Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (44 page)

 
          
 
That had been the prison and torture of the
Mad Mind. It had been able to spare nothing in its struggle to survive. And
that is all that had saved the rest of the galaxy from its strange wrath.

 
          
 
"But it escaped," Seeker said.

 
          
 
"It... diffused." The odd word
popped into her head, summoned by the fading images from the Captain. "It
is made of magnetic fields, and they diffused across the conducting disk. That
took a very long time, but the Mind managed it."

 
          
 
"Where was the Black Hole?" Seeker
asked.

 
          
 
"It was the biggest humanity could
find—the hole at the center of the galaxy."

 
          
 
They both looked out through the transparent pressure
membrane. The vibrant glow of a million suns wreathed the center of the galaxy
in beeswarm majesty. Yet at the center of all that glare dwelt an utter
darkness, they knew. Ten billion years of galactic progression had fed the
Black Hole. Stars which swooped too close to it were stripped and sucked in.
Each dying sun added to the compact darkness, the dynamical center about which
a hundred billion stars rotated in the gavotte of the galaxy.

 
          
 
Cley whispered, "Then moving the solar
system here, near the galactic center, was part of the scheme to trap the Mad
Mind?"

 
          
 
Seeker said, "It must have been."

 
          
 
"Wouldn't it be safer to get as far away
as possible?"

 
          
 
"Yes. But not responsible."

 
          
 
"So humanity brought the sun and planets
here as a kind of guard?"

 
          
 
"That is one possibility. Our star may
have been moved here to challenge the Mad Mind when it emerged."

 
          
 
"How can we?"

 
          
 
"With difficulty."

 
          
 
"That's one possibility, you said. What's
another?"

 
          
 
"That we were placed here as a sentinel,
to warn others."

 
          
 
"Who?"

 
          
 
"I do not know."

 
          
 
"Hard to warn somebody when you don't
know who that might be."

 
          
 
"There is yet one more possibility."

 
          
 
"What?"

 
          
 
"That we are here as a sacrifice."

 
          
 
Cley said nothing. Seeker went on.
"Perhaps if the Mad Mind finds and destroys its imprisoners, it will be
content."

 
          
 
The casual way Seeker said this chilled Cley.
"What's all this about?'"

 
          
 
"Perhaps the Supras know."

 
          
 
"Well then, let them fight the Mind. I
want out of it."

 
          
 
"There is no way out."

 
          
 
"Well, moving further from the sun sure
doesn't seem so smart. That's where the Mind is accumulating itself."

 
          
 
Seeker studied the stars, bright holes punched
in the pervading night. "Your talent made you too easy to find on Earth.
Here you blend into the many mind-voices."

 
          
 
Cley opened her mouth to disagree and stopped,
feeling a light, keening note sound through her thoughts. She blinked. It was a
hunting call, a flavor that eons had not erased, as though from some quick bird
swooping down through velvet air, eyes intent on scampering prey below.

 
          
 
She glanced back at the smoldering glow of the
galactic center. Against it were black shapes, angular and swift, growing. Not
metal, like Supra ships, but green and brown and gray.

 
          
 
"Call the Captain!" she said.

 
          
 
"I have," Seeker said.

 
          
 
As Cley watched the approaching sleek
creatures she saw that they were larger than the usual spaceborne life she had
known, and that it was far too late to avoid them, even if Leviathan could have
readily turned its great bulk.

 
          
 
Skysharks, Cley thought, the word leaping up
from her buried vocabulary. The term fit, though she did not know its origin.
They were elegantly molded for speed, with jets for venting gases. Solar sails
gave added thrust, but the lead skyshark had reeled in its sails as it
approached, retracting the silvery sheets into pouches in its side. Cupped
parabolas fore and aft showed that it had evolved radar senses; these, too,
collapsed moments before contact, saving themselves from the fray.

 
          
 
The first of them came lancing into the
Leviathan without attempting to brake. It slammed into the skin aft of the
blister that held Seeker and Cley. They could see it gouge a great hole in the
puckered skin.

 
          
 
The skysharks were large, muscular,
powerful
. Cley watched the first few plow into the mottled
hide of the Leviathan and wondered why they would risk such damage merely for
food. But then her ears popped.

 
          
 
"They're breaking the seals!"

 
          
 
"Yes," Seeker said calmly,
"such is their strategy."

 
          
 
"But they'll kill everything
aboard."

 
          
 
"They penetrate inward a few layers. This
lets the outrushing air bring to them the smaller animals."

 
          
 
Cley watched a skyshark back away from the
jagged wound it had made. A wind blew the backdrop of stars around, the only evidence
of escaping air. Then flecks and motes came from the wound, a geyser of
helpless wriggling prey. The skyshark caught each with its quick, wide mouth,
seeming to inhale them.

 
          
 
Cley had to remind herself that these gliding
shapes and their cool, soundless, artful movements were actually a savage attack,
remorseless and efficient. Vacuum gave even death a quality of silent grace.
Yet the beauty of threat shone through, a quality shared alike by the grizzly,
falcon and rattler.

 
          
 
Her ears popped again. "If we lose all
our air . . ."

 
          
 
"We should not," Seeker said, though
it was plainly worried, its coat running with swarthy spirals. "Membranes
close to limit the loss."

 
          
 
"Good," Cley said uncertainly.
But as she spoke a wind rose, sucking dry leaves into a cyclone
about them.

 
          
 
"That should not happen," Seeker
said stiffly.

 
          
 
"Look."

 
          
 
Outside two skysharks were wriggHng into older
gouges. Air had ceased to stream from them, so the beasts could enter easily.

 
          
 
Others withdrew from the rents they had torn
after only a few vicious bites. They jetted along the broad sweep of skin,
seeking other weak points. In their tails were nozzled and gimbled chambers.
She saw a bright flame as hydrogen peroxide and catalase combined in these,
puffs and streamers pushing them adroitly along the rumpled brown hide.

 
          
 
From the gaping gashes where skysharks had
entered came fresh puffs of air. Some carried animals tumbling in the thinning
gale, and skysharks snapped these up eagerly.

 
          
 
"The ones that went inside—they must be
tearing up those membranes," Cley said.
"Sucks out
the protected areas."

 
          
 
Seeker braced itself against the steadily
gathering winds.
"A modified tactic.
Even if
those inside perish, their fellows benefit from the added game.
Good for the species overall, despite the sacrifice of a few."

 
          
 
"Yeah, but what'll we do?”

 
          
 
"Come."

 
          
 
Seeker launched itself away and Cley followed.
Between bounces off trunks and bowers.
Seeker curled
up into a ball to minimize the pull of the howling gale. Cley copied this,
narrowing her eyes against the rain of leaves and bark and twigs that raked
her.

 
          
 
Seeker led her along a zigzag path just
beneath the Leviathan's skin. Despite the whirling winds she heard the yelps
and cries of animals. A catlike creature lost its grip on a tubular root and
pin-wheeled away,
A
triangular mat with legs caroomed
off Seeker and ricocheted from Cley before whirling into the madhouse mist.

 
          
 
They came to a system like a heart, with veins
and arteries stretching away in all directions. The wind moaned and gathered
itself here with a promise of worse to come. The open wounds behind them were
probably tearing further, she guessed, evacuating more and more of the
Leviathan. For the first time it occurred to Cley that even this colossal creature
could perhaps die, its fluids and air bled into space.

 
          
 
She hurried after Seeker. A gray cloud
streamed by them, headed toward the sighing breezes. Cley recognized this
flight of thumb-sized flyers which had made up the Captain, now streaming to defend
its ship. There might even be more than one Captain, or a crew of the
anthology-beings. Or perhaps the distinction of individual entities was
meaningless.

 
          
 
Ahead was a zone of gauzy, translucent
surfaces lit by phosphorescent streaks. Seeker grabbed a sheet of the waxy
stuff^, which seemed to be a great membrane upon which pollen caught. Even in
the chaos of drifting debris Cley could see that this was part of an enormous
plant. They were at the tip of a great pistil. Seeker was wrenching off a slab of
its sticky walls. Above this was a broad transparent dome which brought
sunlight streaming into the leathery bud of the plant. Its inner bulb had
mirrored surfaces which reflected the intense sunlight into bright blades,
sending illumination deep into the inner recesses of the Leviathan.

 
          
 
She took this in at a glance. Then Seeker
yanked her into position on the bulb wall, where her feet caught in sticky goo.
Seeker barked orders and Cley followed them, fashioning the tough sheet into a
pyramidal shape. Seeker stuck the edges together with the wall adhesive. It
turned down the last side, leaving them inside the pyramid. They drifted toward
the transparent ceiling, moving on an eddy of the slowly building winds. Seeker
crouched at an apex of the pyramid. It touched the ceiling and did something
quickly to the wall—and they passed through, into naked space.

 
          
 
"This will last for only a while,"
Seeker said.

 
          
 
"Till we run out of air," Cley said.