Chapter 4

== Spolti Cluster, Tenebara Research Station ==

"Look, the big risk has always been there, right?" Ed said. "We've known from the beginning that we'd have to stop playing with the simulators eventually and actually try this."

"Yes, but I didn't expect you to be the first test subject," Gordon said. "You're too valuable."

"I'm not. I'm no more valuable than anyone else you might find, and I've got one advantage. I've got this damned genetically optimized body the Skafti had to whip up for me."

There was a long silence as the two men faced each other, waiting for the other to add something.

"All right," Gordon said finally. "But you have to tell Kristy."

"She already knows," Ed said with a laugh. "We had to fight between ourselves when we first signed onto the project over which of us got to volunteer for this."

"And you won?" Gordon said, grinning.

"I did, but I had to cheat. I promised I'd make sure she was pregnant before we began the final phase. She is, so that's why I'm making the offer today."

"I see," Gordon said, his grin growing wider. "All right then. I'll schedule the surgery for tomorrow."

It was a strange series of events and revelations that had brought Gordon's research to this point. He was no physicist, and certainly no subspace wave field theorist, but as he was fond of saying — 'The math never lies' — and the math had led him inexorably towards this point. First he had decided that the mathematical models Rella and Rika were studying as part of their education in the field of subspace physics was incomplete somehow, and he kept mulling it over in the back of his brain until one day it just popped out, clear as day.

To have a subspace wave field generator, you must presume such a thing or place as subspace, but just what was subspace? The theoretical physicists did not all agree, in either broad or detailed terms, about what subspace was, but that had not prevented them from developing theories which the Tolchoran and Skafti engineers had built upon. The primary beneficiaries were the existing FTL engines that moved their ships between the stars.

"It is as if subspace is more firmly fixed in reality," Rella had explained. "The FTL engines are able to push harder against it than they can against normal space, and that translates into traveling faster and farther for the same energy expense."

"This is the same reason why our generators make the Rek so much more maneuverable," Rika had explained. "It gives the ships control surfaces something to push against, even in the vacuum of space."

That conversation had been the beginning, and the stint here at the Tenebara Research station had been the realization of a big part of that idea, but not all. Spaceships, shifted part-way into subspace, gained even greater efficiencies, travel times shrank and distances traveled in a single transit grew another exponential step beyond the current norms.

Gordon might have been content with that, except for another conversation — this time one with Waxalin Feldain, the current bright star among the Primes in the Maga. While he was considered a materials and structural engineering genius, he had been, and remained, as Gordon was, a Mathematics Prime.

They met through the datanet at first, but eventually spent hours arguing and laughing over their wilder ideas via holographic vid sessions.

"Its a shame we're not irilonic beings," Wax had said. "We might be able to push ourselves into subspace, and wouldn't that be interesting to see!"

The offhand comment had come while they were discussing the differences in power demands for the older subspace designs and the new ones they had been theorizing using Gordon's 'new math'. The theory, and Wax saw it in the numbers as quickly as Gordon did, suggested that for small scale objects, with volumes and surface areas which would easily describe all but the smallest and very largest of the known intelligent beings in Skafti space, it might be possible to carry sufficient power to move them into subspace.

The three years since the completion of the original work found Gordon gnawing on that thought, and it was only after having heard from Ed Bell, and having gotten curious about the range and depths of the modifications made to those who were Iri Voch, that it came to him. We may not be irilonic, but some of us were, due to Skafti artifice, far more irilonic than others.

The possibilities were instantly intriguing, but along with the interest came concern. Something like this could work, but might well do so in gloriously fatal ways. Even if it proved non-fatal, how would an intelligent consciousness handle the exposure to whatever subspace was?

Again the Iri Voch seemed to be ideal candidates. Their Ora were second only to the Maga in complexity, and unlike those of the Maga primes, theirs were not integrated into their own consciousnesses, but maintained their own unique consciousnesses, apart from their hosts.

Then came the cruel stage of his research. After Ed did some arguing on his behalf with the Iri Voch themselves, Ora from Iri voch who had died in action started being brought to him, and with the consent of those consciousnesses, they were re-implanted in non-sapient creatures that had been heavily modified with irilonic implants, as the Iri Voch and others were.

Then the subspace wave field modifications were made.

Made and remade and made again as Ora after Ora sacrificed themselves for Gordon, and what might come. The early ones died in ways that seemed horrific and cruel, but the data allowed them to refine the theory, and slowly the Ora began to survive. Then it was a matter of keeping their consciousnesses whole and sane.

Near the beginning of the process, Waxalin Feldain joined the team, and he insisted that he do his share of the processing from that point on.

"I need to take my share of the pain and the burden" he explained. "Some of what you do here can be laid at my feet, and if I can be considered responsible for an idea, I must share the burden of the grief and pain it causes."

Slowly they came closer and closer to the time when they felt it would be safe for sapient trials. Ed insisted it had to be him. Kristy disagreed of course, sometimes violently, but once she was pregnant, Ed was finally able to insist.

"You know they've got me recorded every which way but loose. The complete genetic rewrite they had to do for me was stuck away in a drawer somewhere, and its just waiting to be pulled out and reused."

"But I don't want a copy of you," Kristy argued.

"Sweetheart, what you've got is already a copy. You know that."

"Not what's up here," Kristy said, stroking a temple as she came to stand behind him. "That's what I worry about loosing."

In my Yoeme dreaming, was I the Pascola or the Deer Dancer? Was I both? I felt the Sun on my back and dirt on my bare feet that were from a place that no longer held such. I felt the air moving around me and in it, the scent of mesquite. Voices joined me in song and I didn't know the words, but somehow my voice answered theirs. I sought the field of flowers in the dance I did in my own head, and as I had become used to, saw the new, bright flowers that were my recently fallen brothers among the Iri Voch. My thoughts toe-stepped to them, bent low and unfocused. The flowers leapt into my hands, held high and wide and shaking, and I let the smell of my brothers wash over me.

Ed woke without moving. The dreams seemed to be growing more frequent and intense as the day of the test grew closer. The ever-more-mysterious Antheia had called the day before, 'just to say hi' and to encourage him with reminders that all he need do was keep focused on being Ed and it would all turn out fine. He hoped so. He didn't have enough reference on the old ways, despite his childhood attentiveness to the Escalante's instructions.

Where is this leading me? Why me? What does it all mean?

Ed's waking thoughts were much more anchored in the present than his dreaming ones these days. Today the sleep field would hold him in ignorant nothingness while the knives worked again to change him.

The surgeries had been nothing compared to some he'd had in the past. Ed didn't sense any pain. He hadn't slowed down any, as far as he could tell, and JC would have told him if he had. His balance was the same, his reaction times unchanged. He knew that would change soon, when the tests began, but for now he felt good about his state of being. He folded his thoughts through himself and into the place he was able to go now, even waking, where he could see the flowers on the field, and dance with them, and sing their song.

I feel JC coming along with me now. Sense his eyes behind mine, seeing the great plain and the flowers stretching out and beyond. Again the dust is on my feet and the Sun on my back. Through the dust and beyond the sun I run now with the steps of the deer, alert and open to the moment. Open to the story. The story that was us and is us. The story of what we become. Each deer step of the story. There are others waiting. Waiting to find this place, waiting to trace the deer's steps through the world and sing past the barrier and into this field and join their spirits with mine, and add their steps to the dance. Almost but not yet. Almost.

"Am I a spirit too, Ed?" JC asked when they returned their minds to the world.

"Not yet my brother, but you will be," Ed said, turning to run back to the house. "We will be - together."

== Spolti Cluster, Tenebara Research Station ==

The central lab space had been emptied out and its interior was now thickly covered with sensors and data pickups. Ed, wearing a heavily modified suit of battle armor stood at its center. Rella and Rika Suu scurried around him, examining the leads and external nodules that were attached to the armor at various places.

"We're ready for power-up of the external exciters," came Gordon's disembodied voice, booming through the chamber. "Rella, Rika, everything is in the green. Leave it alone and get back to the observation blister."

The twin Kuftasans left the chamber and it grew silent, and remained that way for a long, tense moment.

"External exciters are powering up," came Gordon's voice. "Feel anything?" he asked Ed.

"Nothing," Ed responded. "Should I?"

"No," came Gordon's reply. "All indicators are green, status looking good on the internals."

"Power up of external exciters complete," came Rella Suu's voice.

Another long moment of silence followed.

"All systems show stable," Rika's voice announced into the quiet.

"Activating internal taps," Gordon's voice came, this time directly into Ed's comm system.

Ed suddenly had an awareness of the power nodules attached to his battle armor, and knew that with the flip of a mental switch he could flood the new circuitry embedded in his body with power.

"Cycle on the grav field interlocks," Gordon called out. Ed flipped a mental switch and felt his world suddenly grow stiffer and more distant as he was wrapped in a stabilizing gravitic field.

"Gravitic field stable and holding all green," came Rika's voice after another long pause.

"Everything reads green at this end. Ready for subspace field generator power up," Ed said, out loud and through the comm unit.

"Medical team status?" Gordon's voice called out.

"Medical team standing by," came the response.

"Green and go on activation at your discretion," Gordon's voice spoke softly, after the longest pause of all.