No matter. Emerson knew his brain was no longer equipped to solve complex problems. If all he accomplished was to draw the attention of the Zang — bringing their protective wrath down on the trespassers — that might be enough.
The wounded Fractal World turned before him as the airlock closed and he gently nudged the boat’s thrusters, moving toward the interlopers. Waves of aversion increased in strength as he drew nearer. Pain and pleasure, disgust and fascination — these and many other sensations washed over him, rewarding Emerson each time his eyes or thoughts drifted away from the activity ahead, and punishing every effort to concentrate. Without the experience on Jijo, he might never have overcome such combination. But Emerson had learned a new habit. To seek discomfort — like a child pressing a loose tooth, attracted by each throbbing twinge, teasing and probing till the old made way for the new.
The little rewq helped. Sensing his need, it kept ripple-shifting through various color spectra, conveying images that wavered elusively, but eventually resolved into discernible shapes.
Machines.
He realized at least a dozen spindly forms had already latched themselves to Streaker’s nose. They clambered like scavenging insects probing the eye of some helpless beast. If the goal were simple destruction, it would all be over by now. Their aim must be more complex than that.
He recognized the hot light of a cutting torch. Either they were trying to burn their way into the ship, to board her, or …
Or else their effort was aimed at cutting something off. A sample, perhaps. But of what?
Emerson pictured Streaker in his mind, a detailed image, unimpaired by his aphasia with sentences. The memory was wordless, almost tactile, from years spent loving this old salvaged hull in ways a man could never love a woman, supervising so many aspects of its transformation into something unique — the pride of Earthclan.
All at once he recalled what lay beneath that bitter, flickering glare.
A symbol. An emblem supposedly carried by all ships flown by oxygen-breathing, starfaring races.
The rayed spiral crest of the Civilization of Five Galaxies.
Incongruity stunned Emerson. At first he wondered if this might be yet another trick, deceiving his perceptions once again, making him think that was their target. All this seemed an awful lot of effort to expend simply defacing Streaker of its bow insignia.
Anyway, the machines were clearly having more trouble than they had bargained for. The dense carbon coat burdening the Earthship was obdurate and resistant to every attempt by Hannes Suessi and the dolphin engineers to remove it. As he drew closer, Emerson saw that only a little progress had been made, exposing a small patch of Streaker’s original hull.
He almost laughed at the aliens’ discomfiture.
Then he looked beyond, and saw.
More machines. Many of them, swarming darkly, converging from the starry background. Almost certainly reinforcements, coming to make short work of the job.
It was time to act. Emerson reached for his weapons console, choosing the least potent rays, lest he damage Streaker by mistake.
Well, here goes nothing, he thought.
I sure hope this works.
So intent was he on aiming — carefully adjusting the crosshairs — that he never noticed what had just happened within his crippled mind.
His use of two clear sentences, one right after another, smoothly expressing both wryness and hope.
Gillian
REALIZATION CRACKLED THROUGH HER consciousness like pealing thunder. She cried out a shrill command.
“Security alert!”
Klaxons echoed down the Earthship’s half-deserted halls, sending dolphins scurrying to combat stations. The ambient engine hum changed pitch as Suessi’s crew increased power to shields and weapon systems.
“Niss, report!”
The spinning hologram spoke quickly, with none of its accustomed snideness.
“We seem to have been suborned by a combined psi-cyber stealth attack, with an aim toward distracting Streaker’s defenders, both organic and machine. The fact that you and I roused simultaneously suggests the emitter source has been abruptly destroyed or degraded. Preliminary indications suggest they used a sophisticated logic entity whose memic-level was at least class—”
“What’s our current danger?” Gillian cut in.
“I detect no immediate targeting impulses or macroweaponry aimed at this vessel. But several nearby automatons show latent power levels that could turn dangerous at close range.
“So far, it seems they are content to fire away at each other.”
She stepped toward the display showing a camera view of the ship’s bow … exactly opposite from the region she had been inspecting, suspicious of some unknown menace. Her heart pounded as she saw how close it had been. All might have been lost, if the intruders had not fallen to fighting among themselves. Sharp flashes surged and flared as spiderlike shapes lashed at each other, casting battle shadows uncomfortably close.
“Where the hell are the Zang?” Gillian murmured under her breath.
Scanning the area of space where the hydrogen entities had been, her instruments showed no sign of the big globule-vessel … only a disturbing, elongated cloud of drifting ions. Perhaps it’s only backwash from their engines, when they departed on an errand. They may be back at any moment.
Her mind quailed from the other possibility — that some weapon had removed the Zang from the local equation. A weapon powerful enough to leave barely a smudge of disturbed atoms in its wake.
Either way, the psi attack kept us from noticing our guardians were gone. Someone went to a lot of trouble making sure we’d sit still for a while.
She felt Suessi’s engines dig in as Kaa started backing away from the combat maelstrom. But the pilot only made a little headway before the swarm of conflict followed, as if tethered to Streaker by invisible cords.
“Do you have any idea who—”
“None of the combatants has identified itself.”
“Then what were they trying—”
“It appears that some group was attempting to steal Streaker’s WOM archive.”
“Streaker’s …?”
Her question froze in her throat. Gillian’s mouth closed sharply as she understood.
By law, each Galactic vessel was supposed to carry a “watcher” … a device that would passively chronicle the major features of its travels. Some units were sophisticated. Others — the sort that a poor clan could afford — were crude mineral devices, capable only of recording the ship’s rough location and identifying any ships nearby. But all of them fell into the category of “write-only memories” … designed to store knowledge but never be read. At least never within the present epoch. Eventually, each was supposed to find its way into the infinite archives of the Great Library, to be studied at leisure by denizens of some later age, when the passions of this one had faded to mere historical interest.
At once, the strategem behind this attack made sense to her.
“The Old Ones … they must have found the codes, enabling them to read our WOM. It would tell them where Streaker’s been!”
“Enabling them to backtrack our voyage and find the Shallow Cluster.”
Gillian’s reaction was strangely mixed. On the one hand, she felt angry and violated by these beings who would meddle in her mind and rob Streaker of its treasure. Information her crew had guarded for so long, and Tom and Creideiki paid for with their lives.
