Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

a stunt.
    But the light, so his smart eyes quickly told him, was too complex
for that. It was as if the sky was crowded with stars, every place he
looked.
    And suddenly he understood. Olbers’ paradox…
    ’Sink Ambassador. This teleportation technique of yours. It can
carry you from one side of the universe to the other. Yes?’
    ’Further than that.’
    ’And the light that bathes us - ’
    ’It is starlight, Jack Raoul. Nothing but starlight.’
    Again he had the sense that someone called him. He ascended into
the light, seeking the voice.
     
    ’After several seconds the eyelids closed again, slowly and
evenly, and the eyes took on the same appearance as before.
    ’I called out again.
    ’Once more, without any spasm, the lids lifted. Undeniably living
eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than
the first time. Then there was a further closing of the eyelids, but
now less complete.’
     
    He looked down at the Ghost ship, a mass of entwined silvery
cables with knots of life embedded everywhere, all of it glowing in
the endless starlight. He could still make out the Sink Ambassador, a
mercury droplet clinging to the tangle.
    But the structure was shrinking, closing on itself. The sky was a
sphere of light, glowing white, and he felt he was being drawn away
from the tangle, up into the light.
    ’Olbers’ paradox,’ he whispered.
    ’Yes,’ said the Ghost. ’A key moment in the evolution of human
thought, a philosophical fossil preserved by exiles through the Qax
Extirpation… If the universe were infinite and static, every line
of sight would meet the surface of a star, and the whole sky would be
as bright as the surface of a sun. Even occluding dust clouds would
soon become as hot as the stars themselves. That was evidently not
so, observed those thinkers of old Earth. Therefore their universe
could not be infinite or static.’
    ’But here - ’
    ’But here, things are different. This appears to be a pocket
universe, Jack Raoul. We believe it is a bubble of spacetime pinched
off by a singularity. The heart of a black hole, perhaps.’
    ’Infinite and static.’
    ’Yes.’
    ’It doesn’t make sense,’ Raoul said. ’If the whole sky is as hot
as the surface of the sun - Ambassador, how do you keep cool?’
    The Ghost rolled, shimmering. ’There is another pocket universe at
the centre of the colony. Our heat is dumped there.’
    Raoul gaped. ’You have a whole universe for a heat dump? And is
that how the stars keep shining?’
    ’We think so. Otherwise, immersed in this heat bath, simple
thermodynamics would soon cause the stars to evaporate. We have only
recently arrived here, Jack Raoul; there is much we have yet to
explore. But it is clear to us that this cosmos is heavily
engineered.’
    ’Engineered? Who by?’
    ’The Xeelee,’ the Ghost said.
    ’Ah.’ The Xeelee: aloof from the petty squabbles of lesser kinds,
even of sprawling, brawling humanity. The Xeelee, as remote as
clouds.
    ’It is not certain,’ said the Ghost. ’But there are certain
signatures we have come to recognise… Such universe-modelling does
appear to be a characteristic Xeelee strategy.’
    Raoul laughed, wondering. ’At last you’ve found yourselves an
inverted sky, Ambassador. A Cold Sink.’ Considering their
evolutionary history, shaped by cosmic betrayal and cold, this place
was like a Ghost wish-fulfilment fantasy.
    ’Yes. Jack Raoul, we believe we were led here, by the Xeelee.
Perhaps they have prepared a bolt-hole of their own, in case their
epochal war with the photino birds is ultimately lost.’
    ’You see this place as a bolt-hole? What are you hiding from?’
    ’You,’ said the Ambassador.
    That took him aback.
    ’Jack Raoul, your Expansion is already expanding exponentially. We
are in your way.’
    Raoul had heard this said. The Ghosts’ home range lay between
mankind and the rich fields of the Galaxy’s Core, and the Expansion
was pressing.
    But he protested, ’It’s a big Galaxy. It’s not even as if we are
fighting over the same kinds of territory, or resource. Ghosts are
adapted to the cold and dark, humans to deep gravity wells. There is
room for all of us.’
    ’That is true,’ said the Ambassador. ’But irrelevant. Your
Expansion is fuelled by ideology as much as resource acquisition -
and it is not an ideology that preaches of sharing. In such a
situation there can be no diplomacy.
    ’There is already war. A series of flashpoints, all along