Read Online Furious Gulf by Gregory Benford - Free Book Online Page A

of the work gang rested on their tails. He was beginning to
     see what his father liked about spending so much time out here, beneath the seethe of sky. A million pinprick fires shone
     through the blobs and swirls of twilight radiance—dust and gas, tortured into smoldering luminescence by huge electrical currents.
    Staring outward for long moments, he could sense the slow churn of the entire disk of the galaxy. Everything here whirled
     about a single point that no one could see: the black hole at True Center.
    The Eater. As a boy on Snowglade he had seen it, a smoldering presence behind churning molecular clouds. Some legends called
     it the Eye, from an age when it had glared down on Families like an avenging angel, or devil, or both.
    Toby could only glance at the eye-stinging brilliance there—the disk of captured matter that spiraled about the hole. Then
     he had to look away, or his body’s own systems would close down his optical vision, to avoid getting burned out. Still, it
     was eerie, staring at clouds of dust as they slid into the death grip of that tiny, vicious maw. A mouth that was always hungry,
     always impatient.
    He turned his back on the glare and hiked down into the little valley formed by two bulges in
Argo
’s hull. He was daydreaming, taking in the view—and then stopped short. Quath’s honeycomb warren lay in shambles.
    And Quath stalked among the ruins. Her double-jointed legs worked in their steel sockets as Quath seized a wall of gray bricks.
     Alarmed, Toby trotted forward, boots clanging heavily.
    —What happened? Did a piece of the Chandelier hit it?—
    
    —But this much, something big—hey!—
    Quath jerked powerfully and the entire wall came apart. Bricks of waste and garbage flew everywhere. Then Toby noticed that
     despite their tumbling and spinning, the bricks all drifted into neat stacks on the hull, following long, curved paths in
     zero-gravs. They settled nicely into order with impossible, liquid grace.
    —How’d you do that?—
         hull.>
    —Okay, but how do you get them to fly apart like that, and go into the right stacks?—
    
    Toby squinted up at the huge form as she broke up another part of her own dwelling. He knew enough about Quath to see that
     he would get no more explanation of how, so he turned to why. Quath answered,      trajectory.>
    —What trajectory? We haven’t decided where to go yet.—
    
    And then Quath would say no more. She worked quickly and, for her size, with an unlikely deft touch. Toby called to her and
     got no answer.
    He shrugged and walked away, reminding himself not to take this personally. Quath was not a woman in an insect suit. Nor was
     she an untamed and uncontrollable force of nature. She was just plain alien, and human metaphors didn’t apply. That was the
     hardest thing to remember, when you’d just been snubbed. Toby turned and called back,—So much for your crap-castle, bug-face!—
    Quath stopped and waved two feelers at him but said nothing but <[untranslatable]>. Maybe that was an obscene gesture, for
     Quath’s race—but Toby would never know.
    He stalked away and took out his irritation by working harder, faster. He was pleasantly tired by the time the job was done,
     and when he cycled back inside he treated himself to a full shower.
    This was three days early, but he felt sorely used by life. He thumbed the nozzle on full bore and selected options of suds
     and an alcohol spray. By pure luck it was the first day in a cycle and the water was fresh. It didn’t smell of other Bishops
     or of the refilter that never really took away all the odors. He let the wonderful warmth gush over him, tuned the nozzle
     to pound his muscles and massage