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Forceful began, We are only a few of the Outbounds. We will join other
Beings-yes, perhaps smaller than us and of less consequence- who are of like
mind. We shall traverse the desert between the suns!
We fear no obstacle-
Not at all, Dusk sent. I do not depart.
Forceful seldom paused when interrupted, but this time: What?
We have a Proto. I would rather cast my lot with it.
Forceful asked, Why? With such prospects before us-
To bring this Proto into full Being. To ... Perhaps to replace Chill.
Forceful let two full transit-times between the Beings pass, making a long
silence. We are Outbounds.
We cannot carry Protos on such a vast odyssey.
This Proto I propose we call Chill. Dusk's tone carried a hard edge no Being
had heard from her before.
These events had changed Dusk, and they no longer knew her.
Forceful sent fretted wave packets, no discernible content beyond a foul mood.
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Recorder slowly murmured, The Proto has pealed forth elementary waveforms.
Yet... they do resemble the signatures of Chill.
We have not met this vexing quandary since the Long Times, Vain sent-a Being
who seldom spoke, like
Quiet. But when it did, the Eight listened. Vain was paired in helicity with
Eater-who was feasting on the fringes of whorls now stripping off the edges of
the fresh solar storm-and so all understood that this was some form of
consensual voice for the both of them. Chill is gone!
And so Vain sent them again to consider the deepest dilemmas that confronted
Beings. Of course, they did not fear Death-an idea almost wholly
theoretical-precisely because it was very rare.
Instead, they had all through their long lives suffered the Diminishment,
losing whorls and thus fractions of memory and self. Such was life. To trim
intelligently was ideal; to do it brutally was subtraction. But neither of
these was the theoretical absolute ... was Death. That province no one knew-by
definition of
Being.
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And yet to this end Chill had now delivered himself.
The Beings found Chill's motivations mysterious. Perhaps some state of
depression had forced him to
Die? Some considered him deranged. Others felt that choosing Death meant,
obviously, that some higher state was thus made available. Creation simply
would not permit intelligences to stop.
Perhaps, these said, the whispers heard from the Distants were, in fact, from
those now living on another plane.
This was one of the primary reasons cited by the Outbounds for their
agenda-particularly by Forceful, who now sent, We may well find Chill
ourselves, in some other state-across the desert.
This reply sent rippling, complex waveforms among the Eight and the Six alike
(though the Six were
Five, with Chill gone). Their vexed talk pivoted around a paradox at the core
of their existence. The bow shock turbulence could shear off parts of Beings,
here in the most lively zone, the Cascade. But it also energized fresh
whorls-giving food plus building materials. Beings could tease these into
self-sustained magnetic cells, to stock more memory, more "body," more skills.
The ultimate source of the shock wall was the sun's momentum as it orbited the
mass of the inner galaxy. So the Beings owed both their origin and their
growth to the remorseless momentum of that sole scintillating dot, the Fount,
brimming with promise.
So we leave!
The Six, now the Four-(Mirk, Sunless) (Ring, Forceful)-set off to swim through
the desert between suns.
The voyage would be long, and quite probably they would not survive. The
wastes before them held shadowy presences, legendary pitfalls, and the
unending terror of the shadowy unknown. All this they knew.
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Their seething plasma wakes throbbed as they steadily stroked outward. They
chose, of course, to move laterally, crosswise to the unending torrent from
upstream, where the interstellar gas and plasma came brawling in from the
stars. Never swim against the current. They all knew that the distances were
immense, the spans of time daunting even for the Beings. But the Eight sensed
something fundamental, as did those lesser (and far more numerous) Beings who
hung back from the Cascade. From them rose a long, rolling chorus in farewell
salute. They all knew that after an age-old debate the issue was settled.
Most would stay, but the Outbounds had the courage to go.
Though perhaps its end would never be known to the Eight, an epoch voyage had
begun.
10
THE SUNBORN MAGNETICS
Julia sat and watched as the spectral monitors-set in the microwave and radio
ranges, to pick up the avalanche of talk from the Beings-sprayed their arrays
onto screens. The solar storm had passed, carrying the Proto into the outer
reaches. There it might survive, grow, self-organize in the filmy reaches far
beyond the raw rub of matter. The society of Beings would tend to it. After
all, the Sunborn were their future.
So much.
She sighed, suddenly tired. "I hope this convinces them," she said wanly.
Viktor patted her hand, concerned. His forehead wrinkled, and his eyelids
fluttered, holding back emotion before the rest of the crew. "You sent the
entire lot of data we got from the Marsmat, so is all you can do. Was
brilliant, when you saw that the waveforms in the Mars-mat correlated with the
Beings'
language. And that this Incursor, lost in the inner planets, was trapped. So
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might still be there. Have a signature, anchored in the crust of Mars.
Electromagnetic waves, they do not lie."
The rest of the watch crew-those not doing maintenance, anyway-nodded
silently. They were waiting, too. For her to explain the Leap.
That a Being, sunk into the crust of Mars somehow, billions of years ago,
would find a link to the emergent biological forms there. That somehow-what
labyrinths remained to explore in this!-the Being had learned to squeeze rock
with its magnetic fields. It used that ability to provoke other currents in
the crust. That the electric potentials it produced would resonate with the
microbial mats covering the early, warm and wet period of Mars. That a
symbiosis would arise. That a collaboration-a dance?-would come from such
strange musics. So much ... all in one leap. The unconscious, doing all the
heavy lifting...
Killings asked quietly, earnestly, "How'd you know that the low-frequency
emissions from Mars-stuff you've been seeing for decades- was related? I mean,
assuming it is."
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