Heaven's Reach (45 page)

Uh-oh.

They had him cornered, with his back against the lockers. As the station resumed its wild movements, the mites approached from two sides across the bucking deck, snapping jaws and waving scorpionlike tails.

Harry tried clearing his mind. Supposedly, if you practiced mental discipline, you could make your intellect impervious to toxic notions.

Unfortunately, beings who were that disciplined made lousy E Space observers. He had been recruited
for his credulous imagination—a trait these parasites would use to demolish him.

“Uh … could I maybe interest
you
guys in entertaining an idea or two?” He spoke quickly, breathlessly. “How about—this sentence is a lie!”

Their reaction, a snapping of pincers, seemed amused.

“Well then … how do you know you exist?”

Total contempt.

Shucks, it worked in some old tellie shows.

Of course, sophisticated memes would dismiss such clichés like flint-tipped arrows bouncing off armor. But what about a concept they might not have met before?

“Uh, has anyone ever told you about something called
compassion?
Some think it's the surest route to salv—”

The mites prepared to spring.

The station swerved again as the autopilot threw another gyration.

Suddenly, a radiant glow flooded the window opposite Harry, filling the control room with torrents of
starlight.

Harry sighed.

“Well I'll be a monk—”

Before he could complete the phrase, several things happened at once.

Both parasites leaped.

The big meme predator clinging to the outer hull screeched dismay.

His wildly gyrating station collided with the Avenue, a glancing blow, with the big memoid pressed between, giving it a taste of the Reality Continuum.

Tormented ululations filled Harry's brain as the predator burst asunder, spilling its complex conceptual framework in explosive agony.

Deprived of its parent, one of the mites shattered just before reaching his throat. But the other held cohesion long enough to strike him from behind.

It was Harry's turn to scream. He howled as something fluxed into his body. Pain yanked away all rational thought, piercing his buttocks and spine, then coursing
along his outer flesh like searing fire. Meanwhile, deep within, qualms and uncertainties began attacking every belief, every assumption he had ever held dear.

Suns and galaxies loomed around Harry as the station leaned into the Avenue, pushing against the membrane separation, threatening to trigger a reentry transition.

Machinery wailed, joining his bellow of despair.

All the memes and holograms had vanished. Air leaked out of the station through a dozen small holes. But he hardly noticed. Teetering between one realm of living ideas and another of harsh, universal rules, Harry fought to hold on to something. His essence. His sense of inner being.

Himself.

Ewasx

T
HIS IS NOT THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE HIDING
places.

Then why did we/I choose it, my rings?

Out of all the twisty crannies that make up the great battleship, why did we take shelter in this chamber of glass-sealed walls and bubbling incubation cells?

Because it is “home”? The place where we began?

Our second torus of cognition refutes this with a reminder that
most
of our component rings had their origins elsewhere—in pungent mulch pits filled with delicious rotting vegetation, at a crude settlement called Far Wet Sanctuary, on lonely Jijo.

It is true. Only three present members of our shared stack started here, aboard the
Polkjhy
, in this sterile nursery, where infant rings are nurtured to perfection with computer-controlled drips of synthetic nutrients. But they are three of our most important parts, yes?

• Our muscular torus-of-movement, with agile legs.
  
• Our donut-of-smells, making us recognizable to the Jophur crew.
  
• And, of course, your Master Ring, most precious of all. The essential (Me) ingredient, needed to transform modestly diffuse traeki into gloriously focused Jophur.
  

Is that not reason for nostalgia? Enough to call this darkened chamber home? (Though it appears to have suffered damage recently, and been repaired with hasty patching.)

Yes, go ahead. You may stroke the wax of memory. Recall the way things used to be on Jijo, before the change. Recollect how we/I learned to understand
alien
forms of parenthood, from close association with five other races.

During our prior incarnation, as the beloved traeki sage,
Asx
, we/I used to hold qheuen grubs and g'Kek larvae in our gentle tentacles, as well as hoon and human babies, rocking them, or spilling sweet aromatic mist-lullabies, crafted to bring happy dreams.

These recollections are preserved, not melted by our violent transformation into
Ewasx.
And yet, I am confused.

What point are you trying to make, my rings?

That we should be jealous?

That no ring stack—traeki or Jophur—can ever know a parent's love?

We are piled up from parts. Assembled.
Made
, like some machine. Perhaps that is why other races hate/envy us so.

What? you say there is no such hatred on Jijo? Ah, but consider the price you colonists paid for likability! To live in brute ignorance. Worse yet, afflicted to remain placid traeki, almost inert with lack of ambition. Won't you admit, at last, that life was never this vivid when you comprised poor compliant Asx?

You will? You will? you'll concede that much?

Well, then. Perhaps we are making progress.

WHAT? WHAT'S THAT?

You would have
Me
, the Master Torus, confess something in return?

You wish me to admit that we have lately also seen some drawbacks—some disadvantages—to the mono-maniacal way Jophur behave.

No, you needn't stroke recent wax, or replay those horrid events we observed before fleeing the control room. Foul-tempered, aggrieved and violent, the actions of our leaders were hardly inspiring. They don't exhibit great progress toward enlightenment.

But what choice is there? We of
Polkjhy
must pursue the dolphin-crewed ship! Its secrets may shed light on a time of changes, now convulsing the Five Galaxies. If Earthlings truly did find Progenitor Relics in a shallow globular cluster, what might that say about the way Galactic Civilization has been run for a billion years? Could it imply that our entire religious-and-genetic hierarchy is upside down?

WHAT IS THAT YOU SAY?

Our second ring of cognition asks—
so what?

• so what
  if ancient beliefs about the Progenitors prove wrong!
  
• so what
  if we were lied to about the Embrace of Tides!
  
• so what
  if some other clan manages to seize
  Streaker
  , and read its information first! Why should any sensible sapient get into a grease-lather over matters so obscure and trivial?
  

I … hesitate to answer.

The question seems so jarringly incomprehensible … like asking why we breathe oxygen, or metabolize food, or procreate, or express loyalty to kindred and posterity! It disturbs Me gravely that you/we could even raise such doubts!

PERHAPS I/WE SHOULD NOT HAVE FLED THE CONTROL ROOM, AFTER ALL.

(Seeking sanctuary in this dim/familiar hiding place.)

Indeed, our shared core roils with mad, provocative thoughts, questioning central Jophur beliefs. Moreover, since becoming a fugitive, I no longer seem to have the Masterful force of will that once let me squelch such ponderings.

PERHAPS IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER TO LET THE FOLLOWERS OF THE HIGH PRIEST DISASSEMBLE US/ME FOR SPARE PARTS.

That might have been My greatest service to
Polkjhy
, and to the great Jophur clan as a whole.

The chief advantage of this refuge is that ship sensors will be unable to detect our body traces, masked by row after row of transparent growth cabinets, filled with juvenile rings of all types. Of course, there are robot nurses here, tending the young. These slave-drones would report me, but only if someone on the bridge
asks.
Unless or until a specific enquiry is made, I/we can probably remain safe here, emitting authority pheromones, giving the machines orders, pretending to be in charge of the caretaking facility.

There is another danger. At random intervals, various Jophur ring piles come to the door demanding spare parts.

Mostly, these are soldiers. Tall, formidable warrior stacks, bearing wounds and horrid stains from their ongoing struggle to expel Zang invaders from the battleship. That infestation currently blights a third of
Polkjhy
's decks and zones. Some recent progress has been made against it, but our fighters show the cost, seeking replacements for rings damaged in close combat with the hydrogen breathers.

Fortunately, none of their caste seems inclined to question our/My presence here … and we mostly stay out of sight.

Yes, my rings. It is only a matter of time till we/I are caught. Soon we will face disassembly. I wonder if they will bother salvaging any of our toruses or waxy memory beads for use elsewhere.

Probably not.

During long, idle moments, we/I linger before vision-odor displays, captivated by events that have enveloped
Polkjhy
since our captain-leader was killed.

Do you recall, my rings, how our great ship swooped through the twisted bowels of the transfer point, following the Earthship so closely, and with such skill, that they could never get away?

From the Research Department, crew-stacks reported progress understanding the
Streaker
's strange protective layer—the coating that prevented our rays from stopping the dolphins earlier. That veneer seemed to offer invincibility, but according to our onboard Library we learn the technique was abandoned by most Galactics long ago! The tactic is quite easily defeated, once an opponent knows how. Only surprise made it effective back at the Fractal World.

The librarians promised a recommended countermeasure, shortly.

Meanwhile, the transfer nexus grew crowded with refugee ships, not only from the dissolved retirement community behind us, but from hundreds of others! Each emigrant vessel decided among three choices—to remain in Galaxy Four and seek room in some other cloistered shelter, or else to change life orders. To go back to the starfaring Civilization of Five Galaxies … or possibly forge deeper into the Embrace of Tides. It was enthralling, and a great honor, to watch so many exalted Old Ones make this fateful judgment, though it did not affect our tenacious pursuit of the Earthlings.

That was when we encountered the
Harrower.

A thing of legend.

A rare phenomenon of destiny.

A cloud of light that sorted through the agitated, thronging vessels. Choosing some. Sending others along their assigned ways.

DO YOU RECALL OUR SURPRISE, MY RINGS, WHEN THE HARROWER PLUCKED UP THE EARTHLING SHIP,
AND GENTLY PLACED IT AMONG THOSE AIMED FOR TRANSCENDENCE?