Pascale's Wager: Homelands of Heaven

by Anthony Bartlett

  Eboni felt Danny withdrawing into himself, into his grief and anger, and she looked for a way to help him, for something that would keep his soul alive. She decided to introduce him to the horses. There were a number of quite large herds ranging free in the north-east corner of the Homeland. They were the stock from which all the personal horses of Immortals were drawn, the big hunters, the ponies, the racing horses. When people no longer wanted to keep them they would return them to the sierra, and when they were looking for a mount they would ride up to the high grasslands and simply rope one out from the herd.

  Eboni had her own horse, which she stabled at the villa, a smart, quick Appaloosa. She used it for the round-ups, and also loved just riding for pleasure. The colony had a couple of quarter horses for people going up to the herds and she invited Danny to take one out. She saddled a well-tempered bay and after a just a couple of sessions he was sitting the horse like a natural. It seemed only a few weeks before he was able to vault into the saddle and accelerate smoothly up to a canter, as if he'd been doing it all his life.

  “I've got to get me one of these! I could do this all the time!”

  “Sure, I'm planning on it. We'll go up to the sierra. You’ll snag a good one. You'll be spoiled for choice when we get up to the grasslands!”

  The planned trip would last three days and they packed the necessary supplies. They trotted along the paths and side roads, dressed in thicker cotton tunics and breeches, ready for a long trail. Reaching the downtown area they continued past it, across the racetrack and under the shadow of the massive Font Eterno. From there they struck up into the hills and by nightfall pitched camp looking down on the glimmering lights of the city and the mystic glow of the great semi-globe marking its eastern limit.

  “Have you ever been to one of those things of Sarobindo's? You know, where he almost dies?”

  “Yes, a few. Don't tell anyone but I always found them a little boring, except for all the people there. That's what made them fun.”

  “The next one's pretty soon, isn't it? Are you going?”

  “If you want to go, I'll go.”

  One of the horses whinnied softly behind them, and the moon was cresting over the southern horizon. “I can't imagine anything better than this, Eboni. But ever since that banquet I know it's all wrong too. I've got to find out really what I think, about everything. So, yes, I believe I will be going.”

  Eboni pulled him close to her and drew a blanket up over them. “Don't worry, I'll be there too.”

  The next day they headed to the high valleys and caught sight of their first herd. It was led by a black stallion, with a band of subordinate males tagging along. The black regarded them calmly as they rode up. Eboni laughed, “This herd is always a good place to start. It's as if the stallion is looking after them for us, keeping them in trim until we come for one. What do you think about these?”

  Danny was delighted with the whole thing, the tribe of horses and the way it worked, but he did not see one he wanted. They continued west along the grasslands, skirting a tree-lined spur. In the distance they saw another group but as they moved closer it turned tail and retreated. “See that huge roan, that's Roland. He was one of the greatest racehorses of all time, but only the best jockeys could ride him. He's the undisputed king up here and has gotten used to his freedom. He and his brood are practically wild.”

  They rode up onto the ridge, threading a path through tall conifers until they came out on the far side.

  The view was enchanting, a vast natural arena surrounded by tree-covered slopes and rising up behind ranks of high, treeless peaks. Framing the furthest peaks a rack of gray cloud gave a telltale sign they were nearing the borders of the stormworld, but here everything was a green and vivid peace. At the bottom, only a few hundred yards from the edge of the trees, there was a small herd grazing. Eboni and Danny came down the hill slowly, taking the opportunity to check the group. There were about twenty horses. The leader was a splendid Arabian gray, and almost immediately they'd seen it Danny said, “That's the one, that's the horse I want.”

  “That's right, go for the hard one. Well, this will be fun.”

  She unhitched her lasso and led the way out on to the meadow. The Arab's head went up and it did a half turn, its rich mane bouncing on its neck. The heads of the mares followed in a circle and they shifted their feet and whinnied.

  “Easy, there, easy...” Eboni walked her horse slowly out toward the group, Danny behind her. The Arab was looking warily at the approaching riders. Suddenly it tossed his head and trotted away. It was followed by some of the band but in ragged fashion. Others just glanced at the riders in an uninterested way and returned to grazing.

  “Hey, I remember now. That’s no stallion, it's an alpha female. You still want her, Danny?”

  “Sure, I do. Male or female, it's the one I want.”

  Eboni nodded and held out her hand for him to keep still. Then she moved in among the herd and stood there. The horses relaxed and the Arab did so too, turning her back to the rider to show she didn't care. Eboni edged the Appaloosa closer until it was just a few paces behind her quarry. Eboni was speaking soothingly. The horse looked around and at first didn't seem to mind, but suddenly she changed her opinion, flung up her head and bolted skittishly away.

  “Damn! Playing hard to get! Danny, you circle up to head her off. I'm going to have to make a run for her.”

  Danny set out in a big loop then moved in closer, close enough so the Arab noticed. He too started talking, telling her how beautiful she was, how already he loved her like crazy. She seemed interested, pricking up her ears and regarding Danny appreciatively. All at once Eboni booted the Appaloosa into a charge, whirling her lasso over her head. Too late the Arabian caught the motion. She sprang to the right but Danny urged his horse forward to head her off. She could probably have outrun him but as she saw his direction she twisted left and then Eboni was on her. The lasso fell plumb over her neck and she was caught. Eboni yanked the rope around the saddle horn and quickly pulled the mare to a halt. She called Danny to come up next to her as she fished a halter out of a saddle bag. “Here, you seemed to be making an impression. Put this on her.”

  Danny dismounted and walked up to the captive horse. “My, my, you're beautiful! But you be good now! Let me put this on you and we'll be friends for life.”

  She snorted indignantly but did not back away. Her legs and flank were quivering, somewhere between anger at loss of independence and remembered pleasure at human contact. Danny stroked her nose, “Why would anyone want to leave a jewel like you out here in the hills, unless of course they thought you wanted the freedom. I kind of agree with that, but still I think you'd be happier with me.” He slipped the halter onto her head and pulled the buckles in place. “Not sure what I'm going to call you, but whatever your name you're all mine now!”

  With Danny holding the halter rope the two Immortals cantered back across the meadow to the tree line. From there they hiked to the top of the ridge. The Arab was clearly accustomed to a bridle and she co-operated without resistance, leaping sure-footedly over the rocks and fallen pines. She seemed almost happy now to be one of them. They camped near the top, close to a small spring, tethering the horses in a group with the Arab in the middle.

  Danny and Eboni gathered brushwood to build a fire. They sat with their backs against a log watching the stars come out between a ragged frame of branches. The shapes of the high peaks were still visible under a twinkling violet backdrop. An aromatic smell rose from the heart of the fire. Danny said, “I'm going to call her Stardust, that's the name for her.”

  He turned to look at her. “You'll carry me clear to the other side of Heaven, won't you?”

  The Arab regarded him calmly and Eboni said, “I'm sure she's up for it. But heaven knows what you'll find when you get there!” And they both smiled and laughed, glad to be together, and with the horses, there in the high sierra.

  10. CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH

  Palmiro
carefully squeezed the bulb of the pipette between his finger and thumb, releasing a tiny drop of chemical into a dish. The liquid was a complex organic compound and the dish contained tissue from the lung of a mouse. He was working at a relentless pace, obeying Adorno's command that he continue with his study in the area of immortality. Without explanation Adorno had connected the research to Pascale. He had directed him to focus on this work immediately after reminding him of his friend and her situation.

  Palmiro took the hint entirely at face value: if he was to help Pascale, it was essential to pursue his master's biological breakthrough. Alongside of this, the whole experience of seeing Adorno's lair and learning its secret purpose added urgency to his efforts. His mentor wanted immortality in outer space, but that meant he was going to die in Heaven, and he, Palmiro, was part of the plan. He would be the link between the scientist's vision and the rest of the Immortals. It did not matter whether he understood why or how, or whether he doubted Adorno or thought he was crazy, he was the one Adorno had told his ideas to, and there was no way out.

  He could not untangle everything in his head, but he felt he was now on a strict timetable, one he was obliged to keep to in every waking moment. No longer did endless days of study and research stretch out before him. Rather, every minute’s work was urgent. It was of paramount importance that he penetrate the physics of immortality in order to fulfill Adorno's dream of re-educating the Immortals.

  He was working feverishly to finish his experiment and go on to the next. From articles Adorno had given him he had learned about a built-in function of cells which caused the collapse or death of certain cell elements. His work with the mouse tissue had shown it was possible to slow down this process or stop it entirely. By administering the correct chemical signals through the cell walls it was more or less possible to switch off these functions. However, that did not in itself make for an end to death, in fact it could lead to a very unwanted outcome, the cancerous growth of cells. It seemed essential in fact that cells die off and be replaced in turn by new ones. What was needed was the ability to promote an indefinite healthy renewal of all organ cells, a kind of everlasting regeneration. The signaling device would have to be highly complex, a piece of bio-software which surpassed in sophistication everything he had come across so far.

  He had always known of course that the enzyme, as it was called, was already in the water supply and consumed by everyone in Heaven. That was the reason the water always had a very slight texture to it. Adorno had warned him against trying to analyze this too soon, telling him that without the necessary preparation he would never be able to understand it. Now he decided to look anyway. He prepared a drop with a fixing agent for molecular structure and placed it in the microscope chamber, adjusting the magnification and resolution. After several tries he thought he had identified Adorno's masterpiece, a fuzzy complex architecture that did not look like anything that he had seen before. He pored over it intensely, viewing its separate parts and trying to recognize any possible sequence. But there was nothing he could grasp onto. It was like an unknown object from deep space.

  He fell back wearily in his chair and tried to think. He remembered Adorno had described a very accurate technique of establishing the structure of materials. It was a method of using X Rays to bombard the object and observe the unique pattern then created. But again it took training to manage the process correctly and he knew a crystalline form was needed. At the same time he really did not know how to extract the enzyme from the water without destroying it. What he needed was a pure solution of the enzyme and then perhaps he could produce a crystal form. With that he would get an accurate analysis and compare it against the computer data base. Everything was getting more and more complicated and he wondered what Adorno could be thinking, setting him this impossible, frustrating task.

  Suddenly, he sat bolt upright. What had Adorno said on his way down the corridor to the Hyperbrain? That the workshops and labs to the side contained equipment, including chemicals? Wasn't it possible, even likely, that they still held a lot of the reagents from his original experiments? And if Adorno had revealed to him his most secret research, what possible objection could he have to him seeing these other items, too? All he had to do was gather anything that looked like an organic solution, come back and produce a crystalline form and he would be on track to the information he needed.

  Palmiro jumped from his seat and ran to the window of the laboratory. He could see no movement in Adorno’s study opposite. He raced across the garden with its flower urns and fountains, and knocked on the study door. No reply. He opened the door, the room was empty. In three bounds he was across the floor and through the doorway that led to Adorno’s laboratories, running down the first corridor, through the boot room and into the passageway connecting to the other buildings.

  The first side door he tried led to what seemed like an all-purpose warehouse. It contained crates stacked to the ceiling, overflowing with books and articles and various tools and pieces of electrical equipment, circuit boards, processors, spools of wire and cable, but no chemicals. The second door led into a hi-tech welding and casting shop, with a couple of electrical furnaces and what looked like an overhead transport rail. On his third try he knew he was home. It was not actually a room but another walkway that ran at an angle to the first and led to a further door. It was the smell that gave it away, a faint but distinct odor of acids and bases, similar to his own workplace but staler and heavier. He ran to the end and pushed it open. In front of him was a long interior lit by just a pair of security lights. He cast around for the main switches and turned them all on. He saw ranks of bright steel shelves and freezers on either side and steel lab tables along the middle.

  Everything was filled with complex testing apparatuses, along with jars, vials, bottles and boxes. He pulled open three or four of the freezer doors creating immediate clouds of vapor. On most shelves were tubes, dishes and boxes, stored every which way, everything bearing labels with the formulas covered with frost or faded by time and unreadable. What he was looking for could have been here but there was no clue to be had.

  He pulled open more freezers on both sides of the workspace. Halfway down there were two heavy chests which took a brute effort to open. Inside there was not the usual chaotic jumble but neatly stacked rows of liter-sized steel canisters all marked with the same heavy stamp. Rubbing off the accumulated frost from a couple of them he could make out “Prometheus Labs” and the image of a naked man pulling fire from the sky. He knew almost certainly he had found what he was looking for. He picked up a crate filled with boxed compounds and slid them onto the floor, then lifted in four of the flasks. He shut the open freezers and shivering from their cold made his way back along the corridor with his haul. He carefully cracked the door to Adorno's study, but it was deserted just as before. Exiting the room he crossed the garden and arrived back in his own lab undetected.

  It did not take him long to compare a defrosted sample from the flasks with his picture from the microscope. Zooming in he thought he could see what looked much like the same structure, simply in much denser concentration. He stored the flasks in his own refrigerator and then turned to his next task, creating crystals from the liquid. He had only made the simplest crystals before and this was much more complex. He had to follow instructions carefully and over several failed attempts. He struggled for days with the repetitive tasks, trying to establish the correct conditions for crystallization. As he repeated the steps mechanically again and again his mind began to move freely on other tracks and little by little a picture of what he was really doing came to him. It was as if he was walking through a gradually dissipating mist. He saw that he did not really want to know how the enzyme worked. That did not interest him. Instead he was seeking some simple but crucial information, something that would give him the ability actually to control this thing.

  As his mind wandered on this track another thought struck him, like a thunderbolt. Just as with his old master, Gu
est, he was looking for a switch. This time it was for Adorno, but he was still seeking the power to turn something off. He was researching a technique to stop the enzyme working and it was Adorno who had given him his orders. What was it he had said? “I need people to know what I'm doing and to follow me. But it is not going to happen so long as they are obsessed with immortality.” Adorno had clearly suggested an end to immortality, planting the thought in his head as the final goal of his research.

  At that moment the realization made him want to give up entirely. How was it Adorno had so entered into his thinking that he was able to direct him almost unconsciously? At least with Guest everything had been out in the open. The scientist, instead, had infected his mind with his wishes so that he had been working toward his master's goal without even knowing it. As he mechanically placed another drop of the liquid on the crystallization tray he could see the strategy behind it all. By not simply giving him the data Adorno had sent him down the narrow pathway of his own brilliant research, getting him to think of himself as a second Adorno, pursuing the unknown. That way his student would work as hard as he could to get results and at the same time would come round to accepting their final objective.

  Palmiro felt horror, but at the same time there was a huge and terrible thrill. He had been initiated into something fateful and enormous and it was exactly what he had imagined when he first accepted his situation in the Homeland of Heaven. He was a Tepper who would learn the secrets of Immortals and become a pioneer in a way no one else had ever been before. He was very near being able to do that, to bringing about a cataclysmic change in immortal existence. And undeniably it was Adorno, the greatest scientist the world had ever known, who had led him to it. In his subtle and devious way Adorno had wanted him, believed in him, and brought him to the threshold of this amazing achievement. Strangely, he had never felt closer or more bonded to his teacher than at this moment.