Night of Light

by Philip José Farmer

  On the way to the police morgue, the cardinal said, "I didn't have the heart to ask you to go to Kareen, John. But since you yourself volunteered, I won't object. Anna. . ."

  ". . .Is only one human being, and the destiny of billions of others depends upon me," Carmody finished for him. "Yes, I know."

  The cardinal said he would not leave this afternoon as he had planned. Despite the most pressing urgency to return to Rome, he would stay here and conduct Anna's funeral. He would make all arrangements, including the police investigation. After Carmody got to Kareen, he could expect to receive news, by letter or courier, about the results of the investigation.

  "The police," Carmody said listlessly. "I wonder who could have hated me enough to kill Anna. She had no enemies. But won't the police delay me with their questions so I'll miss the ship?"

  "Leave that to me," Faskins said.

  Afterward, Carmody was unclear about much that happened. He lifted the sheet without any apprehension or agony and gazed for a moment at the blackened, open-mouthed face. He repeated to the police captain what he had told the cardinal. No, he had no idea who could have planted the bomb. Somebody had returned from a past Carmody had hoped would be forever obliterated and had killed Anna.

  The two priests started toward the port in a taxi. They passed the headquarters of the Order of St. Jairus on Wildenwooly. Twenty-three years ago, the building had been on the outer edge of a small town. Now it was in the heart of the large capital city of the planet. Where there had been no buildings more than two stories high, dozens now reached above twenty stories. Where a man once could have walked from the center of town to its borders in twenty minutes, he would now have to walk from dawn to dusk. All the streets were paved, and most of the highways out into the farmlands were covered with griegite. When John Carmody had first come here as a lay brother of the order, he had muddied his sandals the moment he had stepped from the exit of the spaceport. And the buildings of the town had been logs and mortar. . .

  Anna. If he had not married her, he would now be sitting behind the huge shiny desk in the main office. He would be supervising the ecclesiastical affairs of his Church on a planet as large as Earth. True, Wildenwooly had a population of only fifty million, but this was fifty times what it had been when Carmody had first set foot here. It was a paradise of elbow room. Earth was jammed with people raw from rubbing against each other's skins.

  Anna. If she had not married him, she would be alive today. But when he had told her that he was not sure he was doing the right thing by marrying her, she had told him she would go into a convent if she could not have him. He had laughed then and told her that she was being romantic and unrealistic. She needed a man. And if she could not have him, she would eventually find another.

  There had been a furious quarrel, after which they had fallen into each other's arms. The next day, he had taken ship to Earth to make his annual report. He had spent two weeks there and left, glad to get off Earth and eager to see Anna again. The Vatican was now a cube a half-mile wide. It housed not only the Holy Father but the millions needed to run the complex government of the Church on Earth and on Earth's forty colonist planets, and the people who furnished services and goods and their families. It also contained a titanic protein-computer second in size only to the Federation's Og Boojum.

  The rest of Rome was a two-mile high quadrangle around the Vatican. The Eternal Seven Hills had long ago been leveled; the Tiber ran through a plastic tube in the lower levels of Rome.

  Change was the only constant in human affairs and, indeed, in the universe. Men and women were born and died. . . Anna!

  He cried and sobbed as if great hands within him were squeezing the breath and the tears out of him. The cardinal was rigid with embarrassment, but he pulled Carmody's head down against his chest and patted the priest's hair while he muttered jerky and awkward consolation. Presently, his body relaxed, and his own tears fell upon Carmody.

  By the time they had reached the port, Carmody was sitting up and drying his eyes on a handkerchief. "I'll be all right now. For a while, anyway. I'm glad I have an excuse to get away. If I'd stayed, I might have fallen apart. What kind of an example would I be to those I've tried to support in their grief? Or to those who've listened to me preach that death is more an occasion for joy than sorrow, since glory awaits the dead and they're beyond the temptations and evils of this world? I knew damn well while I was saying all those words that they meant little. It's not until the shock and pain wear away that they're any comfort."

  The cardinal did not reply. A moment later, they reached the port. This was a five-story building, covering thirty acres, and built largely of white marble quarried in the Whizaroo mountains some ninety kilometers from the capital city. Its huge main room was filled with human beings from every planet in the Federation and a number of other sentients. Most of them were here on government or other business; the minority were those who had enough money to afford first-class fares. The immigration section was in another part of the building, and there the people were not so expensively dressed nor so carefree.

  The two priests walked slowly through the crowd, many of whom wore the "medusa" or "living wig," which coiled itself at regulated times to form different coiffures and also every hour passed through the entire spectrum of 100,000 colors. Many wore the half-cloaks with flaring "bartizan" shoulders and material which gave forth tinkles, the notes of which varied according to minute changes in temperature and air pressure. A few of the older people had painted legs, but the rest wore boswells -- tights on the surface of which appeared moving pictures of the wearer at various stages of his life, and personal statistics or capsule biographies. One expensively dressed woman had boswells which portrayed in cartoons the highlights of her life.

  Carmody said good-bye to His Eminence, who wanted to return to the city and start making arrangements for the funeral. He also had several letters to dictate to the officials in the Vatican, explaining why he was delayed.

  The checkout required for every interstellar traveler took a half-hour. Carmody stripped off his clothes, which were taken away to be sanitized. In the physical-examination cubicle, he stood motionless for two minutes while the scanners probed intangibly into his body. At the end of that time, he was given a certificate of good health. His garments were returned with another certificate. He put back on his three-cornered, low-brimmed hat, the stiff white collar, the simple blouse, the conservatively puffed shorts, the modest codpiece, and unadorned maroon tights. From that moment until he entered the ship, he was not allowed to re-enter the other part of the building.

  However, a letter, also sanitized, was delivered to him via tube. A woman's voice came through a speaker to inform him that the letter had just come off the

  Mkuki, direct from Earth. Carmody looked at the seal, which bore his name and address and that of the sender: R. Raspold. He dropped it into his beltbag with the other letter.

  Meanwhile, his passport and other papers were brought up to date, checked, and validated. He had to sign a waiver whereby both the governments of Wildenwooly and the Federation were absolved of any obligation if he were to die or be injured on Kareen. He also took out insurance for the flight as far as Springboard. Half went to his order, one quarter to his daughter (begotten two years after he had become a priest), and one quarter to the governmental agency that supervised the reservations for the sentient but primitive aboriginals of Wildenwooly.

  He finished a few minutes before announcement of the takeoff of his ship, the White Mule, a small liner of the privately owned Saxwell Stellar Line. Thus, he had a little time to study his fellow debarkees. There were four, three of whom would be getting off at planets other than Kareen. The only one whose destination was the same as his was a Raphael Abdu. He was of average height, 1.9 meters, medium stocky in build, but his hands and feet were huge. He had a broad, meaty face, a dark skin, wavy brown hair, and slight epicanthic folds that indicated some Mongolian ancestors. According to the records, h
e was a native of Earth and had been on Wildenwooly for several weeks. His business was listed as export-import, a term covering a multitude of interests.

  A voice from the speaker asked all to sit down. A minute later, the room in which the travelers sat detached itself from the main building and moved out toward the White Mule. The liner was a hemisphere the flat part of which rested on the griegite-paved landing circle. Its white irradiated plastic skin gleamed in the midafternoon sun of Wildenwooly. As the mobile room approached, the seemingly unbroken surface of the White Mule split near the ground, and a round port swung out. The mobile, directed by remote control, nudged gently into the entrance, and its front door collapsed on itself. An officer in the green uniform of the Saxwell line entered and bade them welcome.

  The passengers filed into a small chamber with only a green rug for furnishings and thence into a large room. This was a cocktail lounge, now closed. They passed through another room, where they were handed a small document. Carmody glanced through his to see if anything new had been added, then stuck the paper into a pocket of his blouse. It contained a short history of the Saxwell line and a list of procedures for the passenger, with all of which he was familiar.

  There were three levels open to passengers, first, second, and third class. Carmody had purchased a ticket for third class, in accordance with the economy required by his order. His level was a huge room that looked more like a theater than anything else, except that the screen at this moment showed the view outside the ship. The seats were arranged two abreast with aisles between the rows. Most of the eight hundred seats were filled, and the room was noisy with chatter. At that moment, Carmody wished he were in a first-class cabin, where he could have privacy. But that was out of the question, so he sat down beside a vacant seat.

  A stewardess checked him to make sure he was strapped in, and asked him if he had read the rules. Would he care for a space pill? He said he did not need one.

  She smiled at him and went on to the next passenger. Carmody could overhear the fellow say that he wanted another pill.

  The pilot's smiling face appeared on the screen. He welcomed his passengers aboard the White Mule, a fine ship which had not had an accident or even been behind schedule in its ten years of service. He warned them that takeoff would be within five minutes and repeated the stewardesses' instructions not to remove the straps. After a few words about their next stop, he signed off.

  The screen went blank for a second, then the 3-D projection of Jack Wenek, a well-known comedian, abruptly hovered in the air a meter in front of the screen. Carmody did not care to listen, so ignored the button which would have brought Wenek's voice to him. However, he felt that he needed something to divert himself. Or something even stronger than a diversion, something which would put his grief and problems in a different perspective. He needed immensity, awe and wonder to make him shrink.

  He reached under the seat and took from the rack a helmet-shaped device with a snap-down visor. After placing it on his head, he moved the visor down over his face. Immediately, he heard the voice of an officer of the White Mule.

  "... Provided individually so that your fellow passengers won't have to view this if they don't wish to. Some people, encountering this for the first time, are thrown into a state of shock or hysteria." The curved inner side of the visor leaped into solid life. Carmody could see the spaceport outside, the white, mural-decorated buildings gleaming in the bright mid-afternoon sun, the people looking out of the windows of the port buildings at the White Mule.

  "A dozen spaceships take off every day from this port. But the spectacle, unspectacular as it is, continues to attract hundreds, even thousands of sightseers every day on every planet of the Federation. And on every non-Federation planet, too, for sentients are just as curious as Terrestrials. Even much-traveled passengers, the port employees, and the crews of other ships do not become accustomed to this seemingly magical trick."

  Carmody drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, for he had heard similar speeches many times. At once, a voice cut in: "Are you all right, sir?"

  Carmody said, "Huh?" Then he chuckled. "I'm OK. I was just a little impatient with the lecture. I've made over a hundred jumps."

  "Very well, sir. Sorry to have bothered you."

  He made an effort to calm himself, and settled back to watch the scene on the visor.

  The first voice returned. ". . .three, two, one, zero!"

  Carmody, knowing what was coming, refrained from blinking. The port was gone. The planet of Wildenwooly and the brightness of its sun were gone. Cups of burning wine hung on a black table: red, green, white, blue, violet. The one-eyed beasts of the jungle of space glared.

  ". . . approximately 50,000 light-years away in quote nothing flat unquote. The Earth-sized planet you were just on is too far away to be seen, and its sun is only one of the millions of stars scattered prodigally through the universe around you, 'the eternally sparked thoughts in God's mind,' to quote the great poet Gianelli.

  "Just a moment. Our ship is turning now to align herself for the next jump. The protein computer which I briefly described a moment ago is comparing the angles of light from a dozen identifiable stars, each of which radiates its unique complex of spectral colors and each of which has a known spatial relation to the other. After the quote artificial brain unquote of the computer ascertains our location, it will point the ship for the next jump."

  Fine horizontal and vertical lines appeared on the visor before Carmody.

  "Each square of the grid is numbered for your convenience. Square 15, near the center, will contain the luminary of Wildenwooly in a few seconds. It is now in No. 16, drifting at a 45-degree angle across it. Watch it, ladies and gentlemen. It is now becoming brighter, not because it is getting closer but because we have amplified its light for your easier identification."

  A yellow spark passed beneath a larger but ghostly pale blue one, then entered the corner of square fifteen. It slipped across the grid line, stopped in the middle, and bobbed up to the center.

  Carmody remembered the first time he had seen this happen, so many years ago. Then he had felt a definite pain in his belly, as if his umbilical cord had been reattached, only to be savagely ripped out and to go trailing away from him through space. He had been lost, lost as never before in his life.

  "The location of Wildenwooly's sun relative to the other point-stars has been determined and stored by the computer. The ship was ready several million microseconds ago to hurl itself on its next leap through the so-called subspace or nonspace. But the captain has delayed the ship because Saxwell Interstellar Lines cares about the enjoyment of its passengers. Saxwell wants its guests to see for themselves what is occurring outside the White Mule.

  "The next jump will take us another 50,000 light-years, and we will quote emerge unquote from nonspace or extraspace, a hundred kilometers outside the extreme limits of the atmosphere of our next planetary destination, Mahomet.

  "This precision is possible only because of the numerous flights that the White Mule has made between Wildenwooly and Mahomet. Of course, the relative positions of the two have changed since the last trip. But a cesium clock is coordinated with the computer, and the distance and angles traversed by the pertinent planets since the last trip have been calculated and compared to our present position. When the captain activates the proper control, he gives the order for the entire navigational complex of the White Mule to bring the calculations up to the microsecond and then to automatically jump the ship."

  The officer paused, then said, "Are you ready, ladies and gentlemen? I will now count. . ."

  Minimum jump, for some reason Carmody did not understand, was the length of the spacecraft. Maximum jump depended on the number of translation generators used and the power available. The White Mule could have passed from the Galaxy to anywhere in Andromeda in one leap. One and a half million light-years could be spanned as swiftly as the spurt of an electron down a wire. And the distance from Wildenwooly to a po
sition just outside the atmosphere of Kareen could be spanned in four maneuvers, total "real" time sixty seconds. But the owners of the White Mule were more interested in making money than in displaying the powers of the vessel. Thus, there were two more planetary stops before Kareen.

  The blackness and the burning globes flickered. Before Carmody was the great bow of a planet, forever taut with the pull of gravity, sunlight striking off an ocean, the darkness of a tortoise-shaped continent, the whiteness of a cloud mass like an old, huge scar on the shell of the tortoise.

  Despite his previous experience, Carmody jerked back. The massy bulk was falling toward him. Then he was lost in admiration, as always, at the seeming ease and sureness of the maneuver. The complex of artificially grown cells, only three times the size of his own brain, had given the White Mule its true course. It had directed the jump so that the vessel popped like a rabbit out of a hat, perilously close to the upper air of Mahomet, tangent to the course of the planet around its sun and moving at the same velocity. Moreover, the White Mule was over the hemisphere on which it was to land.

  Carmody blinked. The curve leaped at him. Another flicker of the eyelid. The visor was filled with a large lake, a mountain range, and a few clouds. The ship rocked for a few seconds, then steadied as the compensating drives took over.

  A blink. The range was now a dozen mountains and the lake had expanded. On the western shore of the lake was the spiderweb outline of a city's streets and a number of huge white round spots, like a spider's eggs -- the landing circles -- in the center of the web.

  Down on the surface, those looking upward would see the White Mule, if they saw it all, only as a glint of light. But in a few seconds they would hear the boom made by the White Mule's first displacement of air as it had flashed from "nonspace" into the atmosphere. Then, as the ship became visible as a larger disc, another boom would follow the first. And a third.