A PANORAMA OF DEATH HAD HER RIVETED.
“I will grant you one thing,” remarked the voice from the spinning hologram. “Wherever you Terrans travel in the universe, you do tend to leave a mark.”
She had no reply for the Niss Machine. Gillian hoped if she kept silent it would go away.
But the tornado of whirling lines moved closer instead. Sidling by her left ear, it spoke her native tongue in soft, natural tones.
“Two million centuries.
“That is how long the Library says this particular structure existed, calmly orbiting the galaxy, a refuge of peace.
“Then, one day, some wolflings came by for a brief visit.”
Gillian slashed, but her hand swept through the hologram without resistance. The abstract pattern kept spinning. Its mesh of fine lines cast ghost-flickers across her face. Of course the damned Niss was right. Streaker carried a jinx, bringing ruin everywhere it went. Only here, the consequent misfortune surpassed any scale she could grasp with heart or mind.
Instruments highlighted grim symptoms of devastation as, escorted by the huge Zang globule-vessel, Streaker entered a ragged gap in the tremendous fractal shell, bathed in reddish sunlight that was escaping confinement for the first time in aeons. A storm of atoms and particles blew out through the same hole, so dense that at one point the word “vacuum” lost pertinence. A noticeable pressure appeared on instruments, faintly resisting the Earthship’s progress.
There was larger debris. Chunks that Kaa moved nimbly to avoid. Some were great wedges, revealing hexagonal, comblike rooms the size of asteroids. Tumbling outward, each evaporating clump wore shimmering tails of dust and ions. Thousands of these artificial comets lit up the broad aperture … a cavity so wide that Earth would take a month in its orbit to cross it.
“Albeit reluctantly, Dr. Baskin,” the Niss concluded, “I admit I am impressed. Congratulations.”
Nearby, a throng of walker-equipped neo-dolphins jostled among the passengers. The Plotting Room grew crowded as off-duty personnel came to gawk at the spectacle. But a gap surrounded Gillian, like a moat none dared cross, except the sardonic Tymbrimi machine-mind. No one exulted. This place had caused the crew great pain, but the havoc was too immense, too overwhelming for gloating.
Nor would it be fair. Just a few factions of Old Ones had been responsible for the betrayal that sent Streaker fleeing almost a year ago, while some other blocs actually helped the Earthship get away. Anyway, should hundreds of billions die because of the greed of a few?
Don’t get carried away, she thought. There’s no proof this disaster has anything to do with us. It could be something completely unrelated.
But that seemed unlikely. Sheer coincidence beggared any other explanation.
She recalled how their previous visit ended — with a final backward glimpse during Streaker’s narrow getaway.
We saw violence erupting behind us, even as someone opened up a door, letting us make a break for the transfer point. I saw a couple of nearby fractal branches get damaged, and some windows broken, while sects clashed over Emerson’s little scoutship, seizing and preventing him from following us.
Gillian’s friend paid dearly for his brave rearguard action, suffering unimaginably cruel torture and abuse before somehow, mysteriously, being transported to Jijo right after Streaker. The speechless former engineer was never able to explain.
Amid the guilt of abandoning him, and our hurry fleeing this place, who would have guessed the Old Ones would keep on fighting after we escaped! Why? What purpose could an apocalypse serve, after we took our cursed cargo away?
But a horrible tribulation must have followed. Ahead lay ample testimony. Plasma streamers and red-tinged dust plumes … along with countless long black shadows trailing from bits of dissolving rubble, some larger than a moon, but all of them as frail as snowflakes.
She pondered the ultimate cause — the treasures Streaker carried, like Herbie, the ancient cadaver that had taken over her study, like Poe’s raven, or Banquo’s ghost. Prizes lusted after by fanatical powers hoping to seize and monopolize their secrets, winning some advantage in a Time of Changes.
It was imperative to prevent that. The Terragens Council had made their orders clear — first to Creideiki and later to Gillian when she assumed command. Streaker’s discoveries must be shared openly, according to ancient Galactic custom, or not at all. Mighty races and alliances might violate that basic rule and think they could get away with it. But frail Earthclan dared not show even a hint of partiality.
In an age of rising chaos, sometimes the weak and friendless have no sanctuary but the law. Humans and their clients had to keep faith with Galactic institutions. To do less would be to risk losing everything. Unfortunately, Gillian’s quest for a neutral power to take over the relics had proved worse than futile.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. After the Great Institutes proved untrustworthy at Oakka, Gillian had what seemed (at the time) an inspired notion.
Why not pass the buck even higher?
She decided to bring the relics here, to a citadel for species that had “moved on” from the mundane, petty obsessions plaguing the Civilization of Five Galaxies. At one of the legendary Fractal Worlds, harassed Earthlings might at last find dispassionate advice and mediation from beings who were revered enough to intercede, halting the spasmodic madness of younger clans. These respected elder sapients would assume responsibility for the burden, relieve Streaker of its toxic treasures, and force the bickering oxygen alliances to share.
Then, at long last, the weary dolphins could go home.
And I could go searching for Tom, wherever he and Creideiki and the others have drifted since Kithrup.
That had been the theory, the hope.
Too bad the Old Ones turned out to be as fretful, desperate, and duplicitous as their younger cousins who still dwelled amid blaring hot stars.
It’s as if we were a plague ship, carrying something contagious from the distant past. Wherever we go, rational beings start acting like they’ve gone mad.
Monitors focused on the nearest edge of the great wound, revealing a shell several thousand miles thick, not counting the multipronged spikes jutting both in and out. Dense haze partly shrouded the continuing tragedy but could not mask a sparkle of persistent convulsions. Structural segments buckled and tore as Gillian watched. Fractal branches broke and went spinning through space, colliding with others, setting off further chain reactions.
The massive spikes on the sunward side glittered in a way that reminded Gillian.
Windows. When we first came here … after they opened a slim door to let us through … the first thing I noticed was how much of the inner face seemed to be made of glass. And beneath those immense panes—
She closed her eyes, recalling how the telescope had revealed each branchlet was its own separate world. Some greenhouses — larger than her home state of Minnesota — sheltered riotous jungles. Others shone with city lights, or floating palaces adrift on rippled seas, or plains of sparkling sand. It would take many millions of Earths, unrolled flat, to cover so much surface, and that would not begin to express the diversity. She might have spent years magnifying one habitat after another and still routinely found something distinct or new.
It was the most majestic and beautiful place Gillian had ever seen.
Now it was unraveling before her eyes.
That haze, she realized, aghast. It isn’t just structural debris and subliming gas. It’s people. Their furniture and pets and clothes and houseplants and family albums … Or whatever comprised the equivalent for Old Ones. What human could guess the wishes, interests, and obsessions that became important to species who long ago had seen everything there was to see in the Five Galaxies, and had done everything there was to do?
However abstruse or obscure those hopes, they were dissolving fast. Just during Streaker’s brief passage through the gaping wound, more sapient beings must have died than the whole population of Earth.
Her mind quailed from that thought. To personalize the tragedy invited madness.
“Is anyone trying to stop this?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
