“Thank you, Bowie,” I said and walked through the empty floor to my office.
It was as if I had done all this a thousand times before and this was one more dreary performance. Huo was so predictable, so ordinary, that it was almost startling. The surprised look, the frantic reach for the laser in the security drawer, the expression when he knew he would be too late.
I stood looking down at his body and thought my sad thoughts. How banal. How ordinary a crook. Who was it that spoke of the true horror of greed being its utter banality?
I went to see Sandler, who became very confused. He showed me tapes of conversations with “Brian Thorne” and I had to admit the double was excellent. Then Lowell gave me the bad news.
“You’re broke, Mr. Thorne. It will take you years to get the mess straightened out. His signature was perfect. Even the thumbprint slip-on was made by an expert forger. I’m sorry . . . but you saw him yourself. His mannerisms, his way of speaking, his voice, the nicknames, the special information and—”
I waved him silent. “I understand. It’s not really—important. Is there anything at all left? I must repay the Sunstrums for the passage money and I have some . . . research to do.”
“I was in the process of liquidating the Itacoatiara Dam stock with the Amazonia Corporation. There’s some of that left, and, uh, I haven’t sold off the Cortez stock on the deep-drilling wells on Mars, and
. . .”
“I’ll need about ten million Swiss francs. Do I have it or not?”
“I think so, sir. I can let you know in a day or so. Where will you be?” Lowell, ever cautious, ultraconservative.
“London. Control will know.”
“Uh, you don’t have Control, sir. It was sold, along with—”
“All right. I’ll call you. Bank of Luna is the Sunstrum bank. Pay them first, then I’ll want to know how much is left.”
But there would be enough.
I had Cilento’s original papers brought to me in his London studio, and with them the reports of the research teams I had set working two years before. I read everything through once, then again. At first I was confident that my new insights, or what I thought were my new insights, would help me solve the problem quickly.
But I was wrong. For days I stared at the sensatron, reading the notes, the reports, the Probability Analysis papers, the conjectures and wild guesses. Time and again I walked around Michael Cilento’s strange, final sensatron, looking at the red-violet sea, at the footsteps that went off through the grass to the distant rocks at seaside.
Then I had to admit my failure to comprehend. No mere strange metaphysical experience on the fourth planet had prepared me to be a scientist. But I knew that one way to unravel problems was to get people who liked to unravel problems and give them the technical assistance necessary.
I attacked the problem as if I were assembling an exhibit or putting on an art festival. I got Coleman from Harvard by buying one of England’s best wine cellars and opening it to him. Gilman Gottlieb came from his hobbit-hole in the Sierras when he was told Coleman was going to beat him to the solution. I poured resources into backup teams from Intertech and Physics International. I gave grants to M. I. T. and Caltech and established the Mark Rhandra Chair of Physics at the University of Mexico, just to free a certain scientist.
I paid top money for top men, but money was not the only consideration. I made it a challenge, and of course, it was. It took eight months, but slowly the pieces began to come together. I found that my
“insights” were not so wrong after all.
There is no time outside the universe. We found that out when we were able to move aside all the energy, all the particles, all the light, to make a hole in space. The sensors probed through that hole, into the outside of curved space, to find another way back in. What we couldn’t be certain of was where and when the re-entry would be. This was when Cilento’s sensatron provided critical information. Carefully, we opened it up. Coleman traced the aiming circuits. Gottlieb did the math, and Intertech built the transporter machinery. It took more time to make it self-sufficient, with a portable fusion generator, but I needed it that way.
We sent through several objects, but nothing came back. A laboratory rat went through and returned dead, and very old. A second rat came back dead, but approximately the same age. One half of a matched set of atomic clocks went and were returned. There was a difference of 45.76.3 seconds when they were compared. We were getting there.
Experiment after experiment was tried. Most failed in some way or another. Sensing and recording devices were sent but the magnetism was ruined, film fogged, and other methods were too faulty for any good use. We had to send a human, the multi-purpose recording and analysis generalist. A machine can only respond to what it is built to respond to, and nothing else. A man can accept variables, sense the unknown, and analyze, somewhat, on the basis of very little information. I insisted that man be me, but they were not yet ready. The drift factors were the problem: we start out here and go there and return at once . . . but here is several seconds removed. The planet turns, it orbits the sun, the sun moves in relation to other stars, the whole universe is exploding still. There was no relative point to which we could anchor, no benchmark from which we could measure.
“What we need is a kind of step process,” Coleman told me.
“We move an approximate distance toward point X in an approximate direction. Then we stop and adjust. Two dings left, one ding high. Then we go to point B and look at point A, where we started, and back at point X, and make another guess at it. And so on. Inching closer with each adjustment.”
“Guess?” I said.
“Sure,” he smiled. “A guess. Fifty, a hundred years from now, when this whole thing is computerized to the nth degree you’ll be able to condense and speed the whole process up. But for now it’s an approximation. Cut and fit. With each cutting and fitting we gain knowledge and expertise.”
“That’s why pioneers got full of arrows,” I sighed.
“But if it works,” he said happily, “we can go anywhere. The first explorations will be cut and fit. Then we’ll get transmitter stations on Centauri, for instance. We can beam in on it, simplifying the whole process. Then on a planet in another direction—with triangularization we can go somewhere else, faster and more accurately.”
I thought a moment. “What if we had a beam signal here on Earth, and the other from Mars?”
“We thought of that. It would broaden the base and give us a more accurate aiming method. The time lag between here and there can be worked out easily enough.”
“How did Cilento do it?”
“Dumb luck, probably. It held together long enough for him to go through, as long as the recording cycle went, and then the hole closed. He could never come back that way.”
“I’ve been having the Young Observatory on Luna analyze the spectrum of the recorded sun and run a comparison test. So far they’ve come up with nine suns within ten light years that are close approximations.”
Coleman rubbed his lip with his thumbnail. “Ah, yes, the target. Wouldn’t you rather just go to Centauri? It would be easier.”
“Easier, but not what I want.”
He shrugged. “I’d be satisfied to get to any other sun.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But I want that certain planet.”
“They may be dead . . . or . . . something.”
“Yes, I know.” A sudden thought came to me. The mural in the Star Palace. During that hallucination that I had it seemed to . . . open . .
. to become a kind of guide. Could that mural help me?
I thought about that in the weeks to come, as my team patiently built a background of experience with the transporter. We could aim the beam with some degree of accuracy, or at least we could hit the same spot more than once. The trouble was we didn’t know whether that spot was down the block, two star systems over—or across the galaxy or across the universe. In theory it could be
any of those. We could shoot blind, but with accuracy. What we needed were eyes. I was beginning to think I knew how it could be done. There was only one way to find out.
Bowie stood with me at Station Two’s cargo hatch, watching as they transferred the big stasis cylinder to the shuttle. We didn’t have much to say to each other that hadn’t been said. The shuttle crew disappeared into the hold, except for one who motioned to me. I turned to Bowie and we looked at each other for a moment, the lights and the stars glistening on the curving faceplates. “Well, so long, boss,” he said. “Good luck.”
“Thank you, Bowie,” I said. Thank you.”
“Look,” he said, “about what you did for me, I—”
“Forget it. I won’t be needing it and you might enjoy it.”
“Uh . . . okay, boss.”
“Let’s get a move on, huh?” The crewman gestured again from the hatch. I shoved off and went down a safety line and into the shuttle. I felt the clang of the hatch through my feet, and then we were moving silently away from the station.
“Clear seventeen for Libertad.”
“Plane four, spoke ninety. Watch it out by the Chekov, Jake, they had some kind of spillage.”
“Right. Seventeen out.”
We passed close to a cluster of ship’s cores and I could see the welders installing framing around the Steinmetz and the Anthony Coogan, fastening them to the main cluster. Another group going out for asteroid ships. The Solar System was being tamed; the big adventures were now routine assignments.
The shuttle detoured around the old Einstein, still in service, and gnarled with modifications. Beyond it was the gambling ship Eros, and the Lao-tzu, now just a supply ship, but once a history-making vessel. The Libertad was out near the edge. I gave only part of my attention to the transfer of the stasis cylinder. What I was really gazing at was old Earth, over my head, looking blue and ruffled with white.
“Goodbye,” I said, and went into the ship.
Nova ran across the churned sand and threw herself into my arms. I fell laughing back against the sandcat as I kissed her. “It’s very hard to laugh and kiss at the same time,” she said, “so shut up.”
We went into the lock and along to the Sunstrum dome, where I told them everything. Or as least as much as I could explain, which left out a lot.
“I want to go,” Nova said. I saw her parents exchange looks and sad little sighs.
“I don’t know if I can go, yet,” I said.
“Of course you can,” she said with certainty. “I have confidence in you.”
Li Wing smiled at me. “I suppose you must try,” Sven said.
“Of course he must,” said Nova. “It will be terrific!”
“If it works . . .“ said Sven Sunstrum, “if it really works, it will change everything. We can go anywhere!”
I nodded. But I didn’t want to go just anywhere.
“I’ll go with you tomorrow,” Nova said.
We came toward the Star Palace with the setting sun behind it, and the big crownlike structure glowed like the enormous jewel that it was. I parked the sandcat at the base, near the steps, and we climbed down.
Nova stood next to me as we stared up at the beautiful alien building glowing in the distant light of Sol. “I never tire of coming here,”
she said. “It’s always the same, yet . . . never the same.”
I debated whether to unlash the big stasis cylinder holding my equipment now or later, and decided later. The weather satellite had told of a sandstorm to the west, so we put on our spacesuits, just in case. I helped Nova into the straps of her big backpack full of an assortment of equipment and food. Then I pulled on mine, bending with the weight even in this lighter gravity.
I had a difficult time finding the spiraling steps, for in this light everything looked different. That cascade of liquid frozen crystal I remembered as being elsewhere, and that wall of starbursts was entirely new. I supposed I had passed it in the dark and not noticed. We searched through an emerald cavern that looked somewhat familiar, then found ourselves going upward instead of down, through a colonnade of amber trees, and into a bower of bluegreen flowers.
Here we rested and made love and slept. I awoke in the night and felt her next to me, loving and trusting. I looked straight up, through a transparent ceiling that transformed the stars into blossoms of pinpoint suns. I felt calm and, perhaps for the first time in my life, serene. In the morning we found the opening into the base rock without trouble. Nova and I went out to carry in the transporter equipment. In our suits and backpacks we went into the shaped stone and along the passage to the room with the mural on the ceiling. I set the equipment with the focusing device on the sandpile beneath the mural. I knew of no other place to find my answers. Perhaps the answers were within me, simply undiscovered, as all magic is unexplained science.
I turned the light on the ceiling to show Nova the mural, but she wasn’t looking. Her own light was on a dark blotch in the sand.
“It’s your blood, isn’t it?”
I nodded. There were the marks of my feet and the disturbed sand where I had twice lain, once in fear and once in pain. “Look up,” I said.
She looked and her soft gasp echoed in the small room. “I had forgotten how strange and beautiful it was,” she said. She sat down on the sandpile and looked up. “We used to come here sometimes, when I was a child. I found this on our first visit. I was very small, and I got separated from the others. I lay here and . . .”
Her face grew solemn. “I think I slept and I had strange dreams. I woke when I heard them calling me, and I found my way out. I came here every time after that, down here, and . . .” Her eyes searched the faded mural. “I had forgotten . . . almost . . . it was always very disturbing, but . . . I always came.”
She laughed self-consciously and patted the sand. “Come, touch the sands of Mars,” she said.
Lying next to her I stared up at the galactic swirl of the unformed shapes. What did it mean? Did it mean anything at all? Was this some sort of primitive Martian cave drawing, of no meaning to anyone but the alien artist, or to the pre-historic tribe he belonged to? Or was this some sort of mandala, or focusing image? Was it meaningless decoration, design without content, the painting of a madman locked away forever in a red stone dungeon?
My eyes wandered over the flaked, faded mural, trying to replace the missing parts, merging, blending, brightening . . . Was there some sort of galactic center to it all? Did the picture truly represent a spreading of intelligence as it seemed to do?
The silent arms turned without words. The galactic mural spun silently. Eons passed. Suns were born and grew old and shrank to black holes and waited for rebirth. Still the spiral moved, shaping and being shaped, expanding and changing.
Lifeforms proliferated, changed, died, moved on, changed. The galactic swirl turned in its majestic sweep, the amorphic arms with their tips of life, moving past . . . pulling me along . . . pulling Nova . . . we melted, blended, linked . . .
There was the slightest shift of awareness, a millimeter of reorientation, and the sudden awareness of a new reality. I knew then what the galactic mural’s true function was. It was a focusing device, a cosmic mandala—and beyond that the supreme creation of the ancient Martians. We linked through the mandala to their ultimate concept, a gigantic organic computer, self-perpetuating, self-aware, nearly eternal. Carried by a flood of shifting reality, we moved into full-phased contact with this incredible storehouse of information, this vast thinking machine, this still-living heart of the Martian civilization. I suddenly knew how primitive man’s toddler science of mnemonics really was. We were still in the “rhyme to remind” stage and they had created the mural as a focusing and teaching device before man on Earth had left the Bronze Age.
Buried in the sand drift in the old and seemingly meaningless room was a stone bench, a kindergarten chair-and-desk for Martian children. It was a classroom where young Martians had learned the first steps in controlling the racial compu
ter. It had lain, long unused, until I had stumbled into it.
Now I looked, really looked, up through the stone, into the crystal structure above us and saw it for what it really was, not an ancient ruler’s whim, not the crowning achievement of a dynasty, but an organic crystal entity, a storehouse and machine, a function and a personality fused into a living work of art. Each microfleck of crystal was stressed-just-so and linked to another, a latticework of knowledge and function that had lasted across the millenia, a matrix of reality that moved out of time and space as it needed. And, like a tool that is decorated, it was also beautiful, and now, for the first time, I saw how beautiful. I merged into the mental web of the Star Palace and saw things that man had not yet dreamed possible. I saw the simple methods whereby man might control his own body. I saw the techniques of virtually instant regeneration of tissue, any kind of living tissue, man or Martian, animal or crystal. I saw the recording of a man, a microdot on the droplet of frozen gold that was the complete record of the Planet since Man had landed, and that man was me. I saw the severed leg, the bloody flesh, the pounding heart, the snap and sparkle of my brain as I used the techniques of the crystal computer to heal myself. I felt Nova join me, melding, flowing until we were like one. We saw how the mural had tugged at her, as a child, and laughed at how obvious it had all been. We “looked” with one set of perceptions, joined together, yet each an individual.
We saw the record of all the instruments that kept aware of the very fabric of space, and felt the computer read our simple minds and direct our joined focus to the anomaly we sought, the tiny disruption of that fabric several years before and several millions of miles sunward. We saw where creatures had passed through that momentary and artificial rupture, and where they had gone. We sensed, rather than saw, where Michael and Madelon had gone, and felt a flash of pity for the scientists who assumed that one of nature’s rules regarding electromagnetic radiation held true for physical objects. We saw the way open to the stars.
We perceived where the last of the Martians had gone into the fabric of space, taking themselves outward through space that was not space, outward to a destiny we couldn’t even guess, not even with the help of their great machine. They had gone beyond the use of it, leaving it behind like a discarded toy; or perhaps a marker on a path. Would man be able to follow? Would mankind’s huge ego allow it to accept a handout of knowledge, even a knowledge so vast? But our minds were already focusing elsewhere.
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