Read Online Omega Point Trilogy by George Zebrowski - Free Book Online

away from the solar system and explore the worlds of the Federation Snake. He wanted to see how people lived, and if they were happier. Julian could do without him for a time.
    Grazia , he said silently. The ring of worlds in the sky blurred into a band of light as tears filled his eyes, while another part of him cursed the fact of human dependency and the insufficiency of all things.
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VIII. Home
“As to what happened next … when men are desperate no one can stand up to them.”
    — Xenophon
    THE STILLNESS in the control cabin was oppressive. The ship’s motion through the gray vastness seemed to be an imprisonment within a static medium. That the ship was moving was something he knew ; but his body felt only confinement.
    His father came in and stood behind him. “Where are we going now?” he asked.
    “I think we’ve lost the pursuers, but I don’t want to lead them back to the base if I’m wrong. We’re going back to Myraa — later we’ll go to the base to pick up some equipment I want.”
    “What do you have in mind?” His father’s tone was almost friendly, as if he were another person.
    “What do you care?”
    “I’m sorry I can’t feel the way you do. Can you feel how sorry I am?”
    “How can you bring yourself to care about the deaths of our enemies?”
    “I can’t help it — it’s been so long. What can those alive now know of the old struggle?”
    “I’m going to leave you at the base — unless you still want to help.”
    “If something happens to you, I will never be able to leave the base. Leave me with Myraa instead.” His father’s voice was almost a whisper. He’s inside me , Gorgias thought, I’ll never get rid of him . “I think I might like living with Myraa and the others.” Punish him , don’t give him what he wants .
    “I’ve changed my mind — we’ll go back to the base first. I’ll need you to help me load and handle two or three gravitic units. You do know something about them, don’t you?”
    “Yes, very well,” his father said, “but later you must leave me on Myraa. It’s what I want now.”
    Gorgias turned around in his station chair.
    “Must — there is little that I must do. I’ll see.” The old Herculean was trying to manipulate him now.
    “I’ll stay in the aft cabin,” his father said and left the control area.
    As he watched the bulkhead door slide shut, a sudden fear gripped Gorgias, as if he had been cut off from everything real. The past was shrinking away from him, leaving him alone and naked before a stone wall of infinite height and thickness, a structure that he would never be able to penetrate. He could not imagine what lay on the other side, but he knew that he desired it above everything else. He turned back to the screen and closed his eyes to shut out the timelessness of jumpspace; visualizing the wall before him, he made an effort to pierce its substance. His eyes came up against a fine texture of sandy pits and scars, where a nameless weathering had worked to breach the stone.…
    He opened his eyes, suddenly aware that he had been dozing. The screen was filled with the gray-white light of the continuum, casting its pallor into the cabin. He looked at his hands. The skin seemed dead and dry, as if the flesh were about to fall away from the bones. Everything in jumpspace is dead; everything that passes through dies a little . He rubbed his hands together and they fell away from his arms.…
    He sat up and realized that he had been dreaming about being awake. The screen was a normal gray with black stars; passage home was a quarter over and there was no sign of hunters.
    He got up and paced the cabin, dreaming of the new sortie.
    As the universe reappeared on the screen, the Hercules Cluster took up half the field of view ahead, a globe of fireflies exploding out from a center of concentrated light. Within a half hour the Cluster became the entire universe as the ship penetrated toward the base star