UH-OH, HE THOUGHT. THIS IS GONNA BE A rough one.
Harry nulled the guidance computer in order to protect its circuits during transition. Window covers snapped into place and he buckled himself in for the shift to another region of E Space. One that had been declared “off-limits” for a very long time.
Well, it serves me right for volunteering. Wer’Q’quinn calls this a “special assignment.” But the farther I go, the more it seems like a suicide mission.
At first nothing seemed to be happening. His official instruments were useless or untrustworthy, so Harry watched his own little makeshift verimeter. It consisted of an origami swan that shuddered while perched on a tiny needle made of pure metal that had been skimmed directly from the surface of a neutron star. Or so claimed the vendor who sold it to him in the Kazzkark bazaar. Nervously, he watched the scrap of folded paper twitch and stretch. His mind could only imagine what might be going on outside, with objectivity melting all around his little survey ship.
Harry’s jittery hands scratched the fur of his neck and chest. The swan quivered, as if trying to remember how to fly.…
There came a sudden dropping sensation. The contents of his stomach lurched. Several sharp bumps followed, then violent rocking motions, like a boat swept by a storm-tossed sea. He gripped the armrests. Straps dug fiercely into his lap and shoulders.
A peculiar tremor jolted the deck under his bare feet — the distinct hum of a reality anchor automatically deploying. An unnerving sound, since it only happened when normal safety measures were strained near their limits. Sometimes an anchor was the last thing preventing random causality winds from flipping your vessel against shoals of unreined probability … or turning your body into something it would rather not be.
Well … sometimes it worked.
If only there was a way to use TV cameras here, and see what’s going on.
Alas, for reasons still not fathomed by Galactic savants, living beings entering E Space could only make sense of events firsthand, and then at their own considerable risk.
Fortunately, just as Harry feared his last meal was about to join the dishes and cutlery on the floor, the jerky motions began damping away. In a matter of seconds things settled to a gentle swaying.
He glanced again at the improvised verimeter. The paper swan looked steady … though both wings seemed to have acquired a new set of complex folds that he did not remember being there before.
Harry cautiously unbuckled himself and stood up. Shuffling ahead with hands spread wide for balance, he went to the forward quadrant and cautiously lifted one of the louvers.
He gasped, jumping back in fright.
The scout platform hung suspended — apparently without support — high over a vast landscape!
Swallowing hard, he took a second look.
His point of view swung gently left, then right, like the perspective of a hanged man, taking in a vast, blurry domain of unfathomable distances and tremendous heights. Gigantic spires, sheer and symmetrical, could be dimly made out beyond an enveloping haze, rising past him from a flat plain far below.
Harry watched breathlessly until he felt sure the surface was drawing no closer. There was no sense of falling. Something seemed to be holding him at this altitude.
Time to find out what it was. He worked his way around the observation deck, and at the rearmost pane he saw what prevented a fatal plummet.
The station hung at one end of a narrow, glowing thread, extruded from a hull orifice he’d never seen before. But a familiar blue-striped pattern suggested it must in fact be the reality anchor, manifesting itself this time in a particularly handy way.
At the other end, high overhead, the anchor seemed to be hooked into the lip of a flat plane stretching away horizontally to the right. To his left, an even greater expanse of open sky spread beyond the half-plane. He had an impression of yet more linear boundaries, far higher still.
At least the station hadn’t changed much in physical appearance during passage. Metaphorical stilt legs still hung beneath the oblong globe, waving slowly in space. Something seemed to be wrong with vision, though. Harry rubbed his eyes but the problem wasn’t there. Somehow, all features beyond the windows appeared blurred. He couldn’t recognize the mountainous columns, for instance, though the grotesque things felt somehow familiar, filling his mind with musty impressions of childhood.
This place was unlike anything he’d experienced since personality profile machines on Tanith had selected him to be the first neo-chimpanzee trained as a Navigation Institute Observer. He knew better than to ask any of the onboard programs for help figuring it out.
“The region of E Space where you’ll be heading is seldom visited for good reasons,” Wer’Q’quinn had said before Harry set off this time. “Many of the traits that patrons instill in their clients, through Uplift — to help them become stable, rational, goal-oriented starfarers — turn into liabilities in a realm where all notions of predictability vanish.”
Recalling this, Harry shook his head.
“Well, I can’t say I wasn’t warned.”
He turned his head to the left and commanded—“Pilot mode.”
With a faint “pop” the familiar rotating P materialized nearby.
“At your service, Harvey.”
“That’s Harry,” he corrected for the umpteenth time, with a sigh. “I’m getting no blind spot agoraphobia, so you might as well open the shutters the rest of the way.”
The ship complied, and at once Harry winced at a juxtaposition of odd colors, even though they were muted by the strange haze.
“Thanks. Now please run a scan to see if this metaphorical space will allow us to fly.”
“Checking.”
There followed a long silence as Harry crossed his fingers. Flight made movement so much easier … especially when you were hanging by a rope over miles and miles of apparently empty space. He imagined he could hear the machine click away, nudging drive units imperceptibly to see which would work here, and which were useless or even dangerous. Finally, the rotating P spun to a conclusion.
“Some sort of flight appears to be possible, but I cannot pin it down. None of the allaphorical techniques in my file will do the trick. You will have to think of something original.”
Harry shrugged. That made up a large part of why he was here.
“Have you located our watch zone?”
“I sense a narrow tube of normal space not far away from us, in figurative units. Subjectively, you should observe a glowing Avenue ‘below’ … somewhere in the fourth quadrant.”
Harry went to the window indicated and looked down among the blurry, giant shapes.
“Ye-e-es, I think I see it.” He could barely discern a faint, shining line. “We better try to get closer.”
“Assuming you find a way.”
“Aye,” he agreed. “There’s the rub.”
Harry anxiously ran his fingers through his chin fur and scalp, wishing it hadn’t been so long since he had had a good grooming. Back on Horst, where he and his distracted parents were the only chimps on a whole planet, it had always seemed simply a matter of personal hygiene to keep the insidious dust out of your pelt. Only during school days on Earth did Harry learn what a sybaritic art form it could be, to have one or more others stroke, comb, brush, and tease your hair, tugging the roots just right, till the follicles almost screamed with pleasure. Looking back on those days, the warm physical contact of mutual grooming was the one thing he missed most about his own kind.
Too bad his partners also talked so much — from banter and gossip to inquiries about every personal foible — the sorts of things Harry could never be comfortable discussing. His awkward lack of openness struck Earth chims as aloof, even condescending, while Harry found them overly prying. Invariably, he remained an outsider, never achieving full entry or intimacy in the college grooming circles.
Harry knew he was procrastinating, but he felt uncertain where to start.
“So you are concerned about rumors of unusual detours in hyperspace and disturbed transfer points,” Wer’Q’quinn had replied, after Harry returned from his last mission. “These phenomena are well outside your jurisdiction. But now it seems that a confluence of factors makes it necessary to confide in you.”
“Let me guess,” Harry had asked. “The disturbances are so bad, they can be observed even in E Space.”
“Your hunch is astute,” Wer’Q’quinn agreed, snapping a GalTwo approval-punctuation with his beak. “I can see your recruitment was not a forlorn gamble, but rather evidence of my own deep insight, proving my value to the Institute and my worthiness of rapid promotion
“Your next patrol begins in one-point-three standard days.”
After allowing for briefings, that left just enough time for a bath and a good sleep in his barracks cubby. He had hoped for a longer rest. There was a foruni masseuse in the bazaar whose instinctive understanding of other species’ musculoskeletal systems made the agile creature expert at loosening the kinks in Harry’s spine.… Alas.
While nervously combing his chin, a frayed fingernail yanked some gnarly hair, making Harry twinge. He held the strand up for a close look.
It’s a good thing chimp hair doesn’t keep growing longer, like on the faces of human males who don’t depilate. Back on Horst, he had seen Probsher shamen whose patriarchal beards lengthened over the years till they stretched nearly all the way …
Harry blinked, realizing what his subconscious was driving at. He turned quickly and pressed against the rearmost window, peering at the blue cable — which dangled the station over an immeasurable drop. Stretching upward, it seemed almost to disappear, aiming toward one edge of that far-off horizontal plane.
“Pilot,” he said. “I want to see if we can play out the pseudolength of our reality anchor. Can we unreel any more?”
“It is already at maximum extension,” came the reply.
Harry cursed. It had seemed a good idea.…
“Wait a minute,” he muttered. “Don’t be too literal. Try it another way. All right, so maybe we can’t feed the anchor out any more. But tickle the damn thing anyway, will you? Maybe we can change its length some other way. By stretching it, maybe. Or causing it to grow.”
He knew he was being vague. Flexible thought sometimes meant working your way around an idea’s blurry outlines.
“I will try, and let you know,” the computer replied.
There followed a series of faint humming sounds, then a sudden jar as the platform dropped, weightless again just long enough to make fear erupt in his chest. It jerked short abruptly, sending Harry staggering against his command couch, feeling his stomach keep falling.
“H-h-h-” He tried again. “W-Well?”
“The rules of topology here seem to allow a wide range of flexible conformal mappings. Practically speaking, this means the cable can stretch, adjusting to any length, at almost any speed desired. Congratulations, Commander Harms. You seem to have found a way to maneuver in the subjective vertical.”
Harry ignored the suspicion of sarcasm, which might be imagined. At least this trap had proved easier to escape than the banana peel mesa.
Still, I’ll only feel safe after learning the metaphorical rules that apply here. There were reasons why patrol craft seldom entered this region. Many that tried never returned.
“Start lowering us then,” he commanded. “Gently.”
The flat half-plane overhead receded as the “ground” approached at a steady clip, reminding him of something — either the inexorable nature of destiny … or else an oncoming train.
While at Kazzkark, there had been time to enquire about the Siege of Earth.
He shouldn’t be interested. Having dedicated his life to the monastic Navigation Institute, Harry was supposed to forsake all prior loyalties of kinship or patron line. But few sophonts could ever transfer natural sympathies completely. Institute workers often discreetly sought news of “home.”
When Harry found himself with an extra hour between briefings, he ventured to the bazaar, where a Le’4-2vo gossip merchant accepted his generous fee and showed him to an osmium-lined room containing a masked Library tap.
It didn’t take long to find the topic — which had risen three more significance levels since the last time he checked — under the heading: “Major News — Quasi Current Events.” The latest word from Galaxy Two was dire.
Terran forces and their few allies had been forced to retreat from the Canaan colonies, which were now provisionally ruled by a Soro admiral.
The beautiful dolphin-settled world of Calafia had been invaded. A third of that water-covered globe was taken over by a mixed squadron led by one faction of the Brothers of the Night, while a different clique from that same race of fanatical warriors fought bitterly to “liberate” the rest.
Earth itself was enveloped and frail Terragens forces would have crumbled by now, but for help from the Tymbrimi and Thennanin … and the way enemies kept fragmenting and fighting among themselves. Even so, the end seemed near.
In a footnote, Harry saw that the tiny Earthling leasehold on Horst had been occupied … by the horrible Tandu.
Shivers ran down his spine. There was mention of an evacuation by the local staff, so perhaps Marko and Felicity had time to flee with the other anthropologists. But somehow Harry doubted it. His parents were obsessive. It would be just like them to stay, assuming that the invaders would never bother a pair of scientists doing nonmilitary work.
Even if all the technicians and Terraformers left, where would that leave the natives? Human tribes that had turned their “probationary” mental status into license to escape the rigors of modern society, experimenting instead with countless diverse social forms — many of them imitating one totem species or another. Some groups purposely modeled themselves on the matriarchal hive societies of bees, while others mimicked wolf packs, or the lion’s pride, or marriage patterns found only in strange, pre-Contact novels. Most of the little Probsher bands had little interest in technology or Galactopolitics.
They would be helpless meat to predatory warriors like the Tandu.
Fleeing the gossip merchant’s shelter, Harry had tried to wipe the news from his mind. Soon victorious eatees would be scrapping over the remains of fallen Earthclan. With neutral governance dissolving all over the Five Galaxies, it should be simple to coerce the Uplift Institute, getting humans, chims, and dolphins declared open for adoption. All three races would be parceled out like spoils of war, each to a new “patron,” for genetic-social guidance across the next hundred thousand years.
That is, if we don’t “accidentally” die off during the confusion. It had happened before, nearly every time a wolfling race appeared, claiming to have raised itself to sapience without help from any other. The amazing thing was that Earthclan had lasted this long.
Well, at least gorillas are safe. The Thennanin aren’t bad masters … assuming you must have a master.
I wonder who will get us chims, as part of the bargain?
Harry’s teeth bared in a grimace.
They may find us more trouble than we’re worth.
During his next briefing with Wer’Q’quinn, he had blurted a direct question. “All these hyperspatial anomalies and disturbances … are they happenin’ on account of the war over Earth?”
Instead of rebuking Harry for showing interest in his old clan, the Survey official waved a suckered tendril obligingly.
“Young colleague, it is important to remember that one of the great mentational dangers of sapient life is egotism — the tendency to see all events in the context of one’s own self or species. It is natural that you perceive the whole universe as revolving around the troubles of your former clan, little and insignificant as it is.
“Now I admit recent events may appear to support that supposition. The announcement of possible Progenitor relics — discovered in a secret locale by the infamous dolphin ship — precipitated open warfare among the most warlike oxygen-breathing clans. Trade patterns unravel as some alliances seize control over local transfer points. However, let me assure you that the energy fluxes released by the battles so far have been much too small to affect underlying cosmic links.”
“But the coincidence in timing!”
“You mistake cause for effect. The angst and fury that now swirl around wolflings had been building for centuries before humans contacted our culture. Ever since the Fututhoon Episode, a nervous peace has been maintained mostly by fear, while belligerent parties armed and prepared for the next phase. Alas for your unlucky homefolk, it is an inauspicious time for innocents to stumble onto the star lanes.”
Harry blinked for several seconds, then nodded. “You’re talkin’ about a Time of Changes.”
“Indeed. We in the Institutes have known for almost a million years that a new era of great danger and disruption was coming. The signs include increased volatility in relations between the oxygen and hydrogen life orders … and there were outbreaks of spasmodic exponential reproduction within the Machine Order — violations requiring savage measures of suppression. Even among clans of our own Civilization of Five Galaxies, we have seen a rise of religious fervor.”
Harry recalled the proselytes swarming the main avenues of Kazzkark, preaching diverse obscure interpretations of ancient prophecy.
“Bunch of superstitious nonsense,” he had muttered.
To his surprise Wer’Q’quinn agreed with an emphatic snapping of his beak.
“That which is loudest is not always representative,” his boss explained. “Most species and clans would rather live and let live, developing their own paths to wisdom and allowing destiny to take its own time arriving. Who cares whether the Progenitors are going to return in physical form, or as spiritual embodiments, or by remanifesting themselves into the genome of some innocent presapient race? While fanatical alliances clash bitterly over dogma, a majority of oxygen breathers just wish to keep making steady progress toward their own species-enlightenment. Eventually all answers will be found when each race joins its patrons and ancestors in retirement … and then transcendence … following the great ingathering Embrace of Tides.”
There it was again — Harry thought at the time. The basic assumption underlying nearly all Galactic religious faiths. That salvation was attainable by species, not individual organic beings.
Except for that Skiano missionary — the one with the parrot on its shoulder. It was pushing a different point of view. A real heresy!
“So, young colleague,” Wer’Q’quinn had finished. “Try to picture how disturbing it was — to fanatics and moderates alike — when your hapless dolphin cousins broadcast images that seemed to show Progenitor spacecraft floating through one of the flattest parts of Galactic spacetime! The implications of that one scene appeared to threaten a core belief-thread shared by nearly all oxygen breathers.…”
At that point Harry was riveted and attentive. Only then, as luck had it, an aide barged in to report that yet another t-point was unraveling in the Gorgol Sector of Galaxy Five. Suddenly Wer’Q’quinn had no time for abstract discussions with junior underlings. Amid the ensuing flurry of activity, Harry was sent to the Survey Department to finish his briefing. There was never a chance to ask the old snake about his intriguing remark.
What core belief? What about the Streaker’s discovery has everybody so upset?
At last the platform settled down to “earth.”
The surface was relatively soft. His vessel’s spindly legs took up the load with barely a jounce.
Well, so far so good. The ground didn’t swallow me up. A herd of parasitic memes hasn’t converged yet, trying to take over my mind, or to sell me products that haven’t been available for aeons.
Harry always hated when that happened.
He looked warily across a wide, flat expanse covered with limp, fluffy cylinders. They looked like droopy, slim-barreled cactuses, all jumbled loosely against each other as far as the eye could see. He took over manual controls and used a stilt-leg to prod the nearest clump. They squished underfoot easily, rebounding slowly after he backed off.
“Can we retract our reality anchor now?” he asked the pilot.
“No need. The anchor is restored to its accustomed niche.”
“Then what is that?” Harry asked, pointing to the blue cable, still rising vertically toward the sky.
“The ropelike metaphor has become a semipermanent structure. We can leave it in place, if you wish.”
Harry peered up the stretched cord, rubbing his chin.
“Well, it might offer a way out of here if we have to beat a hasty retreat. Just note this position and let’s get going.”
The scout station set out, striding across the plain of fuzzy tubes. Meanwhile, Harry kept moving from window to window, peering nervously, wondering how this region’s famed lethality would first manifest itself.
Rearing up on all sides, at least a dozen of the slender, immensely tall towers loomed in the background. Some of them seemed to have square cross sections while others were rectangular or oval. He even thought he perceived a rigid formality to their placement, as if each stood positioned on a grid, some fixed distance apart.
Harry soon realized the strange blurriness was not due to any obstructing “haze” but to a flaw in vision itself. Sight appeared to be a short-range sense in this patch of E Space.
Great. All I need is partial blindness in a place where reality literally can sneak up on you and bite.
It should be a short march to where he last saw the Avenue. Awkwardly at first, Harry accelerated his station across the plain of fluffy growths, all bent and twined like tangled grass. These “plants” didn’t wave in a breeze, like the saw-weed of Horst. Still, they reminded him somehow of that endless steppe where dusty skies flared each dawn like a diffuse torch, painful to the eyes. The sort of country his ancestors had sniffed at disdainfully before returning to the trees, ages ago on Earth. Sensibly, they left scorching skies and cutting grass to their idiot cousins — primates who lacked even the good sense to escape the noonday sun, and later went on to become humans.
According to the Great Library, Horst had been a pleasant world once, with a rich, diverse ecosystem. But millennia ago — before Earthlings developed their own starships and stumbled on Galactic culture — something terrible had happened to quite a few planets in Tanith Sector. By the ancient Code of the Progenitors, natural ecosystems were sacrosanct, but the Civilization of Five Galaxies suffered lapses now and then. In the Fututhoon Episode, hundreds of worlds were ravaged by shortsighted colonization, leaving them barren wildernesses.
Predictably, there followed a reactionary swing toward manic zealotry. Different factions cast blame, demanding a return to the true path of the Progenitors.
But which true path? Several billion years would age the best-kept records. Noise crept in over the aeons, until little remained from the near mythical race that started it all. Speculation substituted for fact, dogma for evidence. Moderates struggled to soothe hostility among fanatical alliances whose overreaction to the Fututhoon chaos now promised a different kind of catastrophe.
Into this delicate situation Earthlings appeared, at first offering both distraction and comic relief with their wolfling antics. Ignorant, lacking social graces, humans and their clients irked some great star clans just by existing. Moreover, having uplifted chimpanzees and dolphins before Contact, humans had to be classified as “patrons,” with the right to lease colonies, jumping ahead of many older species.
“Let them prove themselves first on catastrophe planets,” went the consensus. If Earthlings showed competence at reviving sick biospheres, they might win better worlds later. So humans and their clients labored on Atlast, Garth, and even poor Horst, earning grudging respect as planet managers.
But there were costs.
A desert world can change you, Harry thought, recalling Horst and feeling abruptly sad for some reason. He went down to the galley, fixed a meal, and brought it back to the observation deck, eating slowly as the endless expanse of twisted, fuzzy tubes rolled by, still pondering that eerie sense of familiarity.
His thoughts drifted back to Kazzkark, where a tall proselyte accosted him with strange heresies. The weird Skiano with a parrot on its shoulder, who spoke of Earth as a sacred place — whose suffering offered salvation to the universe.
“Don’t you see the parallels? Just as Jesus and Ali and Reverend Feng had to he martyred in order for human souls to he saved, so the sins of all oxygen-breathing life-forms can only be washed clean by sacrificing something precious, innocent, and unique. That would be your own homeworld, my dear chimpanzee brother!”
It seemed a dubious honor, and Harry had said so, while eyeing possible escape routes through the crowd. But the Skiano seemed relentless, pushing its vodor apparatus, so each meaningful flash of its expressive eyes sent a translation booming in Harry’s face.
“For too long sapient beings have been transfixed by the past — by the legend of the Progenitors! — a mythology that offers deliverance to species, but nothing for the individual! Each race measures its progress along the ladder of Uplift — from client to patron, and then through noble retirement into the tender Embrace of Tides. But along the way, how many trillions of lives are sacrificed? Each one unique and precious. Each the temporal manifestation of an immortal soul!”
Harry knew the creature’s eye twinkle was the natural manner of Skiano speech. But it lent eerie passion each time the vodor pealed a ringing phrase.
“Think about your homeworld, oh, noble chimpanzee brother! Humans are wolflings who reached sapience without Uplift. Isn’t that a form of virgin birth? Despite humble origins, did not Earthlings burst on the scene amid blazing excitement and controversy, seeing things that had remained unseen? Saying things that heretofore no one dared say?
“Do you Terrans suffer now for your uniqueness? For the message that streams from that lovely blue world, even as it faces imminent crucifixion? A message of hope for all living things?”
Even as a crowd of onlookers gathered, the Skiano’s arms had raised skyward.
“Fear not for your loved ones, oh, child of Earth.
“True, they face fire and ruin in days to come. But their sacrifice will bring a new dawn to all sapients — yea, even those of other life orders! The false idols that have been raised to honor mythical progenitors will be smashed. The Embrace of Tides will be exposed as a false lure. All hearts will turn at last to a true true faith, where obedience is owed.
“Toward numinous Heaven — abode of the one eternal and all-loving God.”
In response, the bright-feathered parrot flapped its wings and squawked “Amen!”
Many onlookers glowered upon hearing the Progenitors called “mythical.” Harry felt uncomfortable as the visible focus of the proselyte’s attention. If this kept up, there could be martyrs, all right! Only the august reputation of Skianos in general seemed to hold some of the crowd back.
In order to calm the situation, Harry wound up reluctantly accepting a mission from the Skiano, agreeing to be a message bearer … in the unlikely event that his next expedition brought him in contact with an angel of the Lord.
It was about an hour later — subjective ship time — that a blue M popped into place a little to his left.
“Monitor mode engaged, Captain Harms,” the slightly prissy voice announced. “I take pleasure to announce that the Avenue is coming into range. It can be observed through the forward quadrant.”
Harry stood up.
“Where? I don’t …”
Then he saw it, and exhaled a sigh. There, emerging out of the strange haziness, lay a shining ribbon of speckled light. The Avenue twisted across the foreground like a giant serpent, emerging from the murk on his left and vanishing in obscurity to his right. In a way, it reminded Harry of the undulating “sea monster” he had witnessed during his last survey trip, near the banana-peel mesa. Only that had been just a meme creature — little more than an extravagant idea, an embodied notion — while this was something else entirely.
The Avenue did not conform to the allaphorical rules of E Space.
Strictly speaking, it consisted of everything that was not E Space.
Because of that, cameras might perceive it. The tech people at NavInst had loaded his vessel with sensor packages to place at intervals along the shining tube, then retrieve later on his way back to base. Ideally, the data might help Wer’Q’quinn’s people foretell hyperspatial changes during the current crisis.
He pressed a button and felt a small tremor as the first package deployed.
Now, should he turn left, and start laying more instruments in that direction? Or right? There seemed no reason to choose one way over the other.
Well, he was still an officer of the law. Harry’s other job was to patrol E Space and watch for criminal activity.
“Computer, do you detect signs anybody’s been through this area lately?”
“I am scanning. Interlopers would have to travel alongside the Avenue in order to reach an intersection with Galaxy Four. Any large vessel piercing the tube, or even passing nearby, would leave ripple signs, whatever its allaphorical shape at the time.”
The platform nosed closer to the shining tube of brightness. Harry had glimpsed the Avenue many times while on patrol, but never this close. Here it appeared rather narrow, only about twice the height of the station itself. The tube shone with millions of tiny sparks, set amid a deep inner blackness.
The narrow, snakelike volume was filled with stars … and much more. Within that twisty cylinder lay the entire universe Harry knew — planets, suns, all five linked galaxies.
It was a topological oddity that might have looked, to its long-extinct first discoverers, like a wonderful way to get around relativity’s laws. All one needed was an intersection near the planetary system one was in, and another near one’s destination. The technique of entering and leaving E Space could be found in any Galactic Library branch.
But E Space was a world of unpredictability, metapsychological weirdness, and even representational absurdities. Keeping the Avenue in view until you came to some point near your destination could entail a long journey, or a very short one. Distances and relationships kept changing.
Assuming a traveler found a safe exit point, and handled transition well, he might emerge where he wanted to go. That is, if it turned out he ever left home in the first place! One reason most sophonts hated E Space was the screwy way causality worked there. You could cancel yourself out, if you weren’t careful. Observers like Harry found it irksome to return from a mission, only to learn they no longer existed, and never really had at all.
Harry didn’t much approve of E Space — an attitude NavInst surely measured in his profile. Yet, they must have had reasons to train him for this duty.
The platform began zigging and zagging alongside the Avenue, occasionally stopping to bend lower on its stilts, bringing instruments to bear like a dog sniffing at a spoor. Nursing patience, Harry watched strange nebulae drift past, within the nearby cylindrical continuum.
A bright yellow star appeared close to the nearby tube edge, against a black, star-flecked background. It looked almost close enough to touch as his vessel moved slowly past. I guess there’s a finite chance that’s Sol, with Earth floating nearby, a faint speck in the cosmos. The odds are only about a billion to one against.
At last, the station stopped. The slanted letter seemed to spin faster.
“I note the near passage of three separate ship wakes. The first came this way perhaps a year ago, and the second not long after, following its trail.”
“A pursuit?” This caught his interest. For the spoor to have lasted so long testified how little traveled this region was … and perhaps how desperate the travelers were, to pass this way.
“What about the third vessel?”
“That one is more recent. A matter of just a few subjective-duration days. And there is something else.”
Harry nervously grabbed his thumbs. “Yes?”
“From the wake, it seems this latter vessel belongs to the Machine Order of Life.”
Harry frowned.
“A machine? In E Space? But how could it navigate? Or even see where it …” He shook his head. “Which way did it go?”
“To the figurative left … the way we are now facing.”
Harry paced on the floor. His orders from Wer’Q’quinn were clear. He must lay the cameras where they might peer from E Space back into more normal continua, offering NavInst techs a fresh perspective on the flux of forces perturbing the Five Galaxies. And yet, he was also sworn to check out suspicious activities.…
“Your orders, Captain Harms?”
“Follow them!” he blurted before the decision was clear in his own mind.
“Sorry. I am not programmed …”
Harry cursed. “Engage pilot mode!”
Almost before the cursive P popped into place, he pointed.
“That way. Quickly! If we hurry we still might catch them!”
The platform jerked, swinging to the right.
“Aye aye, Hoover. Off we go. Tallyho!”
Harry didn’t even grimace this time. The program was irritating, but never at the expense of function. Even Tymbrimi usually knew where to limit a joke, thank Ifni. The station jogged onward in a quick eight-legged lope across the savannah of fuzzy, cactuslike growths.
To his left the Avenue swept by, a glittering tube containing everything that was real.