we were here or how dire our situation, hovering near the south chapel, a mere fifteen yards from the wall of the abbey, was the largest black hole I’d seen yet.
“And if it expands enough to reach the wall?” I demanded. I knew the answer. I wanted someone to tell me I was wrong.
“If it behaves like the one we saw beneath Chester’s,”Barrons said, “the entire abbey and everything in it will disappear.”
“Best case scenario,” Dancer disagreed. “I’ve been studying these things, tossing in small objects. Each one I’ve seen was suspended aboveground. I believe they all are, since the HFK took the frequency it wanted from the air and left its deposit in the same place. Which makes sense because once the sound waves contacted another object, they would no longer have emitted undiluted frequency. Each item I tossed in was instantly absorbed and the anomaly grew slightly. Worth noting, its growth was not proportionate to the mass of the item absorbed.”
“For fuck’s sake, what’s your point?” Barrons growled.
“I’m making it. When the hole beneath Chester’s absorbed Mac’s ghouls—which glided aboveground, by the way—it sucked them upward and in. Nothing I’ve tossed to any of the black holes was in direct contact with another object.”
Maybe I
didn’t
know the answer. Maybe the answer was worse than I’d thought.
“Worst case scenario,” Dancer continued, “it’ll devour the abbey and everything it’s touching, sensing it all as a single large object.”
“But the abbey is touching the earth!” I exclaimed.
Dancer said, “Precisely.”
“How quickly could it absorb it, if it did?” Barrons demanded.
“No way of knowing. It could be the holes will always suck things upward and in, provided the object is smallenough that it doesn’t counter the pull of the thing’s gravity. It could be very large objects like the earth are beyond their ability to tackle and it would merely take a chunk of the abbey. If it emits inadequate gravitational force, one might assume matter would separate under oppositional tension as competing gravities reach critical inertia. Problem is, I can’t confirm they function identical to what we understand as black holes, and frankly that understanding is limited and speculative. Performing an experiment elsewhere might topple an unstoppable cascade of dominoes.”
“Sum it up,” I said tersely.
“Bottom line: I suggest we don’t let the black hole touch the abbey even if it means tearing the place down to get it out of the way.”
9
“Out of dark a hero forms, city’s knight that serves no throne…”
J ada stared into the night, watching through the window as visitors passed from sight beyond the columns of the grand entrance of the abbey.
She’d known they would come. Those who wanted her to be someone she was no longer, someone who would never have survived those insane, bloody years in the Silvers.
They thought she’d stolen their Dani away. She hadn’t. They thought she was split. She wasn’t.
She was what Dani had become.
Which wasn’t the Dani they’d known.
But how could they expect a teenager who’d leapt into a Silver to come out the same five and a half years later, as if nothing had happened to her while she was gone?
It wasn’t possible.
Fourteen-year-old Dani was as irretrievable as anyone’s youth.
Their desires were illogical. But desires usually were. She had a few of her own that defied reason.
She knew the name she’d taken for herself upset them. But no one had called her Dani for longer than she could remember, and she’d wanted a fresh start to put the past behind her.
She was home.
Life began now.
As she’d learned to live it.
When she realized she’d been gone a virtually insignificant amount of time, Earth-time—a fact nearly beyond her comprehension at first—she’d known those at the abbey would never follow an abruptly older Dani as readily as they would an unknown warrior.
“And if it expands enough to reach the wall?” I demanded. I knew the answer. I wanted someone to tell me I was wrong.
“If it behaves like the one we saw beneath Chester’s,”Barrons said, “the entire abbey and everything in it will disappear.”
“Best case scenario,” Dancer disagreed. “I’ve been studying these things, tossing in small objects. Each one I’ve seen was suspended aboveground. I believe they all are, since the HFK took the frequency it wanted from the air and left its deposit in the same place. Which makes sense because once the sound waves contacted another object, they would no longer have emitted undiluted frequency. Each item I tossed in was instantly absorbed and the anomaly grew slightly. Worth noting, its growth was not proportionate to the mass of the item absorbed.”
“For fuck’s sake, what’s your point?” Barrons growled.
“I’m making it. When the hole beneath Chester’s absorbed Mac’s ghouls—which glided aboveground, by the way—it sucked them upward and in. Nothing I’ve tossed to any of the black holes was in direct contact with another object.”
Maybe I
didn’t
know the answer. Maybe the answer was worse than I’d thought.
“Worst case scenario,” Dancer continued, “it’ll devour the abbey and everything it’s touching, sensing it all as a single large object.”
“But the abbey is touching the earth!” I exclaimed.
Dancer said, “Precisely.”
“How quickly could it absorb it, if it did?” Barrons demanded.
“No way of knowing. It could be the holes will always suck things upward and in, provided the object is smallenough that it doesn’t counter the pull of the thing’s gravity. It could be very large objects like the earth are beyond their ability to tackle and it would merely take a chunk of the abbey. If it emits inadequate gravitational force, one might assume matter would separate under oppositional tension as competing gravities reach critical inertia. Problem is, I can’t confirm they function identical to what we understand as black holes, and frankly that understanding is limited and speculative. Performing an experiment elsewhere might topple an unstoppable cascade of dominoes.”
“Sum it up,” I said tersely.
“Bottom line: I suggest we don’t let the black hole touch the abbey even if it means tearing the place down to get it out of the way.”
9
“Out of dark a hero forms, city’s knight that serves no throne…”
J ada stared into the night, watching through the window as visitors passed from sight beyond the columns of the grand entrance of the abbey.
She’d known they would come. Those who wanted her to be someone she was no longer, someone who would never have survived those insane, bloody years in the Silvers.
They thought she’d stolen their Dani away. She hadn’t. They thought she was split. She wasn’t.
She was what Dani had become.
Which wasn’t the Dani they’d known.
But how could they expect a teenager who’d leapt into a Silver to come out the same five and a half years later, as if nothing had happened to her while she was gone?
It wasn’t possible.
Fourteen-year-old Dani was as irretrievable as anyone’s youth.
Their desires were illogical. But desires usually were. She had a few of her own that defied reason.
She knew the name she’d taken for herself upset them. But no one had called her Dani for longer than she could remember, and she’d wanted a fresh start to put the past behind her.
She was home.
Life began now.
As she’d learned to live it.
When she realized she’d been gone a virtually insignificant amount of time, Earth-time—a fact nearly beyond her comprehension at first—she’d known those at the abbey would never follow an abruptly older Dani as readily as they would an unknown warrior.
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