Stranger Suns

by George Zebrowski

  “Didn't care much if I did or didn't. Only found out later that he was dead.”

  “Did you regret it?” Lena asked.

  “Not then.”

  “Do you now?”

  “Don't know. What are you looking at me like that for? I don't know, and I never will. You can't make me feel what I can't.” He got to his feet. “We're coming in. Want me to hold the ship until you get back?”

  “Do you think it'll take us long to find Tasarov?” Juan asked.

  “Can't say. I don't like to come out of the ship. I'll hold the lock open as long as I can. It goes back by itself after a while unless you stand something in it.”

  “We know,” Juan said. “We were here before the prison was set up.”

  “Do you have any idea where we could find Tasarov?” Lena asked.

  “Ask around. By the way, would you do it with me on the way back?”

  Juan repressed his sudden rage; his hand sought his weapon and closed around it in his pocket. Lena regarded the man coldly.

  “Doesn't hurt to ask in my position,” the man said. “I wouldn't mind either of you.”

  Lena's eyes narrowed. Juan was repelled by the convict, wishing that she had not followed him and wondering if Titus had warned her about the dangers.

  “Sure, I understand,” the man added, studying Juan. “You've got something with her yourself. There's some women down there, but they're all taken.” He laughed. “So's everyone else! It's one thing we can't duplicate in the small chambers. Only the big man can loan you someone, or let you use a duper.”

  “So there's a group that controls the replicators?” Juan asked.

  The man nodded, still staring at Lena. “Down there, but not on the big ship.”

  Lena stared back, poised to strike, and Juan knew that she would. He gripped his gun and waited.

  The convict said, “I wouldn't live down there, even for a woman.” His shoulders sagged. He swallowed hard and finally looked away. The viewspace overhead went dark as the vessel landed.

  35. A SEA OF STONE

  Juan and Lena paused in the open lock and gazed out at the rusty brown desert. The red-white dwarf hung just above the horizon of the plain. Overhead, the globular cluster added its pale light to the sunset. The wind gusted as they stepped outside.

  Lena adjusted her backpack and glanced behind her. The convict had not come to see them off. “Are you sorry I came?” she asked.

  “No,” he lied as they stepped out of the lock.

  Even with nose filters, the odors of the land were still musky, but the discomfort of trace elements was gone. They lowered the visors on their helmets and started for the rise, moving carefully between the plants.

  They came to the top of the gentle rise and looked out over the domes. The complex seemed deserted. They made their way down to level ground and came to the tree where Magnus had been buried. Juan paused under the heavy branches, remembering. A slight breeze turned the red leaves, casting white ghosts onto the trunk. Lena was a dark shape waiting for him outside the cover of the tree, and he felt again that he had lost pieces of himself.

  She came toward him. “What is it, Juan?”

  “Nothing. Let's go.” They left the tree and approached the nearest dome.

  “They must all be inside,” Lena said.

  “The air is better there.”

  “I'm curious how they live. How many are here?”

  “Nearly three thousand.”

  They came to the entrance. It glowed, and they passed—into a dimly lit yellow space. He took off his helmet.

  As his eyes adjusted, he saw dark shapes asleep on the black floor. There was a clear path to the center, where six bodies huddled apart from the rest.

  “That's far enough,” a man's voice said behind him.

  Hands seized him, pulled off his pack, and began to search him. He glanced at Lena. She was getting the same rough treatment.

  “We're from UN-ERS,” he said, turning around.

  A bludgeon struck him on the side of his head. He heard Lena gasp as he dropped his helmet, staggered back, and fell onto sleepers. They cursed and shoved him away. He tried to steady himself, but his head was spinning. He struggled to his knees.

  “You're making a mistake,” he mumbled.

  “We don't care,” the voice replied.

  Arms hoisted him to his feet, and the body search continued. Juan glimpsed people sitting up on the floor.

  “What's this racket!” a booming voice shouted behind him. Someone called out a question in a foreign language.

  “Visitors from home!” the man who had struck him answered. “Say they're UN!”

  “What?”

  “Okay, you—move!”

  Juan staggered forward dizzily, but managed to stay up. “Are you all right?” Lena whispered. He nodded as his eyes cleared.

  “Well, bring them here!” the voice from the center shouted in accented English.

  Juan squinted. The man who sat among his sleeping companions was heavy-boned and muscular, with long black hair; his light-brown face had sharp, high cheekbones, and his dark, almond-shaped eyes seemed as hard as black stones. Slowly, he got to his feet, and Juan noticed that the prison markings had been removed from his coveralls. The three women and two young men around him sat clutching their blankets.

  The man was well over six feet tall, Juan saw as they came before him. The convict gazed down at him intently, then pointed to Lena. “Is she yours?” he demanded.

  “She is Dr. Lena Dravic. I'm Dr. Juan Obrion.”

  “Doctors?” the big man asked.

  “I'm a biologist,” Lena said, removing her helmet. “Dr. Obrion is a physicist.”

  The big convict shrugged, then glared at them. “What were you two sentenced for?”

  “We're not criminals,” Juan replied.

  “I don't like the high-horse sound of you,” the big man said.

  “UN-ERS sent us,” Juan said quickly, “to find Yevgeny Tasarov. Is he here?”

  “You can go back?” the tall man asked.

  Juan nodded. “Do you know him?” The big man clenched his teeth.

  “May we see him?” Lena asked.

  “I don't suppose you're lying—it wouldn't get you much.” He was silent for a few moments. “What will you give in return?”

  “What do you want?” Juan asked.

  “A way out of here.”

  “That may not be in our power,” Juan said cautiously.

  “You'd better strip, then. We'll dupe everything you have.”

  “Is that necessary?” Juan asked.

  The man smiled. “Are you shy? We'll give you back enough to be warm and modest.”

  Juan thought of the pistol in his pocket as he glanced at Lena. Her expression was impassive.

  “We must speak with Tasarov,” he said.

  “I won't bargain,” the big man said impatiently. “You can only give us what's on you.”

  “Are you sure?” Juan said.

  “You're bluffing.”

  “We've arrived openly, hiding nothing,” Lena said.

  The convict leader smiled sourly. “That is the safest way to come here. Cheaper to come with things we can steal than to bring an armed force. Be glad I don't much care what happens to you.” He shook back his black hair. “There's not much more anyone can do to us. Why Tasarov?”

  “That would take a while to explain,” Juan answered.

  The big man took a deep breath. “I'm tired of this!”

  “I'll be honest with you,” Juan said quickly. “We may not be able to do much for you, but we can report that you received us well. That's better than saying that you were hostile.”

  “Not by much. You're suggesting we stay on good terms with all the nice folks back home. Don't be sure you'll get back.”

  “What will you gain by harming us?”

  Laughter followed his question. A few convicts jeered. “Revenge!” someone shouted. “We'll tear you to pieces for the fun of
it!”

  “Quiet!” the dark-haired man cried, raising his hands. He stepped closer to Juan. “Strip back there,” he said, motioning to a partitioned area behind him. “Stay put until we copy your gear.”

  “What about Tasarov?” Juan demanded. He looked around the dome, at the reclining and squatting mass of humanity that was staring at him and Lena. These were human beings, he told himself, if only in some small part of themselves, hidden behind hard inner walls.

  “Your naive honesty is charming,” the big man continued. He stepped close to Juan, as if to say something in confidence. A sudden weakness showed in his face. “Follow me right now,” he said softly, looking around. “Go back to sleep!” he shouted, then led the way across the black floor to the partitions on the far side of the dome. “Speak softly,” he whispered as Juan and Lena followed him behind the makeshift barriers, where he sat down in a crude chair and pointed at two others.

  Juan and Lena sat down. “I hold this place together,” he said suddenly. “They look to me to decide things between them. We have everything we need to live, but in truth we have nothing. I tell you this because it's plain what you are, and maybe you can help us.”

  “What are we?” Lena asked, putting her helmet down on the floor.

  The convict almost laughed. “Forgive me, but you walked in here like children.”

  “Why do they look up to you?” Lena asked.

  “Isn't it obvious? I'm both attractive and intelligent. That's hard currency here.”

  “Why were you sent here?” Juan asked.

  “I'm Tasarov,” the big man said, apparently taking great pleasure in startling him. “I was exiled because I wouldn't submit to my betters. A few of them even stole my work and put it out as their own.” He smiled. “I'm a prideful, boasting man, and I make good on my boasts. Men and women both find me insufferable, but they can't keep their hands off me. Now, what is it you two want with me?” He smiled at Juan and leered at Lena. “I really should have had you stripped in full view. You're both very beautiful!”

  “Thank you for the compliments,” Lena said. Juan tensed.

  Tasarov's expression changed. “Dr. Obrion, you can't imagine what an absolute dead end existence has become here. We have everything we need or can duplicate, but it reduces us to our physical appetites, to the games we can play with each other in place of life. It's like trying to swim in a stone sea. We exist and struggle against boredom, inventing ever more trivial matters to quarrel over. I hope very much that you have come to ask me something very important, or at least amusing.”

  “Has anyone else come looking for you?” Juan asked.

  “Soviet? Yes, but he died. I killed him.”

  “Killed him? But why?” Lena asked.

  “He mocked us. We disgusted him.”

  “And you killed him for that?” Juan said.

  “We fulfilled his opinion of us. It cost us nothing to destroy him. What do you want from me?”

  “Are you still a mathematician?” Juan asked.

  Tasarov nodded. “Of course. It's the single delight I have. I live on it. This may be the ideal place for it. I wander through ideal space within myself, even when I dream. The others sense my joy. They see that I am untouched by our physical plight. It helps them. They don't grasp very much, but I tell them what I can when they ask. They escape with me a little. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I do,” Juan said. “How much have you thought about the alien web?”

  “I'm sure that it doesn't just connect to this place.”

  “You're right. It's spread across the known universe. There's no sign of the builders.” Juan summarized his experiences, ending with a description of the variant effect.

  Tasarov was delighted. He leaned forward in his chair. “And you have observed this effect?”

  “Yes. Four of us have drifted away from our prime world. We're here because it was reported you had done some theoretical work that might help us understand movement through both the web and probability.”

  Tasarov shook his head in denial. “You intrigue me. I want to begin thinking about the problem right away. But I fear that in coming to find me, you have perhaps lost the Yevgeny Petrovich Tasarov who did the work you're after. In this probability, I have not done such work.” He smiled. “I seem to remember some thoughts about possible worlds—perhaps I am remembering what one of my other selves knows? I wonder, from your description, if only consciousness is displaced through probability, as in musical chairs—you know the game—or if bodies move?” He shrugged. “What does it matter? Space, time, and matter may be illusory. Only thoughts exist, in a matrix of relationships, in a kind of stage setting, I mean. It's real, as far as it goes, but falls apart if you move between stage sets. You two have seen through the painted sets!” He grinned at them.

  “I suppose we have,” Juan said, wondering if the man was mad.

  36. THE TONGUES OF MEN AND ANGELS

  Tasarov turned on a small portable lamp, gestured at a samovar, and offered to make tea. “It's good Russian tea. We've duplicated it a thousand times.” He sat back in his chair and said softly, “I would consider it a kindness if you would let us duplicate what you have on you. Do you have weapons? If you do, I would prefer that you keep them hidden. We have not had occasion to duplicate weapons, aside from cutlery. Life is strange enough as it is. I wouldn't want what authority I have here to start depending on weapons. It would destroy the stability we have. Arms might tempt us to try to go back and storm the Amazon terminus.”

  “Our weapons are too small for that kind of action,” Juan said.

  “Good—don't even show them to me.”

  “This Soviet you killed,” Lena said, “what was his name?”

  “Ivan Dovzhenko. Did you know him?”

  “Yes,” Juan said, wincing.

  “Ah, but he wouldn't have been the one you knew.”

  “How was he killed?”

  “I snapped his neck. I felt ashamed for him.”

  “That was your only reason?” Juan asked.

  “It gave us a moment of relief to see one of our captors die. There was great bitterness here in the first months after our arrival, as we began to see what our existence would be—a very slow dying.” He shook his head and said, “We will never see the world we knew again. Can you imagine that? No more sun, green fields, or blue sky. Only this rusty landscape.”

  “We might be able to take you out of here,” Juan said.

  Tasarov stared at him in disbelief, then took a deep breath. “I don't think I could go alone. There are people here I love. I could not live while they suffered here. You do mean that I alone would be permitted to leave?”

  “Yes,” Juan said.

  “But what would justify such privilege? I have done no work on possible worlds. They would know I have nothing to give.”

  “Perhaps you could start some work,” Lena suggested.

  “Yes, but it would come to nothing. They would want a way to control, or predict, movement in probability, and that is not probable. I'm not being facetious. It would be a compounding of the infinity of probabilities for us to be able to target the world into which we would pass, since probability also guides that outcome. There is no ground on which to stand that would be immune to the workings of probability.”

  “But I think that human probability is limited,” Juan said.

  “I would like to hear your reasons, but how might that give us prediction or control?”

  “One can find the limited human history that one wants by passing through the frames until that world is found. Our group did so to escape a run of worlds destroyed by nuclear war.”

  “Ah, yes, of course, but you won't ever be able to do much more than that,” Tasarov replied, “or find worlds that are not in the cards for human nature—utopias, for example, which might be found only in futurity. You can't enter the future or the past, can you?”

  “No,” Juan said, “but we've lost time between variants.”
<
br />   “Good. Time travel into the past or future along one line of probability would shake my understanding of physical theory, though mathematical descriptions of timelike journeys are possible.”

  “Will you consider coming back with us?” Juan asked.

  Tasarov shook his head. “Not alone. I would not be able to return to this same place and the people I care about.”

  “What if we could take them with us?” Lena asked.

  Tasarov smiled. “What would I go back to? Society is made up of interlocking gangs, a system that is more violent, more lethal and abusive of land and people than any criminal acts. And it brands the outsiders, the ones who oppose it for gain or politics, asthe criminals. Nothing could be more reversed, more false than that. Criminals know what they are and accept it. The social gangs wage war and commit economic violence while pretending to be something better. Their crimes are not as unsightly as rape or murder, but strike deeper, because they are systematic and protected from justice.”

  “But you're neglecting an important fact,” Lena said, “decent people who can only live their lives in a social framework.”

  “Yes, and they never wake up to the violence that is done against them, in the exploitation of their work. They're prisoners and never know it. All revolutions are merely prison mutinies at bottom. But it's useless. Even though the criminal, like the artist, sees through the playacting of the straights—through their fear of the unconventional, their insistence on courtesy and manners—he is also one of them, in that he strives to shut out his true nature. I have no illusions that the underdog in power would be any better. For me there is only personal honor, personal accountability. All so-called progress is individual.”

  Juan said, “A social system is only a harness on a horse. It enables that animal to do what it couldn't before, but it's still a horse.”

  “That is why I will not go back,” Tasarov said. “Our human world is fierce and terrible, and tragic. We love it for its poetry, for the clean lines of its suffering finality as it wars with itself. But I have all that here, where I can probe and experiment in my thoughts.”

  “And do nothing,” Lena said.