The hallway beyond curved up and away in both directions, like a segment of tortured spacetime, rising toward vertical in the distance. The sight always gave Sara qualms. Nevertheless, this time she ran.
Gillian
FOR SOME REASON, THE TUMULTUOUS RED STAR reminded her of Venus.
Naturally, that brought Tom to mind.
Everything reminded Gillian of Tom. After two years, his absence was still a wound that left her reflexively turning for his warmth each night. By day, she kept expecting his strong voice, offering to help take on the worries. All the damned decisions.
Isn’t it just like a hero, to die saving the world?
A little voice pointed out — that’s what heroes are for.
Yes, she answered. But the world goes on, doesn’t it? And it keeps needing to be saved.
Ever since the universe sundered them apart at Kithrup, Gillian told herself that Tom couldn’t be dead. I’d know it, she would think repeatedly, convincing herself by force of will. Across galaxies and megaparsecs, I could tell if he were gone. Tom must be out there somewhere still, with Creideiki and Hikahi and the others we were forced to leave behind.
He’ll find a way to get safely home … or else back to me.
That certainty helped Gillian bear her burdens during Streaker’s first distraught fugitive year … until the last few months of steady crisis finally cracked her assurance.
Then, without realizing when it happened, she began thinking of Tom in the past tense.
He loved Venus, she pondered, watching the raging solar vista beyond Streaker’s hull. Of course Izmunuti’s atmosphere was bright, while Earth’s sister world was dim beneath perpetual acid clouds. Yet, both locales shared essential traits. Harsh warmth, unforgiving storms, and scant moisture.
Both provoked extremes of hope and despair.
She could see him now, spreading both spacesuited arms to encompass the panorama below Aphrodite Pinnacle, gesturing toward stark lowlands. Lightning danced about a phalanx of titanic structures that stretched to a warped horizon — one shadowy behemoth after another — vast new devices freshly engaged in the labor of changing Venus. Transforming hell, one step at a time.
“Isn’t it tremendous?” Tom asked. “This endeavor proves that our species is capable of thinking long thoughts.”
Even with borrowed Galactic technology, the task would take more time to complete than humans had known writing or agriculture. Ten thousand years must pass before seas rolled across the sere plains. It was a bold project for poor wolflings to engage in, especially when Sa’ent and Kloornap bookies gave Earthclan slim odds of surviving more than another century or two.
“We have to show the universe that we trust ourselves,” Tom added. “Or else who will believe in us?”
His words sounded fine. Noble and grand. At the time, Tom almost convinced Gillian.
Only things changed.
Half a year ago, during Streaker’s brief, terrified refuge at the Fractal World, Gillian had managed to pick up rumors about the Siege of Terra, taking place in faraway Galaxy Two. Apparently, the Sa’ent touts were now taking bets on human extinction in mere years or jaduras, not centuries.
In retrospect, the Venus terraforming project seemed moot.
We’d have been better off as farmers, Tom and I. Or teaching school. Or helping settle Calafia. We should never have listened to Jake Demwa and Creideiki. This mission has brought ruin on everyone it touched.
Including the poor colonists of Jijo — six exile races who deserved a chance to find their own strange destinies undisturbed. In seeking shelter on that forbidden world, Streaker only brought disaster to Jijo’s tribes.
There seemed one way to redress the harm.
Can we lure the Jophur after us into the new transfer point? Kaa must pilot a convincing trajectory, as if he can sense a perfect thread to latch on to. A miracle path leading toward safety. If we do it right, the big ugly saprings will have to follow! They’ll have no choice.
Saving Jijo justified that option, since there seemed no way to bring Streaker’s cargo safely home to Earth. Another reason tasted acrid, vengeful.
At least we’ll take enemies with us.
Some say that impending death clarifies the mind, but in Gillian it only stirred regret.
I hope Creideiki and Tom aren’t too disappointed in me, she pondered at the door of the conference room.
I did my best.
The ship’s council had changed since Gillian reluctantly took over the captain’s position, where Creideiki presided in happier times. At the far end of the long table, Streaker’s last surviving dolphin officer, Lieutenant Tsh’t, expertly piloted a six-legged walker apparatus carrying her sleek gray form into the same niche where Takkata-Jim once nestled his great bulk, before he was killed near Kithrup.
Tsh’t greeted the human chief engineer, though Hannes Suessi’s own mother wouldn’t recognize him now, with so many body parts replaced by cyborg components, and a silver dome where his head used to be. Much of that gleaming surface was now covered with pre-Contact-era motorcycle decals — an irreverent touch that endeared Hannes to the crew. At least someone had kept a sense of humor through years of relentless crisis.
Gillian felt acutely the absence of one council member, her friend and fellow physician Makanee, who remained behind on Jijo with several dozen dolphins — those suffering from devolution fever or who were unessential for the breakout attempt. In effect, dolphins had established a seventh illegal colony on that fallow world — another secret worth defending with the lives of those left aboard.
Secrets. There are other enigmas, less easily protected.
Gillian’s thoughts slipped past the salvaged objects in her office, some of them worth a stellar ransom. Mere hints at their existence had already knocked civilization teetering across five galaxies.
Foremost was a corpse, nicknamed Herbie. An alien cadaver so ancient, its puzzling smile might be from a joke told a billion years ago. Other relics were scarcely less provocative — or cursed. Trouble had followed Streaker ever since its crew began picking up objects they didn’t understand.
“Articles of Destiny.” That was how one of the Old Ones referred to Streaker’s cargo of mysteries when they visited the Fractal World.
Maybe this will be fitting. All those irksome treasures will get smashed down to a proton’s width after we dive into the new transfer point.
At least then she’d get the satisfaction of seeing Herbie’s expression finally change, at the last instant, when the bounds of reality closed in rapidly from ten dimensions.
A holo of Izmunuti took up one wall of the conference room, an expanse of swirling clouds wider than Earth’s orbit, surging and shifting as the Niss Machine relayed the latest intelligence in Tymbrimi-accented Galactic Seven.
“The Jophur battleship has jettisoned the last of the decoy vessels it seized, letting them drift through space. Freed of their momentum-burden, the Polkjhy is more agile, turning its frightful bulk toward the new transfer point. They aim to reach the reborn nexus before Streaker does.”
“Can they beat us there?” Gillian asked in Anglic.
The Niss hologram whirled thoughtfully. “It seems unlikely, unless they use some risky type of probability drive, which is not typical of Jophur. They wasted a lot of time dashing ahead toward the older t-point. Our tight swing past Izmunuti should help Streaker to arrive first … for whatever good it will do.”
Gillian ignored the machine’s sarcasm. Most of the crew seemed in accord with her decision. Lacking other
