Gregory Benford - Foundation’s Fear

Sark had seven wormholes. One was dying. It hung a light-hour away, spitting out wild worms that ranged from a hand’s-width size, up to several meters.

A fairly sizable wild worm had sprouted out of the side of the dying worm several months before. The Imperial squadron did not know of this, of course. All worms were taxed, so a free wormhole was a bonanza. Reporting their existence, well, often a planet simply didn’t get around to that until the wild worm had fizzled away in a spray of subatomic surf.

Until then, pilots carried cargo through them. That wild worms could evaporate with only seconds’ warning made their trade dangerous, highly paid, and legendary.

Wormriders were the sort of people who as children liked to ride their bicycles no-handed, but with a difference-they rode off rooftops.

By an odd logic, that kind of child grew up and got trained and even paid taxes-but inside, they stayed the same.

Only risk takers could power through the chaotic flux of a transient worm and take the risks that worked, not take those that didn’t, and live. They had elevated bravado to its finer points.

“This wild worm, it’s tricky,” a grizzled woman told Hari and Dors. “No room for a pilot if you both go.”

“We must stay together,” Dors said with finality.

“Then you’ll have to pilot.”

“We don’t know how,” Hari said.

“You’re in luck.” The lined woman grinned without humor. “This wildy’s short, easy.”

“What are the risks?” Dors demanded stiffly. “I’m not an insurance agent, lady.”

“I insist that we know-”

“Look, lady, we’ll teach you. That’s the deal.”

“I had hoped for a more-”

“Give it a rest, or it’s no deal at all.”

In the men’s room, above the urinal he used, Hari saw a small gold plaque: Senior Pilot Joquan Beunn relieved himself here Octdent 4, 13,435.

Every urinal had a similar plaque. There was a washing machine in the locker room with a large plaque over it, reading The entire 43rd Pilot Corps relieved themselves here Marlass 18, 13,675.

Pilot humor. It turned out to be absolutely predictive. He messed himself on his first training run.

As if to make the absolutely fatal length of a closing wormhole less daunting, the worm flyers had escape plans. These could only work in the fringing fields of the worm, where gravity was beginning to warp, and space-time was only mildly curved. Under the seat was a small, powerful rocket that propelled the entire cockpit out, automatically heading away from the worm.

There is a limit to how much self-actuated tech one can pack into a small cockpit, though. Worse, worm mouths were alive with electrodynamic “weather”-writhing forks of lightning, blue discharges, red magnetic whorls like tornadoes. Electrical gear didn’t work well if a bad storm was brewing at the mouth. Most of the emergency controls were manual. Hopelessly archaic, but unavoidable.

So he and Dors went through a training program. Quite soon it was clear that if he used the Eject command he had better be sure that he had his head tilted back. That is, unless he wanted his kneecaps to slam up into his chin, which would be unfortunate, because he would be trying to check if his canopy had gone into a spin. This would be bad news, because his trajectory might get warped back into the worm. To correct any spin he had to yank on a red lever, and if that failed he had to then very quickly-in pilot’s terms, this meant about half a second-punch two blue knobs. When the spindown came, he then had to be sure to release the automatic actuator by pulling down on two yellow tabs, being certain that he sit up straight with hands between knees to avoid…

“.and so on for three hours. Everyone seemed to assume that since he was this famous mathematician he could of course keep an entire menu of instructions straight, timed to fractions of seconds.

After the first ten minutes he saw no point in destroying their illusions, and simply nodded and squinted to show that he was carefully keeping track and absolutely enthralled. Meanwhile he solved differential equations in his head for practice.

“I’m sure you will be all right,” Buta Fyrnix said fulsomely to them in the departure lounge.

Hari had to admit this woman had proven better than he had hoped. She had cleared the way and stalled the Imperial offices’ Grey Men. Probably she shrewdly expected a payoff from him as First Minister. Very well; one’s life was worth a kickback.

“I hope I can handle a wormship,” Hari said.

“And I,” Dors added.

“Our training is the very best,” Fyrnix said. “The New Renaissance encourages individual excellence-”

“Yes, I’m quite impressed,” Dors said. “Perhaps you can explain to me the details of your Creativity Creation program? I’ve heard so much about it…”

Hari gave her a slight smile of thanks for distracting Fyrnix. He instinctively disliked the brand of rampant self-assurance common on Sark. It was headed for a crackup, of that he was sure. He ached to get back to his full psychohistorical resources, to simulate this Sark case. His earlier work needed refinement. He had secretly gathered fresh data here and yearned to apply it.

“I do hope you’re not worried about the wild worm. Academician?” Fyrnix spoke to him again, brow furrowed.

“It’s a tight fit,” he said.

They had to fly in a slender cylinder, Dors copiloting. Splitting the job had proved the only way to get them up to a barely competent level.

“I think it’s marvelous, how courageous you two are.”

“We have little choice,” Dors said. This was artful understatement. Another day and the sector general’s officers would have Hari and Dors under arrest.

“Riding in a little pencil ship. Such primitive means!”

“Uh, time to go,” Hari said behind a fixed smile.

She was wearing thin again.

“ I agree with the Emperor. Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.”

So the Emperor’s ghost-written remark had already spread here. Minor sayings moved fast, with Imperial muscle behind it.

Still, Hari felt his stomach flutter with dread. “You’ve got a point.”

He had brushed off the remark.

Four hours later, closing at high velocity with the big wormhole complex, he saw her side of it.

He spoke on suitcomm to Dors. “In one of my classes-Nonlinear Philosophy, I believe-the professor said something I’ll never forget. ‘Ideas about existence pale beside the fact of existence.’ Quite true.”

“Bearing oh-six-nine-five,” she said rigorously. “No small talk.”

“Nothing’s small out here-except that wild worm mouth.”

The wild worm was a fizzing point of vibrant agitation. It orbited the main worm mouth, a distant bright speck.’

Imperial ships patrolled the main mouth, ignoring this wild worm. They had been paid off long ago and expected a steady train of slimships to slip through the Imperial guard.

Hari had passed through worm gates before, always in big cruisers plying routes through wormholes tens of meters across. Every hole of that size was the hub of a complex which buzzed with carefully orchestrated traffic. He could see the staging yards and injection corridors of the main route gleaming far away.

Their wild worm, a renegade spin-off, could vanish at any moment. Its quantum froth advertised its mortality. And maybe ours… .Hari thought.

“Vector null sum coming up,” he called.

“Convergent asymptotes, check,” Dors answered.

Just like the drills they had gone through.

But coming at them was a sphere fizzing orange and purple at its rim. A neon-lit mouth. Tight, dark at the very center