David Brin - Heaven's Reach

The tutor frowned.

“As I tried to explain before, Rety, this vessel is in no condition to attempt an interspatial transfer at this time. Navigation systems are minimal and incapable of probing the nexus ahead for information about thread status. The drive is balky and seems only capable of operating at full thrust, or not at all. It may simply give up the next time we turn it on. The supervisory computer has degraded to mentation level six. That is below what’s normally needed to calculate hyperspatial tube trajectories. For all of these reasons, attempting to cross the transfer point is simply out of the question.”

“But there’s no place else to go! The Jophur battleship was dragging us there when it flung us loose. You already said we don’t have the engine juice to break away before falling in. So we got nothin’ to lose by trying!”

The tutor shook its simulated head.

“Standard wisdom dictates that any maneuver we tried now would only make it harder for friends/relatives/parents to find you—”

This time, Rety flared.

“How many times do I gotta tell you, no one’s coming for us! Nobody knows we’re here. Nobody would care, if they knew. And nobody could reach us if they cared!”

The teaching unit looked perplexed. Its ersatz gaze turned toward Dwer, who looked more adult with his week-old stubble. Of course, that irritated Rety even more.

“Is this true, sir? There is no help within reach?”

Dwer nodded. Though he too had spent time aboard Streaker, he never found it easy speaking to a ghost.

“Well then,” the tutor replied. “I suppose there is just one thing to do.”

Rety sighed relief. At last the jeekee thing was going to start getting practical.

“I must withdraw and get back to work talking to the ship’s computer, no matter what state it is in. I am not designed or programmed for this kind of work, but it is of utmost importance to try harder.”

“Right!” Rety murmured.

“Indeed. Somehow we must find a way to boost power to communications systems, and get out a stronger message for help!”

Rety bolted to her feet.

“What? Didn’t you hear me, you pile o’ glaver dreck? I just said—”

“Don’t worry while I am out of touch. Try to be brave. I’ll be back just as soon as I can!”

With that, the little cube vanished, leaving Rety shaking, frustrated, and angry.

It didn’t help that old Dwer broke up, laughing. He guffawed, hissing and snorting a bit like an urs. Since nothing funny had happened, she figured he must be doing it out of spite. Or else this might be another example of that thing called irony people sometimes talked about when they wanted an excuse for acting stupid.

I’ll slap some irony across your jeekee head, Dwer, if you don’t shut up.

But he was bigger and stronger … and he had saved her life at least three times in the past few months. So Rety just clenched her fists instead, waiting till he finally stopped chuckling and wiped tears from his eyes.

The tutor remained silent for a long time, leaving both human castaways with no way to deal with the ship on their own.

There were makeshift controls, left in place by Streaker’s dolphin crew when they had resurrected this ancient Buyur hulk from a pile of discarded spacecraft on Jijo’s sea bottom. Mysterious boxes had been spliced by cable to the hulk’s control circuits, programmed to send it erupting skyward along with a swarm of other revived decoys, confusing Jophur instruments and masking Streaker’s breakout attempt. But since the dolphins had never expected stowaways, there were only minimal buttons and dials. Without the tutor, there’d be no chance of making the ship budge from its current unguided plummet.

Lacking anything better to do, Rety and Dwer went forward and stared ahead through the bow windows, pitted from immersion in the Great Midden for half a million years. Together, they tried to spot the mysterious “spinning hole in space” that Jijo’s fallen races still recalled in sagas about ancestral days — the mighty doorway each sneakship passed through when it brought a new wave of refugee-settlers to a forbidden world in a fallow galaxy.

At first, Rety saw nothing special in the glittering starscape. Then Dwer pointed.

“Over there. See? The Frog is all bent out of shape.”

Rety had grown up amid a primitive tribe, hiding in a grubby wilderness without even the rough comforts of Dwer’s homeland, the Slope. Living in crude huts, with just campfires to ward off chill and darkness, she had constellations overhead nearly every night of her life. But while her cousins made up elaborate hunters’ tales about those twinkling patterns, her only interest lay in their practical use as signposts, pointing the westward path she might someday use to escape her wretched clan.

Dwer, on the other hand, was chief scout of the Commons of Jijo, trained to know every quirk of the sky — from which the Six Races always expected doom and judgment to arrive. He would notice if something was out of place.

“I don’t see …” She peered toward the cluster of glimmering pinpoints he indicated. “Oh! Some of the stars … they’re clumped in a circle and—”

“And there’s nothing inside,” he finished for her. “Nothing at all.”

They stared silently for a while. Rety couldn’t help comparing the disklike blackness to a predator’s open maw, looming rapidly to swallow the ship and all its contents.

“The stars seem t’be smearing out around it,” she added.

Dwer nodded, making hoonish umbling sounds.

“Hr-rm. My sister called this thing a sort of twist in the universe, where space gets all wound up in knots.”

Rety sniffed.

“Space is empty, dummy. I learned that back when I lived with the Daniks, in their underground station. There’s nothin’ out here to get twisted.”

“Fine. Then you explain what we’re about to fall into.”

Little yee chose to speak up then.

“no problem to explain, big man-boy.

“what is life?

“is going from one hole to another, then another!

“is better this way. go in! yee will sniff good burrow for us.

“good, comfy burrow is happiness.”

Dwer glanced sourly at the urrish male, but Rety smiled and stroked yee’s tiny head.

“You tell him, husban’. We’ll slide on through this thing, slick as a mud skink, an’ come out in the main spiral arcade of Galaxy Number One, where the lights are bright an’ ships are thicker than ticks on a ligger’s back. Where the stars are close enough to gossip with each other, an’ everyone’s so rich they need computers to count their computers!

“Folks like that’ll need folks like us, Dwer,” she assured. “They’ll be soft, while we’re tough an’ savvy, ready for adventure! We’ll take on jobs the star gods are too prissy for — an’ get paid more’n your whole Commons of Jijo is worth.

“Soon we’ll be livin’ high, you watch. You’ll bless the day you met me.”

Dwer stared back at her. Then, clearly against his will, a smile broke out. This time the laugh was friendlier.

“Honestly, Rety. I’d rather just go home and keep some promises I made. But I guess that’s unlikely now, so—” He glanced ahead at the dark circle. It had grown noticeably as they watched. “So maybe you’re right. We’ll make the best of things. Somehow.”

She could tell he was putting up a front. Dwer figured they would be torn apart soon, by forces that could demolish all of Jijo in moments.

He oughta have more faith, she thought. Somethin’ll come along. It always does.

With nothing better to do, they counted the passing duras, commenting to each other about the strange way stars stretched and blurred around the rim of the monstrous thing ahead. It doubled in size, filling a quarter of the window by the time Rety’s “tutor” popped back into existence above the black box. The tiny face had triumph in its eyes.