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By Root 1427 0

be detected with the battery of instrumentation that had been set up exterior to the Machine. Their main wait was for the evacuation of the space between and around the benzels. A system of extraordinary efficiency was pumping out the air to attain the highest vacuum ever reached on Earth. She double-checked the stowage of her video microcamera system and gave the palm frond a pat. Powerful lights on the exterior of the dodecahedron had turned on. Two of the spherical shells had now spun up to what the Message had defined as critical speed. They were already a blur to those watching outside. The third benzel would be there in a minute. A strong electrical charge was building up. When all three spherical shells with their mutually perpendicular axes were up to speed, the Machine would be activated. Or so the Message had said.

Xi's face showed fierce determination, she thought; Lunacharsky's a deliberate calm; Sukhavati's eyes were open wide; Eda revealed only an attitude of quiet attentiveness. Devi caught her glance and smiled. She wished she had had a child. It was her last thought before the walls flickered and became transparent and, it seemed, the Earth opened up and swallowed her.

PART III

THE GALAXY

So I walk on uplands unbounded, and know that there is hope for that which Thou didst mold out of dust to have consort with things eternal.

-The Dead Sea Scrolls

CHAPTER 19

Naked Singularity

…mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise.

- RALPH WALDO EMERSON

"Merlin," Poems (1847)

It is not impossible that to some infinitely superior being the whole universe may be as one plain, the distance between planet and planet being `only as the pores in a grain of sand, and the spaces between system and system no greater than the intervals between one grain and the grain adjacent.

-SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Omniania

THEY WERE falling. The pentagonal panels of the dodecahedron had become transparent. So had the roof and the floor. Above and below she could make out the organosilicate lacework and the implanted erbium dowels, which seemed to be stirring. All three benzels had disappeared. The dodecahedron plunged, racing down a long dark tunnel just broad enough to permit its passage. The acceleration seemed somewhere around one g. As a result, Ellic, facing forward, was pressed backward in her chair, while Devi, opposite her, was bending slightly at the waist. Perhaps they should have added seat belts.

It was hard not to entertain the thought that they had plunged into the mantle of the Earth, bound for its core of molten iron. Or maybe they were on their way straight to…She tried to imagine this improbable conveyance as a ferryboat upon the River Styx.

There was a texture to the tunnel walls, from which she could sense their speed. The patterns were irregular soft-edged mottlings, nothing with a well-defined form. The walls were not memorable for their appearance, only for their function. Even a few hundred kilometers beneath the Earth's surface the rocks would be glowing with red heat. There was no hint of that. No minor demons were managing the traffic, and no cupboards with jars of marmalade were in evidence.

Every now and then a forward vertex of the dodecahedron would brush the wall, and flakes of an unknown material would be scraped off. The dodec itself seemed unaffected. Soon, quite a cloud of fine particles was following them. Every time the dodecahedron touched the wall, she could sense an undulation, as if something soft had retreated to lessen the impact. The faint yellow lighting was diffuse, uniform. Occasionally the tunnel would swerve gently, and the dodec would obligingly follow the curvature. Nothing, so far as she could see, was headed towardthem. At these speeds, even a collision with a sparrow would produce a devastating explosion. Or what if this was an endless fall into a bottomless well? She could feel a continuous physical anxiety in the pit of her stomach. Even so, she entertained no second thoughts.

Black hole, she thought. Black hole. I'm falling through the event