by David Brin
Could it be that Mr. Hyde wasn’t a neurosis at all but a game? As a child he had created play universes so detailed that they could hardly be distinguished from reality. His worlds had existed. The neo-Reichian therapists had merely smiled and credited him with a powerful, non-pathological imagination because the tests always showed that he knew he was playing, when it mattered that he know it!
Could Mr. Hyde have been a play-entity?
It’s true that until now it never did any actual harm. It was a perpetual annoyance, but there always turned out to be a valid reason for the things it “made” him do. Again, until now.
“You were non-sane for a time when I met you, Jacob. But the Needle cured you. The cure frightened, so you went into a game. I do not know the details of your game; you were very secretive. But I know now that you are awake. You have been awake for perhaps twenty minutes.”
Jacob clamped down. Whether or not Fagin was right, he had no time to stand here and blather about it. He had only minutes to save the ship. If it was possible at all.
Outside, the chromosphere shimmered. The photosphere loomed over their heads. The dust trails of the P-laser crisscrossed the inner shell.
Jacob tried to snap his fingers, and winced in pain.
“LaRoque! Run upstairs and get your lighter. Quick!”
LaRoque stepped back. “Why, I have it right here,” he said. “But of what use…”
Jacob was moving toward the intercom. If Helene had some reserve of power she’d been holding back, now was the time to use it. He needed a little time! Before he could switch it on, though, an alarm filled the ship.
“Sophonts,” Helene’s voice rang out. “Please prepare for acceleration. We will be leaving the Sun shortly.”
The woman’s voice sounded amused, almost whimsical.
“Due to the mode of our imminent departure, I would recommend that all passengers dress as warmly as possible! The Sun can be very cold this time of year!”
28. STIMULATED EMISSION
A blast of cold air blew constantly from the ventilator ducts around the Refrigerator Laser housing. Jacob and LaRoque huddled around their fire, trying to keep the cold air off it.
“Come on, baby. Burn!” A pile of flesh-foam shavings smoldered on the deck. Slowly the flames grew as they piled on more chips.
“Ha ha!” Jacob laughed. “Once a caveman, always a caveman, eh, LaRoque? Men get all the way to the sun, and they build a fire to stay warm!”
LaRoque smiled weakly, and kept piling on larger and larger shavings. The loquacious journalist had said very little since Jacob released him from his couch. Now and then, though, he would mutter something angry and spit.
Jacob held a torch into the flames. It was made from a clump of flesh-foam stuck to the end of a liquitube. The end began to smolder, giving off thick black smoke. It was beautiful.
Soon they had several torches. Smoke billowed into the air, carrying a foul stench. They had to stand back, in the path of the air duct, to be able to breathe. Fagin moved well into the gravity-loop.
“Okay,” Jacob said. “Let’s go!” He hopped out of the hatchway to the left and tossed one of the smoldering brands to the end of the deck, as far as he could see. Behind him LaRoque was doing the same in the opposite direction.
With a heavy rustling, Fagin followed them out. The Kanten went straight out from the hatch to the opposite end of the deck to act as a lookout, and to draw Culla’s fire if possible. Fagin had refused a coating of flesh-foam.
“It is all clear,” the Kanten whistled softly. “Culla is not to be seen.”
That was good and bad news. It localized Culla. It also meant the alien was probably working to bolix up the Refrigerator Laser. It was getting COLD!
Once it had begun, Helene’s scheme made perfect sense to Jacob. Since she still had control over the screens surrounding the ship, (the crew were alive to prove it), she could let in heat from the Sun at whatever rate she wished. This heat could be sent directly to the Refer Laser and pumped back out into the chromosphere, plus waste heat from the ship’s power plant. Only this time the flow was a torrent, and directed downward. The thrust had stopped their fall and they had begun to climb.
Naturally, such meddling with the ship’s automatic heat control system had to be inaccurate. Helene must have decided to program the mechanism to err in the direction of coldness. In that direction mistakes would be more easily corrected.
It was a brilliant idea. Jacob hoped he’d get to tell her so. Right now it was his job to make sure it had a chance to work.
He edged around the dome until he reached the point where Fagin’s view was cut off. Without looking around, he threw two more of the brands to different parts of the deck ahead of him. Smoke boiled from each of them. The chamber was getting hazy from the smoke released so far. The trail of the P-laser beam shimmered brightly in the air. Some of the weaker trails were disappearing, attenuated by cumulative passage though the smoke.
Jacob moved back into Fagin’s cone of view. He had three more smoldering brands. He backed up onto the deck and tossed them at different angles over the top of the central dome. LaRoque joined him and threw his as well.
One of the torches passed directly over the center of the dome on its way over. It entered the x-ray beam of the Refrigerator Laser and vanished in a cloud of vapor.
Jacob hoped it hadn’t deflected the beam much. The coherent x-rays supposedly passed through the shell with near zero contamination of the ship, but the beam wasn’t designed to handle solid objects. “Okay!” he whispered.
He and LaRoque hurried to the wall of the dome, where spare parts for the recording instruments were stored. LaRoque opened a cabinet and climbed as high as footholds allowed, then offered his hand. Jacob scrambled up next to him. Now they were all vulnerable. Culla must react to the obvious threat implied by the firebrands! Already visibility was dropping well below normal. The chamber was filled with a foul stench and Jacob was finding it increasingly uncomfortable to breathe.
LaRoque braced his shoulder in the top jamb of the cabinet, then offered his cupped hands to Jacob. Jacob took the boost and climbed up onto LaRoque’s shoulder.
The dome was sloping here, but the surface was smooth, and Jacob had only three fingers instead of ten. The flesh-foam coating helped. It was still somewhat sticky. After two unsuccessful attempts Jacob concentrated and leapt from LaRoque’s shoulder, nearly hard enough to shake the man loose.
The surface of the dome was like quicksilver. He had to flatten himself and move with scrambling speed to gain each inch.
Near the top, he had. to worry about the Refer Laser. He could see the orifice as he rested near the summit.
Two meters away it hummed softly; the smoky air shimmered and Jacob wondered what the transparency safety distance was from the deadly mouth.
He turned away so as not to have to think about it.
He couldn’t whistle to let them know he’d made it. They’d have to rely on Fagin’s superb hearing to track his movements, and to time the distraction.
There were at least a few seconds to wait. Jacob decided to take a chance. He rolled over onto his back and looked up at the Big Spot.
Everywhere was the Sun.
From his point of view there was no ship. There was no battle. There were no planets or stars or galaxies. The rim of his goggles even cut off the sight of his own body. The photosphere was everything.
It pulsed. The spicule forests, like undulating picket fences, hurled their noise up at him, and the breakers split just above his head. The sound divided and swept around toward the irrelevencies of space.
It roared.
The Big Spot stared back at him. For an instant the broad expanse was a face, the bristled, grizzled face of a patriarch. The throbbings were its breath. The noise was the booming of its giant voice, singing a billions-year-old song that only the other stars could hear or understand.
The Sun was alive. What was more, it noticed him. It gave him
its undivided attention.
Call me lifegiver, for I am your sustenance. I burn, and by my burning you live. I stand, and in standing supply your anchor. Space curls around, my blanket, and funnels down to mystery in my bowels. Time beats his scythe on my forge.
Living thing, does Entropy, my wicked Aunt, notice our joint conspiracy? Not yet, I think, for you are yet too small. Your puny struggle against her tide is a fluttering in a great wind. And she thinks I am still her ally.
Call me lifegiver, oh living thing, and weep. I burn endlessly and, burning, consume what cannot be re-placed. While you sip daintily at my torrent the font runs slowly out. When it empties other stars shall take my place, but oh not forever!
Call me lifegiver and laugh!
You, living thing, hear the true Lifegiver’s voice from time to time, it is said. He speaks to you but not to us, His first born!
Pity the stars, oh living thing/ We sing away the aeons in pretended joy as we toil for His cruel sister, awaiting the day of your maturity, you tiny embryo, when He turns you loose to change the way of things again.
Jacob laughed soundlessly. Oh what an imagination! Fagin was right, after all. He closed his eyes, still listening for the signal. Seven seconds, exactly, had passed since he reached the top of the dome.
“Jake…” it was a woman’s voice. He looked up without opening his eyes.
“Tania.”
She stood by the pion-scope in her lab, exactly as he had seen her so many times when he came to pick her up. Braided brown hair, slightly uneven white teeth grinning generously, and large, crinkled eyes. She came forward with surefooted grace and confronted him with fists on hips.
“It’s about time!” she said.
“Tania. I… I don’t understand.”
“It’s ’bout time you brought up an image of me doing something besides falling! Think it’s fun doin’ that over and over again? Why haven’t you brought me back having some of the good times!”
He suddenly realized that it was true! For two years he’d only thought of Tania in that last instant, not thinking about their time together at all!
“Well, I’ll admit it’s done you some good,” she nodded. “You seem to finally be free of that damned arrogance. Just think about me from time to time, for heaven’s sake. I hate being ignored!”
“Yes, Tania. I’ll think of you. I promise.”
“And pay attention to the star! Stop thinking you imagine everything!”
She softened. The image began to fade. “You’re right, Jake, dear one, I do like her. Have a good…”
He opened his eyes. The photosphere throbbed overhead. The spot stared back at him. The granulation cells pumped slowly like leisured heartbeats.
Did you just do that? he asked, silently.
The answer permeated him, drilled through his body and came out the other side. Neutrinos to cure neuroses. A most original approach.
A short whistle came from below. Before he was aware he had moved, he was slithering toward the sound and to the right, silently and without a wasted motion.
He peered over to look down on the head of Culla ta-Pring ab-Pil-ab-Kisa-ab-Soro-ab-Hul-ab-Puber.
The alien faced Jacob’s left, his hand still on the open access plate to the computer-input. Though the smoke dimmed it almost to nothing, there was still a glare as the P-laser beam hit the spot.
From the left came a rustling. Somewhere to the right was the sound of running feet, LaRoque hurrying around the dome.
A few silver-tipped twigs poked out from the curve of the dome. Culla crouched and one of Fagin’s shiny light receptors curled up in smoke. The Kanten gave out a high pitched keening and retreated out of sight. Culla swiveled quickly.
Jacob pulled the flesh-foam sprayer out of his pocket. He aimed and pressed the nozzle. A thin jet of liquid shot out in an arc toward Culla’s eyes. In the instant before it struck, Pierre LaRoque appeared, running, his head down as he charged through the smoke toward Culla.
Culla jumped back. The spray passed in front of his eyes. At that instant a bright spark flashed at a point along its length.
With a whoosh the entire stream burst into flame. Culla stumbled backwards, hands in front of his face. LaRoque barrelled through the falling embers and collided with the Pring’s midsection.
Culla almost went down in the thick smoke. Breath wheezed as he gripped LaRoque around the neck, first for balance and then closing tightly to squeeze on the man’s windpipe. LaRoque struggled wildly but his momentum was gone. It was like trying to escape from a pair of boa constrictors. His face turned flush and started to puff.
Jacob gathered himself for a leap. The smoke was so thick he could hardly keep from coughing. Desperately he suppressed the urge. If Culla saw him before he could jump, the alien wouldn’t bother killing LaRoque the hard way. He’d finish them both off with a look.
His muscles pressed like hard springs and he launched himself from the dome.
The midair flight was suspenseful. His own subjective version of time-compression made the transit seem slow and leisurely. It was a trick from the bad old days, and now he used it again, automatically.
When a third of the distance was covered he saw Culla’s head start to turn. It was hard to tell exactly what the E.T. was doing to LaRoque at that instant. A thick pall of smoke obscured everything but Culla’s bright red eyes and two flashes of white beneath them.
The eyes came up. It was a race to see who’d arrive first at a certain point in space, just above and to the right of the alien’s head. Jacob wondered at what angles Culla could shoot a narrow beam.
The suspense was killing him. It was almost satirical. Jacob decided to speed things up and see what happened.
There was a flash, then a tooth jarring, numbing smash as his shoulder hit the side of Culla’s head. He clutched and got a tight grip on the front of the alien’s gown as his inertia carried both of them over into a crashing tumble onto the deck.
Human and alien fought for breath amidst fits of coughing as they rolled into a tangle of slashing, grabbing arms and legs. Somehow Jacob got around behind his opponent and held on tightly to the slender neck as Culla thrashed, trying to turn his head to snap with his cleavers or bum with his laser eyes.
The powerful, tentacular hands clutched back, snatching for a purchase. Jacob dodged his head aside and struggled to get Culla around, so he could get his legs into a scissors lock. After rolling almost halfway across the deck, he succeeded, and was rewarded by a lancing pain in his right thigh.
“More,” he coughed. “Shoot, Culla. Use it up!”
Twice more bolts struck his exposed legs, sending small tsunamis of agony up to his brain. The pain he shunted aside and he held on, praying that Culla would send some more.
But Culla stopped wasting his shots and began to roll about faster, buffeting Jacob every time the human struck the deck. They were both coughing, Culla sounding like half a dozen ball bearings shaken in a bottle, every time he wheezed in the thick, billowing smoke.
There was no way to choke the devil! When he wasn’t holding on for dear life, Jacob tried to turn his grip around Culla’s throat into a strangle hold. But there didn’t seem to be any vulnerable points! It was unfair. Jacob wanted to curse the bad luck but he couldn’t spare the breath. His lungs could barely hold enough to make a small cough, each time the Pring rolled over on top.
Streams of tears blurred his vision and his eyes hurt. He suddenly realized that his goggles were gone! Either Culla had burned them off again in that first instant as he launched himself from the dome, or they’d been torn off during the fight.
Where the hell is LaRoque!
His arms shuddered with the strain and there was a rubbed-out pain in his abdomen and groin from the constant pounding of the cavort across the deck. Culla’s coughing was sounding more pathetic and strained, and his own-took on an ominous gurgle. He could feel the first stages of heat prostration and a dreadful fear that the ordeal would never end, even as the
ir struggle brought his back up against one of the smoldering flesh-foam brands.
It smothered in a broiling release of heat as he screamed. The pain was too sudden and from too unexpected a quarter to be shunted aside. His tight grip around Culla’s throat slacked for an instant of agony and the alien tore at his hands. The grip parted and Culla rolled away even as Jacob grabbed after him.
He missed. Culla scrambled farther away, then turned quickly to face him. Jacob closed his eyes and covered his face with his encased left hand, expecting a laser bolt.
He tried to stand, but something was wrong with his lungs. They wouldn’t work properly. His breath was shallow and he could feel the balance waver as he slowly rose to his knees. His back felt like charred hamburger meat.
Not far away, two meters at most, there was a loud clack! Then another. Then another, closer.
Jacob’s arm fell. He no longer had the strength to hold it up. There was no use in keeping his eyes closed, anyway. He opened them to see Culla, kneeling a meter away. Only the red eyes and gleaming white teeth showed through the thick stomach.
“Cu… Culla…” he gasped Wheezing, the words sounded like tiny, failing gears. “Give up now, this is your last chance. I’m… warning you…”
Tania would have liked that, he thought. It was almost as good a parting shot as hers had been. He hoped Helene had heard it.
Parting shot? Hell, why not give Culla one! Even if he cuts my throat or drills a hole into my brain through my eyelids, I’ll still have time to give him a present!
He pulled the flesh-foam sprayer out of his belt and started to raise it. He’d give Culla such a spraying! Even if it meant he’d die at that instant by laser instead of by decapitation.
Excruciating pain burst like steel needle through his left eye. It felt like a lightning bolt crashing all the way to the back of his head and out the other side. At that same instant he pressed the release and held it in the direction Culla’s head had been.