Читать книгу Star Lass - Paul Kocourek - Страница 5

The Nullilizer fired.

Princess Lassandra's world exploded. Lights rushed at and sped past her, dazzling streamers of burning sparks whirling to infinity. Boiling waves of exploding brilliance washed over and around her like cyclonic-lashed ocean waves crashing on a shattered rocky shore. She felt herself falling helplessly as vast seas of roaring energy surged and crashed about her, every mote of her being filled with fire and thunder.

The lights still flashed and whirled around her.

And she realized she was still seeing them, and that meant… she was still alive!

Princess, are you well? Are you there? Roby's mental voice was anxious.

Yes, I'm still here! It worked! she replied in vast relief. Where are we?

This is hyperspace, Your Highness. My circuits are astonished that you are existing consciously here. No object of mere atomic structure is supposed to be able to survive or even exist here, unless wrapped by a quarteron force shield like our starships.

Maybe it's because you snatched and stored away my particles in your own hyperspace matrix? she offered.

Yes, I did indeed, as you put it, "snatch and store" your particles into my matrix, so with all my quarterons around you, it may well be we preserved you like a starship being wrapped in a quarteron force shield. That would account for it.

And since my atomic particles are stored away, and I am yet alive and aware of you and hyperspace, then it must mean that the human life force really is immaterial, meaning, I really do have a soul. That thought oddly pleased and comforted her. Status request, please. Are we teleporting? Where will we end up?

The faithful royal AI hesitated. I believe we are teleporting. As to your second question, I have insufficient information, Highness, due to two reasons. First, I did not have sufficient room in my matrix for your particles, and with no time to make room, I had to purge some of my circuits, even as I took additional damage from attacks by Virus. I am… incomplete… damaged, though how much I do not know. Second, my interface to normal space is—was—in your royal gold Belt of Arista. Ordinarily, when an AI's interface is destroyed, as far as we know the AI ceases to exist, like what happened to your parents and their royal AIs. However, my interface's normal space components are not destroyed, but are also now resident here in hyperspace. I still exist, but my interspatial link between hyperspace and normal space is gone.

Lassandra felt a sudden chill of dread. Do you mean we have no connection to the outside world at all? And what happened to Virus?

I have no idea what happened to that malevolent AI. Destroyed, hopefully, along with its interface. As for the teleport, Princess, I think a human expression says it best. We have gone into a hole and pulled the hole in after us. There is no telling how far we have traveled so far, and still as yet must travel, and in my incomplete condition, I cannot even calculate how long. Please understand that our teleport's traveling is something we shall both do until the Nullilizer's initial power burst runs out of impetus. Think of it as a cannonball shot that travels until it runs out of momentum because of air resistance and the pull of gravity. Even the time we have spent here in conversation is meaningless without a normal space-time referent. In normal space-time, it could be hours, days or weeks, but it could also be microseconds.

There is one other factor to add. When I and Virus fought, there seemed to be (and you must remember I had my hands full, so to speak, with saving you AND fighting off that rogue AI) some rift opening in hyperspace itself. But a rift, as to what it is, or where it leads, or what such a rift implies, nothing in my programming covers that.

The faithful AI paused.

Princess… Lassandra… I don't want to frighten you, but we may travel for a very long time, and also that we may yet be pulled in by the gravity well of a cosmic body such as a star or planet with a totally hostile environment, which could require my saving your life by placing you in suspended animation.

She was stricken. Oh, no!

Assuming we are not outright destroyed by landing on a blazing star, I might have to keep you in suspension for centuries, maybe millennia, perhaps even eons. My power is derived from the transfinite energy of hyperspace, so I won't run out of power nor fail in my vigilance. Nevertheless, space is very, very, big beyond imagination. The odds that we might by chance, out of the near-infinite size of the universe, find ourselves landing in a safe environment, or be discovered by a search party, could make your recovery just short of truly impossible. They might never find you, leaving you forever lost in space.

The star princess said nothing, horrified beyond words at the implications her royal AI brought out. It was a virtual damnation of some implacable Hell.

Roby unexpectedly announced. Then again, we have a gravity well.

All the spinning, whirling blazing lights abruptly stopped.