She closed her eyes, recalling how the telescope had revealed each branchlet was its own separate world. Some greenhouses—larger than her home state of Minnesota—sheltered riotous jungles. Others shone with city lights, or floating palaces adrift on rippled seas, or plains of sparkling sand. It would take many millions of Earths, unrolled flat, to cover so much surface, and that would not begin to express the diversity. She might have spent years magnifying one habitat after another and still routinely found something distinct or new.
It was the most majestic and beautiful place Gillian had ever seen.
Now it was unraveling before her eyes.
That haze, she realized, aghast. It isn’t just structural debris and subliming gas. It’s people. Their furniture and pets and clothes and houseplants and family albums … Or whatever comprised the equivalent for Old Ones. What human could guess the wishes, interests, and obsessions that became important to species who long ago had seen everything there was to see in the Five Galaxies, and had done everything there was to do?
However abstruse or obscure those hopes, they were dissolving fast. Just during Streaker’s brief passage through the gaping wound, more sapient beings must have died than the whole population of Earth.
Her mind quailed from that thought. To personalize the tragedy invited madness.
“Is anyone trying to stop this?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
The Niss Machine paused before answering.
“Some strive hard. Behold their efforts.”
The monitor view shifted forward as Streaker finally arrived at the habitat’s vast interior space.
Just like the last time, Gillian abruptly felt as if she had entered a vast domed chamber of bright corrugated stalactites and measureless shadows. Although the farthest portions of the vault were several hundred million kilometers away, she could nevertheless make out fine details. The imaging system monitored her eyes to track the cone of her attention, highlighting and amplifying whatever she chose to regard.
Directly ahead—like a glowing lamp in the center of a basilica—a dwarf star cast its warming glow. The visible disk was dimmer and redder than the spendthrift kind of sun where nursery worlds like Terra spun and flourished. By stripping the outer layers for construction material, the makers of this place had created a perfect hearth fire, whose fuel ought to last a hundred billion years. To stare straight at the disk caused no physical pain. But its plasma skin, placid during their first visit, now seemed covered by livid sores. Dazzling pinpoints flared as planet-sized gobs of debris tumbled to the roiling surface.
Yet, Gillian soon realized such collisions were exceptional. Most of the jagged chunks were being intercepted and burned by narrow beams of searing blue energy, long before they reached the solar photosphere.
“Of course even when they succeed in pulverizing rubble, the mass still settles downward as gas, eventually rejoining the sun from which it was stripped so long ago. The star’s thermonuclear and atmospheric resonances will be adversely affected. Still, it reduces the number of large ablative impacts, and thus many actinic flares.”
“So the maintenance system functions,” Gillian commented, with rising hope.
“Yes, but it is touch and go. Worse yet, parts of the system are being abused.”
The monitor went blurry as it sped to focus on a point along a far quadrant of the criswell sphere, where one of the blue scalpel-rays was busy with less altruistic work, carving a brutal path across the jagged landscape, severing huge fractal branchlets, shattering windows and raising mighty gouts of steam.
Gillian cried an oath and stepped back. “My God. It’s genocide!”
“We have learned a sad lesson during this expedition,” the Niss Machine conceded. “One that should very much interest my Tymbrimi makers, if we ever get a chance to report it.
“When an oxygen-breathing race retires from Galactic affairs to seek repose in one of these vast shells, it does not always leave behind the prejudices and loyalties of youth. While many do seek enlightenment, or insights needed for transcendence, others stay susceptible to temptation, or remain steadfast to alliances of old.”
In other words, Gillian had been naive to expect detachment and impartiality from the species living here. Some were patrons—or great-grandpatrons—of Earth’s persecutors.
She watched in horror as some faction misused a defensive weapon—designed to protect the whole colony—against a stronghold of its opponents.
“Ifni. What’s to keep them from doing that to us!”
“Dr. Baskin, I haven’t any idea,” the spinning hologram confided. “Perhaps the locals are too busy in their struggles to notice our arrival.
“Or else, it could be because of the company we keep.”
A screen showed the great Zang ship—floating just ninety kilometers away, quivering as the grim, sooty wind brushed its semiliquid flanks. Clouds of smaller objects fluttered nearby. Some were machine entities. Others qualified as living portions of the massive vessel, detached to do errands outside, then quietly reabsorb when their tasks were done.
“I’ve confirmed my earlier conjecture. The hydrogen beings are coordinating efforts by the harvester robots and other machine beings to help shore up and stabilize the Fractal World.”
Gillian nodded. “That’s why they were at Izmunuti. To fetch construction material. It’s an easy source of carbon just one t-point jump away.”
“Under normal conditions, yes. Until unforeseen storms erupted, precipitated by that psi wave from Jijo. The harvesters we saw there were apparently just a small fraction of those involved in this massive effort.”
“It’s a repair contract, then. A commercial deal.”
“I assume so. Since Galaxy Four has been evacuated by oxygen-breathing starfarers, it would be logical for Old Ones to seek help from the nearest available source. Shall I confirm these suppositions by tapping into the Fractal World’s data nexus?”
“Do no such thing! I don’t want to draw attention. If no one has noticed us, let’s leave it that way.”
“May I point out that some groups within the retired order weren’t inimical? Without their assistance we could never have eluded capture the first time. Perhaps those groups would help again if we make contact.”
Gillian shook her head firmly.
“I’m still worried the Jophur may show up any minute, hot on our heels. Let’s just settle our business with the Zang and get away. Have you heard anything from them?”
Sara Koolhan thought the hydrogen breathers had some ancient claim on the glaver race … a debt to be paid now that glavers had regained presapient innocence. But even so, how would the transaction take place? Was it proper or moral for the Streaker crew to hand over another oxy-species without formal sanction by appropriate institutes? Would the creatures be safe aboard a craft built to support a completely different chemistry of life?
More to the point, would the Zang let Streaker go afterward? According to sketchy Library accounts, hydros did have concepts of honor and obligation, but their logic was skewed. They might reward the Earthlings … or blast them to get rid of a residual nuisance.
At least they didn’t drag us here for prosecution, as I feared. They haven’t handed us over to the Old Ones. Not yet.
A small voice of conscience chided Gillian. Here she was, worried about how to skulk away in her tiny starship, saving less than a hundred lives, while around them nation-sized populations were dying each moment that she breathed.
One more reason not to let the Niss contact the Fractal World’s comm net. She needed to keep the calamity as abstract as possible. A gaudy special-effects show. A vast collision of impersonal forces. Right now, any confirmation of the real death toll might push her to despair.
It’s not our fault.
We came here seeking help within the law. Within our rights.
True, Streaker brought curses from the Shallow Cluster. But how could we know madness would strike the eminent and wise?
 
; This isn’t our fault!
Tsh’t
IT WOULD BE THE PERFECT TIME, WHILE everyone else was preoccupied with the spectacle outside. Streaker seemed likely to be motionless for a while, so Tsh’t didn’t have to be at Dr. Baskin’s beck and call, pretending to share command when everyone knew who gave the orders anyway.
Many crew members ignored the chance to go off duty when their shifts ended, finding excuses to hang around. They stared, wide-eyed, at the shattered glory of the Fractal World, commenting to each other with rapid clicks, exchanging bets whether the frantic efforts by myriad hireling robots would save the giant wounded habitat. After a couple of hours, several gawkers had to be ordered below to rest. But when her own watch period finished, Tsh’t quickly took advantage of the excuse to leave.
This might be her only chance to go below and check out her suspicions;
I know Gillian snuck somebody or something aboard, she thought. Back in that little Jijoan village, where hoons happily sail crude boats, even though they can’t swim a stroke. It was a stormy night, and I was busy discussing technical matters with that urrish blacksmith. But I know Akeakemai. He’s a regular teacher’s pet, and would do anything Gillian asked.
He’s lying or hiding something.
Something he smuggled in the back way when I wasn’t looking.
It worried Tsh’t to be left in the dark like this. She was supposed to be Gillian’s close confidant and co-commander. The show of distrust disturbed her. Especially since she deserved it.
I’ve seen no sign that anyone has connected me to the dead humans.
Nevertheless, Tsh’t worried as she sent her walker stomping down one of Streaker’s main corridors. The hallway felt deserted, emptied by attrition after three years on the run.
Of course it’s always possible that Gillian picked up something with that psi talent of hers. She may suspect the demise of Kunn and Jass was no case of double suicide.
Tsh’t fought to suppress the disturbing image of those two human corpses. She quelled a nervous tremor that coursed her dorsal nerves, making the moist skin shiver and her flukes thrash on the rear portion of the walker’s soft suspension hammock.
How badly she yearned for a real swim! But nearly all the water had been flushed out to lighten Streaker’s frantic breakout from Jijo. Dragging a heavy coat of carbon soot from smoldering Izmunuti, the Earth vessel needed every bit of agility, so nearly all the residence and recreation areas were now bone-dry. Soon, long queues would form at sick bay, as neo-dolphins reported skin sores and bruised ribs. After too much time spent lying prone atop jarring machines, even the softest field-effect cushion made you feel like you had been beached and stranded on a shore covered with sharp pebbles.
Now Dr. Makanee is gone, along with three nurses—left behind to take care of the Jijo colonists—and I’m the one who has to figure out how to stretch our remaining med staff and cover the inevitable complaints. Somehow, despite everything, team efficiency and morale have got to be kept up. That’s what the high and mighty Dr. Baskin leaves to me—all the grungy details of running a ship and crew—while she ponders vast issues of policy and destiny, leading us hither and yon across the Five Galaxies, trying this and then trying that, fleeing from one disaster to the next.
The bitterness was not unmixed with affection. Tsh’t genuinely loved Gillian, whose skill at getting Streaker out of jams had proved nearly as impressive as her affinity for getting into them. Nor did Tsh’t resent human beings as patrons. Without their awkward, well-meaning efforts at genetic engineering, the Tursiops race might never have taken the final step from bright, innocent animals to promising starfarers … and Tsh’t would not have seen the Starbow, or Hercules Arch—or the Shallow Cluster.
Terragens culture granted neo-fins more rights and respect than a new client race normally received in the Civilization of Five Galaxies. Most clients spent a hundred millennia in servitude to their patrons. Humans were doing about as well as they could, under the circumstances.
But there are limits to what you can expect from wolflings, she thought, entering a double airlock to pass into Streaker’s Dry Wheel.
The latest pathetic episode proved this point. Just hours after arriving inside the Fractal World, Gillian Baskin had decided to see whether they were prisoners or guests. Waiting till the Zang seemed preoccupied—supervising a swarm of machine entities doing repair work—she had ordered Kaa to gently nudge Streaker’s engines, easing the ship through the opening toward a beckoning glitter of starlight.
The Zang dropped what it was doing, scattering robot attendants, racing with astonishing agility to cut off the Earthlings’ escape.
Still covered with several meters of star soot, Streaker could not outrun the giant globule. Gillian acquiesced, turning the ship back into the immense habitat. She then ordered a general stand-down. Except for watch crew, everyone was told to get some rest. The Zang vessel returned to work, without evident rancor. And yet Tsh’t felt a hard-won lesson was reinforced.
Humans were sapient for only a few thousand years longer than us dolphins—a mere eyeblink in the story of life in the universe. It’s not their fault they are ignorant and clumsy.
That only means they need help. Even if they are too obstinate to ask for it.
An elevator ride took her to the rim of the wide centrifugal wheel, where rooms lined a long hallway that seemed to curve up and away in both directions. The great hoop straddled Streaker halfway along its length and could be spun up to provide weight on those occasions when the crew needed to turn off floor gravity for some reason—if they were doing sensor scans in deep space, for instance … or evading fleets of pursuers by hiding in an asteroid belt. There was a drawback, though. Whenever they had to land on a planet’s surface—as happened at Kithrup, Oakka, and Jijo—most of the Dry Wheel’s rooms were out of reach.
To anyone except a biped who’s a skilled climber, that is.
Tsh’t strode past the sealed door to Dr. Baskin’s office, where layers of security devices guarded Creideiki’s treasure—the relics responsible for so much grief. This part of the Dry Wheel was always “bottom,” whenever Streaker lay grounded. Dolphins routinely used nearby suites and workshops, but those on the opposite side were often inaccessible. In fact, the crew seldom thought of them at all.
That’s where I’d hide something, if I were Gillian.
The Wheel was spinning right now, so Tsh’t had no trouble striding around its wide circumference, passing laboratories once used by scientists like Ignacio Metz, Dennie Sudman, and the neo-chimpanzee geologist Charles Dart. She kept lifting her jaw to listen, as if nervously expecting to hear ghost footsteps of the bright young Calafian midshipman Toshio Iwashika … or the strong, confident gait of Gillian’s lost Tom Orley.
But they were gone. All of them, along with Creideiki and Hikahi. Dead, or else abandoned on poisonous Kithrup—which was almost the same as being dead.
They were the best of us, taken away before our trials really began. How much would have been different if the captain and the others were still aboard? Instead command fell to Gillian and me … a physician-healer and the ship’s most junior lieutenant … who never imagined we’d have to carry such a burden, year after dreary year.
Fatigue wore at Tsh’t. During sleep shifts she would cast her clicking sonar song toward the Whale Dream, praying for someone to come take away the hardship, the responsibility.
We Streakers are in way over our heads. All of Earthclan is! Gillian was right about one thing. We need help and advice. But we won’t get it from eatees. Not from the Great Institutes, or the Old Ones.
She’s forgotten one of life’s great truths, known by almost every human and dolphin from childhood. When you’re in real bad trouble, the place to turn is your own family.
Using her neural tap, Tsh’t called up the ship’s maintenance system and ordered a trace of atmospheric pollutants, concentrating room by room on the section of the Dry Wheel directly opposite from Dr. Baski
n’s office—the sector routinely left on “top” when Streaker lay on a planet’s surface. The part that dolphins were likely to ignore, even when it was accessible.
Aha! Just as I thought. An elevated profile of carbon dioxide, plus several ketones, a touch of methane, and a strange pair of alcohols. Sure signs of respiration by an oxygen-breathing life-form … though clearly not an Earthling.
And it’s all centered … here.
She made her walker halt before a door labeled HAZARDOUS ORGANIC MATERIALS—and chuckled at Gillian’s little joke.
A slight nudge of volition caused a work-arm to swing forward from her tool harness, aiming a slim drill at the door, near the jamb, where a hole might not be noticed right away. A fine whirring was the only sound. Her cutter penetrated, vaporized, and vac-disposed debris as it moved ahead.
Tsh’t mused on how she was now compounding her own felony. Her growing record of treason. It all started the last time Streaker visited the Fractal World, when everyone grew aware that the Old Ones were going to disappoint them. As crew morale sank, Tsh’t decided it was time to act on her own. To send a message, contacting the one source whose help could be relied on.
Fortunately, the Fractal World had regular commercial mail taps. Even while Gillian parried increasing threats and imprecations from various factions of the Retired Order, Tsh’t found it fairly simple to dispatch a secret message packet, programmed to go bouncing across the Five Galaxies, paranoically covering its own tracks and randomly rerouting before heading for its final destination—a time-drop capsule whose coordinates she had memorized as a youth, long ago. One tuned to respond to just one species in the universe.
By then, Gillian had already decided to flee the cris-well structure and try the “sooner option”—absconding through forbidden Galaxy Four, sneaking past a blaring giant star, then taking shelter on a proscribed world called Jijo.