DEFEND DEFEND—DESTROY, DESTROY! GRIPPED BY MILLENNIAL FERVOR, IT OBEYED.
BUT SOMEHOW WRONGNESSES BEGAN.
THEY STARTED AS BRIEF INVADING SLACKENINGS. UNPREDICTABLY, INTO ITS ALMOST EMPTY EXPANSES, WOULD COME INSTANTS OF DOUBLE-NESS OF ATTENTION THAT SEPARATED IT FROM THE TASK.
FRIGHTENED, THE HUGE BEING HAD REDOUBLED LINKAGE, REFUSED TO FOCUS ON THE DISQUIET. THIS MUST BE A MINOR MALFUNCTION. MALFUNCTIONS, EVEN ERROR, ARE FORESEEN BY THE PLAN. WITH THE LIMITLESS POWERS OF TIME ITSELF, ALL CAN BE DULY COMPENSATED. HIS TROUBLE MUST BE ONE SUCH.
BUT THE MALFUNCTION PERSISTS, DEVELOPS TO MORE THAN A STIR OF UNEASE. LABORING ON THE ASSIGNED VECTORS OF THE TASK, THE GIANT ENTITY WOULD FIND ITS SENSORS HAD SLIPPED FOCUS, SO THAT ITS NAME MUST ECHO REDUNDANTLY UPON THE BANDS. SHOCKED, IT THRUSTS ITSELF BACK INTO LINK. BUT THE TROUBLE RECURS, RECURS AGAIN AND AGAIN.
SLOWLY THE TERRIFYING REALIZATION COMES: THIS IS SELF-GENERATED! DELIBERATELY IT IS LETTING ITS SENSORS SLIDE FROM SYNCHRONY, ALLOWING ITSELF TO SCAN EMISSIONS NOT OF THE TASK, AS IF CRAVING SOME UNKNOWN INPUT.
THIS APPALLS, HERE IS NO MINOR MALFUNCTION, HERE IS DEPRAVITY INCARNATE! AGONIZED, THE ENTITY HURLS ITS IMMATERIAL ENORMITY BACK INTO CORRECT ALIGNMENT, SUPPRESSING ALL BUT THE MOST NEEDFUL RECEPTION. BUT DESPITE ALL IT CAN DO, THE DISTRACTION PERSISTS AND GROWS. TEMPTATION WELLS AGAIN, AND AGAIN IT YIELDS, LETTING AWARENESS QUEST THROUGH MEANINGLESS SPECTRA, GUILTILY AWARE OF AN OBSCURE SATISFACTION OVERWHELMED BY PANIC AND PAIN.
AND WORSE: AS THE LAPSES CONTINUE, IT FINDS THAT IT IS DRIFTING EVER FARTHER FROM THE CENTRAL AREA, THE ZONE OF THE TASK. NOW THE VOICES OF ITS RACE ARE FADING, EVEN AS IT WILLS ITSELF TO OBEY THEM, TO RETURN AT ONCE. CLOUDS OF GAS AND MATTER DENSER THAN ITS OWN BODY ARE THICKENING BETWEEN HIM AND THE OTHERS. RETURN INSTANTLY! BUT STILL IT FINDS ITSELF SEEKING UNKNOWN, NONEXISTENT STIMULATION, SEEKING ANYTHING THAT IS NOT ITSELF OR ITS SHAME.
IT DOES NOT AT FIRST NOTICE THE SMALL INPUTS, THE TINY CRYPTIC SIGNALS IN THE ULTRA-TEMPORAL RANGE. WHEN IT DOES, IT CAN FIND NO MEANING IN THEM. ARE THEY NEW FORMS OF TORMENT RESULTING FROM ITS CRIME? BUT THEY ARE STRANGELY ATTRACTIVE. SLOWLY, SLOWLY. EXCITATION STIRS THE PARSECS-LONG IMMATERIALITY OF ITS NUCLEUS. AN INEXPLICABLE STRESS-PATTERN IS BORN.
THIS IRRITATES: IT SAILS AWAY, ITS MOTION CHURNING THE LOCAL FABRIC OF SPACE-TIME. BUT WHEN IT COMES TO REST, MORE OF THE TINY INPUTS ARE STILL PERCEPTIBLE. INDEED, THEY SEEM TO BE ALL ABOUT, VARYING IN AMPLITUDE AND COMPLEXITY, BUT ALWAYS MULTIPLE, MINUTE AND MEANINGLESS. IDLYTHE IMMENSE DARK BEING SAMPLES THEM. THEY ARE, IT SEEMS, LAGLESS OR TIME-INDEPENDENT: THEY DO NOT VARY WITH APPROACH OR RETREAT.
AND THEIR RECEPTION IS FAINTLY DIVERTING, A WEAK ANODYNE FOR THE PAIN IN WHAT SERVES IT FOR A SOUL. IT LETS ITSELF ATTEND MORE AND MORE. BUT THE SIGNALS WILL NOT COME CLEAR, EVEN THOUGH NEW, DEPRAVED SENSITIVITIES SEEM TO BE DEPLOYING THEMSELVES WITHIN. EXASPERATED, TANTALIZED, THE GREAT SENSOR-SYSTEM STRAINS TO RECEIVE, UNAWARE THAT THE MOST PRODIGIOUS OF THE FORMS OF BEING IS LISTENING TO THE EMANATIONS OF THE MOST ORDINARY.
PRESENTLY A CLOUDY QUESTION SHAPES ITSELF IN THE REACHES ON ITS SLOW, SIDEREAL MIND: COULD IT BE THAT THESE ACTIONS ARE SOMEHOW A PART OF THE PLAN? PERHAPS IT IS DESIGNED TO ELIMINATE THESE PYGMY DISTURBANCES, TO CLEANSE THEM FROM EXISTENCE. THERE WOULD BE NO PROBLEM, DESPITE THEIR DISTRIBUTION DENSITY. IN FINITE TIME, IT COULD SWEEP ALL AWAY.
BUT NO INFORMATION HAS BEEN RECEIVED, AND THERE IS AN ODD RELUCTANCE. A COUNTER-THOUGHT OCCURS: PERHAPS, IT BROODS, PERHAPS I AM SO DEFECTIVE THAT I AM ONLY INVENTING A FALSE PLAN, A TASK TO JUSTIFY MY GUILT.
UNABLE TO RESOLVE THIS COMPLEXITY, IT LETS ITSELF DRIFT FARTHER AND FARTHER, LETS THE NEW RANGES OF AWARENESS RECRUIT AND GROW. FOR LONG WHILES TOGETHER IT CEASES ALL ATTENTION TO THE THUNDEROUS CALLING OF ITS NAME, UNTIL THE TIME COMES WHEN THERE IS ONLY SHOCKING SILENCE ON ITS PROPER RECEPTORS. ITS RACE, THE TASK, ALL ARE NOW TOO FAR AWAY TO RECEIVE!
DESPAIRING THEN, AND MIGHTY BEYOND COMPARE, IT ABANDONS ITS ALMOST UNBODIED VASTNESS TO THE TIDES OF SPACE, OPEN TO ASSUAGE ITS PAIN BY WHATEVER EVIL DEED IT WILL.
Chapter 5
Tivonel jets upwind on her way to the Hearers, on her way to Giadoc, savoring the wild morning. Her aura radiates life-zest, her flying body is a perfect expression of wind-mastery as she darts and planes against the eternal gales of Tyree.
Soon she begins to register a slight magnetic gradient along the trail. It’s coming from a long frail strand of gura-plant evidently anchored far upwind. Her new memory tells her that the Station people arranged it as a rustic marker for the trail. Very ingenious. She tacks effortlessly beside it, recalling her Father telling her that it was such natural interface guides that first led her people down to Deep.
How daring they’d been, those old ones! Braving hunger when they ventured below the life-rich food streams, braving darkness and silence. Above all, braving the terror of falling out of the Wind. Many must have fallen, nameless bold ones lost forever in the Abyss. But they persevered. They dared to explore down to the great stable up-welling, and founded the colony that became Old Deep. In that calm, Tyree’s high culture had developed.
Tivonel’s mantle glints in appreciation; her year in the high Wild has made her more reflective. Now she’s actually known the brutish, primitive life from which her people freed themselves. Tbe Lost Ones were reverting fast. She has touched their hideous mind-savagery and experienced the total impermanence of life in the wild Wind, tumbling endlessly through the food-rich streams, gorging, communicating, mating at random; knowing nothing beyond the small chance group which might at any moment be separated forever. We lived in animal chaos while the centuries rolled by unmarked, Tivonel thinks, shuddering. Much as she enjoys the Wild, that view of the real thing had been too much.
A pity the names of the early pioneers aren’t known. They must have been females like herself. The Memory-Keepers of Deep have engrams only of the generations after the Disaster, when the present Deep was reestablished on another updraft safe from abyssal explosions. Twisting and jetting into the great gales, Tivonel muses on history. Perhaps there were many lost colonies before one succeeded. Achievements go like that, look at the efforts to bring the podplants up.
A turbulence in the trail breaks her revery. She scans ahead. The far point of life that must be the Hearers is still barely discernible, almost lost in the soupy plant-life of the winds. The biosphere is still rich down here. As the chiming lights of a raft of sweet-plants rush by Tivonel checks the temptation to dart out and scoop in a snack. Really, my manners. She sets vanes and jets in closer to the gura-lattice, thinking that it will take an effort to get used to civilization. What if she forgets herself and eats somebody’s garden, down in Deep?
But there’s wildness in her heart, and the mission to the Lost Ones has given her a taste for real achievement. Maybe I won’t stay with the food-hunting teams, she thinks. Maybe I’ll volunteer for one of the real exploration trips down to the dangerous ultradeep above wind-bottom. Whew! That would be something real. We females should do things with all our spare time. At least I can argue Ellakil into trying my scheme of using counters to organize the food trade. But I’m not like the Paradomin radicals. I don’t want to try unfemale things like Fathering. After seeing Ober and the rest in action I know I haven’t the Skills. I haven’t the sensitivity, the patience. What female has? Adventure, travel excitement, work is what we like!
But first I want to see Giadoc again. Maybe—maybe—
Suddenly she is aware of a small, weak life-signal straight ahead. It’s coming fast downwind at her. Hello, it’s a child!