“Lvov!”
The GUTdrive flared past them, sudden, dazzling, and plunged into the damaged Interface.
Electric-blue light exploded from the Interface, washing over her.
There was a ball of light, unearthly, behind her, and an irregular patch of darkness ahead, like a rip in space. Tidal forces plucked gently at her belly and limbs.
Pluto, Charon and goose summer disappeared. But the stars, the eternal stars, shone down on her, just as they had during her childhood on Earth. She stared at the stars, trusting, and felt no fear.
Remotely, she heard Cobh whoop, exhilarated.
The tides faded. The darkness before her healed, to reveal the brilliance and warmth of Sol.
It was a time of extraordinary ambition and achievement. The anthropic theories of cosmological evolution were somewhere near their paradigmatic peak. Some believed humans were alone in the Universe. Others even believed the Universe had been designed, by some offstage agency, with the sole object of delivering and supporting humans.
Given time, humans could do anything, go anywhere, achieve whatever they liked.
Michael Poole was rightly celebrated for his achievements. His wormhole projects had opened up the System much as the great railroads had opened up the American continent, two thousand years earlier.
But Poole had greater ambitions in mind.
Poole used wormhole technology to establish a time tunneclass="underline" a bridge across fifteen hundred years, to the future.[2]
Why was Poole’s wormhole time link built?
There were endless justifications — what power could a glimpse of the future afford? — but the truth was that it had been built for little more than the sheer joy of it.
But Poole’s bridge reached an unexpected future.
The incident that followed the opening of the wormhole was confused, chaotic, difficult to disentangle. But it was a war — brief, spectacular, like no battle fought in Solar space before — but a war nevertheless. It was an invasion from a remote future, in which the Solar System had been occupied by an alien power.
The incursion was repelled. Michael Poole drove a captured warship into the wormhole, to seal it against further invasion. In the process, Poole himself was lost in time.
The System, stunned, slowly returned to normal.
Various bodies combed through the fragments of data from the time bridge incident, trying to answer the unanswerable.
It was said that before Poole’s wormhole path to the future finally closed, some information had been obtained on the far future. And the rumors said that the future — and what it held for mankind — were bleak indeed.
If the data was anything like accurate, it was clear that there was an agency at large — which must be acting even now — systematically destroying the stars…
And, as a consequence, humanity.
In response, an organization called the Holy Superet Church of Light emerged and evolved. Superet believed that humanity was becoming mature, as a species. And it was time to take responsibility for man’s long-term survival as a species.
Eve said, “A fresh starship was launched, called the Great Northern, in an attempt to build a new time bridge. And probes were prepared to investigate the heart of man’s own star, the Sun, where a dark cancer was growing…"[3]
Cilia-of-Gold
The people — though exhausted by the tunnel’s cold — had rested long enough, Cilia-of-Gold decided.
Now it was time to fight.
She climbed up through the water, her flukes pulsing, and prepared to lead the group further along the Ice-tunnel to the new Chimney cavern.
But, even as the people rose from their browsing and crowded through the cold, stale water behind her, Cilia-of-Gold’s resolve wavered. The Seeker was a heavy presence inside her. She could feel its tendrils wrapped around her stomach, and — she knew — its probes must already have penetrated her brain, her mind, her self.
With a beat of her flukes, she thrust her body along the tunnel. She couldn’t afford to show weakness. Not now.
“Cilia-of-Gold.”
A broad body, warm through the turbulent water, came pushing out of the crowd to bump against hers: it was Strong-Flukes, one of Cilia-of-Gold’s Three-mates. Strong-Flukes’ presence was immediately comforting. “Cilia-of-Gold. I know something’s wrong.”
Cilia-of-Gold thought of denying it; but she turned away, her depression deepening. “I couldn’t expect to keep secrets from you. Do you think the others are aware?”
The hairlike cilia lining Strong-Flukes’ belly barely vibrated as she spoke. “Only Ice-Born suspects something is wrong. And if she didn’t, we’d have to tell her.” Ice-Born was the third of Cilia-of-Gold’s mates.
“I can’t afford to be weak, Strong-Flukes. Not now.”
As they swam together, Strong-Flukes flipped onto her back. Tunnel water filtered between Strong-Flukes’ carapace and her body; her cilia flickered as they plucked particles of food from the stream and popped them into the multiple mouths along her belly. “Cilia-of-Gold,” she said. “I know what’s wrong. You’re carrying a Seeker, aren’t you?”
“…Yes. How could you tell?”
“I love you,” Strong-Flukes said. “That’s how I could tell.”
The pain of Strong-Flukes’ perception was as sharp, and unexpected, as the moment when Cilia-of-Gold had first detected the signs of the infestation in herself… and had realized, with horror, that her life must inevitably end in madness, in a purposeless scrabble into the Ice over the world. “It’s still in its early stages, I think. It’s like a huge heat, inside me. And I can feel it reaching into my mind. Oh, Strong-Flukes…”
“Fight it.”
“I can’t. I—”
“You can. You must.”
The end of the tunnel was an encroaching disc of darkness; already Cilia-of-Gold could feel the inviting warmth of the Chimney-heated water on the cavern beyond.
This should have been the climax, the supreme moment of Cilia-of-Gold’s life.
The group’s old Chimney, with its fount of warm, rich water, was failing; and so they had to flee, and fight for a place in a new cavern.
That, or die.
It was Cilia-of-Gold who had found the new Chimney, as she had explored the endless network of tunnels between the Chimney caverns. Thus, it was she who must lead this war — Seeker or no Seeker.
She gathered up the fragments of her melting courage.
“You’re the best of us, Cilia-of-Gold,” Strong-Flukes said, slowing. “Don’t ever forget that.”
Cilia-of-Gold pressed her carapace against Strong-Flukes’ in silent gratitude.
Cilia-of-Gold turned and clacked her mandibles, signaling the rest of the people to halt. They did so, the adults sweeping the smaller children inside their strong carapaces.
Strong-Flukes lay flat against the floor and pushed a single eye stalk towards the mouth of the tunnel. Her caution was wise; there were species who could home in on even a single sound-pulse from an unwary eye.