David Brin - Heaven's Reach

That was the plan, of course, for that trio to act as spies and envoys, getting to know the nature of things within Kazzkark Base, and in the Five Galaxies at large. If possible, they would make contact with some of Earth’s few allies, or else look for some way to buy passage toward Galaxy Two. While attempting to deliver Gillian Baskin’s message to the Terragens Council, they would also try to learn about their own kind, finding some way of securing future livelihoods, for themselves and their friends.

Huck was right. Alvin and Ur-ronn might stay out for hours longer. Pincer would not last that long.

“I’m sssorry,” Kaa said. “We can’t risk throwing everything away for just a sssslim chance of—”

“I don’t care how slim it is, or about the risk! It doesn’t matter!”

Her eyestalks waved and twined in furious anger. But while she cursed him roundly, Kaa knew he must be firm for her sake, even more than his own. With all the g’Keks of Jijo now in peril of genocide — deliberate extinction by wrathful Jophur, bent on satisfying an ancient vendetta — this one little female might be the sole hope of her entire species. Along with a tube of seminal plasm, stored in the scoutboat’s refrigerator, she might possibly reestablish her posterity in some safe hiding place, protected by sympathetic guardians.

Although it was not a role the adventurous Huck relished, she had claimed to see its importance. Until now, that is, when she would toss it all away for friendship.

Personal loyalty. Love. These are supposed to outweigh all other considerations, Kaa thought, wallowing in misery, even as the young g’Kek railed at him, demanding over and over that he open the door.

Raised on Earthling novels, she feels the same way about it that I do. That only the worst sort of person would put stark pragmatism above intimate devotion, abandoning someone you care about to certain death … or something worse … even if it is logically the “right” thing to do.

So Kaa silently derided himself while Huck did it aloud, making the small control room echo with her wails.

Yet, he would not relent.

Anyway, the issue was settled soon. Just a few duras later, Pincer-Tip was dead.

Huck lacked both strength and will to help dispose of the body. That chore was left to Kaa, using the mechanical arms of his walker to heave the bulky qheuen toward the recycler. Huck turned three eyes away from the gory scene, but the remaining stalk quivered and stared, as if dumbly transfixed.

How could this happen? Kaa worried as he sent control messages down his neural tap, causing the machine to move like an extension of his body. Did someone attack the ship? Or was this caused by the disease we heard about … the one that slaughtered many qheuens back on Jijo?

If so, how was Pincer exposed?

Abruptly, Huck let out an amazed cry. Her whistling shouts brought Kaa spinning around, stomping back from his grisly task. He looked down where she pointed, at the bloody deck where Pincer had lain.

There, partly masked by gruesome liquids, both of them now made out a design of some sort, carved deeply into the metal deck.

“He … he …,” Huck stammered. “He musta cut it with his teeth, while he was dying! Poor Pincer couldn’t walk or talk, but he could still move his mouth, as it lay against the floor!”

Kaa stared, in part amazed by the slicing power of qheuen jaws, and by the acute — even artistic — rendering that had been the poor creature’s final act.

It showed a face, vaguely humanoid, but somewhat feral looking, with lean, ravenous cheeks and a small, bitter mouth. He recognized the shape at once.

“A Rothen!”

The race of sneaky criminals and petty connivers, who had persuaded a cult of humans to believe they were patrons of all Earthclan, and rightful gods of Terran devotion.

Then he remembered. There had been such a creature aboard Streaker! A prisoner, brought aboard in secret at Wuphon Port. A Rothen overlord named Ro-kenn, mastermind of many felonies against the Six Races of Jijo.

“He musta stowed away aboard this ship!” Huck cried. “Stayed hidden till we docked, then came out an’ killed poor Pincer to get at the door!”

Kaa’s mind roiled over the disastrous implications. No matter how capable, Ro-kenn could not have managed such an escape all by himself. He must have had help aboard Streaker. Moreover, if this Rothen made it into Kazzkark, all their plans might be in jeopardy.

Stay calm, he told himself. Ro-kenn can’t go to the authorities. The crimes he committed on Jijo are worse than anything the sooners did.

Yes, hut he might hurry to one of the big fanatic clans or alliances, and try to sell them information about Streaker and Jijo. At the very least, he’ll send word to other Rothen.

“We had better try to contact Alvin and Ur-ronn,” Kaa said. And for once he could tell that Huck agreed.

Only that was far from easy. It seemed that all available telecomm lines were jammed with frantic traffic. And things only got worse as another wave of subspace disruptions hit, causing the planetoid to shake and rattle, resonating like a great, hollow bell.

THE UNIVERSE IS AWASH IN TRAGEDY. YET, ONLY now, as it seems to be falling apart, have I finally begun to see some of the ironic, awesome beauty of its cosmic design.

As happened at the Fractal World, we find ourselves surrounded by sudden devastation, orders of magnitude greater than I ever imagined.

Far below us, whirling near the condensed core of a massive ancient star, we see vast, needle-shaped habitats — each one longer than the moon is wide — made of superstrong godstuff, built to withstand fierce tidal strains. Only now those habitats of the Transcendent Order show signs of terminal stress, shedding their outer skins like brittle slough — quivering as wave after wave of spatial convulsions surge through this part of Galaxy Four.

According to both Sara and the Niss Machine, these are symptoms of a fantastic rupture, beyond anything seen in a quarter of a billion years.

The effects have been even worse on the huge armada of “candidate ships” accompanying Streaker converging on multiple, crisscrossing downward spirals toward those needle monoliths. What had been a stately procession, triumphant and hopeful, wedding two of life’s great orders in a great and glorious union, is swiftly dissolving into chaos and conflagration.

So closely were the giant arks and globules packed together — in dense, orderly rows — that each wave of hypergeometric-recoil throws one rank against another. Collisions produce blinding explosions, slaughtering untold millions and throwing yet more vessels off course.

Yet, despite this awful trend, only a few other craft have joined Streaker in attempting to escape, climbing laboriously outward through the maze, seeking some relative sanctuary of deep space. It seems that the addiction of tides cannot easily be broken, once sapients have tasted its deeper pleasures. Like rutting beasts, irresistibly drawn toward mating grounds they know to be on fire, a majority continue on course, accelerating into the funnel, bound for the Embrace they so deeply desire.

Is this the ultimate destiny of intelligent life? After striving for ages to become brainy, contemplative, wise (and all that), do all races wind up driven forward by ineffable instinct? By a yearning so strong they must plunge ahead, even when their goal is falling apart before their eyes?

At last, for the first time in three long years, I begin to understand the persecution we Streakers have suffered — and Earth, as well. For our discovery of the Ghost Fleet truly does present a challenge, a shocking heresy, that strikes at the very heart of Galactic belief systems.