Strata

say? “The lights in the sky are scenery”?’
    WHY NOT ?
    ‘You haven’t told me why the – Builders built.’
    The words flashed on to the screen immediately, as if the Computers had been preparing them.
    HUMANS ARE INQUISITIVE. THAT IS A FUNCTION OF THEIR HUMANITY. THE BEINGS THAT BUILT THIS UNIVERSE DID SO BECAUSE IT WAS UNTHINKABLE THAT THEY SHOULD NOT. CREATION IS NOT A THING THAT GODS DO, IT IS SOMETHING THAT THEY ARE .
    ‘And afterwards? What did they do next?’
    There was white water around the ship. Kin could see a little tree-shrouded island beyond one port, a humped black shape in the twilight, and could feel the hull bouncing over the water.
    The sky wheeled. There was no jolt, it was simply that now the floor was just a wall. Foam covered the ports for a moment, and then Kin could look – down.
    The Rimfall hung before them, looking exactly like a luminous white road. Marco in the pilot’s seat was outlined against it, and Kin could see that he had instinctively braced himself with his feet scrabbling for a hold.
    Down, way down, there was a ball of fire in the sky. The Disc was in darkness now, but the little orbiting sun was giving a brief day to the face of the waterfall. While Kin watched, it climbed above her and disappeared as the ship overtook it.
    Later there was a cloud at the limit of vision. It stayed there for a while, then raced up the glittering stream at a speed that made Kin flinch. There was the faintest of lurches and a second’s darkness as the ship left the water behind at the molecule sieve, and then there were stars.
    There was a long hiss from Marco. It may have been a sigh of relief.
    Silver said, ‘I would have felt happier if the Computers had been able to arrange a more conventional launching, but I must admit that it had style.’
    ‘From their point of view that was the most efficient way,’ said Kin. The sky spun again as Marco turned the ship so that ‘down’ was where long tradition had always put it, in the region of the feet.
    Silver unfastened her couch straps, then looked across at Kin. ‘We built the universe, didn’t we,’ she said.
    ‘Not
us
precisely, these lumps of bone and brain, but the thing in us that makes us what we are. The thing that dreams while the rest of us is asleep.’
    Kin smiled. ‘The Computers wouldn’t tell,’ she said. ‘But yes, you’re right. I think the Computers had a certain extra function, they could suppress all the mental static so the – oh hell, why avoid the word? – so that the god inside could surface just for a while and perform. That’s why practically anyone could be the Disc master. If Jago Jalo had tried the helmet, he’d be there still.’
    ‘No one will believe you,’ said Marco, without turning his head.
    ‘I’m not sure that would be a tragedy,’ said Kin. ‘The Disc was put there as a hoax, or a hint. No one has to believe it. We’ll build a planet for the Disc people and transfer them, and that is the thing that needs to be done.’
    The challenge warmed her. The building of a new Earth; so carefully done that the Disc people could be transferred and not know it. There’d have to be new continents designed, and the Disc people would have to be put into a freeze-sleep until some of their number had bred enough to populate them. It could take a thousand years. There’d be a whole solar system to drag into place, great planets around far stars to be ringed in some vast fields and flipped across light years.
    Buffaloes to be designed. Life wouldn’t be boring.
    Would what the Computers could tell them pay for it? It would.
    They slept and they ate, while the ship dipped under the monstrous shadow in the sky. The little toiling sun shed no light on the blackness as it swung across it.
    Presently the far edge of the Rimfall began to grow larger. Marco slid back into his seat and spoke to the ship’s little brain.
    ‘Okay,’ he reported, ‘major burn coming up. This is where we say goodbye, so get into those couches. The Committee are timing this one for us.’
    It took ten minutes of slight discomfort, listening to the faint roar from the outrigger jets. Kin heard a sigh from Marco’s couch as the engines shut off.
    ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Now we hit the hole, or we miss the hole. I never thought I’d have to worry about running into the wall of the universe.’
    The Rimfall raced past a few thousand miles away, phosphorescent in the light of the full moon. Even Marco took a