David Brin - Heaven's Reach

“Lucky.”

In Trinary, the word-phrase meant much more than it did in Anglic. It connoted special favor in the fortune sea, the deep realm of chance where Ifni threw her dice and ancient dreamers crooned songs that were old before the stars were born.

It was a great honor. But some also say that such titles, once won, are hard to keep.

He started losing his during the fiasco at Oakka, that awful green world of betrayal, and things went rapidly downhill after that. By the time Streaker fled to a murky trash heap beneath Jijo’s forlorn ocean, few called him Lucky Kaa anymore.

Then, in a matter of days, fate threw him the best and cruelest turns of all. He found love … and quickly lost it again when duty yanked Kaa away from his heart, sending him hurtling parsecs farther from Peepoe with each passing minute.

At the very moment she needed me most.

So he took little joy from this flight through a labyrinth of shimmering threads. Only grim professionalism sustained him.

Kaa had learned not to count on luck.

Behind him, the water-filled control room seemed eerily silent. Without opening his eyes or breaking concentration, Kaa felt the other neo-fins holding tense rein over their reflex sonar clicking, in order not to disturb him.

They had cause for taut nerves. This transfer was like no other.

The reason gleamed ahead of Streaker — a vast object that Kaa perceived one moment as a gigantic jellyfish … then like a mammoth squid, with tentacles bigger than any starship he had ever seen. Its fluid profile, transformed for travel through the t-point’s twisted bowels, gave him shivers. Instinct made Kaa yearn to get away — to cut the flanges and hop any passing thread, no matter where in the universe it might lead — just to elude that dreadful shape.

But it’s our guide. And if we tried to get away, the Zang would surely kill us.

Kaa heard a faint caterwauling cry, coming from the dry chamber next door — the plotting room. By now he recognized the wailing sound of glavers, those devolved creatures from Jijo who had voluntarily returned to animal presapience. That alone would be enough to give him the utter willies, even without this bizarre affinity the bulge-eyed beasts seemed to have with a completely different order of life. That understanding offered Streaker a way clear of the dreaded Jophur, but at what cost?

Saved from one deadly foe, he pondered. Only to face another that’s feared all across Galactic Civilization.

In fact, such dilemmas were becoming routine to the dolphin crew. The whole universe seemed filled with nothing but frying pans and fires.

They’re getting ready, Kaa contemplated as a gentle throbbing passed along the tentacles of the squidlike shape ahead. Twice before, this had just preceded a jump maneuver. On both occasions, it had taken all his skill to follow without slamming Streaker into a nearby string singularity. The hydros used a thread-riding style unlike any he had seen before, following world lines that were more timelike than spacelike, triggering micro causality waves that nauseated everyone aboard. Nothing about the Zang method was any more efficient. Each jarring maneuver — and churning neural reflex — made Kaa want to swerve back and do it in a way that made more sense.

I could probably get you there in half the time, he thought resentfully toward the squid-shaped thing. If you just told me where we’re going.

True, the resonances had changed since he last used this t-point, back when Streaker fled the horrid Fractal World, attempting Gillian’s last desperate gamble … the “sooner’s path,” seeking a hiding place on far-off Jijo. When that second singularity nexus reopened near Izmunuti, it must have jiggered this one as well. Still, there must be an easier way to get where the Zang wanted to go than—

Sonar images merged into focus. He perceived a bright cluster of threads just ahead … a Gordian tangle with no spacelike strands at all.

Ugh! That ghastly clutter has got to be where the hydros are aiming, damn them.

And yet, listening carefully to the transposed sound portrait, he thought he could sense something about the knotty mess.…

You know, I’ll bet I can guess which thread they’re gonna take.

Kaa’s attention riveted. This was important to him. More than duty and survival were at stake. Or the vaunted reputation neo-dolphin pilots had begun to earn among the Five Galaxies. Even regaining his nickname held little attraction anymore.

Only one thing really mattered to Kaa. Getting the job done. Delivering Gillian Baskin and her cargo safely. And then finding a way back to Jijo. Back to Peepoe. Even if it meant never piloting again. He triggered an alarm to warn the others.

Here we go!

The “squid” uncoiled, preparing for its final leap.

I AM AT A LOSS TO DESCRIBE EVEN A SINGLE MOment of our time inside the t-point.

Comparisons come to mind. Like a Founders’ Day fireworks display. Or watching a clever urrish tinker throw sparkling exploser dust during a magic show, or …

Give up, Alvin.

All I really recall from that nauseating passage is a blur of dazzling ribbons waving across every monitor screen. While Sara Koolhan shouted ecstatically, watching her beloved mathematics come alive before her eyes, the more experienced Gillian Baskin kept grunting in dismayed surprise — a sound I found worrisome.

The gravity fields pitched and fluxed. Sparks flew from nearby instrument banks. Neo-fin crew stomped their walker machines close, dousing hot spots with inert gas. All told, this first-time space traveler figured we were experiencing no typical passage.

In fact, I soon felt too miserable to notice much of anything. I just spread my arms in a wide circle so the glavers could huddle inside, mewling pathetically. But the shrieking cry of Streaker’s engines tore through all my efforts to umble reassuringly.

Without any doubt, it was among the worst couple of miduras in my life, even when I compare it to the awful time when my friends and I fell off the edge of a subsea cliff in our broken Wuphon’s Dream, with icy water jetting at my face as we tumbled toward the cold hell of Jijo’s Midden.

At one point a dolphin cried out—“Here we go!”—and things rapidly got a whole lot worse. My second bowel did a lurch against my heart. Then I found I couldn’t breathe as every sound around me abruptly ceased!

For a long, extended moment it felt like being swaddled in a dense bale of bec cotton, as if I were being torn from the universe, looking back at it from the end of a long tunnel, or from the bottom of a deep, deep well.

Then, just as suddenly, I was back! The cosmos swarmed around me again. A great weight seemed to lift off my vertebral spines, allowing me to inhale sharply.

We Jijoan boons love our sailing ships, I thought, fighting off waves of queasiness. We never get sick at sea. But our star traveling ancestors must’ve been throwing up all the time, if this was bow they bad to get about. No wonder legends say they were such grouches.

Glancing up, I saw that Gillian and Sara were already on their feet, moving tensely toward the big display. Tsh’t and the dolphin staff piloted their walkers to crowd just behind the humans, peering over their shoulders.

A bit shaky, I stood and joined them. On the main screen, all the roiling colors were dissipating fast. Streaker’s roaring engines dropped to a soft mutter as the ripple-swirls parted like folds of a curtain, revealing …

… stars.

I gazed at strange constellations.

Stars that are some damn Ifni-incalculable distance from the ones I know.

How is one supposed to feel when a long-held, impossible dream comes true?

Alvin, you are now a long, long way from home.