Infinity's Shore (108 page)

The computer's holographic personification paused, deforming into jagged shapes, like nervous icicles.

“
I believe they are Zang
.”

Sara's skin crawled with an involuntary shiver. That name was fraught with fear and legend. Back on Jijo, it was never spoken in tones above a whisper.

“But … how … what could
they
be doing …”

Before she finished her question, the Niss spoke again.

“
Excuse me for interrupting, Sara. Our acting captain, Dr. Gillian Baskin, has just called an urgent meeting of the Ship's Council to consider these developments.

“
You are invited to attend, oh Sage.

“
Do you wish me to make excuses on your behalf?
”

Sara was already hurrying toward the exit.

“Don't you dare!” she cried over one shoulder as the door folded aside to let her pass.

The hallway curved up and away in both directions, like
a segment of tortured spacetime, rising toward vertical in the distance. The sight always gave Sara qualms of dizziness, whenever she ventured outside her quarters. Nevertheless, this time she ran.

Gillian

For some reason, the tumultuous red giant star reminded her of Venus.

Naturally, that brought Tom to mind.

Everything
reminded Gillian of Tom. After two years, his absence was still a wound, an amputation that left her reflexively turning for his warmth each night. By day, she kept expecting his strong voice, offering to help take on the worries. The damned decisions.

Isn't it just like a hero, to die saving the world?

A little voice within her pointed out—
that's what heroes are for.

Yes
, she answered.
But the world goes on, doesn't it? And it keeps needing to be saved.

Ever since the universe sundered them apart at Kithrup, Gillian told herself that Tom couldn't be dead.
I'd know it
, she would think repeatedly, convincing herself by force of will.
Across galaxies and megaparsecs, I could tell if he were gone. Tom must be out there somewhere still, with Creideiki and Hikahi, and the others we left behind.

He'll find a way safely home … or else back to me.

That certainty helped Gillian bear her burdens during
Streaker
's first distraught fugitive year … until the last few months of steady crisis finally cracked her assurance. Without ever realizing when it happened, a transition took place, and she began thinking of Tom in the past tense.

He loved Venus
, she pondered, looking across the raging solar vista that stretched beyond
Streaker
's hull. Of course there were differences. Izmunuti's atmosphere was bright, while Earth's sister world had been dim beneath perpetual acid clouds. And the planet was microscopic compared to a giant red star. Yet, both locales shared essential traits. Harsh warmth, unforgiving storms, and a paucity of moisture.

Both provoked extremes of hope and despair.

“
Isn't this tremendous?
” Tom once asked. “
Have you ever seen anything so superb? This great endeavor proves, once and for all, that humans are capable of thinking long thoughts
.”

She could see him now, stretching both spacesuited arms to encompass the panorama below Aphrodite Pinnacle, gesturing toward stark lowlands where lighting danced about a phalanx of titanic structures receding toward the warped horizon—one shadowy behemoth after another—vast new devices freshly engaged in the labor of changing Venus. Transforming hell, one step at a time.

Even with borrowed Galactic technology, the task would take humans longer to complete than the period they had known writing or agriculture. Ten thousand years must pass before seas rolled across the sere plains. It was a bold project for poor wolflings to engage in, especially when Sa'ent and Kloornap bookies gave Earthclan slim odds of surviving more than another century or two.

“
We have to show the universe that we trust ourselves
,” Tom said. “
Or else who will believe in us?
”

His words sounded fine. So noble and grand. At the time, Tom almost convinced Gillian.

Only now things had changed.

Half a year ago during
Streaker'
s brief, terrified refuge at the Fractal World, Gillian had managed to pick up the latest rumors about the Siege of Terra, taking place in faraway Galaxy Two. Apparently, the Sa'ent touts were now taking bets on human extinction in mere years or jaduras, not centuries.

In retrospect, the ferment and debate over terraforming Venus seemed moot, like all the other projects that were supposed to win a special place in the cosmos for humans and their clients.

We'd have been better off as farmers, Tom and I. Or teaching school. Or helping settle Calafia.

We should never have listened to Jake Demwa and Ceideiki. This mission has brought ruin on everyone it touched.

Including the poor colonists of Jijo—six exile races who deserved a chance to find their own strange destiny undisturbed. In seeking shelter from the cosmos on that forlorn,
forbidden world,
Streaker
had only managed to bring disaster on the tribes of the Slope.

There seemed just one way to redress the balance.

Can we lure the Jophur to follow us into the new transfer point? Kaa will have to pilot a convincing trajectory, as if he can sense a perfect thread to latch onto. A miracle path leading toward safety. If we do it right, the big ugly sap rings will have to follow! They'll have no choice.

Saving Jijo was good enough reason for the suicidal option, especially since there seemed no way to bring
Streaker'
s cargo safely home to Earth.

Another reason tasted bitter, vengeful.

At least we'll take some of our enemies with us.

It has been said that the prospect of impending death clarifies the mind, but Gillian found that it just stirred regret. She shook her head. It would not do to carry such thoughts to the council meeting. She had a duty not to infect the others with pessimism.

I hope Creideiki and Tom aren't too disappointed in me
, she pondered at the door of the conference room.

I did my best. I really did.

The Ship's Council had changed since Gillian reluctantly took over the captain's position at the head of the long table, where Creideiki used to preside in happier times. At the opposite end,
Streaker
's last surviving dolphin officer, Lieutenant Tsh't, expertly piloted the six-legged walker apparatus carrying her sleek gray form into the same niche where Takkata-Jim once nestled his great bulk, before he was killed near Kithrup.

Tsh't exchanged greetings with the human chief engineer, though Hannes Suessi's own mother would hardly recognize him, with so many body parts replaced by cyborg components, and a silver dome where his head used to be. Much of that gleaming surface was now covered with pre-Contact-era motorcycle decals—an irreverent act that endeared Hannes to Gillian and the fins. At least
someone
aboard had kept a sense of humor through the years of relentless crisis.

Gillian felt acutely the absence of one council member, her friend and fellow physician Makanee, who had lately remained behind on Jijo with several dozen members of
the dolphin crew—those suffering from devolution fever, or not essential for the breakout attempt. In effect, dolphins had established a seventh illegal colony on that fallow world—yet another secret worth defending with the lives of those left aboard.

Secrets. There are other enigmas, less easily protected.

Gillian's thoughts slipped past the salvaged objects in her office, some of them worth a stellar ransom. Mere hints at their existence had already knocked civilization teetering across five galaxies.

Foremost among the treasures was a corpse, irreverently nicknamed
Herbie.
An alien cadaver so ancient, its puzzling smile might be from a joke told a billion years ago. Other relics were scarcely less provocative—or cursed. Trouble had followed
Streaker
, ever since its crew began picking up objects they didn't understand.

“Articles of Destiny.” That was the awed phrase used by one of the Old Ones, referring to
Streaker'
s precious load of mysteries, during that dismal visit to the Fractal World.

Maybe this will be a fitting way to go
, she thought.
All those irksome treasures will get smashed down to a proton's thickness moments after we dive into the new transfer point.

At least she might then get the satisfaction of seeing old Herbie's expression finally change, at the last instant, when the bounds of reality closed in rapidly from ten dimensions.

A holo image of Izmunuti took up one wall of the conference room, an expanse of swirling clouds wider than Earth's orbit, surging and shifting as the Niss Machine relayed the latest intelligence in Tymbrimi-accented Galactic Seven.

“
The Jophur battleship has jettisoned the last of its capture boxes, releasing all the decoy vessels it had seized, allowing them to drift onward through space. Now freed of their momentum-burden, the
Polkjhy
is much more agile, turning its frightful bulk in a course change toward the new transfer point. Their aim is clearly to reach the reborn nexus before
Streaker
arrives
.”

“Can they beat us there?” Gillian asked in Anglic.

The Niss hologram whirled thoughtfully. “
It seems un-likely,
unless they use some risky type of probability drive, which is not typical of Jophur They wasted a lot of time dashing ahead toward the older T-point. Our tight swing past Izmunuti should offer enough hyperspatial recoil for
Streaker
to arrive first at Number Two … for whatever good it will do us
.”

Gillian ignored the machine's sarcastic tone. Most of the crew seemed in accord with her decision. Lacking other options, death was more bearable if you took an enemy with you.

The Jophur situation appeared stable for a few more miduras, so she changed the subject.

“What can you report about the other ships?”

“
You mean the two mysterious flotillas we recently detected in Izmunuti's chromosphere? After consulting with the tactical computer and archives, I now conclude they must have been operating together. Nothing else could explain their close proximity, fleeing together to escape unexpected plasma storms
.”

Hannes Suessi objected, his voice wavering low and raspy from the silver dome.

“Mechanoids and hydrogen-breathers cooperating? That sounds unlikely.”

The whirling blob made a gesture like a nod.

“
Indeed. The various orders of life seldom interact. But I queried our captured Library unit, and discovered that it does happen, more often than you might think, especially when there is some project afoot requiring the talents of two or more orders, working together
.”