what’s next. More than a solar mass of real matter … protons and heavy nuclei … leapin’ this way at a good share of lightspeed.”
Sara had learned enough practical physics to know what fist was about to smite them. Each atom of oxygen and carbon in my body passed through a convulsion like this one … cooked in a sun, then spewed into great clouds, before condensing to form planets, critters, people.
Now her own Stardust might return to the cosmic mixing bowl, perhaps joining the life cycle of a new world, yet unborn. It seemed a dry consolation. But she knew another.
Lark.
I got his message — just as that shell closed around the Polkjhy, spreading its lambent tendrils, preparing to catch waves of hyperreality, the very moment when galaxies part company forever.
By now, his ship must already be punching through, catching a great tide of recoiling metric. Outward bound on a great adventure.
Ironies made her smile. Among Nelo’s three children, Lark alone never dreamed of leaving his beloved Jijo. Yet now he would see more of the cosmos than even the great Transcendents! An avowed celibate, he and his mate could sire a whole nation of humanity in some far galaxy.
Good-bye, brother. May Ifni’s Boss keep an eye on you.
Have fun.
Their escape tunnel loomed, a cave filled with eerie, unnerving spirals. She looked up at Emerson. Moments ago, as a final hail of crushed Old Ones fell on the white dwarf’s tormented surface, he had barked a single word—
“Dross!”
— and smiled, as if watching a deadly foe collapse in failure.
Someone counted subjective seconds till the matter-wave would hit. “… fourteen … thirteen … twelve …”
Meanwhile, Akeakemai crooned. “Almost there …” The pilot’s flukes thrashed, urging Streaker along to the refuge. “Almossssst …”
The suspense was so awful, Sara’s mind reflexively fled to a domain where she had some control. Mathematics. To a problem she had discovered recently — while Gillian dickered with the Transcendents to take Polkjhy, and let Streaker go.
Amid a maze of transfinite tensors, Sara had found a renormalization quandary that simply would not go away. In fact, it seemed essential to describe the chaos waves they had seen. Yet, according to the Transcendents’ own models, it made no sense!
I thought I knew the whole truth when I foresaw the galactic breakup, arising from the expansion of the universe. But now I can tell — some added force is driving things faster than expected.
It only made sense if she made a peculiar conjecture.
Something is coming in. Something titanic.
Details were vague, but she knew one thing about the intruding presence.
It won’t be found in any gravity well. We must look elsewhere, in flat space. Far from the Embrace of—
Streaker shook suddenly. Vibrations leaped in force and volume, shuddering her spine. Someone screamed.
“Matter wave!”
For an instant, time seemed to flicker—
Then, across the span of an eyeblink, Sara was surrounded by leaping, yelling figures. Emerson squeezed her as if it were the end of the world. And briefly, she thought it was.
Then she knew Prity’s gleeful screech, the dolphins’ whistled raspberries of joy, and her lover’s gasping laughter. Amid the tumult and confusion, Sara noticed — all the ominous rumblings were gone. Vanished! Replaced by a happy roar of unleashed engines.
The view screens were back on, showing vistas of strangely distorted ylem — the walls of a weirdly beneficent tunnel, sweeping them along.
“We made it!” Suessi’s amplified voice exulted.
We … did?
Sara realized with some chagrin that her math-trance had kept her from witnessing the moment of triumph and salvation.
Well, damn me for a distracted nerd, she thought, and threw herself into kissing Emerson with all her might.
E Space
HARRY’S PROFESSION ALWAYS SEEMED A LONELY one.
Now I know why Wer’Q’quinn sent solitary scouts on missions to E Space. Too many minds can be dangerous here. And embarrassing.
During earlier trips to the kingdom of living ideas, he sometimes had entered a new territory only to find the local matrix crystallizing around symbols that leaked from his own mind. Since there was seldom anyone else around but herds of local memoids, it hardly mattered what the shapes revealed about his subconscious.
This time, the station carried five strong-willed personalities, from four different races. Harry worried from the moment his vessel emerged through a drifting purple haze, striding on long, spidery legs.
The initial fog shredded, as if blown aside by his passengers’ curious scrutiny. Dwer and Kaa and Kiwei Ha’aoulin pressed the windows rimming the control chamber. Dwer had been in E Space before. The others were transfixed by their first visit to this famous, mythical province.
You wouldn’t peer about so eagerly if you’d seen what I have.
Still Harry refrained from closing the louvered blinds. This would be the last chance of their lives to see E Space.
And maybe my last trip, as well.
Soon, the mist cleared to reveal a vast landscape of cubes, pyramids, tilted planes, and other more complex geometric forms. At least, that was how the objects began.
The first time he looked closely at one, it started melting, congealing, taking on new, rounded contours. Soon he saw protrusions on both sides that resembled … ears! Then a flared nose. Moments later, a mouth full of yellowed teeth grimaced back at him, both unappealing and familiar.
He checked instruments. The memic-monolith stood over thirty pseudokilometers away! Apparently, he had just triggered the manifestation of a gigantic sculpture representing his own head, towering higher than the largest structures on Earth. Glancing left and right, he saw that Synthian, dolphin, and human-shaped statuary were coagulating in all directions. Replications of Kaa, Dwer, and Kiwei soon stretched as far as the eye could see.
“Well, well,” commented the delighted Synthian trader, with both hands folded across her belly. “Should someone wake Rety, so she might also partake in this opportunity for megascale immortalization?”
Harry shook his head while a mammoth sculpture mimicked his expression of piqued irritation.
“The poor kid is sleeping off a concussion, for Ifni’s sake. Anyway, this sort of thing generally doesn’t last. Most of these gross memes just fade back into the ylem, soon as the stimulating host mind leaves.”
“But occasionally they don’t fade? There is a chance this will be permanent?”
Harry shrugged, wondering why Kiwei cared.
“I’ve seen things — crypto-shapes and frozen images from the distant past. Wer’Q’quinn says reified memestuff can sometimes get more rigid than anything made of true matter, like the ideas that become permanently fixed in some living brains. I guess there are concept-objects in E Space that may outlast all the protons an’ quarks, an’ the whole sidereal universe.”
Kiwei gazed at a range of hillocks and mountains, most of them wearing her own smug, rounded
