David Brin - Heaven's Reach

“That it scared the living hell out of them.”

Gillian snorted.

“That crock of bull-dross I cooked up? It was sheer bluff and bluster. A child could see through it! Are you saying that a bunch of advanced Galactics, with all their onboard libraries and sophisticated intelligence systems, couldn’t penetrate to the truth?”

The Niss spiral turned, regaining a bit of its former insouciance.

“No, Dr. Baskin. That is not what I am saying. Rather, I am insinuating that a primitive wolfling like yourself, caught up in the emotions of a transitory crisis, cannot see the essential truth underlying all your ‘bluff and bluster’.”

“The Galactics did perceive it, however. Perhaps only instants after they fired upon Streaker. Or else later, when they sensed we were returning, having survived the unsurvivable … and began broadcasting a simple offer to discuss surrender.”

“But that was—” she stammered. “I didn’t mean their—”

“Either way, the alliance shattered — it flash-evaporated — as each squadron fled for home.”

She stared. “You’re guessing. I don’t believe it.”

The Niss shrugged, a twisting of its dark funnel.

“Fortunately, the universe doesn’t much care whether we believe. The chief question now is whether our foes were sufficiently terrified to completely abandon their goals, or if they have merely withdrawn to reassess — to consult their own auguries and prepare fresh onslaughts.

“Frankly, I suspect the latter. Nevertheless, it seems that something noteworthy happened here, Dr. Baskin.

“By any standard, you must accept history’s verdict.

“The word has a strange flavor, spoken aboard this ragged vessel. So I can understand if you have trouble speaking it aloud.

“Let me coax you, then.

“It is called Victory.”

The forces of Terra emerged, climbing slowly, tentatively from their last redoubts, as if suspecting some deadly trick. Out of seared mountain peaks and blasted lunar craters, stubby ships nosed skyward, bearing scars from countless prior battles. Together they cast beams of inquiry toward every dark corner of the solar system. Distrustfully, they threw intense scrutiny toward the one remaining intruder, whose tattered outlines were not at first familiar.

“Keep well back,” Gillian ordered her pilot. “Make no sudden moves. Let’s be patient. Let them get used to us.”

Akeakemai agreed. “We’re emitting Streaker’s transponder code. But it’ll take a while to get other messages out. Till then, I’d rather not make those guys nervoussss!”

It was an understatement. Those tattered-looking units had managed to keep the terrifying Tandu, and many other allied warrior clans, at bay for two years. All told, Gillian would rather not be fried by her own people, just because they had jittery trigger fingers.

After all this time, she could wait just a little while longer.

Jake Demwa isn’t going to be happy with the condition I’m bringing Streaker home in, she mused. Without two-thirds of its crew, or the Shallow Cluster samples. He’ll grill me for weeks, trying to figure out where Creideiki and Tom went off to, and what strange matters may have kept them busy all this time.

On the other hand, she did come back to Earth bearing gifts.

The secret of overcoming Jophur master rings, for instance.

And information about the Kiqui of Kithrup, whom we may claim as new clients for our growing clan.

And the rewq symbionts of Jijo, which help species understand each other. Plus everything the Niss and I learned by interrogating our captured Galactic Library branch.

And there was more.

The Terragens Council will want to know about the lost colony on Jijo and the Polkjhy expedition. Both groups face great dangers, and yet they seem to offer something the council long sought to achieve — offshoots of Earthclan that might survive beyond reach of Galactic Civilization, even if Terra someday falls.

There were plenty of other things to talk about, enough to keep Gillian in debriefing for years.

Everything we discovered about other life orders, for instance. Especially the high Transcendents.

As powerful and knowing as those godlike beings appeared, Gillian had come away from her encounters with a strange sensation not unlike pity. They were, after all, not the eldest or greatest of life’s children, only the ones who stayed behind when everyone else dived into one-way singularities, seeking better realms beyond.

Cowards, she had called them in a moment of pique. Not a fair characterization, she admitted now, though it held a grain of truth.

They seem trapped by the Embrace of Tides. And yet they are unwilling to follow its pull all the way — whether to a higher place or to some universal recycling system. So they sit instead, thinking and planning while time wafts gently by. Except when it seems convenient to sacrifice myriad lesser life-forms in order to accomplish some goal.

All told, they weren’t company she’d look forward to inviting over for dinner.

As the haze of battle cleared, Gillian ordered Streaker’s cracked and fused blast armor sloughed away from the viewing ports for the first time since Kithrup, allowing her to stand before the glittering Milky Way — a spray of constellations so familiar, they would have reassured even some cavewoman ancestor whose life was spent in hardship, grubbing for roots, a mere ten thousand years ago.

Lightspeed is slow, but inexorable, she thought, gazing at the galaxy’s bright lanes. During the next few millennia, this starscape will flare with extravagance. Supernovas, blaring across heaven, carrying the first part of the transcendents’ message.

A simple message, but an important one that even she could understand.

Greetings. Here we are. Is anybody out there?

Gillian noticed Emerson — whose duties down in Engineering were finished at last — hurry in to embrace Sara. The couple stood nearby with their silent chimp companion, regarding the same great vista, sharing private thoughts.

Of course the young woman from Jijo was another gift to Earth, a treasure who, using only mathematical insight, had independently predicted the Great Rupture. That alone was an impressive accomplishment — but now Sara was making further, startling claims, suggesting that the Rupture was only a symptom. Not of the expanding universe, as Earth’s savants claimed, but of something more complex and strange. Something “coming in from outside our contextual framework” … whatever that meant.

Sara thought the mystery might revolve somehow around a race called the “Buyur.”

Gillian shook her head. At last, there would be others to pass such problems on to. Skilled professionals from all across Earth — and dozens of friendly races — who could deal with arcane matters while she went back to being a simple doctor, a healer, the role she had trained for.

I’ll never order anyone else to their death. Not ever again. No matter what they say we accomplished during this wretched mission, I won’t accept another command.

From now on, I’ll work to save individual lives. The cosmos can be somebody else’s quandary.

In fact, she had already chosen her first patient.

As soon as the spymasters let me go, I’ll focus on helping Emerson. Try to help restore some of his power of speech. We can hope researchers on Earth have already made useful breakthroughs, but if not, I’ll bend heaven in half to find it.

Was guilt driving this ambition? To repair some of the damage her commands had caused? Or was it to have the pleasure of watching the two of them — Sara and Emerson — speak to each other’s minds, as well as their hearts.

Watching them hold hands, Gillian relaxed a bit.