surrounding a huge Virtual display at the center. Today the main display was a diorama of the center of the Galaxy, with a brilliant pinpoint that must be Chandra itself, surrounded by an accretion disc and other astrophysical monstrosities. This main display was surrounded by more Virtuals, graphs, diagrams, and scrolling text that were, he recognized, diagnostic data on the Exultant ships themselves. Some of the walkways crossed the pit so that you could walk through the displays, studying them as closely as you liked. Around this pit of ever-changing information, staff worked, talking rapidly, tapping bits of data into the desks they carried. On one high balcony, Hope glimpsed Marshal Kimmer himself, standing gravely with his hands clasped behind his back, surrounded by a cluster of aides.

It was a Navy ops room at the height of a major operation; it was a nest of tense, coordinated activity. But the discipline and organization were obvious, and despite the complexity of the task and the tension of the hour, not a voice was raised.

And the information displays changed constantly. The central diorama had obviously been based on the information retrieved by Pirius Blue during his earlier pass through the central regions. But Hope saw now that sections of it were changing all the time, evidently updated with data returned from the ships of Exultant themselves.

Which meant they got through,
he thought hotly. Exultant Squadron had survived, and had pushed through to its target, the very center of the Galaxy. He clenched his fist.

And now he looked more closely he saw a little cluster of brave green sparks, hovering above the accretion disc. One of those green gems broke from the cluster and was swooping down toward the accretion disc. It was utterly dwarfed, like a fly dropping toward a carpet, but it was advancing anyway. It had begun, Hope realized, thrilled; they were going in for the raid. And if he had survived, that lead spark must be Pirius Red himself.

“I know you.”

A woman approached him. She wore a plain white robe, and was short, shorter than he was. The skin of her face was smooth, but it was not the smoothness of youth, and her eyes were hard and sharp, like bits of stone. She said, “You’re Tuta. Who calls himself Enduring Hope.” She opened her mouth and laughed. It was an ugly, throaty noise, and her teeth were black.

He replied, “I think I know you, too. After he returned from Sol system, Pirius told me about you.”

“My fame spreads across the Galaxy,” Luru Parz said dryly. “I’m sure Pirius is much happier now that he’s away from Earth’s politicking and scheming, and is able to fly his toys around the center of the Galaxy again.”

Enduring Hope stared at her; he couldn’t help it.

Luru snapped, “Speak, boy! Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Hope licked his lips. “I’m thinking I don’t know whether I should offer you a chair, or report you to the Guardians.”

She laughed again. “You have a better sense of humor than Pirius, that’s for sure. I think I like you, Tuta.”

He asked hesitantly, “And is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“That you are”—he glanced around and spoke quietly—“immortal?”

“Oh, I doubt that very much. I just haven’t gotten around to dying yet.”

“Why are you here? And
how
are you here?”

“As it happens I played a major part in initiating this project in the first place—as Pirius ought to have told you, though I doubt he understood it himself, Pirius or his bed warmer, those poor baffled children. I’ve come here to see the climax of what I started. I think I’m entitled to that much. As to
how
I got here, I leaned on Nilis to arrange it. Even so detached a Commissary as that bumbling oaf can still pull strings.”

“Where is the Commissary?”

“Frankly he was getting so anxious he was making a nuisance of himself, and the officer in command of the room sent him away. But he was distracted anyway. He’s still analyzing his fragments of data about Chandra, still seeking to discern what he calls its ‘true nature.’ No doubt you know about that. But of course Chandra’s importance to the Xeelee is all that counts. And if we get a chance, we should smash it, simple as that. That’s why I supported this project in the first place. If it were up to me I would stop Nilis’s pointless rootling. All he is likely to find is a reason to pull our punches, and what use would that be?”