The Xeelee Flower

A.D. 4922

I still get tourists out here, you know. Even though it’s been so long since I was a hero. But then, I’m told, these days the reopened Poole wormholes will get you from Earth to Miranda in hours.

Hours. What a miracle. Not that these tourist types appreciate it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the company. It just bugs me that every last one, after he’s finished looking over my villa built into the five-mile cliffs of Miranda, turns his face up to the ghostly blue depths of Uranus, and asks the same dumb question:

“Say, buddy, how come you use a fish tank for a toilet?”

But I’m a good host, and I merely smile and snap my fingers. After a while, my battered old buttlebot limps in with a bottle of valley bottom wine, and I settle back and begin:

“Well, my friend, I use the fish tank for a toilet for the same reason you would. Because my boss used to live in it.”

And that’s how I got where I am today.

By working for a bunch of fish, I mean, not pissing in the tank. Although I don’t know what stopped me from doing just that by the time we reached Goober’s Star eight months out from Earth.

“The resolution, Jones, the resolution!” The shoal of Squeem darted anxiously around their tank, griping at me from the translator box taped to one glass wall.

I put down the spare tank I’d been busy scraping out, and blinked across the cluttered little cabin. The buttlebotyes, the same one, squeaky-clean in those daysscuttled past, humming happily in its chores. I picked my way to the control panel. I got out my adjustable spanner and gingerly tweaked the fiddly little enhancement vernier. Like most Xeelee-based technology it was too fine for human fingers. The secretive Xeelee evidently have great brains but tiny hands. Then again, some people haven’t managed to evolve hands at all, I reflected, as the Squeem flipped around in their greenish murk.

“Ah,” enthused the Squeem as the monitors sharpened up. “Our timing is perfect.”

I gloomily considered a myriad beautiful images of two things I didn’t want much to be close to: Goober’s Starabout G-type, about two Earth orbits away, and about to nova; and a planet full of nervous Xeelee.

And the most remarkable feature of the whole situation was that we weren’t running for our lives. In fact, we were going to get closera lot closerdrawn mothlike by the greed of the Squeem for stolen Xeelee treasure.

The buttlebot squeezed past my leg, extended a few pseudopodia, and began pushing buttons with depressing enthusiasm. I sighed and turned back to my fish tank. At least I had one up on the ‘bot, I reflected; at least I was getting paid. Although, like most of the rest of humanity at that time, I hadn’t exactly had a free choice in the nature of my employment

The Squeem’s rasp broke into my thoughts. “Jones, our planetfall is imminent. Please prepare the flitter for your descent.”

Your descent. Had they said “your” descent? I nearly dropped the fish tank.

Carefully, I got up from my knees. “Into Lethe’s waters with that.” I defiantly straightened my rubber gloves. “No way. The Xeelee wouldn’t let me past the orbit of the moons”

“The Xeelee will be fully occupied with their flight from the imminent nova. And your descent will be timed to minimize your risk.”

“That’s a lot of ‘you’ and ‘your,’ ” I observed witheringly. “Show me where my contract says I’ve got to do this.”

Can fish be said to be dry? The Squeem said drily, “That will be difficult as you haven’t got a contract at all.”

They had a point. I reluctantly took off my pinafore and began to tug at the fingers of my rubber gloves. The buttlebot smugly opened up the suit locker. “You ought to send that little tin cretin,” I said; and the Squeem replied, “We are.”

I swear to this day that buttlebot jumped.

And so the buttlebot and I found ourselves drifting through a low orbit over the spectacular Xeelee landscape. We watched morosely as the main ship pulled away from the tiny, human-design flitter, and wafted our employer off to the comparative safety of the far-side of one of the planet’s two moons.

My work for the Squeem, roughly speaking, was to do any fiddly, dirty, dangerous jobs the buttlebot wasn’t equipped for, such as to clean out fish tanks and land on hostile alien planets. And me, a college graduate. Of course, the role of humanity at that time was roughly equivalent.

It isn’t that the Squeemor any of the other races out therewere any brighter than we were or better or even much older. But they had something we didn’t, and hadthenno way of getting our hands on.

And that was stolen Xeelee technology. For instance the hyperdrive, scavenged by the Squeem from a derelict Xeelee ship centuries earlier, had been making that fishy race’s fortune ever since. Tools and gadgets of all kinds, on which a Galactic civilization had been based. And all pilfered, over millions of years, from the Xeelee.

I use the word civilization loosely, of course. Can it be used to describe what exists out therea ramshackle construct based on avarice, theft and the subjugation of junior races like ourselves?

We began our descent. The dark side of the Xeelee world grew into a diamond-studded carpet: fantastic cities glittered on the horizon. The Xeeleeso far ahead, they make the rest of us look like tree-dwellers. Secretive, xenophobic. Not truly hostile to the rest of us; merely indifferent. Get in their way and you would be rubbed aside like a mote in the eye of a god.

And I was as close to them as any sentient being had ever got, probably. Nice thought.

Yes, like gods. But very occasionally careless. And that was the basis of the Squeem’s plan that day.

We dropped slowly. The conversation left a lot to be desired. And the surface of the planet blew off.

I recoiled from the sudden light at the port, and the buttlebot jerked us down through the incredible traffic. It looked as if whole cities had detached from the ground and were fleeing upwards, light as bubbles. The flitter was swept with shifting color; we were in the down elevator from Heaven.

Abruptly as it had risen, the Xeelee fleet was past. Immense, night-dark wings spread over the doomed planet for a moment, as if in farewell; and then the fleet squirted without fuss into infinity. Evidently, we hadn’t been noticed.

The flitter moved in looser arcs now towards the surface. I took over from the buttlebot and began to seek out a likely landing place. We skimmed over a scoured landscape.

From behind the darkened planet’s twin moons, the valiant Squeem poked their collective nose. “The nova is imminent; please make haste with your planetfall.”

“Thanks. Now get back in your tin and let me concentrate.” I wrestled with the flitter’s awkward controls; we lurched towards the ground. I cursed the Xeelee under my breath; I thought of fish pie; I didn’t even much like the buttlebot. The last thing I needed at a time like that was a reminder that what I was doing was about as clever as looting a house on fire. Get in after the owners have fled; get out before the roof caves in. The schedule was kind of tight.

Finally, we thumped down. Reproachfully, the buttlebot uncoiled its pseudopodia from around a chair leg, let down the hatch and scuttled out. Already suited up, I grabbed a data desk and flashlight laser, and staggered after it. That descent hadn’t done me a lot of good either, but in the circumstances I preferred not to hang around.

I emerged into a bonelike landscape. The noise of my breath jarred in the complete absence of life. I imagined the planet trembling as its bloated sun prepared to burst. It wasn’t a happy place to be.

I’d put us down in the middle of a village-sized clump of buildings, evidently too small or remote to lift with the rest of the cities. In a place like this we had our best chance of coming across something overlooked by the Xeelee in their haste, some toy that could revolutionize the economies of a dozen worlds.

Listen, I’m serious. It had happened before. Although any piece of junk that would satisfy the Squeem and let me get out of there would do for me.

The low buildings gaped in the double shadows of the moonlight. The buttlebot scurried into dark places. I ran my hand over the edge of a doorway, and came away with a fine groove in a glove finger. The famous Xeelee construction material: a proton’s width thick, about as dense as glass wool, and as strong as Life itself. And no one had a clue how to make or cut it. Nothing new; a familiar miracle.

The buttlebot buzzed past excitedly, empty-handed. The vacant place was soulless; there was nothing to evoke the people who had so recently lived here. The thorough Xeelee had even evacuated their ghosts.

“Squeem, this is a waste of time.”

“I estimate some minutes before you should ascend. Please proceed; I am monitoring the star.”

“I feel so secure knowing that.” I tried a few more doorways. The flashlight laser probed emptiness.Until, in the fourth or fifth building, I found something.

The artifact, dropped in a corner, was a little like a flower. Six angular petals, which looked as if they were made of Xeelee sheeting, were fixed to a small cylindrical base; the whole thing was about the size of my open hand. An ornament? The readings from my data deskphysical dimensions, internal structuredidn’t change as I played with the toy in the light of the flashlight laser. Half the base clicked off in my hand. Nothing exciting happened. Well, whatever it was, maybe it would make the Squeem happy and I could get out.

I took it out into the moonlight. “Squeem, are you copying?” I held it in the laser beam, and twisted the base on or off.

The Squeem jabbered excitedly. “Jones! Please repeat the actions performed by your opposable thumb, and observe the data desk. This may be significant.”

“Really.” I clicked the base on and off, and inspected the exposed underside in the laser light. No features. But a readout trembled on the data desk; the mass was changing.

I experimented. I took away the torch: the change in mass, a slow rise, stopped. Shine the torch, and the mass crept up. And when I replaced the base, no change with or without the torch. “Hey, Squeem,” I said slowly, “are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Jones, this may be a major find.”

I watched the mass of the little flower creep up in the light of the torch. It wasn’t muchabout an ounce per second, to be exactbut it was there. “Energy to mass, right? Direct conversion of the radiant energy of the beam.” And the damn thing wasn’t even warm in my hand.

I clicked the base back into place; the flower’s growth stopped. Evidently, the base was a key; remove it to make the flower work. The Squeem didn’t remark on this; for some reason, I didn’t point it out. Well, I wasn’t asked.

“Jones, return to the flitter at once. Take no further risks in the return of the artifact.”

That was what I wanted to hear. I ran through the skull-like town, clutching the flower. The buttlebot scurried ahead. I gasped out, “Hey, this must be what they use to manufacture their construction material. Just stick it out in the sunlight, and let it grow.” Presumably the petals, as well as being the end product, were the main receptors of the radiant energy. In which case, the area growth would be exponential. The more area you grow, the more energy you receive; and the more energy you receive, the more area you grow, and…

I thought of experiments to check this out. Listen, I had in my hand a genuine piece of Xeelee magic; it caught my imagination. Of course, the Squeem would be taking the profits. I considered ways to steal the flower…

My feet itched; they were too close to a nova. I had other priorities at that point. I stopped thinking and ran.

We bundled into the flitter; I let the buttlebot lift us off, and stored the Xeelee flower carefully in a locker.

The lift was bumpy: high winds in the stratosphere. A spectacular aurora shivered over us. “Squeem, are you sure you’ve done your sums right?”

“There is an inherent uncertainty in the behavior of novae,” the Squeem replied reassuringly. We reached orbit; the main ship swam towards us. “After all,” the Squeem lectured on, “a nova is by definition an instability. However I am confident we have at least five minutes before”

At once, three events.

The moons blazed with light.

The Squeem shut up.

The main ship turned from a nearby cylinder into an arrow of light, pointing at the safety of the stars.

“Five minutes? You dumb fish.”

The buttlebot worked the controls frantically, unable to comprehend the abrupt departure of the Squeem. The nova had come ahead of schedule; the twin moons reflected its sick glory. We were still over the dark side of the planet, over which screamed a wind that came straight from the furnaces of a medieval hell. On the day side, half the atmosphere must already have been blasted away.

The flitter was a flimsy toy. I estimated we had about ten minutes to sunrise.

My recollection of the first five of those minutes is not clear. I do not pretend to be a strong man. I remember an image of the walls of the flitter peeling back like burnt flesh, the soft interior scoured out…

Leaving one object, one remnant, spinning in a cloud of metal droplets.

I realized I had an idea.

I grabbed the Xeelee flower from its locker, and wasted a few more seconds staring at it. The only substance within a million miles capablemaybeof resisting the nova, and it was the size of my palm. I had to grow it, and fast. But how?

My brain chugged on. Right. One way. But would there be time? The flower’s activating base came off, and went into a suit pocket.

The buttlebot was still at the controls, trying to complete its rendezvous with a vanished ship. If there’d been time, I might have found this touching; as things were, I knocked it aside and began entering an emergency sequence. My thinking was fuzzy, my gloved fingers clumsy, and it took three tries to get it right. You can imagine the effect on my composure.

Now I had about a minute to get to the back of the vessel. I snapped closed my visor and de-cycled the airlock. I failed to observe the mandatory safety routines, thus voiding the manufacturer’s guarantees. The buttlebot clucked nervously about the cabin.

Clutching the Xeelee flower, I pulled into space and set off one-handed.

I couldn’t help looking down at the stricken planet. Around the curve of the world, the air rushing from the day side was gathering into a cyclone to end all cyclones; clouds swarmed like maggots, fleeing the boiling oceans. A vicious light spread over the horizon.

Followed by the confused buttlebot, I made it to the reactor dump hatch. In about thirty seconds, the safety procedure I had set up should funnel all the flitter’s residual fusion energy out through the hatch into space, in one mighty squirt. Except, the energy pulse wasn’t going to reach free space; it would all hit the Xeelee flower, which I was going to fix into place over the hatch.

Right. Fix it. With what? I fumbled in my suit pockets for tape. A piece of string. Chewing gum. My mind emptied. The buttlebot scuttled past, intent on some vital task.

I grabbed it, and wrapped the flower in one of its pseudopodia. “Listen,” I screamed at it, “stay right here. Got it? Hold it for five seconds, please, that’s all I ask.”

No more time. I scrambled to the far side of the flitter.

Five seconds isn’t long. But that five seconds was long enough for me to notice the brightening of the encroaching horizon. Long enough to note that I was gambling my life on a few more or less unfounded assumptions about the Xeelee flower.

It had to be a hundred percent efficient; if it couldn’t absorb all that was about to be thrown at it, then it would evaporate like dew. It had to grow exponentially, with the rate of growth area increasing with the area grown already. Otherwise it couldn’t grow fast enough to save me as planned.

I also had plenty of time to wonder if the buttlebot had got bored

There was a flash. I peered around the flitter’s flank.

It had worked. The flower had blossomed in the fusion light into an umbrella-sized dish, maybe just big enough for the hard rain that was going to fall.

The flower tumbled slowly away from the now-derelict flitter, as did the buttlebot, sadly waving the melted stump of one pseudopod. I kicked it out of the way, and pushed into space. The heat at my back was knife-sharp.

I reached the flower and curled into a ball behind it. The light flooded closer, beading the edge of my improvised shield. I imagined the nova’s lethal energy thudding into the material, condensing into harmless sheets of Xeelee construction material. My suit ought to protect me from the nasty heavy particles which would follow. It was well made, based on Xeelee material, naturally… I began to think I might live through this.

I waited for dawn. The buttlebot tumbled by, head over heels. It squirmed helplessly, highlights dazzling in the nova rise.

At the last moment I reached out and pulled it in with me. It was the stupidest thing I have ever done.

The nova blazed.

The flitter burst into a shower of metal rain. The skin of the planet below wrinkled, like a tomato in steam.

And that buttlebot and I rode our Xeelee flower, like surfers on a wave.

It took about twelve hours. At the end of that time, I found I could relax without dying.

I slept.

I woke briefly, dry-mouthed, muscles like wood. The buttlebot clung to my leg like a child to a doll.

We drifted through space. The flower rotated slowly, half-filling my field of view. Its petaled shadow swept over the wasted planet. It must already have been a mile across, and still growing.

What a spectacle. I slept some more.

The recycling system of my suit was designed for a couple of eight-hour EVA shifts. The Squeem did not return from their haven, light years distant, for four days.

I did a lot of thinking in that time. For instance, about the interesting bodily functions I could perform into the Squeem’s tank. And also about the flower.

It grew almost visibly, drinking in the sunlight. Its growth was exponential; the more it grew, the more capacity it had for further growthI did some woolly arithmetic. How big could it grow?

Start with, say, a square mile of construction material. I made educated guesses about its surface density. Suppose it gets from the nova and surrounding stars about what the Earth receives from the Sunsomething over a thousand watts a square yard. Assume total efficiency of conversion: mass equals energy over cee squared.

That gave it a doubling time of fifteen years. I dreamed of numbers: one, two, four, eight, sixteen… It was already too big to handle. It would be the size of the Earth after a couple of centuries, the size of Sol a little later.

Give it a thousand years and you could wrap up the Galaxy like a birthday present. Doubling series grow fast. And no one knew how to cut Xeelee construction material.

The Universe waltzed around me; I stroked the placid buttlebot. My tongue was like leather; the failing recycling system of my suit left a taste I didn’t want to think about.

I went over my figures. Of course, the growing flower’s power supply would actually be patchy, and before long the edge would be spreading at something close to the speed of light. But it would still reach an immense size. And the Xeelee hadn’t shown much interest in natural laws in the past. We drifted into its already monstrous eclipse; the buttlebot snuggled closer.

This was the sort of reason the Xeelee didn’t leave their toys lying around, I supposed. The flower would be a hazard to shipping, to say the least. The rest of the Galaxy weren’t going to be too pleased with the Squeem…

These thoughts sifted to the bottom of my mind, and after a while began to coalesce.

The secret of the hyperdrive: yes, that would be a fitting ransom. I imagined presenting it to a grateful humanity. Things would be different for us from now on.

And a little something for myself, of course. Well, I’d be a hero. Perhaps a villa, overlooking the cliffs of Miranda. I’d always liked that bust-up little moon. I thought about the interior design.

It was a sweet taste, the heady flavor of power. The Squeem would have to find a way to turn off the Xeelee flower. But there was only one way. And that was in my suit pocket.

Oh, how they’d pay. I smiled through cracked lips.

Well, you know the rest. I even got to keep the buttlebot. We drifted through space, dreaming of Uranian vineyards, waiting for the Squeem to return.

The images faded.

“I liked Jones,” I said.

“Because he didn’t give up. I know you, Jack.”

“And he won, didn’t he?”

“Yes. Jones’s small victory would, indeed, prove to be the turning point in human oppression by the Squeem…”

The yoke of the Squeem was cast off. Humans were free again, able to exploit themselves and their own resources as they saw fit. Not only that, the Squeem occupation had left humans with a legacy of high technology.

The lost human colonies on the nearby stars were contacted and revitalized, and a new, explosive wave of expansion began, powered by hyperdrive. Humans spread like an infection across the Galaxy, vigorous, optimistic once more.

And everywhere, they encountered the footprints of the Xeelee…

More Than Time or Distance

A.D. 5024

My one-woman flitter dropped into the luminous wreckage of an old supernova. I peered into the folded-out depths of the dead star, hoarding details like coins for Timothy.

The star remnant at the heart of the wreck was a shrunken miser; its solitary planet was a ball of slag pockmarked with shallow craters. Once this must have been the core of a mighty Jovian. I landed and stepped out. Feel how the surface crackles like glass, Tim… I imagined four-year-old eyes round with wonder. Except, of course, my memory of my son was five years and a thousand light years out of date. But I felt Tim’s presence, somehowwhen you get close enough to someone you’re never really alone again. And maybe if my prospector’s luck changed here, it wouldn’t be five years before I held him again.

Above me violet sails of gas drifted through a three-dimensional sky. Around me a thousand empty light years telescoped away. And ahead of me stood a buildingplain, cuboid, a bit like a large shoe box.

But a shoe box at the center of a nebulaand made of Xeelee construction material.

I stood stock still, the hairs at the back of my neck prickling against the lining of my pressure suit. An original Xeelee relic, the dream of prospectors from a thousand races… and intact, too.

The exploded star washed blank walls with light like milk. I expected a giant to step through that low doorway… I thought of one of Timothy’s jokes. What do you call a giant alien monster with a zap gun?

You know it. Sir.

I stepped through the doorway. The wall material was sword-thin.

The ceiling was translucent; supernova filaments filled the place with violet and green shadows. My eyes were drawn to a flicker of light, incongruously playful: about five yards from the doorway a small pillar supported a hoop of sky blue, which was maybe two feet wide. The hoop was polished and paper-thin, and a sequence of pink sparks raced around its circumference.

About thirty yards further down the long axis of the hall was a second pillar bearing an identical hoop. The two circles faced each other, chattering bits of light.

That was all. But it was enough to stop my heart. Because whatever this place was, it was still workingand working for the Xeelee, lurking like watchful spiders in their Prime Radiant at the Galaxy’s coreonly three days away in their magical ships.

I stepped forward with my portable data desk and began to mark and measure.

The sequence of sparks in the hoop nearest the door was random, as far as I could tell. So was the sequence in the other hoopbut it was an exact copy of the first sequence, delayed by a nanosecond.

I worked out the implications of that, and then I leaned carefully against a low pillar and breathed deep enough to mist up my face plate.

Think about it. Ring A was talking to ring B, which got the message delayed by a nanosecond. Each ring was a light nanosecond across. And the rings were placed a hundred light nanoseconds apart.

So all the delay was in the structure of the ringsand the communication between them was instantaneous.

My face plate fogged a bit more. Instantaneous communication: it was a technological prize second only in value to the hyperdrive itself…

The secret had to be quantum inseparability. When a single object is split up, its components can still communicate instantaneously. That’s high school stuff, Bell’s theorem from the twentieth century. But, everyone had thought, you couldn’t use the effect to send meaningful messages.

The Xeelee had really got their fingers into the guts of the Universe this time. It was almost blasphemous.

And very, very profitable.

My sense of awe evaporated. I found myself doing a sort of dance, still clinging to the pillar, booted heels clicking. Well, I had an excuse. It was the high point of my life.

And at just that moment, in walked a giant alien monster with a zap gun. Wouldn’t you know it?

At least it wasn’t a Xeelee. About all we know of them is that they’re small, physically. My superstitious terror faded to disgust.

“You tailed me,” I said into my suit radio. “You sneaked up on me, and now you’re going to rob me and kill me. Right?” I looked at the zap gun and remembered the joke. “Right, sir?”

I don’t suppose it got it. Silhouetted against a violet doorframe was a humanoid sketch in gun-metal gray. Its head was a cartoon; all the action was in a porthole in its stomach, through which I caught grotesque hints of faces. It was like an inside-out bathyscaphe with weird sea-bottom creatures peering out of darkness.

And it had the zap gun. The details of that don’t really matter; it was essence of gun and it was pointing at me.

I labeled it the Statue.

The silence dragged on, maybe for dramatic effect, more likely because the Xeelee-derived translator box I saw strapped to one metal thigh was having trouble matching up our respective world pictures. Finally it spoke.

“Allow me to summarize the situation.” The box’s voice was a machine rasp; the stomach monster twitched. “I have discontinued your vessel. I estimate your personal environment will last no more than five human days. You have no weapons, or any means of communication with your fellowsnone of whom are in any event closer than a thousand light years.”

I thought it over. “Okay,” I said, “I’m prepared to discuss terms for your surrender.”

“The logic of the situation is that you will die. You will therefore move outside this structure”

Actually the logic was that I was dead already. I thought fast, looking for the edge. “Of course, you’re right.” I stepped forward

and whirled like a leafand snapped one sky blue hoop off its pillarand draped it around my neck.

It was over before either of us had a chance to think about it. The whirling pink sparks faded and died.

The Statue’s limbs were motionless but its stomach thrashed. I felt breathless and foolish; the hoop around my neck was like a lavatory seat put there during a drunken teenage party. “Logic’s not my strong point,” I apologized.

You see, I had a plan. It wasn’t a very good plan, and I was probably dead even if it came off. But it was all I had, and I noticed I was still breathing.

The Statue stared. “You have damaged the artifact.”

“You see, there had to be a reason why you didn’t shoot me in the back before I knew about it. And that reason’s got to be your ignorance of humans. Right?” I snapped. “Despite the fact that you and your kind have been tailing me for months”

“Actually years. We find humans are resourceful creatures, worthy of study.”

“Years, thenif you zapped me, maybe I’d explode, or melt, or in general make a horrible mess of the Xeelee equipment. And you won’t hurt me now for fear of doing even more damage.” I clung to the frail hoop around my neck.

The Statue moved further into the building, the interesting end of the zap gun unwavering. We stood along the axis of the structure. The Statue said patiently, “But even with this awareness you are scarcely at an advantage.”

I shrugged.

“You are still isolated and without resources.” The Statue seemed confused. “All I have to do is wait five days, when you will die in undignified circumstances and I will retrieve the artifact.”

“Ah,” I said mysteriously. “A lot can happen in five days.” In fact, maybe in threeI kept that to myself.

The stomach monster thrashed.

I walked around the pillar and sat down, taking care not to squash my catheter. “So we wait.” I settled the hoop more comfortably around my neck.

Giant wings of gas flapped slowly beyond the translucent ceiling, and the hours passed.

Time stretches like a lazy leopard when it wants to.

I spent a day staring out a statue and not thinking about my catheteror Tim.

I snapped out, “You’ve no idea what you’re stealing from me here.”

The Statue hesitated. “I believe I do. This is clearly a Xeelee monitoring station. Presumably one of a network spread through the Galaxy.”

Instantly I wished I hadn’t spoken. If it had thought through as far as that… to distract it, I said, “So you watched my experiments?”

“Yes. What we see must be a test rig for the instantaneous communication device.”

“How do you suppose it works?” Stick to details; keep it off the Xeelee

A longer pause. Through the ceiling skin I watched a cathedral of buttressed smoke. The Statue said, “I fear the translator box cannot provide the concepts… At one time these two hoops were part of a single object. And an elementary particle, an electron perhaps, would be able to move at random between any two points of that object, without a time lapse.”

“Yeah. This is quantum physics. The electron we perceive is an ‘average’ of an underlying ‘real’ electron. The real electron jumps about over great distances within a quantum system, quite randomly and instantaneously. But the average has to follow the physical laws of our everyday experience, including the speed of light limit.”

“The point,” it said, “is that the real electron will travel at infinite speed between all parts of an objecteven when that object has been broken up and its parts separated by large distances, even light years.”

“We call that quantum inseparability. But we thought you could use it only to send random data, no information-bearing messages.”

“Evidently the Xeelee do not agree,” the Statue said dryly. “It took many generations before my species could be persuaded that the elusive ‘real’ electron is a physical fact, and not a mathematical invention.”

I smiled. “Mine, too. Maybe our species have got more in common than they realize.”

“Yes.”

Well, that was a touching thought which augured hope for the future of the Galaxy. But I noticed it didn’t touch the zap gun.

The thing in the Statue’s stomach started to feed on something; I turned away. The gloom deepened as the pale supernova remnant was eclipsed by the edge of the ceiling. I tried to sleep.

The first day was bad enough, but the second was the worst. Except for the third.

For me, anyway. The suit had water and foodwell, a syrup nipplebut the recycling system wasn’t designed for a long vacation. I didn’t want to lose face by sluicing out my plumbing system all over the floor. And so, when I went for my regular walks around the bereft pillar, I sloshed.

By contrast, the Statue was unmoving, machinelike. Bizarre fish swam in its stomach, and the zap gun tracked me like the eye of a snake.

On the third day I stood by my pillar, swaying in unstable equilibrium. I didn’t have to feign weakness. I sneaked glances at the futuristic sky. I had to time things just right

At length, the Statue said, “You are weakening and will surely die. But this has always been inevitable. I do not understand your motivation.”

I laughed groggily. “I’m waiting for the cavalry.”

The stomach creature twitched uneasily. “What is this ‘calvary’?”

Too uneasy. I shut myself up with the truth. “Maybe I just don’t like being robbed. I’m a prospector for Xeelee gold, but it’s not just for me. Can you understand that? It’s for my son. My off-spring. That’s what you’re taking from me, and I don’t even know what you are.”

A flicker in the sky like the turn of a page.

It was time. I stumbled to my knees.

The Statue said, not unkindly, “You have been a worthy opponent. I will allow you to end your life according to the custom of your species.”

“Thank you. II guess it’s over.” I forced myself to my feet, took the hoop from my neck, and laid it reverently atop the little pillar. I began walking stiffly towards the door, feeling ashamed of my trickiness. Amazing, isn’t it. “I’d like to die outside,” I said solemnly.

The Statue glided away from the doorway, respectfully lowering its zap gun.

I got outside the building. Another shudder across the weird sky. I limped around the corner of the building

and ran for my life. My legs were like string, shivering from under use. A bar of light swept behind the stars. There were tiny explosions in my peripheral vision; it was as if something was solidifying out of the layer of space that cloaked the planet.

The Xeelee didn’t believe in a quiet entrance.

I tumbled face first into a shallow crater and stayed that way. It didn’t feel deep enough; I imagined my backside waving like a flag to the marauding Xeelee.

A giant started stomping around me. I held onto my head and waited for the pounding to stop. I glimpsed wings, night-dark, hundreds of miles wide, beating over the planet, eclipsing the glowing gas.

The planet stopped shivering.

I tried to move. My muscles were like cardboard. Pieces crackled off the back of my suit, which was burnt to a crisp. I walked from the crater scattering scabs like an unearthly leper.

I reached the site of the Xeelee station. I was a fly at the edge of a saucer; the hole was a perfect hemisphere, a hundred yards wide. I skirted it carefully, heading for a sparkle of twisted metal beyond it.

The Statue lay like Kafka’s cockroach, its sketch of a head battered into concavity, its limbs and torso crumpled. Fluid bubbled through a crack in the porthole, and something inside looked out at me listlessly.

The translator box was hesitant and scratchy, but intelligible. “I… wish to know.”

I knelt beside it. “Know what?”

“How you knew when… they would come.”

“Neat timing, huh?” I shrugged. “Well, the clues were there for both of us.”

“Quantum inseparability?”

“Signals will pass instantaneously between a communicator’s two halves. But those halves must once have been in physical contact. Once joined, they can never be truly parted. Like people,” I mused. “It takes more than time or distance”

“I begin to… understand.”

“The components of this station, and all its clones throughout the Galaxy, must have been carried here from a central exchange. That’s where the repairmen we’ve just, ah, encountered, must have come from. And the exchange has to be at the Xeelee home base, at the Galaxy core. Three days’ travel for the Xeelee.”

“So they had to come. But the Xeelee Prime Radiant is a matter of speculation. You did not know”

I grinned ruefully. “Well, I knew for sure I’d had it unless I took a long shot. Your precious logic demonstrated that.”

More bubbles from the stomach, and the voice grew weaker. “But your… ship is destroyed. Your victory does not bring success.”

“Yeah.” I sat in crunchy dirt beside the dying Statue. “I guess I didn’t like to think this far ahead.” The depth of focus seemed to shift; light years expanded around me.

Even the Statue was company. “You have been a worthy… opponent.”

“You’re repeating yourself,” I said rudely.

“My ship is at… the planet’s nearer pole, one day’s journey from here. You may be able to adapt its life system to your purposes.”

“Ah… thank you. Why?”

“Because you would probably find it anyway. And I hope your species will… be tolerant of mine in the future.”

I stayed with the Statue until it bubbled to silence.

I looked back ruefully at the hole the Xeelee had left. There went a hundred fortunes.

But, Lethe’s waters could take the money. I’d take away the Statue’s ship, and at least the principle of the instantaneous transmitter. That ought to be enough; resourceful creatures, we humans.

I felt Tim’s presence steal over me; it was as if his hand crept into mine, reasserting our inseparability. I picked up what was left of the zap gun; it would make a great gift for him. Then I walked over fire-crisped slag to the pole.

The Statue, that Kafka cockroach, reminded me of me. I wondered uneasily if that brave prospector would have found me as repellent, as inhuman, as the creature who tried to rob her.

I knew that the quantum inseparability communicator became a key enabling technology for the expansion of mankind. It made the prospector her fortune, and her fame.

And the expansion continued.

“Watch,” Eve said. “Learn…”

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