The Weapon - Lex - part 32
By Diana the Valkyrie
Around the fireball
Update: 16/11/2003 to valkyrie05


One of her wings curved over the top of the bed, and slowly descended towards
us, until I was covered in the white feathers. It was dark inside her wing,
but I could see some small dots of light, here and there. And then I was in
zero gravity again, just like when we'd been in orbit. The dark was the
darkness of outer space, the small dots of light, I realised, were stars. Huge
balls of fire, but at such a distance that they were just pinpricks of light.
I was spinning slowly in space, and then I saw the sun, bright and huge,
impossibly close, spanning a quarter of the sky. The sun, an uncontrolled
fusion explosion, burning hydrogen to helium with a profligacy of energy
unmatched by any other phenomenon in the universe. Pure waste. With tendrils
of fire leaping from the surface, curving around in the intense magnetic
field, and falling back to the surface. Great whirlpools on that surface,
vortices of fire that dimpled the surface with great holes, darker than the
rest of the surface. Fireballs are beautiful; this one was one of the
loveliest I've ever seen.

I looked around for the planets, but I couldn't see them. I checked the
electromagnetic spectrum; ultra-violet, then infra-red. Even radio
frequencies, nothing. No planets, no life. I looked around the stars in the
distance, and realised that I wasn't in any part of the galaxy I'd visited
before. And then I felt a soft low-frequency gravity-wave of greeting. "Hi".
"Hi," I answered. Two more greetings reached me, and I replied. "Shall we get
into position for the Dance of the Four," suggested one of them. So we formed
a tetrahedron, the simplest Platonic solid, four apexes, four equilateral
triangles, six lines joining the four of us, so that each of us were braced by
the three others in a stable configuration, so that even the tidal force from
the nearby fireball couldn't perturb our positions. We were orbiting the
fireball, fairly close to it, close enough for the tidal forces to be nudging
us apart if it hadn't been for our bonds, close enough so that we could soak
up the coruscating stream of energy that every fireball blasts out into
emptiness.

I wondered. Why do the fireballs do it? Where do the fireballs come from? Why
are there so many of them? Why do they generate so much energy, which is
nearly all wasted, going to nothing and nowhere? Why do some of them form
planets? Why do planets evolve life? Some of us have suggested that new life
on planets arises so that new People will be birthed as Guardians. Others have
suggested that cause and effect might be the other way round, yet more have
suggested that there is no causal relationship. Some folks think that it's all
done by and for the benefit of the fireballs, a benefit that we can't even
imagine. No-one knows.

So many questions, all meaningless. Why is a raven like a writing desk? It's
so easy to ask questions, so difficult to ask questions that are actually
meaningful. I know where I came from, I know where I grew up. I thought of the
species that was my responsibility to Guard, and the warmth and love welled up
in me; I promised myself that as soon as my duties here were finished, I'd pay
them a visit, see how they're doing. They don't need to know I'm there, but I
still like to visit them sometimes, see how far they've come. I'm so proud of
you, you're my babies, my beloved Hopami. I love you, all of you. We grew up
together, my Hopami and I. It's what I am, what I do. Yes, I know why I'm
here.

While we waited, we passed theorems around, discussed the latest advances in
prime number theory, told each other about the geometries we were working
with. It was pleasant, orbiting this gorgeous hot fireball, absorbing its
energy, using it to raise our quantum states to higher levels, giving us a
charge of readily available energy that we could re-emit as electromagnetic,
mesonic or gravitic energy. We played frisbee with some lumps of rock that
orbited close; we configured ourselves as a phased-array antenna to look deep
into the past, viewing superclusters that were billions of lights away, seeing
them as they were before any of us were born.

The years passed pleasantly, it had been a long time since I'd had the chance
to communicate with others of the People. We're a solitary species, very
unlike the Hopami that come from my planet, who are only comfortable in large
groups. And that was one of the things about them that I never could
understand; the way they liked to huddle together. Still, it's always
difficult for one species to understand another, I'm sure they thought I was
alien. The Hopami have no concept of trust, because they have no concept of
distrust. Herd-member relies on herd, herd on herd-member. That's how it has
to be. It's delightful to know a Hopami, you get instant trust. Trust and sex,
but they don't know love.

But even though our instincts are to be alone, the urge to reproduce brings us
together occasionally, and it's at times like there that we exchange ideas and
information. Even though I like being by myself, the cross-fertilisation of
data that happens at these meetings makes them much more of a pleasure than a
duty. A blessing and a joy. A mitzvah.

This wasn't my first birthing, I've done this before. Never as one of the Two,
though. Maybe one day. Theoretically, I'm old enough to - in practice, People
usually attend several birthings before taking the plunge themselves.

I remember my first birthing. It was a while ago, I'd only just become an
adult. I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to pull my weight as one of the
Four; as it happened, the birthing failed, but not because of anything I did.
Half of them do, it's a law of physics, a consequence of symmetry. But I did
my best, I pumped a lot of energy to the Two, and at the end, well, they can
always try again some other time. But there was no Three. Which is actually a
bit sad, even though it's such a common outcome. Because we all know that the
potential for a Third was there, and maybe in a different Heisenberg
observation-state there would have been ... was ... is ...
Heisenburgian-subjunctive[is) - a Third.

But now I'm a veteran of these things, I know what's needed, and I can play my
part, and enjoy the process without fear of looking a failure. For now, I was
happy to orbit the fireball, basking in the radiation, using it to displace
electrons into higher quantum states, giving me more free energy than I would
normally absorb in a million years.