“And, as for me, I would like to embrace Rania myself. I miss her terribly. I miss her more than you now know, but if you ever get to the Virtue level of intellect, larger than any Gas Giant Brain, you will understand me. But I have figured out something I should have seen long ago, something old Mom told me once, but I did not listen. Remember her picture she kept of Dad, the picture she’d never let us talk to?”
“Yeah. Because of his hick accent. Which I ended up borrowing from Dad’s folks anyway. Uncle Zephaniah told me how to say ain’t. My favorite word from that day to this.”
“Ain’t ain’t not your favorite word.”
“’Tis so!”
“Ain’t not!”
“’Tis! Pox you!”
“Pox is your favorite word. Anyway, this is good-bye. Mom kept the picture because she loved Dad’s dream to see us make something of ourselves more than she loved you being able to hear his voice. Don’t you think that hurt her? Cut her something ferocious deep in her heart to keep her little boys not hearing their daddy’s voice in the audio strip? She knew he’d be happier if it were this way. Dead or not, didn’t matter. She still did what would make him happy. She lived for his happiness, not her own. And I reckon I inherited that from her. Thanks, Mom.”
The fairy face began to dissolve, but the voice lingered. “Whether I am alive or dead does not matter, as long as Rania is happy. If you get to her, and you save her, and she is with you, she will be happy. And when all time ends in a singularity, and all parallel lines meet, maybe, just maybe, the cloud of probability where this version of me is floating will meet up with you, become real, and kiss her once again. The universe is a strange place.”
Montrose shouted, “Wait! First tell us—”
But now the voice was high and thin and regal. It was Twinklewink again. “I have lost signal from the ringworld.”
4. Unworthy to Receive
Montrose splashed out of the pool, wincing, as all his wounds were not entirely healed as yet, and stepped over and put his nose against the transparent hull, staring out at the turning ringworld with the blue planet at its center. The clouds and crowds of glassy stained-glass plates of the Dyson sphere were moving, growing thinner, opening the spot directly opposite the ringworld so that more and more light poured out.
Montrose realized with a sinking sensation of awe that each ray of sunlight must contain quanta of information. Even the light particles of Vanderlinden 133 were part of one coherent mental system. And this was not the largest nor most central star of the Praesepe Cluster.
The fairy voice said, “The Cahetel entity is requesting that you receive an embassy from the Praesepe Domination. This requires that I devote more memory space to receiving and compiling the intermediary than I can do without a substantial breech of security protocol.”
Montrose said, “Tell them to bite me. Anything they want to say, they can say over radio.”
Twinklewink said, “Not so. The radiation you observe striking the ringworld is only the visible part of the communication spectrum being used, of which Cahetel can translate and reflect to us only the least part. Merely to receive such a broadcast would entail more energy than the molecular bonds of the materials of this ship could withstand.”
Del Azarchel said dourly, “The voice of the gods would kill us, and the sight burn us to ashes like Semele. Come now! What do you fear? If Praesepe wished us dead, we would have been swatted like flies. Flies? No, like microbes. Let the monsters talk to us!” But he made haste to splash his way out of the pond, making a long and high leap in the lesser gravity, for he knew that the fluid was part of the ship’s brain.
Twinklewink said, “I will be forced into standby mode, due to lack of available resources. Praesepe’s emissary will have considerable latitude in forming its communication platform. Life support will also be placed on standby. You must enter biosuspension of any nonessential organs, and switch to your nonbiological neural systems for the duration of the conversation. The system will be four tiered, with a node here, one at Cahetel, one at the major agora of the Vanderlinden 133 Dyson sphere, and one at the trail of Gas Giant Brains occupying the volume between the stars 39 Cancri and HD 73730. The onboard emissary will share your frame of reference; the emissary possessing Cahetel involves a five-second delay; the interior layers of the Dyson sphere involve between as four and twenty-one minutes, depending on where the information is stored. Twenty-two years is the absolute minimal time for a minimal response to any question elevated to the Praesepe local stars for resolution. Questions requiring responses from the extended mind structure of the outer stars will involve ten times that duration. You may wish to adjust your perception of the local passage of time accordingly.”
4
The Beehive Cluster
1. The Voice of the Collective
A.D. 80101 TO 80700
The preparations were soon made. The overgrown tree branches and twisted trunks, growing in odd spirals and curlicues and Celtic knotwork of wood overhead, filling the whole circle of the ship, were white as ice and seemed sharp and clear in the inert gas which replaced the volatile oxynitrogen atmosphere.
Montrose and Del Azarchel, also white as marble, with only their eyes still dark and gleaming with life, stood ankle deep in the snow, on legs as motionless and numb as marble, each with a white chlamys thrown over his shoulder, for modesty’s sake. They were both facing the largest pool in the garden, one from which the central statue had been removed, a figure of a pilgrim carrying a child, holding a white ball topped with a cross. Who this figure was, nor why Rania had placed it here, Montrose could not guess, and that made him very sorry. So it was with greatest respect that he had asked the statue to step aside and take another place elsewhere in the barren garden.
This pool had been selected because most of the major lines of the ship’s brainwork met here, and those that did not could be conveniently connected by bridging cables, giving this one spot the greatest carrying capacity anywhere in the ship.
Twinklewink said, “Captain Montrose, lord and husband of my mistress Rania, only your direct order, properly worded, can permit me to turn over control of the central brain systems of this ship to Praesepe, and invite the emissary within. I will be in slumber until, if ever, the emissary departs.”
Montrose hesitated.
Del Azarchel said, “As her father, surely I have some authority here?”
Twinklewink said, “Yes. Mistress Rania made it clear that you were to be treated with respect, afforded every courtesy, and under no conditions to be granted access to the central shipbrain.”
Montrose said, “This is an order. Now hear this: allow Praesepe access to the ship’s mind core, reserving only life support, navigation, propulsion, and medical subroutines.”