old world. And if it turns out that the core burst can't be survived—'
'Then I'll go back to Earth by maser, and put the evidence before the whole Coalition in person. Then I'll come through. Not before.'
Paolo seemed bemused, but he inclined his head in a gesture of acceptance. Orlando recalled the time when mind grafts had been fashionable, and they'd had to formally compose little packages of emotion to pass to each other; what a nightmare that had been. He embraced his son, briefly, then watched him walk away.
The first of his bridger clones appeared beside him—actually inhabiting the realistic 5-scape, but casting a shadow here, just as Orlando's own 3-body was rendered visible as a thickened version in the 5-scape.
The clone said, 'They'll find the Transmuters, and come back with the physics of Lacerta and the core burst. People will be persuaded. Lives will he saved. You should be rejoicing.'
'The Transmuters could be a million light years from the singularity by now. And the physics of the burst will probably turn out to he incomprehensible.'
The clone smiled. 'Nothing is incomprehensible.'
Orlando waited for the forty-six to file through the gate. Yatima raised a hand and called out, 'Ill save a planet for you, Orlando! New Atlanta!'
'I don't want a planet. A small island will do.'
'Fair enough.' Yatima walked into the migration software's icon and vanished.
Orlando turned to the clone. 'What now' The Hermit ambassador had become uncommunicative; after learning of their plight ve'd been happy enough to tell them everything they needed to know to follow the Transmuters, but once the xenologists, via the bridgers, had started pestering ver for historical and sociological details, ve'd politely suggested that they go away and mind their own business. Idle, many of the bridger clones were growing anxious and depressed.
The clone said, 'That depends on what you want.'
Orlando replied immediately, 'I'll take back all of you. I'll merge with all of you.'
'Really?' The clone smiled again, face shimmering. 'How much weight can you bear? How much longing for a world you'll never see again? How much claustrophobia? How much—' He waggled his fingers, like batons. 'Frustration at the words you can no longer speak?'
Orlando shook his head. 'I don't care.'
The clone stretched hyperal shoulders; the of his extra pair of arms shrank, then re-grew. 'The seventh clone wants to stay on Poincare. Using the robot for now, until ve can synthesize a proper body.'
Orlando was not surprised; he'd always expected the lowest part of the bridge to fall to the hypersurface. 'And the others?'
'The others want to die. The Hermits aren't interested in a cultural exchange program; there is no role for translators here. And they don't want to merge.'
'It's their decision.' Orlando felt a surge of guilty relief; he might have gone mad with his head packed with Hermit symbols, and he would have felt an obligation never to edit them out, never to excise the selves he'd re- absorbed.
The clone said, 'But I do. I'll merge with you. If you really are willing.'
Orlando examined his strange twin's face, wondering if he was being mocked, or tested. 'I'm willing. Are you sure it's what you want, though? When I merge with the other thousand, what will a few megatau of your experience in 5-scapes amount to?'
'Not much,' the clone conceded. 'A tiny wound. A subtle ache. A reminder that you once embraced something larger than you thought you could.'
'You want me to find sanctuary, and still be dissatisfied?'
'Just a bit.'
'You want me to dream in five dimensions?'
'Now and then.'
Orlando spoke to his exoself, preparing the way, then stretched out a hand to the clone.
18
CENTERS OF CREATION
Carter-Zimmerman polis, U**
After seventy-nine days in the second macrosphere, Paolo still wanted to shout for joy. The singularity had turned out to lie deep within an elliptical galaxy, and the sky around Satellite Pinatubo was clogged with stars again. Poincare had possessed a terrible beauty, all its own, but seeing the familiar spectral classes scattered into new constellations sent a shudder of pleasant alienness through him that was utterly different from anything he'd felt in the macrosphere.
Elena, sitting beside him, swung her legs from the girder. 'What's the relative volume of galactic to intergalactic space?'
'You mean here? I'm not sure.'
Karpal said, 'First estimate from the observatory data is about one in a thousand, depending on how you define the haloes.'
'So is it just luck that we're not a million light years from the nearest star?'
'Ah.' Paolo thought it over. 'You think the Transmuters chose the singularity's position? How?'
'Vacuum is vacuum,' Karpal ventured. 'Until they created the singularity, it would have been meaningless to ask which point of space-time here was the macrosphere. Until that moment, there was only a set of indistinguishable quantum histories that included every possibility. So it's not as if they were stuck with any particular, preordained point.'
Elena said, 'No, but if they'd collapsed that set of histories at random, the most likely result would have been a singularity out in intergalactic space. So either they were very lucky, or they were able to bias the collapse.'
'I say they biased the collapse. Using the shape of the wormhole. Making it bind preferentially to a certain level of gravitational curvature.'
'Perhaps.' Elena laughed, frustrated. 'One more question to ask, if we ever catch up with them.'
Paolo glanced at their destination, Noether, a hot, ultraviolet-tinged star with two waterless terrestrial planets. The Transmuters might well have chosen to settle in this four-dimensional universe in preference to the first macrosphere, but Paolo didn't have high hopes that they would have picked the Noether system as their new home; when they'd arrived, it wouldn't even have been the closest star, let alone the most hospitable. If these planets were deserted, it would only take one more singularity slip to eliminate any possibility of finding the Transmuters in time. He'd suggested to Orlando that many citizens would probably be willing to take refuge in the macrosphere, regardless; after all, if the neutron map had been misinterpreted and it was all a false alarm, there'd be nothing to stop them returning. Orlando had not been impressed. 'A handful of people isn't enough. We have to convince everyone.'
A segmented worm with six flesher legs appeared in the scape, winding its way around the girder. Paolo startled; the icon was exactly like Hermann's, but Hermann hadn't even entered the first macrosphere. And the worm wasn't radiating any signature tag at kill.
Paolo turned to Elena. 'Is this some kind of juke''
She looked at Karpal; he shook his head. 'Not unless the joke's on all of us.'
The worm drew nearer, eye-stalks quivering. Elena called out, 'Who are you?' Anyone was welcome in Satellite Pinatubo, but appearing without a signature was very poor etiquette.
The worm replied, in Hermann's voice, 'You don't wish to call me Hermann?'
