Infinity's Shore

Some race worthy to be their patrons … to help them … as humans never were helped … until the Kiqui can stand on their own.

She had already given up hope of adopting the Kiqui into Terra’s small family of humans, neo-dolphins, and neo-chimps, the initial idea, when Streaker quickly snatched aboard a small breeding population on Kithrup. Ripe presapient species were rare, and this one was a real find. But right now Earthclan could hardly protect itself, let alone take on new responsibilities.

Abhusha shifts again, transmuting into Poposh as one of Gillian’s feet swarms with prickliness, sensing a new presence in the room. Smug irony accompanies the intruder, like an overused fragrance. It is the Niss Machine’s spinning hologram, barging into her exclusive retreat with typical tactlessness.

Tom had thought it a good idea to bring along the Tymbrimi device, when this ill-fated expedition set forth from Earth. For Tom’s sake — because she misses him so — Gillian quashes her natural irritation with the smooth-voiced artificial being.

“The submarine, with our raiding party aboard, is now just hours from returning with the prisoners,” the Niss intones. “Shall we go over plans for interrogation, Dr. Baskin? Or will you leave that chore to a gaggle of alien children?”

The insolent machine seems piqued, ever since Gillian transferred to Alvin and Huck the job of interpreting. But things are going well so far. Anyway, Gillian already knows what questions to ask the human and Jophur captives.

Moreover, she has her own way to prepare. As old Jake used to say, “How can one foresee, without first remembering?”

She needs time alone, without the Niss, or Hannes Suessi, or a hundred nervous dolphins nagging at her as if she were their mother. Sometimes the pressure feels heavier than the dark abyss surrounding Streaker’s sheltering mountain of dead starships.

To answer verbally would yank her out of the trance, so Gillian instead calls up Kopou, an empathy glyph. Nothing fancy — she lacks the inbuilt talent of a Tymbrimi — just a crude suggestion that the Niss go find a corner of cybernetic space and spend the next hour in simulated self-replication, till she calls for it.

The entity sputters and objects. There are more words. But she lets them wash by like foam on a beach. Meanwhile Gillian continues the exercise, shifting to another compass point. One that seems quiet as death.

Abhusha resumes, now reaching toward a cadaver, standing in a far corner of her office like a pharaoh’s mummy, surrounded by preserving fields that still cling after three years and a million parsecs, keeping it as it was. As it had been ever since Tom wrested the ancient corpse from a huge derelict ship, adrift in the Shallow Cluster.

Tom always had a knack for acquiring expensive souvenirs. But this one took the cake.

Herbie.

An ironic name for a Progenitor … if that truly was its nature … perhaps two billion years old, and the cause of Streaker’s troubles.

Chief cause of war and turmoil across a dozen spiral arms.

We could have gotten rid of him on Oakka World, she knew. Handing Herbie over to the Library Institute was officially the right thing to do. The safe thing to do.

But sector-branch officials had been corrupted. Many of the librarians had cast off their oaths and fell to fighting among themselves — race by race, clan by clan — each seeking Streaker’s treasure for its own kind.

Fleeing once again became a duty.

No one Galactic faction can be allowed to own your secret.

So commanded Terragens Council, in the single longrange message Streaker had received. Gillian knew the words by heart.

To show any partiality might lead to disaster.

It could mean extinction for Earthclan.

Articles of Destiny tug at her limbs, reorienting her floating body. Facing upward, Gillian’s eyes open but fail to see the metal ceiling plates. Instead, they look to the past.

To the Shallow Cluster. A phalanx of shimmering globes, deceptively beautiful, like translucent moons, or floating bubbles in a dream.

Then the Morgran ambush … fiery explosions amid mighty battleships, as numerous as stars, all striving for a chance to snare a gnat.

To Kithrup, where the gnat fled, where so much was lost, including the better part of her soul.

Where are you, Tom? Do you still live, somewhere in space and time?

Then Oakka, that green betraying place, where the Institutes failed.

And the Fractal System, where Old Ones proved there is no age limit on perfidy.

Herbie seems amused by that thought.

“Old Ones? From my perspective, those inhabitants of a giant snowflake are mere infants, like yourself!”

Of course the voice comes from her imagination, putting words in a mouth that might have spoken when Earth’s ocean was innocent of any life but bacteria … when Sol’s system was half its present age.

Gillian cracks a smile and Abhusha transforms into Kuntatta—laughter amid a storm of sleeting vacuum rays.