Engineman - Eric Brown [139]
Of course!
-- And yet, Bobby said, something melancholy in his tone, the concerns of the human race are bringing about, albeit unwittingly, the gradual annihilation of this realm. Until now we have existed without threat, free to access and experience the totality of everything.
As he followed his brother's golden comet from the barren interstellar gulf towards the teeming pointillism of life-forces, he wondered how humankind might pose any threat to the continuum.
They passed through the sector where the sparks of light were as tightly-packed as atoms, and came to a margin where the blue of the underlying continuum could be seen between the dancing life-forces. As they continued, the last of the lights passed beyond them, so that soon they were travelling through an expanse of blue radiance even emptier than the last one Mirren had experienced.
Are we going to another galaxy? he asked.
-- We are still in what corresponds to the Milky Way, Bobby told him. -- In fact, this area corresponds to the Rim of our galaxy.
Ahead, or below, or at any rate in the direction Mirren was moving, he perceived a fading of the blue of the continuum. At the same time, as he flew towards and then into the sky blue field, he became aware of an aura of hostility, a sudden iciness which chilled his essence to its very core. Before him, the comet which was Bobby lost its golden glow and its darting vitality.
-- Look, Bobby thought at last.
Before them, in the distance, Mirren made out a vast area of what could only be described as anti-energy, black and lifeless. It was growing - even as he hovered, observing, the circumference of the vast amorphous cloud bloated outwards, expanding in great billowing explosions like ink in water, eating up the pale blue of the continuum around it.
-- Come, Bobby commanded, and flew ever closer to the cloud.
Mirren balked, hanging back. He recalled what Ghaine had told him about facing terror, and understood that what was before them was the source of that terror.
-- Follow me, Bobby exhorted. -- Until you have fully experienced what is happening here, you will be unable to appreciate the true wonder and worth of the continuum.
Mirren hurried to his brother's side, so as not to be alone before the relentless approach of the negative force. Side by side they hovered closer to a great rearing, blooming tumour composed of the very absence of everything that made the continuum what it was: light, life, vitality... They hovered like two mayflies before a thunderhead, their very presence taunting the awful immensity of the invader.
On the edge of the continuum, where the black cloud impinged, Mirren perceived what looked like lengths of rope, or roots, leached of colour, lifeless.
-- The fabric of the continuum itself, Bobby explained. -- The matter which absorbs us upon transcendence, which stores our essences and makes us one. It is dead, killed by this force.
From behind them, Mirren saw a dense flight of united life-forces, like a swarm of hornets or a well-drilled squadron of fighter planes: they swooped, dived at the swelling tumour of cloud and vanished within it, causing the cloud to writhe, to momentarily cease its advance. Then it swelled again, moving ever outwards in its insatiable appetite for more energy.
-- They think that by attacking it like this, they might defeat it, but all they succeed in doing is halting its progress for mere seconds, and sacrificing themselves.
A lobe of cloud erupted suddenly, almost swallowing them up. In that second, as they fled to a safe distance, Mirren knew true terror. The very core of his being was shaken as he perceived the heart of the cloud in its essence, looked into it and experienced only a terrible absence.
What is it? he cried at his brother as they retreated. On all sides, the fabric of the continuum squirmed and writhed as the cloud reached and rendered dead all