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It would never have happened this way if he had been with the
Family or even with Quath. Family kept the sharp edges away. Family was a
fiction, he knew that now. A fiction defending against the furious gulf that
yawned in all directions.
But a truthful fiction, too, because the story Families told by their example
made it possible to go on. The gulf was always there and you would see it
again, certainly for one last time, but there was no special haste in getting
to that moment. After you had seen the gulf you spent the rest of your time
knowing that it was there waiting and would come again.
In knowing this he was now free.
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Phantoms
At first he thought the distant peak was a mountain.
He had been walking for a long time. The forest had opened before him and
seemed to push him out--into rugged terrain where the timewinds blew and
sickened him. He went anyway.
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The mountain reared up as he went and he did not think about it much. Then he
saw that its flanks were smooth and firm. It did not fuzz and split off planes
like the timestone around him. Its smooth inclines stayed fixed. Its faces met
at worked edges. Magnetic field strengths were high, getting higher.
A pyramid. Corners of clear design. And events did not swim in its faces. The
stuff was granite-hard when he touched it at the base. Ordinary matter. A
stack of stone so large it seemed to be the landscape. In the silence of it
lingered mystery.
Going up it he felt better than he had in a long time. He was hungry but he
did not mind that. He put it from his mind, as he had in the years on
Snowglade. It was funny what you could get used to. He realized that hunger
made him nostalgic and laughed out loud. The bright sound went into a silence
so empty and was so completely absorbed that it made him fall silent again.
He had come a long way and so had a long time to think. Any human in this
place knew that he was a tiny and forgettable actor on a stage not of his
making. The drama of the mechs against the natural lifeforms was playing out,
and Toby did not understand it. He longed to talk with Quath again, to see his
father's face.
Below all the colossal energies of mechs and matter lay the whole long history
of the human Hunker Down. Who had made that happen? Why had Bishops and all
the rest of the Families been condemned to the hard-scrabble skin of planets,
when a refuge like the Wedge was here? While dwarves like that Andro got to
enjoy it.
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284
Gregory Benford
Below that riddle were the Bishops, still alive when plenty of other
Families were dead. Just luck, Toby thought. But it made you wonder.
And finally there was the Calamity. He had fled from that catastrophe long
ago, back when he was a boy but did not know what a boy was. He and his father
had lost Abraham that day. But now Abraham was here somewhere. Somehow.
To understand even a little piece of all this, Toby would have to find
Abraham. In a place where direction meant nothing and time was a place.
Partway up he heard footsteps. He was sure they were steps and coming from
above. He hurried up the slope. There were level walkways spaced at even
intervals as he went up.
The walkways went off to left and right and he presumed they led all the way
around the structure. They curved into the distance and he could see no one on
the ones below. He labored against a steepening incline and reached the next
walkway.
No one on it. But the footsteps came slower now. As he climbed farther the
footsteps got fainter as though he had left them behind. They spaced farther
and farther apart.
Dopplering in time. Going away into a future or a past, borderlands of the
real. As if the walker were slowing, hesitating, getting sluggish from
fatigue. Toby himself began to tire but he could still hear the steps coming
in long low notes and so kept on.
The top was not what he expected. Broad and flat and smooth, the surface
flecked with gray dabs. Magnetic field very strong.
No one. He could not hear the footsteps any longer.
He looked down. The walkways were so far away he could not tell if anyone was
on them or not. Featureless and unmarred, the great structure stretched away.
In the hazy distance he could make out the endless wrestling forms of the
timescape, esty fighting against itself, Lanes intersecting in wrenching
turbulence.
He turned away from the edge as he thought about resting for a while before
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going back down.
"Where've you been?"
The pale-skinned man before him was short and compact. The same size as Andro
and the other dwarfs, but wrinkled and completely nude.
"Understand, do you?"
Toby looked around and could not see where the man had come from.
"Look, we haven't much time. You're a Bishop, right?"
Toby's tongue felt thick and useless. "Uh, yeasay."
"Good. Latest generation, I'd judge."
"Yeasay. Who--"
"Come on, get back inside where it's safer. And warmer."
The dwarf showed Toby his leathery back as he marched quickly across the
smooth plain. As Toby caught up the stone split. A clean rectangle opened and
there was a ramp leading down. "Come on."
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FURIOUS GULF
285
Toby stopped at the head of the ramp. "In my Family you don't walk into a
place till you know what it is."
"Oh? It's an operations center." The dwarf turned to go down.
"Whose?"
"Um? Mine. Ours. Human, if that's what you mean."
"And who've you?"
"Oh. Sorry." The dwarf walked over and held out a hand. "Walmsley.
Nigel Walmsley."
"What Family's that?"
"The Brits."
"How do you know who I am?"
"History. I've been waiting for you a long time."
"How long?"
Walmsley looked as though he were calculating. "I make it about twenty-eight
thousand years. Your time frame, of course." To Toby's blank look he
volunteered, "Approximately."
"How come? What for?"
"Come have some tea. You Bishops kept alive that tradition at least, didn't
you?"
"Uh, yeasay." Toby had not tasted tea since he was a boy. "At the
Citadel."
"I see, the Citadel. Good then. You're Killeen's son?"
Startled, Toby gaped. Walmsley nodded. "So I see. Message for you."
He moved his hands quickly and for a flicker one of his arms seemed to be
transparent, showing intricate webs beneath the skin.
Killeen was standing between them both.
His father looked worn, haggard. He was in Family Bishop field suiting, not
ship gear He glanced around and saw Toby. "Son, I need you."
Toby did not know what to say. He reached out to touch his father and his hand [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]