Heaven's Reach by David Brin
“One of those things is headed almost straight for ussss!” the astrogator cried.
Gillian snapped an order. “Get us out of here, and to hell with prudence! Maximum inertial speed!”
Akeakemai responded with an emphatic tail slash. “Aye!”
Almost at once, Streaker’s engines began groaning with urgency. Sara felt ominous vibrations underfoot, along with a strange tension in her spine as compensating fields struggled to match acceleration.
“You know this is ffffutile, of course,” commented Zub’daki. “Even if we avoid collisions and the Jophur, we still aren’t going to make it-t. Streaker would have to be several light-years away in order to escape the coming calamity.”
“What are you talking about?” Sara asked. “What’s coming?”
Before the dolphin astronomer could answer, she stepped back with a gasp.
In the holo display, one of the huge, javelin-shaped gateways could be seen rising rapidly, leaving roiling chaos in its wake, on a course that seemed destined to pass nearby. While trillions died from crashes or fiery detonations, the “gateway” surged blithely onward and upward.
Only now Sara also observed—
“It’s shooting at some of the ships!”
Indeed, the needle-artifact was apparently not content with disrupting the migration with its backwash. It also flailed out with beams of force, like cruel, glowing lariats, aiming at specific targets as it climbed.
This was no anomaly. All the other gateways were behaving the same way as they hurried away from the white dwarf.
Sara felt Prity take her right hand. Aghast at the orgy of destruction—vastly more bloody and devastating than what had happened at the Fractal World—she could only stare and wonder.
I wish Emerson were here, so we could watch the end together.
Amid the advancing wave of blinding outbursts and detonations, she had time for one more thought before the shimmering monster lashed one more time, reaching toward Streaker, with dazzling rays of light.
Forgive me for thinking it—but God … it’s beautiful.…
Alvin’s Journal
HOW CAN I EXPRESS THE JOY I FEEL? OR THE sorrow that simultaneously fills my tense and throbbing spines?
Sometimes life seems just too ironic. The universe may be shaking apart around us, and yet I’ve been blessed by Ifni’s own good fortune, to find love and strange-warm acceptance among my own kind. Meanwhile, poor Pincer—whose idea it was to undertake the adventures that eventually brought us here from our wilderness home—met an untimely death at the very threshold of civilization, because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Scout-Major Harry Harms wanted to put out a police alert for the murderer, but Pilot Kaa begged him not to. A full investigation would blow our cover, revealing the presence of dolphins and sooners at Kazzkark. Above all, Huck must be protected, as the only living g’Kek survivor outside of Jijo—though she chafes at being put in such a position. Indeed, Huck is the angriest among us, shouting to avenge Pincer, whatever the cost!
I was forced to agree with Kaa. With law and order starting to crumble, it is doubtful that a “full investigation” would amount to very much, anyway.
“I’ll put out some feelers,” assured Scout-Major Harms. “And unleash ferret programs to look for any Rothen-like images on the monitors, in case Ro-kenn is careless enough to stroll openly along the avenues. But I’ll wager he’s gone underground. Rothen are notoriously clever at disguises and that sort of thing.”
“Or else he may have already taken shelter with one of the great clansss,” added Kaa. “Perhaps he is dickering with them right now, to sell out Streaker and Jijo.”
Against that possibility, Harry asked Kaa to move our little starship over to the docks of the Navigation Institute, sheltering it behind his own, odd-looking craft.
“You must understand, I’d never do this under normal circumstances,” he explained. “I took an oath. My first loyalty is to the Institute, and to the Civilization of Five Galaxies.” Then Harry shrugged expressively. “But right now it’s unclear what that means anymore.”
I confess, it was hard at first to watch him speak without umbling out loud! I know it shouldn’t surprise me so much to see a chimpanzee talk with sober eloquence. Especially one who stood so straight and tall, with elegant white fur and an enviably agile tail. Clearly, his race has benefited from several more centuries of genetic Uplift since the Tabernacle departed Earth, bringing his mute cousins to Jijo.
“In any event,” Major Harms continued. “You have a full set of bio identifications on Ro-kenn, contained in that report you’re carrying for the Terragens Council. Perhaps they’ll put some of their notorious interstellar agents on his trail. I’m sure the bastard will get paid in full for what he’s done. Don’t you worry.”
A bold reassurance. Even Huck seemed a little mollified.
And yet, given what we’ve heard about the Siege of Terra, how likely is it to come true?
Even before Pincer’s death, our glorious fellowship was breaking up.
Last week, Ur-ronn met up with the p’un m’ang owners of a freighter—birdlike creatures with bristles instead of wings and no manipulative organs to speak of, except for their beaks. This crew was in a real fix. Their “hired hand” had left them in order to head home during the crisis. They seemed delighted by the chance to hire an urrish replacement, even when Ur-ronn told them her technical education was somewhat lacking.
Since piloting is mostly automatic along the main trade routes, and robots take care of most ordinary tasks, what the crew really needs is someone with intelligence and tactile agility, to pick up stuff, run errands, and pull levers whenever the machines prove too inflexible. That sounds easy enough for a tireless worker like Ur-ronn, whose nimble hands can wrap around any task. It should be like child’s play, after slaving away for Uriel, back at Mount Guenn Forge.
I asked Twaphu-anuph to look over the contract with a hoonish bureaucrat’s eye for detail, and he declared it satisfactory. The p’un m’ang will drop Ur-ronn off at their third stop, a port where urrish ships stop frequently, and she can make contact with her own kind. Along the way she’ll gain experience while earning some credits to spend.
I hope she doesn’t hector her poor employers to death with questions.
“At least the ship is warm and dry,” Ur-ronn said, after visiting her new employers. “There’s none of the Ifnicursed humidity I had to put up with on the way here! And the p’un m’ang don’t smell as bad as Earthlings, either!”
Kaa answered with an amiably derisive spitting sound. The two of them had spent a lot of time together during the journey from Galaxy Four, talking about technology and diverting each other’s worries. I doubt I’ll ever see a stranger-looking friendship than a water-loving dolphin and a hydrophobic urs, getting along famously.
“I’ll keep all three eyes open for an Earthling or Tymbrimi ship to pass this on to,” she continued, patting the pouch under her left arm. Inside lay a copy of Gillian Baskin’s report, coded for decipherment by the Terragens Council.
(I have another hidden duplicate. Who knows which of us will get through first. Assuming the cosmos cooperates … and that Earth survives.)
I felt sad when Ur-ronn set off to depart with the p’un m’ang. Bidding our dear comrade farewell, I wanted to pick her up till all four hooves left the ground, and squeeze her in a full hoonish hug. But I know that our races view such things differently. Urs are not a nostalgic or sentimental people.
Of course Ur-ronn loves Huck and me, in the manner of her kind. Perhaps she will think about us, now and then, with passing fondness.
But her life will soon be busy and focused.
She will not miss us nearly as much as we already miss her.
Such is the world.
As Ur-ronn departed, another companion returned to me.
After miduras of intense questioning, Dwer finally got what he wanted from Mudfoot. At last the li
Mudfoot agreed to provide Dwer with code words and phrases that will bring the secret ones out of hiding. This was Dwer’s price for letting the creature go. Mudfoot’s aim now is to make contact somehow with the Tymbrimi and inform them what’s happened on Jijo. Since that goal is compatible with my own, the little fellow will accompany me when I journey onward.
Dwer seems satisfied. Indeed, I think his chief aim was to get the best of Mudfoot, just once, before he and Kaa set course on their long voyage back to Jijo.
Before everything comes apart.
The Five Galaxies rock and shudder as the moment of sundering approaches.
With space quakes intensifying, and cracks spreading through the ancient planetoid’s walls, it grows apparent that even isolated Kazzkark will be no refuge against the coming convulsions. Already the refugee flow has reversed, as more ships and sapients leave than arrive. With half the normal space lanes already disrupted, many folks are using the remaining stable routes to head home while there’s still time.
Among those departing, the most singular looking are acolytes dressed in robes of blue and gold, spreading the gospel of a bizarre faith—one that focuses on salvation for individuals, not races. A creed in which Earth plays the central dramatic role, as martyr planet.
A sect that proclaims love for Terra, while joyous over its crucifixion.
I have no idea if the same message has been preached in a million other locales, or by just the one Skiano apostle. Either way, the cult seems to have struck a chord that resonates in these troubled times. Fanning, across space to spread the word, the missionaries seemed eager to take advantage of the chaos, and the shakiness of more ancient faiths.
At the center of it all, acting as the Skiano’s chief aide and majordomo, is Rety, the young human female who once seemed such an untamed savage, even on remote Jijo. Transformed by surgery and new garments, she beckons and commands the converts—even sophisticated starfarers—like some haughty lord of an ancient patron clan.
And they take it! Bowing respectfully, even when the parrot on her shoulder squawks irreverently caustic remarks.
I’ve never seen a human act more confident, or more arrogantly assured of her status.
Meanwhile, the Skiano himself paces slowly, an eerie light flickering in one set of eyes, while the other pair appears to stare at distant horizons.
Naturally, Dwer has failed persuading Rety to leave this fanatical group. She would not even budge when Harry Harms offered a transit pass to his homeworld, a colony located far from the current troubles, where she might possibly find safety and comfort with her own kind.
Harry and Dwer both express frustration. But frankly, I find Rety’s adamant resolution understandable. She has learned how pleasant it can be to find a sense of importance and belonging among people who value you.
So have I.
It’s nearly time to put down my journal. Dor-hinuf expects me at her parents’ dwelling, where members of the local hoon community will gather again for an evening of dinner and poetry. A normal enough occurrence, back home on Jijo, but apparently quite daring and new among my star-god relations.
I must paw through the box of books I brought from Jijo and select tonight’s reading. Last time, we had some Melville and Cousteau, but it seems that human authors are a difficult reach for many of these civilized hoons. I expect it will take a while for me to teach them the merits of Jules Verne and Mark Twain.
Mostly, they want me to umble from the odes of Chuph-wuph’iwo and Phwhoon-dau, singing melodramatically about taut sails straining against sturdy masts, defying wind and salt spray as a knifelike prow cleaves bravely through some gale-swollen reach. My father would be proud to know that the hoonish literary renaissance of Jijo, so long eclipsed by Earthling authors, is at last finding an eager audience among our distant, starfaring cousins.
It is most gratifying. And yet, I wonder.
How can this be?
Consider the irony! Huck and I always dreamed of how romantic and wonderful it would be to go flitting about in spaceships. But these civilized hoons only see starcraft as conveyances—dull implements for travel between assignments—as they plod through the routine destiny assigned to our kind long ago by our Guthatsa patrons.
So what makes them receptive now, to umbles of hope and joy? Is it the growing chaos outside? Or was something lying in wait all along, sleeping underneath a dark shell of oppressive, bureaucratic unhappiness?
Can it really be the simple image of a sailboat that triggers an awakening, a stirring deep inside?
If so, the elation might have lain buried forever. No civilized hoon would willingly risk life and limb at sea. The mere thought would be dismissed as absurd. The accounts would not balance. Averse to risk, they would never give it a try.
Besides, what hoon can swim? Nothing in our ancestral tree would logically suggest the way hoonish spines frickle at the sight of wintry icebergs on a storm-serrated horizon, or the musical notes that rope and canvas sing, like a mother umbling to her child.
Only on Jijo was this discovered, once our settler ancestors abandoned their star-god tools, along with all the duties and expectations heaped on us by the Guthatsa.
In fairness, perhaps our patrons meant well. After all, we owe them for our sapient minds. Galactic society sets a stern standard that most elder races follow, when uplifting their clients toward sober, dependable adulthood. The Guthatsa took our strongest racial traits—loyalty, duty, devotion to family—and used them to set us down a single narrow course. Toward prudent, obsessive responsibility.
And yet, only now are Dor-hinuf and her people learning how our patrons cheated us. Robbing our greatest treasure. One that we only recovered by playing hooky … by ditching class and heading for the river.
To Jijo, where hoons at last reclaimed what had been stolen.
Our childhood.
Lark
THE TRANSCENDENCE GATEWAYS APPEARED TO have finished their migration, climbing outward from their former position near the surface of a white dwarf star. Now all the huge, needle-shaped devices glistened in much higher orbits, beyond the outer fringes of the candidates’ swarm.
The distance traveled was a short one, as space journeys went. But in crossing it, they created murderous bedlam.
Below lay a roiling cauldron of fire and confusion, as millions of vast spacecraft fought desperately for survival. Already disordered by chaos waves, all the prim spiral traffic lanes were now completely unraveled, curling and splitting into myriad turbulent eddies. Engine resonances intersected and interfered, creating mutual-attraction fields, yanking vessels suddenly toward each other. When one giant ark veered to avoid a neighbor, that brought yet another hurtling toward explosive impact.
Eruptions seemed to coruscate up and down the densely packed funnel, converting what had formerly been sentient matter into white plasma flame.
As if intending to make matters worse, each of the titanic needles also lashed out during its brief voyage, using beams of fierce brightness to seize several dozen spacecraft, chosen apparently at random, dragging them like calves at the end of a lariat.
Among the unchosen, those who brushed accidentally against the tendrils were instantly vaporized.
Why? Lark asked, appalled by the sight. Why did they do it?
He was counting on Ling for an explanation, since she had once been a starfarer and had spent more time exploring the Transcendents’ Data Mesh. But on this occasion she was equally astonished and aghast.
I … cannot begin to guess.… Unless they already had their quota of candidates, and decided that any more would be superfluous.… Or else maybe the chaos waves are getting too strong, and they had to give up trying to send mo
He shook his head, dislodging one of the symbionts that had taken residence there recently, devouring his last hair follicles.
But that doesn’t explain the callous disregard for life! Those are sapient beings down there! Quadrillions of them! Every one was a member of some ancient race that had studied and improved itself diligently for ages just to get here.…
Ling took his arm and stroked it, pressing herself against him for the warm comfort it provided them both.
Even so, Lark, they were still like animals, compared to the Transcendents. Expendable. Especially if their destruction might serve a higher purpose.
He blinked several times.
Higher purpose? What purpose could possibly justify—
He cut off as a new presence began making itself known, groping toward them across the mental byways of the mesh. Soon, Lark recognized a familiar presence—one that had formerly been his teacher … then an enemy … and was now simply a friend.
“X,” the modified traeki, had been doing some independent exploration, and now wanted to report its findings.
The Jophur have despaired of ever returning to their clan, or accomplishing their mission. Moreover, they realize they have very little time. Soon, the macroentity that we now are part of—what you call “Mother”—will complete its conquest of the Polkjhy by breaking into the engineering section, where the former crew have made their last redoubt. When that happens, they will cease to be Jophur—at least by their own narrow definition.
Before that happens, they have decided to embark on a dramatic and conclusive course of action. A final act of vengeance.
Lark cast his mind outward, visualizing the once mighty battleship and its surroundings. Whether by luck or by dauntless piloting skill, Polkjhy had apparently succeeded in escaping the candidates’ swarm. Only tattered outskirts of the whirling disk lay between them and deep space—a starry night sky that rippled, every now and then, with shivering waves of chaos. The prospect of flight beckoned, now that a getaway path seemed clear. But Polkjhy’s remaining crew members knew it could never be. Mother would absorb them into the new hybrid existence, long before they reached the first transfer point. Assuming the t-point was still usable.