Free The Infinity Link by Jeffrey A. Carver Page A

protect his tracks along the way.
    A pathway is now lighted through the grid, with a single amber and a single red block remaining. A time check confirms that the tachyon link will open in fifty-three seconds.
    The amber changes to green, the red to amber.
    He keys in to Mozy. As the circuits connect him to his waiting friend, he thinks: Go to him, Mozy, and be happy. I'll have you here with me, still, and maybe now you'll take notice—maybe he'll be out of your thoughts.
    As a final door creaks open in the darkness, he calls, (Are you ready?)
    In the distance, he hears the soft answer: (Yes.)
    (Sequence start,) he says, as the last amber light turns to green. The tachyon link is open. He is aware in the back of his mind that someone is entering the control room. He ignores that and nudges one final command. A fountain of sparks streams through the grid as the process begins.
     
    * * *
     
    A glittering band encircled her skull as she waited in the darkness. Time slid by like an imponderable mass of ice. What would time come to mean when her consciousness was frozen into a series of impulses in the computer? Every nerve was wired, every thought agitated; strangely, even the memory of Hoshi's clumsily feigned embrace aroused her with sexual excitement. She tried to bring it all to a focus, to corral her thoughts and memories like burning sparks, and to balance the musical tones of her hopes and fears into stable harmonics. The result was a blur of color, a cacophony of tones.
    She thought of Kadin, the stable, good-humored man she had come to love; and she remembered the training for the linkup sessions. Go to him with a clear mind, centered and relaxed. Keep the pathways open, let the images and harmonics drift into their own order.
    Hoshi's mind-voice came through, distant and a little fuzzy, asking if she was ready.
    A heartbeat passed, then two. The circlet of fire around her forehead began spinning and twinkling, faster and brighter, and contracting. It tightened over the lobes of her consciousness like a glittering fist. In that instant, she was paralyzed, her awareness turning to crystal shot through with pulses like beacons in a starless night. Her emotions froze into a cold, white diamond. She felt a rush of sensations, and then icelike clarity, as her thoughts and memories became transparent straight through to the center of her mind and soul.
    A vibration was building inside; forces were gathering, currents of life once bound were coming unleashed. Exhilaration and terror and vertigo flashed through her in a pulse. Somewhere within her, fierce streams were cutting new beds, winds were gusting and moaning, the earth shivering. There was a sun flaring, a candle guttering, a feeling of disconnectedness. From somewhere, a papery voice called: (You will be alone at first. Wait for him there.) They were words that made no sense, held no meaning. All real thought was lost in a whirlwind.
    Then, for a breath, everything fell silent. There was no sound—
    —no light—
    —no motion—
    —and then the world erupted with a thunderclap and a keening wail, driving a spike of pain straight through to the center of her consciousness. Hallucinating in agony, she wandered among the stars, heard the void speaking in tongues. The emptiness rang around her like an infinite gong, and then darkness crushed in upon her.

PART TWO
INTO THE ETERNAL NIGHT

Prelude
    The waters became clearer, and tangier with the taste of salt, as the whales entered the warm fringes of the joining grounds, moving into seas where the sun rose high. Sunlight danced through the surface swells and angled into the abyss, turning from golden-belly pink near the surface to clearwater blue in the midrange. Far below, where only darkness met the eyes, the realm was mapped with whistling echoes. Even now, someone's cry reverberated dimly out of a watery canyon.
    Theirs was a world filled with sounds: the mutter of the sea itself, the whistle of their own songs,