It wasn’t straight, their chosen course. It bent and looped, and, given the radical twists, they should by rights have been sick all over themselves. But while the universe outside went mad, something unseen maintained their internal equilibrium. No one upchucked, though Pulickel was about ready to throw out everything he’d ever learned about physics.
And as if the astonishing road down which they were flying wasn’t wonder enough, beyond the flaring walls of the tunnel could be seen dozens, hundreds of others of equally impossible brilliance, coiling about each other like mating pythons or flaring off in a thousand different directions. Awed, they could only stare. Numbed, Pulickel could only wonder how many ovoids like their own were racing along those improbable lengths at impossible velocities to unknown destinations. Fawn speculated aloud on who or what might be riding in them.
Strands of a rope, threads of a weave, the tunnels were not inviolate. Occasionally a burst of sheer radiance would jump from one tunnel to another. The travelers looked in vain for signs of another voyaging ovoid similar to their own but saw none. It left them to wonder if they simply didn’t know how to look, or if they were truly alone, the only ones abroad on the immense network.
Within the speeding ovoid the air stayed pleasant and fresh, the temperature agreeable. Hearts, however, raced.
“I wonder if we’re traveling along some kind of natural structure,” Fawn speculated, “or if someone actually built all this.”
Pulickel stared at the web of plasma tunnels, thoroughly entranced. “If the latter, it would qualify as the most impressive piece of engineering in our part of the galaxy.”
She laughed softly, a sound that always made him think of fired brandy. “What makes you think that we’re still in ‘our part of the galaxy’?”
He smiled back. “Figure of speech. Everyone needs a reference point to start from.”
“Roads.” Jorana was speaking. “There are an infinite number of roads leading to an infinite number of spaces.”
“Yes,” Ascela agreed. “This one chose us. We did not choose it. We are not the masters of the howling stones.”
“Well, somebody must be.” Fawn tried to stretch, had to settle for a half. “Roads have builders. And destinations.”
Pulickel recalled the naked, overpowering, soul-crushing evil he had encountered. Did one of these roads lead to that? Did the one they were on? But if anything, they continued to suffer from a surfeit of light and not its absence.
Fawn was right. They had no idea where they were. Perhaps not even in the same galaxy or, for all he knew, in the same universe. What, after all, did roads of such magnitude and wonder connect? Different dimensions, parallel universes? He would have given a great deal to see just one star—one ordinary, everyday, spherical ball of thermonuclear fire. But there were none; there were only the roads.
The two transportation stones he had taken and inadvertently activated had sent him careening wildly from place to place, with no control over direction or destination. This was different. This was controlled travel down a designated route. To where, neither human nor seni could say. But Fawn was right: a route implied a destination. He wondered what would happen when they reached it.
If they reached it, he corrected himself. They knew nothing of the lifespan of the beings that had fabricated the network, nor of their tolerance for long-term travel. Perhaps a real-time journey of a century or more was like a week to them. In that event, when it finally slowed to a halt the ovoid would bring forth a load of desiccated corpses.
He felt of his field pack. They had a few concentrates with them, a little juice and water. It wouldn’t last very long and, consequently, neither would they. If they didn’t stop fairly soon, they would have to try to turn the ovoid around or find another way back.
He smiled sardonically to himself. Might as well try to reverse the spin of a pulsar. Which, though he did not know it, was an evaluation not far off the mark. Senisran, Earth, the whole Commonwealth seemed very far away. In that view he was completely correct.
Eventually the maze of fiery, flaring plasma tunnels began to thin out until less than a hundred remained, twisting and coiling like emancipated Aztec deities in the vastness of empty space. As the ovoid sped on, showing no signs of slowing, this number was reduced until only a handful remained, then less than a dozen. Finally there was only the one, a cascade of explosive red and lambent purple, coruscating yellow and throbbing blue. Their tunnel. Their road.
The notion of comparative velocity had long since lost any relevance. With nothing to measure themselves against, they had no way of estimating their speed. Faster than fast was the best description Fawn could come up with. No one was foolish enough to propose an actual number.
Without warning, the plasma tunnel began to constrict around them, until it was no wider than the ovoid itself. This must be how a corpuscle in a capillary feels, Pulickel imagined. And then, as the tunnel walls drew tight, so at last did the cosmos.
They were surrounded by stars. Ordinary, normal-looking, unremarkable stars. Sol-types and red giants, white dwarfs and binaries, they were clearly visible through the blazing walls of the tunnel. They swam in a sea of coruscating nebulae, and Pulickel wanted to reach out and kiss each and every one of them. Instant conflagration aside, it would have taken him quite a while.
More stars were visible than any of them had ever seen at any one time in a crystal-clear night sky or from an orbiting platform. So many stars that they crowded the nebulae for living space and threatened to eliminate the blackness of space in which they swam. Enough stars to make the middle of the Milky Way look empty and unpopulated. You could skip from star to star, hop from system to system, Fawn thought. Or such was the impression the sight created.
A new sensation rippled through them: one of progressive deceleration. Curving to their right, the attenuated plasma tunnel carried them toward a yellow sun surrounded by a ring of matter and energy that coexisted in a state foreign to either xenologist’s experience. Out past this striking system they flew, curving sharply above another star that boasted an entourage of no less than twenty planets plus assorted moons and comets and asteroids. Half these worlds were linked by lesser versions of the energy tunnel through which they were traveling.
Still another system, arrayed around a black hole orbited by strange fan-shape objects whose mouths pointed toward the gravitational monster in their midst, drawing upon its energy, sucking up collapsed matter and feeding it to a world the size of Jupiter. There it was molded and shaped, energy bending energy into a bridge that spanned a galaxy. This galaxy.
Pulickel and Fawn had already decided that they had abandoned one in favor of another, but they didn’t know the half of it.
Proceeding down the tunnel at speeds that had dwindled from the impossible to the merely incredible, they passed structures so immense and overawing as to leave them bereft of superlatives. How could they be expected to relate to an entirely artificial world built, as it were, from matter up?
There was one individual fabrication so grandiose in the conception, so breathtaking in its execution, that it was difficult to believe in its existence. As the tunnel passed through a portal the size of Io, they found themselves confronted by a star that had been entirely englobed by an artificial structure. On its inner surface lived unknown beings in their quadrillions, warmed and nurtured by their captive star. The ovoid passed quickly through its orbit and out an opening on the far side of the englobement.
New tunnels hove into view, passing close to a pulsar to boost their cargoes between the multitudinous stars at ever more incredible velocities. Here were suns enough, planets enough, for individuals who might desire it to have a whole world unto themselves. Desire company, and the plasma tunnels could bring it to you in less than a day.
Above one world someone or something was tracing abstract designs in the planet’s upper atmosphere, using its ionosphere for a canvas. Elsewhere stellar winds were focused through hollow moons, resulting i
n true music of the spheres. It was a universe of wonders and enchantments.
It was also very far from home.
Once, a ship passed close. Or was it a planet, fitted out with engines and powered out of orbit, vacationing from one sun to the next? Pulickel couldn’t be sure and size gave no clue. The scale of values and comparisons on which he relied for such things had long since crumbled to dust.
A smaller speeding artifact came near enough for astonished faces to be seen staring back at the occupants of the ovoid. Anything but godlike visages of authority and power, they conveyed a certain shyness rather than omnipotence. Black and gray wraiths, hairless and wide-eyed, they left in their wake a sense of startled surprise at the nature of the ovoid’s passengers.
Fawn felt a wrenching dislocation, as if they had suddenly reversed direction and picked up speed. Sooner than they had left them behind, they were once again surrounded by hundreds of the dazzlingly effulgent tunnels. She fought to recover her internal equilibrium.
“What happened there? It felt like someone pulled the floor out from under us!”
Pulickel swallowed several times, working to clear the rising gorge from his throat. “Maybe somebody did.”
“The gods saw us.” Having long since resigned herself to whatever fate had in store for them, Ascela wasn’t overly concerned. Jorana gestured agreement.
“They didn’t look much like gods to me,” Pulickel countered. “They were small, and kind of skinny. Builders yes, engineers certainly, perhaps miracle-workers even, but gods? I don’t think so.”
“I know what happened.” Fawn squeezed her eyes shut, blinked once, and shook her head. “Somebody just pulled our superstring.”
He summoned up his usual subdued smile. “I wouldn’t doubt it. I wonder what they’re going to do with us now that they’ve seen us?”
It didn’t take long to find out. There was a renewed sense of slowing. Their tunnel took a sharp turn away from the mass of fiery filaments, which vanished rapidly behind them. This was followed by an interval of utter blackness.
Not long thereafter, the ovoid stopped. Light slowly returned to the interior. Not light from a million stars, or a thousand blazing plasma tunnels, but a softer illumination. Moonlight, supplemented by the flickering dance of torches and lanterns.
The ovoid was oozing its way out of the green mass. They were back.
Through the transparent walls they could see a joyous mob of Parramati leaping and hopping toward them. And when the far end of the elliptical capsule evaporated, they could hear them, as well.
Behind him, Fawn Seaforth was speculating on their unexpected return. “They sent us back. Reprogrammed the egg, or threw us into reverse, or whatever was necessary. But they sent us back.” Rolling onto hands and knees, she prepared to exit in Pulickel’s wake. “I have a feeling we weren’t supposed to be where we were, sort of like a kid who borrows the family transport and goes for a run without first asking permission.”
“I disagree.” Emerging from the ovoid, he fought to make sense of what they’d seen. “I think the process was automatic from beginning to end.”
Pushing past him, the jubilant Parramati surrounded Ascela and Jorana, embracing them exuberantly. There was much clasping of hands and rubbing of snouts. Ears bent forward to catch the travelers’ every bark while sensitive nostrils sniffed for signs of foreign roads. Swallowed by the howling stones, the two big persons had been given up for lost. Their return, alive and in apparent good health, was cause for more than ordinary celebration.
Congratulations were passed on to the humans, as well. Pulickel dimly heard Jorana explaining that they had visited the abode of the gods, seen many wonders, and traversed the preeminent road. It was a miraculous place, the Torrelauapan big person avowed, but not for Parramati. Torrelau, Mallatyah, and the rest of the islands were better. None disputed him, there being little merit in trying to remonstrate with an eyewitness.
What it ultimately proved, of course, was that those who hewed to the ways of kusum would always have miracles and wonders at their beck and call, to enhance their lives and confound their enemies.
A hand clutched at Pulickel’s shoulder, one with five familiar fingers instead of three long, double-jointed ones. Fawn was looking down at him and smiling.
“How did that compare to the trip you made with the transportation stones? At least this time nobody came back comatose.”
“Completely different. This time I felt like something was in control, that it wasn’t random jumping from place to place.” He looked past her, to the glowing green bulk. Its radiance had not diminished. “These howling stones assemble themselves into some kind of station or terminus. It’s one tiny part of the incredible transportation system we saw. Those hundreds of tunnels—many if not all of them must begin and end with terminals just like or similar to this.” Excitement shone in his eyes.
She was nodding slowly. “Tunnels or highways, it’s all the same. Thousands of them, all leading … where?”
“We can find out.” His tone was urgent, eager. “Make a map, learn the routings.”
Her eyes widened. “Whoa, let’s back up a step. We still don’t know for certain that someone built these.”
“Of course we do. We even saw some of the builders.”
“We saw aliens. We don’t know that they were the originators of the tunnel system, or that the builders even still exist. You don’t have to be an engineer to find your way around on public transport.”
“No, but somebody keeps those tunnels functional. Somebody lives on that spherical artificial platform facing the enclosed sun, and somebody builds and operates starships the size of worlds. Or planiforms worlds into starships. If not the original builders, then who?”
She made a face. “Ask me another simple one.”
“Leap of faith, remember? Sometimes you just have to accept, even in science.” He was puzzled by her tentativeness. “These beings englobe stars and tap black holes for power. They string tubes of supercharged plasma between star systems, probably between galaxies, and maybe between adjoining universes. They’re for real, and we have to make contact with them.”
She smiled wanly. “Excuse me if I don’t feel up to monkeying with anything like that. I’m a field xenologist; not a philosopher, metaphysician, or theoretical physicist.”
“Same here,” he retorted. “I just like to see what lies over the next mountain.” He was looking past her now. “All those stars, all those systems! There could have been a thousand intelligent races out there.”
“A million,” she added somberly.
“Yes, a million—and we only saw the one. Don’t tell me you didn’t get the feeling that they reacted to our presence.”
“Reacted to it,” she murmured, “by turning us around and getting rid of us.”
“The engineers.” Pulickel was insistent. “The builders. I know they didn’t look like much, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
“So I’ve been told.”
He missed her sarcasm entirely. “But why a terminus here? And why abandon it who knows how long ago, along with the other stones? It’s almost as if they wanted to break connections with this system, or this part of the galaxy, permanently.”
Extracting a drink cylinder from her pack, Fawn snapped the tip open. It chilled immediately and she downed half the contents in a series of long swallows, then looked long and hard at her colleague. “A reasonable interpretation of the evidence. Think about it.”
He turned away to eye the perfect, unpolluted night sky of Senisran. “But that still doesn’t explain why this world?”
She brooded. “Maybe Senisran isn’t the only one with connections. Maybe if you know where and how to look, howling stones can be found on other worlds within the Commonwealth.”
He gestured sharply at the amorphous structure from which the cryptic emerald radiance continued to emanate powerfully. “Nobody’s ever found anything like this.”
“You mean nobody’s ev
er reported finding anything like this,” she corrected him. “That’s not the same thing as knowing for a fact that nothing like it has ever been found.” She waved at the star-speckled but uninformative heavens. “There could be howling stones scattered across half the Arm without humans or thranx or AAnn or any of the other sentient races knowing about them.” After draining the drink cylinder, she tucked the empty container back in her pack.
“There are a lot of tribes and clans right here on Senisran, and of them all only the Parramati have access to and knowledge of the stones. And that probably by accident. Who knows? This may be the beginning of the discovery of sacred stones throughout the Commonwealth.”
His voice fell. “You’re mocking me.”
“Nothing of the sort. Just being realistic.” She looked back at the glowing green terminal, or whatever it was. “Maybe I’m just not ready to rethink everything I know about natural law.”
Before he could respond, Ascela hopped in between them. The Torrelauapan big person regarded them both. “We have made a decision. All the big persons of all the islands, resolving together. Jorana and I have told them of what we have seen and experienced, and a conclusion has been reached.”
Fawn brightened at this return to reality. “You mean you’re going to accept the treaty?”
Ascela peered up at her. “You have already been told: we make no treaties with anyone. This is not about treaties. Our kusum has just proven its superiority to all other ways of knowing and of acting. Commanding such knowledge frees us from any need to concern ourselves with your technology or that of the shiny-skinned AAnn.
“There will be no treaties. No one will be allowed to come and dig in our islands. We readily forgo any benefits this might have brought to us.” The seriousness of her pronouncement was confirmed by her careful inflection.
“You have seen how the stones are tied to our kusum and how kusum relies for support on the stones. There will be no more demonstrations. The howling stones will be removed and returned to their places of rest throughout the islands.”
“No, you can’t do that!” Seeing the look in the eyes of the two big persons and interpreting it correctly, an agitated Pulickel struggled to compose himself. “I mean, you need to think this through carefully. If the howling stones are disassembled, next time they may not fit together properly. Or the source of their energy could disappear.”