Quick improvisation is not their normal habit, but now they labor furiously, redesigning. Reconfiguring.
AND WE ARE OBJECTS OF THEIR SUDDEN INTENT!
Transfixed, we all watch as two slim plugs of matter slide smoothly out of the Earthship and head this way, leaving holes that seal quickly behind them. These slender tubes race toward Polkjhy … even as the gutted shell of the third vessel approaches us from the other side, shimmering and alive.
Dolphins, Ling says, identifying the contents of the cylinders taken from Streaker. About a dozen of them. Volunteers, coming to join us, along with some gene stores, and cultural archives. …
With breakneck speed, the tubes slide into slots prepared for them. Just in time, as the rippling shell wraps around Polkjhy and seals shut with a blaze of energetic union.
All of Mother’s components — even the newly captured Jophur officers — stagger briefly from psychic shock as that mass of luminous tendrils takes hold of our transformed vessel — bonding and penetrating — turning it into a throbbing, vibrating whole.
Something eager. Coiled and ready for what comes next.
CAN YOU SENSE THE NEARBY AGONY OF DYING GODS?
The needle-gateway writhes and flickers as it draws Streaker toward it. Glowing and collapsing inward, the transcendent nexus flexes, creating powerful fields, causing space to warp straight through its innards, generating a tunnel. A lean passageway.
An improvised escape route for the Terrans to strive for.
Will they make it in time?
AND NOW COMES IGNITION OF THE BRIGHTEST COMPACT DETONATION IN THE UNIVERSE.
Perhaps it will not be our knell of extinction, after all.
A poll has been taken, among Mother’s many members. Nearly all agree.
This is what we would have chosen if the Transcendents had asked. (Indeed, with their mighty simulations, perhaps they did.) Our merged union is a distillation. A combination of life orders. A melange, filled with hybrid vigor. Laced with special flavors from Jijo and Earth, our community may have the right mix that it takes to succeed at last, where so many others failed.
To bridge what was unbridgeable.
To help unite what was separate.
To bring the cosmos more diversity … and make it one.
• • •
We can feel Polkjhy’s new tendrils reaching out, clasping the fabric of space, awaiting the moment when a chaos wave next strikes.
The biggest chaos wave of all.
The Great Rupture.
Have the Transcendents timed things right? Do they really have the skill to trigger their explosion at precisely the moment, so Polkjhy can catch that wave?
Yes, my rings and other selves.
I/we/I/you can hardly wait to find out.
THE WHITE DWARF TREMBLES.
It is just ten thousand kilometers across. Ignition will flow at the speed of sound — a few thousand kilometers per second. That means it should take less than a dura.…
STREAKER LABORS MIGHTILY, STRIVING TO REACH THE ESCAPE TUNNEL.
Go, Sara!
You can make it.
Go!
Each passing second seems an eternity, as the Earthship struggles toward that flickering sanctuary.
ABRUPTLY, OUR SUNWARD SENSORS CATCH A BRILLIANT LIGHT!
A blinding flare that flows and ripples with mad speed across the tormented stellar surface, like the sudden striking of a match.
Then—
CAN YOU FEEL THEM, MY RINGS?
Neutrinos in the wax.
What a strange sensation! Like remembering tomorrow.
And now, here we go—
PART FIVE. THE TIME OF CHANGES
SOME LIFE ORDERS are more communicative than others.
MEMBERS of the Quantum Order have no sense of either place or time. At least, none corresponding with the way we view those properties. Though willing to exchange information, they generally make no sense of our queries, nor do we comprehend most of their answers. There must be some commonality of context in order for the word “meaning” to have any significance. Compared to the Quantum Order, it is almost trivial to converse with hydrogen breathers, machines, or even the most coherent sapient memes.
Once, however, a member of the touvint client race presumptuously interrupted its elders at a D-Space rendezvous, and confronted one of the quantals with a naively simple question.
“WHAT can we expect?”
THE answer has puzzled scholars for a million years. Without hesitation, the strange being replied—
“EVERYTHING.”
Galaxies
THE SUPERNOVA’S PHOTON FRONT CAUGHT Streaker just short of a swirling black tunnel — the escape path promised by cryptic Transcendents.
Alarms wailed and dolphins squalled as waves of searing energy struck from behind, crushing the normal protective fields, slamming each square meter with more heat than a normal sun would over the course of its lifespan. The blast would have evaporated the Streaker of old almost instantly.
But the Earthship was like a whale whose skin was coated with hard-shell barnacles, Streaker toiled under layers of strange stuff — coatings that shimmered in the heat, as if eager for the ruinous light.
Sara held Prity and Emerson. A rumbling vibration rattled her bones and the marrow inside. Blinding turmoil swamped every outside camera, but sensors told of staggering photon and neutrino fluxes as the star passed its limits of endurance … or perhaps ecstasy. In real time, the eruption took milliseconds, but Streaker’s duration- stretched field let the crew witness successive stages, in slow motion.
“Our magic coating’s impressive,” commented Suessi. “But these’re just photons. No way it can handle
