Tides of Light (22 page)

The yellow-white hell soared away above Killeen’s head. The walls nearly seeped a sullen red, but even this was a relief after
the incandescent fury that dwindled now, a fiery disk fading above him like a dimming, perpetually angry sun.

Killeen panted deeply, though it seemed to do no good. Prickly waves washed over him, bringing him unbearable itches that
moved in restless storms across his skin. His lungs jerked irregularly. His arms trembled. Muscles and nerves fought their
private rebellions and wars.

But he had managed to keep his arms and legs straight. The light pressure would not have forced him in only one direction
if he had spun or tumbled.

Had it been enough? The long minutes at the core had crawled by, bringing agonizing lungfuls of scorched air.

Now the searing ebbed slightly.

We are, after all, just another radiating body. We can only lose heat by emitting it as infrared waves. So we must wait for
cooler surroundings before this intolerable warmth can disperse.

His Arthur Aspect seemed remarkably collected, given the hysteria which had beset it only minutes before. “How…how ’bout that
cooling thing?”

You mean our refrigerator? It can only function by ejecting waste heat at a cooler sink. As yet there
are
no colder surroundings, as you can see.

“So we wait till we get out?” It seemed an impossibly long time. Between his boots he could see the blackness of the planet’s
mantle, thousands of kilometers of dead rock they must shoot through before regaining the dark of space itself. And there
he would somehow have to make good this attempt, or else he would slow and pause and then plunge again. He wished again that
he had saved his thruster fuel. It would give him some freedom, some hope of being something other than the helpless, dumb
test particle in a grotesque experiment.

We do have some fluids we could eject, but…

“But what? Look, we try everything. Got no hope otherwise.”

The refrigerant fluids. We could bring them to a high temperature and vent them.

“Think it’ll help much?”

To lose the coolant meant he would have no chance whatever if he failed up ahead and fell back into the tube. He would fry
for sure.

I cannot tell how much momentum we picked up from that maneuver. Pushing a large mass such as ourselves with mere light pressure…

Killeen gave a jittery laugh. “I’m the mass here—you weigh nothin’ at all. And don’t you worry ’bout calculatin’ what’ll happen.
Time comes, up at the top of this hole, I’ll have to grab whatever’s in sight. Fly by the seat of my pants, not some eee-quation.”

Then I should vent the refrigerant fluids?

“Sure. Bet it all!” Killeen felt small icy rivulets coursing along his neck as he let the Aspect take fractional control of
his inboard systems.

I am warming the poly-xenon now.

“And when you spray it, just use the spinal vents. That’ll give us another push in the right direction. Could make the difference.”

Oh, I see. I did not think of this possibility.

“Trouble with you Aspects is you can’t imagine anythin’ you haven’t seen ’fore.”

Let us not debate my properties at quite this time. We are rising toward the surface and you must be ready. I believe the
wall you face is nearer now. Notice the sparkling?

“Yeasay. What’s it mean?”

That is where the mantle rock is forced by sidewise pressure against the passing cosmic string. It is disintegrated on impact.
I cannot see whether it is somehow incorporated into the string, or whether it is simply forced back. For whatever reason,
the rock is held back. Clearly, the cyborgs must relax this hoop pressure somehow, down in the core, in order to fill this
tube with the liquid iron we saw before.

“Maybe they just slow it down some? Let the iron squish in a li’l ’fore the next time the string comes whizzin’ by?”

In the midst of techtalk he lapsed back into the short, clipped speech of his boyhood in the Citadel. The carefully assumed
veneer of Cap’n rubbed away under the press of action. Killeen fumbled with the suit refrigerator controls. He knew he had
to understand more about the hoop.

Possibly. Clearly the rotating string exerts great pressure against these rocks.

Killeen watched the quick flashing in the walls. For him to see these sparks at all, they must be enormous, since his speed
took him by kilometers of the ruby-red rock in an instant. He had no bodily sensation of speed, but knew from
the 3D simulation Arthur ran in his left eye that he was rising toward the surface, slowing as gravity asserted itself.

He had to find a way to escape the tube, but no idea came to him. He had nothing he could throw to gain momentum. The coolant
jet throbbed behind him, but relative to the blur of motion in the walls he could not tell whether it did any good. It occurred
to him that if he was too successful he would crash into the speeding wall and be torn to pieces in an instant. Somehow the
abstract nature of these things, the dry, distant feel of science, frightened him all the more.

The tube is flaring out. We are approaching one side of it, but I cannot judge our velocity well. As we rise, the hoop curves
away to make its great arc outward. The majesty of it is impressive, I must say. No mechtech I have ever heard of matches
this. Grey says the historical records suggest even greater works near the Eater.

“Forget that. What can I
do?
”

I am trying to see how we can use our situation, but I must say that a solution continues to elude me. The dynamics—

“We’re gettin’ close. Come on!”

The rock around him had already ceased glowing. Beyond the walls lay complete darkness. He could not understand how he could
be moving up from the center of New Bishop and yet still feel that he was falling. No matter; science was a set of rules to
him, and this was simply a rule he did not comprehend.

The tunnel was broadening. A shimmering golden passage flared gradually as he gazed between his boots at
shards of light that rushed toward him. More vast lava lakes, brimming with angry reds. The injury to the whole axial length
had brutally shoved great masses together, making the walls around him froth with the planet’s jagged orange wrath.

Again he thought of what would happen if he could do nothing up ahead. The cool logic of dynamics would, Arthur said, fling
him back into the core. The heat would kill him on the next pass. Or if it managed only to send him into delirium, there would
be another cycle, and another, and another…. He would bob endlessly, a crisp cinder obeying simple but inexorable laws.

Instantly he was swimming in light.

Stars bloomed beneath his feet. A bowl of brilliant gas and suns opened as he shot free of the planet’s grasp, above the twilight
line. After the sultry darkness this sky was a welcoming bath of colors and contrasts.

Out
, free!

He could feel his suit cool as it lost heat to the cold sky. It went
ping, pop
as joints contracted. Wrinkled hills rose above his head, the whole landscape stretching as it drew away. Here, too, was
the stripped look, as though the polar ice had only recently been vanquished.

The golden walls fell away from him on one side, but in front of him the radiance did not fade or recede. It was much closer.
He
had
gained some significant speed, then.

But now he was losing his speed along the tube. He watched the planet above his helmet turn into a gigantic silvery bowl.
The dawnline cut this bowl in half. A ruby sky-glow of dustclouds and stars dominated the wan day.

As he rose the world’s curve brought into view a far-off scruff of woodland and stark, jutting mountains. Fluffy white clouds
clung to shallow valleys.

His rate of rise dwindled. The far side of the hoop-tube
was bending away. In front of him the glow was brighter. He took a few moments to be sure he was in fact curving over along
with the hoop walls. Could he see the flicker of motion from the rapidly rotating string? He had begun to think of the walls
as solid, and now he became aware of their gauzy nature.

The cosmic string can exert pressure only when it is very near you, of course. You will not in fact strike the cosmic string
itself, I judge.

“Thought you said it’d take off my hand.”

I have conferred further with Grey. She believes that normally a string would function like a scythe. However, this highly
magnetized string is different. Until now you were moving with respect to the string at high speeds. Now you will have a low
relative velocity, but only for a brief moment. At such speeds the string’s magnetic fields will repulse your metallic boots
and suit.

“Huh.” Killeen supposed this was good news, but the Aspect spoke as though this was just another dispassionate physics problem.
“Look, you save any that cooler stuff?”

Yes, I had anticipated that we might need another push. But there is very little. I needed it all to keep us from losing consciousness
back there, and so—

“Get ready.”

Already he could detect no further shrinking in the wrecked face of New Bishop below. He must be near the top of his swing.

“Fire it!”

He felt the jetting pressure at his back. The glowing hoop-tube curled away like an opening funnel. Beyond he could see the
gossamer surface generated by the globe-spanning cosmic string. It appeared now to wrap the world in a rib-bony stranglehold.

The venting at his spine gurgled to a stop.

Whuum-whuum-whuum
, the magnetic rotor sang.

Vibrant, intense glow spread all around him. He wind-milled his arms and brought his boots down toward the golden surface.
It pulsed with freshening energy.

He felt as though he were a fragile bird, vainly flailing its wings above a sheet of translucent, wispy gold. Falling toward
it. Performing his own sort of experiment…

The impact slammed him hard. It jarred up through his boots like a rough, wrenching punch. He had crouched, letting his legs
absorb the momentum. Suddenly he was shooting along the surface of the sheet.

It has conveyed impulse to you, an infinitesimal fraction of its spinning energy.

Killeen felt himself loft slightly higher. Then he came down toward the sheet again. He had shot sidewise, away from the polar
axis, going out on a tangent like a coin flung off a merry-go-round.

He hit again. This time the jolt twisted his ankle. It felt like a hand grabbing at him, then losing its grip. But it gave
him another push—outward.

I estimate you are gaining significant velocity from these encounters. It is difficult to calculate, but—

Killeen ignored the tiny piping Aspect. His ankle ached. Was it broken?

He had no time to bend over and feel it. The shimmering plain came rising toward him again, hard and flat.

He grunted with pain. The shock caught his feet and flung him off at a steep angle, twisting him with a sharp, wrenching stab.

You will have to be more careful as you set down upon it. It can convey spin, but if your velocity is not aligned with it,
there is a vector coupling, a torque—

“Shut up!” He did not want to set down on the golden surface again, the ghostly curtain that could clutch and break him like
a stick.

But the velocity he was picking up from the thing flung him sidewise, not up. Only his rebounding kept him above the flickering
radiance. If he slipped, tumbled, went shooting across the damned thing as he spun out of control—

The flickering golden sheet rushed at him.

He struck solidly. This time his left leg shrieked with distress and he barely managed to kick free. The strobing glow seemed
all around him. He was going to hit again.

He windmilled. This time the shock was not as great but the muscles of his left leg seized up in an agonizing spasm.

Blinking away sweat, a weakness came over him. His ears rang. He wearily spun himself again, slower this time because the
motion hurt his leg.

He expected to hit quicker but the jolt did not come. He looked down and could not judge the distance. The glow had dimmed.
It took a long moment before he realized that the sheet was curving farther away from him, wrapping down to follow the arc
of the planet.

He was free. Out. In the clean and silent spaces.

We are on a highly elliptical orbit, I gather. It should take us at a significant angle with respect to this hoop-plain. I
cannot calculate the details, so it may be that we will return within its volume.

“Never mind,” he said, panting.

We will need the information in due time, however, and—

“I doubt it. Look up.”

Obsessed with its own mathematics, the Aspect piped with surprise as it responded to what Killeen saw.

Above them floated the sleek metallic body of the cyborg.

Quath made her way cautiously through murky warrens.

After the buoyant vault of space, these tunnels and cramped corridors weighed heavily on her, their air clotted and musky.
Around her surged the endless parade of working podia, bound on their relentless missions, clattering and banging against
one another in their haste. Lesser beings of russet scabrous shells scampered underfoot, bound on their menial tasks. They
had been hatched in the bodies of native animals, to save the Hive’s resources. Genetically programmed, they worked with fanatic
purpose, as though they knew their own short lifespans.