Empery (40 page)

“I say we hold our breath and ride it out. Maybe we can’t stop Triad Two, but we don’t have to help them.”

“Yes, three months is a long time for us to hold our breath. But we know what will happen with the other option. It’s a choice between the chance of them striking back and the certainty of it.”

In his newest metamorphosis he knew himself to be even more of the spindle and less of his former existence. Much that was old and no longer useful had been stripped away, and he had learned much that was new. The most important lesson he had learned was that he could channel the spindle’s energies and did not need to risk his own. Understanding that, he had power; understanding himself, he had the skill.

Thackery had sensed the wrongness the moment he brought his once-again-restored resonance back to the focus of disturbance. He listened and then reached out and touched Sujata’s mind, this time with a delicate, sure touch that left pale, quavery shadows on her thoughts:

Then he moved off, riding the currents of the spindle with the same grace he had once seen in Gabriel, his sight focused far across the fibers to where a trio of wormholes betrayed the presence of three infinitesimally small cylinders enclosing the ordered energies of life. There was no haste in his movement, for he knew the moment and the means and that both were within reach. Doubt was not part of him, nor fear. He had given those up forever.

At one time he had garnered acclaim for doing that which any of thousands could have done as well. Now there was a service that only he could perform but which none would ever know about. They would know only, in time, that the ships and their crews never emerged from the craze, never completed their mission.

He did not even regret their sacrifice, not only because regret, too, had been excised from his substance. He saw that those ships were the center, the source, of the dark anticipations that clouded the near uptime and confused the present. It was within his power to erase those anticipations, and the price paid, even the death of those who had once been his kin, could not begin to compare with the value received.

Calling on knowledge both new and old, Thackery reached out, down toward the boundary, and extended his essence and control into all three wormholes at once, into the hearts of the three ships. It required only a mere shrug, a twist
so
, and a flood of energy poured through him and into the fragile drives. Irreplaceable circuits fused, then melted. There was a sudden flowering of energy where the ships had been, a flowering of such dimensions that the watching eyes on the matter-matrix could not help but detect it and know its meaning.

It was done.

He lingered there to watch the cautious approach of a single ship singing the song of the Mizari to the system of seven suns, to savor the meeting of mind and Mind, and to listen to messages meant for other hearers.

“We will never stand face-to-face to take each other’s measure,” the woman told those whom she served, “for what we are is as far outside their grasp as what they are is outside ours. We will never join hands in friendship, for they have nothing to offer us or we them. But neither will we make war on each other again. We will never share a world with them, but we can share a Galaxy.”

In his new state Thackery could no longer feel, save for those two feelings that all intelligence cannot help but know: amusement at the absurdity of existence, and respect for the finality of nonexistence. But he still had the memory of other emotions, and the heart he no longer possessed swelled with a joy his new body could not have mustered.

For the disturbance in the spindle was vanishing even as he watched, and at long last, the way uptime was clear. And in the tranquil far future, he saw a wondrous vision in the matrix, a living resonance of such delicacy and beauty that merely to embrace it Thackery was required to grow in himself.

= Gabriel…=

>I heard your call and came down from terminus, but the turbulence blocked the way to you. Are you in need?<

The touch of the D’shannan’s answer on Thackery’s being was rapture, a taste of reunion, of completion.
=No. I am whole. =

>Are you finished here?<

Before answering, Thackery looked out across the barrier to the matter-matrix that had been home and hell, that had created him and then destroyed him. He saw the restless activity of the ships and their crews, the worlds newly astir with unleashed ambition. There was no place among them for him, no part in their strivings for him. He was done with that now.

= Yes. I am finished here. =

>Then will you come uptime with me, to await the end in communion?<

=I will, Gabriel
, = Thackery answered eagerly.
=Do you know this timbre? Do you understand my joy? =

>I understand. Come, Merritt Thackery. Come and be one with us.<