Furious Gulf (30 page)

A
bove the disk nothing made of metal or ceramic can survive.

Perpetually the great turning disk grinds down the stuff of stars. Tides suck inward, shredding.

The Eater itself holds eternally captive the gathered masses of a million dead suns. The ancient matter itself vanished in
seconds of stretched agony, drawn down the steepening slide of space-time. But the memory of these transient masses lingers
in curvature.

To the outside, a ghost warp testifies to the dead. Ten billion years of sacrificed matter—stars and dust, planets and cities,
lost civilizations and their records, their hopes—have their single tombstone in the mute remaining distortion. A galaxy’s
ancient pain persists as silent gravitation.

Blobs of already incandescent matter spiral in, skating on the curvature at speeds higher than found anywhere else in the
galaxy. Incessant pull whirls doomed matter in a final frenzied gyre.

The blobs collide, smash, reform, rub. Magnetic fields mediate the friction. Snarls of plasma stream and whirl. Currents churn.

Magnetic vortices grow. The fields twine and loop through the condemned kernels. In tight collisions, fields themselves annihilate
against each other. More energy flares forth.

Above such brutal furnaces skim the phase creatures. They had once been of the mechanicals. Now they exist not in hard circuits
or ceramic lattice-intelligences. They have evolved out of self-directed necessity. To drink more energy they have learned
to dissolve.

As torrents of hard radiation lance through them, they are plasmas. This gathers in fluxes and stores them in long-range correlations.

When the flood ebbs, the phase creatures change. In the cooler spots above the disk they can condense. Lacy filaments become
gaseous discharges. The power so generated they broadcast outward, to lesser ranks who can store it.

The phase creatures themselves use these fluxes to organize themselves into free-floating networks. Circuits without wires.
Electrons flowing only in their own self-consistently generated magnetic fields. Pinched currents that snake and flare. Voltages
and switches. Light-quick, gossamer-thin.

Lively intelligences dance there. Inductive, silent, invisible.

They enter the discussion that has been teeming above them, in the cooler realms. With silky elegance their thoughts merge
with the hard beings who are the cruder, earlier forms of mechanicals.

But the phase creatures still know their origins. They share the thought patterns of the metallic forms. They converse.

I/We do not understand why these odd, primitive primates should be studied at all. And what is this arrival?

You/I summoned |>A<|, who was concluding the elimination of remaining organic life on the planet of these primates’ origin.

This
|
>A<
|
is a strange mixture of intelligences.

I/We know. Tolerate it. Here:

Greetings. I employ the single-consciousness approximation. This you may find uncomfortable.

Regard: How narrow.

We/You tried it before and found it stifling.

We should accommodate |>A<|.

Very well. But what a demented limitation!

Bear with |>A<| for a moment.

To plumb the recesses of primate thinking such strictures are necessary.

Why study them, then?

Their sense of beauty is like no other. Variant organics are unique, as well, but these have long duration here at True Center.

Beauty? We are arbiters of that.

I seek to find wholly fresh reaches of grace and flavor. These are species-specific, lavish in lore.

A needless luxury. We face sterner issues now.

Beauty is as vital to our being as any of your raw pursuits.

Is that an insult?

Never—but a fact.

Careful, then.

I intend no offense. I am a specialist intelligence, with my own drivers. Let me point out to you gathered minds what a richness
these primates have! These are the creatures who developed the Five-Digit Motif. It grips the perceptual centers as can no
other! And then there are their inner, colorful emotion-curtains. Wondrous! Their Subverted-Maximal Abstractions. All wonderful
creations!

I/We are more concerned with their possible danger to us. All because of some semi-mythical knowledge they carry.

But without knowing they carry it. That is important. They must not learn what they possess!

I believe they sense some special destiny which they carry. But they do not know its nature, that is clear. Such beings carry
deeper knowledge as narratives. To primates, a myth is a deep story which answers the difficult questions of their lives.

I/You thought that myths were simply someone else’s religion.

Of course, but I speak of primates. I have studied them well.

Then you are the one who must enter the Wedge and act for us there.

Why? I have other matters—

You know them best.

But I have never been to the Wedge.

I do not wonder, with your time spent on the beauties of underlife.

The Wedge is treacherous.

Indeed. But we/you have breached it with minor forms. Even now the tiny informants have filtered into their portal city. They
are keeping close watch on the primates of the ship—those we allowed to enter.

A move you/I opposed.

It gained us valuable information. This Legacy of theirs—it hints at much we do not know.

We/I would not need to know it if we had expunged the primates.

No! You should not think this way. The primates are a valuable form, approaching extinction. Protect such beings for their
last moments.

That is a luxury.

We command you to follow close upon the important primate members which their own Legacy has identified.

The Wedge is perilous. I cannot even be sure, entering it, where I shall be. Or when.

We/I shall give you/I resources.

I could become lost in the chaotics.

A risk we/you must take.

I have heard that there are agencies in the Wedge which can harm even higher systems such as ourselves.

True. We do not know what they are.

But I am in single-consciousness mode! If I perish, the “I-form” shall vanish!

I\We cannot help that.

You/We elected this state.

Though of course we will archive your present state. A copy of you will carry on.

To venture into such turmoil—I am not qualified.

You/We seem reluctant. Yet you\we have trained in the most important skill—you have dealt with primates. You moved them to
their intersection with the quasi-mechanicals. Very adroit.

And we/you have other motivations.

What motivations? To risk so much—

Think of beauty. Of art.