"I-don't know," Forister groaned. He dropped into the pilot's chair and stared unseeing at the console before him. Micaya Questar-Benn tactfully pretended to polish the gleaming buckle on her uniform belt. "Up to now, I'd have said-but I'm biased, you know."

"Well, I'm not," Nancia said decisively. "I don't know what Polyon's going on about, but whatever it is, I don't believe a word of it."

Forister laughed weakly. "You're biased too, dear Nancia." He stared at the sparkling surface of the minihedron, the polished opaque facets that gave nothing away, and sighed deeply. "I suppose I had better find out what this is."

"Can't it wait until after Singularity?" Nancia said, but too late. Forister had already dropped the datahedron into the reader slot. Automatically, her mind already on the vortex of mathematical transformations ahead, Nancia absorbed the contents of the minihedron into memory. Something strange there, not like ordinary words, more like a tickle at the back of her head or an improperly positioned synaptic connector- She rode the whirlwind down into Singularity, balancing and coasting along constantly changing equations that defined the collapsing walls of the vortex.

Something was wrong; she sensed it even before she lost her grasp on the mathematical transformations. She had never experienced a transition like this one. What was happening? Sounds as slimy as decaying weed whispered and snickered in her ears; colors beyond the edges of human perception rasped at her like fingernails being drawn over a blackboard. The balance of salts and fluids surrounding her shrunken human body swirled crazily, and a dozen alarm systems went off at once: Overload! Overload! Overload! Overload! Overload! Overload!

She couldn't optimize the path; s.p.a.ces decomposed around her and shot off in an infinity of different recompositions, expanding in every path to lights and chaos that could tear her apart. The hyperchip-enhanced mathematics coprocessors returned gibberish. Her brain waves were strung out on the grid of a multi-dimensional matrix. Something was trying to invert the matrix. No computations matched previous results, and all directions held danger.

Nancia shut down all processing at once. The grating colors and stinking noises receded. She hung in blackness, refusing her own sensory inputs, balanced on the point of Singularity where decomposing subs.p.a.ces intersected, with no way forward and no way back.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Polyon was pacing the narrow s.p.a.ce of his cabin, too impatient to strap himself in for Singularity, waiting for some sign that Forister had taken the bait, when the air shimmered and thickened around him.

He opened his mouth to curse his luck. The ship had entered Singularity before that thick-headed brawn ambled to a reader slot.

The air distorted into gla.s.sy waves, then became almost too thin to breathe. The cabin walls and furnishings receded to specks in the distance, then swam around him, huge menacing free-flowing shapes. Polyon's curses became a comical growl ending in a squeak.

d.a.m.n Singularity! There was no chance that Forister would drop the datahedron into a reader now, he'd be safely strapped into his pilot's chair like a good little brawn. By now, too, the ship's reader slots would probably be shut down for Singularity-and even if by some miracle he could persuade Nancia to accept the hedron, he still would not be able to enter the Net until the transformations were over and they had returned to normal s.p.a.ce. No, he would have to wait until after the subs.p.a.ce transformation to implement Final Phase-and this transformation would bring the brainship into Central subs.p.a.ce, close to all the aid that Central Worlds and their innumerable fleets could give.

He reminded himself that this made no difference whatsoever. The basic nature of the gamble remained the same. Either his plan had advanced far enough to succeed despite the way they were forcing his hand, or it hadn't. If it had, then the fleets of Central would be obedient to him and not to their former masters. If it hadn't-well, then, annihilation would be a little quicker than if he'd moved from the remote s.p.a.ces around Nyota, that was all.

He had only to sit and wait. And waiting out a single transformation through Singularity should be nothing to him. He had already spent patient years waiting on Shemali, planting his seeds, watching them grow, seeding the universe, ever since he had the flash of brilliance which at once conceived the hyperchip design and saw how it could be twisted to his own ends.

But this waiting was harder than all those years in which he had at least been doing something something to further those ends; and it seemed longer; and there was something disturbing about this particular ship's decomposition. Singularity wasn't supposed to be this bad. Polyon breathed and gagged on a sickly swirl of colors and smells and textures, looked down at the wavering distortions of his own limbs and closed his eyes momentarily. That was a mistake; Singularity sickness heaved through his guts. What was the matter? He'd been through plenty of decompositions during his Academy training, not to mention pa.s.sing through this very same Singularity point on the way out to Vega subs.p.a.ce. Had he so completely lost conditioning in the five years on Shemali, to be gagging and puking like any new recruit now? to further those ends; and it seemed longer; and there was something disturbing about this particular ship's decomposition. Singularity wasn't supposed to be this bad. Polyon breathed and gagged on a sickly swirl of colors and smells and textures, looked down at the wavering distortions of his own limbs and closed his eyes momentarily. That was a mistake; Singularity sickness heaved through his guts. What was the matter? He'd been through plenty of decompositions during his Academy training, not to mention pa.s.sing through this very same Singularity point on the way out to Vega subs.p.a.ce. Had he so completely lost conditioning in the five years on Shemali, to be gagging and puking like any new recruit now?

No. Something else was wrong. This decomposition was lasting too long. And some of the visual distortions looked oddly familiar. Polyon fixed his eyes on one small sector of the cabin, where braces supporting an extruded shelf formed a simple closed curve of permalloy and plastifilm. As he watched, the triangle of brace, wall and shelf elongated to a needle-shape with one thin eye, stretched out into an open eye as big as the wall, squeezed into a rotating pinpoint of light with absolute blackness at its center, and opened again into the original triangle. Needle, eye, pinpoint, triangle; needle, eye, pinpoint, triangle. They were caught in a subs.p.a.ce loop, perpetually decomposing and reforming in a sequence which preserved topological properties but which made no progress towards the escape sequence leading to Central subs.p.a.ce.

A loop like that couldn't have happened, shouldn't have happened, unless the ship's processors had shut down. Or-a wild hope tantalized him-unless the ship's processors were too busy with some other problem to navigate them out of Singularity.

A problem like a.s.similating a worm program which would turn over all control to a single user, effectively cutting the brain off from her own body and its processing.

Polyon swallowed his unspoken curses and plunged across the cabin. He had some trouble locating the palmpad and holding his hand steady over it, but eventually he managed to match his shrinking and bending arm with the erratic loop of the ballooning palmpad. He slapped the surface twice. "Voice control mode!"

His own voice boomed oddly in his ears, the soundwaves distorted by the perpetual twisting of s.p.a.ce around him, but evidently there was something unchanging in the voice patterns which his worm program still recognized. "Voice control acknowledged," an undulant voice boomed and twittered from the speakers.

"Unlock this cabin door." The first time the words came out as an unrecognizable squeak; the next, something close to his normal speaking voice emerged and the computer acknowledged the command. But nothing happened. A moment later the quavering vocal signal of the program responded with a shrill squeak that gradually became a groaning boom.

"Unable to identify designated ent.i.ty."

Polyon was beginning to catch on to the rhythm of the subs.p.a.ce loop. If he kept his eyes fixed on any known point, like the triangle of shelf and wall and brace, he could recognize when they were pa.s.sing through the decomposition closest to normal s.p.a.ce. If he spoke then, residual subs.p.a.ce transformations still distorted his voice, but at least the computer could recognize and accept his orders.

He waited and spoke when the moment was right.

"Identify this cabin."

Lights flashed on the cabin control panel, rose and fluttered like fireflies trailing the liquid surface of the panel, swam into elongated hieroglyphics of an unknown language, and sank back into the panel's surface to become a pattern signaling failure.

"No such routine found."

Polyon cursed under his breath, and the subs.p.a.ce transformation loop twisted his words into a grating snarl. Something was wrong with his worm program. Somehow it had failed to complete its takeover of the ship's computer functions.

"General unlock," he snapped on the next loop through normal s.p.a.ce.

His cabin door irised halfway open, then screeched and wobbled back and forth as the smooth internal glides had jammed on something. Polyon dove through, misjudged distances and clearance in the perpetual liquid shifting of the transformations, cracked a solid elbow on the very solid edge of the half-open door, landed on a bed of shifting sand, rolled, and found his feet in what was again, briefly, the solid pa.s.sageway outside the cabin.

"Out! Everybody out!" The loop stretched his last word into a howl. At least it got their attention. At least it got their attention. A green slug oozed through one of the other doors and became Darnell, vomiting. Farther away, Blaize's red head blazed under lights that kept changing from electric blue to artificial sun to deepest shadow. Fa.s.sa was a china doll, white and neat and compact and perfect, but as the loop progressed she grew to her normal stature. A green slug oozed through one of the other doors and became Darnell, vomiting. Farther away, Blaize's red head blazed under lights that kept changing from electric blue to artificial sun to deepest shadow. Fa.s.sa was a china doll, white and neat and compact and perfect, but as the loop progressed she grew to her normal stature.

"What's happening?" The loop s.n.a.t.c.hed away her words, but Polyon read her lips before the next phase stretched them into rubber. He waited for the next normal-s.p.a.ce pa.s.s.

"Get Alpha. Don't want to have to explain twice."

Fa.s.sa nodded-Polyon thought it was a nod-and ducked into the cabin nearest hers. Darnell quivered and resumed his form as a giant green slug. The pa.s.sageway elongated into a tunnel with Blaize at the far end, somehow aloof from the group.

Fa.s.sa reappeared, shaking her head. "She won't move. I-" She was bright, Fa.s.sa del Parma was; in mid-sentence, as s.p.a.ce shifted around her, she waited until the next norms.p.a.ce pa.s.s to complete her sentence. "-think she's too frightened, I'm scared too. What's-"

Polyon didn't have time to waste listening to obvious questions. When the next norms.p.a.ce pa.s.sed through them, he was ready to seize the moment. "I'm taking over the ship, is what's happening," he said over the tail-end of Fa.s.sa's question. "Any function on this ship that uses my hyperchips is under my command now. The reason-"

Shift, stretch, contract, waver, back to normal for a few seconds.

"-for this long transition is that the ship's brain is nonfunctional, can't get us out of Singularity."

Darnell wailed and vomited more loudly than before, drowning out Polyon's next words and wasting the rest of that norms.p.a.ce pa.s.s. Polyon waited, one booted foot contracting as he tapped it, stretching and looping over itself like a snake, then deflating again into the normal form of a regulation Academy boot.

"I can pilot us out of Singularity," he announced. "But I need to be at the control console. May have some trouble there. You'll have to help me take out the brawn and the cyborg."

"Why should we?" Blaize demanded.

Polyon smiled. "Afterwards," he said gently, "I won't forget who my friends are."

"What good-" Darnell, predictably, wanted to know, but the transformation loop washed away his question. And when norms.p.a.ce came round again, Blaize was closer to the rest of them; close enough to answer for Polyon.

"What good will his favor do? Quite a lot, I should imagine. It's not just the hyperchips on this ship, is it, Polyon? All the hyperchips Shemali has been turning out so fast have the same basic flaw, don't they?"

"I wouldn't," said Polyon, "necessarily define it as a flaw. But you're right. Once we're out of Singularity and ready to access the Net again, this ship's computer will broadcast Final Phase to every hyperchip ever installed. I'll have-"

They'd all caught on to the rhythm of the transformation loop by now; the wait through three distorted subs.p.a.ces was becoming part of normal conversational style.

"-control of the universe," he finished on the next pa.s.s through norms.p.a.ce. Blaize had come closer yet; stupid little runt, trying to move during transformations.

"And we'll be your loyal lieutenants?" Blaize asked.

"I know how to reward service," Polyon said noncommittally. Into a Ganglicide vat with you, troublemaker, as soon as I have the power.

"Not if I know it," Blaize mouthed as norms.p.a.ce slid away into the first distortion. He swung a fist at Polyon, but before it landed his hand had shrunk to the size of a walnut, and on the next dip through norms.p.a.ce Polyon was ready for him with a return blow that sent Blaize to the deck. By the time he landed, it was soft as quicksand, a pool in which Blaize swirled, too dizzy to rise immediately.

"Stop me," Polyon said to the other two as norms.p.a.ce pa.s.sed through, "and you die here, in Singularity, because n.o.body else can get us out of it. Try to stop me and fail," and he smiled again, very sweetly, "and you'll wish you had had died here. Are you with me?" died here. Are you with me?"

Before they could answer, a new element entered the game; a hissing cloud of gas, invisible in norms.p.a.ce, dearly delineated as a pink-rimmed flood of rosy light in the first transformational s.p.a.ce. It engulfed Blaize and he stopped twitching, lay like one dead in the yielding transformations of the deck.

Sleepgas. And he couldn't shout through the loop to warn them. Polyon clapped both hands over his mouth and nose, saw that Fa.s.sa did the same, jerked his head towards the central cabin. That door too was half open. He made for it, staggering through mud and quicksand, swimming through air gone thick as water, lungs aching and burning for a breath. Fell through, someone pushing behind him, Fa.s.sa, and Darnell after her. Forget Blaize, the traitor, and Alpha, by now sleepga.s.sed in her cabin. Polyon gasped and with his first burning breath called, "General lock!"

The control cabin door irised shut with a strange jerky motion, as if it were fighting its own mechanism, and Polyon found his feet and surveyed his new territory.

Not bad. The only pa.s.senger he'd been seriously worried about was Sev Bryley-Sorensen. But Bryley wasn't here. Good. He was locked out, then, with Alpha and Blaize; probably sleepga.s.sed, like them. The other two were bent over their consoles, probably still trying to figure out why doors were opening and closing without their command, trying to flood the pa.s.senger areas with sleepgas-well, they'd succeeded there, but much good it would do them now! Through the transitions he saw them turning in their seats, open mouths stretching like taffy in the second subs.p.a.ce, then shrinking to round dots in the third. Norms.p.a.ce showed the cyborg freak making a move that wasn't part of the transformation illusion, right arm darting towards her belt. Polyon snapped out a command and the freak's prosthetic arm and leg danced in their sockets, twisting away from the joining point; her flesh-and-blood torso followed the agonizing pull of the synthetic limbs and she rotated half out of her seat. Another command, and the prostheses dropped lifeless and heavy to the floor, dragging the body down with them. Her head cracked against the support pillar under the seat. Polyon stepped forward to take the needler before she recovered. s.p.a.ce stretched away from him, but his arm stretched with it, and the solid heavy feel of the needler rea.s.sured him that his fingers, even if they momentarily resembled tentacles, had firm hold of the weapon. The only pa.s.senger he'd been seriously worried about was Sev Bryley-Sorensen. But Bryley wasn't here. Good. He was locked out, then, with Alpha and Blaize; probably sleepga.s.sed, like them. The other two were bent over their consoles, probably still trying to figure out why doors were opening and closing without their command, trying to flood the pa.s.senger areas with sleepgas-well, they'd succeeded there, but much good it would do them now! Through the transitions he saw them turning in their seats, open mouths stretching like taffy in the second subs.p.a.ce, then shrinking to round dots in the third. Norms.p.a.ce showed the cyborg freak making a move that wasn't part of the transformation illusion, right arm darting towards her belt. Polyon snapped out a command and the freak's prosthetic arm and leg danced in their sockets, twisting away from the joining point; her flesh-and-blood torso followed the agonizing pull of the synthetic limbs and she rotated half out of her seat. Another command, and the prostheses dropped lifeless and heavy to the floor, dragging the body down with them. Her head cracked against the support pillar under the seat. Polyon stepped forward to take the needler before she recovered. s.p.a.ce stretched away from him, but his arm stretched with it, and the solid heavy feel of the needler rea.s.sured him that his fingers, even if they momentarily resembled tentacles, had firm hold of the weapon.

With the next norms.p.a.ce pa.s.s he was erect again, holding the needler on Forister. "Over there." With a jerk of his head he indicated the central column. Somewhere behind there the brain of the ship floated within a t.i.tanium sh.e.l.l, a shrunken malformed body kept alive by tubes and wires and nutrient systems. Polyon shuddered at the thought; he'd never understood why Central insisted on keeping these monsters alive, even giving them responsible positions that could have been filled by real people like himself. Well, the brain would be mad by now, between sense deprivation and the stimuli he'd ordered its own hyperchips to throw at it; killing it would be a merciful release. And it would be appropriate to kill the brawn at the foot of the column.

But not yet. Polyon was all too aware that he didn't know everything there was to know about navigating a brainship. He would need full support from both computers and brawn if he was to get them out of this transition loop alive.

He studied the needler controls, spun the wheel with his thumb, glanced at Darnell and Fa.s.sa. Which of them dared he trust? Neither, for choice; well, then, which was more afraid of him? Fa.s.sa had been showing an uppity streak, asking him questions when she should have been listening. Darnell was still green-faced but appeared to be through vomiting. Polyon tossed him the needler; it floated through norms.p.a.ce and Darnell caught it reflexively just before the transition shrunk it to a gleaming line of permalloy.

"If either of them makes a move," Polyon said pleasantly, "needle them. I've set it to kill...slowly." In fact he'd left the needler as Micaya had it, set to deliver a paralyzing but not lethal dose of paravenin; but there was no need to rea.s.sure his captives overmuch. "Now..." He removed his uniform jacket, draped it neatly over the swivelseat where Micaya had been sitting, and sat down in Forister's chair before the command console. Transitions exaggerated the slight flourish of his wrists into a great ballooning gesture, spun out his sleeves into white clouds of fabric that floated over and dwarfed the other occupants of the cabin.

"What do you think you're doing?" Forister cried. His voice squeaked through the fourth transition s.p.a.ce and fell with a thud on the last word.

Polyon smiled. He could see his own teeth and hair gleaming, white and gold, in the mirror-bright panel. "I," he said gently, "am going to get us out of Singularity. Don't you think it's time somebody did it?"

His reflection narrowed, gave him a squashed face like a bug, dulled the bright gold of his hair and turned his teeth to green rotting stumps. The control panel shrank under his hands, then swelled and heaved like a storm-tossed sea. As norms.p.a.ce approached Polyon darted in, tapping out one set of staccato commands with his right hand, pa.s.sing the left over the palmpad to call up Nancia's mathematics coprocessors, rattling out the verbal commands that would bring the whole ship around, responsive to his commands and ready to sail the subs.p.a.ces out of this Singularity.

She was sluggish as any water-going vessel lacking a rudder and taking in water, half the engines obeying his commands, the other half canceling them. The mathematics co-processors came online and then disappeared before he'd entered the necessary calculations, shrieking gibberish and sliding away in a jumble of meaningless symbols. The moment of norms.p.a.ce pa.s.sed and Polyon ground his teeth in frustration. In the second transformation the teeth felt like squishy, rotting vegetables inside his mouth, then in the third they became needles that drew blood, and by the time norms.p.a.ce returned he had learned not to give way to emotion.

He made two more attempts at controlling the ship, waited out three complete transition loops, before he pushed the pilot's chair back from the control panel.

"Your brainship is fighting me," he told Forister on the next pa.s.s through norms.p.a.ce.

"Good for her!" Forister raised his voice slightly. "Nancia, girl, can you hear me? Keep it up!"

"Don't be a fool, Forister," Polyon said tiredly. "If your brainship were conscious and coherent, she'd have brought us out of Singularity herself."

He used the remaining seconds in norms.p.a.ce to tap out one more command. The singing tones of Nancia's access code rang through the room. Forister's face went gray. Then the transition s.p.a.ces whirled about them, monstrously transforming the cabin and everything in it, and Polyon could not tell which of the distorted images before him showed the opening of Nancia's t.i.tanium column.

On the next pa.s.s through normal s.p.a.ce he saw that the column was still closed. Transition must have garbled the last sounds in the access sequence. He typed in the command again; again the musical tones rang out without their accompanying syllables; again nothing happened.

"You'd better tell me the rest of the code," he said to Forister on the next norms.p.a.ce pa.s.s.

Forister smiled-briefly; something in the expression reminded Polyon of his own ironic laughter. "What makes you think I have it, boy? The two parts are kept separate. I didn't even know how to access the tone sequence from Nancia's memory banks. The syllables probably aren't encoded in her at all; they'll be on file at Central."

"Brawns are supposed to know the spoken half of the code," Polyon snapped in frustration.

"I asked to have it changed just before this run," Forister claimed. "Security reasons. With so many prisoners on board, I feared a takeover attempt-and with good reason, it seems."

"I do hope you're lying," Polyon said. He clamped his mouth shut and waited through the transition loop, marshaling his arguments. "Because if Central's the only source for the rest of the code, we're all dead. I can't tap the Net and hack into the Courier Service database from Singularity-and I can't get us out of Singularity without neutralizing the brain."

"You mean, without killing Nancia," Forister said in a voice emptied of feeling. His eyes flickered once to the cabin console. Polyon followed the man's gaze and felt a moment of fear. A delicate solido stood above the control panels, the image of a lovely young woman with an impish smile and cl.u.s.tering curls of red hair.

Polyon had heard of brawns who developed an emotional fixation on their brainship, even to the point of having a solido made from the brainship's genotype that would show how the freakish body might have matured without its fatal defects. He hadn't guessed that Forister was the sentimental type, or that he'd have had time to grow so attached to Nancia. The idiot might actually think that he'd rather die than kill his brainship.

"There's no need to clutter the problem with emotionalism," Polyon told him. How could he jolt Forister out of his sentimental fixation? "With partial control of the ship to me and partial control to Nancia, neither of us can navigate out of Singularity."

d.a.m.n the transition loop! Forister had caught on to the rhythm by now; and the necessary wait while three distorted subs.p.a.ces composed and decomposed around them gave him time to think.

"I've a better suggestion," the brawn said. "You say say you can navigate us out; well, we all you can navigate us out; well, we all know know Nancia can. Restore full control to her, and-" Nancia can. Restore full control to her, and-"

"And what? You'll drop charges, let me go back to running a prison factory? I've got a better career plan than that now."

"I wasn't," said Forister mildly, "planning to make that offer."

The rhythm of collapsing and composing subs.p.a.ces was becoming natural to them all; the necessary pauses in their conversation no longer bothered Polyon.

"I had something like your own offer in mind," Forister continued at the next opportunity. "Release Nancia's hyperchip-enhanced computer systems, and she'll get us out of Singularity-and you'll live."

"How did you guess?"

Forister looked surprised. "Logical deduction. You designed the hyperchips; you tricked me into running a program that did something peculiar to Nancia's computer systems; the failure reports I read just before you came in showed precisely the areas where she has had hyperchips installed, the lower deck sensors and the navigation system; you've since exercised voice control on Micaya's hyperchip-enhanced prostheses. Clearly your hyperchip design includes a back door by which you can personally control any installation that uses your chips."

"Clever," Polyon said. "But not clever enough to get you out of Singularity. I a.s.sure you I'm not going to restore full computing power to a brainship who is probably mad by now."

"What makes you think that?"

Polyon raised his brows. "We all know what sensory deprivation does to sh.e.l.lpersons, Forister. Need I go into the details?"

"Take more than a few minutes in the dark to upset my Nancia," Forister said levelly.

Polyon bared his teeth. "By now, old man, she's had considerably more than that to deal with. The first thing my hyperchip worm does is to strike at any intelligence linked to the computers in which it finds itself. The sensory barrage would make any human break the link at once. I'm afraid that 'your' Nancia, not being able to escape the link that way, will have gone quite mad by now. So-I think-if you want to live-you'll tell me, now, now, the rest of the access code." the rest of the access code."

"I think not," Forister said calmly. "You've made a fatal error in your calculations."

The transition loop stifled all talk for the endless winding, looping moments of pa.s.sage through shrinking and distorting s.p.a.ces. Polyon ignored the sensory tricks of spatial transformations and thought furiously. When norms.p.a.ce returned, he reached up from his chair to grasp the solido of Nancia as a young woman. Deliberately, watching Forister's face, he dropped the solido on the deck and ground the fragile material to shards under his boot-heel.

"That's what's left of 'your' Nancia, old man," he said. "Are you going to let your love for a woman who never lived kill us all?" what's left of 'your' Nancia, old man," he said. "Are you going to let your love for a woman who never lived kill us all?"

Forister's face was lined with pain, but he spoke as evenly as always. "My-feelings-for Nancia have nothing to do with the matter. Your error is much more basic. You think I'd rather set you free with the universe in your control than die here in Singularity. This is incorrect."

He spoke so calmly that it took Polyon a moment to understand the words, and in that moment the transition loop warped the room and disguised the movements in it. When they pa.s.sed through norms.p.a.ce again, Fa.s.sa del Parma was standing between Forister and Darnell, as if she thought she could shield the brawn from a direct needler spray.

"He's right," she said. "I didn't have time to think before. You're a monster."

Polyon laughed without humor. "Fa.s.sa, dear, to righteous souls like Forister and General Questar-Benn we're all monsters. I should have remembered how you sucked up to them before, helping them trick me. Did you think that would save you? They'll use you and throw you away like your father did."