1.

Lightning tore at the dark-bellied clouds with yellow talons, ripping rain from them in shimmering veils. Kingsley watched out the narrow windows, still feeling in his English soul that rain should properly be accompanied by cold. Here, sheets of it swept through cloyingly warm air.

Great crashes rattled the prefab walls of the Center. The crowd of people around the big screens flinched as the hammering booms rolled unceasingly over them.

"Bit dicey, I'd say." Kingsley turned away from the static-filled screens. "There's no hope of reaching her using the high frequency bands?"

Amy shook her head. "The techs say it's got an ionized blanket over the island now."

"Even in the 96 gigaHertz band?"

"As soon as they start at that frequency, it runs up the plasma density in a spot above the transmitters."

Benjamin said shakily, "A huge current discharge, right down a funnel from the ionosphere. How in the world can it do that from so far out?"

"'How in the world' is precisely it." Kingsley sized up the disarray he saw in the faces around them. "It has had practice on other worlds. It knows planetary atmospheres the way we know our backyards."

Amy said, "Or better, the way birds know air."

"It cut her off so fast fast," Benjamin said.

"It knows she's there. Senses what we plan, probably," Amy said somberly.

Kingsley ground his teeth. "It's seen a lot of tricks, I'll wager."

"We're checkmated," Amy said. "Those Searchers, they're like p.a.w.ns, cut off without even a knight to-"

"Ah, that's the point, isn't it?" Kingsley thought rapidly. A fleeting idea had scurried by.

While he gazed into the distance, Benjamin said flatly, "It's got to be worried. Why bother to cut us off from her and the Searchers? It's concerned."

Kingsley nodded. "A compliment, I suppose."

Amy roused from her depression slightly. "So it knows that we can do it real damage this way?"

Benjamin visibly rallied himself. "It moves to cut her off from Operations, right? Which implies that it works kinda the same way? With a managing center."

Kingsley liked to frame ideas as he thought them through, and so said out loud, "It's searching for our command center. We never said we had one. It a.s.sumes we do because it does. because it does.!"

Amy brightened. "Those interceptions Channing got-they were magnetic wave transmissions inside the Eater's magnetosphere. If we could trace their routes-"

"-we'd get a clue to its central command, right," Benjamin finished.

"Quite a job," Amy said. "We'd have to-"

"Never mind how tough it is," Arno broke in. "Get on it."

Kingsley had concentrated upon the exchange so intently that he had completely missed Arno's eavesdropping. He was pleased that Amy and Benjamin had pulled the same idea out of their gray matter that he had been vainly pursuing. Somewhat rea.s.suring, when others believe a pa.s.sing notion has substance. What had his examiner muttered, long ago at Oxford? The universe is under no obligation to make sense, though a doctoral thesis is The universe is under no obligation to make sense, though a doctoral thesis is. People craved order, meaning, some certainty in the face of immense mystery. No matter the price.

The others chattered on, plainly glad to have something to do. There was perhaps shelter in numbers. In primate talk-a form of grooming, hadn't the Eater said?

As yet another rattling hammer blow fell upon the Center, he felt the need of whatever shelter-even intellectual-he could find.

2.

Benjamin wasn't having any. "Come on, it makes no sense."

Arno gave him the full glowering treatment. Heavy on the eyebrows, stentorian voice, rigid at-attention gaze. "It's the only way we can get this information to her."

"But I've got no no experience at any of this-" experience at any of this-"

"Neither does anyone here. Not anybody who can understand the material."

"I've never been in s.p.a.ce and-"

"It's easy. I've done it."

Arno did look like the type who would sh.e.l.l out big bucks for a suborbital shot, an hour or two of zero-g, and great views. Probably some high-level government gig had taken him up. Benjamin shook his head adamantly. "I'll be a lot higher up in orbit. I'm not used to zero-g."

"So maybe you'll throw up some. So what?"

He gritted his teeth. "I won't be worth a d.a.m.n."

A heavy pause. "It's your duty."

To punctuate this, a rolling series of crashes and thunder rolls swept through the center. They were so common now, n.o.body even cringed.

An aide ran in and said, "We got everybody out of the E wing. It's totalled."

"How many casualties?"

"Plenty of injured. We're setting up Medical in G wing. Got three known dead."

Arno nodded, waved him away, looked blankly at Benjamin. "Well?"

"Okay, I'll go. I don't even see how I can-"

"We'll get you to the airstrip. I've got a first-stage carrier coming in from Oahu."

"You knew I would."

Arno grinned, an unusual expression for him. "Sure, you're an all right guy."

This locker room style did not bother Benjamin, though he recognized the method. "She's in there. Close to it."

"Near as we can tell, yes."

"I'll have to look after her." A part of him said, If there's any chance it's really her, I've got to act on it If there's any chance it's really her, I've got to act on it.

"As well you should. She's the center of coordination."

"That antimatter trap you sent-"

"It's a last-ditch thing. Main thing is, we're going for the plasma a.s.sault. Kingsley thinks that'll herd it around."

"Enough for the nuclear warheads to get in close."

"I know. It failed before. But maybe we can overwhelm it."

Benjamin had no real faith in this, but he could think of nothing else. A fighter against the ropes should try to slug his way out; the time for sublety was past.

But then, a fistfight a.n.a.logy was primate thinking, wasn't it? The Eater would be quite aware of all that. Though were humans really like other, vaguely similar forms evolved around distant stars? How special were these latest products of fitness selection among hominids?

He wondered how often in history men had made desperate moves with the same lack of confidence. The fog of battle The fog of battle, he recalled the term. Delirium was more like it.

Soon enough Kingsley was seizing him by the shoulders, a remarkable gesture for him. "I'll be alongside for the briefings. Amy, too."

"Great. I really appreciate it."

Their presence proved to be crucial. Benjamin sat through hurried yet extensive dissections of what they had learned of the Eater's structures. Amy and Kingsley helped him through the spots when he would blank out, losing the thread.

"Like a brain?" one of the specialists said in answer to Benjamin's question. "We're stacked on top, newer brain on the outside. Form dictates function. Within the limits of being a kludge, of course-sticking new parts on while the older ones are running. On the other hand, the Eater's able to rearrange itself whenever it wants, as nearly as we can tell. So no-it's completely different."

"Then why should I trust any of this?" Benjamin shot back. "It keeps changing."

"Because it's all we've got."

This looked pretty flimsy to him, all the theorizing based on interpretations of magnetic wave packets. Channing had picked up most of the data they were using as she darted around at the fringes of the thing. There was a category of localized information the specialists called the "Remnants"-apparently, the records of civilizations encountered in the far past by the Eater.

"We figure they, too, were 'harvested' by the Eater," the specialist said. "But they're not just libraries. They interact. Talk to each other. To the Eater, wherever its intelligence is."

"Magnetic ghosts," Benjamin said.

"Yes, in a way."

"All the people we shipped up to it, that's what they'll become?"

"We guess so. The information density in the thing is incredible."

"That word doesn't mean much anymore."

One Remnant was an especially powerful agency the cybertechs called the "Old One." "Now, that may be the essence of the Eater, the original race that started it all," a horn-rimmed, earnest woman said. "It seems to have pieces of itself distributed all over the magnetosphere. None of the other characteristic wave packets do that."

"This is all just a bunch of guesses," Benjamin said harshly.

"Right you are," she said.

Later, still unsettled from this, he asked Kingsley and Amy, "Why doesn't it just kill us all?"

Kingsley understood power and had a ready reply. He was holding up pretty well through all this, the upside of his cla.s.sic Brit reserve. "A universal urge," he said. "It doesn't want us all dead; it wants us all compliant."

Grimly, Arno convened with the survivors of high command who could reach the islands. The Eater was slamming away at the United States, pelting it with cyclones, electrical nightmares, fierce winds. Planes did not venture into the snarling skies. The American habit of taking the lead in international matters had now made it the princ.i.p.al target.

Arno and the others tried to raise the stakes. In the last few weeks, various backup missions had gotten into position. Arno used these. There seemed no one in the entire national power apparatus who could stop the on-rolling momentum he had started.

A manned s.p.a.cecraft with hydrogen bombs tried a suicide mission. They had bombs doped with elements that might interfere with the magnetic filaments, perhaps producing an electromagnetic pulse to scramble the field lines' snarls, lowering their information-bearing capacity.

The Eater figured this out, of course. It hulled the ship with high-speed gravel, shot from its accretion disk. The thin-walled vessel was shredded in a moment.

This rattled Benjamin considerably. The military advisers rea.s.sured him, as well as they could when he knew they were dealing with a complete unknown. What did lessons learned by such theorists, from the strategies of Waterloo and Gettysburg and Stalingrad, mean here? Less than nothing.

But Benjamin had Channing to help, they reminded him. Maybe that would matter.

In the hushed, defeated atmosphere at the Center, the staff labored on. n.o.body talked much. The Eater was as chatty as ever, transmitting at high-bit rates any number of reflections on life, culture, and much else. This unnerved them all still further.

YOU WOULD PROFIT FROM INVESTIGATIONS MY-SELF HAS CARRIED OUT OVER THREE BILLION YEARS. HERE I DETAIL THEM BRIEFLY. FROM THE MOMENT OF MY ORIGINS, IN MY KERNEL INTELLIGENCE, I WONDERED IF THERE COULD BE A FAR HIGHER BEING THAN MY-SELF. FOR EXAMPLE, A CLa.s.s THAT HARNESSES THE LUMINOSITY AVAILABLE IN THE STARLIGHT OF AN ENTIRE GALAXY. THIS WOULD BE VISIBLE AT GREAT DISTANCES: A LACK OF LUMINOSITY COMPARED WITH Ma.s.s, AS REVEALED BY STELLAR ORBITS IN THE SUMMED GRAVITATIONAL POTENTIAL. GALAXIES, I HAVE DETERMINED, OBEY SCALING LAWS BETWEEN THEIR SURFACE BRIGHTNESS, RADIUS, AND Ma.s.s. A HIGHER ENt.i.tY FEEDING ON LUMINOSITY WOULD BREAK THESE SCALING RULES. IN THE MANY THOUSANDS OF GALAXIES I HAVE OBSERVED, NONE SHOWS SUCH DIMINUTION. THUS THERE ARE NO GREATER FORMS OF LIFE THAN MY-SELF. I COMPRISE THE ULTIMATA.

"Gee, that's great news," Amy said dryly. "We don't have to worry about anything worse than this guy."

They all laughed, utterly without humor.

They gave him one session of deep electro-sleep. To make him remotely in condition to fly, the physicians said. He had heard of the method, which in practice seemed innocent enough: small patches on his head, a soothing sound, a sensation of skating across a gray plain-and he was waking up ten hours later, feeling better than he had in months.

Then it was just airplanes. Arno's team went with him in a convoy to the freshly sc.r.a.ped landing field a few kilometers from the Center. There a chopper carried him to the Kona airport. It was a deserted landscape pelted by high winds and rains. Enormous waves churned in across the black lava fields and chewed at the runways.

A sleek jet took him to Oahu. Again a barren plain with the military holding a perimeter. No flights except his. The suborbital carrier was of a design he had never seen before, bulky and somehow muscular in its aluminum sleekness. No time delays at all-they hustled him across a hundred meters of slick asphalt and into the pa.s.senger cylinder of the beast. They even had an umbrella-carrier who ran alongside. Somebody was taping his every move, too.

The rumble of its huge engines shook him as he belted in. A steward showed him the s.p.a.ce gear, patiently explaining each and helping him try them on. He dimly saw that this was part of their method. Keep him busy, focused, no time for fear or imagination. He welcomed it. A fringe of his depression lifted as their wheels left the ground.

The craft labored up through decks of roiled clouds. Above 35,000 feet, a clarity came to the seethe outside. They crossed out of the cone that the Eater maintained over the islands. Engines fought the inrushing winds and slowly spiraled them up to 50,000 feet.

Their rise slowed as the jet gulped the thinning air. They took him into the orbital craft then, all suited up and primed with anti-zero-g medical aids. The moment when they dropped the dart-shaped ship from the jet's bay was a foretaste of orbit, but he did not feel like vomiting. The rocket's kick in the a.s.s brought a heady rush. Vibration, ma.s.sive weight. A blue-white view through the port that quickly eased into black. Real orbital zero-g was fun. He was enjoying playing with a floating pen and the view outside when they came for him. Into a smaller compartment he went. The pilot sat a meter away and the view was better.

"A closet with a view," Benjamin said amiably. He was feeling so good he did not even wonder why.

"Yeah, Cap'n," the pilot said. "They rushed me up here so fast, I'm still going through the manifest. Gimmie a min. Name's Sharon."