THE MESSENGER

“Where are you from?” Killeen asked on the sensorium. With effort he made his voice a blend of acoustics and electrospeech. He constricted his throat like a man trying to imitate a frog. The effect, transduced and filtered by buried chips, sent electromagnetic ringings into the fine, thin air.

There was a long moment of wind-stirred silence. Then,

I am slow. Stretched this far, I tire.

I wanted to reach a being called Killeen.

Killeen blinked with such startlement that his eyes flipped into the gaudy infrared. “Wha—? That’s me!”

I have a message for you.

ACCLAIM FOR GREGORY BENFORD’S CLASSIC NOVELS OF THE GALACTIC CENTER

ACROSS THE SEA OF SUNS

“So good it hurts. Benford puts it all together in this one— adult characters, rich writing, innovative science, a grand philosophical theme—it’s all here.”

Washington Post Book World

“Confirms again Benford’s unsurpassed ability to simultaneously sustain literary values and exciting speculative science.”

—Publishers Weekly

TIDES OF LIGHT

“Mr. Benford is a rarity: a scientist who writes with verve and insight not only about black holes and cosmic strings but about human desires and fears.”

New York Times Book Review

“Benford’s most adventurous, most philosophical, and most scientifically creative novel. The best sf novel so far this year.”

Houston Post

ALSO BY GREGORY BENFORD

Fiction

Beyond Infinity

The Martian Race

Eater

The Stars in Shroud

Jupiter Project

Shiva Descending (with William Rotsler)

Heart of the Comet (with David Brin)

A Darker Geometry (with Mark O. Martin)

Beyond the Fall of Night (with Arthur C. Clarke)

Against Infinity

Cosm

Foundation s Fear

Artifact

Timescape

The Galactic Center Series

In the Ocean of Night

Across the Sea of Suns

Great Sky River

Tides of Light

Furious Gulf

Sailing Bright Eternity

Non-fiction

Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates

Across Millennia

Copyright

Copyright © 1987 by Abbenford Associates

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Warner Books

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

The Aspect name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books.

First eBook Edition: October 2009

ISBN: 978-0-446-56750-3

Contents

THE MESSENGER

ALSO BY GREGORY BENFORD

COPYRIGHT

PROLOGUE

PART ONE: Long Retreat

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

PART TWO: The Once-Green World

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

PART THREE: The Dreaming Vertebrates

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

EPILOG Argo

ONE

TWO

Timeline of Galactic Series

About the Author

To

Lou Aronica and David Brin

two knights of the Sevagram

PROLOGUE

The Calamity

Killeen walked among the vast ruins.

Exhausted, he kept on through a jumble of shattered steel, caved-in ceilings, masonry and stone and smashed furniture.

His breath rasped as he called his father. “Abraham!”

A cold murmuring wind snatched the name away. Smoke seethed from crackling fires and streamed by him, making the air seem to waver and flow.

From here the Citadel sprawled before him down the broad, knobbed hill. Intricate warrens were now squashed into heaps of stone and slag. Legs stiff from exhaustion, eyes stinging with smoke and grief, he paused above a shattered plain of marble-white rubble—the caved-in shards of a dome that once rose a kilometer above the Citadel arboretum. Places where he had run and played, loved and laughed…

“Abraham!” He had seldom spoken his father’s name and now it seemed strange and foreign. He wheezed, coughed. The acrid bite of smoke caught in his throat.

The lower ramparts of the Citadel burned fiercely. The mechs had penetrated there first. Black murk hung over the larger districts—the Broadsward, the Green Market, and the Three Ladies' Rest. Soot coated the jagged teeth of broken walls.

Beyond, lofty spires had been cut to blunt stubs. Their stumps radiated gorgons of structured steel. The shifting breeze brought him the crunch of collapsing walls.

But the wind carried no moans or shrieks. The Citadel lay silent. The mechs had taken lives and selves and left nothing but emptied bodies.


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