Heaven's Reach (27 page)

The sphere's injury reminded him of his own maiming, which also had occurred in this very place.

Trembling, Emerson's hand raised toward the area near his left ear. A filmy creature quivered at his touch—the
rewq
symbiont he had brought along from Jijo. Together with unguents supplied by a traeki pharmacist, the rewq was partly responsible for his surviving an injury that should otherwise have left him dead or a living vegetable. The tiny thing released its gentle clasp on a surface blood vessel and rippled aside, letting Emerson stroke the scar tissue surrounding a hole in his head. Not an accidental lesion, but a deliberate hurt.

This was where it had happened, about a year ago.
Here
—he recalled climbing into a small fighter craft, ready to sacrifice himself and cover
Streaker
's desperate escape.

Here
—he blazed forth in the little scoutship, shouting defiance at those hostile factions whose demands and extortions disproved their vaunted reputation for wise
neutrality … cries that turned joyful when a
different
clique of Old Ones intervened, opening a door in the great shell to let Gillian and the others escape.

Here
—exultation cut off as his tiny vessel was seized by slabs of force, hemming it in, then abrading and dissolving the armored scout like a skinned pineapple, yanking him to a captivity worse than any he could have imagined.

Emerson was still hazy on what followed. His captors used potent conditioning that made memory excruciating. For most of the last year, he had wandered in a fog of amnesia, punctuated by bouts of searing agony whenever he tried to recall.

Defeating that programming had been his greatest victory. Emerson's mind was now his own again—what remained of it, that is. Anguish-reflexes still tried to divert his roaming thoughts, impeding him from salvaging further recollections, but he had learned to fight back by not giving a damn about pain. Emerson knew each throbbing impulse meant he was putting another piece back in place, thwarting their purpose.

If only he knew what that purpose was.

Lacking important parts of his old brain, Emerson could not express in words the irony he felt, crouched in his secret little bubble niche, looking across the broad corrugated vistas of the Fractal World. Even mute, his emotions had a complex, fine-grained texture.

For instance, by all rights, he should be experiencing satisfaction from the rack and ruin tearing through this place. As swarms of huge robots poured in through the sphere's gaping wound, converging to shore up its unraveling rim, he ought to be hoping for them to fail. That would be vengeance—for his tormentors to be smashed, for all their hopes and works to fall like ash into an emancipated sun.

But there was something else inside him, older and stronger than wrath.

Love of a certain kind of beauty.

The gracefulness of artifice.

The glory of something well made.

He could still recall the day—ages ago—when
Streaker
entered this redoubt of the Retired Order for the first time, full of naive hopes that would soon be betrayed. Awed by the splendor, he and Karkaett and Hannes Suessi had argued ecstatically over the ultimate function of this titanic habitat—to cheat the eroding rub of time, taming the wasteful extravagance of a star. It seemed an engineer's paradise.

And he still felt that way! Remarkably, he cheered the robot workers on. Emerson figured he would have revenge on his tormentors, simply by surviving. So long as
Streaker
roamed free, frustration must surely fill those cold eyes he recalled peering down at him while cruel instruments reamed his mind, sifting and squeezing for secrets he did not have.…

Emerson shuddered. Why hadn't the Old Ones simply killed him when they finished trawling through his brain? Instead, they mutilated and cast his writhing body across space in some unknown manner to crash-land on lonely Jijo.

It seemed a lot of trouble to go to. In a strange way, the special attention bolstered Emerson's sense of worth and self-esteem.

So he was willing to be magnanimous. He rooted for the repair mechanisms as they spun vast, moon-sized spools of carbon fiber, weaving nets to catch and hold tottering fractal spikes, made of fragile snow and wider than a planet. He applauded the robot tugs, swarming like gnats to divert huge, drifting ruins away from collision paths that might wreak untold devastation. Emerson did not think of sapient beings living beneath those countless, glittering windows. Perhaps it was the lack of words, but to him, the Fractal World seemed not so much a habitat as a creature in its own right, self-contained, self-aware, and wounded, fighting for its life.

He used a pocket terminal to get close-ups. Unable to command by voice or keyboard, he found the little computer was conveniently programmed in other ways. It coaxed him to use a language of gestures that must have been developed for disabled aphasics on Earth, a handy mix of hand motions, eye flicks, and plain old pointing that usually conveyed what he wanted. It sure beat the
clumsy, grunting efforts he used on Jijo, when communicating with poor Sara often reduced them both to tears of futility.

And yet … he recalled those months fondly. The sooner world had been beautiful, and the illegal colony of six allied races had moved him deeply with their strangely happy pessimism. For that reason, and for Sara's sake, he wished there were something he could do for the Jijoans.

For that matter, he wished he could do something for
anybody
—Gillian, the Streakers … or even the hordes of hardworking robots, laboring to save an edifice that was built when early dinosaurs roamed Earth. Lacking useful work, he was reduced to staring at a great drama unfolding outside.

Emerson hated being a spectator. His hands clenched. He would rather be using them.

With a rapid set of winks, he called up the scene in the Plotting Room, where Gillian met with Sara and the youngsters from Wuphon Port. They were joined by a tall stack of fuming, waxy rings—Tyug, the traeki alchemist of Mount Guenn Forge, who filled out a quorum of the Jijo's Six Races. Amid their animated discussion he saw the young centauroid
urs
, named Ur-ronn, gesture toward their small herd of glavers, mewling and licking themselves nearby. Beings whose ancestors had roamed the stars, but who since had reclaimed innocence—the method prescribed for winning a second chance.

Emerson wasn't quite sure of the connection, but apparently those reverted creatures had something to do with the huge, blobby star vessel that escorted
Streaker
here.

He was proud when a word came floating to mind.
Zang.

Except to prevent
Streaker
from leaving, the great globule seemed indifferent at first, concentrating on the repair task, directing mechanical hirelings to weave vast nets of black fiber, bandaging cracks in the huge edifice. But after a day or so, the Zang were forced to pay attention when mysterious objects drifted toward the
Earthship, approaching from various parts of the immense inhabited shell, nosing close to investigate.

The Zang drove each snoop away, keeping a cordon around the Terragens' cruiser. Yet,
Streaker
's exotic guardians showed no interest in acknowledging Gillian's frequent messages.

Emerson recalled one of the few definite facts known about the mighty hydrogen breathers—they had different ways of viewing time. Clearly, the Zang felt their business with
Streaker
could wait.

Now he listened as Gillian consulted with the Jijo natives, trying to form a plan.

“What if we just herd the glavers onto a shuttle and send it over? Do we have a clue whether that would satisfy the Zang? Or if the glavers would be safe?

“Suppose the answer to both questions is yes. What does Galactic law say about a situation like this? Are we supposed to ask the Zang for a receipt?”

Out of the flood of words, only “Zang” had any solid meaning to him. The rest floated just beyond clear comprehension. And yet, to Emerson, the rich sibilance of her voice was like music.

Of course he had always nursed a secret passion for Dr. Gillian Baskin, even when her husband, Thomas Orley, lived aboard
Streaker
—the sort of harmless infatuation that a grown man could control and never show. At least not crudely. Life wasn't fair, but he did get to be around her.

Alas the infatuation started affecting his judgment after Tom vanished heroically on Kithrup. Emerson started taking risks, trying to emulate Orley. Attempting to prove himself a worthy replacement in her eyes.

A foolish quest, but natural. And it paid off at Oakka, where minions of the Library and Migration Institute betrayed their oaths, conspiring to seize
Streaker
's cargo to benefit their birth clans instead of all civilization. There, Emerson threw himself into a wild gamble, and his boldness paid off, helping win a narrow victory—another brief deliverance—enabling
Streaker
to flee and fight another day.

But here …

He shook his head. In viewing tapes from
Streaker
's departing point of view, Emerson now realized that his sacrifice in the borrowed Thennanin scout had made very little difference.
Streaker
's escape path had begun opening even as he charged ahead, ignoring Gillian's pleas to return. He would have gone to Jijo anyway, and in more comfort, if he had just stayed aboard this ship and never fallen into the clutches of the Old Ones.

Scanning the near edge of the torn Fractal World, he immersed himself in the fantastic task of preservation. Numbers and equations were no longer trustworthy, but he still had an engineer's instincts, and these thrilled as he watched machines bolster vast constructions of ice and carbon thread. He had never seen cooperation on such scale among hydros, oxies, and machines.

That thought made the cosmos seem a nicer place somehow.

Time passed. Emerson no longer thought in terms of minutes and hours—or duras and miduras—but the uneven, subjective intervals between hungers, thirsts, or other bodily needs. And yet, he began feeling tensely expectant.

A bedeviling sense that something was wrong.

For a while he had difficulty placing it. The dolphins on duty in the bridge seemed unconcerned. Everything was calm. None of the display screens showed any obvious signs of threat.

Likewise, in the Plotting Room, Gillian's meeting broke up, as people dispersed to workstations or else observed the awesome vista surrounding
Streaker.
Nobody appeared alarmed.

Emerson conveyed to the little holo unit his desire to tap the ship's near-space sensors, scanning along its hull and environs. As he went through the exercise twice, the creepy feeling came and went in waves. Yet he failed to pin anything down.

Calling for a close-up of Gillian herself, he saw that she looked uncomfortable too—as if some thought were scolding away, just below consciousness. A holo image stood before her. Emerson saw she was examining the area around
Streaker
's tail section.

Signaling with a grunt and a pointed finger, Emerson ordered his own viewpoint taken that way. As the camera angle swept along the ship's outer hull—coated with its dense star-soot coating—he felt a growing sense of relief. If Gillian was also looking into this, it might not be just his imagination. Moreover, her instincts were good. If there were a serious threat, she would have taken action by now.

He was already feeling much better as the holo image swept past
Streaker
's rear set of probability flanges, bringing the stern into view.

That was Emerson's first clue.

Feeling better.

Ironically,
that
triggered increased unease.

Back on Jijo—ever since he had wakened, delirious, in Sara's treehouse with a seared body and crippled brain—there had always been one pleasure that excelled any other. Beyond the soothing balm of secretions from the traeki pharmacists. Beyond the satisfaction of improved health, or feeling strength return to his limbs. Beyond the wondrous sights, sounds, and smells of Jijo. Even beyond the gentle, loving company of dear Sara. One bliss surpassed any competitor.

It happened whenever the pain stopped.

Whenever the conditioned agony, programmed into his racked cortex, suddenly let go of him—the abrupt absence of woe felt like a kind of ecstasy.

It happened whenever he
stopped
doing something he wasn't supposed to do. Like trying to remember. Any attempt at recollection was punished with agony. But the reward was even more effective, at first. A hedonistic satisfaction that came from not trying anymore.

And now Emerson sensed a similarity.

Oh, it wasn't as intense. Rewards and aversions manifested at a much subtler level. In fact, he might never have noticed, if not for the long battle he had fought on Jijo, learning to counter pain with obstinacy, by facing it, like some tormented prey turning on its pursuer … then transforming the hunter into the hunted. It was a hard lesson, but in time he had mastered it.

Not … there …
he thought, laboriously forming
the words one at a time, in order to lock in place a fierce determination.

Go … back.…

It felt like trying to fight a strong wind, or swimming upstream. Each time the holo scene made progress toward the ship's bow, he felt strange inside. As if the very
concept
of that part of
Streaker
was peculiar and somehow improper, like trying to visualize a fifth dimension.

Moreover, it apparently affected computers, too. The instruments proved balky. Once his view passed forward of the first set of flanges, the camera angle kept wandering aside, missing and curving back around toward the stern again.

A torrent of cursing escaped Emerson. Rich and expressive, it flowed the way
all
speech used to, before his injury. Like songs and some kinds of poetry, expletives were fired from a part of the brain never touched by the Old Ones. The stream of invective had a calming, clarifying effect as Emerson turned away from all artificial tools and images. Instead, he pressed his face close to the bubble window, made of some clear, incredibly strong material that Earth's best technicians could not imitate. He peered forward, toward
Streaker
's bow.