horizontally to the right. To his left, an even greater expanse of open sky spread beyond the half-plane. He had an impression of yet more linear boundaries, far higher still.
At least the station hadn’t changed much in physical appearance during passage. Metaphorical stilt legs still hung beneath the oblong globe, waving slowly in space. Something seemed to be wrong with vision, though. Harry rubbed his eyes but the problem wasn’t there. Somehow, all features beyond the windows appeared blurred. He couldn’t recognize the mountainous columns, for instance, though the grotesque things felt somehow familiar, filling his mind with musty impressions of childhood.
This place was unlike anything he’d experienced since personality profile machines on Tanith had selected him to be the first neo-chimpanzee trained as a Navigation Institute Observer. He knew better than to ask any of the onboard programs for help figuring it out.
“The region of E Space where you’ll be heading is seldom visited for good reasons,” Wer’Q’quinn had said before Harry set off this time. “Many of the traits that patrons instill in their clients, through Uplift — to help them become stable, rational, goal-oriented starfarers — turn into liabilities in a realm where all notions of predictability vanish.”
Recalling this, Harry shook his head.
“Well, I can’t say I wasn’t warned.”
He turned his head to the left and commanded—“Pilot mode.”
With a faint “pop” the familiar rotating P materialized nearby.
“At your service, Harvey.”
“That’s Harry,” he corrected for the umpteenth time, with a sigh. “I’m getting no blind spot agoraphobia, so you might as well open the shutters the rest of the way.”
The ship complied, and at once Harry winced at a juxtaposition of odd colors, even though they were muted by the strange haze.
“Thanks. Now please run a scan to see if this metaphorical space will allow us to fly.”
“Checking.”
There followed a long silence as Harry crossed his fingers. Flight made movement so much easier … especially when you were hanging by a rope over miles and miles of apparently empty space. He imagined he could hear the machine click away, nudging drive units imperceptibly to see which would work here, and which were useless or even dangerous. Finally, the rotating P spun to a conclusion.
“Some sort of flight appears to be possible, but I cannot pin it down. None of the allaphorical techniques in my file will do the trick. You will have to think of something original.”
Harry shrugged. That made up a large part of why he was here.
“Have you located our watch zone?”
“I sense a narrow tube of normal space not far away from us, in figurative units. Subjectively, you should observe a glowing Avenue ‘below’ … somewhere in the fourth quadrant.”
Harry went to the window indicated and looked down among the blurry, giant shapes.
“Ye-e-es, I think I see it.” He could barely discern a faint, shining line. “We better try to get closer.”
“Assuming you find a way.”
“Aye,” he agreed. “There’s the rub.”
Harry anxiously ran his fingers through his chin fur and scalp, wishing it hadn’t been so long since he had had a good grooming. Back on Horst, where he and his distracted parents were the only chimps on a whole planet, it had always seemed simply a matter of personal hygiene to keep the insidious dust out of your pelt. Only during school days on Earth did Harry learn what a sybaritic art form it could be, to have one or more others stroke, comb, brush, and tease your hair, tugging the roots just right, till the follicles almost screamed with pleasure. Looking back on those days, the warm physical contact of mutual grooming was the one thing he missed most about his own kind.
Too bad his partners also talked so much — from banter and gossip to inquiries about every personal foible — the sorts of things Harry could never be comfortable discussing. His awkward lack of openness struck Earth chims as aloof, even condescending, while Harry found them overly prying. Invariably, he remained an outsider, never achieving full entry or intimacy in the college grooming circles.
Harry knew he was procrastinating, but he felt uncertain where to start.
“So you are concerned about rumors of unusual detours in hyperspace and disturbed transfer points,” Wer’Q’quinn had replied, after Harry returned from his last mission. “These phenomena are well outside your jurisdiction. But now it seems that a confluence of factors makes it necessary to confide in you.”
“Let me guess,” Harry had asked. “The disturbances are so bad, they can be observed even in E Space.”
“Your hunch is astute,” Wer’Q’quinn agreed, snapping a GalTwo approval-punctuation with his beak. “I can see your recruitment was not a forlorn gamble, but rather evidence of my own deep insight, proving my value to the Institute and my worthiness of rapid promotion
“Your next patrol begins in one-point-three standard days.”
After allowing for briefings, that left just enough time for a bath and a good sleep in his barracks cubby. He had hoped for a longer rest. There was a foruni masseuse in the bazaar whose instinctive understanding of other species’ musculoskeletal systems made the agile creature expert at loosening the kinks in Harry’s spine.… Alas.
While nervously combing his chin, a frayed fingernail yanked some gnarly hair, making Harry twinge. He held the strand up for a close look.
It’s a good thing chimp hair doesn’t keep growing longer, like on the faces of human males who don’t depilate. Back on Horst, he had seen Probsher shamen whose patriarchal beards lengthened over the years till they stretched nearly all the way …
Harry blinked, realizing what his subconscious was driving at. He turned quickly and pressed against the rearmost window, peering at the blue cable — which dangled the station over an immeasurable drop. Stretching upward, it seemed almost to disappear, aiming toward one edge of that far-off horizontal plane.
“Pilot,” he said. “I want to see if we can play out the pseudolength of our reality anchor. Can we unreel any more?”
“It is already at maximum extension,” came the reply.
Harry cursed. It had seemed a good idea.…
“Wait a minute,” he muttered. “Don’t be too literal. Try it another way. All right, so maybe we can’t feed the anchor out any more. But tickle the damn thing anyway, will you? Maybe we can change its length some other way. By stretching it, maybe. Or causing it to grow.”
He knew he was being vague. Flexible thought sometimes meant working your way around an idea’s blurry outlines.
“I will try, and let you know,” the computer replied.
There followed a series of faint humming sounds, then a sudden jar as the platform dropped, weightless again just long enough to make fear erupt in his chest. It jerked short abruptly, sending Harry staggering against his command couch, feeling his stomach keep falling.
“H-h-h-” He tried again. “W-Well?”
“The rules of topology here seem to allow a wide range of flexible conformal mappings. Practically speaking, this means the cable can stretch, adjusting to any length, at almost any speed desired. Congratulations, Commander Harms. You seem to have found a way to maneuver in the subjective vertical.”
Harry ignored the suspicion of sarcasm, which might be imagined. At least this trap had proved easier to escape than the banana peel mesa.
Still, I’ll only feel safe after learning the metaphorical rules that apply here. There were reasons why patrol craft seldom entered this region. Many that tried never returned.
“Start lowering us then,” he commanded. “Gently.”
The flat half-plane overhead receded as the “ground” approached at a steady clip, reminding him of something — either the inexorable nature of destiny … or else an oncoming train.
While at Kazzkark, there had been time to enquire about the Siege of Earth.
He shouldn’t be interested. Having dedicated his life to the monastic Navigation Institute, Harry was supposed to forsake all prior loyalties of kinship or patron line. But few sophonts could ever transfer natural
