David Brin - Heaven's Reach

Something had the crew very upset.

Queasy sensations warned Lark of shifts in the ship’s artificial gravity, making the floor seem to tilt, then briefly lose pressure against the soles of his feet. The steady background hum of engines increased pitch and intensity. Lark was tempted to duck into a nearby chamber and try to activate a view screen, just to find out what was going on. But any room might become a trap while his pursuers were so close.

A few duras later, he felt a nervous shiver on the back of his neck that warned him of approaching robots — a fey sensitivity to their suspensor fields that had saved him more than once so far. The scent of approaching Jophur soldiery reinforced his decision.

Back the other way, quickly!

Though weary, he sped up, trying to reach one of the ramps leading to the next level. Of course, with each move north the width of his domain narrowed, leaving him fewer options. Soon, they would harry him into a corner with no escape.…

Lark scurried around a bend, only to brake sharply, with a grunt of dismayed surprise.

Just a few meters ahead of him, Rann let out a shout. The tall Danik warrior yelled at a golden bracelet on his wrist. “I’ve got the son of a bitch!”

Lark spun about and fled, seeking the only remaining branch tunnel that seemed free of foes. Behind him, Rann could be heard switching to GalTwo — more useful at communicating with Jophur than vulgar Anglic cursing.

“To this locale, speed quickly and urgently. The quarry, it is near!”

Lark considered halting. Finding a corner to hide behind and ambush Rann as he hurried after. Better to face the human traitor alone, and possibly do Rann harm, than wind up facing a swarm of Jophur and their robots, who would be invulnerable to his fists.

But he chose to stay free, if only for a few moments longer, dashing down the sole remaining escape path — a narrow corridor, probably leading nowhere.

Sure enough, exultant cries followed, and Lark knew he was cornered when he saw the dead end, no more than forty meters ahead.

He halted by a closed doorway, fumbling with shaky hands to bring the purple ring up against the lock plate. It sprayed a soft mist, but either the torus was tired or the Jophur commanders had learned their lesson. The door stayed adamantly shut.

Lark heard a cry of satisfaction as Rann spied him from the far intersection. But the Danik waited for others — Jophur and their machines — to join him before approaching any closer. For several duras the two of them just stared at each other in mutual loathing. Then Rann smiled as a Jophur and two robots joined him. They started to advance.

Suddenly, from Lark’s other side, there came a low reverberation and a growing sense of heat. He turned around, backing away from the bulkhead where the hallway ended. That blank wall began glowing and bowing outward. Molten droplets oozed from the edges of an oval that blazed brightly, forcing him to raise both hands and shield his eyes. Lark gagged on an odor he recalled from visits to the laboratory of the Explosers Guild, in Tarek Town — hydrogen sulfide gas.

As the oval slumped inward, he briefly glimpsed another twisty corridor beyond, glowing with an eerie light. Lark turned to flee, but a wave of hot vapors slammed his back, “knocking him down. His forearms struck the deck painfully hard while a surge of baked air passed overhead and on down the hall, toward Rann and his companions.

For an instant, Lark’s senses were in such an uproar that he felt swaddled by numbness. No information could get through, except pain … and the fact that he still lived. When he managed to open his eyes once more, Lark blinked in disbelief.

Down the corridor, where moments ago his hunters had been marching confidently to capture him, he now glimpsed the last of them fleeing round the corner. Rann glanced back, terror in his pale eyes, and Jophur warriors heaved their bulky forms out of sight. Only two robots remained at the intersection, taking up defensive stances, but not firing — as if loath to try.

Lark knew he should be happy of anything that put his enemies to flight. Yet, he felt reluctant to roll over and see what had arrived. I just know I’m not gonna like this, he thought.

The rotten egg smell was almost overpowering, and a faint luminance filled the hall, coming from above and behind his prone form, along with a faint, whispering hum.

Gathering his courage, Lark pushed off the floor with his scalded right arm, rolling onto his back.

It stood a few paces behind him, just this side of the hole it had made in the bulkhead. A glowing ball, roughly three meters across, barely able to squeeze through the corridor. Though it had the color of bronze metal, the intruder seemed to ooze and ripple as it rolled slowly forward, more like a fluid-filled bag than a balloon. Lark recalled the living cells he used to watch through his beloved microscope, back when he and other sages had the time to pursue knowledge, doing what passed for science on the primitive Slope.

A cell, many times his size. Living.

And yet, all at once, Lark knew—

This is like no life I ever saw before.

The thing made sloshing sounds as it crept languidly toward Lark, swarming over his foot, climbing upward, rendering him immobile, then causing a chill numbness to spread along his bones.

FOR AGES — ever since the blessed Progenitors departed — some contemplative oxygen-breathing races have wondered about the question of “plenitude.”

If life is so common and vibrant here in the Five Linked Galaxies, they ask, should we not expect to see signs of it elsewhere? Astronomers have counted seven hundred billion other galactic pinwheels, ovals, and other vast conglomerations of stars out there, some of them even bigger than our own Galaxy One. It seems to defy all logic that ours would be the only nexus where sapiency has arisen.

What a waste of potential, if it were so!

Of course, this opinion is not universally shared. Among the many social-religious alliances making up our diverse civilization, some insist that we must be unique, since any other situation would only mock the ultimate greatness of the Progenitors. Others perceive those billions of other galaxies as heavenly abodes where the august Transcendents go, once they complete the long process of perfecting themselves on this plane of reality.

Many have tried to pierce the veil with scientific instruments, such as vast telescopes, aimed at studying our silent neighbors. Indeed, some anomalies have been found. For instance, several targets emit rhythmic noise pulsations of towering complexity. Other galaxies seem burned out, as if a recent conflagration tore through them, destroying nearly every planetary system at the same time.

And yet, the data always seems ambiguous, allowing a variety of interpretations. The Great Library is filled with arguments that have raged for aeons.

Are other galactic groups linked together by hyperspatial transfer points, the way our own five spirals are, despite huge separations in flat spacetime? Our best models and calculations do not give definitive answers.

FROM time to time, some young race gets impatient and tries posing these questions to the Old Ones — those sage species who have surrendered starships to develop their souls within the Embrace of Tides, passing on to the next order of life.

Depending on their mood, the ancients either ignore such entreaties or reply in frustrating ways.

We are alone, answered one community of venerable ones.

No we are not, countered a second. Other galaxies are just like ours, teeming with multitudinous sapient species, taking turns uplifting each other as a sacred duty, then turning their attention toward the duties of transcendence … as we are doing now.