sickness will make it futile to work. So let me quickly try to sort among the terrible things I have lately experienced.
Strangest of all was Dr. Baskin’s voice, filled with such a deep resignation that she seemed more Jijoan than star god. Like one of our High Sages reading from the Sacred Scrolls — some passage foretelling inevitable tribulation. Somehow she made the impossible sound frighteningly plausible.
“You’ll get used to this sort of thing.…”
While the transfer fields close in around me — as nausea sends chills and frickles up and down my shivering skin — I can only hope that never happens.
She said it less than a midura ago, while gazing back at our handiwork.
An accomplishment none of us sought.
A disaster that came about simply because we were there.
• • •
In fact, those milling about the Plotting Room watched two views of the Fractal World, depicted on giant screens — both of them totally different, and both officially “true.”
Speaking as a Jijo savage — one who got his impressions of spaceflight by reading Earthling books from the pre-Contact Twenty-Second Century — I found things rather confusing. For instance, many of those texts assumed Faster-Than-Light travel was impossible. Or else, in space-romance yarns, authors simply took FTL for granted. Either way, you could deal with events in a simple way. They happened when they happened. Every cause was followed by its effects, and that was that.
But the screen to my left showed time going backward!
My autoscribe explained it to me, and I hope I get this right. It seems that each microsecond, as Streaker flickered back into normal space from C Level, photons would strike the ship’s aft-facing telescope, providing an image of the huge “criswell structure” that got smaller and dimmer as we fled. The pictures grew older, too, as we outraced successive waves of light. By the contorted logic of Einstein, we were going back in time.
I stared, fascinated, as the massive habitat seemed to get healthier before my eyes. Damaged zones reknitted. The awful wound grew back together. And glittering sparks told of myriad converging refugee ships, apparently coming home.
The spectacle provoked each of my friends differently.
Huck laughed aloud. Ur-ronn snuffled sadly, and Pincer-Tip kept repeating “gosh-osh-osh!”
I could not fault any of them for their reactions. The sequence was at once both poignantly lamentable and hilariously absurd.
Over to the right, Sara and Gillian watched a different set of images, caught by hyperwave each time we flickered into C Level. Here my impression was of queasy simultaneousness. This screen seemed to tell what was happening right now, back at the Fractal World. Time apparently moved forward, depicting the aftermath of our violent escape.
The effects flowing from each cause.
Of course things are really much more complicated. That picture kept wavering, for instance, like a draft version of some story whose author still wasn’t sure yet what to commit to paper.
Sara explained it to me this way—
“Photons haul slow truths, Alvin, while speedy hyperwaves carry probabilities.”
So this image represented just the most likely scenario unfolding behind us. However slim, there remained a chance it wasn’t true. Things might not be happening this way.
By God, Ifni, and the Egg, I still pray for that slim chance.
What we saw, through rippling static, was a harsh tale of rapid deterioration.
More than a single great laceration now maimed the great sphere. Its frail skin peeled and curled away from several newly slashed wounds. These fresh cracks spread, branching rapidly as we watched, each one spilling raw sunlight the color of urrish blood.
Hundreds of exterior spikes had already broken loose, tumbling end over end as more towering fragments toppled toward space with each passing moment. I could only guess how much worse things were inside the great shell. By now, had a million Jijo-sized windows shattered, exposing forests, steppes, and oceans to raw vacuum?
The hyperwave scene updated in fits and starts, sometimes appearing to backtrack or revise a former glimpse. From one moment to the next, some feature of devastation that had been here suddenly shifted over there. No single detail seemed fixed or firmly determined. But the trend remained the same.
I felt claws dig into my back as little Huphu and the tytlal, Mudfoot, clambered onto opposite shoulders, rubbing against me, beckoning a song to ward off the sour mood. Partly from numb shock, I responded with my family’s version of the Dirge for Unremarked Passing — an umble so ancient that it probably predates hoonish Uplift, going back to before our brains could grasp the full potential of despair.
Roused by that low resonance, Dr. Baskin turned and glanced at my vibrating throat sac. I am told that starfaring humans do not like hoons very much, but Sara Koolhan whispered in her ear and Gillian nodded approvingly.
Clearly, she understood.
A few duras later, after I finished, the little spinning Niss hologram popped into place, hovering in midair nearby.
“Kaa reports that we are about ten minutes away from t-point insertion.”
Dr. Baskin nodded.
“Are there any changes in our entourage?”
Her digital aide seemed to give a casual, unconcerned twist.
“We are followed by a crowd of diverse vessels,” the machine voice replied. “Some are robotic, a majority house oxygen-breathing refugees, bearing safe-passage emblems of the Retired Order of Life.
“Of course, all of them are keeping a wary distance from the Jophur battleship.”
The Niss paused for a moment or two, before continuing.
“Are you absolutely sure you want us to set course for Tanith?”
The tall woman shrugged.
“I’m still open to other suggestions. It seems we’ve tried everything else, and that includes hiding in the most obscure corner of the universe … no offense, Alvin.”
“None taken,” I replied, since her depiction of Jijo was doubtless true. “What is Tanith?”
The Niss Machine answered.
“It is a planet, where there exists a sector headquarters of the Library Institute. The one nearest Earth. To this site Captain Creideiki would have taken our discoveries in the first place, if we had not fallen into a cascade of violence and treachery. Lacking other options, Dr. Baskin believes we must now fall back on that original plan.”
“But didn’t you already try surrendering to the Institutes? At that place called Wakka—”
“Oakka. Indeed, two years ago we evaded pursuit by merciless battle fleets in order to make that attempt. But the madness sweeping our civilization preceded us there too. Sworn monks of the monastic, bureaucratic brotherhoods abjured their oaths of neutrality, choosing instead to revert to older loyalties. Motivated in part by ancient grudges — or else the huge bounties offered for Streaker’s capture by various fanatical alliances — they attempted to seize the Earthship for their blood and clan relations.”
“So the Institutes couldn’t be trusted then. What’s different this time?”
Dr. Baskin pointed to a smaller display screen.
“That is what’s different, Alvin.”
It showed the Jophur battleship — the central fact of our lives now. The huge oblate warship clung to us like a bad smell, following closely ever since their earlier assault failed to disable Streaker. Even with Kaa at the helm, the dolphin crew thought it infeasible to lose them. You’d have better luck shaking off your shadow on a sunny day.
“Our orders are clear. Under no circumstances can we let one faction snatch our data for themselves.”
“So instead we shall go charging straight into one of the busiest ports of Galaxy Two?”
The Niss sounded doubtful, if not outright snide. But Dr. Baskin showed no sign of reacting to its tone.
