made a point of reminding us how low we stand on life’s pyramid.”
The image of Jake Demwa smiled, with wrinkles creasing all the right places.
“You are bitter. After suffering through earlier contacts with so-called Old Ones, I can hardly blame you. Those creatures were scarcely older than you, and hardly more knowledgeable. Such immature souls are often arrogant far beyond their actual accomplishments. They try to emphasize how high they have risen by denigrating those just below. In your own journal, Dr. Baskin, you make comparisons to ‘ants scurrying under the feet of trampling gods.’
“In fact, though, any truly advanced mind should be capable of empathy, even toward ‘ants.’ By deputizing a small portion of myself, I can speak to you in this manner. It costs little to be kind, when the effort seems appropriate.”
Gillian blinked, unable to decide whether to be grateful or offended.
“Your notion of selective kindness … terrifies me.”
The Demwa replica shrugged.
“Some things cannot be helped. Those composite beings who died recently — whose stirred mass and other attributes now form a dense cloud, hovering at the brink of oblivion — they will serve vital goals much better with their deaths than they would as junior Transcendents. Here, and at many other sites across the known cosmos, they will ignite beacons at just the right moment, when destiny opens a fleeting window, allowing heavens to converse.”
Her brow grew tense from concentration.
“Beacons? Aimed where? You Transcendents are already masters of everything within the Five—”
Abruptly, Gillian hazarded a guess.
“Outside? You want to contact others, beyond the Five Galaxies?”
Demwa seemed to croon approvingly.
“Ah, you see? Simple reasoning is not so difficult, even for an ant!
“Indeed, an aim of this vast enterprise is to shine brief messages from one heavenly locus to another. A greeting can be superimposed on the blaring eruption of light that will soon burst from this place, briefly achieving brightness greater than a whole galaxy.”
“But—”
“But! You are about to object that we can do this anytime! It is trivial for beings like us simply to set off supernovas, flashing them like blinking signal lights.
“True! Furthermore, that method is too slow, and too noise-ridden, for complex conversation. It amounts to little more than shouting ‘Here I am!’ at the universe.
“Anyway, the vast majority of other galactic nexi appear to be mysteriously silent, or else they emanate vibrations that are too cryptic or bizarre for us to parse, even with our best simulations. Either way, the puzzle cannot be solved by remote musing on mere sluggish beams of light.”
Avoiding the false Demwa’s scrutinizing gaze, Gillian stared at a far wall, deep in thought. At last she murmured.
“I bet all this has to do with the Great Rupture that Sara predicted. Many of the old connective links — the subspace channels and t-point threads — are snapping at last. Galaxy Four may detach completely.”
Her hands clenched.
“There must be some opportunity. One that only takes place during a rupture, when all the hyperspace levels are convulsing. A window of time when …”
Looking back at her visitor, Gillian winced to find it transformed yet again. Now Jake Demwa was replaced by the image of Tom’s mother.
May Orley grinned back at her, bundled in thermal gear against a Minnesota winter, with a ski pole in each hand.
“Go on, my dear. What else do you surmise?”
Such rapid transfigurations might once have unnerved Gillian, Before she had departed on this long, eventful space voyage. But after years spent dealing with the Niss Machine, she had learned to ignore rude interruptions, like rain off a duck’s back.
“A window of time when spatial links are greater than normal!” She stabbed a finger toward the Transcendent. “When physical objects can be hurled across the unbridgeable gulf between galactic clusters, at some speed much greater than light. Like tossing a message in a bottle, taking advantage of a rare high tide.”
“A perfectly lovely metaphor,” approved her ersatz mother-in-law. “Indeed, the rupture is like a mighty, devouring wave that can speedily traverse megaparsecs at a single bound. The supernova we set off shall be the arm that throws bottles into that wave.”
Gillian inhaled deeply as the next implication struck home.
“You want Streaker to be one of those bottles.”
“Spot on!” The Transcendent clapped admiration. “You validate our simulations and models, which lately suggested a change in procedure. By adding wolflings to the mixture, we may supply a much needed ingredient, this time. Perhaps it will prevent the failures that plagued our past efforts — those other occasions when we tried to send messages across the vast desert of flatness between our nexus of galaxies and the myriad spiral heavens we see floating past, tantalizingly out of reach.”
Gillian could no longer stand the unctuous pleasantness of May Orley. She covered her eyes, in part to let the Transcendent shift again … but also because she felt rather woozy. A weakness spread to her knees as realization sank in.
Instead of imminent death by fiery immolation, she was being promised an adventure — a voyage of exploration more exceptional than any other — and Gillian felt as if she had been punched in the stomach.
“You’ve … been trying this a long time, have you?”
“Ever since recovering from the earliest recorded crisis, just after the Progenitors departed, when our happy community of seventeen linked galaxies was torn asunder. Across the ages since then, we have yearned to recontact the brethren who were lost then.”
The voice was changing, mutating as it spoke, becoming more gruff. More gravelly.
“It is a pang that hurts more deeply than you may know. For this reason, above all others, we made sure that starfarers would abandon Galaxy Four, in order for the loss to be less traumatic, this time.”
Uncovering her eyes, Gillian saw that the transcendent now resembled Charles Dart, the chimp scientist who had vanished on Kithrup, along with Tom and Hikahi and about a dozen others.
“You can truly remember that far back?”
“By dwelling deep within the Embrace of Tides — skim-orbiting what you call ‘black holes’—we accomplish several ends. In that gravity-stressed realm we can perform quantum computing on a measureless scale, combining the insights of every life order. With loving care, we simulate past events, alternate realities, even whole cosmic destinies.”
Gillian quashed a manic surge of hysterical laughter. It was awfully posh language to come from the mouth of a chimp.
She fought for self-control, but the Transcendent did not seem to notice, continuing with its explanation.
“There is yet another effect of living near an event horizon, where spacetime curls so tightly that light can barely struggle free. Time slows down for us, while the rest of the universe spins on madly.
“Others plunge past us into the singularities, diving headlong toward unseen realms, pursuing their own visions of destiny — but we remain, standing watch, impervious to entropy, waiting, observing, experimenting.”
“Others plunge past …,” Gillian repeated, blinking rapidly. “Into the black holes? But who …?”
A grim smile spread slowly, with her growing realization.
“You’re talking about other Transcendents! By God, you aren’t the only high ones, are you? All the life orders merge next to black holes — hydros and oxies and machines and the rest — gathering near the greatest tides of all. But that’s not the end of the story for most of them, is it? They keep going, into the singularities! Whether it takes them to a better universe, or else eliminates them as dross, they choose to keep going while you guys stay behind.
“Why?” she asked, pursuing the point. “Because you’re afraid? Because you lack enough guts to face the unknown?”
