The Weapon - Lex - part 33
By Diana the Valkyrie
The Two arrive
Update: 17/11/2003 to valkyrie05


Then they arrived. First one, then, soon after, the other. The Two that would
become Three. Some People like to arrive fashionably late for this, but I
think that's just poor manners. The First dived down close to the fireball,
just grazing the corona, then zooming out into a highly elliptical orbit. The
Second followed, actually penetrating the surface of the fireball to a small
depth, in order to get a tighter, faster orbit and catch up with the First.

But the First didn't wait till she got to aphelion before turning back to the
fireball; I could feel the reverberations in the non-existent ether as she
fired off a gravity wave to turn in a tight loop and aim back at the fireball.
The Second followed her, but she was still a long way behind. As the First
approached the fireball, she accelerated, and looped around the back; the
Second did the same, but after vanishing out of sight behind the fireball,
didn't appear back in sight.

The First looked back, couldn't see her, and curved back to make another pass
around. As she passed close to the fireball, the Second popped out from where
she'd been hiding, under the surface of the fireball, in a gravitational
anomaly, where she's been invisible.

The chase continued; I was powerfully reminded of how my own Hopami did their
courting; the ritualised chase, the dance, the leap, the mobbing, the social
customs that are so important to them, and which I had to learn in order to
bind properly with my Wielder. And that made me think about sweet Karam, my
first Wielder, about how wonderful our relationship had been. My emulation of
Karam agreed, making noises of pleasure. I scratched his belly.

But this wasn't about me, it was about the Two. I shouldn't be dwelling on my
own concerns now that they're here, I should be cheering them on. I devised an
elaborate verbal artform, and sent it to the others for the Four for criticism
and improvement; they corrected and improved the language I'd used and added
verses to it, and sent it back to me. I made some more corrections, added
another verse, and resubmitted it. The others, working as a trio, reflected it
back to the First, who forwarded it to the Second.

Then the Fourth sent a theme to me. I appended a variation to it, and sent it
back. The Fourth sent me the theme, plus the four variations, and I added
another. We bounced the theme-stream back and forth, adding more and more
variations, until it had the feeling of completeness, and then the Fourth
beamed the Theme, plus Variations, to the First and Second. Everyone felt
satisfied by the package.

We continued to do similar things; the Sixth started off a set of geometrical
axioms, and we all contributed lemmas, theorems and proofs until we had a very
elaborate canon based on those axioms, and that became part of the birthing
feast. The Third axiomed a different set of physical laws, and we played with
these, developing the consequences into a pocket universe.

While we were making birthing gifts for the Two, they were doing their own
thing. Partly a chase, partly a fight, and partly a dance. The First would
chase the Second, then the Second would chase the First. We call this "Tag",
and it's often played by young People with their Guardianship, but the play is
just a kind of preparation for the adult game of Tag. The young of my Hopami
play a similar game, taking turns to be the chaser and the chased, and I used
to play with them, back when I ... back when. When this birthing is done, I'm
going back there, just for a visit, make sure they're doing fine. I wonder if
they still remember me. They live for such a short time. It took me a while to
get used to that, you barely have time to get to know them, and then they die.

When the chaser caught the chased, there would be a quick exchange of mass,
and then the roles reversed. I watched them as they twisted and cavorted,
knowing that one day, I'd be doing that, I'd be one of the Two. I mean, I've
done my time of duty as a Guardian, I've participated in several birthings, I
know the customs and rituals of the People. And I have a hankering to be one
of the Two that becomes Three. But not just yet. Just a hankering, not an
urge. And anyway, there isn't a species that would need a Guardian just now.
Although there's a few that aren't many million years away from there, and I
have to admit, I've been devising a new non-linear algebra in n-space which
I'm hoping might lead to me being chosen to be one of the Two sometime soon.
It's a rather elegant construct, if I do say so myself, and I've had a few
favourable comments on it already.

I watched the Two approach each other, binding themselves into an orbit around
their mutual center of gravity. I saw the first wispy tendrils of
electromagnetic radiation were exchanged, softly as an evening breeze stirring
the front fringes of a Hopami. I watched wistfully as they started to reflect
their energy back and forth between them. And then, as the amplitude of the
energy exchange grew, I watched more longingly.

It's the same every time I attend a birthing. The process gets to you, stirs
you deeply, emotionally. How could it not? You wouldn't be there if the Two
weren't already closely linked to you, and you're hoping that the birthing
will be successful, and that a Third will join the numbers of the People. We
don't birth often, but when we do, it's a momentous time, an important step in
the development of the Two, the Four and of the whole of the People.

And, of course, it's deeply erotic. Pleasurable. The thought of the Two
becoming Three excited and motivated me, even as I recognised that this was
just the instinct to reproduce that every species has, because if they don't
they're soon extinct.

Sure enough, watching the exchange of energy between the Two, aroused our
passions, and the Four started to beam pulses of energy to them, orbiting each
other, orbiting the fireball, the Two stable at the centroid of the
tetrahedron that we Four had created. The energy that we'd absorbed from the
fireball in the years while we'd waited for the Two, we were now expending,
dropping electrons from higher to lower quantum states, focussing our energy
on the Two, helping them pump up their mutual passion.

Of course, this raised the Two into higher states of excitation, and their
energy exchanges began to increase in power. And, via the ancient feedback
loop, the sight of that more energetic exchange stimulated us Four, and we
increased the frequency and amplitude of our emanations.

It was, of course, a one way street. We were pumping up the Two, but they were
keeping the energy between them, reflecting it back and forth, exchanging
electromagnetic energy up and down the spectrum. Exchanging the gift of power,
but never keeping it for themselves, always returning it to the other.

Then they started approaching each other more closely; spiralling their orbits
closer around the common center of gravity. And with the closer approach, and
the increasing exchange of energy, we could see the first flecks of quantum
entanglement begin to develop. The orbital period of the Two shortened and
shortened until it could be measured in femtoseconds, a whirl of love, the
waltz of the birthing.