And so they both had in-head software running designed to spot nanotech security devices or pickups, and they were very careful about being followed. Of course, the various security forces could hack his own in-head systems without him even being aware, seeing everything he saw, listening in on everything he heard. The trick was to stay off their radar to begin with; if they didn’t suspect him of anything, they wouldn’t monitor him.
He hoped.
Her jab about him getting lost referred to the last time they’d met, when he’d led her into a seldom-used and heavily shieldedwarehousing unit in the synchorbital facility within Skyport, lost contact with the Net, and lost his directional cues. They’dfound their way back to a wired section eventually, but he’d been afraid they were going to have to call for help, and that would have put him on that radar screen big-time.
He reached across the table and took her hand. “How long do you have?” he asked.
“Forty-eight hours. More like forty-one now.”
Katya piloted a Yastreb fighter deployed on board the Russian carrier Vladivostok. Cordell was stationed on board the slightly larger Yorktown. Finding time together—and getting downtime schedules to mesh—was a real challenge, one worthy of a super-AI.
“Well, that’s plenty of time,” Cordell told her.
She arched one perfect eyebrow. “For what?”
“I thought we might go back to our room and—”
A distinct shudder ran through the restaurant. Cordell had been born and raised in San Francisco, and he’d been through morethan his fair share of earthquakes. This was like that—a kind of wave coming up through the deck. Several other patrons inthe Overlook made startled comments.
“What the hell . . .”
“What was that?” Katya asked, looking around.
“I’m not—”
“All Navy and Marine personnel, all Navy and Marine personnel,” a voice sounded inside his head, a transmission over the fleetnet.“Return to your ships and other stations immediately, repeat, immediately. This is not a drill!”
The interlude, Cordell thought, was over. Why, he didn’t know.
USNA CVS America
CIC
N’gai Cluster
1105 hours, FST
Gray was still shaken by his experience in the Godstream. Coming back had felt like a terrible dwindling, a loss of substanceand assurance and knowledge that had at the time seemed godlike. This time was worse, if that was possible, than his firstexperience at the Omega Rosette three years ago.
In his mind’s eye now, he floated outside the enormous McKendree cylinder, speaking with the exquisitely alien Ghresthrepni.He felt utterly drained but forced himself to push ahead, asking the strange being the questions he’d worked out in advanceduring the trip from Earth. Other humans had gathered with him—Truitt and Kline from Xenosoph, and Mallory, the expedition’shead of xenotechnology.
“We would like to know,” Greg Mallory was saying to the alien, “exactly what happened to the ur-Sh’daar at the time of theSchjaa Hok.”
The alien phrase meant approximately “The Transcending” and referred to the Sh’daar equivalent of the Technological Singularity.It was not, Gray knew, something the modern Sh’daar liked to talk about. In fact, it terrified them.
“They . . . left us,” the Adjugredudhra told them, essentially repeating itself for the fifth or sixth time. The humans hadbeen talking with the Adjugredudhra for nearly two hours now, and the alien representative remained reluctant to discuss whatit insisted was “old history . . . another time.”
The conversation was proving to be circular and frustrating.
“You’ve already told us that they disappeared,” Gray said. “We know that. We’ve even seen it, or at least a part of it.”
Years before, Gray had seen what they now believed to be a kind of computer-generated simulation of the moment of Schjaa Hok, images of a bright and golden civilization composed of dozens of different alien species. Those CGIs had been recorded atthe time, even though Gray and others had been receiving the images directly in their brains. While telling the bare-bonesstory of what had happened, Gray believed the actual events had been shaded somewhat in the retelling, perhaps even editedto the point of completely changing the story.
“You are referring to the Memories,” Ghresthrepni said. “Those were created by the Baondyeddi and the Sjhlurrr.”
Its translated voice betrayed nothing like impatience or irritation at the repetitive questioning. Gray wished he could interpretthe being’s emotions as it spoke. The chirps and tinkling bells heard in the background—the being’s actual speech—told himnothing about the Adjugredudhra’s feelings.
But this was new information, Gray thought—at long last. The images he’d seen had been CGI, as he’d suspected. The Baondyeddi—huge pancakes on dozens of tiny feet—were masters ofcomputer technology. They had, Gray knew, uploaded themselves into a planet-sized computer on Heimdall, living out the eonsin virtual worlds of their own creation.
At least until the Consciousness had found them. . . .
Gray knew less about the Sjhlurrr, save that they were eight-meter-long slugs colored in gorgeous patterns of red and gold.Perhaps they were experts in computer technology as well.
“We need to know the reality of what happened,” Gray said, pressing the issue. “What happened in the Technological Singularity? Did the ur-Sh’daar really just vanish?”
“That was long ago,” Ghresthrepni told him. “None of that matters now.”
“It matters to us, Ghresthrepni,” Truitt said, blunt. “Humanity is approaching its own Schjaa Hok, and we need to know what to expect.”
“Then we sorrow for you humans, for your species will know devastation beyond your deepest imaginings.”
“What kind of devastation?” Mallory wanted to know.
For answer, the universe folded back around them, and they found themselves in a starkly realistic virtual reality. They stoodon a rocky ledge overlooking the sprawl of a vast and alien metropolis, a city fully as large as Gray’s Manhatt Ruins, butalive and rich and vibrant with light and activity. Aircraft filled the sky, vehicles like mag-lev pods whipped through transparenttubes, viewalls twenty stories high displayed glimpses of multiple alien species engaged in incomprehensible activities. Thetechnology, Gray thought, was roughly on a par with where Humankind was now.
And then he saw the edge of the
