Far Frontiers Part 7

"Oh! Look at it. Just look at it!"

Gibeon Bastrop had displaced the hovering chair forward until it could no longer advance.

It floated right up against the material of the port, pressing against the thick transparency. Had Bastrop been able to continue forward, the navigator had no doubt he would have done so, right out into thevacuum of s.p.a.ce itself.

"Look at what, Anna Surat? At that? At the Chauna?"

Something had materialized between the two suns. Hitherto invisible, the extraordinary ephemeral shape was rapidly becoming visible as it drew energy from the nearest star. One gigantic jet of roiling plasma after another burst from the surface of the smaller sun to be drawn across many A.U.s into the larger. Each jet was several hundred times the diameter of the Earth, infinitely longer, with an internal temperature rated in thousands of degrees centigrade.

And each time a violent, spasming plasma jet erupted between the two stars, a portion of it illuminated the Chauna. The legend of the Cosocagglia was not a wandering planet, or a lost ship of profound dimensions, or a streak of natural phenomena as yet unidentified by science. It was at once something less, and much, much more.

"My G.o.d," Anna Surat whispered in awe, "it's alive!"

There were two wings, each ablaze with lambent energies of a type as yet unstudied. They rippled and flamed across the firmament, faint but unmistakable, like bands of energized nebulae ripped loose from their primary cloud. Nearby stars were clearly visible through them, but they were substantial enough to retain color. With each ma.s.sive emission from the smaller star, the Chauna partook a little of the enormous energies that were pa.s.sing between the two suns. The central portion of the event (creature?.. . spirit?) was sleek and slightly less pellucid than the wings. No other features were visible: no limbs, no face, no projections of any kind. No other features were necessary.

"It looks," an awestruck Anna Surat observed almost inaudibly, "like a b.u.t.terfly. But what's going on? What is it doing?" She had to strain to make out the Old Man's reply.

"It's feeding, Anna. Though it's millions of kilometers across, it's too fragile a structure to draw energy from a star itself. So it waits for one star to drift near enough to another for all that ma.s.sive gravity to do the job for it. When it senses what's going to happen, it places itself between the two and filters what it needs from the fleeting eruptions of plasma, like a great whale feeding on plankton. Neutrinos, cosmic rays, charged particles-who knows what it ingests and what it ignores? How would you, how could you, possibly study such an ent.i.ty? We can only watch and marvel. In the process, it apparently acquires throughout its substance a little ancillary coloration."

"A little!" The tenuous but vast extent of the Chauna was already greater than both suns.She continued to stare-what else could one do?-even as the Seraphim's instruments methodically registered the immense strength of the repeated solar outbursts while her screens fought to shield her frail, vulnerable, minuscule occupants from the effects of all that energy being blasted out into s.p.a.ce.

On other worlds, instruments would register the pulsarlike outburst and place it in the proper category of celestial disturbances. They would not note the presence of a third object drawing upon a tiny portion of the expelled energies. Though of unimaginable size, that object was far too ephemeral to be perceived by distant instruments.

The feeding of the Chauna was an infrequent event, or it would have been noticed before.

Clearly, the Cosocagglia had noticed it, in their thousands of years of specefaring. Now it was, at last, the turn of humans to do so. The myth had been made real. And it was a discovery that could be shared, and supported, and categorized. The Seraphim's battery of recorders would see to that When those incredibly attenuated sun-sized wings moved, there was a collective gasp among the crew of the witnessing vessel. Nothing like a Chauna had ever been seen before, and nothing like a Chauna in motion had ever been envisioned. It was beyond imagining, pest belief, a magnificent violation of known astrophysical doctrine. With that movement, no one questioned any longer if the phenomenon was alive. It was visible for another minute or two, a colossal undulation of energized color rippling against the star field, a million billion times vaster than any aurora. Then it was gone, the life-sustaining solar energy it had a.s.similated dispersed throughout its incomprehensibly vast incorporeality.

For a long time the navigator stood staring out the lofty port, aware she had been witness to one of, if not the greatest, sights the galaxy had yet revealed to human kind. Then she was reminded that her hand was still resting on the sharp-boned shoulder of the man who had made it possible for her to experience the inconceivable wonder. The man who had continued to insist all along that it was real, that it existed, and that the tiny, wandering creatures called humans might actually be able to descry such a marvel. Who had insisted despite the protests and disapproval of his fellows.

Suddenly she understood a little of what had made Gibeon Bastrop the singular individual he was. Suddenly she understood something of the source of his remarkable ability, and drive, and power. It made her wish she could have known the man, and not simply the pitifullyweakened and superannuated husk that presently occupied the motile.

"You were right, Mr. Bastrop. You were right all along. You and the Cosocagglia. And everyone else was wrong. Mr. Bastrop?" Her hand slid gently along the shoulder until it made contact with the leathery neck. The head reacted by falling forward, stopping only when the strong chin made contact with the all but exposed sternum. The neck did not pulse against her hand. When she shifted it, no air from the open mouth moved against her palm. She drew her hand back slowly.

"You were right," she repeated. "It was beautiful. As beautiful as you hoped it would be.

And so, I see now, were you."

OUT OF THE CRADLE

by Terry D. England

Terwy England is the author of a novel called Rewind He has been a journalist for more than twenty years, and also has written for New Mexico magazine. This is his second published story. He lives and writes in New Mexico. Pain seared across his face, pulsing in synch with waves of heat roiling from the magma hole. An odd, tiny movement pushed into a corner of his vision. A blister, swelling slowly, a last- ditch defense against the relentless heat.

He locked his gaze back on the glowing lava, mesmerized by the undulations of color and heat: radiant shades of red, touches of blue, an occasional yellow flare, weaving together in a hypnotic blend.

He tried to flex his fingers, but they wouldn't obey. His hands were foreign objects, no longer under his control. Skin and synth-dermal sleeve melted into each other, colors of both lost into a grayness slowly spreading. He dragged his left leg forward; some of the melted overboot pulled away and remained behind, an artificial footstep in the bleak gray and black of the new lava. Hot slivers shot up his thighs and arrowed up his back.

His vision swam and he fell to a knee, scream sc.r.a.ping out of a parched throat as thigh skin split open, exposing quivering muscle.

"Choc-choco-" His lips refused to move, his voice just a whisper. He fell on his side.

A bulbous object bounced into view, stopping directly overhead. He screamed again as metallic talons wrapped around his torso and yanked him off the pound. Cooling sprays washed over smoldering skin; his last conscious sensation was the diminishing of the pain as the black overtook him.

He sat up on the narrow table, ran his hand across his chest, abdomen, along his thighs.

Skin stayed taut over muscle; p.e.n.i.s, toes, fingers where they should be, pink and flexible; muscles bunched and stretched with each movement. He swept a hand through thick, dark hair; it had been the first to go, melting and dribbling across his scalp. He'd almost turned back right then.

He leaped off the table, ran vigorously in place for ten seconds, dropped and did ten quick push-ups, sprang to his feet and broke into a rhythm of side-to-side stretches.

"Lincoln Jones, Cradle NA21O," a neutral voice called out. "Live comm. Accept?""Quasi Alham, Cradle NA21O."

"Accept."

"Please drink fluid in red cup on table. Discharge denied until substance ingested."

Lincoln picked up the cup and looked at the greenish stuff. It smelled like too-sweet guava juice and had the consistency of tomato paste he had seen once in an Out-World restaurant.

Plus, there was a lot of it.

"So, my sib, Pele won, didn't she?" Quasi's voice, this time using a young-man old American Midwest flat accent, came out of a speaker on the wall.

Lincoln swallowed some of the substance, grimaced. "She lost. I'm still alive."

"But for the miracle of modem medicine. You know, most 'zekes sample Hawaii for surf and sea, soft breezes under swaying palms, and the gentle caresses of shapely synth-Polynesians steeped in datalore of an-dent s.e.xual rites. Not Lincoln Jones, the sensualist. Damage?"

Lincoln got half of the liquid down. "I'll check." He tapped a b.u.t.ton on the table; words formed on the wall. "Near-collapse of cardiopulmonary system from ingestion of gases.

Reproductive system damaged to nonfunctionality-hnim, didn't notice that one-nose tissue burned to nonfunctionality. Epidermal layers down to muscle fiber of right hand and fingers fused, ten percent of left hand had sloughed off. Eighty percent skin burned to second degree; twenty percent to third degree. Trauma factor 44, survival factor 3, overall score, 92."

"Almost half baked. Did you wait or did you call?"

"I tried to call." Lincoln swallowed some more of the fluid. "Waited too long, but the medi-ship controller heard enough of the call to determine I was in big trouble."

"Hmmpf. Trouble, indeed. The Terra Sphere can sensate the lava flows of Kiilauea for you without risk-mg you dying."

"Pixel fantasies. I felt all that heat. It was real." He drained the last of the substance. His stomach felt bloated.

"Nor be forced to drink two liters of goop."

Lincoln looked at the empty container. 'That is the only positive I can see-"

"While I see another speech coming. I'm sliding out. Until your next adventure, you twisted sensualist. Ciao."

Lincoln studied himself in the mirror. Brown hair, brown eyes, wide face, mouth set in asmirk. He erased that, continued to study the body, trying to detect changes, a spot where the nano-bugs made an error, slipped up, gave him a mole or left a scar. Well, if there had been a slip, he couldn't find it. To do a detailed exam, he'd have submit to a cellular scan, but he didn't want to take the time. Moot point, anyway. Changing one's body was as easy as changing one's clothes, so worrying about every little cell being exactly right was unnecessary. This physique still had an overwhelming resemblance to the Lincoln Jones who'd arrived in Hawaii two days ago, the Lincoln Jones formed by DNA combinations donated by his Parental DNA Donors.

Sometimes he wondered which feature came from whom, but that also was a useless line of inquny. The PADDs had met, given up some DNA, then departed, perhaps together, perhaps not, perhaps in the last act before giving up their original 'zekes for good in order to Cross Over. Or perhaps they'd already Crossed Over and simply selected the code from their personal records. His gestation came in an artificial womb and he was born into a Cradle, a group home designated NA2 10, operated by State contractors. His 11 Cradle siblings comprised his family, all spending their childhoods in the flesh, all looking forward to the day when they Crossed Over themselves into the TerraSphere as distinct but formless ent.i.ties, freed from flesh. Forever.

Except him.

And that was causing problems within the Cradle.

He turned from the mirror, ordered a bluish kilt, interlink vest, and sandals on the processor, then took a water shower, letting the liquid flow down his skin in sensual streams. The garments were waiting in the repromatt locker when he finished, and as he wrapped the kilt around his waist, he realized the bloated feeling had pa.s.sed. He slipped his sandals on, then the vest, carefully aligning the link connections in the collar with those in his neck, and left.

Back in the room of the only surviving hotel on Waikiki Beach, Lincoln kicked off the sandals and settled onto the couch, fingering the control b.u.t.tons on the vest.

"News, WNN. Continuous cast," a voice said.

Visual: A building burning, flames reaching into the sky, two persons watching. Julie Cotton, the artificially created but beautifully sculpted Terra Sphere news wraith, intoning in the background. ..... called the Harry S. Truman House located in Independence, Missouri, which caught fire early this morning. Town officials were taken by surprise and could not get enough corporeals together to fight the blaze, so the House burned to the ground. Federal Park Serviceofficials said the House had been left untended because few corporeals visit the site any more. In fact, the records show the last corporeal visitor was six months ago. It would seem, then, dear watchers, that Mr. Truman's old house won't be missed very much-"

The image blinked and Lincoln faced a man with olive skin, slanting eyes, and thin face.

"Cracker?" Lincoln said.

"Only to talk to you," the face said.

"To sell something, to get me to donate high chips to some cause, to enlist me in some scatterbrained enterprise."

"My name is Fortuna and I represent the Orion Foun-"

"Forget it." Lincoln cut the connection. Always someone trying to ram in and make one pitch or another. He sighed, sat back, slid his feet along the carpet until something hard hit his left big toe. He plucked a small metal object out of the nap. Lincoln stared at a small, brownish metal disk. A bearded man's profile dominated one side, with the words "In G.o.d We Trust" along the edge over the head. Just behind the man's neck was the word "Liberty" and in front was "1999"

and a "D" below that. He flipped the disk over and found, below a representation of a building of some kind, the words "ONE CENI" Above the building, along the edge again, "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA." Between the words and the building's roof, more words, E PLURJBUS UNUM. The historyimmersion lessons filtered up through his memory until he realized he and the bearded man shared a name, that this was a token for cash money, one cent out of a hundred. He drew a blank on the building, though, and the odd words above it, so he tabbed his linkvest again.

"The building represented on the reverse is the Lincoln Memorial," came the even voice of the Historian of Archives. "The penny, as it is called, honors Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, links top left. Inside the memorial is a statue of Mr. Lincoln seated, with excerpts of speeches carved on the walls, links right. The Lincoln-head cent was designed by Victor David Brenner and the coin was issued in nineteen-oh-nine to mark the one- hundredth anniversary of Mr. Lincoln's birth. The first design had wheat ears on the reverse, but the memorial replaced the wheat in nineteen-hundred fifty-nine. This penny design was in use until the denomination was eliminated in twenty-twenty-one. The metallic content of the coin-"

Lincoln jumped the lesson, picking the odd phrase with a twitch of eyeball. "The words are Latin, an an-dent language derived from the ancient country Latmum, links above, where thecity of Rome was established in what is now called Italy. The language was spread by the rise of Rome as a military and ciiitural power, links left. The words mean Out of Many, One. It is the motto of the United States of America-"

Lincoln cut off the droning historian but continued to gaze at the disk. Odd how the hotel cleaner-bots could miss something this big. He tossed the disk up, caught it, leaned back, tossed and caught it again, this time snapping his thumb so it spun. Whoever dropped it likely is lamenting the loss of something valuable, something just over 150 years old. In that age, people didn't live very long. Now, they lived far longer.

At least, in their minds they do.

A white garment like a Greek chiton wrapped itself tighter around the girl on the platform as a lanky man with red hair and beard wearing a tuxedo with top hat clamped heavy cuffs on her ankles. A slight breeze rippled the garment and her long brown hair. She stared out over the edge of the bridge, down the dry riverbed where it turned at the base of a granite cliff. A pyramid of gra.s.sy berrns had been piled fifty-four meters below where the woman now stood.

"All righty-o," said Top Hat. "Set."

The girl-late teens, Lincoln guessed-turned languidly toward Top Hat. "The cord is right?"

"Guaranteed." Top Hat flashed a toothy grin, stepped back.

The girl turned back without a sound. She stood easily, though her eyes were unfocused.

"She's gathering kanna," piped up a tousled-haired teenager in skintight pants swirling with every color in the spectrum in a constantly changing pattern.

"Is it difficult?" Lincoln's sarcasm was answered with a smirk.

The girl lifted her arms straight out, then fell for- ward, sailing off the bridge in a graceful arc. The cords whined as they slid over the edge, then snapped. The girl hit the top right of the berm pile; her body jerked in the return flex of the cords, then hung limp, one arm at an odd angle.

A bulbous medi-ship leaped skyward from a bluff west of the bridge and swooped down to her. It grappled her inside and let the cords fall free. Then it rose, halted at bridge level."Ma.s.sive trauma to the head and neck," a mechvoice intoned. "Fracture on right side of skull, jaw dislocation. Fracture and displacement of spinal cord at third and forth cervical vertebrae. Collapse of right lung but full trauma to digestive and cardiopulmonary organs not a.s.sessable at this time. Damage to skull suggests concomitant damage to brain. Death probable within fifteen minutes. Score: Trauma factor forty-five, survival factor seven, overall score, eighty-four."

"Yabba!" the teen blurted as the medi-ship zipped away. "Her best yet. If she survives, of course. Doesn't count, otherwise."

Lincoln leaned over the railing. Top Hat and another youth in a shapeless white jumpsuit were pulling the cords up. Below, a crew readjusted the berms the girl had knocked askew.

'That's it, then?" he said.

"Well, yeah. You can die instantly if you hit the berms wrong. The idea is to do damage, but live to crow."

"Ummm. I suppose there's buzz there. It just seems so-lackadaisical."

"Ain't you a little old for this, anyway?"

Lincoln eyed the teen, who glared back with a half-challenging, half-amused look.

"You have a problem with that?"

"No. Just we rarely see someone past First Score here. Are you an Incorrigible?"

"No." Lincoln turned, brought one foot up flat against the rock bal.u.s.trade, crossed his arms and leaned back. "I just haven't Crossed Over yet."

"You're an Incorrigible. Name's Slaben, by the way.

"Lincoln Jones."

"Yabba. Three more years, then freedom. CrossOver comes, I'm gone. No more constraint." He thumped his bony chest. "When I shuck this, it'll be in such bad shape, no one'll want to use it again."

Indeed, the young body bore a lot of scars, as if he'd stopped remolding past a certain point. Lincoln had heard of this, a sort of a mark of bravery, a rite of pa.s.sage the way hunts for dangerous animals once marked the line between child and adult. It didn't matter, of course, because remolding could fix any body, change it, make even Slaben's scarred carca.s.s into something sleek and perfect.

"You're so eager to become a wraith.""Mind without body-oozin'. A life of sliding, yabba." He grinned. "Want to go next? I'll shuck my place."

Lincoln shook his head. "I'll pa.s.s. No challenge." It wasn't the pain that bothered him- that was the idea. after all-but something seemed to be lacking.

The teen shrugged. "You'll be back, Mr. Jones. I know your type."

"Do you, now. A man of the Out-World, wise beyond his years."

Top Hat made a backward dive off platform, keeping the headgear in place until he hit the berms.

"I just know. You Incorrigible 'zekes are pretty much alike. All body, no mind."

The train hurtled down the track, locomotive roaring, connecting rods and drive wheels just a blur. The train, twenty flatcars loaded with steel I-beams, gained more speed, and soon Lincoln, strapped to the front of the locomotive, saw the wall rising above the horizon. The wind tore at his face, puffing his cheeks and forcing his lips back in a rictus. He watched the wall grow until it dominated everything before him. In the last seconds, he noted the rectangular pattern of the bricks before they smashed into his face, the momentum from the locomotive behind doing its best to ram him through the entire wall.

After a moment, "Boy, that was stupid," a voice said into the darkness.