Infinity's Shore

From a bag at his feet, he pulls out the midget dulcimer Ariana Foo had given him back at the Biblos Archive, that ornate hall of endless corridors stacked high with paper books. Not bothering with the hammers, he lays the instrument on his lap and plucks a few strings. Twanging notes jar the others from their anxious mutterings to look his way.

Though Emerson’s ravaged brain lacks speech, he has learned ways to nudge and cajole. Music comes from a different place than speech, as does song.

Free association sifts the shadowy files of memory. Early drawers and closets, undammed by the traumas of later life. From some cache he finds a tune about travel down another narrow road. One with a prospect of hope at the end of the line.

It spills forth without volition, as a whole, flowing to a voice that’s unpracticed, but strong.

“I’ve got a mule, her name is Sal,

Fifteen miles down the Erie Canal.

She’s a good old worker and a good

old pal,

Fifteen miles down the Erie Canal.

We’ve hauled some cargo in our day,

Filled with lumber, coal, and hay,

And we know every inch of the way,

From Albany to Buffalo-o-o.…”

Amid the shadows, they are not easily coaxed from their worries. He too can feel the weight of rock above, and so many years. But Emerson refuses to be oppressed. He sings louder, and soon Jomah’s voice joins the refrain, followed tentatively by Sara’s. The horses’ ears flick. They nicker, speeding to a canter.

The subterranean switching yard narrows again, walls converging with a rush. Ahead, the glowing line plunges into a resuming tunnel.

Emerson’s voice briefly falters as a flicker of memory intrudes. Suddenly he can recall another abrupt plunge … diving through a portal that opened into jet vacuum blankness … then falling as the universe converged on him from all sides to squeeze.…

And something else.

A row of pale blue eyes.

Old Ones …

But the song has a life of its own. Its momentum pours unstoppably from some cheerful corner of his mind, overcoming those brief, awful images, making him call out the next verse with a vigor of hoarse, throaty defiance.

“Low bridge, everybody down!

Low bridge! ’cause we’re comin’

to a town.

And you’ll always know your neighbor,

Always know your pal,

If you ever navigate along the Erie Canal.”

His companions lean away from the rushing walls. Their shoulders press together as the hole sweeps up to swallow them again.

PART THREE

ONCE A LENGTHY EPISODE of colonization finally comes to an end, subduction recycling is among the more commonly used methods for clearing waste products on a life world. Where natural cycles of plate tectonics provide a powerful indrawing force, the planet’s own hot convection processes can melt and remix elements that had been fashioned into tools and civilized implements. Materials that might otherwise prove poisonous or intrusive to new-rising species are thus removed from the fallow environment, as a world eases into the necessary dormant phase.

What happens to these refined materials, after they have been drawn in, depends on mantle processes peculiar to each planet. Certain convection systems turn the molten substance into high-purity ores. Some become lubricated by water seeps, stimulating the release of great liquid magma spills. Yet another result can be sudden expulsions of volcanic dust, which briefly coat the planet and can later be traced in the refractory-metal enrichment of thin sedimentary layers.

Each of these outcomes can result in perturbations of the local biosphere, and occasional episodes of extinction. However, the resulting enrichment fecundity usually proves beneficial enough to compensate, encouraging development of new presapient species.…

from A Galactographic Tutorial for Ignorant Wolfling Terrans, a special publication of the Library Institute of the Five Galaxies, year 42 EC, in partial satisfaction of the debt obligation of 35 EC

Streakers

Hannes

SUESSI FELT NOSTALGIC ABOUT BEING HUMAN. NOW and then, he even wished he were still a man.

Not that he was ungrateful for the boon the Old Ones had granted him, in that strange place called the Fractal System, where aloof beings transformed his aged, failing body into something more durable. Without their gift, he would be stone dead — as cold as the giant corpses surrounding him in this dark ossuary of ships.

The ancient vessels seemed peaceful, in dignified repose. It was tempting to contemplate resting, letting eons pass without further care or strife.

But Suessi was much too busy to spare time for being dead.

“Hannes,” a voice crackled directly to his auditory nerve.

“Two minutes, Hannes. then I think-k we’ll be ready to resume cut-t-ting.”

Shafts of brilliant illumination speared through the watery blackness, casting bright ovals toward one curved hull segment of the Terran starship Streaker. Distorted silhouettes crisscrossed the spotlight beams — the long undulating shadows of workers clad in pressurized armor, their movements slow, cautious.