Feeling warmer, Rodi dropped into three-space.
The neutron star was one of a binary pair. It was the remnant of a blue-white giant, once so bright it must have made its companion star cast a shadow. Perhaps there had been planets.
The giant had exploded.
Planets evaporated like dew and layers of the companion star blasted away. The giant’s remnant collapsed into a wizened, spinning cinder as massive as Earth’s sun but barely ten miles across.
The new neutron star dragged down material from its companion and rotated ever faster. The spin deformed it until at last it was virtually a disc, its rim moving at a third the speed of light. Spin effects there canceled out the star’s ferocious gravity and a layer of normal matter began to accrete…
A human ship had blundered here, scarred by some forgotten war; Rodi found a battered wreck in close orbit around the neutron star. The crew had no way back to hyperspace and no way to call for help.
And in this dismal system there had been only one place that could conceivably sustain human life…
In Rodi’s monitors the neutron star was a plate of red-hot charcoal. A point on the rim was emitting green laser light, picking out a message in something called Morse code. The message was one word of ancient English. “Mayday. Mayday…”
Rodi set up a reply, in the same old tongue and code. “I represent the Exaltation of the Integrality. What is mayday?”
The reply came a day later.
“Apologies are offered for the delay. It took time to locate the Comms Officer. I am the Comms Officer. What do you want?”
“My name is Rodi. I have traveled here in an Exaltation of Arks. I have brought you good news of the Integrality—”
“Are you human?”
“Yes, of course. How long have you been stranded?”
“Stranded where?”
Rodi pulled at his chin. “Would you like to hear of events in the galaxies? Of the wars with the Xeelee?”
“What are galaxies? — Cancel question. Please understand that this is the first time the Comms System has evoked a reply—”
“Then why have you maintained it?”
“Because we always have. The role of Comms Officer is handed from mother to daughter. We know we came from somewhere else. The Comms System is the only link with this other place, our origin. How could we abandon it? Are you in this other place?”
“Yes. You are not alone.”
“How reassuring.”
Rodi raised an eyebrow. Sarcasm? “Please describe your world.”
“What world?”
It took some time to achieve a common understanding.
The stranded crew had observed the layer of soupy liquid at the star rim. The liquid was full of complex molecules, left over from the supernova’s fusion fury.
It was their only hope.
With astonishing audacity they had terraformed the ring-shaped sea. Then they began to mold their own unborn children.
Their descendants swam like fish in a dull red toroidal ocean, chattering English. They didn’t need hands or tools; only the old Comms System had been left for them, lasing its message to the skies. Rodi imagined the Comms Officer tapping a broad, unwearing key with his mouth or tongue.
Rodi sent down a small, sturdy probe. It was a passing novelty among the fish-folk. Rodi wondered if they thought he was swimming somewhere inside.
There was a death among the fish-folk. A corpse fell from a school of wailing relatives and settled slowly to the star’s glowing surface.
Rodi’s probe took a tissue sample from the corpse.
The fish-folk were beyond the reach of the glotto-chronology dating technique. Rodi turned to genetic analysis. Two groups on Earth will show divergence of genetic structure at a rate of one percent every five million years.
Rodi found that the fish-folk had swum their ocean for fifty thousand years.
That appalled him. How long had this damn Xeelee war dragged on? How many human lives had been wasted?
The fish-folk weren’t too impressed by the Integrality.
“All mankind is joined in freedom,” said Rodi. “The worlds in home space are joined by inseparability links into a neural network; decisions flow through the net and reflect the wills of all, not just one person or one group…”
And so on.
The Comms Officer was silent for a long time. Then: “What you say means little to us.”
“Your world is unchanging. You are isolated. You are cut out of the great events which shape the greater human history.”
“But great events mark our lives,” said the Comms Officer, and Rodi wondered if he had given offense. “Our convocations, for instance. There are places where we swim in concert and cause the ocean to sing. We did this not long ago.”
That puzzled Rodi. It sounded like a starquake, a sudden collapse of the crust; that would make the whole star ring like a bell.
Could they cause a starquake?
Perhaps they had some way of manipulating the star’s ferocious magnetic field. And after all, a quake had disrupted the Exaltation inseparability net not long ago.
After a fortnight Rodi took his leave of his friend.
“Wait,” the Comms Officer said unexpectedly. “I have a message to give you.” And he transmitted: “Our grand Foe, / Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy / Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven.”
“What does it mean?” asked Rodi.
“Unknown.”
“Then why do you send it?”
“Every Comms Officer is taught to send it.”
“Why?”
“What is ‘heaven’?”
“Unknown.”
Rodi thought of the rhyme the Moon children had taught Thet. To wage by force or guile eternal war / Irreconcilable to our grand Foe, / Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy…
The pieces fit together, he realized, astonished.
He transmitted his conclusion to Holism Ark for analysis.
Rodi went through the motions of lifting the flitter back to hyperspace, his thoughts clouded.
Once more his mission hadn’t unfolded as he’d been taught to expect.
The humans in this region had been forced to find their own ways to come to terms with the events that had stranded them. If they hadn’t they couldn’t have survived. So — why did they need the Integrality? — or a junior missionary like himself?
Was the Integrality’s crusade meaningless?…
The Exaltation’s formation had changed.
His speculations driven from his mind, he stared at his monitors. Around Holism Ark the fleet’s symmetrical pattern had been distorted into a wedge; at the tip the Arks’ fleshy walls were almost touching. Flitters scurried between the Arks; hundreds of closed-beam inseparability net messages radiated away from Holism Ark.
What was happening?
He pushed into Holism Ark. The maintenance bay was deserted. He flew through an axis filled with a harsh light. People rushed past, wings fluttering.
Men and women came along the axis shoving a cannon-like piece of equipment. Rodi recognized a machine-shop heavy-duty laser. He had to press against the wall to allow the team to pass. Their eyes passed blankly over him.
Rodi noticed a fist-sized, fleshy lump on the back of the neck of the nearest man, at the top of his spine.
The freefall common room was unrecognizable. Rodi clung to a wall and stared around. The floating tables were being cleared away; he saw a group of children shooed through the commotion.
There were more bulges on the spinal columns of the crew. Even the children were affected. Some sort of sickness?