that conditions were probably similar during the Gronin Collapse,” Wer’Q’quinn explained when Harry reported for his last assignment.
From a high balcony at Navigation Institute HQ, they watched as crowds thronged down the main arcades toward various egress ports, streaming to reclaim the starships that had brought them here. Meanwhile, Wer’Q’quinn waved a languid pseudopod and continued contemplating the past.
“Then, as now, the Institutes went into denial at first. Later, under instructions from higher life orders, they concealed the truth from most of our civilization until it was too late for any concerted preparation. Indeed, an identical scenario would have repeated this time, if not for the recent warning that was broadcast from Earth. Without it, most of the races in the Five Galaxies would have had scarcely any chance to get ready.”
“A lot of clans chose to ignore the warning,” Harry groused. “Some are too busy attacking Earth to listen.”
After a gloomy silence, he went on.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance that all these spatial disturbances will affect the Siege of Terra, is there?”
Wer’Q’quinn swiveled a squidlike gaze toward the chimpanzee scout, as if scrutinizing him for any sign of wavering loyalty.
“That seems unlikely. We estimate that up to thirty percent of the t-points in Galaxy Two will remain at least partly functional. Of course, during the worst part of the crisis, metric backlash will convulse every level of hyperspace. Woe unto any vessel that tries to undergo pseudoacceleration while that is going on! But this should scarcely inconvenience the great battleships presently surrounding your ancestral solar system. They will be safe, so long as they remain in normal space, and refrain from using probability weapons until the rupture is over.
“Naturally, we expect the effects will be far more severe in Galaxy Four.”
Harry nodded. “Which is exactly where you’re sending me.”
“Would you withdraw? I can send another.”
“Oh, yeah? Who else are you gonna find who’s willing to enter E Space at a time like this?”
Wer’Q’quinn’s answer was eloquent silence. Of his remaining staff, only Harry had the experience — and talents — to hold any hope of success in that bizarre realm of living ideas.
“Well,” Harry grunted. “Why the hell not, eh? You say I should have time enough to lay down new instrument packages along the Path, from here to Galaxy Four, and still make it back before the crisis hits?”
“It will be close,” Wer’Q’quinn averred. “But we have supplemented our traditional calculations with new estimates, utilizing wolfling techniques of mathematical incantation that were contained in the message from Earth. Both methods appear to agree. The main rupture should not take place till after you safely return.”
Another long silence stretched.
“Of course I would’ve gone anyway,” Harry said at last, in a gruff voice.
A low sigh. A nervous curling of tentacles.
“I know you would.”
“For the Five Galaxies,” Harry added.
“Yes.” Wer’Q’quinn’s voice faltered. “For the Civilization of … Five Galaxies.”
Down on the boulevards of Kazzkark, the worst of the exodus appeared to be over. While gleaners sifted through dross and wreckage from so many hurried departures, Harry strode along with a floating donkey-drone, bearing capsules to deposit in E Space for Wer’Q’quinn. Telemetry from these packages might reveal more about the strains now pulling apart the connective tissue of space. Perhaps next time — in a hundred million years or so — people might understand things a little better.
And there would be a next time. As the universe expanded, ever more of the ancient “flaws” that linked galaxy to galaxy would stretch, then break. After each sundering transition, the number of surviving t-points would be smaller, their connections less rich, and the speedy lanes of hyperspace become that much more inaccessible.
As it ages, the cosmos is becoming a less interesting, more dangerous place. Everything must have seemed so close and easy in the Progenitors’ day, he thought. A time of magic, when it was almost trivial to conjure a path between any two points in seventeen linked galaxies.
He squared his shoulders back.
Oh, well. At least I get to take part in something important. Even if Wer’Q’quinn is exaggerating my chances of getting home again.
Kazzkark had seemed so immaculate when he first arrived here from training school. Now a dusty haze seemed to pervade the corridors, shaken from the walls by quakes and chaos waves, which rattled this entire sector at ever narrower intervals. They had grown so frequent, in fact, that he hardly noticed most of them anymore.
It just goes to show, even the abnormal can get to seem normal, after a while.
Approaching the dockyards, he witnessed a large party of hoonish clerks and their families, carrying luggage and tugging hover-carts, preparing to board a transport for one of their homeworlds. The queue was orderly, as you would expect from a hoonish procession. Yet, something appeared different about this group. They seemed less dour, more animated, than others of their kind.
It’s their clothes! Harry realized, all at once. Alvin’s got them wearing Hawaiian shirts!
Indeed, roughly a third of the hulking bipeds had set aside the more typical robes of boring white or silver, and draped themselves instead with tunics bearing garish prints of flowers and tropical ferns — split down the back to leave room for their craggy spines. Umbling as they waited patiently in line, the group made every nearby corridor reverberate with tones that seemed far livelier than the dirgelike chants usually heard from hoons.
One GalSix trill-phrase, in particular, caused Harry to stumble.
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that translates into Anglic as “heigh ho!”
Some of the older hoons looked on all this with perplexed — even miffed — expressions. But toward the front there stood a crowd of youths — teenagers, he noted — who boomed out the refrain with enthusiastic bellows of their bulging throat sacs.
A cheerful ballad about transition, and eagerness for new vistas.
Over in a corner, shuffling behind the hoons, stood a strange figure, looking like a short, shabby Jophur. It was Tyug, the traeki alchemist from Jijo, accompanying Alvin on the next phase of his adventure.
Harry tried to catch Alvin’s eye as he walked past, but the lad was fully immersed, enjoying his role as the out-of-town boy who had come to stir things up. With Dor-hinuf close to his side, and a pair of tytlal lounging on his broad shoulders, Alvin leaned against a loosely wrapped shipping crate, feigning nonchalance while keeping a close vigil over its contents.
One edge of the tarpaulin shifted as Harry watched. From the darkness within, a single eye drifted upward at the end of a waving stalk. Another tried to follow, squeezing through to twist and stare at the surroundings.
Without pausing in the umble song, Alvin silently used one burly hand to grab both wayward eyes and cram them back inside. Then he tied the tarp down firmly. The crate shuddered, as if someone inside were rolling back and forth in protest. But Alvin only leaned harder until things settled down.
“Ahoy!” shouted a hoon at the front of the queue, when the portal opened at last, leading to their ship. “Avast back there. Here we go!”
Harry tried holding it in. He struggled hard, and managed to make it fifty meters farther along before his splitting sides could take it no longer. Then he ducked around a stony corner, sagged against the nearest wall, and guffawed.
The Official Docks were nearly deserted. Dignitaries of the Library, Migration, Commerce, and War Institutes had already scurried off, leaving empty moorings. Only Wer’Q’quinn’s busy teams remained on duty, rushing forth on rescue missions, or using beacons to guide traffic around danger zones. Noble work. Harry’s own days might be better spent that way, helping save lives and patching the raveled skeins of Galactic society. After the main rupture event, NavInst must promote recovery by getting trade going again.
But Wer’Q’quinn saved me for this mission. I guess the old octopus knows what he’s doing.
Ahead lay Harry’s venerable observation platform, designed for cruising the memic jungles of E Space. Although this mission was bound to be the most dangerous yet, Harry found his footsteps speeding up, drawn by
