"I change, but I cannot die. . . ."
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Tamika was torn between awe and fear, standing beside Thalia at the command console as they watched the final stages of the star's destruction. The station itself was now fully withdrawn into n-space, with only n-thread links still open to the monitoring satellites. The station was no longer within the sun's space-time at all. The image of that doomed orange ball on the viewscreen was coming to them across multiple shifts in spatial dimension. It seemed no less immediate for all that.
Somewhere deep in that sphere was a small station, protected by n-space shielding, but far closer to the soon-to-be-released forces of the supernova. Somewhere deep in that sphere was Rus'lem and his friend Max and, Tamika feared, the Tandesko assassin. She'd been not at all reassured by Willard's one communication. Why had he not made contact again?
She'd wanted to ask; but Thalia was preoccupied as time-zero approached, even with active control out of her hands. They were attempting to map the gateway from here, in case Ruskin failed at Room Zeta, or didn't survive to bring the information back.
Thalia seemed icily calm about the possibility that Zeta station might simply disappear in a haze of plasma. Perhaps she couldn't bear to contemplate it. Did Thalia still love Willard? Tamika wondered. Did they both stand to lose someone precious when this thing blew?
In fact, the woman seemed altogether, remarkably, cool. She and her people had somehow brought order to the control center after the chaos of the Tandesko attack. The dead and wounded had been carried out, the damaged consoles bypassed as much as possible, and shattered morale cobbled back together. Most everyone here seemed to be operating in a condition of controlled shock; but Thalia controlled, or hid, hers better than most. When Tamika heard her talking to another console about cutoff criteria for Zeta, she could hardly stand to hear the words. Behind the jargon, they were talking about severing the connection to the remote station, and virtually guaranteeing the death of anyone still there; and through it all, Thalia's voice remained hard and punctuated.
And what use am I here? Tamika thought. She'd volunteered to go to the infirmary to help tend the injured; but Thalia had insisted that she stay, insisted that her knowledge of Ruskin might be needed if things got confusing. Well, things were confusing, all right; but there didn't seem much she could do to help.
For the last twenty minutes, Thalia had been trying to raise the station—Willard, Max, anyone—without success. The stationwide search for the assassin had also failed. They all now harbored the same suspicion of where the Tandesko might be. And control had been locked into Zeta.
"Neutrino fluctuation at zero-six-niner," someone announced, causing a general stir. "Fusion has stopped. The squeeze is on."
Tamika was just responding internally to that news—that the core of the star was dead—when someone else screamed, "We've got it, people! We have collapse! We have collapse!"
On Thalia's face there was scant reaction, perhaps a barely perceptible tightening of the jaw muscles.
"Here we go—" another voice said.
None of these changes was visible on the face of the star that showed on the screen; but shock wave measurement and neutrino flux were shooting off the scale.
And hidden in the heart of the star, at the center of the implosion, a black hole was forming.
In a few hours, when the shock wave reached the surface, this orange sphere would blaze into a beacon that would light the galaxy.
"Rus'lem," Tamika whispered to herself as tears began streaming down her cheeks.
* * *
How to feel
to know
to understand
It was happening in such an eyeblink of time, and it was not natural. Surely not natural. Was it Bright's own, or something of another realm:
Of consciousness
of will
of spirit
to be felt
not touched
The music ends the
song dies
Tightening from within, consuming, and no way to reach to stop to grasp to understand
Time ends
Bright had seen death
I have seen death
Conflagration seeding cooling darkening fading of rhythm and being. Bright had seen oldlife seed newlife of spirit hot from flame. But in the new did anything of the old remain
oldlife spirit ?
oldlife song ?
When time ends all ends
Could newlife burn in the belly of its fires, could it blossom in the flame
Do you burn
do you grow
do you sing ?
There was ponderous dizziness, losing everything, something changing within that hurt that stole power that made it want to twist itself inside out
Won't you please
Speak
sing
tell who
are you
are you
are you
* * *
And in Ali'Maksam's brain, pain was the blank slate, the tabula rasa upon which all questions were written, all pleas filed, unfulfilled wishes cast upon the heavenly waters.
Cast your wishes to the stars . . .
And they had done it. Whatever he had been wishing to prevent or protect was gone now, ashes: Willard betrayed, the star destroyed, the gateway created but out of control. How had it gone so wrong? He'd betrayed Willard to the Querayn in order to save him from the Tandeskoes. And the Querayn had betrayed them both: denying Willard his free will, despite their promise to Ali'Maksam. And what had they really wanted: not the gateway, but this contact with the star, even at the cost of its death? So much loss, so much innocence destroyed!
And now? The explosion had begun, but Ganz had ruined the mapping station, so that none of them might see its formation; and Willard, fighting for survival, had virtually disappeared into his own maze of conflicting selves and wishes, until even Ali'Maksam, who knew him best, could scarcely separate the false from the real.
And Ali'Maksam, no fighter, had camouflaged himself with his own virtuals and given his friend the one thing he could think of to say:
Turn to the sun, Willard, to the sun. . . .
Telling Willard to do the thing he himself wished to do. But Ali'Maksam's soul was too seared by the pain of the sun—too immense or too alien; he could not reach it with his own mind, he could only reverberate like a church bell in that outcry.
And echo with his own pain, the betrayal of a friend.
And wonder: Had it had to be so?
Willard, if you are still there, if you can hear . . . Willard, I sensed the danger you chose at that lodge, but you would not be dissuaded. And I knew no other way! I trusted the Querayn to assure you freedom to find yourself. I tried to protect you and I failed. But there was a greater need! Neither of us, none of us, wanted the monopoly of the gateway!
And somehow out of the maelstrom, Willard's thought came back: You knew, then? You knew of the gateway?
In your thoughts, Willard—I never meant to spy, but I'd seen it and I knew your despair. . . .
But Willard was gone now, lost from the contact; and Ali'Maksam continued spinning in his own thoughts, so lost in the internal rotation that he was scarcely aware of his virtual presences or of his own position, crouched in the corner of the control room watching the frozen tableau of Ruskin and Ganz. The others were paralyzed by the blaze in the viewscreen and the sudden queer twisting of the station itself. And though his eyes saw the jump in the neutrino readings, and deep in his mind he understood that from the neutrino flux would come an even stronger K-space field, he was nevertheless stunned when the fabric of space and of consciousness yawned open around him.
He felt a sense of utter foolishness, then joy; he should have seen it coming.
But how could anyone have anticipated this: a star's mind welling up into one's own?
* * *
On the sea of consciousness—on its surface float bewilderment and confusion, hints of deadly danger and rapturous peacefulness, and suggestions of what might lie below:
fortress floating in a sea of amber
and a voice from within
** You speak **
the light is you then
and you know me
** I am Bright **
and within you hide the mysteries of the fortress
** and you **
I am in the fortress
** yes **
I created the fortress
** why **
I am killing you
* * *
Time the catalyst turning worlds inside out
* * *
In the abyss of consciousness, forces vast and tiny moved together, touching and pushing, testing and mingling—
—Logothian—
—Human—
—hrisi—
—and another, far vaster,
reverberating with power
and bewilderment—
* * *
Bright, carrying the knowledge of eons, searching the heavens of all life for understanding of what might lie beyond—
—beyond all existence.
* * *
and astonished—
That you
my children
so small
could do this
to me
* * *
((If only—))
((If only—))
((You knew—))
((You knew—))
((How very small we are—))
((We are—))
* * *
—And how very sorry—
—sorry—
—sorry—
* * *
But time was the destroyer, which no one could turn back.