Beyond Infinity by Gregory Benford

Author:Gregory Benford
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

PART V

THE SYSTEM SOLAR

When men do whate’er they can,

Easing work endangers man.

Yet there’s glory in our freedom,

Human being is not beedom.

—John Hertz

1

PREY

NEXT MORNING THE FOG began to clear. Seeker kept studying the sky. They had made steady progress climbing the flanks of the saw-toothed mountain range, and now the terrain and rich fauna resembled the territory where Cley had grown up.

She searched the distant ridgelines for hints of lookouts. Hers was not the only tribe of Ur-humans, and someone else might have escaped, despite Rin’s certainty. She asked Seeker to tune its nose to human tangs, but no traces stirred the fitful breezes.

Twice they sought cover when flying foxes glided over, their ballooned arm-wings shining against the sky. By this time surely the Supras would have sent their birds to reconnoiter, but in the blank blue bowl above, neither her nor Seeker’s even sharper vision could make out any of the ponderous, wide-winged silhouettes.

They watched a vast covey of the diaphanous silvery foxes bank and swoop down the valley currents. Seeker motioned to her. Distant rumblings came, as though the mountains above them rubbed against a coarse sky. The foxes reacted, drawing in their formation like silver leaves assembling into a ghostly tree.

Blue striations frenzied the air. The few remaining clouds dissolved in a cyclonic churn.

Cley began, “What…?”

Sheets of boiling yellow light shot overhead. A wall of hard sound followed, knocking Cley against Seeker. She found herself facedown among piney needles without any memory of getting there.

All around them the forest lay crushed, as though an enormous thing had trampled it in haste. Deep booms faded slowly in the sky. An eerie silence settled. Cley got up and inspected the wrenched trees, gagging at fumes from a split stinkbush. Nearby, two flying foxes lay side by side, as though mated in death. Their glassy eyes were still open and jerked erratically in their narrow, bony heads.

“Their brains still struggle,” Seeker said. “But in vain.”

“What was that?”

“Like the assault before on your people?”

“I suppose…but this time”—she swept her hand to the horizon of mangled forest—“it smashed everything.”

“Impatience, perhaps.” Seeker lifted a snapped wing.

“The foxes took the brunt of it for us.”

“Poor things…” Her voice trailed off as the animals’ bright eyes slowed, dimmed, then closed. “They died of electrodynamic overload, I guess.”

“Our pursuer does not know precisely where we are, so it sends generous slabs of electrical energy to do its work. And brute-force shock waves to squash.”

Seeker gently lifted the two foxes and made a slow, grave gesture, as if offering them to the sky. A long moment passed. When Seeker lowered its claws, Cley could not see the foxes, and they were not on the ground or anywhere nearby.

“What…?”

Seeker said crisply, “I judge we should shelter for a while.”

They climbed swiftly up the rough rise to a large stand of the tallest trees Cley had ever seen. Long, fingerlike branches reached far up into the air, hooking over at the very end, as if blown by a wind on high.

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