Infinity's Shore

Again he glanced at Ling, the star-voyaging biologist. Her aura still seethed, though now in cooler shades. She’s declared an end to her old allegiance. Does she have a new one yet? Other than revenge, that is? He wished they could go somewhere private — and dry — to talk, without the guarded gamesmanship of their earlier conversations. But Lark wasn’t sure she’d want the same thing. Just because his allegations had proved right, that did not mean she should bless him for smashing her childhood idols.

After counting a long interval, Ling nodded and they turned around again.

Rann grunted satisfaction, and Lark felt his heart race.

The beads had penetrated most of the way into the glowing cage! Hardworking blues bubbled satisfaction, then hurried toward the boo grove, fetching air from their makeshift snorkel.

Lark wrote a message to those inside the Rothen airlock.

EVERYBODY CLEAR OUT

BUT 2 SMALL HUMANS.

WEAR AIR SUPPLY.

BRING CURES!

When next he and his companions turned back toward the lock, it was nearly empty. Two women stood on the other side. Petite, though even through their swim-coverings he saw well-developed figures — buxom and wasp-waisted. Clearly, they must have taken advantage of the same cosmetic biosculpting that had made Ling, and the late Besh, so striking. It’s a different universe out there, where you can design yourself like a god.

Lark swam to where the tip of a mulc capsule protruded from the Jophur barrier. Most of the bead lay deep inside. At its far end the makeshift bottle’s hole was plugged by a thick wax seal.

From his thigh pouch Lark drew a tool provided by one of Lester Cambel’s techie assistants. A can opener the fellow called it.

“Our problem is to deliver dissolving fluid into contact with the barrier, but not lake water,” the tech had explained. “Our answer is to use the new traeki fluid to hollow out some mulc beads. Then we coat these cavities with neutral wax, and refill them with more of the antidote fluid. The hole is plugged, so we have a sealed vessel—”

“I see you left an old Buyur machine inside,” Lark had observed.

“The fluid won’t affect it, and we need the machine inside. It doesn’t matter what it did in Buyur days, so long as we can signal-activate it to move again, pulling a string attached to the plug. When the plug goes pop! — the contents pour into contact with the Jophur wall! It’s foolproof.”

Lark wasn’t so sure. There was no telling if clever, homemade electrical devices would work underwater, surrounded by time-warped fields. Here goes everything, he thought, squeezing the activator.

To his relief, the Buyur device began moving right away … unfolding an appendage, all coiled and springy like a shambler’s tail.

I wonder what you used to do, he pondered, watching the machine writhe and gyre. Are you aware enough to puzzle over where you are? Where your masters have gone? Do you have an internal clock, to know half a million years have passed? Or did time stop for you inside the bead?

The coiled arm flailed as the machine sought to right itself, yanking a cord attached to the stopper at the far end. The plug slipped, caught, then slipped some more.

It was hard to follow events in the region of “quantum separated time.” Things seemed to happen in fits and starts. Sometimes effect seemed to precede cause, or he saw the far side of a rotating object while closer parts remained somehow obscured. It was a strange, sideways manner of seeing that reminded Lark of “Cubist” artworks, depicted in an ancient book his mother loved borrowing from the Biblos Archive.

Finally, the stopper slid free. At once reddish foam spread from the nozzle of the makeshift bottle, where its contents met the golden wall. Lark’s heart pounded, and he felt his amulet, the fragment of the Holy Egg, react with growing heat. His left hand clawed at the skink-skin wrappers, but could not gain entry to grab the vibrating stone. So, like an itch that could not be scratched, he endured the palpitation as his breastbone was rubbed from both sides.

Grunts of satisfaction escaped Rann as the foamy stain spread, eroding the Jophur barrier from within. The widening hole soon met a neighboring “bottle,” embedded in the wall near the first. In moments, fresh supplies of dissolving fluid gushed. The material of the barrier seemed to shiver, as if it were alive. As though in pain. Waves of color rippled around the growing cavity, as his rewq tried reading strange emotions.

So fixed was everyone on the process, for long intervals no one looked beyond, to the airlock and its two inhabitants, until a stray current tugged Lark aside. Lacking outside observers, the Danik women must have experienced time’s passage in a somewhat linear fashion. They looked tense, hunching away from the red foam, crouching near the airlock’s sealed inner door as the bubble slowly approached. Fear showed through their transparent face masks. No one knew what would happen when the hissing effervescence broke through.