Retired Order is, in fact, only a vestibule for oxy-races that can no longer bear the rigors of flat spacetime. Though they huddle like hermits in a gravity well, trying to perfect their racial souls, that doesn’t necessarily make them tolerant or wise. After our travails with the Old Ones, I was willing to head back into the Five Galaxies, and risk contact with oxy-civilization once more.
Only now we find ourselves, against all logic or reason, adopted willy-nilly into the Transcendent Order!
At least that is what the symbol on our prow seems to mean. Somebody, or something, planted a single wide chevron there — perhaps as a very bad joke.
An emblem signifying high spiritual attainments, plus readiness to abandon all temporal concerns.
In effect, it says — Hey! Look at us. We’re all set for godhood!
Sheesh, what a situation. I feel like a street kid with a stolen tuxedo and fake ID, who somehow managed to bluff her way into the Nobel Prize ceremony, and now finds herself sitting next to the podium, scheduled to give a speech!
All this street kid wants right now is a chance to slink away without being noticed, before the grown-ups catch on and really give us hell.
Getting away won’t be easy. A kind of momentum field rings this huge flotilla, carrying us along helplessly amid the horde of giant transports. Moreover, our navigation systems are haywire. We’ve no idea where we are, let alone where to go.
At one point, during an especially smooth transit through B Space, Akeakemai reported that the surrounding field seemed weak. I had him nudge Streaker to the edge of the swarm, hoping to slip out during one of the cyclical jumps back to normal space. But as we prepared to break free, Olelo thrashed her flukes with a whistle warning. We were being scanned by hostile beams, cast from an enemy ship!
Soon we spied the Jophur dreadnought, working its way through the throng of giant arks.
Once, the battlewagon had seemed omnipotent. Now it looked small compared to the surrounding behemoths. Stains marred its once shiny hull in places where the skin seemed to throb, like infected blisters. Still, the crew of egotistic sap-rings had great power and determination to pursue Streaker. They would pounce whenever we left the convoy’s safety.
We fell back amid the titans, biding our time.
Perhaps whatever ills afflict the Jophur will eventually overcome them.
The universe may produce another miracle.
Who knows?
Perhaps we will transcend.
The Niss Machine plumbed our stolen Library unit, researching data about the strange layer covering Streaker’s hull, both shielding her and weighing her down. It began as a thick coat of star soot, amassed in the atmosphere of a smoldering carbon sun. Later, some mysterious faction transformed the blanket — beneficently, or with some arcane goal in mind — creating a shimmering jacket that saved our lives.
“It is a form of armor,” the Niss explained. “Offering tremendous protection against directed energy weapons — as we learned dramatically at the Fractal World. Trawling for records, I found that the method was used extensively on warships until approximately two hundred million years ago, when a fatal flaw was discovered, rendering it obsolete.”
“What flaw?” I asked. Naturally, something so convenient must have an Achilles’ heel.
The Niss explained. “Much of the soot pouring out from Izmunuti consists of molecules you Earthlings call fullerenes — or buckeyballs — open mesh spheres and tubes consisting of sixty or more carbon atoms. These have industrial uses, especially if gathered into sheets or interlocking chains. That’s why robot harvesters visited Izmunuti, acquiring material in their futile effort to repair the Fractal World.”
“We already knew the stuff was strong,” I answered. “Since Suessi had such trouble removing it. But that’s a far cry from resisting Class-Eight disintegrator beams!”
The Niss explained that it took special reprocessing to convert that raw deposit into another form. One with just the right guest atoms held captive inside buckeyball enclosures. “Atoms of strange matter,” the disembodied voice said.
I confess I did not understand at first. It seems that certain elements can be made from ingredients other than the normal run of protons, electrons, and neutrons, utilizing unusual varieties of quarks. Such atoms must be kept caged, or they tend to vanish from normal space, hopping off to D Level, or another subcontinuum where they feel more at home.
It felt weird to picture Streaker sheathed in such stuff.
Then again, I guess it would be weirder to be dead.
I well remember expecting to be vaporized when those fierce beams struck. But our surprising new armor absorbed all that energy, shunting every erg to another reality plane, dissipating it harmlessly.
“Sounds like a neat trick,” I commented.
“Indeed, Dr. Baskin,” the Niss answered, with a sardonic edge. “But a few hundred aeons ago, someone discovered how to render this fine defense useless by reversing the flow. By turning this wondrous material into a huge antenna, absorbing energy from hyperspace — in effect cooking the crew and everything else inside.”
So, that was why no one in the Five Galaxies had been stupid or desperate enough to use this kind of armor for a long time. It worked at first, because the Jophur were taken by surprise. But they have their own Branch Library aboard the Polkjhy, every bit as good as ours. By now they must surely have caught on, and prepared for our next encounter.
Somehow, we’ve got to get rid of this stuff!
I assigned Hannes Suessi to puzzle over that problem. Meanwhile, my plate is full of other troubles.
For one thing, the glavers howl, night and day.
Before leaving aboard Kaa’s little boat, Alvin Hauph-Wayuo instructed us in the care and feeding of those devolved descendants of mighty starfarers. There wasn’t much to it. Feed them simulated grubs and clean their pen every few days. The glavers seemed stolid and easy to please. But no sooner did Kaa depart, taking Alvin and his friends to safety, than the filthy little creatures started moaning and carrying on.
I asked our only remaining Jijo native what it could mean, but the behavior mystifies Sara. So I can only guess it has something to do with the changing composition of the huge migration fleet surrounding us.
As we move across vast reaches of space and hyperspace, more globulelike vessels keep joining the throng, jostling side by side with jagged-edged arks of the former Retired Order. Zang … plus other varieties of hydrogen breathers … now make up roughly two-thirds of the armada, though their vessels are generally much smaller than the monumental oxy-craft.
Our glavers must be sensing the Zang presence somehow. It makes them agitated — though whether from fear or anticipation is hard to tell.
They aren’t the only ones feeling edgy. After leaving so many crewmates behind on Jijo, Streaker seems haunted and void … a bit like a wraith ship. Mystery surrounds us, and dangerous uncertainty lies ahead.
Yet, I can say without reservation that the dolphins left aboard this battered ship are performing their tasks admirably, with complete professionalism and dedication. After three years of winnowing, we are down to the last of Creideiki’s selected crew. Those who seem immune to reversion or mental intimidation. Tested in a crucible of relentless hardship, they are pearls of Uplift — treasures of their kind. Every one would get unlimited breeding privileges, if we made it home.
Which doubles the irony, of course.
Not one of the fins believes we’ll ever see Earth again.
As for Sara, she spends much of her time with the silent little chimp, Prity, using a small computer to draw hyperdimensional charts and complex spacetime matrices.
When I asked the Niss Machine to explain what they were doing, that sarcastic entity dismissed their project, calling it—“Superstitious nonsense!”
In other words, Sara still hopes to complete the work of her teacher, combining ancient Earthling mathematical physics with the computational models of Galactic science, trying to make sense out of the strange,
