Beyond the Farthest Suns by Greg Bear Read Free Book Online

experienced that peculiar quality of his or her world­line which made them unique. Fairchild, stable and strong, did not see much to surprise him. Graetikin marveled at a new insight into his work. Edith, still wrapped in her childhood, had a nightmare and woke far in her past, screaming for her father.
    Again the darkness. The ouroboros of the hole spat them out. The computers triggered a lengthy jump, as best as they were able, for the actions of their smallest circuits were still not statistically reliable. This was the chance Graetikin knew they all had to take.
    They escaped. The ship rattled and shook like a dog after a swim. The howl of metal made Fairchild’s scalp prickle and his arm-hair stand on end. A rush of wind swept the bridge. Edith Fairchild wept quietly and Disjohn, beside her, trembled.
    They held each other, sweat dripping and noses flaring, panicked like wild beasts. Graetikin bounced his fingers clumsily over the screen controls, then corrected his foul-up and gave them a view of what lay outside.
    â€œI don’t see anything,” Fairchild said.
    â€œI’m astonished we made it,” Graetikin whispered. Disjohn gave him a wild look. The screen showed nothing but cold darkness.
    â€œScan and chart all radiating sources,” the cap­tain instructed the computer.
    â€œThere are no compact sources of radiation. Standard H-R distribution shows nothing. There is only an average temperature,” it said.
    â€œWhat’s the temperature?”
    â€œTwo point seven one degrees Kelvin.”
    Graetikin slammed his scriber onto the panel. “Any white hole activity? Any sign of the singularity we just came through?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œWe had to come out of something!”
    â€œUndefined,” the machine said.
    â€œWhat does it mean?” Edith asked, holding her chin in her hands.
    Graetikin fingered the mar his scriber had made in the panel. “It means we’re in a region of heat-death.”
    â€œWhere’s that?”
    â€œUndefined,” the computer repeated.
    â€œâ€˜Where’ is meaningless now,” Graetikin said, eyes dull. “Everything’s evenly distributed. We’re between beats, at the top of a cycle between expansion and collapse. We’ve escaped into a dead universe.”
    â€œWhat can we do?” Disjohn asked. He felt an intense ache for his wife, and wished she were at his side. The grief was so strong, it seemed he had lost her only recently. He looked at Edith. She resembled her mother so much his throat ached. He patted his daughter on the head, but felt none of the reassurance he was trying to give.
    â€œWe might go into stasis and wait it out. But we’d have to have a timer, something measuring the pro­gress of the universe outside us. Tens of billions of years. I don’t think any of our instruments would last that long.”
    â€œThere has to be a way!” Fairchild said.
    â€œI told you, Father,” Edith said. “We were the offenders.” She did a mad little dance. “I told you. We didn’t prepare. Why—”
    Graetikin thought of them waiting until the ship ran out of energy and food and breathable air. Years, certainly. But years with a burnt-out old politician and his pre-pubescent daughter, a triangle of agonizing possibilities. Even could they survive, they would have no basis for a new life.
    Edith’s face showed white and distorted. “Why, we’re in hell!”
    Nestor’s ship rounded the nebula and waited. Anna asked the Heu­ritex several times if anything had been sighted, and each time it replied in the negative. “There is no sign,” it said finally. “We would do well to return home.”
    â€œNothing left,” Anna said. She couldn’t convince herself she had done all she could.
    â€œOne moment, madame,” the Heuritex said. “This region was devoid of Thrina