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Earth with us. When a parent dies, the genes remain, and the memories, which
are only lesser and weaker threads."
"My parents are alive, probably, but I can't feel them
."
"We're on opposite sides of a gulf of physics difficult for us midges to
understand, in our guts," Theodore said. Musing over his spherical field-bound
pond, stirring it with a glass rod, watching the algae twine on the rod,
making history among the micro-organisms, the paramecia and rotifers, the
euglenoids and diatoms, the desmids, amphipods, ostracods, wreaking havoc
among the daphnia.
The comparatively large chaoborus larvae thin as ghosts with vicious curved
beaks and black-
eyed heads, pairs of beautifully patterned buoyancy organs fore and aft,
whisking themselves away with a wriggle to avoid the currents.
Martin rolled over and opened his eyes and felt the tingle in his lids.
Sometimes he made moves that were resisted: sudden moves, alarming the fields
perhaps, though dropping his substance only a few ten thousandths into the
forbidden chasm of one thousand g's.
It was best not to move at all, and so most of the children did not.
Theresa and Ariel sat talking quietly about Hans the Eternal and others; as
they talked, Martin saw Hans and Theodore together, though they had not been
close friends, had rarely spoken to each other. Hans asked Theodore what he
thought of Martin, whether Martin had what it took to be Pan.
"He doesn't think so," Theodore said, winking over his shoulder at Martin. "He
thinks he cares too much."
"Do you think I have what it takes?"
"Nobody who wants to be Pan should be," Theodore said.
"I don't want to be& " But there was something like hope on Hans' face.
Theresa and Ariel discussed the gowns the Wendys would wear when all was done,
and they married another world.
Theresa wore this gown as she marched down a vast cathedral aisle. The gown
draped white, like a weave of quartz crystals and diamonds, supernaturally
supple and beautiful, and in her hair
threaded rubies, emeralds, opals, beryls, flowers of sulfur, selenite,
celestite, amethyst, garnets, agates, sapphires, and on her hands she wore
constellations of Iceland spar, white aragonite, green azurite, blue lapis,
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representing the dowry of her Mother, and Theodore gave her away, dressed in a
suit woven entirely of shimmering midges and butterflies and moths, and Martin
waited at the altar. Behind him opened the arms of another world, even more
beautiful than Earth, and that meant a guilt of unfaithfulness.
Now the women were talking about having children someday, and Ariel shaking
her head stubbornly, saying she would not be a good mother, she was too tough
on others, no sympathy, but Theresa said instincts will kick in and they will
be tender.
Three days, top to bottom, in this small room, sleeping and talking, eating
only a few times, for food did not digest well under the tyranny of volumetric
fields grumpy about adding new molecules to the body's equation.
The bottom of the universe, perversely, was bright, and the top was dark. The
Dawn Treader had fallen out of the darkness, away from the muddy twisted ring
of stars, but there was still this vast cliff to descend, from three quarters
of the speed of light to less than one hundredth of one percent c, a
profligate excretion of momentum that must later be regained from fuel in the
very system they would try to kill.
They tumbled toward the central furnace, their almost straight-line course
gradually curving like an expertly drawn wire. They slowed to one half c, one
quarter, one tenth, one hundredth, and now, one thousandth, one ten
thousandth.
Breaking and entering. Intent to murder.
The enormous burden of momentum passed away, and the children were no longer
fast gods, but pigeons in the head of a very quiet, dark bomb, stealing
through the house, the solar system of
Wormwood.
Martin opened his eyes and spread his arms, his fingers, savoring the freedom
of no tingle, no tyranny.
Theresa leaned over him, already awake. "It's over," she said. "We're here."
In the first few hours of freedom from the cramped super deceleration space,
the children reacquainted themselves with the ship. Martin led them stem to
stern, following the map projected by his wand.
Tortoise had taken the shape of a squat dumbbell, the third homeball having
split into two hemispheres, absorbing and redistributing the second neck to
become a connecting bar between them. The nose was a mere blister on the blunt
face of the fore hemisphere, and there was no tail.
Hakim set up the search shop in the nose of
Tortoise to see what there was to see. The new star sphere quickly filled with
information, and Hakim immediately reexamined their target worlds one by one
as Martin observed: rocky Nebuchadnezzar, innermost, Ramses next, and far
beyond, on the opposite side of Wormwood, Herod, the massive depleted gas
giant. There were still no major surprises at this distance, half a billion
kilometers from Nebuchadnezzar, but the images in the star sphere were
gratifyingly crisp and clean.
"It's very good," Hakim told Martin. "What would we like to know?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]