The flawship’s interior, crowded with privileged citizens and dignitaries, was even more free-form than Olmy’s craft.
The surfaces varied from oyster pearl to abalone gray, and there seemed to be no edge or corner; only one spacious, long cabin, wrapped around the three-meter-wide flaw passage and propulsion machinery.
People of a bewildering variety of body styles tracted from point to point in the cabin, exchanging picts or conversing in English or Chinese. Some sipped drinks from free-floating charged globules of fluid, which somehow managed to avoid passersby with both grace and anticipatory intelligence.
Lanier had barely gotten the hang of maneuvering with the traction fields. Farley seemed more adept—a natural gymnast, which caused him some chagrin. He applied himself more diligently to learning the skill. ”This is lovely,” she confessed, spinning slowly next to him, then reaching out and braking against the gently glowing violet sheet of a field.
Heineman and Carrolson helped each other along between the homorphs and neomorphs, smiling stilly and nodding, hoping that—as Olmy had told them--they would find it almost impossible to do something socially unacceptable.
Anything they did, any mistake they made, would be considered charming.
They were, after all, “quaint.”
Patricia tried to keep to herself, clutching her bag containing slate, processor and multi-meter. She was not in the least successful at being inconspicuous.
Suli Ram Kikura tracted toward Patricia and intercepted the rapid pictings of a man whose skin had the sheen of black hematite. The man apologized in a few simple picts for his assumption that Patricia knew the highest degrees of graphic-speak.
Then, in moderately accomplished English—no doubt picked up in a quick gloss a few minutes before boarding—he launched into a complicated discussion of early terrestrial economics. Kikura had wandered off to smooth over another complication--Lanier was being determinedly, if slowly, pushed into a broad dimple by two lean and striking women.
The women were dressed in full-length leotards with long, alternately stiff and supple fantails of fabric stretched between theft legs and under their arms. They resembled fancy goldfish; there was little he or Farley could do to discourage them.
Patricia listened to the man’s discourse for several minutes before saying, “I’m pretty ignorant about that. My specialty is physics.”
The man stared at her and she could almost hear him switching over to a recently programmed portion of his implant. ”Yes, that’s fascinating. So much of physics was in ferment in your time—” Olmy moved in quickly and picted something Patricia did not understand. The man moved away resentfully, a thin circle of red around his face.
“Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea,” Olmy said, escorting her to where the Frant was engaged in conversation with two neomorphs, one a radiolarian, the other recognizable as the Director of the Nexus, Hulane Ram Seija.
“I suppose we have to get used to it,” Patricia said. Why get used to it? she asked herself. She didn’t plan on staying forever.
“Ser Ram Seija,’ the Frant said, turning toward her, “here is our first guest.” The Frant’s wide-extended eyes seemed to naturally convey humor and good spirits. Though she found the word guest euphemistic, at best, she did not resent the Frant’s using it.
“Tve been looking forward to a chance to talk with you, someplace out of chambers,” Ram Seija said. ”Though this hardly seems the best time ...”
Patricia focused on his face, projected at mid-level on the sphere that was his body. She had a distinct impression she was on a ride in Disneyland, seeing something extraordinary with a perfectly mundane explanation. She didn’t answer for some time, and then snapped herself out of her reverie, saying, “Yes, certainly.”
“You’ll enjoy Tunbl, our world,” the Frant said. ”We’ve been long-time clients of the Hexamon. It’s a very tame gate, long established.”
““We’ll go there first,” Ram Seija said. ”A journey of four hours to the Frant gate at four ex six, and then a leisurely two-day rest stop. We’re hoping the President can break away from his conference to meet us.”
Four ex six—four million kilometers down the corridor—merely a hop, skip and jump, she thought. And for every thousand kilometers, an advance of one year in time; for every fraction of a millimeter, essay into an alternate universe ...
How much closer to home?
“I look forward to meeting it--him, and to visiting Tunbl,” she said, acquiescing to the spirit of the occasion.
“We’re requested at the bow,” Lanier said, brushing by with Farley.
Heineman and Carrolson were already on their way. The crowds parted before them; she had never seen so many smiling faces, or so much interest in her person. She hated it. She wanted to run and hide.
Feeling through her jumpsuit for the letter from Paul, finding it and pressing it, she followed the Frant and Olmy toward the bow of the flawship.
Senator Oyu was there, with three Naderite homorphs from Axis Thoreau, all historians. They smiled and made room for the five. The flawship captain, a neomorph with a masculine human mink and a serpentine body from the waist down, fully three meters in length, joined them last.
“The honor for starting our short journey goes to the first guest to arrive at the Axis City,” the captain said. Patricia took his hand and tracted into position at the bow, near the flaw passage. ”Miss Vasquez, would you like to do the honors? Simply ask the flawship to begin.”
“Let’s go,” Patricia said softly.
A sharp-edged circle about five meters in diameter cleared to one side of the flaw passage, offering them a view of the Way. They seemed to float high above the lanes of traffic and the gate terminals. The ineffably glistening line of the singularity glowed hot pink just beyond the bow; for the moment, there was no sensation of motion.
Patricia turned to look back at Olmy, Lanier and Farley.
Lanier smiled at her; she smiled back. Despite everything, this was kind of exciting. She felt like an indulged and pampered child, visiting a party of very peculiar adults.
We’re the larvae, they’re the butterflies, she thought.
Within a half hour, the flawship was moving so rapidly—just over 104 kilometers per second—that the walls of the Way became a slick blur of black and gold. They had already traveled some 94,000 kilometers and were still accelerating.
Ahead, the flaw pulsed deep red. Patricia felt Farley’s hand on her shoulder.
“It’s amazing how much this is like a party on Earth,” Farley said. “Not in Hopeh, but in Los Angeles or Tokyo. I went through Tokyo to get to Los Angeles, and then on to Florida ... There were quite a few receptions. The embassy party ...” She shook her head and grinned.
“Where the hell--what the hell--are we, Patricia? I am very confused.”
“They’re people, just like us,” Patricia said.
“I just don’t—can’t always believe what’s happening. Inside, I go back to when I was a little girl in Hopeh, listening to my father teach. I escape.”
Bringing Ramon Tiempos de Los Angeles to read ...
“All parties get boring after a while. I’d rather be working,” Patricia said, “but that wouldn’t be sociable. Olmy wants us to be sociable.”
Suli Ram Kikura approached them, looking concerned.
“Has anybody offended you?” she asked. ”Or made improper offers?”
“No,” Farley said. ”Patricia and I are just watching.”
“Of course ... you’re getting tired. Even Olmy forgets these necessities—sleep and rest.”
“I’m not tired,” Patricia said. ’I’m very alert, in fact.”
“I, as well,” Farley agreed. ”Perhaps ‘dazed’ is a better word.”
“You may seclude yourselves any time you wish,” Ram Kikura said.
“We’ll just stay in the bow and watch,” Patricia said. She floated with legs crossed in a lotus, and Farley did likewise.
“We’re fine,” Farley said to the advocate. ”We’ll rejoin everybody shortly.”
Ram Kikura returned aft to a group of neomorphs challenging each other with complex puzzle-picts.
“It’s not a bad place to be,” Farley offered after a few minutes of silence. ”These people aren’t cruel.”
“Oh, no,” Patricia said, shaking her head. ”Olmy is helpful, and I like Kikura.”
“Before we left, she was talking to Garry and me about our rights in selling historical information. Or exchanging for advantage, she called it. Apparently we can access all sorts of valuable private data banks for what we have in our memories so she said.”
After an hour, Patricia, Heineman and Carrolson secluded themselves at the rear of the cabin. The Frant fended off the curious as they napped. Lanier and Farley were too wired to relax; they talked.
At the midpoint of their journey, after accelerating at just under six g’s, the flawship was traveling some 416 kilometers per second; it then began to decelerate.
In another two hours, the flawship had slowed to what seemed a crawl, only a few dozen kilometers an hour. Below, many of the broad silver-gray disks flew majestically above the lanes. Four large twisted-pyramid structures were discernible in the distance: the terminals coveting the four gates to Tunbl.
Two homorphs joined them—slightly more radical models of Olmy’s ilk, self-contained and largely artificial. They were dressed in blue-and-white body-suits that ballooned dramatically around the calves and forearms; one was female, though her hair was cut much like Olmy’s, and the other was indeterminate. They smiled at Patricia and Farley and exchanged simple picts. Patricia touched her torque and replied; Farley flubbed her answer and made them laugh good-naturedly.
The indeterminate one stepped forward, a Chinese flag suddenly picted above the left shoulder.
“We have not met,” it began. ”I am Sama illa Rixor, special assistant to the President. My ancestors were Chinese. We have been discussing morphology of those times. Miss Farley, you are rare, are you not? You are Chinese, yet you have Caucasian features. Is it that you have had ... what they called cosmetic surgery, available even then?”
“No ...” Farley said with some embarrassment. ”I was born in China,” she said, “But my parents were Caucasian—“ Patricia tracted away from the stern, toward Lanier, Carrolson and Heineman. Ram Kikura glided up to them and indicated they would be leaving the flawship soon; a V.I.P disk shuttle was already leaving the gate terminal to take them aboard.
Heineman was questioning Olmy about the identity of the Frant that had accompanied them, suspicious that it might have changed places with one of the nine other Frants tiding with them. ”It looks different. Are you sure it’s the same Frant?”
“They all look alike when they’re mature,” Olmy said. “Why does it matter?”
“I just want to know where I stand with somebody,” Heineman responded, reddening.
“It’s really not important,” Olmy said. ”Once they’ve homogenized and passed current memory to each other, one can take up where the other leaves off.”
Heineman wasn’t convinced, but he decided it wasn’t worth pursuing.
The V.I.P transportation disk was as wide as the flawship was long. It ascended to within thirty meters of the axis, surface crawling with glowing sheets of charge picked up in the plasma field. The glow slipped away from the disk’s upper surface like phosphorescent sea foam, and a circular opening appeared in the center.
The flawship’s hatches opened then, and the guests leaped out through the connecting fields in orderly pairs and triplets, hanging on to each other, tracting to the opening in the disk.
Olmy took hold of Farley and Lanier and Lanier held Patricia; Ram Kikura took Carrolson’s and Heineman’s hands. Together, they flew with the rest of the group.
The disk was little more than an enlarged version of the cupolas that had covered the gates just beyond the seventh chamber; except for a webwork of glowing lines, it had no visible lower half, and to Heineman’s consternation, no platform or support to rest on. The party simply floated in the space immediately beneath, suspended in an invisible and all-enveloping traction field which was in turn shot through with smaller visible fields. All that separated them from the vacuum—all that lay between them and the walls of the Way, twenty-five kilometers below—was a battery of subtle energies.
Lanier saw several homorph and many more neomorph pilots and workers at the edges of the disk, segregated from the entourage. He watched a spindle-shaped neomorph weaving its way through purple traction sheets, followed by boxes from another section of the flawship. On the opposite side, the eight Frants also waited to disembark. Their own Frant had returned to its fellows and had already homogenized with them, rendering Heineman’s question academic.
Lanier reached out for a tenuous purple traction line and twisted around to look at Heineman.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked.
“Lousy,” Heineman said.
“He’s a sissy,” Carrolson said, a little pale herself.
“You should love this,” Lanier chided him. ”You’ve always been in love with machinery.”
“Yeah, machines!” Heineman growled. ”Show me any machines! Everything works without moving parts. It’s unnatural.”
The disk began its descent as they spoke. The clusters of passengers excitedly exchanged picts; Patricia floated with arms and legs spread, one hand grasping the same taction line as Lanier.
She stared down at the terminal, watching the disks enter and exit ports near the base from four directions. Many more disks waited in stacks like so many pancakes, or fanned out in spirals within a holding column.
The disk descended slowly, giving them plenty of time to inspect the wall traffic around the terminal. Most of the lanes were filled with the cylindrical container-vehicles of many diverse shapes spheres, eggs, pyramids and some of a blobby appearance, composed of many complex curves.
Lanier tried to make sense out of it all, using what the data pillar had taught them, but couldn’t—there was apparent order, but no easily discerned purpose. Patricia tracted in his direction.
“Do you understand all that we’re seeing?” he asked her.
She shook her head. ”Not all.”
Ram Kikura broke from a cluster of brightly dressed homorphs and came their way. ”We’ll pass through the gate in just a few minutes,” she said. ”You must know, if Olmy and the Nexus allow it, that I can make you very wealthy people.”
“Wealth still means that much?” Carrolson asked dubiously.
“Information does,” Ram Kikura replied. ”And I’ve already picted with four or five powerful information distributors.”
“Send us on tour like circus freaks,” Heineman grumbled.
“Oh, give me some credit, Larry,” Ram Kikura said, touching his shoulder. ”You won’t be abused. I wouldn’t stand for it, and even if I turned out to be—what did you call them?—a scheister, Olmy would protect you. You know that.”
“Do we?” Heineman undertoned as she departed.
“Don’t be a grouch,” Carrolson scolded.
“I’m being on my guard,” Heineman said testily. ”When in Rome, watch out for public restrooms.”
Lanier laughed, then shook his head. ”Hell, I don’t even know what he means,” he confided to Patricia. ”But I admire his caution.”
The disk was now level with a broad, low port in the eastern side of the terminal. The surface of the building was coated by a material resembling opalescent milk glass, with bands of brassy orange metal spaced at seemingly random intervals on the horizontal planes.
“It’s beautiful,” Farley said. Patricia agreed and then felt her eyes grow warm and moist; she couldn’t be sure why. Her throat clutched and she wiped her cheeks as drops broke free.
“What’s wrong?” Lanier said, edging closer to her.
“It is beautiful,” she said, stifling a sob. Involuntarily, Lanier felt his own eyes moistening.
“We can’t forget them, can we?” he asked. ”Wherever we go, whatever we see—they’re with us. All four billion of them.”
She nodded rapidly. Olmy came up behind them and held an archaic and unexpected handkerchief over her shoulder. She took it, surprised, and thanked him.
“If you keep this up,” he warned in a whisper, “you might be surrounded in a few minutes. We are not used to seeing people cry.”
“Jesus,” Carrolson said.
“Don’t judge us on that basis,” Olmy said. ”Our people feel as strongly, but we differ in how we express ourselves.”
“I’m fine,” Patricia said, dabbing ineffectually at her eyes. “You carried this just in case we ... ?”
Olmy smiled. ”For emergencies.”
Lanier took the handkerchief and finished wiping her face for her, then waved the cloth through the air to catch a few stray drops.
“Thank you,” he said, returning it to Olmy.
“Not at all.”
They entered the terminal. Within the hollow structure, beams of light outlined paths for vehicles to take. In the center, still perhaps a kilometer below them, was the gate itself—a vast, smooth-lipped hole leading into a featureless blueness.
“This is our second biggest gate, five kilometers in diameter,” Olmy said. “The largest is seven kilometers wide and leads to the Talsit world at one point three ex seven.”
“We’re going down—through this one?” Heineman asked.
The disk was already resuming its descent.
“Yes. There’s no danger.”
“Except to my mental health,” Heineman said. ”Garry, I wish I’d been a house painter.”
They were directly over the gate now, but no detail was visible beyond the blueness. Five smaller disks moved in a squadron below, clearing a path for them. At the ‘rim of the gate, hundreds of cylinders and other vehicles cascaded from the lanes in majestic, controlled fall.
Light guidelines rearranged to surround their disk in a column.
When they had descended to a point where they were approximately level with the edge of the gate, Lanier suddenly made out details in the bottom, directly beneath. The Frant world was actually visible in the blueness, as if distorted in an old painting-on-a-cylinder that could only be seen when placed on a circular mirror. He could make out oceans, distant mountains black against an ultramarine sky, the elongated and brillant orb of a sun.
“Jesus,” Carrolson said again. ”Look at it.”
“I wish I wasn’t,” Heineman said. ”Do you think Olmy has any Dramamine?”
The floating clusters of homorphs and neomohs picted bright circles and bursts of color in appreciation. The disk vibrated, and the landscape slid smoothly into proper perspective. The guiding column of light beams vanished and they completed their gate passage, suddenly sweeping low over a dazzling white surface.
Lanier, Carrolson and Patricia tracted to a lower point of the disk, near the boundary of the webwork lines of force, so that they could see the horizon of the Frant world. To each side, lines of cylinders and other vehicles were spaced between hovering disks disgorging cargo.
Lanier turned full circle, surveying the mountains and sea beyond the white-paved gate reception area. He had never seen a sky so intensely blue.
Like a blowtorch describing an arc in the sky, a meteor plummeted toward the distant sea’s surface. Before it struck, a web of pulsed orange rays lanced out from the horizon and shattered the meteor. More beams sought out and destroyed the crazily weaving fragments. Only dust remained to hit the ocean or land.
“That’s the story of their life, in a nutshell,” Ram Kikura said, pointing to where the meteor had met its end. ”That’s why the Frants are Frants.” She took Lanier’s hand and then reached for Patricia.
Olmy gathered the other three around them. ”Come. We’ll disembark soon. It’s a bit heavier here; you’ll need belts at first.”
The disk came to its assigned landing area. The transparent fields beneath them rearranged as they approached the white pavement, and the webwork of bright lines reformed into a vortex.
“The President’s advocate and the Director of the Nexus will go down first,” Ram Kikura said. ”We follow, and then the Frants, and then the rest.”
Oligand Toiler, Hulane Ram Seija and their aides--two fish-shaped neomorphs and three bomorphr--drifted toward the center of the vortex and were smoothly deposited on the pavement beneath the disk. Olmy urged his group down, and they tracted along the same path, feet touching ground a few meters from the President’s party.
After months in Thistledown and the Way, Tunbl’s pull was something of a shock, like suddenly being saddled with heavy bricks.
Patricia’s knees sagged and her leg muscles protested.
Heineman groaned and Carrolson’s face looked strained.
Bus-sized, square, low-slung vehicles rolled up on large white wheels.
As each person entered, Frants wrapped lift belts around them to lessen the effect of the heavier gravitation.
Neomorphs, practically helpless without traction fields, were given special full-float belts that could be adjusted to fit their wide range of shapes.
“You should enjoy this,” Ram Kikura told them as the bus rolled off the white pavement onto a broad, brick-colored road. ”We’re going to the beach.”
The Frant world, she explained, served as a resort for humans and several other oxygen-breathing beings in the Way.
Because the level of ultraviolet from the bright yellow-dwarf star was higher than humans were used to, an atmospheric shield had been erected over several thousand square kilometers.
The resort lay in the shield’s shadow.
“The ocean has few large carnivorous life forms—none that would want to eat humans, anyway—and the environment is clean. It’s ideal. The vacation spot of choice for all who can afford to go—which is virtually any corporeal citizen.”
The resort’s long, low main building was in an ideal location, fronting a broad white quartz-sand beach on one side of a half-moon harbor.
Each room had a patio and transparent doors with a choice of undisguised real scenery or various illusart displays. The furniture, in keeping with the Old Terrestrial motif of the resort, was real and unchangeable.
They ate lunch, their first meal on the Frant world, in a restaurant decorated in late-twentieth-century style, the food served by homorphs. Mechanical workers were not in evidence.
After lunch, they walked to the resort buildings and Ram Kikura inspected their rooms carefully before letting them enter. They still wore their belts, though Lanier felt he was up to doing without. He would only remove his when Heineman did, however, and Heineman seemed content to leave it on.
Patricia looked around her room, then joined the others on Lanier’s patio. Ram Kikura told them they could rest and swim for a few hours, and that she and Olmy would be nearby if they were needed.
“They’re taking a room for themselves upstairs,” Carrolson said in a confidential tone after she had left. “I think they’re lovers.”
Patricia opened the patio’s metal gate. ”I’m going to take a walk,” she said. She glanced at Lanier. ”Unless you think we should stick together all the time.”
“No, We’re probably safe enough here. Go ahead.” Lanier watched her walk down the beach, stiff-legging through the sand past homorphs and even a few belted nemorphs. Nobody paid her much attention. He shook his head, smiling. ”Could be Acapulco,” he said, “with a few odd balloons drifting around.”
Farley put her arm around him. ”I’ve never been to Acapulco, but I don’t think it had a sky that color.”
“Lovebirds,” Carrolson sniffed, glanced reproachfully at Heineman. “You never treat me that way.”
“I’m an engineer,” Heineman said. ”I don’t pamper, I just make things run right.”
“You do indeed,” Carrolson said.
“My God, listen to us, we’re cheerful,” Lanier said.
“Patricia isn’t,” Carrolson said. “we’ve seen her putting on her stern look when she sees you two. I think she’s jealous, Garry.”
“Christ.” Lanier sat down in a patio chair and stared across the dazzling beach and intense green-blue sea to the knife-sharp horizon. “She’s been an enigma since I first met her.”
“Not to me,” Farley said. All faces turned to her. ”I understand her at least a little,” she continued. ”I was like her--less brilliant, but inner-directed. Stubborn. My life was miserable until I was twenty-five or twenty-six, and I decided to be more normal—exterior normal, anyway.”
“She’ll be twenty-four tomorrow,” Carrolson said.
“That’s her birthday?” Farley asked.
Carrolson nodded. “We’ve told Olmy and explained about birthday parties. He thinks it’s a good idea. Apparently they don’t have birthdays here-so few people are actually born, biologically speaking. There are naming days, maturity celebrations--mostly in Axis Nader. I gather that age doesn’t mean as much to them as it does to us.”
“So what kind of party will it be?”
“I suggested we keep it small—ourselves, Olmy, Ram Kikura. He agreed.”
“Lenore, you’re a marvel,” Lanier said, unconsciously adopting Hoffman’s tone of voice. Carrolson curtsied and dimpled her cheeks with her twisting index fingers.
“We’re more than cheerful,” Heineman said, staring at her. “We’re absolutely nuts.”
Patricia had gone about half a kilometer down the beach when she saw Oligand Toiler standing on the sand ahead of her. He wore shorts, revealing blond-haired, well-shaped legs slightly bowed, and a loud Hawaiian-print shirt. ”Do you like it?” he asked, modeling for her.
She gawped, not knowing what to say.
“Well, I tried,” he said, seeming chagrined. ”I’d like to talk with you, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m not sure—” she said.
“It might be important. For all of you.”
She stood her ground, head bowed slightly, staring up at him, but said nothing.
“We can keep on walking,” Toiler said. ”I’d like to explain some things before you meet with the President—if he can make time for us.”
“Let’s talk, then,” she said, walking past him. He took two running strides to catch up with her.
“We’re not your enemies, Patricia,” Toiler admonished. “Whatever Olmy may have told you—”
“Olmy’s said nothing against anybody,” Patricia said.
“This is just my way,” she said. ”We’re—I’m not very happy these days, for obvious reasons.”
“Most understandable,” the advocate said, keeping pace with her.
None of the other bathers or flouting neomorphs seemed to find it unusual for the President’s advocate and a woman from centuries in their past to be walking together. They were casually ignored.
”I find the resort here wonderful. I come often. Reminds me of what it is to be human ... do you understand?”
“To see things that are real,” Patricia said.
“Yes. And to get away from the problems for a while. Well, this is obviously a working vacation, and brief at that—we can’t stay more than two local days. But we thought it worthwhile to show you how our system works. We are trying to enlist your support—Patricia? May I call you that?”
She nodded.
“Because of the way things have worked out, you people can be very influential. We won’t force you into our ways or opinions, that’s not how our government works. Modeled on your own, after all.”
They stopped at a natural basalt breakwater pointing out to sea.
Patricia turned and saw a small, bright meteor pass across a few degrees of the horizon. No beams reached out to destroy it—it was small enough to disintegrate harmlessly on its own.
“We helped the Frants install their Sky Lance,” Toiler said. “When we opened the gate, they were still in the early atomic age. We arranged for some exchanges of information, set up a client-patron relationship and gave them what they needed to protect their world against the millennial comet sweeps.”
“What did you get in return?”
“Oh, they received much more than Sky Lance for what they gave. We opened the Way to them. They’re full partners in three gates now, commerce with three worlds and the normal-space trading systems around them. In return, they leased raw material and information rights to us. But the most valuable commodity they contribute is themselves.
You met Olmy’s partner. We find them ideal to work with—resourceful, reliable, unfailingly pleasant. And as far as anyone can tell, they genuinely enjoy working with us.”
“Makes them sound like good pets,” Patricia said.
“Yes, there is that aspect,” Toiler admitted. ”But they’re at least as intelligent as we are—unsupplemented, of course—and nobody treats them as if they were second-class citizens, or pets. You may have to drop some of your past prejudices to see our situation clearly, Patricia.”
“My prejudices are dropped,” she said. ”I’m just being ...”
She raised her hands and shook her head. Not once since their meeting had she looked directly at Toiler’s face.
“Before we came, every thousand years, Tunbl would pass through a sweep of old comets. They’d regularly lose more than half their population. All this ocean is cometary water—gathered across billions of years. Apparently, there was a long lull about a million years ago, and in that time the Frants evolved to their current form and built up basic cultures. Then the sweeps began again. Gradually, the individual Frants became more and more alike, passing information and personality traits on through chemical messengers, then through cultural means. They became a holographic society, the better to absorb the shock of the sweeps. But they had never realized their potential, and weren’t about to, until our gate was opened. Now they have some of our own technologies—using high-speed pictors to update each other, or even exchanging partial personalities. All in all, I’m not sure who was the more lucky—the Frants, or ourselves. We might have lost to the Jarts centuries ago if the Frants hadn’t helped us.”
Patricia listened intently; filling in what she hadn’t had time to research in the data service. ”Why can’t you establish some sort of client-patron relationship with the Jarts?” she asked.
“Ah! The Jarts are quite another story. You know, of course, that we found them occupying the Way when we first connected it to the seventh chamber.”
“So I’ve heard,” she said, remembering what the rogue had told her.
“The Engineer had the misfortune of opening an experimental gate on the Jart home world. Time in the Way was not yet matched with our own time. They were able to spend about three centuries in the incomplete Way, making it their home, even learning to open crude gates. When the Way was connected and opened, there they were--much as they are today. Strong, intelligent, aggressive, absolutely convinced they’re destined to populate all universes. We fought a violent war with them and pushed them back in the first decades. Then we opened selected gates and filled the first segment of the Way—down to one ex five—with soil and air. All the time we were building the Axis City, we fought skirmishes with them, pushing them back farther and farther, closing their gates. Finally, they retreated to two ex nine, and we established a barrier at that point. We tried reasoning, making exchanges. They wouldn’t have it. We knew we couldn’t rid the Way of them—we weren’t strong enough.”
Patricia sat on the lowest step of a stairway leading to the top of the breakwater. ”And how can we help you?”
“That’s a complicated question, actually,” Toiler said. “You can best help us by supporting us. Or—by not opposing us.”
“You can all go home now,” Patricia said. ”Such as it is.”
Toiler paused for a moment, puzzled by the abruptness of her leap of ideas. ”Exactly.” He sat beside her, and she edged a few centimeters away. ”Such as it is. Personally, despite Ser Lanier’s most heartfelt plea, I see little reason to return to Earth now.”
“You could help the survivors.”
“Patricia, they—you become us. I see nothing iniquitous with letting a world heal itself. The fact that we’ve made a causal loop—that we can return to the worst point in our world-line—is not what I would consider an opportunity. At the moment, it’s a handicap. Has Olmy explained how we hope to push the Jarts from the Way? For good?”
She shook her head.
“It’s an ambitious plan. You’ve heard rumors about secession—having the Axis City divide in two?”
She decided to play dumb and shook her head again.
“Our flaw research group discovered, years ago, that the Axis City could be accelerated to near c—to near light-speed. There would be no damage to the city itself, and the citizens would experience only minor discomfort—”
“I think we should all hear about this,” Patricia decided suddenly, standing up.”I mean, all of my group. Not just me.”
“They can learn as much as they want. You can guide them when they get back to the Axis Citymit’s all available in City Memory. Or Olmy can explain it to you.”
“Why hasn’t he told us already?”
“Patricia, our world is extremely complex, as you know perhaps better than I. I doubt Olmy has had the opportunity to educate you on a thousandth of the more important things there are to know about us.”
“Okay,” Patricia said, stepping onto the sand and facing Toiler. “I’m listening.”
“It would take over a day to approach that velocity, accelerating at about three hundred g’s—which is very close to the theoretical limit for the inertial damping systems, and for something as large as the Axis City, traveling on the flaw. The flaw would be seriously stressed, producing hard radiation and heavy particles ... But within the Way, even a velocity of one-third light-speed would create a space-time shock wave. We would reach that velocity at about one point seven ex nine. We would pass through the territories held by the Jarts with devastating effect. The relativistic distortions within the Way would be incredible. The shape of the Way itself would be altered as we passed, and whatever gates the Jarts have opened would be smoothed out of existence”—he slid his hand in a flat-out gesture--”like ironing a piece of fabric in one of your world’s laundries.”
Patricia’s eyes became distant. Her mind was racing now to absorb the idea of a relativistic object within the Way—and the realization that within the Way, an object traveling at only one-third c would be relativistic.
“A grand scheme, don’t you think?”
She nodded abstractedly. ”How far would you Iravel down the Way?”
“That’s still being debated.”
“And what are the alternatives?”
“The conference is considering the alternatives even now—and have been for over three weeks. We believe the Jarts will break though our barriers in a matter of years, perhaps months. They’ll overrun our most extended gates--we’ll shut them down and withdraw, of course—and eventually, by the end of the decade, they’ll push us back into the Thistledown. We’ll have to evacuate, and to keep them from following us, we’ll have to destroy the Way. That would be an incredible calamity.”
“You’re certain about this?”
Toiler nodded once. ”We cannot hold them for long. They’ve grown quite strong, and they’ve enlisted the help of other world:, by opening gates all up and down their segment of the Way.”
“Couldn’t you do the same?”
“As I said, they’ve occupied the Way for several centuries longer than we have. They’re more familiar with it, in some ways, than we are, even though we created it.”
Toiler wasn’t telling her about one of the alternatives the rogue had mentioned--blowing the Thistledown from the end of the Way and “cauterizing’ it, sealing it closed so it would continue to exist, independently of the sixth chamber machinery.
She decided not to ask him about that possibility. ”It’s fascinating,” she said. ”Gives me a lot to think about.”
“Yes, well, I’m sure I’ve violated all the rules of etiquette, Patricia. You’ve been very kind to listen to me. Our time is quite limited, as you see, and you’ve brought an additional element into the equation ... “
“I’m sure we have,” Patricia said. Perhaps more than you know ... “I’d like to walk back now.”
“Certainly. I’ll accompany you.”
She smiled at him, eyes still distant. Toiler said very little as they retraced their steps up the beach to the resort buildings, and that suited Patricia.
She was already slipping into the state, her mind working, conjuring up her personal notation. Passing quickly through Lanier’s room, she made a few excuses and retired to her own quarters, lying down on the bed and closing her eyes tightly.
Toiler greeted the others and spoke with them for several minutes, explaining he had had a good conversation with Patricia concerning subjects of importance to all of them.
After he left, Lanier knocked on Patricia’s door, and received no answer.
“Patricia?” he called.
“Yes,” she said softly, scrunching up her face.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m resting,” she said. ”I’ll join you for dinner.”
He looked at his watch; their second meal on the Frant World, ostensibly supper, would begin in an hour. He returned to his room.
“How is she?” Carrolson asked.
“Fine, she says. She’s napping.”
“Not likely,” Farley said. ”I wonder what Toiler told her?”