Authors: Gregory Benford
Tides of Light (20 page)
And now this: a mission to squash an infestation in orbit. Honor! Opportunity!
A vicious pest had occupied the station, killing a minor functionary. The orbital laborers were too busy to tend to the task,
and so had delegated it to the lower-rank ground podia. Still, this was surely more than Quath had dreamed she could achieve,
a strand far higher in the social web.
Beq’qdahl said.
Quath gibed at her,
Beq’qdahl was still sensitive about the embarrassing encounter with the Noughts.
Quath said slyly,
<
I
shall decide what is necessary here.>
Quath saw Beq’qdahl’s design. She wished to recoup her repute. A quick engagement could indeed restore her good name. Perhaps
the Tukar’ramin had allowed the two of them alone to come on this mission for just that reason.
Quath fretted. She had assumed that
she
was being honored here. Now she saw that perhaps the Tukar’ramin was simply guarding Beq’qdahl’s stature, with Quath along
as a safeguard. In case Beq’qdahl bungled matters, Quath-the-Nought-Slayer could save the day.
Quath hesitated. After all, action in orbit was a great privilege. She scintillated her pore hairs to show agreement.
The very death of Nimfur’thon might have arisen from Nought vandalism, causing the Syphon to snarl. Quath relished the opportunity
to squash more of these dwarf enemies.
They swooped around the bowl of the planet. Below them the Cosmic Circle tilted on the far horizon and began with gravid grace
to spin again. Its length shimmered brilliantly
as it converted a small fraction of the mass at the core into self-energy.
Quath watched this with humble awe. She saw they would intersect the shuttle ship near the pole, where they could well witness
the working of the Cosmic Circle.
She hoped to approach it, sense its cyclic power. There was a legend among the podia that the Circle, their most potent tool
and weapon, radiated an enhancing aura. Podia who ventured near were ensured of longer life.
Quath thought this was probably worthless legend, but she was not absolutely sure. Why not test it? After all, she was a Philosoph.
Her conversion to an inner certainty of her own immortality, which had come as a blinding insight on the battlefield, had
now echoed down through her life. She no longer questioned the ultimate rightness and central position of the podia, and of
her place in the scheme of the galaxy. The calming reassurance of her conversion was an ever-present joy.
Yet, oddly, when she had related this to the Tukar’ramin, that great entity had seemed unmoved.
Quath watched as they approached the shuttle ship. She tensed with excitement as Beq’qdahl commanded,
Quath clanked and rasped as she made her way through the lock. She was fully charged in all reservoirs and capacitances. Her
body prickled with the desire to vanquish.
She launched herself through the lock into the cool embrace of high vacuum. Pleasurable waves swept across her tough self-skin,
the original organic hide she had been born with. She had thought of covering it with body armor or some useful appliance,
but the charm of true flesh outweighed utility. She was nostalgic for her earlier, purely organic
self. To erase all dependence on flesh would be too great a breaching with her past, too soon. Time enough for that later,
when she had climbed on up to greater strands in life. Only the Illuminates, it was said, were totally augmented. Those vast,
wise beings had attained the ultimate synthesis of flesh and mechanism.
The shuttle ship hung nearby. Quath saw immediately that a cloud of junk spun lazily away from the small aft lock. Amid the
twirling stuff was a silvery Nought.
She shot toward it. Yes, it was the same boring bipedal sort that she had slaughtered in plenty on the battlefield. The mirror
finish to its skin spoke of a high-quality technology, an insulating texture. Perhaps the Nought had stolen this material
from the podia’s stores in the orbiting station. This suspicion flared hotly in Quath. She sped to intersect the pitifully
slow passage of the Nought.
She caught it easily. Its struggles were comically weak.
Beq’qdahl sniffed.
Quath felt an idea percolate up from one of her subminds.
Beq’qdahl’s voice betrayed interest.
Killeen fell.
It had taken him years to truly get used to the sensation of free-fall, and that had been outside
Argo
, in the silent enormity of open space. It had been possible then to convince his reflexes that he was in some sense flying,
airy and buoyant, oblivious to gravity’s cruel laws.
But here…Here he plunged downward between mottled glowing walls that rushed past with dizzying speed. He
felt
the silvery rim of New Bishop thrusting up to meet him as the planet flattened into a plain. Crinkled mountains grew, detail
getting finer with every moment. Through the gauzy sheen of the whirling cosmic string he watched the planet grow.
The polar region still held a few rivulets of white, snow from what must have once been an icecap. The land had a naked look,
pale and barren, as though recently exposed. It stretched away, filling half his sky beyond the glowing translucent walls
of the hoop-tube. The ravaged land was rutted by fresh rivers that poured over jagged scarps. He could see rough roads cut
by treads, broad tracks of churned mud.
The ground hurtled up, a vast hand swatting at him, and
he flinched automatically. He plunged toward a broad hillside—
—braced himself for the impact—
—and felt nothing.
Instantly he shot through into a dim golden world, alone.
Glowing walls gave some light but he could see nothing beyond them. Far below, between his boots, was a glaring yellow point.
Arthur’s voice came to him:
I have conferred with Grey. She unfortunately knows nothing more of this than I. We are left with only educated guesses. This
tube is indeed empty, free even of air. We are inside the planet now. I estimate our speed at 934 meters per second.
Dark mottled shapes soared up toward him and flashed soundlessly past in the walls. “Headed for what?”
If the alien cyborgs have constructed this miraculous planet-coring device with the precision I would expect of them, I predict
we shall plunge entirely through the center and out to the other side.
“What’s a cyborg?” Killeen asked, to focus his mind. His Grey Aspect answered faintly:
Half-organic being…half-machine…I could not ascertain…exact proportions…from such hasty observation…historical records…spoke
of such a race…in very early days…the Great Times…
“Skip that! How can I get
out?
”
Arthur replied crisply:
We cannot. By thrusting the cosmic string to very near the planetary axis, the cyborgs ensured that there is no spin along
this tube. Matter coming up from the core—or down from outside, as we are—will suffer no slow drift, and so should not strike
the walls. In addition, uniquely to this choice they have adroitly made, there is no Coriolis force which would deflect us.
Killeen could not follow the jargon but he understood it was all bad news.
Despite the glowing walls the light around him was dimming.
He fought down rising panic. Part of his fear came from the simple fact that he was falling at greater and greater speeds,
and sheer animal terror threatened to engulf him. Against this consuming fear he fought like a man hammering at a dark wave
which loomed ever higher. His breath caught. He forced his throat to open, his lungs to stop their spasmodic heaving.
Grainy, blurred shapes flashed past. These were features in the rock, illuminated by the thin barrier of the rotating hoop.
The yellow glare below had swollen to a brilliant disk. He could feel now through his sensorium a bone-deep bass
whuum-whuum-whuum-whuum
of the spinning magnetic fields.
“Maybe…maybe I can reach the walls. Is there any way I can slow down?”
Killeen felt Arthur’s sharp, pealing laugh. A circle appeared in his left eye. It billowed into a sphere—the planet—with a
red line thrust along the axis of revolution. A small blue dot moved inward near the top of the axis, just below the surface.
We have now acquired a speed of 1,468 meters per second. The hoop material, remember, is extremely dense—many millions of
tons per kilometer. All packed into a thread which hardly spans an atom’s width, whirling at immense speed. If you were to
strike that matter at our present speed, your hand would vaporize.
Killeen’s breath came in fast, jerky pants. “Suppose they get some core metal in here, comin’ out, and we meet it.”
I don’t suppose I have to analyze that possibility for you.
“No, guess not.”
Killeen cast about for some idea, some fleeting hope. The walls were nearly dark now, the radiance of the hoop somehow absorbed
by the rock beyond. Smoldering orange-brown wedges shot past—lava trapped in underground vaults, great oceans of livid, scorching
rock.
I would suppose that the hoop-tube is left to stand empty at times. Perhaps the cyborgs are now working on some minor repairs.
Or perhaps they simply pause to let the orbited teams which are fashioning the first batch of core metal do their work. In
any case, assuming the cyborg above did not simply throw us in to see us boiled away by a gusher of iron, there is another
fate.
Killeen tried to calm himself and focus on Arthur’s words. The walls seemed closer as he fell, the tube narrowing before him.
He pulled himself rigid and straight, arms at his sides, feet down toward the yellow disk below that grew steadily. He blinked
back sweat and tried to see better.
I believe we have passed through the crust and are now accelerating through the mantle. Note that the occasional lava lakes
are getting larger and more numerous. Temperature increases here by about 10 degrees centigrade every kilometer we fall. This
will continue until the temperature exceeds the melting point of simple silicate rocks. Then—drawing on studies of similar
planets—we will enter an increasingly dense and hot core. At this point the rocks will be fluid and at about 2,800 degrees
centigrade.
“Howcome rock doesn’t fill up this tube?”
The hoop pressure, which is truly immense. Grey calculates—
“And the heat? The hoop stops that?” Killeen asked, seeking reassurance, though he already suspected the answer.
Heat is infrared electromagnetic radiation. The hoop is transparent to it. All light passes through it—which is why we see
now the dark rock beyond. Soon, though, the silicates will begin to glow with the heat of their compression.
“What’ll we do?”
The heat radiation exerts a pressure. But this is symmetric, of course, acting equally in all directions. So it cannot push
us toward one wall in preference to another. But it will cook us quite thoroughly.
“How…how long?”
Passage through the core…about 9.87 minutes.
“My suit—it’ll silver up for me.”
True, it already has. And I calculate we might survive one entire passage if we seal up completely, close your helmet visor,
damp all inputs. Perhaps the cyborg understood that; it may know a good deal about our technology. Yes, yes…I am beginning
to see its devilish logic.