Galactic Center 5 - Furious Gulf by Gregory Benford

Author:Gregory Benford
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780446559041
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THREE

The Far Black

The man was a wrinkled dwarf, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“You’re from what era?” he asked, leading a band of five officers and Toby through a long, dimly lit corridor. A gloomy, low-ceilinged warren. Their boots rang on the hard, ceramic surface. Nobody answered, waiting for Killeen to break their silence, but he remained silent.

The dwarf shrugged. “Pretty recent, looks to be.”

Toby hadn’t seen the first encounter between Killeen and this short, muscular figure, but it didn’t seem to have settled anything.

“After the Calamity, as I told you,” Killeen said evenly. But his mouth was tight and bloodless.

“That doesn’t cut any thick air here, fella. All life’s a big old calamity, you look at it the right way.”

“Our home is the planet Snowglade, and I’ll thank you to keep your philosophy to yourself.”

The dwarf’s eyebrows arched, peering up at the Cap’n. “Oooh, you’re a systo-critic, eh?”

Killeen’s mouth twitched. Toby could tell his father was carefully feeling his way into a completely unknown situation. Strange, but looking completely ordinary. Killeen said formally, “We have come from the destruction of our world. We were led by portents and messages—”

“Fashion this—I had a chip installed just so I could speak this venac you’re squawking. So look, fella, I’d ’preciate some bandwidth here. Every ship comes limping in is from some esty pigeonhole, thinks we should know all their history, right down to the pimples on their cultural ass.”

“I expect respect for a delegation from a far outpost of—”

“Respect you’ll get from guys behind desks. Me, I got a job to do.” They reached the end of the corridor. Beyond yawned more round mouths of hallways.

Toby said, “I missed what you said earlier, so—well——what is this place?”

The dwarf blinked up at him. “Just an ordinary entrance portal. Better than most, I’d say, and—”

“No, I mean, what’s it a portal to?”

“Into the esty.”

“And what’s that?”

“Esty. S for space, T for time.” The dwarf waved them down a corridor and they kept walking. Doors slid open automatically as they passed. They ignored these invitations and behind them followed the whisk of closings.

“You mean we’re in some other kind of space-time here?” To Toby this place looked stupefyingly boring.

“Kids don’t learn much these days, do they?” the dwarf asked Killeen pointedly.

Toby couldn’t see how this shrunken little man could tell he was young, when Toby towered over him, and was searching for a barbed way to say this when Killeen murmured evenly, “We would all appreciate knowing what the hell this place is.”

“A stable chunk of convoluted esty. Inhabited. Governed. And now that you mention it, I haven’t heard any thanks for pulling you all in out of the Far Black.”

Killeen said sincerely, “We do thank you. We—”

“You’ll be paying for all this later, Captain, so don’t overdo the sincerity. Right now—”

“Who made this, this ‘esty’ of yours?” Toby burst in. “You people?” He looked doubtfully down at the man.

“Made it?” The dwarf shrugged. “It’s always been here.”

“How could it?” Toby demanded. “I mean,

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