Gregory Benford Furious Gulf

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Torn free of her, and used to connect them. As Toby inhaled, it stretched--and
he smelled his own acid-sharp fear.
"Quath!"--but the ivory head that swiveled to regard him was a whirling mass
of bulging sockets and wiggly stalks, deeply alien face-scapes, not one
expression but many. Eyes and lurching mouths and planes of cheek and jowl all
working against each other, the personalities of his friend spattering across
the great head.
Unreadable. This, more than the slamming colors and ripping winds, frightened
Toby and sent a chill through his aching, straining joints.
Quath's rasping was harsh and yet calm, resigned.
This is the stochasticity. The random esty's laborings.>
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A pearly fog dispersed, blown by some unseen wind, and Toby saw far below
them--though they were not falling toward any place now--a
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208
Gregory Benford mass of pinhole openings in a broad plain. The pinholes
danced, refracted by great distance.
They flew along the plain as though blown by a wind, soundless but for a soft
chime almost like tiny voices. One pinhole swelled and he could make out small
bumps on it. Toby closeupped the nodules and found their crests crowned by
dashes of white--and then realized that these were snow-capped mountains.
Toby saw the size of the thing he was witnessing--a plain sprawling away into
hazy infinity, a whole flat world. Seething with pores. Pockets
. 4.
that opened and closed like slippery mouths.
Quath called.
They lurched sidewise, Toby barely keeping both gloved hands on
..
Quath. Rushing winds, hard-slamming acceleration.
:
The mountaintops streamed by like tiny ridges. Something slammed them forward
with a rude kick, up and away from a yawning cavern that churned with brooding
shapes. A sudden veer, and they were back above the plain. The multitude of
other pinholes churned and jostled like an
..
angry crowd. Gravity's gullet.
I!:.
"What... what are they?" Toby called.
"Places to go?"
that knowledge--or can have it.>
"Where are we going?"
:
"I'm rethinking this whole idea, buggo."
.,
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I
Something somber and yet matter-of-fact in Quath's tone was chilling.
ioby held tight to the alien's leg and watched as a particular pinhole began o
grow nearby. He realized that they were speeding toward it, turning at angles
and spinning in a random dance, while vagrant forces plucked at his fluttering
legs, his painful arms, and gurgled the fluid in his ears. He forced away
bitter nausea but it hovered in the back of his throat.
Hold. Just a little longer. If you lose Quath-
The hole puckered. Toby had the unpleasant sensation that it was preparing to
swallow them--and then it did.
In a blur of wrenching speed they rushed through gauzy spaces, his eyes
filming and suddenly thick with tears. Then he heard a rasp, felt a thump--and
they were on a field of ropy, tough grass. He felt himself gingerly and sat
up.
"Uh!" Muscles complained. No bones seemed to grind against themselves.
Quath was already surveying the curved bowl that arced away in all
directions--though she moved a little unsteadily on her feet. Toby could not
see where they had come from, but a small dappling in the sky flickered,
hinting at a huge space above--and then was gone.
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FURIOUS GULF
209
"That like to pulled me apart."
"That was weather?"
matter. Redesigning itself self-consistently.>
He felt bruised. "I don't get it. What happened?"
before. A separate space-time, usually closed off from countless others. Only
when readjustments occur do the Lanes intersect.>
"That's happening now? How come?"
Its added mass now forces the entire geometry near the black hole--including
this esty--to adjust.>
He remembered how this whole esty place had swelled up out of the ergosphere.
Worlds within worlds, all moored somehow. "What holds it together?"
"Start with the esty then. What keeps it ridin' around near a black hole, when
that hole's supposed to eat stars for breakfast?"
paper when you slide it across a table.>
"Huh?" Toby rubbed his shoulders, fighting cramps. His muscles were bunched
hard and he had to pound on them to free them up any. He lay back, tired. "So
this esty, it's written into the, the--"
space-time kernel embedded into another space-time, which in turn is curved by
the black hole. The esty is a stable dip in this overall curvature.
A well. A refuge.>
Toby brushed at the soft, moist grass. At first it moved away. Then it
caressed his fingers. "This grass--it's esty-stuff?"
it.>
"Ummm. Good to know grass is still grass."
pulsing artery.>
Toby lay back and let Quath go on. She was trying to get across slippery
ideas. He fumbled with them and finally decided to simply accept.
Primates, Quath had once told him, liked to reason by analogy, like holding up
an orange and seeing how it was like a planet. Here something like that was
needed. Capillaries, arteries, the esty as flow.
But the feel of this place was off balance, not like anything he had ever
known. Pressing textures played along his skin. The air kept stretching and
relaxing, rubbery. Tremors beneath him radiated upward into the cottony
blanket above. The esty, adjusting itself? The waves were just below the edge
of hearing--yet he felt them through his bones, a heavy pulse.
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210
Gregory Benford
And on top of this, the troubled sense of being watched. Scrolling feelers in
his sensorium. When he focused on them they dispersed.
Toby stared up in wide-eyed awe. "Land as fat as God's pocket." A
cloud dissipated and he saw high above a vast curving green mat, spotted in
vibrant yellows and purples. Land, far away.
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The roof of this Lane arced over them, as if they were in a huge spinning
cylinder, pinned to the sides by centrifugal force. But there was no spin,
Quath told him. Or nothing that would seem to humans like spin.
Instead, the esty held itself together with its own curvature of... itself. He
struggled with the idea, got nowhere, so tossed it aside. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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