But that wasn’t going to help now.
He ran through a quick hack procedure, trying to get a first-cut estimate of the strings’ true distance…
He didn’t believe the answer. He modified the procedure and ran it again.
The answer didn’t change.
Well, so much for my two-light-year safety zone.
The string pair was only around ten million miles from the Northern — less than a light-minute.
One of the pair of strings was receding — but the other was heading straight for the ship.
He ran more checks. There was no error.
In fifty seconds, that encroaching string would hit the Northern.
He burst out of the machinery and back into the world of humans. With impatience he waited for pixels to congeal out of the air, for his face to reassemble; he felt his awareness slow down to the crawl of humans.
29
Five million years after the first conflict between humans and Qax, the wreckage of a Spline warship had emerged, tumbling, from the mouth of a wormhole that blazed with gravitational radiation. The wormhole closed, sparkling.
The wreck — dark, almost bereft of energy — turned slowly in the stillness. It was empty of life.
Almost.
I’m still not sure how I survived. But I remember — I remember how the quantum functions came flooding over me. They were like raindrops; it was as if I could see them, Spinner-of-Rope. It was painful. But it was like being born again. I was restored to time.
It hadn’t taken Poole long to check out the status of the derelict his craft had become. There had been power in the lifedome’s internal cells, sufficient for a few hours, perhaps. But he had no motive power — not even a functioning data link out of the lifedome to the rest of his ship.
I remember how dead the Universe looked. I couldn’t understand how the stars had got so old, so quickly; I knew I couldn’t have fallen more than a few million years.
But I knew I was alone. I could feel it.
I made myself a meal. I drank a glass of clear water… His face, softly translucent, was thoughtful. Do you know, I can remember the taste of that water even now. I had a shower… I was thinking of reading a book.
But the lights went out.
I felt my way back to my couch. I lay there. It started getting colder.
I wasn’t afraid of death, Spinner-of-Rope. Strangely, I felt renewed.
“But you didn’t die,” she said. “Did you, Michael?”
No. No, I didn’t die, said Poole.
And then, a ship had come.
Poole, dying, had stared up in wonder.
It was something like a sycamore seed wrought in jet-black. Night-dark wings that spanned hundreds of miles loomed over the wreck of Poole’s GUTship, softly rippling.
“A nightfighter,” Spinner breathed.
Yes. I got colder. I couldn’t breathe. But now I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live just a little longer — to understand what this meant.
And then —
“Yes?”
And then, something had plucked Poole from the wreck. It was as if a giant hand had cupped his consciousness, like taking a flame from a guttering candle.
And then it spun me out…
Poole had become discorporeal. He no longer even had a heartbeat.
He felt as if he had been released from the cave of bone that had been his head.
I believe I became a construct of quantum functions, he said. A tapestry of acausal and nonlocal effects… I don’t pretend to understand it. And my companion was still there. It was like a huge ceiling over me.
“What was it?”
Perhaps it was Xeelee. Or perhaps not. It seemed to be beyond even the Xeelee a construct by them, perhaps, but not of them…
Spinner-of-Rope, the Xeelee were — are — masters of space and time. I believe they have even traveled back through time — modified their own evolutionary history — to achieve their huge goals. I think my companion was something to do with that program: an anti-Xeelee, perhaps, like an anti particle, moving backwards in time.
I sensed — amusement, Poole said slowly. It was amused by my fear, my wonder, my longing to survive. She heard the faded ghost of bitterness in his voice.
After a time, it dissolved. I was left alone. And, Spinner, I found I could not die.
At first, I was angry. I was in despair. He held up his glowing hand and inspected it thoughtfully, turning it round before his face. I couldn’t understand why this had been done to me — why I’d been preserved in this grotesque way.
But — with time — that passed. And I had time: plenty of it…
He fell silent, and she watched his face. It was blank, expressionless; she felt a prickle of fear, and wondered what experiences he had undergone, alone between the dying stars.
“Michael,” she said gently. “Why did you speak to me?”
His bleak expression dissolved, and he smiled at her. I saw a human being, he said. A man, dressed in skins, frostbitten, in a fragile little ship… He came plunging through a wormhole Interface, uncontrolled, into this hostile future.
It was an extraordinary event… So I — returned. I was curious. I probed at the wormhole links — and found you, Spinner-of-Rope.
Spinner nodded. “He was Arrow Maker. He was my father,” she said.
Michael Poole closed his eyes.
“…Spinner-of-Rope,” Louise Armonk said. She sounded urgent, concerned.
“Yes, Louise.”
“I don’t know what in Lethe is happening in that head of yours, but you’d better get it clear fast.” Spinner heard Louise issue commands over her shoulder. “…We’ve got a problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“Listen to me, Spinner. Here’s what you must — ”
Louise’s voice died, abruptly.
“Louise? Louise?”
There was only silence.
Spinner twisted in her couch. Behind her, the bulk of the lifedome loomed over the clean lines of the nightfighter, a wall of glass and steady light.
But now a soft webbing, a mesh of barely visible threads, lay over the upper levels of the lifedome.
“Lethe,” Spinner hissed. “That’s string.”
For the first time in several years, the Decks were filled with the wail of the klaxon.
Morrow, hovering in the green-tinged air close to Deck Two, straightened from his work. His back ached pleasurably, and there was warm dirt and water on his hands; he felt a fine slick of sweat on his forehead.
He looked around vaguely, seeking the source of the alarm.
Milpitas, his sleeves rolled up and the deep scars of his face running with sweat, studied him. The Planner fingered a handful of reeds which protruded from the spherical pond. “Morrow? Is something wrong? Why the klaxon?”
“I don’t know, Planner.”
The sound of the klaxon was deafening — at once familiar and jarring, making it hard to think. Morrow looked around the Decks, at the tranquil, three dimensional motion of people and ’bots as they went about their business; in the distance the shoulders of the Temples loomed over the grass-covered surfaces. It all looked normal, placid; he felt relaxed and safe.