Galactic Center - Furious Gulf Part 3

Evaporated away, like the plants in the parks.----But why not in here? I mean, this was sealed.-Toby wondered why mechs would leave this vault under air pressure, if they were the last ones here. He walked among the ranks of shadowy machinery and puzzled over what it was for. There was a certain cast to the bulky a.s.semblages, a style that was not like the mech machines he had feared and hated all his life.It struck him that these were human machines, by far the largest he had ever seen. He smiled with pride. Men and women had once worked on the scale of mechs. He had lived with the automatic a.s.sumption that only the malevolent, intelligent machines could achieve great works. Argo 43.was an ancient human work, of course, but it was of the Arcology Era, used to fly between the Hunkered-Down colonies on the far-flung planets.

And Argo had used many parts scavenged from mechs. These old human artifacts were different. Beautiful, he decided.Killeen sent,--Team Lambda has found some engraving in a wall. I want full spectro-copies of it.-Toby had the gear for that.--Yeasay, coming.-He turned to go and a sudden blaring signal erupted through the comm line.

I AM A BOMB. I AM SET TO EXPLODE IN THREE HUNDRED TIME INTERVALS.

*BEEP* THIS MARKS THE BEGINNING OF A TIME INTERVAL. THERE ARE TWO.

HUNDRED NINETY-NINE TO GO. I AM A BOMB. I AM SET TO EXPLODE IN THREE.

HUNDRED TIME INTERVALS. *BEEP* THERE ARE TWO HUNDRED NINETY-EIGHT.

TIME INTERVALS TO GO.

The signal came from somewhere in the vault, Toby's locator told him.--Evacuate!--he called and started for the lock.It was closing. Cermo was in front of him, moving with a speed and dexterity surprising for his size. Cermo aimed his weapon at the lock and blew off a hinge. The door stopped.Toby got through the entrance and then stopped.--You figure it's a nuke?----Might be,--Cermo sent.--Move!----Let's push the lock door back in place. It might contain anything less than a nuke.--Cermo swore but agreed. They swung the door shut with the help of three other crew. The time wasn't lost anyway, because others were still coming out. The last crewwoman squeezed through and they slammed the bulky steel shut.n.o.body wasted time on breath. They rushed down silent, inky hallways.

Teams came streaming out of the Chandelier. Toby got into free s.p.a.ce just as the relay transmitter they had left in the vault sent: *BEEP* I AM A BOMB. THIS HAS BEEN A WELCOME CONCLUSION TO MY HISTORIC.

MISSION. I BID GOOD-BYE TO THOSE WHO CREATED ME AND GAVE ME THIS.

OPPORTUNITY TO SERVE. THANKS ALSO TO THOSE WHO TRIGGERED MY COMPLETING.

MOMENT. I NOW DETONATE WITH RESOLVE AND ELOQUENCE. *BEEP*

Its transmission shut off.The Chandelier shook visibly. Spires sheared away. Walls split.A helical tower cracked. Then it all came apart in slow motion, buckling and fracturing into shards that spun away, tumbling. In the silence of s.p.a.ce it was like watching a mountain come apart piece by piece.Toby watched the debris as their flyer sped away. It had been a close call, but the Chandelier was fracturing with little energy left over.

44.Argo was already speeding away. They probably wouldn't sustain much damage.--Whew! We were lucky.--he said.--Maybe,--Killeen answered.Cermo said,--I don't think that stuff can really hurt us much.----Me neither,--Killeen answered.--But maybe it wasn't supposed to.-Toby puzzled.--Huh? What else could it have been for?----Wish I knew. But anybody who just wanted to kill us wouldn't have given any warning.-Toby blinked.--And putting it inside an airlock... --Cermo said,--Mechs wouldn't be drawn to an atmosphere. They work better without one. We'd be suckered in, though.----So I figure,--Killeen said.--We set off a humans-only alarm.-They watched in silence the slow-motion wreck of their ancient ancestral home. Toby's oldest Aspects murmured, stirred by memories he could probably never know. He felt also the unspoken anguish in the scattered comm comments. Even though picked clean, there had been a feeling to the place, a taste of what humans had been like many millennia ago. A flavor of antiquity, faint and echoing. Tantalizing, sweet--and then s.n.a.t.c.hed away forever.--Too bad I didn't get to that engraving,--Toby said.--Yeasay. Team Lambda got a few quick shots, though.--Killeen scowled, lines deepening in his face.--I don't get it. Why destroy such a beautiful thing? They didn't even catch us.--Cermo said,--Dunno. Me, I figure mechs maybe just like busting up anything human. Anything that means something to us.--Killeen said darkly,--Let us hope it is only that.-- 5.

Ancient Flavors Toby liked working outside. Grunt work in zero-gravs was more like dancing than real labor, demanding some body-smarts--but there were moments that took plenty of muscle, too.There was joy in popping out a sweat. He used it to work off his frustrations, which were getting to be many. Even the best skinsuit got pretty swampy after a while, though, and it was a lot of trouble to pee, so you didn't drink anything for hours before going out. That meant your throat dried out and you got by on sips of tomato juice.This job was tougher. Their pa.s.sage through the molecular cloud had somehow shorted out some of the ship's sensors. Cermo said it was all those banks of dust. Then the Chandelier explosion had pocked the hull. Most of the debris was small stuff, but each gouge had to be patched. Tedious, messy, and essential, just like most jobs on a starship.

When there's only one skin between you and high vacuum, you take care of it.Toby helped get a crushed antenna back into shape, depending on instructions from a Face he carried. A Face was a trimmed down Aspect, really just a catalog of technical lore and tricks. Toby let the Face tell him which tools to use and electrical connections to make, which left him free to just puff and sweat for a while. Techno-thinking was intricate and hard and he tired of it. But the repair routines went into muscle-memory, so he would be able to do it better next time.When a break came he took a stroll over the hull while the rest of the work gang rested on their tails. He was beginning to see what his father liked about spending so much time out here, beneath the seethe of sky. A million pinp.r.i.c.k fires shone through the blobs and swirls of twilight radiance--dust and gas, tortured into smoldering luminescence by huge electrical currents.Staring outward for long moments, he could sense the slow churu of 46.

the entire disk of the galaxy. Everything here whirled about a single point that no one could see: the black hole at True Center.The Eater. As a boy on Snowglade he had seen it, a smoldering presence behind churning molecular clouds. Some legends called it the Eye, from an age when it had glared down on Families like an avenging angel, or devil, or both.Toby could only glance at the eye-stinging brilliance there--the disk of captured matter that spiraled about the hole. Then he had to look away, or his body's own systems would close down his optical vision, to avoid getting burned out. Still, it was eerie, staring at clouds of dust as they slid into the death grip of that tiny, vicious maw. A mouth that was always hungry, always impatient.He turned his back on the glare and hiked down into the little valley formed by two bulges in Argo's hull. He was daydreaming, taking in the view--and then stopped short. Quath's honeycomb warren lay in shambles.And Quath stalked among the ruins. Her double-jointed legs worked in their steel sockets as Quath seized a wall of gray bricks. Alarmed, Toby trotted forward, boots clanging heavily.--What happened? Did a piece of the Chandelier hit it?----But this much, something big--hey!--Quath jerked powerfully and the entire wall came apart. Bricks of waste and garbage flew everywhere. Then Toby noticed that despite their tumbling and spinning, the bricks all drifted into neat stacks on the hull, following long, curved paths in zero-gravs. They settled nicely into order with impossible, liquid grace.--How'd you do that?--e --Okay, but how do you get them to fly apart like that, and go into the right stacks?----What trajectory? We haven't decided where to go yet.--And then Quath would say no more. She worked quickly and, for her size, with an unlikely deft touch. Toby called to her and got no answer.He shruged and walked away, reminding himself not to take this personally. Quath was not a woman in an insect suit. Nor was she an untamed and uncontrollable force of nature. She was just plain alien, and human metaphors didn't apply. That was the hardest thing to remember, 47.when you'd just been snubbed. Toby turned and called back,--So much for your c.r.a.p-castle, bug-face!--Quath stopped and waved two feelers at him but said nothing but <[untranslatable]>. Maybe that was an obscene gesture, for Quath's race--but Toby would never know.He stalked away and took out his irritation by working harder, faster.

He was pleasantly tired by the time the job was done, and when he cycled back inside h treated himself to a full shower.This was three days early, but he felt sorely used by life. He thumbed the nozzle on full bore and selected options of suds and an alcohol spray.

By pure luck it was the first day in a cycle and the water was fresh. It didn't smell of other Bishops or of the refilter that never really took away all the odors. He let the wonderful warmth gush over him, tuned the nozzle to pound his muscles and ma.s.sage his scalp. Back in Citadel Bishop they had lots more water, so much he had even played in a bath of it once. Usually baths were reserved for couples, as part of the wedding ceremony.He was sorry when his charge was used up and the last dribbles gurgled away. He wouldn't have another such treat for weeks.He sighed, dropped into his bunk--and his caller chimed. Cermo's voice rang in his left ear. "Report to Command, Toby."Toby groaned. He and Besen had planned on "resting up" together, which was Family slang for a little mutual bunk time in the free-for-all quarters. Unmarried Family enjoyed a period of complete s.e.xual freedom, before the necessity of childbearing closed in, and Toby had been making the most of it. This feature of shipboard life he liked best--time to indulge the animal within. Well it would have to wait.He called Besen and explained. She groaned. "Hey, and I got us time in a zero-grav section, too!""Duty calls, my Juliet.""So you did check that play. See, it's parting that's such sweet sorrow."

"In this case, it's staying apart.""Hurry it up, Romeo. Maybe we can still use the time I booked."To his surprise, only his father and Cermo were in the Command Center. The two figures seemed dwarfed by the enormous ceramic-faced banks of computers, the arrays of sliding phosph.o.r.escent data. Cermo said rather stiffly, "We have need of your Shibo Aspect."Toby studied his father's face in the shimmer of blue-white data displays, remembering the last time they had talked about Shibo, but Killeen was wearing his firm Cap'n persona. His dark eyes gave nothing away. "Uh, okay. What's up?""Two things, really." Killeen was brisk, efficient. "That engraving from the Chandelier, remember? We're trying to decipher it. Give a squint."

48.

SHE,.

/IHT IAI DVIIJTTA8 Q/ItlHDEIAI E1 VIWOIA/IH TA/IHD VASTY REALMS OF DUST AND Ga.s.sY LORE, BLUNTED MAD ATTACKS.BRAVE-PARTING A TIDE OF GROTESQUES, CONSUMED THE FIVE KINDS..TACH YJOH DVIIWOJD-JSITE VII gA/IQ DVIIVI2 [OSHE,.5I/IH DMIWOIA)[ YTIDOSI/I ,/IaUAD TaU[ go BODY WELL, VOYAGED ON TO PLACE IMMUTABLE--THOUGH WEA-.SHE,.

8MStU8 >tJO/IHT /O aHYlUTJUD 8aOIDA eOaHylCla ZSIOTa HeOHWSTILL, AND SLITHERS THROUGH THE TICK OF TIME, AND CONTOR.HDAqa-5IU IO al/IOWSHE,.

IAOITAMIVIA H/IH Q/ITTIUQ /IDAJAq JIAHq HHT O H/IQIA/IEt(H I,/I/ITE AND NOW DWELLS IN THE TANGLE OF TIME WHERE ETERNITY ABIDES.

E/ITATI(I/IM YTVIDIHI,tVOE EM,q':[UE/i JOE (][/IfilAV/I M20;I YJICIO8 H/tHIN EVENT-SPUN.

DRIFTS, BOWEL-DEEP, FLECKED BY DELICIOUS../IHUTUi-AD/IMO QVIA YHOTEIH-HU iO EHUDVIOTSHE,.

aI aA ,IJU[-HEHSV[ VISI(3AJ-TIA/IDE .GIG WRITTEN AND SHALL BE RENDERED FORTH IN THE RESTORATION TO..HMOD.SHE,.

5tlAJ HHT OF (IYIAWVII /IDMUJq OHW JJA /IW JJAHE aA HaISI JJAH2AND LIBRARY. FULLNESS OF GREAT DURATION, IS NOW AND EVER.

.Hg JJAH2"Ummm.' Toby was mystified. He summoned up his Shibo Personality.

Her cool presence paused a long moment and then said,This "she" must've been quite a woman.Killeen said, "We can't make sense of some parts of this."

Toby frowned. "What's it mean, that every other line is written backwards?"

Cermo shrugged. "Some kinda code?"

He felt Shibo meshing with his oldest Aspects, calling up shreds of memory. She summed these and reported:This is an ancient skill. I saw such when I was a girl with FamilyKnight. This was written to be read digitally. Instead of return ing to the left to scan each line, a digital mind simply reads thecharacters in backwards order as its field of view returns, rightto left.

49.

Toby relayed this. Cermo said, "Seems screwy."

It saves time. Our practice of reading only after returning to theleft each time is for simple minds.Killeen said doubtfully, "Chandelier folk could do such?"Family Knight did, once. Their ancient scrolls were writ so. I sawsome as a girl.Toby repeated this. He could see by the compression of Killeen's face that it had great weight for him. It was the burden of all the Families to live out lives of flight and desperation, knowing that once their kind had strode proud and tall at Galactic Center. Chandelier-makers, explorers, hunters of vacuum beasts, riders of great storms. But that was so long ago now that even legends only whispered about the heights of such far antiquity.

"There was none such at the Citadel of Family Bishop," Killeen said begrudgingly.

Toby recalled seeing a wall in the ruined Blaine Arcology that held some such message on it. He started to say so but Cermo cut him off with a wave. "Look, however they slung their alphabet, I can see this plain. It's a story about a woman who led humanity. They won. But what's all this stuff about pearl palaces?"

"I figure that's the Chandelier," Killeen said distantly.

"Makes sense," Toby said, quickly referring to his Isaac Aspect. "That word 'pearl' means a jewel--a kind of foggy one, like thin cat beer."

This time Shibo was puzzled.What is "cat beer"?"Milk. Sorry, it's a kid's joke." Toby whispered to her.

He had said it without thinking. He wanted to be taken seriously here, not as just a funnel for Shibo's expertise. He had not let Cermo or Killeen have direct access to Shibo through comm interface, which would have been an easy techno-trick. Then they would have just bypa.s.sed him completely, a kid left out of adult business.

"There's a lot I don't understand about this engraving," Killeen said.

"First, can you get it writ right for us?"

For Shibo it was easy. In a few moments she relayed to one of the big wall screens.

50.

SHE.

ON WHOSE b.r.e.a.s.t.s GREAT RENOWN IS INSCRIBED BATTLING IN THE.

VASTY REALMS OF DUST AND Ga.s.sY LOREr BLUNTED MAD ATTACKS.

SHE,.

BRAVE-PARTING A TIDE OF GROTESQUES, CONSUMED THE FIVE KINDS.OF LIVING DEAD IN STILL-GLOWING HOLY HEAT.SHE,.

EMBRACER OF MEN AND OF JUST CAUSE, FEROCITY KNOWING HER.

BODY WELL/ VOYAGED ON TO PLACE IMMUTABLE--THOUGH WEARIED.

FEVERED STILL IN ARDOR FOR HUMANITY'S PEARL PALACES.

SHE,.

WHOSE STORY SPREADS ACROSS CULTURES OF THE FOLK, BURNS.

STILL, AND SLITHERS THROUGH THE TICK OF TIME, AND CONTORTIONS.

OF UR-s.p.a.cE.

SHE,.

STERN DEFENDER OF THE PEARL PALACE, QUITTED HER ANIMATION.

AND NOW DWELLS IN THE TANGLE OF TIME WHERE ETERNITY ABIDES.

HER BODILY FORM EVADED, SOLE SUPREME SOVEREIGNTY MEDITATES.

IN EVENT-SPUN DRIFTS, BOWEL-DEEP, FLECKED.

BY.

DELICIOUS.TONGUES OF UR-HISTORY AND OMEGA-FUTURE.SHE.

I$ AS WAS AND DOES AS DID. SCENT-LADEN, FLESHY-FULL, AS IS.WRITTEN AND SHALL BE RENDERED FORTH IN THE RESTORATION TO.COME.

SHE,.

SHALL RISE AS SHALL WE ALL WHO PLUNGE INWARD TO THE LAIR.

AND LIBRARY. FULLNESS OF GREAT DURATION, IS NOW AND EVER.

SHALL BE."So I was right." Killeen slammed a fist on his desk. "They had a long era when they beat the mechs--see, the 'five kinds of living dead.' I saw that written on a monument, a tomb, years ago--remember? You were both there."

Cermo frowned. "Ummm, I recall something..."

Toby said, "I remember. The inscription was about a powerful 'He,'

though, and--"

"It was about mechs, for sure," Killeen went on. "And this 'she,' a great leader--they took her away somewhere."

Cermo's brow wrinkled doubtfully. "How's that?"

"Plain as starshine," Killeen said, getting up with muscular energy and pacing before the screen. "See? This 'she' 'voyaged on to place immutable' after her 'bodily form evaped'--evaporated? She'll 'rise as shall we all who plunge inward to the lair and library.' They left the Chandelier, at least some of them. And went somewhere else, this 'lair'

where they'd be safe."

51.Cermo nodded reluctantly. "Yeasay, I remember a tomb. As for the rest...""It's obvious!" Ki]leen paced quickly. "Look, I recorded it using one of my Aspects. Here--"On a screen flashed: He,on whose arm fame was inscribed, when, in battle in the vasty countries, he kneaded and turned back the first attack. With his breast he parted the tide of enemies--those hideous ones, mad-mechanical and unmerciful to the fallen.

There was more, and Killeen rattled on, reciting pa.s.sages and comparing them with the inscription they had seen near a tomb, and none of it made any particular sense to Toby. Some, like He: Who led Humankind from the steel palaces aloft, probably referred to the Chandelier Era. Others, such as He: by the breezes of whose prowess the southern ocean is still perfumed, must have come from a time when there were oceans on Snowglade, not just the lakes he knew, that shrank every year. But there were plenty, like He: Who set forth Humanity in the names of the Pieces, that made no sense at all. And his Isaac Aspect told him that even the folk of the Arcologies were mystified by such wordy relics.Killeen paced and talked, paced and talked. When his famous ardor came on him like this, he had a hypnotic energy. But Toby could see a quiet frenzy building in his father and did not like the signs.Cermo intervened, voice smooth and soothing. "Could be, lotsa big fat maybes in there--but that's not the point, Cap'n, 'member?"Killeen blinked and took a deep breath. "I ... suppose not. I had hoped that the engraving would give us some way to deal with this tight spot we're in."Toby tried to keep his voice light and businesslike. "What spot?"

Cermo said to his Cap'n, "We should hold a Gathering."

"Yeasay. I can present our choices to the Family--"

"What spot?"Cermo said, "The explosion in the Chandelier, it was the energy source for a pulse of radiation. We thought it was meant to catch us, but could be the emission was the true intent."Toby kept his face blank to cover his surprise, the way his father sometimes did. "I didn't pick up anything, on any comm band."Killeen thumbed up a spectrum plot on a wall screen. "No wonder. It was far up in frequency, way above anything we can see. Gamma rays.And beamed--Argo picked it up, just barely.""Beamed which way?" Toby persisted."Outward. Toward some of those places Quath told us to avoid."

Killeen gazed somberly at his son.

52.

Toby felt a burst of sympathy for his father. Killeen had taken so much on faith, and now that would all be tested. They had followed Quath's advice ever since their long flight began from Trump. They had gone to that world hoping to make it be New Bishop, thinking they would settle there. But they had been driven out.

And the Family had not even protested when members of Quath's species had followed them--though at a distance, propelling forward a huge glowing instrument of their own gigantic craft. It was somewhere behind them, acting as a kind of rear guard that n.o.body quite understood.

They had swooped and dodged to get this close to True Galactic Center, avoiding obstacles Quath found in the confusing star maps. All on faith, flying nearly blind. Without knowing what strange strategies would work here.

"Burglar alarm," Toby blurted.

Cermo asked, "Huh? The emission?"

"Beamed at somebody who wanted to know when humans returned here," Toby said with more certainty than he felt--a skill he thought of as adult, manly.

Killeen nodded. "Mechs."

"Why not just leave a bigger bomb?" Cermo said. "Kill us total."

Toby spread his hands. "Maybe they thought they'd catch us."

Killeen shook his head. "They master enormous energies. If they wanted to kill, they'd have done the job."

"So why'd they want to catch us?" Cermo asked.

Toby said quickly, "And the explosion, maybe it was just to make us think we had gotten away, that we were okay."

Killeen pursed his lips, still pacing tensely. "Mechs think we're pretty dumb. Could be."

"Something else, too," Toby said, listening to Shibo. "That bombspoke our kind of talk. Not this ancient lingo."

Killeen stopped pacing and regarded his son with interest.