Heaven's Reach

From the Journal of Gillian Baskin

I WISH TOM COULD HAVE BEEN HERE. HE WOULD love this.

The mystery.

The terrifying splendor.

Standing alone in my dim office, I look out through a narrow pane at the shimmering expanse of raw ylem surrounding Streaker — the basic stuff of our continuum, the elementary ingredient from which all the varied layers of hyperspace condensed, underpinning what we call the “vacuum.”

The sight is spine-tingling. Indescribably beautiful. And yet my thoughts keep racing. They cannot settle down to appreciate the view.

My heart’s sole wish is that Tom were sharing it with me right now. I can almost feel his arm around my waist, and the warm breath of his voice, urging me to look past all the gritty details, the worries, the persisting dangers and heartaches that plague us.

“No one said it would be safe or easy, going into space. Or, for that matter, rising from primal muck to face the heavens. We may be clever apes, my love — rash wolflings to the end. Yet, something in us hears a call.

“We must rush forth to see.”

Of course, he would be right to say all that. I’ve been privileged to witness so many marvels. And yet, I answer his ghost voice the way a busy mother might chide a husband so wrapped up in philosophy that he neglects life’s messy chores.

Oh, Tom. Even when surrounded by a million wonders, someone has to worry about the details.

Here aboard this frail dugout canoe, that someone is me.

Days pass, and Streaker is still immersed in this remarkable fleet. A vast armada of moving receptacles — I hesitate to call the spiky, planet-sized things “ships”—sweeps along, sometimes blazing through A-or B-Level hyperspace, or else turning to plunge down the throat of yet another transfer point … an immense crowd of jostling behemoths, racing along cosmic thread paths that correspond to no chart or reference in our archives.

Should I be surprised by that? How many times have I heard other sapient beings — from Soro and Pila to Synthians and Kanten — preach awe toward the majestic breadth and acumen of the Galactic Library, whose records encompass countless worlds and more than a billion years, ever since it was first established by the legendary Progenitors, so long ago.

We younger races feel the Library must be all-knowing. Only rarely does someone mention its great limitation.

The Library serves only the Civilization of Five Galaxies. The ancient culture of oxygen-breathing starfarers that we Earthlings joined three centuries ago.

To poor little Earthclan, that seemed more than enough! So complex and overpowering is that society — with its mysterious traditions, competing alliances, and revered Institutes — that one can hardly begin to contemplate what else lies beyond.

But more does lie beyond. At least seven other orders of life, thriving in parallel to our own. Orders that have wildly different needs and ambitions, as well as their own distinct kinds of wisdom.

Even the ever-curious Tymbrimi advised us to avoid contact with these ultimate strangers, explaining that it’s just too confusing, unprofitable, and dangerous to be worth the trouble.

To which I can only say — from recent experience — amen.

Of course, it’s common knowledge that the oldest oxygen-breathing races eventually die or “move on.” As with individuals, no species lasts forever. The cycle of Uplift, which stands at the core of Galactic society, is all about replenishment and renewal. Pass on the gift of sapiency, as it was passed to you.

Being new to this game, ignorant and desperately poor, with our own chimp and dolphin clients to care for, we humans focused on the opening moves, studying the rules so we might act as responsible patrons, and perhaps avoid the fate that usually befalls wolflings.

Beginnings are important.

Yet, each alliance and clan also speaks reverently of those who came before them. Those who, like venerated great-grandparents, finished their nurturing tasks, then turned their attention to other things, maturing to new heights and new horizons.

After we fled treachery at Oakka World, I decided not to trust the corrupted Institutes anymore and to seek advice instead from some of those learned, detached elders we had heard about. Beings who had abandoned starfaring for a more contemplative life in the Retired Order, cloistered near the fringes of a dim red star.

Events at the Fractal World soon taught us a lesson. Aloofness does not mean impartiality. The so-called Retired Order is, in fact, only a vestibule for oxy-races that can no longer bear the rigors of flat spacetime. Though they huddle like hermits in a gravity well, trying to perfect their racial souls, that doesn’t necessarily make them tolerant or wise. After our travails with the Old Ones, I was willing to head back into the Five Galaxies, and risk contact with oxy-civilization once more.

Only now we find ourselves, against all logic or reason, adopted willy-nilly into the Transcendent Order!

At least that is what the symbol on our prow seems to mean. Somebody, or something, planted a single wide chevron there — perhaps as a very bad joke.

An emblem signifying high spiritual attainments, plus readiness to abandon all temporal concerns.

In effect, it says — Hey! Look at us. We’re all set for godhood!

Sheesh, what a situation. I feel like a street kid with a stolen tuxedo and fake ID, who somehow managed to bluff her way into the Nobel Prize ceremony, and now finds herself sitting next to the podium, scheduled to give a speech!

All this street kid wants right now is a chance to slink away without being noticed, before the grown-ups catch on and really give us hell.

Getting away won’t be easy. A kind of momentum field rings this huge flotilla, carrying us along helplessly amid the horde of giant transports. Moreover, our navigation systems are haywire. We’ve no idea where we are, let alone where to go.

At one point, during an especially smooth transit through B Space, Akeakemai reported that the surrounding field seemed weak. I had him nudge Streaker to the edge of the swarm, hoping to slip out during one of the cyclical jumps back to normal space. But as we prepared to break free, Olelo thrashed her flukes with a whistle warning. We were being scanned by hostile beams, cast from an enemy ship!

Soon we spied the Jophur dreadnought, working its way through the throng of giant arks.

Once, the battlewagon had seemed omnipotent. Now it looked small compared to the surrounding behemoths. Stains marred its once shiny hull in places where the skin seemed to throb, like infected blisters. Still, the crew of egotistic sap-rings had great power and determination to pursue Streaker. They would pounce whenever we left the convoy’s safety.

We fell back amid the titans, biding our time.

Perhaps whatever ills afflict the Jophur will eventually overcome them.

The universe may produce another miracle.

Who knows?

Perhaps we will transcend.

The Niss Machine plumbed our stolen Library unit, researching data about the strange layer covering Streaker’s hull, both shielding her and weighing her down. It began as a thick coat of star soot, amassed in the atmosphere of a smoldering carbon sun. Later, some mysterious faction transformed the blanket — beneficently, or with some arcane goal in mind — creating a shimmering jacket that saved our lives.

“It is a form of armor,” the Niss explained. “Offering tremendous protection against directed energy weapons — as we learned dramatically at the Fractal World. Trawling for records, I found that the method was used extensively on warships until approximately two hundred million years ago, when a fatal flaw was discovered, rendering it obsolete.”

“What flaw?” I asked. Naturally, something so convenient must have an Achilles’ heel.

The Niss explained. “Much of the soot pouring out from Izmunuti consists of molecules you Earthlings call fullerenes — or buckeyballs — open mesh spheres and tubes consisting of sixty or more carbon atoms. These have industrial uses, especially if gathered into sheets or interlocking chains. That’s why robot harvesters visited Izmunuti, acquiring material in their futile effort to repair the Fractal World.”

“We already knew the stuff was strong,” I answered. “Since Suessi had such trouble removing it. But that’s a far cry from resisting Class-Eight disintegrator beams!”

The Niss explained that it took special reprocessing to convert that raw deposit into another form. One with just the right guest atoms held captive inside buckeyball enclosures. “Atoms of strange matter,” the disembodied voice said.

I confess I did not understand at first. It seems that certain elements can be made from ingredients other than the normal run of protons, electrons, and neutrons, utilizing unusual varieties of quarks. Such atoms must be kept caged, or they tend to vanish from normal space, hopping off to D Level, or another subcontinuum where they feel more at home.

It felt weird to picture Streaker sheathed in such stuff.

Then again, I guess it would be weirder to be dead.

I well remember expecting to be vaporized when those fierce beams struck. But our surprising new armor absorbed all that energy, shunting every erg to another reality plane, dissipating it harmlessly.

“Sounds like a neat trick,” I commented.

“Indeed, Dr. Baskin,” the Niss answered, with a sardonic edge. “But a few hundred aeons ago, someone discovered how to render this fine defense useless by reversing the flow. By turning this wondrous material into a huge antenna, absorbing energy from hyperspace — in effect cooking the crew and everything else inside.”

So, that was why no one in the Five Galaxies had been stupid or desperate enough to use this kind of armor for a long time. It worked at first, because the Jophur were taken by surprise. But they have their own Branch Library aboard the Polkjhy, every bit as good as ours. By now they must surely have caught on, and prepared for our next encounter.

Somehow, we’ve got to get rid of this stuff!

I assigned Hannes Suessi to puzzle over that problem. Meanwhile, my plate is full of other troubles.

For one thing, the glavers howl, night and day.

Before leaving aboard Kaa’s little boat, Alvin Hauph-Wayuo instructed us in the care and feeding of those devolved descendants of mighty starfarers. There wasn’t much to it. Feed them simulated grubs and clean their pen every few days. The glavers seemed stolid and easy to please. But no sooner did Kaa depart, taking Alvin and his friends to safety, than the filthy little creatures started moaning and carrying on.

I asked our only remaining Jijo native what it could mean, but the behavior mystifies Sara. So I can only guess it has something to do with the changing composition of the huge migration fleet surrounding us.

As we move across vast reaches of space and hyperspace, more globulelike vessels keep joining the throng, jostling side by side with jagged-edged arks of the former Retired Order. Zang … plus other varieties of hydrogen breathers … now make up roughly two-thirds of the armada, though their vessels are generally much smaller than the monumental oxy-craft.

Our glavers must be sensing the Zang presence somehow. It makes them agitated — though whether from fear or anticipation is hard to tell.

They aren’t the only ones feeling edgy. After leaving so many crewmates behind on Jijo, Streaker seems haunted and void … a bit like a wraith ship. Mystery surrounds us, and dangerous uncertainty lies ahead.

Yet, I can say without reservation that the dolphins left aboard this battered ship are performing their tasks admirably, with complete professionalism and dedication. After three years of winnowing, we are down to the last of Creideiki’s selected crew. Those who seem immune to reversion or mental intimidation. Tested in a crucible of relentless hardship, they are pearls of Uplift — treasures of their kind. Every one would get unlimited breeding privileges, if we made it home.

Which doubles the irony, of course.

Not one of the fins believes we’ll ever see Earth again.

As for Sara, she spends much of her time with the silent little chimp, Prity, using a small computer to draw hyperdimensional charts and complex spacetime matrices.

When I asked the Niss Machine to explain what they were doing, that sarcastic entity dismissed their project, calling it—“Superstitious nonsense!”

In other words, Sara still hopes to complete the work of her teacher, combining ancient Earthling mathematical physics with the computational models of Galactic science, trying to make sense out of the strange, frightening disruptions we have seen. Convulsions that appear to be unsettling a large fraction of the universe.

“I’m still missing some element or clue,” she told me this morning, expressing both frustration and the kind of heady exhilaration that comes with intense labor in a field you love.

“I wonder if it may have something to do with the Embrace of Tides.”

The Niss seems all too ready to dismiss Sara’s efforts, because they have no correlation in the Great Library. But I’ve been impressed with her gumption and brilliance, even if she does seem to be bucking long odds. All I can say is more power to her.

Always hovering near Sara — with a distant, longing expression in his eyes — poor Emerson watches her tentative models flow across the holo display. Sometimes he squints, as if trying to remember something that’s just on the tip of his tongue. Perhaps he yearns to help Sara. Or to warn of something. Or else simply to express his feelings toward her.

Their growing affection is lovely to behold — though I cannot entirely deflect pangs of jealousy. I was never able to return Emerson’s infatuation, before his accident. Yet he remains dear to me. It is only human to have mixed feelings as his attention turns elsewhere. The stark truth is that Sara now has the only virile male human within several megaparsecs. How could that not make me feel more lonely than ever?

Yes, Tom. I sense you are still out there somewhere, with Creideiki, prowling dark corners of the cosmos. I can trace a faint echo of your essence, no doubt making, and getting into, astonishing varieties of trouble. Stirring things up even more than they already were.

Assuming it isn’t wishful thinking — or some grand self-deception on my part — don’t you also feel my thoughts right now, reaching out to you?

Can’t you, or won’t you, follow them?

I feel so lost … wherever “here” is.

Tom, please come and take me home.

Ah, well. I’ll edit out the self-pity later. At least I have Herbie for company.

Good old Herb — the mummy standing in a corner of my office, looking back at me right now with vacant eyes. Humanoid but ineffably alien. Older than many stars. An enigma that Tom bought with more than one life. A treasure of incalculable value, whose image launched a thousand Galactic clans and mighty alliances into mortal panic, shattering their own laws, chasing poor Streaker across the many-layered cosmos, trying to seize our cargo before anyone else could wrap their hands-claws-feelers-jaws around it.

My orders sound clear enough. Deliver Herbie — and our other treasures — to the “proper authorities.”

Once, I thought that meant the Great Library, or the Migration Institute.

Sorely disappointed and betrayed by those “neutral” establishments, we then gambled on the Old Ones — and nearly lost everything.

Now?

Proper authorities.

I have no idea who in the universe that would be.

Till this moment, I’ve put off reporting my most disturbing news. But there’s no point in delaying any longer.

Yesterday, I had to put a dear friend under arrest.

Tsh’t, my second-in-command, so competent and reliable. The rock I relied on for so long.

It breaks my heart to dial up the brig monitor and see her circling round and round, swimming without harness in a sealed pool, locked behind a coded door plate.

But what else could I do?

There was no other choice, once I uncovered her secret double dealings.

How did this happen? How could I have been blind to the warning signs? Like when those two Danik prisoners “committed suicide” a couple of months ago. I should have investigated more closely. Put out feelers. But I left the inquest to her, so involved was I with other matters.

Finally, I could no longer ignore the evidence. Especially now that she helped another, far more dangerous prisoner to esc—

…

I had to interrupt making that last journal entry, several hours ago. (Not that I was enjoying the subject.)

Something intervened, yanking me away.

An important change in our state of affairs.

The Niss Machine broke in to say the momentum field was collapsing.

The entire huge armada was slowing at last, dropping from A Level down to B, and then C. Flickers into normal space were growing longer with each jump. Soon, long-range sensors showed we were decelerating toward a brittle blue pinpoint — apparently our final destination.

Olelo’s spectral scan revealed a white dwarf star, extremely compact, with a diameter less than a hundredth that of Earth’s home sun, consisting mainly of ash from fusion fires that entered their last stage of burning aeons ago. In fact, it is a very massive and old dwarf, whose lingering furnace glow comes from gravitational compression that may last another twenty billion years.

We began picking up nearby anomalies — spindly dark objects revolving quite close to that dense relic star. Massive structures, big enough to make out as black shadows that sparkled or flashed, occulting the radiant disk whenever they passed through line of sight. Which they did frequently. There were a lot of them, jammed so close that each circuit took less than a minute!

Soon we verified they were orbiting artifacts, jostling deep inside the sheer gravity well.

Of course the concept was familiar, reminding me of the Fractal World, crowding and shrouding its small red sun — a contemplative sanctuary for retirees. Indeed, this place bears a family resemblance to that vast habitat. Only here the distance scales are a hundred times smaller. Tremendous amounts of matter abide in that curled well, crammed into a tight funnel of condensed spacetime.

Whoever lives down there must not value elbow room very much.

They belong to an order of life that craves a different kind of dimensionality. A squeezing clasp that older races interpret as loving salvation.

Joining others in the Plotting Room, I watched this new variation on an old theme gradually loom before us.

“There are ssseveral billion white dwarves per galaxy,” commented Akeakemai. “If even a small fraction are inhabited like this, the p-population of transcendent beings would be staggering. And none would’ve been detectable from pre-Contact Earth!”

Sara held the hand of Emerson, whose eyes darted among the surrounding vessels of our convoy, perhaps fearing what they might do, now that we’d arrived. I sympathized. We’re all waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Deceleration continued through normal space, as the Niss Machine rematerialized to report. It had finished researching the symbol on our prow — the broad chevron representing our counterfeit membership in a higher order of sapiency.

“Let me conjecture,” I said, before the whirling hologram could explain. “The emblem stands for a union of the hydro-and oxy-life, coming together at last.”

One of my few remaining satisfactions comes from surprising the smug machine.

“How … did you know?” it asked.

I shrugged — a blithe gesture, covering the fact that I had guessed.

“Two line segments meeting at an angle of one hundred and four degrees. That can only represent the bonds of a water molecule. Hydrogen plus oxygen, combining to make the fundamental ingredient of all life chemistry. It’s not so mysterious.”

The spinning lines seemed to sway.

“Maybe for you,” the Niss replied. “Earthling preconceptions are not as fixed, perhaps. But to me this comes as a shock. After all the warnings, the endlessly repeated stories about how dangerous Zang are … how illogical, touchy, and inscrutable they can be …”

I shrugged.

“Young boys call little girls names, and vice versa. Often, they can’t stand each others’ company. At least, till they grow up enough to need one another.”

It was a facile analogy. And yet, the comparison made sense!

I used to wonder about the oxy-hydro antagonism. How, if they are so fundamentally different, so explosively hostile and incompatible, did the Zang and their brethren manage to keep peace with the Civilization of Five Galaxies for so long? Why hasn’t one side wiped out the other, instead of grudgingly cooperating in complex feats of migration and ecomanagement, sharing spiral arms and space lanes with a relative minimum of violence?

How, indeed? It seemed improbable.

That is, unless the whole thing was already worked out at a higher level! A level where both life orders at last matured enough to find common ground.

A consummation, with each side providing what the other lacks.

So.

Here we are, at a place of fusion and consolidation.

A union forged amid strong gravity currents, deep within the Embrace of Tides.

We seem to be invited.

That leaves just one question.

Why?