The Sunborn (32 page)

Joy came sliding in with the spitting fear, always. Some Beings dreaded the necessity of the Cascade. Others longed for the shaking, slamming, pitching verve of it. Chill and Dusk broke with glee through mountainous crests, skating on the seethe. Battered, they lunged into the roar of magnetic storms and spitting ions, rolled and swamped by them, besting them with cries of triumph. Hissing fires lit in their bufferskins.

Swimming, they sang.

Recorder said, feeding sedately on minor vortices.

Ring chimed.

Forceful said.

Ring sent in diplomatic calming notes.

Instigator sent, lolling from one great churning crest of magnetic twist to the next.

Instigator adroitly sucked in the morsels of delicious helicity, absorbing their angular momentum. Pleasure suffused its body, a shape sleek and slim and the size of planets. It loved basking in the surges of energy as some of its unwanted hair-fine fields—ugly, with frayed ends, unsightly tangles, and nets—dissolved in heat and plasma jets. Knots that Instigator could never unwind it let meet other such repulsive, contorted messes fresh in from interstellar space.

Fizz! Hideous, snarling wrath dissolved into balmy energy. Whenever fields of opposite direction were shoved together, the opposites canceled. Their energies flared beautifully along Instigator’s lean flanks, lighting up its best features. It thought its elegantly tapered in-mouth was the best, a purse like no other among the Beings. And its marvelous antennas: streams of elegantly confined plasma, arcing to and fro as tasteful advertisement. Through these it knew the Whole, and what other agency of itself should be as beautiful?

Part of the refinement of this harvest was in just
this
state, Instigator thought. Bliss, while tumbling mouthlong into the abyss. The Cascade.

For they were shooting down the coiling rapids. At their backs pressed the Upstream, heavy and eternal, cool and certain. Here came the interstellar plasma and gas, the charged and uncharged wedded by their long association, all coasting along at their minor velocities between the stars. Until the Hot came plowing along its great path, the arc that would take it all the way around the Hub in due time, circling the entire galaxy. In the frame of the Beings, carried along by the Hot’s slow sway, the Upstream was the eternal storm that fed them. Manna.

All along the parabola of the Hot’s province, vast turbulence negotiated the collision of Hot and Stream. Squalls larger than worlds perpetually broke there, in energies comparable to the pale Hotlight that shed upon this.

Mirk called.

Chill supplied.

Curling out of the churn, they all caught the low-frequency wave front.

Sunless shouted. These came seldom and could be rich.

Recorder said slowly.

Hotclouds were the occasional nuggets that came forth when the Hot raged. Furious and doomed, Hotclouds came from storms that burst into froth. As they rose, they ebbed, died. The Hotclouds’ bounty was gained at the expense of a framework that might have made a Being. But it would be a rebuke not to feast upon the vagrant energies remaining in the Hotcloud, after all. The cloud was thick plasma, cooling and clasping its fields poorly. It was child’s play—and if a child were nearby, it would be encouraged to be the first—to rip this poor bag and eat its momentary wealth.

Ring began,

Recorder said. This was the old way of measuring distance, though Beings varied greatly in size according to age and whether they had ever been Diminished.

It smelled wrong, scorched and bristling. Too…alive. Hotclouds had settled into decay and were easily torn. This torch cut upward through the waves, not minding the curl of them, boring, cutting outward.

Ring observed warily.

Chill said, the nearest to it. Chill flexed away from the speeding bite.

Forceful spoke for the first time.

Too late. The Hotpoint punched through the strong field blanket Chill had raised to protect itself. Fields flared and died as the onrushing lance of plasma punched through Chill. Long, agonizing peals came from Chill. Shells of opposite currents peeled away. Dusk, Chill’s linkmate, fell away in a panic. The very tones of Chill’s outcry shifted as layers swamped and filled with virulent plasma, stifling chords.

Recorder sent.

Dusk called, struggling toward Chill’s raked image.

A sudden searing wail froze them. Chill was being stripped by the warm, fast electrons. Flowing faster than field knots could impede them, they made new conducting paths within the vast body. Charges long held apart suddenly united. Frenzy. Memories and structural parts of Chill popped and moaned in pitiful low tones…and fell silent.

called Mirk from afar, but it was far too late.

Chill splintered now. They all rushed to capture parts of Chill as he shredded. Shards of plasma caught in magnetic traps fumed free, lost. Colossal flares burst along the body as fields, newly connected by the ravening plasma, canceled each other out. This liberated raw energy blew apart more parts of the rupturing body.

Instigator said.

someone called.

Sunless shouted.

Instigator went on carefully.

Forceful sent in shrill tones.

Instigator said,

Sunless sent.

Instigator’s words carried menace.

Mirk sent mournfully,

Instigator was grim.

Mirk sent, <…that is all there is now.>

Instigator cried in triumph.