Heaven's Reach (48 page)

Stationing himself near a portside window, Harry peered through the murk.

We only need a few more minutes. Come on, you memoid bastards. Leave us alone just that long!

Harry's back itched, and he started reaching around with a hand to scratch it … but stopped when the job was handled more conveniently by his new appendage. His tail, lithely curling up to rub and massage the very spot. At once, it felt both natural and surprising, each time it moved to his conscious or unconscious will.

He caught the two young humans staring at him. Dwer at least had the decency to blush.

Eat yer hearts out
, Harry thought, and used the tail to
smooth his pelt of sleek, ivory fur.
Poor humans. Stuck with those bare skins … and bare butts.

Then he had no more time for whimsy.

Out there amid the haze, he spied movement. Several dark gray entities. Huge ones, far larger than the megapedes he had fought before. Through the mist, these looked sleek and rounded, nosing along the vast carpet like a herd of great elephants.

Then Harry realized. That was the wrong metaphor. As they drew nearer, he recognized their rapid, darting motions, their earlike projections and twitching noses.

Mice … goddamn giant mice! Ifni, that's all I need.

He felt a shiver of dismay as he realized—they had spotted the station.

To the pilot mode, he gave an urgent, spoken command. “Increase speed! We've got to climb the leg before they reach us!”

Amber and red lights erupted across the control board as the jarring pace accelerated. A great woodlike pillar loomed before them, but Harry also sensed the memes scurrying faster in pursuit. Self-sustaining conceptual forms far more sophisticated and carnivorous than any he had seen. It was going to be tight. Very tight indeed.

God. I don't know how much more of this I can take.

From the Journal of Gillian Baskin

I
WISH TOM COULD HAVE BEEN HERE. HE WOULD
love this.

The mystery.

The terrifying splendor.

Standing alone in my dim office, I look out through a narrow pane at the shimmering expanse of raw
ylem
surrounding
Streaker
—the basic stuff of our continuum, the elementary ingredient from which all the varied layers of hyperspace condensed, underpinning what we call the “vacuum.”

The sight is spine-tingling. Indescribably beautiful. And yet my thoughts keep racing. They cannot settle down to appreciate the view.

My heart's sole wish is that Tom were sharing it with me right now. I can almost feel his arm around my waist, and the warm breath of his voice, urging me to look past all the gritty details, the worries, the persisting dangers and heartaches that plague us.

“No one said it would be safe or easy, going into space. Or, for that matter, rising from primal muck to
face the heavens. We may be clever apes, my love—rash wolflings to the end. Yet, something in us hears a call.

“We must rush forth to see.”

Of course, he would be right to say all that. I've been privileged to witness so many marvels. And yet, I answer his ghost voice the way a busy mother might chide a husband so wrapped up in philosophy that he neglects life's messy chores.

Oh, Tom. Even when surrounded by a million wonders, someone has to worry about the details.

Here aboard this frail dugout canoe, that someone is me.

Days pass, and
Streaker
is still immersed in this remarkable fleet. A vast armada of moving receptacles—I hesitate to call the spiky, planet-sized things “ships”—sweeps along, sometimes blazing through A- or B-Level hyperspace, or else turning to plunge down the throat of yet another transfer point … an immense crowd of jostling behemoths, racing along cosmic thread paths that correspond to no chart or reference in our archives.

Should I be surprised by that? How many times have I heard other sapient beings—from Soro and Pila to Synthians and Kanten—preach awe toward the majestic breadth and acumen of the Galactic Library, whose records encompass countless worlds and more than a billion years, ever since it was first established by the legendary Progenitors, so long ago.

We younger races feel the Library must be all-knowing. Only rarely does someone mention its great limitation.

The Library serves only the Civilization of Five Galaxies. The ancient culture of oxygen-breathing starfarers that we Earthlings joined three centuries ago.

To poor little Earthclan, that seemed more than enough! So complex and overpowering is that society—with its mysterious traditions, competing alliances, and
revered Institutes—that one can hardly begin to contemplate what else lies beyond.

But more does lie beyond. At least seven other orders of life, thriving in parallel to our own. Orders that have wildly different needs and ambitions, as well as their own distinct kinds of wisdom.

Even the ever-curious Tymbrimi advised us to avoid contact with these ultimate strangers, explaining that it's just too confusing, unprofitable, and dangerous to be worth the trouble.

To which I can only say—from recent experience—
amen.

Of course, it's common knowledge that the oldest oxygen-breathing races eventually die or “move on.” As with individuals, no species lasts forever. The cycle of Uplift, which stands at the core of Galactic society, is all about replenishment and renewal. Pass on the gift of sapiency, as it was passed to you.

Being new to this game, ignorant and desperately poor, with our own chimp and dolphin clients to care for, we humans focused on the opening moves, studying the rules so we might act as responsible patrons, and perhaps avoid the fate that usually befalls wolflings.

Beginnings are important.

Yet, each alliance and clan also speaks reverently of those who came before them. Those who, like venerated great-grandparents, finished their nurturing tasks, then turned their attention to other things, maturing to new heights and new horizons.

After we fled treachery at Oakka World, I decided not to trust the corrupted Institutes anymore and to seek advice instead from some of those learned, detached elders we had heard about. Beings who had abandoned starfaring for a more contemplative life in the Retired Order, cloistered near the fringes of a dim red star.

Events at the Fractal World soon taught us a lesson. Aloofness does not mean impartiality. The so-called Retired Order is, in fact, only a vestibule for oxy-races that can no longer bear the rigors of flat spacetime. Though
they huddle like hermits in a gravity well, trying to perfect their racial souls, that doesn't necessarily make them tolerant or wise. After our travails with the Old Ones, I was willing to head back into the Five Galaxies, and risk contact with oxy-civilization once more.

Only now we find ourselves, against all logic or reason, adopted willy-nilly into the Transcendent Order!

At least that is what the symbol on our prow seems to mean. Somebody, or something, planted a single wide chevron there—perhaps as a very bad joke.

An emblem signifying high spiritual attainments, plus readiness to abandon all temporal concerns.

In effect, it says—
Hey! Look at us. We're all set for godhood!

Sheesh, what a situation. I feel like a street kid with a stolen tuxedo and fake ID, who somehow managed to bluff her way into the Nobel Prize ceremony, and now finds herself sitting next to the podium, scheduled to give a speech!

All
this
street kid wants right now is a chance to slink away without being noticed, before the grown-ups catch on and really give us hell.

Getting away won't be easy. A kind of momentum field rings this huge flotilla, carrying us along helplessly amid the horde of giant transports. Moreover, our navigation systems are haywire. We've no idea where we are, let alone where to go.

At one point, during an especially smooth transit through B Space, Akeakemai reported that the surrounding field seemed weak. I had him nudge
Streaker
to the edge of the swarm, hoping to slip out during one of the cyclical jumps back to normal space. But as we prepared to break free, Olelo thrashed her flukes with a whistle warning. We were being scanned by hostile beams, cast from an enemy ship!

Soon we spied the Jophur dreadnought, working its way through the throng of giant arks.

Once, the battlewagon had seemed omnipotent. Now it looked small compared to the surrounding behemoths.
Stains marred its once shiny hull in places where the skin seemed to
throb
, like infected blisters. Still, the crew of egotistic sap-rings had great power and determination to pursue
Streaker.
They would pounce whenever we left the convoy's safety.

We fell back amid the titans, biding our time.

Perhaps whatever ills afflict the Jophur will eventually overcome them.

The universe may produce another miracle.

Who knows?

Perhaps we will
transcend.

The Niss Machine plumbed our stolen Library unit, researching data about the strange layer covering
Streaker
's hull, both shielding her and weighing her down. It began as a thick coat of star soot, amassed in the atmosphere of a smoldering carbon sun. Later, some mysterious faction transformed the blanket—beneficently, or with some arcane goal in mind—creating a shimmering jacket that saved our lives.

“It is a form of armor,”
the Niss explained.
“Offering tremendous protection against directed energy weapons—as we learned dramatically at the Fractal World. Trawling for records, I found that the method was used extensively on warships until approximately two hundred million years ago, when a fatal flaw was discovered, rendering it obsolete.”

“What flaw?” I asked. Naturally, something so convenient must have an Achilles' heel.

The Niss explained.
“Much of the soot pouring out from Izmunuti consists of molecules you Earthlings call fullerenes—or
buckeyballs—
open mesh spheres and tubes consisting of sixty or more carbon atoms. These have industrial uses, especially if gathered into sheets or interlocking chains. That's why robot harvesters visited Izmunuti, acquiring material in their futile effort to repair the Fractal World.”

“We already knew the stuff was strong,” I answered. “Since Suessi had such trouble removing it. But that's a far cry from resisting Class-Eight disintegrator beams!”

The Niss explained that it took special reprocessing to convert that raw deposit into another form. One with just the right guest atoms held captive inside buckeyball enclosures.
“Atoms of strange matter,”
the disembodied voice said.