Toby saw that a long thick swath was a side view of half the disk, the wrath and roil of it replaced by a single shading. Thin lines sloped down into the disk—from above and below, where the jet formed. These were the magnetic lines of the Mind itself—part of its huge structure, stretching beyond the disk and into the leagues between the stars. But these magnetic feet mired in the disk were important, for here the Mind fed itself from the furious energies released in the disk. Toby felt, for reasons he could not name, that even these sloping lines, far larger than solar systems, were as insignificant on the scale of the Mind as the curling hairs on his own legs.

And along the innermost magnetic line lay an orange dashed trail that lengthened as he watched—Argo’s path.

Then the dashed trail raced ahead, switched from orange to blue, and left the field line. It arced inward—and the figure expanded, bringing into view the disk’s inner edge, which tapered down to a point. Beyond that, even further in, Toby had expected to see the glowing white-hot ball that he saw on the view screens.

But the intense radiance appeared on the figure as only an insubstantial shimmer. Apparently the Magnetic Mind did not consider those searing energies important. Argo’s dashed trail led through the radiance, moving more and more swiftly. Then it arced up slightly. At the very center of the white ball lay something utterly dark, though winking with small energies as he watched.

You will depart from me. I withdraw. I send now details of your trajectory to come.

“Wait!” Toby saw real fear haunt Killeen’s eyes. “Where are we going?”

The star that has died at the outer rim now sends its shattered self inward through the disk. A swirl and plunge of massive lumps come lashing through the disk. They stress and deform me. This I suffer—and for you. Such wrenching mass yields up the conditions the Abraham-thing appears to want—and predicted. You shall embrace it. Move quickly now, for a cusp season approaches.

“What?” Killeen shouted, balling his fists. “What’s coming?”

The aperture moment.

NINE

The Cyaneans

Toby put his arm around Besen and held on for dear life. The Argo groaned and pulsed. Decks and bulkheads creaked. Toby felt his own boots rock with unseen stress. His Isaac Aspect called,

What marvelous tides!

“That’s what moves water around in lakes and such, right?”

Yes, but the force comes from another gravitating body. Like the doomed star we saw at the edge of the great disk, torn apart. Now the black hole is pulling on Argo , a bit more strongly on the side closer to the hole, than on the outer side. We feel that as tension, trying to pull the ship apart.

“Damn!” Toby told Besen this, then asked, “Can Argo take it?”

I believe so. The stress is annoying, that I concede—

“How would you know?”

I can generalize from my past life. Admittedly I do not feel your bodily discomfort, but—

“Or pleasures either, right?”

Quite so. I merely watch your visual input.

Toby didn’t like the thought of Isaac even seeing some parts of his private life, and Besen’s close warmth made him even more sure of it. It was embarrassing, to think that his Aspects had been there, in some limited sense, in the warm, aromatic intimacy of the bedclothes . . .

Do not trouble over that. Our opinions mean nothing.

This was from Shibo. A deeper, resonant voice that carried nuances that without warning drew him into her own interior world, the full spreading wealth of her past.

—Her beloved Citadel beset by forces bleak and imponderable, ill-shaped and just beyond the deranged horizon. Would they come by seething air or across the cratered plain? And when? Or were their ambassadors already inside the shut gates?—gray enemies no bigger than an eye’s pupil, yet seeing just as much, and rapping back to their comrades their microwave reports, machine tales of the soft goings here.—

He regained his balance. “How . . . how come?”

Aspects are static. Aspects cannot grow. So their views do not alter. You cannot truly change their minds about anything.

Toby wasn’t sure this was much consolation. He noted that Shibo did not say that she could not change. Were Personalities different? He had the distinct impression, from subtle changes in Isaac and Joe and maybe even Zeno, that Shibo was carrying out some sort of therapy on them, resolving the clashing psyche-storms that beset such truncated minds.

Then his distracted thoughts came to an abrupt end when a sudden wave flexed through the deck. He and Besen slammed into a bulkhead and tumbled to the deck of the Bridge.

As he got up, Toby saw that Killeen had remained standing, legs braced to take surges. But the Cap’n’s face was drawn and he searched the wall screens intently for understanding. They showed a blinding hail of gauzy hot gas and chunks of unknown matter, all spraying by them at blistering speed. Warm breezes now blew through the Bridge, fluttering Toby’s hair as the circulators labored to ease the steady heating from outside.

Killeen called again for the Magnetic Mind. Again there was no answer. It had abandoned them.

The ship’s officers were all anchored in their shock couches, staring at Killeen, visibly wondering why he did not strap himself in, too. Toby knew why. If he conceded even this small vulnerability, it would whittle him down in the eyes of those he now had to lead. So he turned and conspicuously paced, hands behind back, as another ripple shook the Bridge. He did not stumble, did not even slow his steady pace.

Toby looked around, but there were no vacant shock couches for him and Besen. If they wanted to see what was going on, they would have to stand. Nobody noticed them, or else they would have been hustled away. All eyes watched the screens and the Cap’n.

Killeen turned slowly, holding the Bridge crew with his level, stone-faced gaze. Then he saw Quath’s head, shifty-gimballed in a hooded carapace, jutting into the Bridge entrance. The Cap’n called out with a faint note of desperation, “What do your brothers know about this place?”

<Only ancient texts can guide us. The Myriapodia ventured this way once, probing to see what had drawn the mechs here.>

“They never came back?”

<We, too, suffered a fall when the mechs discovered us. They sensed us here first, disturbing their works. We withdrew quickly, unlike you humans. You persist beyond reason.>

Toby broke in. “How come you hunted humans, then? We could have been allies all along.”

<We mistook you for animals. You had fallen so far, beaten down by mechs. Only your father and your Legacies reminded us that you are of the stuff which once blazed so bright and now is so pitiful.>

Toby gulped. Quath was no diplomat.

Killeen asked, “These ‘texts’ of yours—what do they say?”

<Many ships were lost here. It is easy to slip on the sliding surface of space itself.>

“Space? Hell, what about the heat? And this stuff coming at us, big chunks—”

<Those are masses crushed and compacted by the stretch of geometry here. Avoid them, and otherwise ignore them. They are on their way to their funerals.>