Chapter 35

Time was a vast bubble expanding in space, and Ruskin was on its surface, peering in …

… and what he saw were other faces, one of them blindingly bright, peering into expanding bubbles of time, peering inward athim.

Reflections in a hall of mirrors:

The gateway was forming even as his mind slipped through this distorted corridor of time. Matter at the heart of the star had been crushed out of existence, the singularity snatching at the hyperstring and holding it secure. The K-space field had multiplied in strength; and the entrance to the gateway was being sculpted out of twisted space-time by the forces he had put into motion a lifetime ago.

In the very shape of that opening were being determined the secrets that could guide future travelers through the treacherous waters of transit — or send them hurtling to destruction. And nothing he could do now could influence that shape or map its secrets.

Ganz, succumbing to madness, had destroyed the very instruments of control. But did that truly matter? Zeta station itself was being twisted into a realm of half existence, and its occupants with it; and with or without instruments, what could any man do now?

A parade of failed dreams:

The Querayn, he perceived, had wanted the project diverted to a study of the star consciousness itself. That was now impossible, though a moment had come and gone when he had nearly yielded. The Tandeskoes and Auricles had each wanted the gateway for themselves; and that, too, now seemed unlikely.

And what didhe want? He knew now: that no one should own the gateway or its secrets. A star was dying for this gateway, and he would have no one rob it of the meaning of its death. He would have the gateway for all or for none.

An extraordinary world was opening around him now as the space-time that held him twisted like a Möbius strip, as the control station in which he had stood and fought was wrenched out of its universe.

Ali’Maksam’s soul had become entwined with his own, and he saw now how the Logothian suffered, knowing that he had sinned against his friend, doing what he thought had to be done — though it was a betrayal, knowing no other way; and a terrakell winked at him as it opened a small window into his own past, showing him how indeed he’d been unwilling to listen to reason, or to Max’s intuitions, back when it might have mattered.

— Willard, I am sorry —

Max, I understand. I forgive.

Their two voices drifted apart and then together again, like spirit elementals. But in this reality of souls entwining, Ali’Maksam’s was not the only one wrapped around and mingled with his …

There was also ahrisi assassin:

It was a stricken Tandesko soul that touched his. The rigidity ofhrisi training had been overcome by madness; hir had struck a blow in blind destructiveness, obliterating the mapping console that could have brought some order out of this chaos. A madness of death had overcome hir, in the place of the dignity that hir would have wished at the end.

Hir has failed in disgrace. There can be no excusing, no forgiving, ever …

And Ruskin’s soul eyed hir soul, willing itself to speak:I  … and found itself unable to complete the thought. Could he forgive an assassin who had tried to kill him, who had savagely killed so many others?

Could he?

The station was contorting around him; and though he felt Dax still alive within him, it was clear that they would die together.(I’ll miss you, Dax.)

((I would remain a part of you, Willard.))

But still Ali’Maksam’s words were ringing in his ears, ringing as the sun exploded:

You must turn to the sun …

And he turned and reached out into the sunset glow, and called to the sun to recognize him who had killed it, him who regretted but could not undo what was done. Him who cried out to his own victim:

— Bright —

— if it is you —

— if you can help —

— if you will be a part —

And the voice that called back was clearer now but it was like no voice, no soul he had ever known before.

There was great confusion in the light and shadow now. At Bright’s heart was a thing dark and dreadful, a thing that grabbed, that swallowed brightness itself. Was this the thing that had called, that had spoken:Killing you, I am killing you

Bright wasn’t sure; Bright was dizzy; but Bright called back:

Are you the one?

are you the newlife?

in the belly of my flame?

And the darkness made no answer, but another called out, sang in desperation and sorrow:Help me help me if you are a part

And Bright knew then that if the darkness was death to oldlife, still a newlife was growing, springing fresh out of the convulsions and ashes:

I would

be a part

yes

to cherish the newlife

Yes

And so mingled the souls in the belly of Bright’s flame; and Bright began to see the newlife emerging there, began to understand. All of the souls were being drawn into one, a great whirlpool of life and consciousness.

And Bright, more than any other, had the power to shape and form the newlife

as everything changed

<<< You see it now >>>

<<<And feel it >>>

<<<Growing >>>

<<<Bright >>>

<<<You >>>

<<<We >>>

<<<I >>>

Tamika

I love you

Good-bye

There was a gathering of light and fire, and the fury of wind and sea: a tornado, a typhoon, a whirlpool into the abyss of infinity, where space became unspace.

And Bright, recognizing newlife forming out of the old, yielded up what it could no longer hold to itself. And Bright became one with its killers.

And Bright shaped the vortex and together they slipped into its streams forever.…

The neutrino flux peaked seven-tenths of a second ahead of the model-predictions. Alarm flashed across Thalia’s face at the news.

Tamika wasn’t sure why this should worry anyone, and she hardly cared; all she wanted to know was whether anyone on that deep-star station was going to emerge alive.

Rus’lem!

In her heart was a bottomless emptiness, a conviction that she already knew the answer. Hot tears welled; somehow she kept them at bay.

On the consoles, data poured in:

“String capture confirmed; load-doubling at mark minus oh-point-eight-seven.”

“Field strength just passed critical-two. We should be feeling the effects soon.

“Thalia, we’re slipping farther ahead of mark. Is Ruskin controlling this thing or not?”

The director’s answer was a whisper: “I don’t know.”

Someone else’s voice:“We’ve gone twenty-gee off the plot. We could be losing it. If we’re going to save this thing, we’d better do it now!”

“There’s nothing we can d —”

Thalia’s words were cut off by a thunderclap. The floor jumped, jumped again — and Thalia crashed into Tamika as they both went down. The quake reverberated through the floor for what seemed an eternity — Tamika struggling to get out from under Thalia, clutching in terror at the ungrippable base of a console, the metal floor vibrating, hammering at her body. Suddenly, as abruptly as it had struck, the quake died away.

Thalia struggled to her feet, cursing. “Everyone okay?” she shouted. She extended a hand, helped Tamika to her feet. Even before many of the others had gotten back into their seats, she called, “Give me a reading on Zeta —” and froze. Her face went rigid. A light was flashing red on her console.

Tamika felt Thalia’s alarm, felt terror welling up in her own heart. “What is it?” she whispered.

The astrophysicist’s voice was inhumanly flat, the voice of a nonliving thing: “Zeta is gone.”

“Gone?”

The deadness did not leave Thalia’s voice. “That was the primary shock wave. We had no way of knowing how it would propagate across n-space. Now we have … now we know. The stress was —” Her voice died. She drew a breath and spoke to the console. “Did we cut cleanly from Zeta?”

For several seconds, Tamika heard only the thunder of blood in her ears, but finally Thalia’s voice filtered through saying, “… structural damage?” and she saw Thalia nodding bleakly.

The grief bubbled up so fast Tamika was hardly even aware that she was crying, though the tears streamed hot and wet.

At the front of the room, half the viewscreen had gone blank, remote links lost. On the right-hand side, a deep image of the inner sun remained. Through the blur in her eyes, she saw it blossom, like a time-lapse image of a flower opening, into dazzling full brilliance, consuming itself in fire as the shock wave propagated outward.

Someone cheered weakly, and Tamika wanted to kill him.

And inside her, a voice was saying, over and over:

((Don’t lose hope, Tamika. Don’t ever lose hope …))

And she wanted to kill Dax, as well.

There was a general commotion toward the front of the control room, which at first she ignored, because a sudden wooziness was coming over her, and she felt that there was a choir of voices in her head. Voices strange and familiar. And through them she heard shouts, but she couldn’t understand what anyone was saying.

((The mapping console has gone blank. The telemetry links are out. Willard thought the only way to map it was from the inside, and maybe he was right. Maybe there was no way to map it.))

Then everything they’d come here for was lost.

((Something strange happening, Tamika. I feel funny, like when we went through K-space.))

And that was what the strange voices were: Thalia’s thoughts were in her head, a faint babble of pain. So were many others. But it was more than that: there were louder voices, and they were growing in volume like a symphony in crescendo, but it was a symphony of light more than of sound; and perhaps she was dreaming,surely she was dreaming, but she thought she heard Ali’Maksam’s voice, and Willard’s, and something else altogether strange and wondrous …

Worlds turning inside out

Light stretching like taffy, fire streaming and pouring in a cosmic fountain. And in the heart of blazing brightness, a point of darkness infinitely deep; and in the center of that darkness there was singing, there was life

and voices

Ali’Maksam spoke of living suns, of sentience so old and vast that for them to touch a star’s mind was a wonder out of Heaven; and he spoke of sadness and of hope

overlaid with voices

Dax, filled with astonishment and wonder at the layers within layers, that Willard had become an agent of change to the star, as Dax and the others had been to Willard

rippling with fear and hope

Forgiveness asked and given; and the bitterness of failure turning, changing to something new

and reverberating

Willard speaking of self-knowledge, and of living and dying, his voice echoing like timpani

Tamika

I love you

Good-bye

And exploding all around them was a brightness beyond comprehension, a life with thought and memory beyond imagining, not dying now but changing, and drawing them in with it …

It was a long time before the voices and the images faded; and then someone yelled something about the formative K-space field being gone now; and someone else shouted in a voice so choked with emotion it was impossible to say whether it was despair or joy, that it looked as though a stable formation had occurred, a gateway had been created; and a lot of people were weeping, and one crazy loon was singing.

And tears were streaming down Tamika’s face, but something within her had turned inside out, and she was no longer grieving; but her arms were comforting someone else who was shaking with grief, and somehow she wasn’t surprised to discover that it was Thalia.

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Starstream #01 - From a Changeling Star
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