End of the Circle Read online

  Louie wondered if he had the strength to wrench that long control around on its hinge, swing it against Lang’s head, get in the first shot. “You can’t do any of that by trying to control the Shapings, Doctor. Zand proved that.”

  Lang shifted to turn a dial. The console shone brighter and sang more gloriously. “I know that. What I’ll do is merge with them. For they, too, are reaching the end of a vast cycle.

  “Not that I’m of any significance, but perhaps I can be like an insignificant snowflake that determines which way the avalanche shall fall. In any case, I won’t know, for Emil Lang won’t exist anymore.”

  Louie had taken Lang’s shift of position into account and now gathered himself. But Lang threw him off by rising, and Louie noticed for the first time that something truly new had been added to Zor’s apparatus: a pair of brass handgrips set perhaps a yard apart on the console.

  Lang smiled suddenly, his black, all-pupil eyes gleaming limpidly. “There’s no one else eligible for the job, so I have to try, at the very least. Won’t you wish me well … Louie?”

  Louie froze and found himself answering, “I do, Emil. I wish you well.”

  He moved with all the speed he could muster but stopped just before he got within reach. The control bar was forgotten, the fight forgotten. Louie Nichols found himself guided by a simple intuition—nothing to do with Shapings or psi but only a feeling that the man had spoken the truth.

  “I wish you well.”

  “Thank you, Louie. Good-bye.”

  Lang rose unhurriedly and seized both handgrips. A light like the beginning of the universe filled the vault module, and Louie felt as if all the winds of time were blowing through his brain, something so symphonic and grand and terrible that he shrank from perceiving them.

  He was hurled back through the air, through the door of the vault, as the light expanded.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SIX

  What with all the new psi-powers—and other faculties—we saw manifested along the way, maybe this whole kick-out’s just been the universe’s way to give evolution a leg up.

  Bruce Mirrorshades, Machine Mind and Arthurian Legend

  Down near Ranaath’s Star the sphere ships spiraled along the accretion disc, orienting themselves for the final transit.

  The mingled energies of Second Gen Protoculture and the Awareness cloaked them, so that they were like a string of mirror-perfect pearls, to shield them against the tidal forces and the more menacing phenomena beyond.

  Within the ships, all platforms but one were occupied by simulacra of the One Haydon, giants but still minute now that they were parts: tens of thousands of them watching silently over the ships’ systemry as the moment approached.

  On that other single platform stood the Robotech Elders, watching gleefully. The infusion of Protoculture had freed them of the need for their life-support thrones; they were swelled and vibrant with the vitality the Second Gen essence had given them.

  They waited near a sphere of their own, a small vessel fashioned and put there by Haydon. In it they would journey back from the moment of intersection with all the power of Protoculture at their command. That power would bring the Local Group under their dominion, just the springboard they needed to put the universe at their feet.

  The Elders, looking like scavenger birds on a storm wind, gazed into the scanner hungrily.

  The Event Horizon loomed up before them.

  “I just get the feeling that the people in this whole long historical contest are starting to fall together like pieces of a puzzle,” Jean Grant pondered. “I mean, from Zor to Roy II—”

  “It’s as likely as any other explanation,” Lisa admitted.

  Just then Rick turned to them in the crowded shuttle, lowering the com unit he had been using to follow what was going on between the SDF-3 and the shuttle’s com officer. He was still holding Roy II in his lap, but it didn’t look out of place with humans and XTs and Zentraedi children and so forth all crammed into one ship.

  “Somebody shut down the commo jamming, but I don’t think we’re gonna be able to make any sense of anything until we get back to the SDF-3. Louie and Lang are having some kind of showdown or something. But at least Vince has Engineering alerted and getting set for the big push.”

  Lisa reached out to smooth Roy’s raven hair. Even with the proof that the children had preternatural powers, even accepting the fact that they were the newspace strandees’ only hope of survival, she had trouble from moment to moment keeping herself from denouncing the plan Rick had formulated.

  She reminded herself of the Sterlings’ encounter with the Black Knight, though. What hope was there for Roy if he became part of the Regess’s lab experiments? Or if Haydon took over?

  The shuttle and accompanying VT and Zentraedi arrived on the hangar deck to find Louie’s cybernaught team under close arrest—having surrendered, apparently, because outside interference in the confrontation between Louie and Lang was impossible now—and most other people trying to sort themselves out.

  “We’ve got a team by the main hatch to the compartment where Lang and Nichols are,” Xien reported a bit shakily, “but as yet they can’t get it open. Some kind of cyber-stunt.” He glared at Louie’s fellow grid-gallopers, who did not appear to notice.

  “Never mind that for now,” Vince said. “We’ve got to detour around that compartment and get back to the drive section. Are the new patch-ins rigged?”

  An engineering officer who looked like she was not old enough to vote reported, “The teams are almost ready, sir. I’ve had my people leave a lot of leeway in the leads and cables, because nobody seems sure just where the drives’ll be situated when they, um, appear.”

  IF they appear, Vince amended, but kept it to himself. There was also the possibility that the SDF-3’s spacefold drives would show up upside down or something, but there was not much point worrying about that. “Very good.”

  The Sterlings were still clinging to one another, but Aurora tugged to free herself. “I have to go aft with the others. But I wish you’d come.”

  Rick and Lisa knelt by Roy. Lisa ran her fingertips through the boy’s fine hair. Rick told his son, “Don’t be afraid; we’re gonna be right there with you.”

  He was already tugging at their hands. “We haveta hurry!”

  Rick had already directed Colonel Vallenskiy to remain in command in the TIC; Lisa had left Raul Forsythe conning the bridge. They both stood, each taking one of the boy’s hands, and hugged each other quickly and very urgently.

  Just then there was a message over the PA. Karen Penn, who with Jack Baker was leading the security team that was covering the compartment containing Lang and Louie Nichols, reported, “Admiral, something’s happening in there. I’m not sure what.”

  The rest of it was lost in the sudden soaring of sound, the rising vibrations-that-were-not-vibrations, that shook the ship. Light seemed to come from everywhere, and someone screamed. Wind squalls swept the vessel. All at once there were radiant vortices everywhere, shooting back and forth at high speed like living things, going through solid bulkheads without any perceptible resistance.

  Vince bellowed, “All right, stations everybody! Stand to! Let’s do it, people!”

  The flux-storm, or whatever it was, abated a bit, and people rushed off to their stations. Scott and Marlene went with the party headed for the drive section, as did a lot of the XT Sentinels and Zentraedi. Even Veidt and Vowad went along. Rem, Minmei’s hand in his, was following step by slow step when another light-storm struck.

  This one was different, a cloud of lumens that closed in around them alone, and none of the others seemed to notice. Minmei screamed, cringing to her knees, arms closed protectively around her middle. Rem knelt next to her, eyes slitted against the onslaught.

  The cloud became a face that Rem recognized. The Regess looked down emotionlessly at the two.

  NO, YOU WONT BE SAVED. ALL YOUR PLANS WILL COME TO NOTHING. THIS IS THE MOMENT OF MY TRIUMPH AND YO
UR EXTINCTION.

  “No!” Rem howled. He hauled Minmei to her feet to seek shelter, but when he started off, she pulled in another direction. “That way! That way!”

  They left the cloud behind, though there were still swirls of fury around them. Minmei led the way down one passageway and then another until they came to a quarters hatch. Rem hit the release and on the other side found a pistol leveled at him.

  Bowie stared down the barrel. Rem felt his pulse pound, waiting for the blast. After a long hesitation, though, Bowie bit out, “Close it. Seal it behind you.”

  Rem saw then that Musica was trying to comfort Allegra, both Muses huddled together in the lower bunk. Bowie reholstered the sidearm, saying, “I don’t know what’s happening, but I know I want the Singers and me together when it does. No more soldiering for me.”

  His eyes flicked to Minmei. “What brought you back?”

  She was sobbing, shaking her head, chest racked, unable to tell him. Maybe she could not have even if she hadn’t been crying. Rem took her into his arms.

  Bowie went to where his compact synthesizer keyboards were set up next to the glowing Cosmic Harp. “Well, maybe you just wanted to be played out with some song. Good a way to go as any.”

  His fingers touched keys, evoking full, uplifting chords. “It’s what I was planning on.”

  Minmei swiped back the limp hair from her eyes, lifting her head. “Yes. Music.”

  Rem helped her over to where she could slump into a seat near Bowie and sat stroking her shoulder, back, and face. Bowie played a melody she knew, and she lifted her voice. At least she could give her unborn baby that much.

  Minmei lost herself in the words for a few bars, shutting out the rest of the world, until she realized that Musica had sat to stroke notes from the fine lines of resplendence that were the strings of the Cosmic Harp.

  Musica sang, too, and in a few more moments Allegra joined in. The SDF-3 shook and jolted, distant shrieks and wails rang from far-off bulkheads, doomsday light anomalies impinged again and again at the edges of their song. But within it, for the moment, the music somehow kept them safe from the terminal spasming of the Shapings; from the probings of the Regess or, perhaps, only from her malice; from the rift-energies as newspace drew in realtime’s structure; and from the desperation and despair claiming so many others aboard the SDF-3.

  In the drive section, techs were being ordered back to stand along the bulkheads and everybody was donning headgear. There was no time for much else in the way of safety precautions—like getting all hands into spacesuits—and no telling what sort would be needed.

  Pinwheels of ghostly pastel flame swooped and buzzed through the cavernous compartment like startled birds; the mental sounds and the jarring of the SDF-3 were increasing.

  The children had formed their circle of power once again, this time with Aurora as a link between Roy and Drannin. They were situated off in one corner of the compartment in the hope that they would be out of the way of danger. The parents moved back, Lisa releasing Roy’s shoulder only after Rick put his arm around her.

  Rick tried to get Jack or Karen on the intercom to find out what was happening at Lang’s sanctum, but all communications seemed to be down.

  The children had taken up a new chant, the eerie glow of their eyes brightening. Rick could not hear it over the astral storm that blew and crashed around them, then, leaning closer, did hear.

  Ro-bo-tech, Ro-bo-tech, Ro-bo-tech …

  The children had picked their mantra, their source of power and unity, their psychic spell word and focus; something about it made the parents, the techs, and the rest stand a bit straighter, hold their chins a little higher. Lisa felt Rick squeeze her hand and saw that his eyes were glistening with tears.

  The chant became louder than the astral storm not in sheer decibels but in the minds of those gathered. Their physical surroundings—the drive ancillaries, the bulkheads—fell away in a panorama of boiling psi-stuff, and the children forced back the curtain with their unity, searching.

  Ro-bo-tech! Ro-bo-tech! Ro-bo-tech!

  The perceptual mist fell away and they saw the SDF-3’s drive housing, like a phantom, translucent and insubstantial, there where it had once been.

  Angelo Dante sent up a cheer, feeling a personal stake in the matter of the drives, and was the first one to grab a connector cable as thick as his own upper arm, ready to hook up.

  But Gnea held him back, just as Vince Grant and some of the others called out for everybody to keep their distance. The drives were still insubstantial; the children had not fully materialized them yet.

  The chant became more intense, and the drives took on solidity. They became opaque, then substantial.

  And then the sky opened up.

  The Regess looked down, anger somehow showing forth from her blank mask of a face.

  I HAVE BROUGHT YOU HERE, AND HERE YOU WILL REMAIN, RAW MATERIALS FOR MY TRANSFORMED NEWSPACE!

  Long cyclonic whips of otherworldly force lashed in at the drives from everywhere, striking at their housing. The children’s chant wavered, became unsure. The drives lost substance once more and faded; the ectoplasmic storm closed in.

  But the Regess’s face remained above those gathered below. I WILL BROOK NO MORE INTERFERENCE!

  Around each child a dark corona grew as the Regess sought to waft them away into her own zone of existence. The chant faltered, the children fighting her will, but the coronas became darker and darker still.

  Like dozens of others, Rick and Lisa leapt forward to save the children but rebounded from a barrier of force that encompassed the circle. Lisa watched, helplessly sprawled on the deck, as Roy and the rest faded from view into night.

  In the compartment holding Lang’s vault module, Louie Nichols zeroized his goggles’ transparency and threw his forearm across them for good measure.

  The brightness was too intense for sight to have any coherence, anyway. At the ground zero of Lang’s ultimate Protoculture act, Louie found himself perceiving things with new and different senses.

  He beheld the end of Lang by immersion in the Protoculture. In the end, the man’s expanded intellect, colossal as it was, was overshadowed by his boundless delight in the elegance, subtlety, and mystery of the universe and of life itself.

  As Jovian as those things were, though, Lang had been right; somehow, Louie sensed that Lang’s essence was no more than a single snowflake against the endless winter vista of the Shapings. The single particle that had been Lang floated away to become part of the Shapings, the man himself lost and gone forever.

  Because the nature of Haydon had not been intended for the transition to newspace, the sphere ships exerted unique adaptive energies to the transit.

  Negotiating perilous intercontinua commissures, they endured and wended toward their destination but accumulated more and more excess psi-quanta in their force envelopes. It was not unlike a skier building up more momentum than was desired and finding himself unable to shed it.

  The sphere ships would either reach the bottom of their hill with incalculable mental energy potential or perish in a failure that would destroy everything, everywhere, everywhen.

  Lisa watched her son pulled from sight without even the hope that she could sacrifice herself to save him, without even the hope that she would have his body to mourn over.

  Then something changed the world of ectostorm and mind-blast there in the violence of the drive compartment, something that called the unleashed fury to heel for an instant and calmed the cataclysm for a beat. Lisa knew what it was, but it took her a moment, in her stunned state to fix words to it.

  Life is only what we choose to make it

  Let us take it

  Let us be free!

  Lisa heard kick croak, “Minmei!”

  By the time Lisa had levered herself up and looked around, there were indescribably sweet notes backing Minmei’s silvery voice and other voices chiming in.

  Minmei stood near the hatch, looking scared and weary
and haggard, but she clung to Rem, who bore her up, and she became a pure instrument for her song.

  We can find the glory we all dream of

  And with our love,

  We can win!

  Musica and Allegra wove their spell behind hers. The Cosmic Harp danced like a starry spiderweb under Musica’s fingers. Giving it all a kind of human interface was Bowie, eyes closed, drawing lofty chords from the synth-keyboard slung over his shoulders.

  Scarcely aware of it, Lisa also took in Jack and Karen and Harry Penn, all of them apparently out of breath and hunkered down near the harp. Of course; it hadn’t just levitated itself there.

  But her thoughts were all for Roy and the kids; Lisa looked back to see the dark coronas fade a bit, the children still sitting in their places.

  As Minmei let her song take flight, the chant came up beneath it, somehow merged with it—

  Ro-bo-tech! Ro-bo-tech! Ro-bo-tech!

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The quick and the dead—we’re both!

  Remark attributed to

  Rick Hunter at the

  Intersection

  Rick threw himself at his son, dreading the barrier that would hurl him back again.

  But this time he made it, passing through a sort of resistance area, a membrane. He went down on one knee next to his son. “Roy, try again. Try for the spacefold drives again!”

  Roy left off the chant, though the others kept it up, to look at his father with glowing eyes. “We’re trying, Daddy. But that lady, the Regess—she put them someplace that we can’t find them.”

  “Keep looking; they have to be somewhere.”

  God, what was he doing, giving psi-search pointers to his superkid? But he couldn’t help it; he had to do something, had to keep them in the fight.

  “The drives might be anyplace, Roy, anyplace in, um, space or time! Look everyplace.”