[Is this real?] Sage whispered, gazing at the star system, knowing that it was impossible: it was an image, an illusion. He felt a sudden longing; he thought of his brother, light-years away, and wished that he could reach out to his brother as easily as this image had come to him. How long had it been since the last message? Three years?
There was a rumble in the rapture-field, but no answer to his question. Finally he murmured to Ramo, [Does this look to you like what I think it does?]
Ramo grunted. [A stored image, obviously.]
[Maybe, but . . . I don't think so.] Doubt was rising in him, but the feeling of certainty that had swept him was too strong, the sense that this was a direct and present view. [The system said it was related to your question about stardrive effects. I don't see how . . .] Sage struggled to find words. [I think it's realtime. The way it opened up like a window . . .] He hesitated, aware of a halo surrounding them, shimmering. [See that flicker, like a transmission?]
[Can't be done,] Ramo said. [Not over interstellar distances. You should know that. It's either a recording or a construct.]
[A construct wouldn't have that flicker,] Sage said.
[Well, something from one of the probes, then. Or the colony fleet.]
Sage flushed at the latter suggestion, wanting to say, Yes . . . yes. But he knew it wasn't true. [It can't be from the colony ships,] he said finally. [It's the wrong color sun. And the fleet's still in transit. And anyway, how would they have transmitted it?]
Ramo peered at him, taken aback. [How come you know so all-fired much—?]
[It is a realtime image,] said a voice, interrupting. It carried a Midwestern twang. It was the voice of the gnostic system.
Sage swallowed. [Do you mean a realtime transmission?]
[It is a demonstration of interdimensional transfer-gate imagery.]
There was a silent pause. Then Sage said, [What's that mean?]
Ramo grunted. [Bull.]
The gnosys was silent.
Sage tried to think. Truthfully, Ramo's reaction made the most sense. There was no way he knew of to project a realtime image between stars. Even by faster-than-light ship, transit took months or years, and there was no mode of communication that was faster. So either he was misunderstanding—or this was something totally, stunningly new. [When you say, "realtime,"] he said carefully, [what exactly do you mean?]
[What would you expect it to mean?] said the gnosys.
Flustered, Sage stammered, [I . . . I don't know. Please explain.]
The gnosys was silent again.
[This,] Ramo muttered, [is weird. Did we ask for this? Why are we being subjected to weirdness?]
Data continued to flow past, updating the image. [I don't know,] Sage murmured finally. [But I think we'd better talk to Kyd. This just isn't right.] With a touch, he opened an outside channel. The image of the star system quivered, and a glowing wedge of the rap-field opened up like a fan. [Can you hear me out there?] he called.
A tiny voice answered. [Sage?] He boosted the signal, strengthening the voice. [Yes, we hear you.] It was Pali. [Have you entered the system yet?]
He was stunned. [Haven't you seen any of this?]
There was puzzlement in Pali's voice. [We saw you . . . searching, I guess. Then the picture scrambled—and we've been waiting to hear from you. Have you had any luck?]
[Wait a sec'.] Sage touched and altered the configuration. [Are you getting a picture now?]
[Yes. Wait . . . we had something for a second, then it went blank.]
Ramo broke in. [What'd it look like?]
[Space . . . stars.]
[Bingo,] Ramo murmured.
[What do you mean?]
[That's what we'd like to know.]
Sage broke in to describe what had happened. He didn't get far; his words were interrupted by cutouts in the voice channel. He swore, trying unsuccessfully to restore continuity.
[I don't think . . . it wants us to talk,] Ramo said uneasily.
[Maybe you should come out,] Pali said. [Are you still there?]
Sage heard her, but something had just caught his attention, streaking across the star field. [Did you see that?] he said to Ramo.
There was another movement, and this time he was able to track it. A spacecraft of some sort went by, but was gone before he could blink. Moments later, two more ships arrowed into view, both visibly under power. Lights were sparkling on both; they were shooting at each other.
[Sage, are you there?] asked Pali. [Are you disconnecting?]
[No!] Ramo interjected. [I want to know what that's all about!]
[We can't, Pali,] Sage said. [Something's happening.] He let the channel close before Pali could answer and focused his attention on the action.
The last two ships were moving more slowly, and the viewpoint zoomed inward. One ship was large and ungainly, shaped more like a piece of driftwood than a spacecraft. Odd, Sage thought. It was changing shape as it moved, like a living thing. The other was smaller and angular, more like a normal spacecraft. The image tracked the two ships as they dwindled in the distance, exchanging fire. [System!] he cried. [What is this?]
There was no answer.
[DeWeiler, if you know a way to get that thing back on the horn—]
Sage was trying, poking at various connections.
[System!] Ramo bellowed. [Quit screwing around!]
[Wait—]
[If we have to haul it out by the ears and make it talk—]
[I don't think that's the way—]
[You do it your way, I'll do it mine,] Ramo said savagely. He shifted away from Sage and began shouting: [System! This is Ramo Romano . . .]
Sage shivered and put distance between himself and Ramo. He had to try to make sense of this, for his own sanity if for nothing else. Could Ramo be right; was it all a construct? Sitting here wondering wasn't doing him any good. What he had to do was get deeper into the system and find out what was going on. But first, he had to get away from Ramo.
He shifted a setting, and Ramo shrank to a tiny figure at the far corner of the field, his shouting now inaudible. So far, so good. He wasn't sure where to go from here; but that was the sort of challenge he didn't mind. And there was something . . . something that told him it was all right to proceed into the inner levels, even without clearance. Odd; and yet the feeling was unmistakable.
The view of space suddenly dwindled, and a window opened internally—a lighted shaft into the central machinery of the gnostic system. Hello? The window beckoned in silence. Sage positioned himself like a spider at the edge of the shaft and contemplated the view. It was a terribly long way down. His breath caught. Well, he thought, are you a hotshot designer or not?
He spun a spiderweb-connection to his present location, then cautiously dropped into the opening and descended. He had never done anything like this before—keeping an anchor in one place while stretching himself into a no-man's land where the rules said he shouldn't be; but it felt right. Circumstances, or something, said he must go, and he felt a tingle of excitement and fear. This was a part of the system where even high-level gnosys designers rarely meddled—and yet he had set off no alarms. Well, he thought, if I'm being invited . . .
Come, a silent voice beckoned.
* * *
He was quite deep, passing levels of the operating system that, like geologic strata, had lain unchanged for years. It dizzied him to think how many layers there were to the system. Over and over, just as he thought he was approaching the center, entire new levels of complexity opened to view. Subsystems glimmered with activity, streaks of light in a translucent substrate. Here and there he observed growth and alteration on a small scale; everywhere the system was operating like a finely jeweled watch. Tinker with care, he thought somberly. The sentient and self-aware kernels lay deeper still, but their activities were reflected all around him.
Like a lonely spelunker, he touched down at the bottom of the shaft and peered about. Several sectors surrounding him came alight, and he felt a rush in the pit of his stomach. An alarm?
The rush turned to a maelstrom in his head. He was suddenly, dizzily aware of heightened sensory input. Everything around him—every pathway traced out with light and dark and color, every connection—seemed etched in exquisite detail. The image of the battle gleamed in his awareness, remotely. Ramo's voice rattled in the distance. Another voice was answering; and for an instant he thought that Ramo, with his brash insistence, had succeeded where he, with skill and subtlety, had failed. But no . . . Ramo was evoking a lower-order response; he was getting answers, but it was all ambiguity. Sage closed off the channel with a vague feeling of satisfaction.
An airy lightness invaded his thoughts, with the words: Cross over to red-green-amber and descend. He looked, found the markers named, and obeyed.
This way lay another world. He passed through an archway and floated downward. His vision blurred, and hearing came to the fore: buzzing and popping sounds, arcing and sputtering, and hums reverberating with harmonic beat. It was like floating through a factory with his eyes closed. An image rose unbidden from a lost memory—his father leading him and his brother Tony through the workplace, the two young boys pointing and muttering, pausing to stare up in wide-eyed wonder as a crab-like welding robot showered itself with sparks. Then the sounds around him faded, and so did the memory.
What followed was a soundless, sightless dripping of information, an infusion of pure knowledge into his mind. He felt no comprehension, just an awareness of data accumulating that he had neither the speed nor the perception to process. And then, from somewhere in the subconscious, understanding began to emerge.
The workings of the inner core of the system were being revealed in glimpses, flickerings of light like the illumination of fireflies, more tantalizing than informing . . . except that, as the glimpses accumulated, larger fragments came together in his mind: a fuller awareness of the astounding complexity of the system and of its reach, not just through the Company, but planet-wide. And not just planet-wide, but across much of the solar system and even the abyss of interstellar space, where something was . . .
Something was happening, and he was being made aware of it; he had been chosen for it.
. . . And that was when the first tremor of fear rippled up his spine, with the awareness that he was not alone here, and that the reach of the system was not just through physical space, but intellectual space as well, and he was not alone here. There was a presence observing him, judging him, but not making itself known to him. It was not so much communicating as tempting him with bits of information and watching his response. And his response was apprehension, turning quickly to stark fear.
He could hardly even keep straight in his mind why he was so frightened. What was it he had glimpsed? Something in space, across the light-years, something threatening and dreadful . . .
His thoughts flashed out to Tony, to the colony fleet. Could it be . . . ? No. It was impossible. The fleet was still in transit.
Then what? What were these images—and why were they being shown to him?
A voice within him told him to be patient for an answer, but he could not obey. His fear was turning to panic—why me?—smoking up inside him, choking him, as though he had stepped into a burning building and lost the door. He had to get out, to get free, to breathe.
What terrible secret was being kept here?
Get out now! he cried to himself. You shouldn't be here! You don't want to know! Get out!
Before he was even conscious of his actions, he was already scrambling upward and away, shedding layers of gnostic enhancement as he fled. He was assailed by dizziness and rumbling, rushing air—he was aware of passing Ramo, but he didn't stop; he was a drowning man clawing his way to safety—and he fought his way upward until suddenly the pressure and the confusion were gone, and the only thing surrounding him was the glow of the rapture-field, and with it the tiny hummings of the outermost layers of the gnostic system.
And there he stayed, floating, gasping for breath, alone at last with his own, and only his own, thoughts.