Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

hole, and after that
they will rip off that fancy roof. Then the whole mess will fall into
Chandra’s event horizon, and that will be that.’
    ’Which is why Greyworld had to be evacuated,’ Futurity said.
    ’The latest Kard is known for her humanitarian impulses,’ Tahget
said dryly.
    Poole said, ’All right, Mara, here we are. What now? Do you want
to be taken down to Greyworld?’
    ’Oh, no,’ she said. ’What would be the point of that?’ She seemed
faintly irritated. ’I told you, Michael Poole. My Sharn isn’t on
Greyworld. She’s there.’ And she pointed to the glimmering black
hole.
    Tahget and his crew exchanged significant glances.
    Futurity felt a flickering premonition, the return of fear. This
journey into the heart of the Galaxy had been so wondrous that he had
managed, for a while, to forget the danger they were in. But it had
all been a diversion. This woman, after all, controlled a bomb, and
now they approached the moment of crisis.
    Poole drew him aside. ’You look worried, acolyte,’ he
murmured.
    ’I am worried. Mara is still asking for the impossible. What do we
do now?’
    Poole seemed much calmer than Futurity felt. ’I always had a
philosophy. If you don’t know what to do, gather more data. How do
you know that what she wants is impossible?’ He turned to Tahget.
’Captain, how close can you take us to the satellite black hole?’
    Tahget shook his head. ’It’s a waste of time.’
    ’But you don’t have any better suggestion, do you? Let’s go take a
look. What else can we do?’
    Tahget grumbled, but complied.
    So the ship lifted away from Greyworld, and its retinue of Kardish
greenships formed up once more. Mara smiled, as if she was coming
home at last. But Futurity shivered, for there was nothing remotely
human about the place they were heading to now.
     
    Slowly the spiteful light of the satellite black hole drew
closer.
    ’Acolyte,’ Poole murmured. ’You have a data desk?’
    ’Yes.’
    ’Then start making observations. Study that black hole, Futurity.
Figure out what’s going on here. This is your chance to do some real
science, for once.’
    ’But I’m not a scientist.’
    ’No, you’re not, are you? You’re too compromised for that. But you
told me you were curious, once. That was what drove you out of the
farm and into the arms of the Ecclesia in the first place.’ He
sighed. ’You know, in my day a kid like you would have had better
opportunities.’
    Futurity felt moved to defend his vocation. ’I don’t think you
understand the richness of theological - ’
    ’Just get the damn desk!’
    Futurity hurried to his cabin and returned with his data desk. It
was the Ecclesia’s most up-to-date model. He pressed the desk to the
observation lounge blister, and checked it over as data poured
in.
    ’I feel excited,’ he said.
    ’You should,’ Poole said. ’You might make some original discovery
here. And, more important, you might figure out how to save all our
skins, my Virtual hide included.’
    ’I’m excited but worried,’ Futurity admitted.
    ’That sounds like you.’
    ’Michael Poole, how can a human child survive in a black
hole?’
    Poole glanced at him approvingly. ’Good; that’s the right question
to ask. You need to cultivate an open mind, acolyte. Let’s assume
Mara’s serious, that she knows what she’s talking about.’
    ’That she’s not crazy.’
    ’Open mind! Mara has implied - I think - that we’re not talking
about the child in her physical form but some kind of download, like
a Virtual.’
    Futurity asked, ’But what information can be stored in a black
hole? A hole is defined only by its mass, charge and spin. You need
rather more than three numbers to define a Virtual. But no human
science knows a way to store more data than that in a black hole -
though it is believed others may have done so in the past.’
    Poole eyed him. ’Others?…’ He slapped his own cheek. ’Never
mind. Concentrate, Poole. Then let’s look away from the hole itself,
the relativistic object. We’re looking for structure, somewhere you
can write information. Every black hole is embedded in the wider
universe, and every one of them comes with baggage. This satellite
hole has its own accretion disc. Maybe there…’
    But Futurity’s scans of the disc revealed nothing. ’Michael Poole,
it’s basically a turbulence spectrum. Oh, there is some correlation
of structure around a circumference, and over time tied into