‘Engineered? Who by?’
‘The Xeelee,’ the Ghost said.
‘Ah.’ The Xeelee: aloof from the petty squabbles of lesser kinds, even of sprawling, brawling humanity. The Xeelee, as remote as clouds.
‘It is not certain,’ said the Ghost. ‘But there are certain signatures we have come to recognise … Such universe-modelling does appear to be a characteristic Xeelee strategy.’
Raoul laughed, wondering. ‘At last you’ve found yourselves an inverted sky, Ambassador. A Cold Sink.’ Considering their evolutionary history, shaped by cosmic betrayal and cold, this place was like a Ghost wish-fulfilment fantasy.
‘Yes. Jack Raoul, we believe we were led here, by the Xeelee. Perhaps they have prepared a bolt-hole of their own, in case their epochal war with the photino birds is ultimately lost.’
‘You see this place as a bolt-hole? What are you hiding from?’
‘You,’ said the Ambassador.
That took him aback.
‘Jack Raoul, your Expansion is already expanding exponentially. We are in your way.’
Raoul had heard this said. The Ghosts’ home range lay between mankind and the rich fields of the Galaxy’s Core, and the Expansion was pressing.
But he protested, ‘It’s a big Galaxy. It’s not even as if we are fighting over the same kinds of territory, or resource. Ghosts are adapted to the cold and dark, humans to deep gravity wells. There is room for all of us.’
‘That is true,’ said the Ambassador. ‘But irrelevant. Your Expansion is fuelled by ideology as much as resource acquisition – and it is not an ideology that preaches of sharing. In such a situation there can be no diplomacy.
‘There is already war. A series of flashpoints, all along the Expansion’s growing border. Naturally we will use our every resource in our fight for survival, just as we did when our sun died. There will be epic battles. But the logic is against us. Our most optimistic projection is three thousand years.’
‘Until what?’
‘Until the Silver Ghosts are extinct.’
Raoul said grimly, ‘I spent my life fighting against such outcomes, Ambassador. As did you. Are you telling me now it was all futile?’
‘From the beginning. But there is no failure, Jack Raoul. Here we have found a sanctuary. Though the Xeelee do not intervene in the squabbles of lesser types like us, they appear to embrace diversity. They gave us this place. Perhaps they have prepared a haven for your kind, against the inevitable day when humanity too must decline.’
But Raoul found it increasingly hard to concentrate; his attention was drawn away from the Ghost and his words, away from the tangle, up to that infinite light.
The Ghost spun on its invisible axis, this way and that. ‘Jack Raoul, I urge you to consider. If we are safe here, so are you. We can provide any Virtual environment you desire.’ The Ghost seemed to hesitate. ‘We can give you Eve.’
Ah, Eve…
You can ‘t stay. It was as if he could hear her voice, see her pushing her fingers through her greyed hair. You held on to me for too long. And now, this. You never could let go Jack. But now you have to. You see that, don’t you?
He felt himself rise further. The tangle shrank beneath him, becoming lost in the light.
It’s time to go, Jack.
‘The Sink Ambassador is a friend,’ he told Eve.
‘Jack Raoul?’
Sure he’s a friend. That’s why he’s showing you what you want to see. You don’t want to die a failure. But it isn’t real. You know that, don’t you?
Perhaps the Sink Ambassador somehow heard this inner voice. ‘Jack Raoul, it can be as real as you desire. We have only a single moment to give you. But we can make that moment last an eternity.’
‘Thank you, my friend. But this isn’t my place.’
‘Jack Raoul, please…’
The tangle faded into the light. Raoul had time for a last, brief stab of regret.
Then, artificial eyes raised, he ascended into the white glow that was calling him.
‘I attempted a third call, but there was no further movement. The eyes finally took on the glazed look of the dead.
‘The whole sequence of post-excision events lasted twenty-five to thirty seconds. More precise timings are of course available in the record.
‘Death occurred due to separation of the brain and spinal cord, after transection of the surrounding tissues and excision of the brain from the chest cavity, which probably caused acute and possibly severe pain. Consciousness was lost due to a rapid fall of intracranial perfusion of blood. Throughout the procedure nervous connections were maintained with sensory organs, notably the “eyes”, “ears” and “nose”.
‘As noted, Jack Raoul did not resist.
‘It may be that because of Raoul’s unique physical condition, this “beheading” was the only available mode of execution. However I believe that my precise observations during my administration of this case demonstrate that Raoul was aware of what was happening to him even after excision, thus casting doubt on the humanity of the procedure.
‘I will concede that I saw a certain peace, at the last, in Jack Raoul’s dying eyes. It may be that somehow he found consolation, which may in turn give comfort to those who passed sentence on this complex man.
‘Death occurred at the time and place noted.
‘Signed: HAMA TINIF, Attending Physician.’
The Sink Ambassador was right. War was inevitable. The logic of the Third Expansion would have it no other way.
At first human forces made spectacular advances. The Ghosts, capable of manipulating physical law, were on paper formidable adversaries. But we were better at making war.
In the centuries of conflict that followed, the Coalition completed its control. Humanity’s ideology and economics were reoriented. Our entire civilisation became a machine to serve the Expansion and the war, and in turn became dependent on those two projects.
But then, as we approached the Ghosts’ home ranges, the Expansion stalled.
ON THE ORION LINE
AD 6454
The Brief Life Burns Brightly broke out of the fleet. We were chasing down a Ghost cruiser, and we were closing.
The lifedome of the Brightly was transparent, so it was as if Captain Teid in her big chair, and her officers and their equipment clusters – and a few low-grade tars like me standing by – were just floating in space. The light was subtle, coming from a nearby cluster of hot young stars, and from the rivers of sparking lights that made up the fleet formation we had just left, and beyond that from the sparking of novae. This was the Orion Line – six thousand light years from Earth and a thousand lights long, a front that spread right along the inner edge of the Orion Spiral Arm – and the stellar explosions marked battles which must have concluded years ago.
And, not a handful of klicks away, the Ghost cruiser slid across space, running for home. The cruiser was a rough egg-shape of silvered rope. Hundreds of Ghosts clung to the rope. You could see them slithering this way and that, not affected at all by the emptiness around them.
The Ghosts’ destination was a small, old yellow star. Pael, our tame Academician, had identified it as a fortress star from some kind of strangeness in its light. But up close you don’t need to be an Academician to spot a fortress. From the Brightly I could see with my unaided eyes that the star had a pale blue cage around it – an open lattice with struts half a million kilometres long – thrown there by the Ghosts, for their own purposes.