Tides of Light (21 page)

Killeen shut down his suit inputs. He left only a slight lightpipe for optical images. His suit skin reflected the blur of
thickening light around him with a mirror finish. The walls rushing past were turning ruddy, sullen. “Where are we?”

We must be approaching the boundary at which iron melts. This reddening probably signals the transition from the mantle to
the outer core. We can expect some varying magnetic fields now, since this is the region—so theory says—where the planet’s
field is born. Large currents of molten metal eddy about, carrying electrical currents, like great wires in a generator station.
New Bishop’s spin serves to wrap these around, creating current vortexes, which in turn stir up magnetic whorls.

“Damn, it’s getting hot already.”

External temperature is 2,785 degrees centigrade.

Killeen clicked down his visor. He fell in complete blackness. He wondered if he could stand the heat in utter isolation,
plunging faster, faster, ever faster….

Again he struggled to slow his breathing. If he was to live through even the next few minutes he would have to think clearly.
The dark might help that as long as he could keep his natural reactions from running away.

Luckily, the added speed imparted by the cyborg will take us through that much faster. I register external temperature now
at well over 3,000 centigrade. Here—one of the suit’s lightpipes will give us a faint image, which is all we need in such
a place.

“Damnall,
think!
”

I am. I simply do not see any way out of our dilemma.

“There’s gotta be
some
way—”

The existence of a well-defined problem does not imply the existence of a solution.

“Damn you!”

Years before, Killeen had suppressed his Aspects when they threatened to overwhelm him. Now he felt the risk in that. Arthur
was a disconnected intelligence, serving as a mere consultant mind. Without nature’s primitive surges of alarm, like adrenaline,
Arthur remained aloof. Still, his coolness kept the less-used Aspects and Faces from intruding on Killeen with their panics.

“Look, we get through this, we’ll be back outside, yeasay?”

Yes. But that is the devilish nature of this cyborg’s trick. We are participating in an ancient schoolboy’s homework problem—a
shaft through the planet, with us as the harmonically oscillating test mass.

“What…”

Killeen suddenly saw what Arthur meant. He watched as in his eye the blue dot shot through the core and on, out through the
other side of the red tube. It rose toward the surface, its velocity dwindling in gravity’s grip, then broke free above the
surface, still slowing. After hesitating at the peak it began falling again, to execute another long plunge through the heart
of the spitted planet.

We can perhaps survive this one passage. But another, and another?—so on, ad infinitum?

“There must be a way out.”

Killeen said this with absolute conviction, even though he had no knowledge of the physics underlying Arthur’s colorful display.
Even if a gargantuan alien had made this incinerating rattrap, it could have made a mistake, left some small unnoticed exit.

He had to believe that or the panic which squeezed his throat would overwhelm him. He would die like a pitiful animal, caught
on the alien’s spit and roasted to a charred hulk. He would end as a cinder, bobbing endlessly through the central furnace.

We might possibly try something at the very high point, when the hoop begins to curve over far above the pole. We should come
to rest there for a brief instant.

“Good. Good. I can maybe pump some this cooling stuff—”

Refrigerant fluids, yes, I see. Use them in our thruster. But that would not be enough to attain an orbit.

“How about the hoop? Maybe I could bounce off it up there, where it’s spinning. I could pick up some vector, get free.”

Killeen felt Arthur’s strangely abstract presence moving, pondering, consulting Ling and Grey and some Faces, as though this
were merely some fresh problem of passing interest. Falling in absolute blackness, he felt his stomach convulse.
He clamped his throat shut and gulped back down a mouthful of acid bile.

Now a strange sound came to him. Beneath the ratcheting
whuum-whuum-whuum
of the revolving hoop he heard bass gurglings and ringing pops.

We are picking up the whorls of the planetary magnetic fields in the core. They sound remarkably like organ notes.

The long, strumming, hollow sounds broke Killeen’s attention. He imagined they were majestic voices calling out to him, beckoning
him into the utter depths of this world….

No. He shook himself, gasped, and switched the lightpipe image into his left eye.

The walls outside bristled with incandescent heat, cherry red. Globs of scorched red churned in the walls.

“Stop your calculatin’ ! Give me an answer.”

Very well. The idea might be marginally possible. I cannot estimate with certainty. However, it would require that we be close
enough to the hoop-formed wall. The cyborg has placed us exactly in the center of this tube, as I measure. We need to move
perhaps a hundred meters before we will be within the pressure shock wave of the hoop as it turns.

“How far’s that?”

About as far as you, ah,
we
can throw a stone.

“That’s not so hard. I can use that cooler stuff—”

Extract it now and we will die in seconds.

“Damnall. I’ll do it when we’re clear, then.”

That is tempting, but I fear it would not be effective. The tube opens as it rises toward the surface. Here the tube wall
is only a stone’s throw away. By the time we are clear of the core, the walls will be too far to reach in time—unless we begin
to move now.

“Yeasay, yeasay—
how
?”

Even a small pressure applied now would give us enough push to reach the wall during the rise out.

“Pressure…”

Killeen frowned. The claustrophobic suit filled with the sound of his own panting, his sour sweat, the naked smell of his
fear. He felt nothing but the clawing emptiness of perpetual falling, of weightless anxiety. He squinted at the tiny image
that came through the lightpipe.

The walls outside were flooded with fire. The nickel-iron core only a short distance beyond raged and tossed with prickly
white compressional waves. He flew close to livid pink whorls that stretched for tens of kilometers, yet passed in a few seconds
of harsh glare. The hoop’s constant
whuum-whuum-whuum
stormed in his teeth and jaws with grinding persistence.

For a crawling moment he remembered a similar time long ago on Snowglade. He had gone flying with his new wife, Veronica,
and Abraham. Near the Citadel there had been an ancient tunnel through a mountain, dug during the High Arcology times. The
prickly desert wind swept through it and funnels artfully increased the gale speed. Where the tunnel turned abruptly vertical
the wind could support a man with wings. He had cast off into the roaring
stream and circled around the tunnel’s wide oval bore. Veronica followed, grinning and wide-eyed. By canting their wings they
could soar and plunge and bank about each other. Abraham then came swooping down, his yells swept away in the howl. They had
labored against the battering wind and then harvested its incessant pressures, merrily spiraling around one another, aloft
on the moment…

All gone, a time lost forever…

Now…

His tongue seemed to fill his throat. Searing air bit in his nostrils. His suit was close to overheating. He realized he was
nearing the point where his grip on himself would slip. He would do something rash to escape the heat and he would die.

But something Arthur had said plucked at his memory. Even a small pressure…

“The light. You said something about it pushing us.”

Yes, of course, but that acts equally in all directions.

“Not if we turn some of the silver off.”

What? That would—Oh, I see. If we slightly lessen the silvering on the front of us, say, by robbing the autocircuits there
of power…yes, then the light will reflect less well. We will be pushed in that direction by the light striking us from behind.

“Let’s do it. Not much time.”

But the heat! Lessening the reflection heightens the absorption.

Killeen had already guessed that. “Show me how to taper down the silver on my chest.”

No, I don’t—The temperature outside, it’s 3,459 centigrade! I don’t—I can’t take—

“Give the info.
Now
.” Killeen kept his mind under tight control. This was the only way, he felt sure of it, and seconds counted.

Not now, no! I’ll—I’ll think of something—something that will work—yes, work when we get through the core. I’ll review my
back memories, I’ll—

“No.
Now
.”

He felt the Aspect’s fear, surging now nearly as strongly as his own. So the chip-mind had finally broken, revealed the fragments
of its residual humanity.

Deliberately he reached within himself and smothered Arthur’s objections. It called plaintively to him in a small, desperate
whine. Killeen clamped down, forced Arthur back into a cranny.

“
Now
.”

Beq’qdahl’s ribbed pores flared a deep, angry yellow.

Quath quickly peered ahead, using the sharp infrared.
Motes were spreading away from the outline of the approaching station.

we
who are as thick as grubs!>

You
were playing your addled prank.>

Quath bristled.

<
I
wished to get on with our assault.>

Quath said as mildly as she could, of the little Nought.>

Quath watched the shuttles speed away, spreading like fragments of an explosion. A nice escape. Already some swept in close
to the glow of the cosmic string, which was rotating on a test run, to try new magnetic flux generators at both poles. The
test would last only a bit longer, and would not suck more metal from the core unless there was a pressure failure. The string
would keep the Noughts from reaching the upper atmosphere, but as she watched the shuttles they mingled with the great slabs
of freeze-formed nickel-iron that laced the high orbits.

Clever pests! She hungered to crush them.

Amid that complex stockpile they could hide quite well, and no doubt planned to do so. These were no mere ground-grubbed Noughts,
no. As soon as the cosmic string slowed, they would slip into the planet’s atmosphere and air brake. With each working of
the Syphon quakes rocked the planet, but that would scarcely prevent their landing. Once down, they could find easy refuge
in the jumbled countryside.

Beq’qdahl said ponderously.

Quath spat back, I
shall rely on the inboard timeline recordings, which will show what a trifling time we spent on our game.>

Such a measure might not carry significant weight with the elders of the Hive, but Quath was determined to try.

Beq’qdahl paused, obviously reconsidering. Their ship cruised along its approach orbit. The station ahead seemed inactive
now. Its bays yawned empty, shuttle ships gone.

A mech-slave signal peeped forth on the main board before Quath. A large craft hung near the station, probably the Noughts’.

Beq’qdahl said.

Quath said.

Beq’qdahl said judiciously.

<
I
did. And so I shall report.>

Quath decided not to challenge this small lie.

Quath relaxed somewhat. She watched one of the fleeing shuttlecraft on the horizon, where it took up orbit above the aura
of the Cosmic Circle. Alarm shot through her.

Beq’qdahl ratcheted her pods in disbelief.

did
,> Quath cried in frustration.

Beq’qdahl’s electro-aura seethed with malice.

Acrid hormones flooded the cabin as both of them suffered involuntary embarrassment. Their bodies acted to rid their lymph
chambers of the corrosive chemicals generated by their sudden, spiky emotions.

Quath said darkly,

your
fault.>

you
, noble pus-sucker.>

Beq’qdahl saw Quath’s threat. Her head swiveled and turned indigo in confusion.

Bitter cadences of violent color washed over Beq’qdahl. some
way to recover.>

Quath said. will be paid. After all, this is a minor task.>

Beq’qdahl said sourly.

Quath recalled. It had seemed a small matter at the time they received their orders. which have pestered us.>