Galactic Center - Furious Gulf Part 19

"Look, what's this Mantis after?"

"Suredead us, then." "Then what's it want?"

Toby's brow wrinkled. A shadow fell over the thick canopy. He squeezed down his sensorium. With acoustic suppressors even the wheeze of breathing could not leak out. He lay covered by the loops of spiral blue-green that had showered down. He raised his head slightly and was just in time to see a thin yellow spark come caroming among the trees. It struck some and bounced off, humming as if it were talking to itself. About the size of his head. The spark turned darker and orange-tinged with each collision. It came nearer--and moved faster than he could follow.It hit Quath. Angry red embers shot over Quath's carapace. One leaped off her and chewed at Toby's left side. He rolled automatically, trying to get away from the pain. "Ah!" The embers fizzled away.Toby lay absolutely still. Nothing changed. The shadow had pa.s.sed on and with it the pale wedge in his sensorium. Aches hardened into swift,shooting pain in his arm. "Q... Quath?"

No signal. "QuathI"

They lay that way for a long time as winds whipped through the high spiral folds above. Toby probed at himself. He flinched when he moved his left arm a certain way and found out that the arm was broken. He blocked most of the nerves from there but could not get all of them. To stop all thehurt would have meant losing motor control of the arm.Quath moved. Slow, tentative.He had been thinking of himself and felt guilty when he saw how much damage she had taken. It was all on the far side of her. "Hurt bad?"

The words sounded stupid. Three legs shattered. Spokes of white metaljutting through the carapace. Brown fluid everywhere.

"Can you walk?"

"Can I help?"

234.

"Huh?" Toby stood, staggered, and picked up one of her splintered shanks. "No way!"Toby scowled. "What's changed, Quath?'"But, but what--" He stopped himself because he was afraid he was going to cry."Why am I such a big deal?""d.a.m.n it, that's just a theory!""What sanctimonious, ridiculous--""What? I, I, uh..." He was stymied. "But where'll I meet you? This place, it's so big, what'll I do?"

"d.a.m.n it! I won't." 6.

Mind Surgery He holed up in a shaded hollow and the pain started in on him. It had spread into his ribs and he was not surprised to find that three of them were broken too. The electrical energy of the spark had dissipated into tiny shock waves that snapped bone and broke capillaries.That's what his diagnostics told him. The facts popped up in his left eye when he keyed in for them. Signifier icons showed bright and clear.

Yellow fractures, scarlet blood patches in his arm, 3D blue spaghetti for pain networks.Solutions popped up too. Making field repairs was not easy. He called up two seldom-used Faces who did the hard work at the back of his skull.

They wormed down out of his cerebral cortex and into the basic, shadowy machinery. Most of the brain was circuitry for housekeeping operations.

You couldn't consciously intervene in how your food got digested or control your heartbeat. They ran just fine on their own. And it would be a bad idea to make intervention easy and risk s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g yourself up out of clumsiness. But repairing damage could be accelerated and this was a time when he needed that.These Faces squirmed down into operating centers that fed stimuli and ferried nutrients. They took over. He knew they were working when his arm started to tingle. It was like being tickled deep inside only it didn't make you laugh. So he cried for a while and felt better. He wriggled around and broke out in a clammy sweat all along his left side.More explosions boomed down from the sky but he was a far way beyond that and didn't care. His systems labored heavily. Bone repair was hard, he knew, and he tried to not let his conscious mind interfere.But there were a lot of things to think through and he could not keep his mind on them for long. Spikes of pain broke through and startled him.

Then his systems would catch the problem and he would be all right for a while. The sweats did not go away though.

236.

The dreams started then.Only they were not dreams because in between them he had his eyes open. They played on his retina and there was nothing he could do to stop them. He tried closing his eyes but they still ran.He was riding in something that had wheels but seemed to fly. A woman had offered him a ride in it and somehow they had pa.s.sed through dissolving air and furious, fast rock, and now were careening down (or maybe up) a steep flat lake. It was smooth and seemed horizontal, with his weight thrusting straight down along his spine. But it was also angled so that they accelerated across it. The jet-dark surface spewed and foamed and muttered to itself like a stormy liquid but the woman rapped it with a stick every few minutes, as if trying it for strength, and the stuff gave back a solid ringing smack, like steel ringing bong bong on granite.s.h.i.+bo grinned at him. Her bright sharp teeth laughed out words so mangled he could not catch them and there was no time to smooth them into meaning. They plunged forward.It went on a long time. She had teeth missing, two ears on her left side and none on the right, and wore only a halter. This had seemed important when he first saw her but such facts were now dwarfed by the blistering wind that raked him, the jolting speed, the lurches of his already aggrieved stomach. "Long live all!" she shouted back to him and took a pull from a vaporizer."Long live me, anyway," Toby answered. He had taken a few hits from the vaporizer and was feeling strange but still scared.Something big hit the black lake and threw up a dark geyser in snarled fingers."We'll make it!" s.h.i.+bo shouted.

She had to because other people were trying to talk to him. Theiroices came down from the sky, but by the time they reached him theywere whispers.Instead of breaking into droplets the black waters squared out intoplanes. "Let me do it," s.h.i.+bo called. She smashed the panes into showersof glinting mica shards. "See?"--and he was in the open, rolling down a hill. He cracked his knee oni!!

a rock and inhaled dust. Choked. Gasped. This was real, no dream. Helooked back up the slope and saw the tall gra.s.s mashed down where hehad been lying in a bath of his own sweat. Something had made him get upand stumble and fall out here, exposed. He scrambled back up as fast as hecould.On the way up his knee hurt more than his arm or ribs. That was agood sign as long as the knee wasn't damaged. He found the place wherehe had been lying. It was damp and smelled bad.His knee was getting better, though. He walked a little unsteadily to astream and cleaned himself off for the first time in--two? three?--days.

237.Hard to tell. His inboard monitor told him, 2.46 days in all. Impossible to tell here with the light coming and going like fitful weather. He wondered how all the forest had adjusted to this erratic pace.For a while he just lay beside the stream without any energy for more. A solid fact sat in front of him and would not let him rest. He knew what had to be done now and that Quath had been right. s.h.i.+bo had kept him from seeing it. The way she had kept him from registering other things. Amusing him with interior spectacles that got more and more frantic.The damage and repair had undermined some part of her somehow.

At least for now. Which meant he had to do it now or later he would think of something else that needed doing or maybe get distracted by a gimpy joint or a funny itch and then he would never do it. Maybe not for the rest of his life.He crawled back in a shaded hole and got out his field kit. The tools were not made for this job. They had socket and groove faces, tiny insert arms and variable-geometry drivers, but nothing specialized. And he had to work behind himself. Operating by feel, sitting up when he wanted to lie down.

You do not want to do this.

He did not answer her. The small adjustable tips were hard to get right. His fingers were blunt and clumsy. He dropped one tip and had to fish it out of the dirt and clean it off. No way to even keep all the instruments lined up properly.

I have done so much for you. You and I work together. Your female side integrates with mine.

The tip ends would not come right. He lined them up and inserted them into the b.u.t.t of the axis tool. The fit was not perfect but it would do.

I have so much more to teach you. If you will only give me time. I can give excellent advice on how to deal with this place. You are alone. You need me.

Reaching behind his head was hard. He braced himself with his nearly useless left arm. The spreading ache in it told him that this was not a great idea. His Faces working the repairs sent little warning spikes up into his cerebral cortex. Lances of aggrieved pain/anger, like the emotions of insects. But there was nothing else to do.

238.

We can have so much fun together! I've shown you my past. My whole world. Isn't that enough?

"Don't want your world."He gritted that out through clenched teeth. She was talking faster and faster as he got the sleeve fitted into his spinal slot. Images shot through him now. Ruins in purple shadows. Mech carca.s.ses sprawling across a field on Snowglade. Tastes of spicy hot dishes, smells of fresh spring, laughter heard pealing down a stony hallway.He cut the skin away from the slot to get more room. He had to operate by feel alone now. The pictures running in his eyes were clipped, speeded up, flickering with demented haste.

You are betraying your father. He put me here. It was to guide you. To help you! And you turn against me, throw me -- He popped the slot open. Poked into the micros. The racing images got ragged, spotty.

A Personality can't live chip-encased for long. You know that. I will shrink. Parts of me will evaporate! I will shrink back down into an Aspect unless I am aired, used.

The tools were not right and he could not be sure he would not damage the chip. This slot had been double-decked to take a Personality.

The readers were jammed to a one-molecule-thick layer around the chip.haere was a to take the readers out without stripping them but thatwilys impossible without a lot more gear than he had, even if he could see what he was doing.

You can't! I've done so much for you. The whole female side of your personality--I've brought it out. Made you much more mature.

"Yeasay. I'm so mature I'm stuck here alone and banged up and no Family to help me pry you out."

I didn't make you do all those things. You can't escape theguilt of running away from your father. It wasn't my doing!

He felt carefully. It seemed like he had got the tips in right but it was hard to tell. They had to fit just so in the crowded receivers at the socket rim.

239.

Please! I won't do any remembering or thinking without you approving it. I just, you don't know what it's like, I had to -- He tried one. Tugged gently on the end and the tip caught against the socket and held. He did not know what would happen if he got only part of the chip out. She was firm-integrated with him through the hard circuitry at the base of his skull. Could he get the chip free and not leave part of her with him? He did not know.

I'll do anything you want!

No point in waiting. He took all the tips in a tight grip and breathed deeply.

Wait! Please!

For a long, hard moment he could not move. She had his muscles locked and he felt her sleeting anger slam into him full force.She had been a wonderful woman once and living on like this had made her into something else. Carrying a Personality was far harder than an Aspect, but something else had happened between them. Something about her and him, the imponderable mix of people. Not the fault of either, maybe, just a fact.He did not know if the true s.h.i.+bo could ever come back again in a Personality but that was not the point now, and in a flash of close contact between them he told her that, not in words but in pangs of sharp remorse.Two heartbeats. Then her reply.Her fury battered against him. His right hand shook. Fingers went numb. Hard to hold the tips in them. His breath caught.She moved fast, trying everything. His sphincter clenched, b.a.l.l.s ached. Jumpy nervous energy wormed across his skin. His chest froze up.

Hand jangling, thumb askew, muscles rock-hard.He made himself relax his right hand and let the wrist go free. In the backlash of the muscles he reversed the tension against her and moved.He jerked the tools out at all four quadrants. They came flee.

No you can't I love you love Killeen love all of you don't make me stop please please I can't can't can't can't can't can't His hand brought the tips around all bright-b.l.o.o.d.y and with skin caught in them. Like a single muscle his body s.h.i.+vered. A violent jerking, 240.

throwing off a sheen of droplets. Lungs heaved as if he had been under water a long time.The moist forest around him lay at the end of a long shadowy tunneland purple flies buzzed in halos around the tunnel walls.Closing, far away. Sliding dark.He pitched forward into the tunnel.

241.

Frames In one frame of reference, the Wedge whirls at a blistering angular velocity, skimming razor-close to the speed of light.In another mathematical frame, it stands stationary in a geometric manifold.

Still, silent. Lines of folded s.p.a.ce-time eddy about it.In this view, despite excruciating gradients and wrenching torques, the Wedge is an island of tranquil stability. Gravitational radiation from the black hole coalesces about its slippery contours.Waves lap. Languid, easy. Torsional stresses play like intricate spider webs along slick, pulsing bulges.This pressure sustains the Wedge against all las.h.i.+ng dissipations. It has done so for an interval whose length--or duration--depends upon the local geometry of the observer.In still another frame of reference, the Wedge is locked in unending, furious struggle with the black hole.Forces wrestle. The Eater seeks to eat. The Wedge jams itself between theEater's jaws. Pries them open. Plugs the gullet. Saves itself.All are true.Each is a frame. Truth is the sum of all frames.Down the magnetic field lines that thread the Wedge, rubbery yet unbreakable, trickle wave packets of rippling complexity. They carry information in the only fas.h.i.+on that can slip through the knotted weave of the Wedge.Along these slender strands--wiry, coiled lifelines--the mechanical civilization converses with its delegate. The machine intelligences gather in packets, elaborate sliding decompositions of data. They linger above the fray of the great accretion disk, in the eternal sleet of hard radiation. Against this torrent the gliding minds use defenses of ceramic and metal.By rippling the magnetic field lines they converse with their delegate.

Hollow voices down a vast well.At the bottom, the lone creature hears. Replies. Always amid discord, the delegate must both debate and act. Dividing its intelligence yet again, it a.s.signs separate portions to these tasks.It does not enjoy the pleasures of its rulers, who float in majestic remove.

It must endure the rasp and grit of the lands within the Wedge. Seeking, always seeking.All parties to the discussion think at the speed of light. Their voices cannot escape their origins, however, or the a.s.sumptions of their kind.

I/You have explored a huge array of vaults and s.p.a.ces, *>A<]. yet="" you="" find="">

242.I have discovered a wealth of primate culture!That was not your task, >A<>

How well I know. Our own ancient data imply that thereare special, message-bearing primates. I have soughtthem. But they are difficult to separate from the hordes ofprimates here.There are so many? Hiding from us? They fear us--quite rightly, I suppose.

Search out these certain message- bearers! Be done with such irritants.The s.p.a.ces here are innumerable.Continue. Secure the minimum of three genetic layers which we/you require.We have the basic biological information from the oldestgeneration, the "grandfather." But the nature of thecoded message demands three generations. Direct bio logical descent.The Legacies implied that we/you needed full a.n.a.lysis of them. Thismeans complete and viable copies.I/We think not. They could just as wellbe dead.I have been carefully reading each surekill I make. My subunits are equally careful. I shall not miss the characteristic signature of the particular primate we need, the youngest. I knew him.On their planet?He was useful in securing his father-self when I wished to make a capture.I hope you/we can do as well now/here.

243.You/We are fading from our/your field of view. Is the Wedge damaging?I have navigated the s.h.i.+fts here, but there is a troubling background sense. Something more lurks in these warped pa.s.sages.What is it? I/You have heard reports from earlier units we/all sent into the Wedge. Before they vanished from us/you.I do not know how to describe it. A faint trembling presence beyond my fields. But it is not localized.An echo.I think not. It comes from everywhere but does not repeat what I send. I am uneasy.Stifle your/our reactions. You/We act for us/all, remember.This is not the time for hesitation.Kill them all if you/we can. I/We would be done with this vexation.I have surekilled so many. My factors overload. So much wealth to know and savor!Forget your/our strange sense of beauty! Never before has such a strong agency as you/we penetrated the Wedge so deeply. Know them, yes.

Then end these parasites in their last lair.Savage them!I obey.

Part V

MLIGN.A-rENTIONS

I.The Pain of EternityToby woke feeling tired but clean. He had been out for a long time. His arm throbbed less now. Blunt pain, as if it were seeping away from him.

s.h.i.+bo wasn't there.

He had her chip in his carrypouch. Now he probed for her self. Skated over inky crevices where his Aspects lived their compacted semi-lives.

Tramped through the galley of Faces.

Gray pa.s.sageways yawned. Isaac and Zeno and the others called to him and wanted to talk about s.h.i.+bo. They always wanted to talk. About anything. But of s.h.i.+bo there was nothing.

He knew shreds might still cling somewhere in him. A Personality was by nature diffused, hard to grasp. So he would have to watch carefully.

The earlier signs--mood s.h.i.+fts, deflections of his attention, outfight seizure of his sensorium:had been increasingly overt. If traces of her remained, they would be subtle.

He got up, creaking. Sore. With a bone-deep weariness that sleep could not take away.

No skittering warnings in the sensorium. It expanded like a blue bubble in his vision and brushed against only the rustlings of the forest and dark-bellied clouds. Time to get back to business.

Years of Family discipline had taught him to follow orders when he did not like them. Something in the way Quath told him to leave had the force of an order.

He carried it out without thinking. Thought, after all, was a luxury when living depended on speed and concealment and silent savvy.

He moved with his sensorium compressed to a half-sphere barely bigger than his arms' reach. That allowed practically no time to defend against one of the spark things that had hit Quath. But it would make him harder to find, he hoped.

When he reached the next high point he peered backward. Shadowy 248.forms, gliding like leaves blown on systematic breezes. Quath. Quath. He yearned to send the call.

More burnt-yellow sparks jumped and bounced among the forest.

Others cruised far up toward the other enclosing curvature of the Lane.

Where he had left Quath something fired vicious hot-white bolts.

Toby knew it would be foolish to try to raise Quath's signal but the desire to do it was almost uncontrollable. At last he turned away and devoted himself to speed.

He ran for some time before he noticed that he was crying. Never, on the long pursuits the Family had endured on Snowglade, had he ever felt alone. Now the sour desperation of his predicament descended on him and he could not stop the anguish bubbling up in him. No Quath, no Family, just bare empty flight.

What would Killeen think? He made himself stop, willing the hardness into himself until the tears quit. He had to uphold the Bishop way.

Even here, even alone. Maybe especially here.

He came to a bare stony territory. Would he be too exposed here?

Dirty-gray clouds hugged the ground and then lifted suddenly, as if some giant had s.n.a.t.c.hed them away. But there were none of the airborne forms that hovered half-seen like something glimpsed out of the corner of your eye. So he went on.

Something came over a distant peak and vectored in on him. He shot at it and missed and it burned his right side in an instant. His second shot got off as he went down. It caught the thing. A quick, buzzing fireball. Something tiny, tumbling. It crashed down, a sound like the air ripping apart.

He had shat his pants. That made him disgusted with himself but his right arm was more important.u The pain made his hands tremble. He got his right side up and nning again with some repair work. His arm was sore but would move again.

He found running water nearby and got cleaned up. Humbling work.

In an abstract way he was surprised he had been so scared. All fear, he realized, later seems somewhat ludicrous.

By the time he could limp over to where the thing had gone down there was just a hole in the ground. He had been d.a.m.n lucky to wing the thing and knew it.

He licked his lips, feeling the fear again. If he kept going this way one of the seekers would track him for sure, bring down a whole flock the next time.

He remembered Quath's little lesson about the sums and how in this geometry, Lanes were like those pairs of numbers. Each pair summed to a hundred, and rearranging them endlessly kept the grand total constant.

The esty stayed intact.

And the total did not have to be a hundred or a thousand or a million.

The Lanes could number a million. Or a billion. Or some other word 249.

offered by his chattering Isaac Aspect, big words ending in -ion that just said that it was bigger than any person could ever know.So he was not surprised when time wore on and he kept moving and saw no one. He might never meet a human again. The Lanes could snake on for an uncountable, twisty forever.The trick was to find a way out of this particular place. A way the mechs could not track easily. How? Just running harder wasn't enough.Puzzles thickened in his head. Quath had said that gravity was esty, curved. Ma.s.s did that. Planets held you to them by curving s.p.a.ce-time, which humans felt as a clear, strong force. Yeasay, fine.But Isaac said that esty curvature generated further curvature. So gravity could make more of itself, conjuring up more from less. Something had knitted this esty so that it held firm. It even prospered here on the lip of the abyss, kissing the Eater of Everything."Anything you understand, you can use," Toby muttered to himself as he trotted. He remembered this was a saying of his grandfather Abraham, and wondered where in this place old Abraham might be."Abraham, he would've done something with this stuff," he said, voice frail against the whispery musics of the landscape.No place to run, not literally anyway. And he was getting tired.So he tried to shape the timestone. Logic said it was impossible but logic wasn't doing too well here lately, was it?His weaponry had no effect, but after laser-cutting the stuff glowed.

He tried microwaves, sonics, even a nano-reamer he still carried from Snowglade days. Nothing worked.Next he used the whole spectrum. No response. He hit it with pulsed infrared. For the barest instant a thin grin split the stone.Again. This time it lasted longer and he jammed his boot in and shoved. It gave, then started crus.h.i.+ng his boot. He yanked free and the stuff slammed shut.Next time he was more careful. First, he found a place where he felt nauseous. Dimpling perspectives, watery light, refractions of sound and s.p.a.ce. Where the Lanes intersected, gravity twisted.Second, he cut and heated it. He jabbed, pried, ran through variations of weaponry. Sweaty work. He cut his hand, scorched an arm. Nothing came right the first time. But it seemed that he was slicing deeper into the timestone. The fatigue got to him and he had to stop and rest. Sweat trickled into his eyes and then he knew it wasn't sweat.Tears again. He was impatient with himself this time. Killeen would snort and look the other way. Besen would be sympathetic, and that would be even worse."If they get you, know what they'll do?" Saying it out loud helped.

"They'll suck out all you know. Use it against Besen and Killeen and ever'body."His voice was stem and that helped, too. He realized how much he missed that simple thing, the sound of humanity, a voice not his own. So 250.

d.a.m.n screwed up you're talking to yourself, another part of him said, but he pushed that thought away. Anything that made him feel better helped, andthe h.e.l.l with a.n.a.lyzing.Back to work.Progress was slow. He found a rippling ridgeline with esty-fog rolling over it in strands of orange light. He tried the cutting again. A broad line cracked the stone. Through it he caught a whiff of something vile and poisonous, pale green vapors--and kicked at the stone to close it, fast.