<< From the Wild. Specified magnolia. Is it okay? Salome sounded anxious.
> It’s perfect.
Did GalDiv know? Did they note a favourite flower in a person’s file?
Kara and Salome finished the tour together. A waste treatment plant the size of four old-fashioned dictionaries, kept in a small cupboard.
<< And all manner of vids for you.
All retro classics from the nineteen-thirties to the eighties. Some she knew and loved, others knew from reading but had never seen. She remembered – it seemed like a hundred years ago – Greenaway mentioning her love for retro culture. Was this reminding her that she belonged to GalDiv? No. He knew that she never would. More accurate and comforting to believe it was Greenaway being thorough.
> Is there robot help?
<< Meet Cedric.
A wall panel slid open and a bot the size of a large dog sidled out. It looked like the bastard child of a squid and a spider. Part of it bowed towards Kara.
<< Cedric takes care of things.
> Just the one?
<< There are fifty of them. Taking care includes killing bad beings.
> Makes me nervous.
<< All the Cedrics know your brain-wave pattern, iris and voice ID, DNA, finger and ear prints. Cedrics do not make mistakes.
> Controlled by you?
<< And so by you. If you are incapacitated the decisions will be made by Ishmael and myself. Our instructions are to enable you, Marc Keislack and Tatia Nerein to complete the mission. And then get you home safe.
> Greenaway. Call her Tatia Greenaway. When we find her.
They returned to the control room and Kara was shown the sideslip field generator that took the SUT into and through netherspace. It was a tenth the size of those traded by the Gliese for humans. Fully automated, too. She remembered the first time she’d seen one operating, the colours, the sense of freedom, abandonment, and sex with crewman Henk. Not the first time he’d used netherspace to seduce someone, Kara thought. Did similar with Marc – who knew he’d be so receptive? Maybe n-space leaves you no choice. Which reminded her.
> So what is netherspace anyway? Cleo had explained but she needed to hear another version.
<< You want the detailed answer or the simple one? Salome, not Ishmael.
> What do you think?
<< You know about vacuum space energy? Zero point?
> Where all those particles or waves come from and form fields.
<< Oh, you read a book? Well, it’s not that. Each sentient universe has its own zero point energy field. Netherspace is what surrounds all of them. It’s another dimension that holds all the potential energy that feeds the other universes. Well, I say dimension. In fact infinite dimensions so really none. No time either. Netherspace is the source of the drive to life. It’s chaos. But because it’s infinite and anything can happen, it also has areas that are ordered. So the sideslip generator takes the SUT and us into n-space, and we introduce an ordered pattern which is actually our direction of travel, which is fine because areas of order only add to the overall chaos.
> Sentient universes? That’s a new one.
<< A universe is basically a vast information exchange. It is aware. That does not mean it cares. Frankly, my dear, it doesn’t give a damn.
> So now it’s dated clichés. Ishmael said it’s – he – is essentially a copy of my own mind. But faster. What are you?
<< Autonomous, dedicated to this SUT. I think he meant more intelligent. Anything else? We will be entering netherspace soon. I’ll be distracted.
Kara wasn’t sure why she asked the question. Maybe it had lurked in the back of her mind for a long time.
> So what’s intelligence?
<< Condensed information originally. Universe awash with data that can become compressed by gravity. What is gravity? Basically, the pressure of an infinite set of sets, the reality that contains all the universes and itself, think snake devouring its tail, what was once mistakenly called space-time.
It is increased or emphasised by mass. Time is only an address. So you get more pathways, links open up between datum, data groups, mega groups. Add the universe’s own sense of awareness. It develops from that. Some species are more attuned to netherspace than others. Greater self-awareness, emotion, creativity. Now I gotta go. Been fun hanging out. Later.
* * *
Kara lay on her bunk.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it. Maybe I should have asked that question long ago.
Here she was on some sort of quest, for fuck’s sake, to save a galaxy she couldn’t comprehend from a threat she didn’t understand. What’s that all about?
Nursemaid to Marc and Tatia? Any competent special ops soldier could do that, and some better than Kara. She was an empath, but had little opportunity to use it. Did she really need to know how an enemy feels when they die? This was a combat mission, not Be Nice to Aliens Week. Perhaps she could find Tatia using said empathy. A phrase she’d once heard popped into her mind. Spooky action at a distance. And then the concept it had referenced – were she and Tatia somehow entwined?
There’d been a brief dalliance – come on, girl, weren’t no mimsy dalliance, we went at it like rabbits – on the way back from that Cancri planet. Tatia is not, was never a life partner.
I don’t do life partners. But we are connected.
A day ago, on the banks of the Severn Estuary, she fell in lust with a man twenty years older. Helped by a nature entity, true. That same man would send her on a suicide mission if he thought it necessary. And maybe already had. Your empathy will help you find Tatia, he’d said. Yeah, right. Could he tell her how that works? No, he couldn’t. No one could. Empathy raised to the power of unknown is personal to the holder. Everyone has a different way to use it.
She’d tried so
