FURIOUS GULF.

Gregory Benford.

Prologue True Center

Toby watched his father walk the hull.

Killeen was a silvery figure, his suit tuned to reflect as much radiation as possible. A mirror man. Slick light slid over him as he moved, shimmering with the phosph.o.r.escence of stars and gas. Toby could follow Killeen's smooth, slow lope as a rippling warp against the fiery background.

--Dad!--Toby called over his skinsuit comm band.

--What? Oh... --Killeen's surprise came through the fizz of comm static.--How come you're outside?-- --Crew's wondering how come you're out here so long.-As Cap'n of the Argo, Killeen could do whatever he liked, of course.

But Toby had felt the growing uncertainty among the officers inside.

Somebody had to act, to say something, so he had pulled on his skintight suit and come clumping out here. Lately Cap'n Killeen had kept himself isolated. He came out here to hike over the fat curves of the ship's hull, often not even leaving his suit comm line open.

Killeen said distantly,--I'm navigating. Watching.-The big man's watery image flowed, liquid with light, as Killeen came toward Toby across Argo's blunt prow. His suit momentarily mirrored the black depths of a nearby molecular cloud, and Toby saw him as an eerie shadow-man against the distant burnt-orange wash of star-speckled gas.

--You can do that from the bridge,--Toby said.

--Get a better feel for it out here.--Killeen came close enough for Toby to make out his father's stern expression through the suit's small vision slit.

Toby knew his father's pinched-face, hedgehog mood, and decided to cut through it directly.--There's near a dozen more crew on sick report.-- Killeen's lips thinned but he said nothing. Toby hesitated, then summoned up his courage.--Dad, we're starving! Those gardens we lost, they're not gonna grow again. Face it!-- 2.Abruptly Killeen whirled, adroitly sliding his magnetic boots in zero gravity.--I am facing it! We just don't know any more techtricks. Even the specialists, the green-thumbers, they can't get those ship gardens sprouting again. No help there. So I'm thinking, got that?-Toby stepped back involuntarily; Killeen's flinty anger was quick and daunting. He took a breath and said hesitantly, --Shouldn't... can't we *.. do something different?--Killeen scowled.--Like what?----Approach some of those?--Toby pointed tentatively.Far ahead of Argo floated faint metallic dabs of light. Not clouds or luminous dust. Artificial.--We don't know what they are. Could be mechwork. Probably is.Mechs have built plenty near True Center.--Killeen shrugged.

--Maybe they're human, Dad.----Doubtful. It's been a fearsome long time since humans lived in s.p.a.ce.----That's just what history says. We won't know till we look for ourselves. We're raiders by heritage, Dad! The Family's itching to get out of the ship, stretch their legs.--Killeen gazed thoughtfully toward the blaze of Galactic Center.--One thing you learn as Cap'n is not to stick your nose into a beehive just to smell the honey. Those things'Il probably be hostile, even if they aren't mech. Ever'thing else here seems to be.-Toby let the remark ride. It had been over a year, but still Killeen had not recovered from the death of his woman, Shibo. He kept up his duties as Cap'n but was often withdrawn, pensive, moody. That might have been acceptable for a crewman, but not for a Cap'n. The price in morale was getting too high.Still, Toby thought, Killeen was probably right. They were cruising directly into the center of the galaxs where vast, indifferent energies worked. Huge, glowering suns. Incandescent clouds of dust and gas.

Powers far beyond anything mere humans could manage. And somewhere here, intelligences to match the mad swirl of stars.He had studied enough history to know that humans had evolved near a star two-thirds of the way out in the galactic spiral. The galaxy was a spinning disk, like a toy--only bigger than the human mind could encompa.s.s.

Out there at Old Earth, far from the cataclysms of True Center, living had been easy, quiet.One of his instructional drills had tried to get him to visualize a box that was a light-year on a side, the distance light itself could travel in a whole year. Out there, near the legendary Earth, that box would hold maybe one single star, on average.Here, at Galactic Center, such a box held a million stars.Suns crowded the sky like glowing marbles. Stormy streamers of red gas shrouded them. Stars swarmed like angry bees around the central axis--the blue-white brilliance of the exact center.

3.Toby said quietly,--We could come alongside one of 'em, just for a look.--Killeen shook his head.--Solve one problem, maybe, but make another.

A worse one.----We're starving, Dad. We have to do something.--Killeen turned and strode angrily away along the worn and pitted hull. His magnetos snapped down to the metal with a hard clank that Toby felt through his own boots. He trotted after his father. Walking here took a strangely gaited stride, coasting between steps, letting his boot damp just long enough to get more momentum. Then he jerked the boot free, pushing forward, and was off on another glide. Toby was good at it but he couldn't keep pace with his father.Argo had brought them here at near-light speeds, gulping down plasma with her magnetic scoops. There was fuel aplenty, thicker and thicker as they neared the center. Still, random chunks of rock had pocked and blistered her shiny hull. Now they were coasting slower, and Killeen used the chance to hull-walk with some safety. Argo had joined the gyre of matter here, which swung about True Center at one-thousandth light speed.Killeen reached a smooth ridge in the Argo's complex bulges and stopped, as if on the brow of a real mountain, back on the planet of their birth. Their ship was a last grand construction of their ancestors, a vessel as big as a hill. Beyond him loomed a vast dark cloud, like a smudge of ink against the flaming stars.Killeen turned and looked back at his son. As Toby approached hesaw Killeen's expression shift to a plaintive longing.--If only there were planets here... ----Can't be, I heard,--Toby said flatly, hoping to jar their talk back to realities.--Why?--Killeen asked sharply.--Look at these stars! They're flying past each other so close, they strip planets dean free of their parent sun.----Well, that sets planets drifting free, sure. So?--Killeen said stubbornly.--Sure, free. And frozen. Too far from any sun. No plant life. No food.--Killeen peered wistfully outward.--So in all this magnificence, there's no place for life?----Yeasay. Prob'ly none for us, either.--Toby ventured this opinion mostly to snap his father out of his illusions. Maybe even get him to rethink this foolhardy venture to True Center.Killeen gave him a sober, almost plaintive look.--We have to go on.----Why? The radiation levels are so high, Argo can barely hold it off.Just coming outside here, you're risking heavy exposure.----It's our duty, I tell you.----Dad, your first duty is to Argo, to your crew.-- 4.

--There's something near the Galactic Center. We have to find out what.- Toby snorted in frustration. Killeen's eyes narrowed at this, but Toby told himself he was speaking for a majority of the crew. That was his duty, too. He said bitterly,--Moldy old records hint--hint!--at something.

That's all. For that we're supposed to...- He broke off as Killeen abruptly turned his back. The Cap'n of the Argo kept his shoulders square despite a sudden sag of his head. Toby saw that his father was fighting with himself, wrestling with dark demons his son would never fully know.

Toby could only glimpse them through the clotted phrases of their conversations, through half-made gestures, through the veiled language of shrugs and scowls and sudden, blunt looks that revealed momentar naked emotion. The Cap'n was never able to unburden himself, not even to his son. Not even, perhaps, to Shibo... when she had lived.

Things were weighing on Killeen. Shibo's loss. Killeen's oblique relation now with his own son. The approaching whirlpool of True Center. All these churned within his father's mind, Toby knew. An unhealthy soup.

Killeen gazed out at the blue-black ma.s.s that loomed like an absolute wall beside the Argo. It was a snarled, inky cloud of dust and simple molecules, their ship's instruments said. But Killeen always distrusted the crisp certainties of Argo's Bridge diagnostics. Years before he had formed the habit of surveying from the hull itself, free of the rea.s.suring, softening, artificial clasp of the ship. Or at least that was what he said. Toby suspected that he just liked to get clear of Argo's confines. Like father, like son.

Gloomy clouds like this dotted the pressing radiance of the Galactic Center, black punctuation marks in a riot of stellar fire. Killeen had chosen Argo's to take of this cloud shield lethal course advantae aS a against radiation levels. As Argo slipped slowly by veiled, murky filaments, Toby watched his father's face tighten, wrinkle with a grimace--and suddenly open in astonishment.

--There!--Killeen pointed.--Moving.-- Toby thumbed a control on his neck collar. The helmet computer telescoped his vision and shifted to infrared. His field of view rushed into the recesses of the cloud.

Something snaked at the edge of the mottled mist.

--Go to high mags,--Killeen said tersely, his surprise gone, all business.

Toby sent his vision zooming to max magnification. RANGE: 23 KILL, his visor told him.

The snaky thing wriggled--slowly, slowly. Its gleaming jade skin reflected the starglow. Sluggishly it spread gossamer-thin sheets along its body.

--It's alive!--Toby called.

5.The green serpent was using sails. Natural sails, grown out of its body on fibrous spars. They caught amber starlight. In zero gravity, Toby knew, even the faint pressure of light was enough to give a measurable push.

With nothing to slow it down, the twisty creature would pick up speed.

--Look.--Killeen whispered.--There's something more in that doud.-- The gently wriggling beast had no head, only a long black slit at one end. Toby thought this must be a mouth, because the push from its broad, shiny sails was taking it forward with the slit end ahead. And it was sailing in pursuit of a blue ball.

Silently they watched it draw nearer, nearer--and the slit-mouth widened. Something orange shot out and stuck to the blue ball. Drew it in.

The slit-mouth yawned. With two gulps the ball disappeared.

bPredators.--Killeen said.--And prey.- Toby said wonderingl)--Pred... ? How can anything live in a cloud?

In free s.p.a.ce?-- A grin split Killeen's star-tanned face.--In free s.p.a.ce? Nothing's free, son. Molecular clouds have organic molecules, right? So the astro types say.-- --Those names, yeasay.--Toby recalled the voice of his teacher Aspect, Isaac, who gave him complicated lessons.--Oxygen. Carbon.

Nitrogen.-- Killeen gestured expansively.--Add all this starlight, cook for a few billion years. Presto!- Toby blinked.--Life's hiding all through this cloud?-- --I'll bet the hunting is good at the edge of the cloud. Some things prob'ly live deeper in, where they can hide. Every now and then they'll come out. To bask in the starlight. Get warm.- Toby nodded, convinced.--That snaky thing, it knows that. Comes around, looking for supper.-- --The sail-snake eats the blue b.a.l.l.s. But what's the blue ball eat?----Something smaller. Something we can't see from here.-- --Right.--Killeen squinted.--There's got to be some critter that lives off the starlight and drifting molecules alone.- Toby said wonderingly,--Plants? s.p.a.ce plants. I'll bet we can eat some of them.-- Killeen pounded his son on the back.--Be a wonder if we couldn't.

We know these clouds have the same basic chemistry that nature generates everywhere. Argo's science programs told us that, 'member? So we'll be able to digest some of whatever's hiding in there, for sure.- Toby blinked, watching the jade snake unfurl its sails further. Was it green for the same reason plants were, to sop up sunlight in all colors except green? It began an achingly slow turn, showing curved black stripes. Had it seen their ship? Maybe they should run it down, see what it tasted like. His stomach rumbled at the idea.

6.

But the creature had a majesty about it, too. A beauty in its glistening hide, its graceful movement. Like an immense swimmer in a black pool.

Maybe they'd leave it be.

--We'd never have seen them from the bridge. Those instruments would've filtered out what they didn't think was important.--Killeen was all business again, his wonderment suppressed. That was part of the price of being Cap'n.

Toby gaped, still fascinated by the sail-snake. He knew what his father said was right. n.o.body could have guessed what they'd see out here. But Killeen had come out, again and again. Hammering away at a Cap'n's problems, thinking, worrying, pacing the hull, looking without knowing what he was looking for. And some of the crew had thought he was crazy.

Toby listened as Killeen called the Bridge and ordered Argo toward the shadowy cloud. Understanding came slowly amid the crew. He could hear on comm as the ship stirred with excited voices, with hope, with joy.

--Dad?--he finally asked.

Killeen was giving a flurry of orders. Crew had to prepare to hunt, to forage, to pursue strange game in inky vacuum depths. To do things they had never tried before. Had never even imagined.

Killeen paused and said curtly,--Yeasay?-- --We can hole up inside the cloud for a while. Rest up. Get our bearings.-- Killeen shook his head furiously.--Naysay. Resupply, that's all.

There's True Center. Look at it! We're so close now.- Toby peered ahead, through dusty clumps already wreathing the hull of Argo as the great ship headed into the recesses of the giant cloud. At max mag he could make out the exact center of the galaxy. White-hot. Beautiful.

Dangerous.

And his father, he now saw, could never be deflected from that goal.

Not by starvation. Not by deadly risks. Not by the weight of past sorrow.

They would fly straight into the gnawing center of all this gaudy, swirling chaos. On an impossible voyage. Looking for something, with no clear idea of what it might be. , n this is what we were born to Killeen grinned broadly.--C mo , son, do. We'll go onward. Inward. There's all our Family's past here, somewhere.

We'll find out what happened, who we are.----Crew doesn't like that kind of talk, Dad.-He frowned.--How come?----This is a scary place.-- --So? They haven't seen the glory of it, haven't really thought it through. When the time comes, they'll follow --We're running for our lives, Dad.-- --So?--Killeen grinned, a jaunty human gesture amid the wash of galactic light.--We always have been.-- 7.Particle Storm The carapace glides like a hunting hornet.Its thorax is of high-impact matte ceramic. Bone-white lattices mimic ribs. Storage balloons inflate like lungs as it exchanges plasma charge. Slow rises, fluttering exhales.This is illusion. Its body is a treasury of past designs, free of weight, remembering nothing of planets. Evolution is independent of the substrate, whether organic or metallic or plasmic. Its design follows cool engineerings now encased in habit. Function converges on form. Tubular rods of invisible tension, struts like statements.Elsewhere along its expanses, gray pods stud the shooting angularities of it. Scooped curves in smudged silver. Tapering lines blend, uniting skewed axes. None of these geometries would be possible beneath the dictates of gravity.It torques. Grave, careful. Movement is a luxury, scarcely necessary when what truly stirs is data.It has little kinesthetic sense. Instead it lives amid encoded interior universes. Webs, logics, filters. Perceptions are racing patterns flung between the shifting sands of stars and lives.Data pours through these s.p.a.ces. Digital rivers fork into rivulets, seeking receptors. Stuttering, layer-encoded, as endless as the rain of protons.Like a feverish need the data-streams fall here on opaque t.i.tanium sh.e.l.ls.

But it does not sense the particle torrent that flails uselessly at ma.s.sive shields: layers of stressed conglomerate cismetal, revolving.Ma.s.s is brute. Inside the crystalline ramparts, there is nothing which seems like a machine. No obvious movement, no sliding mechanical torques. Here the essence is static, eternal, a fulcrum of fixed forces.Thought is infinitely tenuous. The inner mind flits down tiny stalks of dark diamond, fashioned from the cores of ancient supernovas. Codes race in fine sprays of polarized nuclei, dancing forever in buoyant fields. Electrons pinch and snake, bearing luminescent ideas.From the distance come spectral streamers of a red giant, laboring toward supernova. Plasma casts ruby shafts across the slowly revolving planes. The tossing, frenzied flush traces out the worn rims of craters. Random impacts, long forgotten. Pocks and scratches cross the ma.s.sive shanks.

These tell strange stories, unreadable now.Death crowns the spiral spine: antennae tinged in jarring yellow. They can slice through the galactic hiss here, stab electromagnetic needles through prey light-minutes away.For the moment it converses. Its interior selves are free of the swallowing mandates of self-preservation. Their task is to think long. Within them, data dances.

8.

The anthology intelligence speaks to others far distributed along the galactic plane--though the separation into (self, here) and (other, there) is a convention, a brute simplification for this slowly revolving angularity.

Something like an argument congeals. Sliding perspectives of digital nuance. Binary oppositions are illusory here--you/I, point/counter--but they do shape issues, in the way that a frame defines a painting.

It begins. Language lances across the storming ma.s.ses that intervene, the vagrant pa.s.sing weather. Cuts. Penetrates.Semi-sentients should not preoccupy us.They must. They are an unresolved issue.You term them "primates"?Of the cla.s.s of dreaming vertebrates.I/You consider them irrelevant.The underlying issues still vex.They are nothing! Debris, motes.

They approach. Little time remainsbefore they will near the Center.We/You have eradicated humans virtually everywhere. Only small bands remain. Our protracted deliberations, well recorded in history, demand completion of this ancient task.This policy is e>/-*-x< old.="" we/you="" should="" reinspect="" it.they="" are="" nearly="" extinct.="" press="" on.their="" extinction="" seems="" difficult="" to="" achieve.="" they="" persist.="" this="" suggests="" weyou="" reconsider="" ourmy="">

9.

They are vermin. Carbon-based evolution brings only low skills. They still communicate with each other linearly!Some would say that evolution works as equally upon youus as upon them.Nonsense. We You direct our changes. They cannot. This is the deep deficiency of chemical life.They were once able to alter their own imprintings. To write changes in their carbon kind.They lost it as weyou diminished them. Now they are the same as the unthinking forms, the animals--shaped by random forces.They were once important players here. WeYou should understand their threat to us before expunging them.Possibly they harbor information harmful to usyou--so say our most stable records.Those are sheltered against the Ma.s.s Eater's radiant storm and so should be well preserved.By its nature weyou cannot know what this hidden information is.Why "by its nature"?There are many theories.Precisely. Does it not seem curious that something in ouryour makeup makes it somehow impossible for usyou to know what these humans carry? That such knowledge is 10.

blocked for us? A curious aspect of ourdeep programming.May carry. Such ancient records are suspect.WeYou cannot risk disbelievingthem.Long ago the philosopher I I resolved such questions. WeYou are imprisoned within our perception-s.p.a.ce.

There will always remain matters youwe cannot know.But if these matters affect ourselves?

Disquieting.Living with ambiguity is the nature of high intelligence. Still, to lessen uncertainty, weyou should exterminate the remaining bands.And lose their information?Very well--archive them first. I now point to this latest incursion--already it nears True Center.There may be risks in erasing them.Nonsense. YouWe have destroyed many such expeditions before.First, let scouts find them accurately.

The usual primate-hunter units will track them, perhaps inflict minor damage--one must give such lower forms some reward structure, remember.You/We advocate delay?No--cautious action. Remember that higher forms than us will judge 11.ouryour actions. Prudence demands care. Earlier events involving these primates, on two separate planets, have pointed toward some significant yet poorly defined role they play. They may carry information--and what are they, but information? Indeed, whatare we?--which can bring theattentions of minds above ours.

Very well, caution. But how?

A trap.

Part I

F^R P. NTI Q U I'l

I.

Techno-NomadsToby had barely gotten back inside the air lock and was shedding his suit when Cermo showed up. Toby wore nothing but shorts under his vacuum suit, and the ship felt colder than outside. He rummaged in his locker for his overalls, shivering, and Cermo said, "Where you been?"

"Where's it look?"

The big man towered over Toby. Cermo had been called Cermothe-Slow in years past, but now was leaner and quicker. A broad grin seemed to divide his face in half with delighted antic.i.p.ation. "Heard all the ruckus.

Cap'n found us somethin' to eat, right?"

"We'll see."

"Doesn't change anything for you, though," Cermo said with a sly chuckle. He was a big man with a soft-eyed, mirthful face, so the chuckle carried no malice.

"Whaf's that mean?"

"You're on maintenance detail today."

"So? Okay, I'll check the biotanks, the usual."

"Today's not usual." Again the sly grin.

"What's wrong?"

"Sewage seals broke."

"Again? No fair! They went out last time I was on maintenance, too."

"Well then, you're an expert." Cermo handed Toby a mop. "Apply your know-how."

The seals were always popping, because the pressure regulators had to be tuned just exactly right. Human waste was a vital ingredient in the biotanks. It had to be pressurized, filtered, and the final product flattened into squishy mats--which the farm teams spread around among the big bowl-shaped crop zones. The Argo was a long-voyage ship, designed to keep every drop of water, every sigh of air sealed tight inside its skin.

I 6.Easy to understand, hard to do. Most of the Argo crew were relatives, all that remained of Family Bishop. They came from Snowglade, a bleak world Toby remembered rather fondly. Toby was of the youngest generation of Family Bishop. That gave him the flexibility of being fresh and green, but the sour fact of the matter was that Bishops had few skill.s to help them run the Argo.

All Families had been techno-nomads, learning just enough to survive while they were on the move. Always running, dodging, staying ahead of mechs. Not that most mechs paid them any special attention. Humans at Galactic Center were more like rats in the walls, not major players in anything.

Argo was as friendly to its pa.s.sengers as a ship could be, a fine artifact from the High Arcology Era. Trouble was, its systems a.s.sumed the pa.s.sengers had educations that Family Bishop could only guess at.

Example: the sewage. Neither Cap'n Killeen nor Cermo nor anybody else had been able to make head or tail of the instructions for the pressure system.

It a.s.sumed something called the Perfect Gas Law, the instructions said. The foul stuff that actually flowed through the smooth, clear pipes was certainly not perfect, and it obeyed no law anybody ever heard of. It spewed out without provocation and often with what seemed to be insulting timing. Last week, a howling brown leak sprayed the Family when it was a.s.sembled for a wedding. That took a certain fine edge off the celebration.

Toby joined the other poor souls who had drawn maintenance this week. He breathed through his mouth but that helped only a while, until the smell got up into his head. His teacher Aspect, Isaac, spoke to him in his mind while he bent over, pushing the foul stuff with a sponge brush.I have conferred with the most ancient records you carry in chip-library.