Below, the quantum flaw was growing faster than ever, its diamond-white glare brightening. Legroeder clicked in a filtering routine and peered at the flaw through darkened glass. If they were going to fly headlong through it, was there any way to control the outcome? Was it all up to Nature and the structure of the flaw? Maybe not. This was the Flux, and if there was any chance of influencing their passage by changing their entry, it was now or never.
Legroeder felt a tremor, and looked up to see a tenuous link between the two ships. Palagren and Ker’sell were slowly reeling in the joined net.
Cantha spoke up. I recommend going in one after another. These readings are all very strange, my friends. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I feel it’s going to be interesting.
Interesting!
If you can’t hold it together, Cantha called to Deutsch, then fall in behind us and break contact just before we enter. Try to follow as precisely as possible.
Are you going in and leaving us here? Poppy screeched.
No one’s leaving anyone, Cantha answered. But our time perceptions may give us a better chance to find the way.
I approve of your plan, said another voice. It took Legroeder an instant to recognize Captain Friedman. He had almost forgotten about the captains. Not that any orders from them could make much difference at this point.
Everyone prepare, Legroeder called, to enter the quantum flaw.
From somewhere deep within the strained fabric of the net came the rumbling voice of Captain Glenswarg: Permission granted. Godspeed, gentlemen…
The quantum flaw dominated the sky now, nearly encircling them. It was no longer a smoothly curved line, but a finely jagged thing, fractal in nature. Deep within Legroeder’s implants, a furious analysis of the flaw was taking place. Was it a relic of the primordial universe, like a cosmic string of normal-space? It was a discontinuity in the structure of spacetime, for certain. One moment, it looked like an opening across half the universe; the next, it was a one-way passage into oblivion.
The answers would soon become clear.
With Impris swinging around behind them, the joined nets were becoming more difficult to control. The attraction of the flaw was beginning to fluctuate as they drew near. Were they feeling the effects of its fractal shape?
Cantha looked increasingly worried. He peered across the net at Legroeder, his face lit by the ghostly glare of the quantum flaw. Uncertainty-readings are off the scale. Even if you find a way to maneuver, I can’t give you any guidance on a course.
Legroeder nodded.
The fractal nature of the flaw was becoming increasingly pronounced, as finer and finer details of jaggedness came into view. Would their passage be determined by how they intersected with those jagged elements at the boundary? How could he possibly control that? But there had to be a way to influence their passage. It was not a matter of evidence, but of faith.
The Narseil were peering this way and that. What were they seeing in the tessa’chron? His own sense of time and reality was singing and twanging like a violin string. If any of you sees a way through this, don’t be shy about telling me. Freem’n—can you still hear me?
Like you’re at the end of a tunnel. You ready to go through?
Ready, Legroeder lied. He could feel the other ship pulling from side to side like a boat in tow. It’ll be soon now. If we get separated going through…
I’ll be looking for you on the other side. Tell Palagren to have one of those Narseil beers ready for me.
Yah, said Legroeder, wishing he could think of something more to say.
Palagren suddenly exclaimed, By the Three Rings, would you look at that!
And then the bottom fell out from under Legroeder, and he could feel the net suddenly stretching ahead like a spiderweb in a breeze, and one particular fractal angle in the flaw blossomed. And in a single, strangely prolonged instant of time, the flaw yawned open and swallowed them.
The net was turned inside out. The Narseil voices distorted into a sound like an electronic malfunction, and Legroeder’s stomach went into freefall. His head felt distended like a child’s soap bubble. As he brought his gaze around behind, to where Impris was following, he glimpsed a flicker of silver and a crazed opening in the sky. He heard Deutsch’s voice—a heart-rending shriek, tearing off into silence. Then the jagged opening closed, with a blinding flash that billowed out in slow motion.
That had been… Impris… enveloped by the blinding flash.
Legroeder cried out: Frrreeemm’nnn… Faarrrraaeeeemmmmaaauuuu…
His voice was incomprehensible, even to him. Focusing inward, trying to reconnect with Deutsch through his implants, he found instead an enormous inner vista of space, spangled with stars and galaxies. He tried to draw breath; he could not; dizzily he searched for the implants; they were circling him like flickering stars, doing he knew not what. There was no connection left with Impris.
His vision ballooned out again. Where the flash had been there was now a coiling darkness, webbed with lines of force.
Dear Christ! he whispered, and his voice moaned out into the net, joining with the incomprehensible groans of the Narseil. Had they just watched Impris die?
Palagren’s arms were stretched out, distended and transparent; all the riggers were turning transparent. All of their voices were dying away; but new sounds were rising…
*
An impossibly deep rumble… a thrum of incredible power… and, it seemed, sadness. Legroeder was hypnotized, unable to turn his attention, as the thrum filled with deeper and deeper harmonics. It was a choir of unimaginable size and proportion, a choir of space and time, and yet seemingly almost a living thing.
Was he hearing the shifting and creaking of the very fabric of spacetime itself? He was stunned, awed, terrified. For a moment, he wondered: was he even still alive? The quantum flaw could have wrenched them apart into constituent particles, puffing them out of existence in a cloud of neutrinos and gamma rays. Were these the dying thoughts of a haze of neutrinos, soon to dissipate like the morning dew?
They had lost Impris. Deutsch. Legroeder wanted to experience all that he could before he too vanished. Maybe it was pride. Or longing. Or grief. Or stubbornness. He focused all of his being on trying to perceive the sounds that welled around him. If only he could form a picture from them.
As if in response, coiling out of the darkness came distorted lines of force, turbulent traceries of fire, the body of the quantum splinter, surrounding them. Before them stretched a long, jagged avenue of fire and darkness, reaching out into the deeps of space… from infinity at one end to infinity at the other.
He stared at it and thought dumbly, it’s either the road to Heaven or the road to Hell…
*
He viewed its majesty through sound, an embryonic music of the spheres, heartbreakingly mournful. But this was not just the music of a handful of stars and star clouds. This was something very different, something far, far greater…
…wheeling majestically in space…
…enveloped by the sound of an expanding universe…