By studying the double images of stars and galaxies, Mark was able to check on the near-lightspeed velocities of the string segments; he constantly updated the internal model he maintained of the local string dynamics, trying to ensure the ship stayed a safe distance away from -
A watchful subroutine sounded an alarm. It felt to Mark like a prickling of vague unease, a shiver.
…There was movement, in the field of view of one sensor bank. He swiveled his consciousness, fixing most of his attention on the anomaly picked up by that sensor bank.
Against a background provided by a beautiful, blue-stained spiral galaxy, he saw a double track of multiple stellar images.
There had to be two lengths of string there, he realized: two arcs of this single, huge loop of string, no more than light-hours apart. And he could see from the melting flow of the star images that the arcs were sliding past each other in opposite directions; maybe eventually they would intersect.
In some places there were three images of single stars. Light from each of those stars was reaching him by three routes — to the left of the string pair, to their right, and straight through the middle of the strings.
The cause of the alert was obvious. All along the double tracks, he saw, star images were sliding, as if slipping across melting spacetime. These strings must be close — maybe even within the two-light-year limit he’d imposed on himself as a rough safety margin.
He ran a quick double-check on the routines he’d set up to monitor the strings’ distance from the ship. He wondered if he ought to tell Louise and Spinner about this…
Now, suddenly, alarm routines shrieked warnings into his awareness. It was like being plunged into an instant panic; he felt as if adrenaline were flooding his system.
What in Lethe —
He interrogated his routines, briskly and concisely. It took only nanoseconds to figure out what was wrong.
The pair of string arcs were closer than he’d thought at first. His distance estimation routines had been thrown by the interaction of the two strings, by the way the pair jointly distorted star images.
So the strings were closer than his monitoring systems had told him. The trouble was, he couldn’t tell how close; maybe they were a lot closer.
Damn, damn. I should have anticipated this. Feverishly he set off a reprogramming routine, ensuring that for the future he wouldn’t be fooled by multiple images from pairs of string lengths like this — or, indeed, from any combination.
But that wasn’t going to help now.
He ran through a quick hack procedure, trying to get a first-cut estimate of the strings’ true distance…
He didn’t believe the answer. He modified the procedure and ran it again.
The answer didn’t change.
Well, so much for my two-light-year safety zone.
The string pair was only around ten million miles from the Northern — less than a light-minute.
One of the pair of strings was receding — but the other was heading straight for the ship.
He ran more checks. There was no error.
In fifty seconds, that encroaching string would hit the Northern.
He burst out of the machinery and back into the world of humans. With impatience he waited for pixels to congeal out of the air, for his face to reassemble; he felt his awareness slow down to the crawl of humans.
29
Five million years after the first conflict between humans and Qax, the wreckage of a Spline warship had emerged, tumbling, from the mouth of a wormhole that blazed with gravitational radiation. The wormhole closed, sparkling.
The wreck — dark, almost bereft of energy — turned slowly in the stillness. It was empty of life.
Almost.
I’m still not sure how I survived. But I remember — I remember how the quantum functions came flooding over me. They were like raindrops; it was as if I could see them, Spinner-of-Rope. It was painful. But it was like being born again. I was restored to time.
It hadn’t taken Poole long to check out the status of the derelict his craft had become. There had been power in the lifedome’s internal cells, sufficient for a few hours, perhaps. But he had no motive power — not even a functioning data link out of the lifedome to the rest of his ship.
I remember how dead the Universe looked. I couldn’t understand how the stars had got so old, so quickly; I knew I couldn’t have fallen more than a few million years.
But I knew I was alone. I could feel it.
I made myself a meal. I drank a glass of clear water… His face, softly translucent, was thoughtful. Do you know, I can remember the taste of that water even now. I had a shower… I was thinking of reading a book.
But the lights went out.
I felt my way back to my couch. I lay there. It started getting colder.
I wasn’t afraid of death, Spinner-of-Rope. Strangely, I felt renewed.
“But you didn’t die,” she said. “Did you, Michael?”
No. No, I didn’t die, said Poole.
And then, a ship had come.
Poole, dying, had stared up in wonder.
It was something like a sycamore seed wrought in jet-black. Night-dark wings that spanned hundreds of miles loomed over the wreck of Poole’s GUTship, softly rippling.
“A nightfighter,” Spinner breathed.
Yes. I got colder. I couldn’t breathe. But now I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live just a little longer — to understand what this meant.
And then —
“Yes?”
And then, something had plucked Poole from the wreck. It was as if a giant hand had cupped his consciousness, like taking a flame from a guttering candle.
And then it spun me out…
Poole had become discorporeal. He no longer even had a heartbeat.
He felt as if he had been released from the cave of bone that had been his head.
I believe I became a construct of quantum functions, he said. A tapestry of acausal and nonlocal effects… I don’t pretend to understand it. And my companion was still there. It was like a huge ceiling over me.
“What was it?”
Perhaps it was Xeelee. Or perhaps not. It seemed to be beyond even the Xeelee a construct by them, perhaps, but not of them…
Spinner-of-Rope, the Xeelee were — are — masters of space and time. I believe they have even traveled back through time — modified their own evolutionary history — to achieve their huge goals. I think my companion was something to do with that program: an anti-Xeelee, perhaps, like an anti particle, moving backwards in time.
I sensed — amusement, Poole said slowly. It was amused by my fear, my wonder, my longing to survive. She heard the faded ghost of bitterness in his voice.
After a time, it dissolved. I was left alone. And, Spinner, I found I could not die.
At first, I was angry. I was in despair. He held up his glowing hand and inspected it thoughtfully, turning it round before his face. I couldn’t understand why this had been done to me — why I’d been preserved in this grotesque way.
But — with time — that passed. And I had time: plenty of it…
He fell silent, and she watched his face. It was blank, expressionless; she felt a prickle of fear, and wondered what experiences he had undergone, alone between the dying stars.
“Michael,” she said gently. “Why did you speak to me?”
His bleak expression dissolved, and he smiled at her. I saw a human being, he said. A man, dressed in skins, frostbitten, in a fragile little ship… He came plunging through a wormhole Interface, uncontrolled, into this hostile future.