It was the sheer size of the image they melded into which defeated Stephanie for some time. Her eyes simply couldn’t accept
what she was seeing.
Cochrane’s face, thirty kilometres high, smiled down at them.
“Hi, guys,” he said, “Guess what I found.”
Stephanie started laughing. She used the back of her hand to smear tears across her cheeks.
The crystal sphere drifted in towards Ketton island, dimming slightly as it came. When it was a few metres from the cliff,
a tiny circular section darkened completely, and receded inside in a swift fluidic motion.
At Cochrane’s urging, Stephanie and her friends, along with Sinon and Choma, stepped through the opening. The tubular tunnel
had smooth walls of clear crystal, with thin green planes bisecting the bulk of the material around it. After a hundred metres
it opened out into a broad lenticular cavern a kilometre wide. Here, the long fractures of light beneath their feet glimmered
crimson, copper, and azure, intersecting in a continual filigree that melted away into the interior. There was no sign of
the fearsome light emitted by the outer shell, yet they could see out. Ketton island was clearly visible behind them, distorted
by the compacted facets of crystal.
One of the red sheets of light fissuring the cavern wall began to enlarge, the crystal conducting it withdrawing silently.
Cochrane walked out of the opening, grinning wildly. He whooped and rushed over to his friends. Stephanie was crushed in his
embrace.
“Man! It is good to see you again, babe.”
“You, too,” she whispered back.
He went round the rest of the group, greeting them exuberantly; even the serjeants got high fives.
“Cochrane, what the hell is this thing?” Moyo asked.
“Don’t you recognize her?” the hippie asked in mock surprise. “This is Tinkerbell, dude. Mind you, she inverted, or something
like that, since you saw us last.”
“Inverted?” Sinon asked. He was gazing round the chamber, sharing his sight with the serjeants outside.
“Her physical dimension, yeah. There’s a whole load of real groovy aspects to her which I don’t really dig. I think, if she
wants, she can get a lot bigger than this. Cosmic thought, right?”
“But what is she?” Moyo asked impatiently.
“Ah.” Cochrane gestured round uncertainly. “The information has been kinda flowing mostly one way. But she can help us. I
think.”
“Tina’s dying,” Stephanie said abruptly. “Can anything be done to heal her?”
Cochrane’s bells tinkled quietly as he shuffled about. “Well sure, man, no need to shout. I’m awake to what’s going down.”
“The smaller crystals are gathering around Tina,” Sinon reported, looking at what he could see through the serjeants tending
the invalid. “They appear to be encasing her.”
“Can we talk to this Tinkerbell directly?” Choma asked.
“You may,” a clear directionless female voice said.
“Thank you,” the serjeant said sombrely. “What are you called?”
“I have been named Tinkerbell, in your language.”
Cochrane twisted under the stares directed at him. “What?”
“Very well,” Choma said. “Tinkerbell, we’d like to know what you are, please.”
“The closest analogy would be that I have a personality like an Edenist habitat multiplicity. I have many divisions; I am
singular as I am manifold.”
“Are the small crystals outside segments of yourself?”
“No. They are other members of my race. Their physical dynamic is in a different phase from mine, as Cochrane explained.”
“Did Cochrane explain to you how we got here?”
“I assimilated his memories. It has been a long time since I encountered an organic being, but no damage was incurred to his
neural structure during the reading procedure.”
“How could you tell?” Rana muttered. Cochrane gave her a thumbs up.
“Then you understand our predicament,” Stephanie said. “Is there a way back to our universe?”
“I can open a gateway back to it for you, yes.”
“Oh God.” She sagged against Moyo, overwhelmed with relief.
“However, I believe you should resolve your conflict first. Before we began our existence in this realm, we were biological.
Our race began as yours; a commonality which permits me to appreciate the ethics and jurisprudence that you observe at your
current level of evolution. The dominant consciousness has stolen these bodies. That is wrong.”
“So’s the beyond,” McPhee shouted. “You’ll no’ make me go back there without a fight.”
“That will not be necessary,” Tinkerbell said. “I can provide you with several options.”
“You said you used to be biological beings,” Sinon said. “Will we all evolve into your current form in this realm?”
“No. There is no evolution here. We chose to transfer ourselves here a long time ago. This form was specifically engineered
to sustain our consciousness in conjunction with the energy pattern which is the soul. We are complete and essentially immortal
now.”
“Then we were right,” Moyo said. “This realm is a kind of heaven.”
“Not in the human classical religious sense,” Tinkerbell said. “There are no city kingdoms with divine creatures tending them,
nor even levels of ecstasy and awareness for your souls to rise through. In fact, this realm is quite hostile to naked souls.
The energy pattern dissipates rapidly. You are capable of dying here.”
“But we wanted a refuge,” McPhee insisted. “That’s what we imagined when we forced the way open to come here.”
“A wish granted in essence if not substance. Had you arrived with an entire planet to live on, then its atmosphere and biosphere
would sustain you for thousands of generations; at least as long as it would orbiting a star. This realm is about stability
and longevity. That’s why we came here.But we were prepared for our new life. Unfortunately, you came here on a barren lump
of rock.”
“You speak of change,” Sinon said. “And you know of souls. Is your kind of existence the answer to our problem? Should our
race learn how to transform itself into an entity like you?”
“It is an answer, certainly. Whether you would be ready to sacrifice what you have to achieve our actuality, I would doubt.
You are a young species, with a great deal of potential ahead of you. We were not. We were old and stagnant; we still are.
The universe of our birth holds no mysteries to us. We know its origin and its destination. That is why we came here. This
realm is harmonious to us; it has our tempo. We will wait out our existence here, observing what comes our way. That is our
nature. Other races and cultures would take the path to decadence or transcendence. I wonder which you will select when it
is your time?”
“I like to think transcendence,” Sinon said. “But as you say, we are a younger, less mature race than you. Dreaming of such
a destiny is inevitable for us, I suggest.”
“I concede the point.”
“Can you tell us of a valid answer to the problem of possession we currently face, how we can send our souls safely through
the beyond?”
“Unfortunately, the Kiint were correct to tell you such a resolution must come from within.”
“Do all races who have resolved the question of souls apply this kind of moral superiority in their dealings with inferior
species?”
“You are not inferior, merely different.”
“Then what are our options?” Stephanie asked.
“You can die,” Tinkerbell said. “I know you have all expressed a wish for that. I can make it happen. I can remove your soul
from the body it possesses, which will allow this realm’s nature to take its course. Your host will be restored, and can return
to Mortonridge.”
“Not too appealing,” she said shakily. “Anything else?”
“Your soul would be welcome to join me in this vessel. You would become part of my multiplicity.”
“If you can do that, then just give each of us our own vessel.”
“While we are effectively omnipotent within this realm, that ability is beyond us. The instrument which brought us here, and
assembled our current vessels, was left behind in your universe long ago. We had no further use for it, so we thought.”
“Can’t you go back?”
“Theoretically, yes. But intent is another thing. And we don’t know if the instrument still exists. Moreover, you would probably
be unable to adapt to such a vessel by yourself; our psychology is different.”
“None of those are very attractive,” she said.
“To you,” Choma interjected quickly. “To most of the serjeants, transferring ourselves into a new style of multiplicity is
very attractive.”
“Which opens up a further option,” Tinkerbell said. “I can also transfer your souls into the empty serjeant bodies.”
“That’s better,” Stephanie said. “But if we go back, even in serjeant bodies, we’ll still wind up in the beyond at some later
time.”
“That depends. Your race may decide how to deal with souls that become trapped in the beyond before that happens.”
“You’re giving us a lot of credit. Judging by our current record, I’m not sure we deserve it. If you can’t shoot it, people
aren’t interested.”
“You are being unfair,” Sinon said.
“But honest. The military mind has infiltrated government for centuries until they became one,” Rana said.
“Don’t start,” Cochrane grunted. “This is like important, you dig?”
“I don’t pretend to predict what will come,” Tinkerbell said. “We abandoned that arrogance when we came here. You seem to
be determined. That usually suffices.”
“Did you come here purely to circumvent the beyond?” Sinon asked. “Was this your racial solution?”
“Not at all. As I said, we are an old species. While we were still in our biological form we evolved into a collective of
collectives. We gathered knowledge for millennia, explored galaxies, examined different dimensional realms coexisting with
our own universe—everything a new race does as fresh insights and understanding open up. Eventually there was nothing original
for us, only variations on a theme that had been played a million times before. Our technology was perfect, our intellects
complete. We stopped reproducing, for there was no longer any reason to introduce new minds to the universe; they could only
ever have heritage, never discovery. At such a point some races die out contentedly, releasing their souls to the beyond.
We chose this transference, the final accomplishment for our technological mastery. An instrument capable of moving the consciousness
from a biological seat to this state was a challenge even for us. You can only sense the physical aspects of this vessel,
and even those can be at variance with what you understand. As I think you realize.”
“Why bother with an instrument? We came here by willpower alone.”
“The energistic power you have is extremely crude. Our vessels cannot even exist fully in the universe, the energy patterns
they support have no analogue there. Their construction requires a great deal of finesse.”
“What about others? Have you discovered any life forms here?”
“Many. Some like us, who have abandoned the universe. Some like you, thrown here by chance and accident. Others which are
different again. There are visitors, too, entities more accomplished than we, who are charting many realms.”
“I think I would like to see them,” Choma said. “To know what you do. I will join you if I may.”
“You will be welcome,” Tinkerbell said. “What of the rest?”
Stephanie glanced round her friends, trying to gauge their reaction to the offers Tinkerbell had made. Apprehension persisted
in all of them, they were waiting for her lead. Again.
“Are there any other humans here?” she asked. “Any planets?”
“It is possible,” Tinkerbell said. “Though I have not encountered any yet. This realm is one of many which has the parameters
you desired.”
“So we can’t seek refuge anywhere else?”
“No.”
Stephanie took Moyo’s hand in hers and pulled him close. “Very well, time to face the music, I suppose.”
“I love you,” he said. “I just want to be with you. That’s my paradise.”
“I won’t choose for you,” she told the others. “You must do that for yourselves. For myself, if a serjeant body is available
I will take it and return to Mortonridge. If not, then I’ll accept death here in this realm. My host can have her body and
freedom back.”
To a civilization innocent of regularised interstellar travel, the arrival of a single starship could never be viewed as a
threat in itself. What it represents, the potential behind it, however, is another matter. A paranoid species could react
very badly indeed to such an event.
It was a factor Joshua kept firmly in mind when
Lady Mac
emerged from her jump a hundred thousand kilometres above the diskcity. The crew did nothing for the first minute other than
running a passive sensor sweep. No particle or artefact was drifting nearby, and no detectable xenoc sensor locked on to the
hull.
“That original radar pulse is all I’m picking up,” Beaulieu reported. “They haven’t seen us.”
“We’re in clear,” Joshua told Syrinx. All communication between the two starships was now conducted via affinity, the bitek
processor array installed in
Lady Mac
’s electronics suite relaying information to
Oenone
with an efficiency equal to a standard datavise. The bitek starship had searched through the affinity band, its sensitivity
stretched to the maximum. It was completely silent. As far as they could tell, the diskcity Tyrathca didn’t have affinity
technology.
“We’re ready to swallow in,” Syrinx replied. “Shout if you need us.”
“Okay, people,” Joshua announced. “Let’s go with the plan.”
The crew brought the ship up to normal operational status. Thermo dump panels deployed, radiating the star-ship’s accumulated
heat away from the gleaming photosphere; sensor booms telescoped up. Joshua used the high-resolution systems to make an accurate
fix on the diskcity, not using the active sensors yet. Once he’d confirmed their position to within a few metres, he transferred
the navigational data over to a dozen stealthed ELINT satellites stored on board. They were fired out of a launch tube, travelling
half a kilometre from the fuselage before their ion drives came on, pushing them in towards the diskcity on a pulse of thin
blue flame. It would take them the better part of a day to fly within an operational distance when they could start returning
useful data on the artefact’s darkside. Joshua and Syrinx considered it unlikely the diskcity could detect them in flight,
even if their sensors were focused on space around
Lady Mac
. It was one of the mission’s more acceptable risks.