a strange sensation not unlike pity. They were, after all, not the eldest or greatest of life’s children, only the ones who stayed behind when everyone else dived into one-way singularities, seeking better realms beyond.
Cowards, she had called them in a moment of pique. Not a fair characterization, she admitted now, though it held a grain of truth.
They seem trapped by the Embrace of Tides. And yet they are unwilling to follow its pull all the way — whether to a higher place or to some universal recycling system. So they sit instead, thinking and planning while time wafts gently by. Except when it seems convenient to sacrifice myriad lesser life-forms in order to accomplish some goal.
All told, they weren’t company she’d look forward to inviting over for dinner.
As the haze of battle cleared, Gillian ordered Streaker’s cracked and fused blast armor sloughed away from the viewing ports for the first time since Kithrup, allowing her to stand before the glittering Milky Way — a spray of constellations so familiar, they would have reassured even some cavewoman ancestor whose life was spent in hardship, grubbing for roots, a mere ten thousand years ago.
Lightspeed is slow, but inexorable, she thought, gazing at the galaxy’s bright lanes. During the next few millennia, this starscape will flare with extravagance. Supernovas, blaring across heaven, carrying the first part of the transcendents’ message.
A simple message, but an important one that even she could understand.
Greetings. Here we are. Is anybody out there?
Gillian noticed Emerson — whose duties down in Engineering were finished at last — hurry in to embrace Sara. The couple stood nearby with their silent chimp companion, regarding the same great vista, sharing private thoughts.
Of course the young woman from Jijo was another gift to Earth, a treasure who, using only mathematical insight, had independently predicted the Great Rupture. That alone was an impressive accomplishment — but now Sara was making further, startling claims, suggesting that the Rupture was only a symptom. Not of the expanding universe, as Earth’s savants claimed, but of something more complex and strange. Something “coming in from outside our contextual framework” … whatever that meant.
Sara thought the mystery might revolve somehow around a race called the “Buyur.”
Gillian shook her head. At last, there would be others to pass such problems on to. Skilled professionals from all across Earth — and dozens of friendly races — who could deal with arcane matters while she went back to being a simple doctor, a healer, the role she had trained for.
I’ll never order anyone else to their death. Not ever again. No matter what they say we accomplished during this wretched mission, I won’t accept another command.
From now on, I’ll work to save individual lives. The cosmos can be somebody else’s quandary.
In fact, she had already chosen her first patient.
As soon as the spymasters let me go, I’ll focus on helping Emerson. Try to help restore some of his power of speech. We can hope researchers on Earth have already made useful breakthroughs, but if not, I’ll bend heaven in half to find it.
Was guilt driving this ambition? To repair some of the damage her commands had caused? Or was it to have the pleasure of watching the two of them — Sara and Emerson — speak to each other’s minds, as well as their hearts.
Watching them hold hands, Gillian relaxed a bit.
The heart can be enough. It can sustain.
Akeakemai called.
“We’re back in two-way holo mode, Dr. Baskin. And there’s a transmission coming in.”
The big visual display erupted with light, showing the control room of an approaching warship. It had the blunt outlines of Thennanin manufacture. The crew was mostly human, but the face in front of the camera had the sharp cheekbones and angular beauty of a male Tymbrimi, with empathy-sensitive tendrils wafting near the ears.
“… that we must find your claims improbable. Please provide evidence that you are, indeed, TAASF Streaker. I repeat …”
It seemed a simple enough request to satisfy. She had spent hard, bitter years striving for this very moment of restored contact. And yet, Gillian felt reluctant to comply.
After a moment’s reflection, she knew why.
To any human, there are two realms—“Earth” and “out there.”
As long as I’m in space, I can imagine that I’m somehow near Tom. We were both lost. Both hounded across the Five Galaxies. Despite the megaparsecs dividing us, it only seemed a matter of time till we bumped into each other.
But once I set foot on Old Terra, I’ll be home. Earth will surround me, and outer space will become a separate place. A vast wilderness where he’s gone missing — along with Creideiki and Hikahi and the others — wandering amid awful dangers, while I can only try to stay busy and not feel alone.
Gillian tried to answer the Tymbrimi. She wished someone else would, just to take this final burden off her shoulders. The ordeal of ending bittersweet exile.
She was rescued by an unlikely voice. Emerson D’Anite, who faced the hologram with a smile, and expressed himself in operatic song.
Destiny
THE ZANG COMPONENTS WERE BETTER prepared to take all this in their philosophical stride. So were the machine entities who helped make up the macrocommunity called Mother.
In both hydro-and silicon-based civilizations, there existed a widespread conviction that so-called “reality” was a fiction. Everything from the biggest galaxy down to the smallest microbe was simply part of a grand simulation. A “model” being run in order to solve some great problem or puzzle.
Of course, it was only natural for both of these life orders to reach the same conclusion. The Zang had evolved to perform analog emulations organically, within their own bodies. Machines did it with prim software
