Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (52 page)

 
          
 
Seeker said softly, "They had done great
damage to themselves. Remorse tinged them. But only for a while."

 
          
 
Alvin
nodded. "Still, our records did not
show such a high intelligence as you display."

 
          
 
"You still think of traits lodged in
individuals, in species," Seeker said.

 
          
 
"Well, of course. That defines species,
nearly."

 
          
 
Seeker asked, "And if a trait is shared
among many species simultaneously?"

 
          
 
Alvin
shook his head.
"By
telepathy, like that of
Lys
?"

 
          
 
"Or more
advanced."

 
          
 
"Well, that might alter the character of
intelligence, granted."

 
          
 
Alvin
's face took on his librarian's precise,
pensive cast, his cheeks hollowing as though he contracted into himself.
"I wonder if such talents could arise naturally."

 
          
 
"They do," Seeker said. "I am a
member of a larger system. So are you, but you do not communicate well—a
typical characteristic of early evolved intelligences."

 
          
 
Alvin
's mouth turned up in an irked curve.
"People seem to feel I speak fairly clearly."

 
          
 
"People do, yes."

 
          
 
Alvin
smiled stiffly. "We re-created you
ourselves, made you whole from the Library of Life. Sometimes I think we erred
somehow."

 
          
 
"Oh no!"
Seeker barked happily. "It was your best idea."

 
          
 
"The records say you were solely suited
for Earth."

 
          
 
"Wrong," Seeker said.

 
          
 
"That would explain why you move so
easily in space."

 
          
 
"Not entirely." Seeker's eyes danced
merrily.

 
          
 
"You have other connections?"

 
          
 
"With everything.
Don't you?"

 
          
 
Alvin
shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't think
so."

 
          
 
"Then do not think so much."

 
          
 
Cley laughed, but at the back of her mind a
growing tenor cry demanded attention. "Something's . . ."

 
          
 
Seeker nodded. "Yes."

 
          
 
She felt the Supras of Lys now, Seranis just
one among many cascading voices. They formed tight links, some in their ships,
some in this Leviathan, others dispersed among Jonahs and Leviathans and the
churning life-mats of the Jove system.

 
          
 
"How quickly does it approach?"
Alvin
asked urgently. The earlier mood was
broken, his doubts momentarily dispelled. Now he was cool efficiency.

 
          
 
"I can't tell." Cley frowned.
"There are refractions. ... Is it possible that the Mad Mind can move even
faster than light?"

 
          
 
"That is but one of its
achievements,"
Alvin
said, concern creasing his forehead. "We humans attained that long
ago, but only for small volumes, ships. The Mad Mind was limited, as are the
magnetic beings. This great fact ordains that the linking of the natural
magnetic minds proceeds slowly across the galaxy. Nothing so large can move
faster than light. Or so we thought."

 
          
 
"That's how the Mind finally got out of
the Black Sun, isn't it?" Cley asked. She caught thin shouts of alarm in
her mind.

 
          
 
"It used the quantum vacuum,"
Alvin
said. His cheeks hollowed again with a cast
of relief. The chance to be secure in his knowledge, Cley guessed.

 
          
 
Alvin
leaned forward, his eyes soft as he peered
into the dying firelight. "On average, empty space has zero energy. But by
enclosing a volume with a sphere of conducting plasma, the Mad Mind prevented
the creation of waves with wavelengths larger than that volume. These missing
waves gave the vacuum a net negative energy, and allowed formation of a
wormhole in space-time. All such processes are ruled by probabilities requiring
great calculation. Yet through that hole the Mad Mind slithered."

 
          
 
"To our solar system," Cley
concluded.

 
          
 
"Never before has a magnetic mind done
this,"
Alvin
said. "It escaped from the prison of
time—a feat on such a scale that
even
the Empire did
not anticipate."

 
          
 
Seeker whispered, "Coincidence,
Alvin
?" This was the first time Cley had
ever heard Seeker use the name. There was a tinge of pity in the beast's voice,
or what she took for that.

 
          
 
Alvin
's head jerked up. He flicked a suspicious
glance at Seeker. "The thought occurred to us, too. Why should the Mad
Mind emerge now?"

 
          
 
"Just as you're getting
free of Earth again?"
Cley asked.

 
          
 
"Exactly,"
Alvin
said. "So we studied all the physical
evidence. Observed the path of damage the Mad Mind has wrecked as it left the
galactic center." He hesitated.
"And made a
guess."

 
          
 
Seeker said, "It was you."

 
          
 
Alvin
's eyes shifted away from the waning fire,
as though he sought refuge in the gloom surrounding them.
"Perhaps
so.
I found V^anamonde. The exuberance of anamonde was so great at being
discovered! That sent magnetosonic twists through the whorls of an entire
galactic arm. 1 hese reached the Mad Mind in its cage. To see

 
          
 
ancient
foes
reuniting again sent it into a rage, a malevolence so strong that it exerted
itself supremely.
And forced its exit."

 
          
 
They sat silently for a long moment. The inky
recesses of the Leviathan were unrelieved by the distant promise of stars.

 
          
 
Cley said finally, "You didn't know. All
the lore of Diaspar did not warn you."

 
          
 
He smiled mirthlessly. "But I did it.
All the same."

 
          
 
Cley said, "That Empire might have
troubled their mighty selves to make a jail that held."

 
          
 
Alvin
shook his head. "There is none better
in this space-time."

 
          
 
"Well, damn it, at least they shouldn't
have just left it as a problem to be solved by us
. "

 
          
 
Seeker lifted its snout, seeming to listen to
something far away. Then it said, ""Shoulds and mights are of no
consequence. The problem has arrived."

 
          
 
In the end it was like nothing she had
expected or feared.

 
          
 
She
lay
in a
comfortable vine mat in the Leviathan, alone, eyes closed. She felt nothing of
it, or of her body.

 
          
 
The struggle raged red through landscapes of
her mind.

 
          
 
The link with the Supras smoothed the harsh,
glancing edges. Still, the cauldron of sensations was only a fragment of the
broadening perspectives which opened for her in the hours and then days of the
conflict.

 
          
 
She had anticipated great flares of
phosphorescent energy, climactic storms of magnetic violence. There were some,
but these were merely sideshow illuminations dancing around the major conflict
hke heat lightning on a far horizon.

 
          
 
For Cley the struggle called upon her
kinesthetic senses—overloaded and strained and fractured, splitting her into
shards of disembodied perception. This was all she was capable of grasping.

 
          
 
Yet each splinter was intensely vibrant,
encompassing.

 
          
 
She felt herself running, once. The pleasant
heady rush of sliding muscles, of speed-shot perspectives dwindling, of slick
velocities— and then she was in cold inky oblivion, her sun blocked by moving
mountains. These moist shadows coiled with acrid odors. Harsh, abrasive air thrust
up her nostrils.

 
          
 
The ground—like a plain of
lead-gray ball bearings—slid by below her invisible feet, tossing like a
storm-streaked, grainy sea.
Sweet tastes swarmed up her
sinuses,
burst wetly green—and she tumbled into another bath
of rushing impressions.
Of receding depths.
And then of oily forces working across her skin.
It went on
and on, a riverrun she could not stanch or fathom.

 
          
 
But at times she did sense pale immensities
working at great distances, like icebergs emerging from a hurricane-racked
ocean.

 
          
 
Dimly she caught shreds of a childlike mind,
incomparably large, and recognized Vanamonde. It had prowled the solar system,
she saw, blunting the attacks of the Mad Mind. She owed it her life, for surely
the Mind would otherwise have found her on her outward voyage.

 
          
 
Beneath the ragged waves that washed her she
felt infinitesimal currents, tiny piping voices. She recognized these as the
recently grown Ur-humans, unformed personalities speckled by dots of
kinesthetic tension.

 
          
 
They were all like elemental units in an
enormous circuit, serving as components which relayed messages and forces they
could no more recognize than a copper wire knows what an electron is.

 
          
 
And Seeker was there. Not the Seeker she knew,
but something strange and many-footed, immense, running with timeless grace
over the seamless gray plain.