George Zebrowski - The Omega Point trilogy

The Omega Point Trilogy

George Zebrowski

ISBN 0-7592-0515-9

Author Biography

George Zebrowski's thirty-five books include novels, short fiction collections, anthologies, and a book of

essays. The Washington Post recently said: “You can trust yourself in the hands of certain masters, and

George Zebrowski is one.” His best known novel is Macrolife, which Arthur C. Clarke described as “a

worthy successor to Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker. It's been years since I was so impressed. One of the

few books I intend to read again.” Zebrowski’s stories and novels have been translated into a half-dozen

languages; his short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon

Memorial Award. Stranger Suns was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The Killing Star,

written with scientist/ author Charles Pellegrino, was praised by The New York Times Book Review as

“a novel of such conceptual ferocity and scientific plausibility that it amounts to a reinvention of that old

Wellsian staple, [alien invasion]...” The Washington Post Book World described the novel as “a classic

SF theme pushed logically to its ultimate conclusions.” Brute Orbits (1998), an uncompromising novel

about the future of the penal system, was honored with the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best

Novel of the Year. Cave of Stars, a novel that is part of the Macrolife mosaic, was published by

HarperPrism in 1999, also to widespread acclaim. Swift Thoughts, a collection of twenty- four stories,

with an introduction by Gregory Benford and a wraparound painting by Bob Eggleton, will be published

by Golden Gryphon Press in early 2002.

Other works by George Zebrowski available in e-reads editions

The Sunspacers Trilogy

To Don Wollheim, guardian of beginnings.

Contents

Book One.7

Ashes and Stars.7

I. War Stars8

II. Jumpspace14

III. Exiles20

IV. Sortie27

V. The Legacy35

VI. Target41

VII. Awakening46

VIII. Home50

IX. The Ring56

X. New Mars61

XI. The Rock68

XII. Planetgrazer72

XIII. Ocean Strike79

XIV. Swimmer in Shadows87

Book Two.94

The Omega Point95

I. Immortal Enemy96

II. Percussion Cantata102

III. The Hunter107

IV. The Fiery Cloak111

V. Impromptu117

VI. A Bitter Native Land122

VII. Ends and Means130

VIII. Myraa’s World134

IX. Graveyard of Titans143

X. Lesser Magellanic148

XI. Dialogue153

XII. Armed163

XIII. The Field of Death171

XIV. Personal Battle178

XV. The Closed Circle184

XVI. Galaxy of Minds191

Book Three.203

Mirror of Minds.204

I. To Be Reborn205

II. Dark Mirror209

III. The Hidden Face215

IV. The Heart of Fire223

V. The Listener229

VI. The Fortress Self237

VII. The Weapon244

VIII. Mind Net249

IX. The Old Ones255

X. Behind the Night262

XI. The Stillness of the Will269

XII. Flower and Sword273

XIII. Mirror of the Will280

Book One

Ashes and Stars

I. War Stars

“But what are kings when regiment is gone,

But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?”

— Marlowe,Edward the Second

“The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill

our souls with a fantastic estimate …”

— Pascal,Pensées

THE WAR STARS burned brightly in his memory, each sun a pulsing furnace of hate transforming

plasma energies into the frozen grimace of armor, creating the base for war’s iron game — machines,

weapons, Whisper Ship hulls — power packaged and stored until the moment of kinetic deployment.

There was enough energy here in the Hercules Globular Cluster for a million years of conflict. Some had

even dreamed of gathering a hundred stars into a single unit and moving it through space as if it were a

ship. No enemy system could have survived a collision with such a configuration.

As he walked down the stony corridor toward the war room located in the center of the underground

base, Gorgias almost smiled at the absurdity of the scheme; but the bitterness set into the muscles of his

face resisted even a faint smile. Any culture capable of calling up such a titanic force would have had no

need of warfare to gain its ends. Those who had dreamed such dreams had been mad. He imagined the

red thread of insanity as athing, a subtle, spidery network of impulses reaching upward out of some

infinitesimal corners of space-time to lace the tender systems of biological structure. Where was the

force-center of this willful bestiality, this evil within intelligent beings, so often wished away by

well-wishers? The radiant energy of the Cluster had poured out with the martial will of its civilization; the

suns of home had nurtured an armory of hate so powerful and tenacious that only the complete

destruction of the home worlds had been enough to bring stillness.

Stillness, he thought, but not peace — there was no one to make peace with; New Anatolia and the

twenty original worlds of the Empire would be lifeless for tens of thousands of Earth years. He felt the

flow of hatred in himself, detachment followed by rationality, the silent shock of recognizing one’s own

workings. He remembered the sense of power that accompanied a noble ancestry, the prideful stance

against death; a love of this power struggled to well up inside him and coil around his flesh. But at the

same time he felt this strength passing from him, and he was not certain that he would miss it.

Once it might have won against the tall shadows from Earth, the pale Earthfolk from whose stock the

Herculeans had sprung millennia ago, like sparks struck to light new stars. Earthfolk burned more slowly

then Herculeans, reasoning, calculating, clinging to their leisure planet in fear of death. Or was this too an

illusion?

He thought of his son. What was left for his namesake now? Should he encourage him to settle among

the last Herculeans on Myraa’s World? Should they continue to go out on nuisance raids against the

Earth Federation? Or should they go back into stasis and pass into another time? As if from behind a

mask he peered at possibilities beyond the dances of power which had consumed the life of his kind.

Together with his son he still lived in the prison of their will; the will which had thrown a net across the

stars, pulled together an empire, was ripped open now, lying on cold stones at the bottom of a dark sea.

The lights in the corridor flickered. A returning surge of hatred gripped him as he came to the door of the

war room. He stopped and thought of the Whisper Ship lying in its berth in the bowels of the base; he

knew what the ship could do, and it was only a matter of time before his son learned also. The base was

still an efficient military teaching environment, designed to bring one or a thousand students into full

possession of its powers; it was the only school his son had known.

The door opened. Gorgias stepped inside, knowing that he would not try to stop his son; the pressure of

the past was too great to permit alternatives, at least any that his son might accept.

In the darkened war room, a haze of projected light stood in a column on the polished surface of the

meeting table, casting a three-dimensional starmap into the space of the large gallery overhead. A

long-dead, encyclopedic voice was speaking. His son sat on the other side of the large table, a

motionless figure staring up at the stars.

Quietly, Gorgias sat down and listened with him.

“Visualize an imaginary translucent tubeway through normal space,” the voice was saying, “one end

attached to Earth’s solar system, the other to the Great Globular Cluster in the constellation of

Hercules.…”

Overhead, the image showed the galaxy on edge. A glowing red snake grew out of the solar system,

crossing the disk toward the center in short spirals and arcs until it buried its head in the cluster circling

the galactic hub, 34,000 light-years from Sol.

“The fastest ships take five Earth months to pass through this winding volume of Federation Space,

which varies from five to twenty light-years in diameter. A hundred thousand worlds circle their suns

here, many of them earthlike; others are too young for intelligent life to have developed; some cradle

prespace humanoid cultures; still others have in-system space travel; many are dead worlds. A

continuous stream of human life colonizes these worlds, coming out from Earth as well as from other

colonial planets. Rejecting engineered environments, this river of life hungers after natural worlds born of

suns.…”

Now it seemed that he was rushing toward the Hercules Cluster at a fantastic speed. The image grew

until it took up the whole view, dominating the skymap like a galaxy.

“The greatest object of colonization was the Cluster in Hercules. Its settlement led to a cultural and

biological branching of humankind. The biological divergence was accomplished through genetic

engineering, specifically through the mixing of human DNA with that of the cluster’s original humanoids,

whose civilizations contributed much to the style of the emerging Herculean Empire. This hybridization of

humankind from Sol led to the greatest recorded conflict in history.…”

He looked at the darkened figure of his son. Brought up in an atmosphere of disintegrating mobilization,

pushed along by the pressure of a past he could never rejoin, the young man of two hundred and twenty

Earth years had grown toward a breaking point; he had to recreate the past or die. Inside, his son was a

fortress.

Suddenly the lights came on in the gallery, banishing the starmaps. The surface of the table below

became a lake of light. His son glared at him from the far shore.

“I want to hear only one thing from you,” he said, “that you will remove Oriona from Myraa’s clutches.”

“We can’t; you know that your mother won’t have anything to do with us.…”

“We will bring her here and she will help us with our plans.”

“Our plans mean nothing to her. How many times do I have to tell you?” Our plans, he thought,

wondering at how the words now startled him. When had he changed, when had he started thinking

differently?

“She’ll think differently when she leaves Myraa’s influence. Then she’ll believe and live as we do.…”

Once, long ago, Oriona had been his other half in everything. Yes, living on Myraa’s World had changed

her, probably for the better; she no longer hated the old enemies, she was indifferent to them. He looked

at his son across the bright table. What could he say to him that would turn back his natural energy? The

black uniform with its orange star of the Empire fit him well. There were enough uniforms in the base to

clothe a planet.

Characteristically, after a few moments of silence, his son changed the manner of his attack. “You see,

we have to be willing to hurt them badly, with small things perhaps, but small things of great cruelty, acts

which can never be forgotten, wounds which can never heal. We must hurt them as they hurt us. We can

do this.”

“No action we can take against Earth can be decisive, ever.”

“Unless we raise troops and strategic weapons. Meanwhile small sorties will hurt them and preserve our

will for a better day.”

“What weapons, what troops? Are you still dreaming of the troop cylinder?”

“There was such a thing toward the end of the war. One day I’ll find it.”

“Even a hundred would do no good — at best they stored ten thousand, one division of hastily trained

personnel. Even if you found the cylinder, there is no assurance that you could revive those soldiers

stored in that way. Actually, I never saw any evidence for the cylinders.”

“But we have the tripod that fits a cylinder here!”

“So maybe there was one — only one.”

“Under good leadership we can grow — the lives in the cylinder are not just for combat.”

“You’re talking of committing unborn generations to vengeance. It’s over, let it die.” Oriona, you are

right, he thought, we must come to the end of our wars; if we do not, we will not see what lies beyond.

What do you see, my love, what is there for you on that green world?

“… In your weakness,” his son was saying, “you fail to see that if we’re terrible enough, often enough,

we can blackmail a universe.”

Perhaps he was right; what else was there beyond the old war? Inwardly he looked back into the past

and saw a black pit.

“Only if we remain at large,” he said to his son, “only if they don’t catch us.” The black pit was drawing

him down; or was it rushing up to meet him?

“To remain at large is a matter of skill in avoiding a real test of strength,” his son answered. “But

consider — if we could destroy large populated centers, how long could they deny our demands?”

“You have demands? What could we ask for that they might not take back when we were made

harmless?”

“The first demand is recognition of the need to rebuild our home world.…”

“Sometimes I think you’re a complete idiot — what can their promises mean after the toll you plan to

inflict? Don’t you see — any guarantee would be observed by them attheirpleasure, not ours.” He

looked at his son carefully. Was this the descendant of Gorgias the First, Uniter of Worlds, creator of the

Herculean Empire? Perhaps there was more to his plan, some shrewdness he had missed.

“We would keep a hidden strike force. At the first violation we make them pay! If we can remain at

large, you and I, then so could such a force.”

Gorgias felt his head shake in denial, as if it had become independent of his body; his right hand trembled

and for a moment he was unable to speak. His son’s will had entered him and taken possession,

half-convincing him, reminding him of his own earlier self, with its resolve and hatred. All that would be

required to make his son’s terrible vision work was an iron terror, a will that would be ready to do

anything against the enemy, a resolve that would not crumble when confronted by pity. This would be the

game Oriona feared, the iron game that would set father and son in the service of an old hatred, turning

them into devices to serve the dead. Father and son had skirted the edge of this game; now, finally, they

would be drawn into its merciless logic and cruel satisfactions.…

“One day,” his son continued, “our worlds will be repopulated, our power rebuilt. We will have little

need of threats then. But until then, you and I must be guardians of that future. Have you forgotten? Have

you become a coward? Won’t you even try — or will you abandon me as you abandoned Oriona?”

Gorgias looked into his son’s eyes.I won’t need you, they seemed to say,I’ll become my own father,

I’ll deny you if you refuse me and you’ll be left alone.Without Oriona and me you are nothing. A

shuddering fear, like breaking metal, passed through him. He tasted its cold in his mouth. His stomach

knotted in rage, and he knew for the first time that he would be able to kill his own son — if for no other

reason than to abolish this monstrous resurgence of his own youth, this fortress self which had come out

of him, out of the past, to stand alone in this way.

Oriona’s eyes looked at him from beneath black eyebrows and black hair. “Well?” his son asked. “Will

you plan with me?” The questions were now shouts, strong and insistent and convinced, assuming

agreement. For a moment his son’s shouting shape became a torso rising from the frozen lake of the

polished table, an awesome creature imprisoned here by the sheer weight of its own hatred. His son was

a creature of loveless power, making him doubt again, forcing him to feel once more the uncoiling insanity

of the failed past.

“All right,” Gorgias said softly, “but first —”

“Good!”

“— but first we’ll visit Oriona.” Perhaps she may be able to quiet her son, he thought, even though the

life she lives is a delusion.

“We’ll take her away,” his son said.

“Let’s see how she feels.” A lie might save his son’s life. Any delay might change the future; once his son

started on this new course, there would be no turning back; his life would become a hunted thing, and

one day he would die. Any delay might save him. There were worlds aplenty outside the Federation,

where a life might be started anew; a small community … simply existing … perhaps Oriona was living

that life right now.

“I’ll prepare the ship,” his son said.

Gorgias nodded and tried to quiet himself.

II. Jumpspace

“It is natural for the mind to believe, and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must

attach themselves to false.”

— Pascal,Pensées

“A man knew himself as the product of this world. He sought to become its consciousness: a way of

dreaming that would embody its salvation.”

— Bousquet

A SHADOWED FACE floated in the stone ceiling, and faded; in another moment it would have spoken

to him.

Cave eyes stared at a barrier of ice in a timeless place.

Outside the black walls, floor and ceiling of the doorless room, lay an infinite solidity; the cell was the

only open space, cut miraculously out of a universe of rigid substance. The lonely lamp in the corner

would go out if he looked away; the darkness would flow in around him and solidify, freezing his

movement until his flesh also turned stony.…

The home world lay before him. He had never seen it after the holocaust, yet suddenly he was there. The

land was an endless plain of ashes, the remains of cities and towns, the very mountains. The planet was a

heated dust bowl, wind-whipped and sterile. Grief held back all his tender reactions, all regret and tears.

He felt the hell wind on his face, tasted the baked ash in his mouth as the gray sea drifted around his feet.

He walked forward across the meadow of ashes. The horizon was a wavy line of heat distortions. He

came abruptly to a large circular pit in the waste; stars burned below the world, glowing gravel floating in

a subterranean universe.…

The dream was always the same.

A titanic fist pounded on the wall behind his bed, making the stone echo like metal; the black surfaces of

the room became glassy and shattered, flowing away like water.…

He sat up suddenly and saw his father standing in the open doorway.

“Are you awake?”

“I’m ready,” he said, feeling distrustful of the silhouette. His father’s dark shape turned and went out into

the corridor.

He looked at the dark lamp in the corner, remembering that in the dream he had believed that his life

was somehow dependent on its continued shining; a curious absurdity.

He got up and prepared to follow his father to the ship.

The ramp tunnel exit loomed ahead suddenly and the Whisper Ship shot out over the barren surface of

the planet. A glowing cloud of interstellar gas blazed from horizon to horizon as the vessel raced over

jagged mountains, stone-filled valleys and dusty plains; airless, beaten by solar wind and heat, the lifeless

world orbited faithfully, forever dead in the angry glare of its small, white-hot primary. Located near the

center of the cluster, the entire system was wrapped in a cloud of gas and dust half a light-year across.

The ship lifted into the shining sky. Variations in cloud density let in the light of cluster stars, the glow

fading as the ship shifted position.

With his father now asleep in the aft quarters, the younger Gorgias began his first watch. Without

warning the ship slipped into otherspace, revealing the stars of the cluster as perfectly round black coals

set at an indefinite distance. For the next one hundred and fifty hours the ship would push through this

ashen sea, fifty thousand light-years across the top of the galaxy, halfway across the spiral, past where

Earth swam deep in the spiral disk’s outer arms, upward to the sparsely starred region where Myraa’s

World looked out on the dark between the galaxies.

All through his first watch, the younger Gorgias was irritated by the shroud of hyperspace covering the

known universe, hiding the diamond-hard stars, abolishing the black void’s comfort, leaving only the

ash-white continuum dotted with the obsidian analogs of objects in normal space-time. The bones of

reality, he thought, dry and lifeless; passing through this region was always a slow dying.

Did he really care about the Herculean dead? He searched himself, trying to feel the death of millions.

The killing of ten would have been intolerable. Each of those hundreds of millions would have lived a

thousand Earth years or more, each life an entire world of experience, now cut off. To remember their

passing was to deny oneself all normal day-to-day living, all simplicity, all love; to remember their passing

was to act in ways that would change him irrevocably, making him an instrument, a sacrifice to the fires of

outrage. He did not, and never would, belong to himself, or to anyone else.

If he could hurt even ten Earthborn, the news would humiliate millions; the dead deserved that much.

Each blow, however small, would be a reminder that the Federation’s victory had not been complete.

The dead were alive within him, sparks ready to flare up into an inner fire; his strength was the needed

fuel; his strength was their will preparing to live again. Rest would come for him only when all the hatred

he bore was spent.

The thought of his father’s growing weakness made him angry again. He felt it as a coldness camped at

his center, a promise of failure. He would have left the older man in stasis at their last waking and gone

out by himself, but the ship was still tuned to the other’s personality and would obey no one else. The

ship could only be his by deliberate transfer of command; his father’s death would not give him the ship.

He needed his father’s good will.

If only a second Whisper Ship could be found. Perhaps there was one somewhere on Myraa’s World.

He had always suspected that Myraa knew more than she was willing to tell. Maybe he could learn

something from Oriona. Myraa or one of the other survivors might have revealed something to her, a

piece of information that would not appear to be useful, but which might be crucial to one who could fit it

into a large context. The visit might turn out to be useful after all.

He found himself thinking about Myraa — her nakedness, her long hair, her smile, the freshness of her

skin. Thoughts of her always brought out his weakest feelings. The universe of time and space had

cheated him (what was this effort of time passing?) of the simplest pleasures enjoyed by the humblest

creatures on a million worlds. He was a thinking, self-conscious object living in a plenum where distance

lay between objects that were made up of infinitesimally spaced small objects lying below gross

perception. What was justice, or vengeance, in such a universe? Why did he crave closeness with

Myraa, and why was he compelled to believe that distance from her way of life was necessary for him?

In his way he loved her, but he would not give himself up to her; the cry of the past was stronger than her

love; for him to ignore the past would be to die.

He would have to recreate the history from which he sprang; it would have to be a certain kind of living

object, a network of conscious beings again holding the Hercules Cluster together. To this community he

would give himself; there love might not be a fault; there he would shine as he had been meant to shine, a

king from a line of kings; there he would know the past and future as they should be, unshattered and

filled with the meaning of time; there the past would be pride, the future a distant glowing goal that would

consume all things in its crucible of satisfaction and joy.

On the screen, the desolation of otherspace promised nothing as the ship rushed through its oblivion.

When his father came in to stand his first watch period, Gorgias rose and let the older man take the

station chair.

“I’ve found a likely target for us,” Gorgias said.

His father swung the seat around and glared at him. The face was pale, the blue eyes sunken from worry

and doubt; the hands sought each other from fear, then pushed apart to hide the fact. “What are you

talking about? We were not to plan anything until after the visit.”

“Thirty light-years south of Myraa there is a frontier world, mostly small towns, not more than half a

million people, an easy target.”

His father gripped the armrests. “Later, we don’t have time to discuss it now, get some rest.”

“You said you would fight —”

“A world that size is unimportant, settled by rejects. Federation won’t be impressed.”

“We could destroy a town in a single run.”

“They’d look for us on Myraa’s World immediately, hold Oriona and others hostage …”

“We could do it after we take Oriona with us. Besides, what makes you so sure they are capable of

holding hostages?”

His father was shaking his head. “There’s too little thought and preparation. Don’t be so impatient. Do

you think that Federation military operatives are stupid? They’ll pick up on every mistake. They won the

war that way.”

“But they never came up against a Whisper Ship.”

“True, the ship is unassailable, but you might imprison yourself forever inside. Even the life-support

systems require mass to synthesize food.…”

“I could recycle indefinitely.”

“But you would starve if something went wrong. Son, there are ways to trap or disrupt the ship. In time

it would be possible to bring enough power to bear on it to tear it open.”

“Things would never get that far,” Gorgias said. He turned and started aft.

George Zebrowski - The Omega Point trilogy

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