The luxury liner H.M.S. Aquinas sped among the stars, its great engines devouring distance and defying time. Each porthole offered a lurid glimpse of that colossal pointillist work which God Himself has painted in subtle yet searing star-points upon the black canvas of creation, too vast for any critic ever to step back and see entire. In the main lounge, however, the ship's passengers were already jaded by the splendour of the suns and had found a new distraction. For Astron, high celebrant of the newest religion, was weaving dazzling circles of rhetoric around a shabby, blinking priest of the oldest.
“Did not a great writer once say that the interstellar spaces are God's quarantine regulations? I think the blight He had in mind was the blight of men like this, crabbed and joyless celibates who spread their poisoned doctrines of guilt and fear from planet to planet, world after world growing grey with their breath…”
The crabbed and joyless object of these attentions sipped wine and contrived to look remarkably cheerful. Father Brown was travelling from his parish of Cobhole in England on Old Earth as an emissary to the colony world Pavonia III, where Astron planned to harvest countless converts and (it is to be assumed) decidedly countable cash donations for his Universal Temple of Fire.
“For the Church of Fire pays heed to its handmaid Science, and sheds the mouldy baggage of superstition. The living Church of Fire gives respect to the atomic blaze at the heart of every sun, to the divine laws of supersymmetry and chaos theory; the dying church of superstition had nothing to say about either at Vatican III.”
The little, pudding-faced priest murmured: “We never needed chaos theory to know that the cycles of evil run ever smaller and smaller down the scales of measurement, yet always dreadfully self-similar.” But it passed unheeded.
Astron boomed on, remarking that those who obstructed the universal Light would be struck down by the spear of the sun. Indeed he looked every inch the pagan god, with his great height, craggy features and flowing flaxen hair now streaked with silver. A golden sunburst of a ring gleamed on his finger. His acolyte Simon Traill was yet more handsome though less vocal, perhaps a little embarrassed at Astron's taunting. Both wore plain robes of purest white. The group that pressed around consisted chiefly of women; Father Brown noted with interest that red-haired Elizabeth Brayne, whom he knew to be the billionaire heiress of Brayne Interplanetary, pressed closest of all and close in particular to young Traill. She wore the dangerous look of a woman who thinks she knows her own mind.
“Damn them,” said a voice at Brown's ear. “Pardon me, Father. But you heard that Astron saying what he thinks of celibacy. He chews women up and spits out the pieces. See Signora Maroni back there with a face like thunder? She's a bit long in the tooth for Mr. Precious Astron, but for the first two nights of this trip she had something he wanted. Now that something's in his blasted Temple fund, and—Well, perhaps you wouldn't understand.”
“Oh, stories like this do occasionally crop up in the confessional,” said the dumpling-faced priest vaguely, eyeing the dark young man. John Horne was a mining engineer, who until now had talked of nothing but Pavonia III's bauxite and the cargo of advanced survey and digging equipment that was travelling out with him. Father Brown knew the generous wrath of simple men, and tried to spread a little calm by enquiring about the space-walk in which several of the passengers had indulged earlier.
Though allowing himself to be diverted for a little time, Horne presently said, “Don't you feel a shade hot under the dog-collar when Astron needles you about his Religion of Science and how outdated you are?”
“Oh yes, science progresses most remarkably,” said Father Brown with bumbling enthusiasm. “In Sir Isaac Newton's mechanics, you know, it was the three-body problem that didn't have any general solution. Then came Relativity and it was the two-body problem that was troublesome. After that, Quantum Theory found all these complications in the one-body problem, a single particle; and now they tell me that relativistic quantum field theory is stuck at the nobody problem, the vacuum itself. I can hardly wait to hear what tremendous step comes next.”
Horne looked at him a little uncertainly.
A silvery chime sounded. “Attention, attention. This is the captain speaking. Dinner will be served at six bells. Shortly beforehand there will be a course correction with a temporary boost of acceleration from five-eighths to fifteen-sixteenths g.”
“I go,” said Astron with a kind of stately anger, drawing himself up to his full, impressive height and pulling the deep white cowl of the robe over his head. “I go to be alone and meditate over the Sacred Flame.” With Traill cowled likewise in his wake, he stalked gigantically from the lounge.
“That makes me madder than anything,” Horne said gloomily, beginning to amble in the general direction of Elizabeth Brayne. “No pipes, no cigarettes, that's an iron rule—and he manages to wangle an eternal flame in his ruddy stateroom. The safety officer would like to kill him.”
But it was not the safety officer who came under suspicion when the news raced through the Aquinas like leaves in a mad March wind: that a third lieutenant making final checks before the course change had used a master key and found that great robed figure slumped over the brazier of the Universal Flame, face charred and flowing hair gone to smoke, a scientific seeker who had solved the no-body problem at last.
By a happy chance, ship security had been contracted out to the agency of M. Hercule Flambeau, one-time master criminal and an old friend of Father Brown, who set to in a frenzy of Gallic fervour. Knowing the pudgy little priest's power of insight, Flambeau invited him at once to the chamber of death. It was a stark and austere stateroom, distinguished by the wide brazier (its gas flame now extinguished) and the terrible figure that the third lieutenant had dragged from the fire.
“He seems to have bent over his wretched flame and prayed, or whatever mumbo-jumbo the cult of Fire uses for prayer,” mused Father Brown. “Better for him to have looked up and not down, and savoured the stars through that porthole…Even the stars look twisted in this accursed place. Might he have died naturally and fallen? That would be ugly enough, but not devilish.“
The tall Flambeau drew out a slip of computer paper. “My friend, we know to distrust coincidence. The acolyte Traill is nowhere to be found, and the ship's records say the nearest airlock has cycled just once, outwards, since Astron left the main lounge an hour ago. Some avenger has made a clean sweep of the Church of Fire's mission: one dead in a locked room, one jettisoned. And half the women and all the men out there might have had a potent motive. We're carrying members of rival cults too—the Club of Queer Trades, the Dead Men's Shoes Society, the Ten Teacups, and heaven knows what else. But how in God's name could any of them get in here?”
“Don't forget the crabbed priesthood that blights human souls,” said the smaller man earnestly. “Astron was last seen attacking it with a will, and its representative has an obviously criminal face. Ecce homo.” He tapped himself on the chest.
“Father Brown, I cannot believe you did this thing.”
“Well, in confidence, I'll admit to you that I didn't.” He bustled curiously about the room, blinking at the oversized bed and peering again through the viewport as though the stars themselves held some elusive clue. Last of all he studied the robed corpse's ruined face and pale hands, and shuddered.
“The spear of the sun,” he muttered to himself. “Astron threatened his enemies with the spear of the sun. And where does a wise man hide a spear?”
“In an armoury, I suppose,” said Flambeau in a low voice.
“In poor foolish William Blake's armoury. You remember, All the stars threw down their spears? But the angel Ithuriel also carries a spear. Excuse me, I know I'm rambling, but I can see half of it, just half…” Father Brown stood stock still with hands pressed into his screwed-up eyes. At last he said: “You thought I shuddered at that wreck of a face. I shuddered at the hands.”
“But there is nothing to see—no mark on the hands.”
�
��There is nothing. And there should be a great sunburst ring. They are younger hands than Astron's, when you look. It is the acolyte Traill who lies there.”
Flambeau gaped. “But that can't be. It turns everything topsy-turvy; it makes the whole case the wrong shape.”
“So was that equation,” said Father Brown gently. “And we survived even that equation. But I need one further fact.” He scribbled on a slip of paper and folded it. “Have one of your men show this to John Horne. A reply is expected.”
Wordlessly, Flambeau pressed a stud and did what was asked. “Horne,” he said when the two friends were alone again. “The one who fancies Miss Brayne and didn't like her interest in men with white robes. Is he your choice for the dock?”
“No. For the witness-box.” Father Brown sat on the edge of the bed, the dinginess of his cassock highlighted by the expanse of white satin quilting, his stubby legs not quite reaching the deck plates. “I think this story begins with young Horne prattling over dinner about his cargo. So I asked whether a piece of his equipment was missing. Come now: when you think of fiery death in a locked stateroom, what does mining and surveying gear suggest to you?”
“Nothing but moonshine,” said Flambeau with sarcasm. “I do assure you that each hull plate and bulkhead has been carefully inspected for any trace of a four-foot mineshaft through which a murderer might crawl.”
“That's the whole sad story. Even when you look at it you can't see it: but every stateroom of this vessel contains a Judas window through which death can strike. And—” Brown's muddy eyes widened suddenly. “Of course! The spear of the sun is two-edged. My friend, I predict…I predict that you will never make an arrest.”
As Flambeau arose with an oath, the communicator on his wrist crackled. “What? The answer is yes? Father, the answer is yes.”
“Then let me tell you the story,” said the priest. “The great Astron devoured woman after woman, but most of all he craved the women who did not crave him. For as I saw, Elizabeth Brayne was taken with Simon Traill. And Astron left the room in anger.
“I fancy it was his practice to have Traill watch over the ritual flame for him, while another cowled figure glided out upon certain assignations. But this time Astron's assignation was a darker one. He knew where to find the pressure suits: there was a space-walking party a few watches ago. He knew that in Horne's cargo he would find his spear.”
“Which is—?”
“A laser.”
Father Brown continued dreamily after a sort of thunderous silence. “Picture Astron floating a little way outside that porthole, a wide-open window for his frightful, insubstantial bolt. Picture his unknowing rival Traill bent over the flame, struck in the face, falling dead across the brazier which would slowly burn away every mark of how he died.”
“Name of a name,” cried Flambeau. “He is still out there. We shall have him yet!”
“You will never have him.” Father Brown shook his head slowly. “The spear, I said, is two-edged. Oh, these strong and simple Stoics with their great bold ideas! Astron called us impractical and superstitious, but lacked even the little smattering of quantum electrodynamics that every seminarian picks up along with his Latin and his St. Augustine. He thought the crystal of the port purely transparent, Flambeau: but there is diffraction, my friend, and there is partial reflection. And even as it slew his victim, the spear of the sun rebounded to strike the murderer blind.” The little priest shivered. “Yes, the humour of God can be cruel. Astron's easy arrogance saw the motes in all men's eyes, and now at last found the beam in his own…
“Picture him now, flinging his suit this way and that with those clever little gas-jets, with nightmare pressing in as he realizes he cannot find the ship in the endless dark. And then comes the course correction and he has no more chance. And now that void which he worshipped in his heart has become his vast sarcophagus.”
“I think,” said Flambeau slowly, “that brandy would be a good thing. Mother of God. All that from a missing ring.”
“Not only that.” said Father Brown, “The viewport crystal was slightly distorted by the heat of the beam's passage. I said the stars looked twisted, but you thought I was being sentimental.”
IN OUR NEXT ISSUE: Fr. Brain Stableford continues his series on forgotten SF authors, with a spirited case for reviving the works of 19th-century fantasist H. G. Wells. Our regular Credo Quia Impossibile squib daringly tackles another zero-probability notion in “The Piltdown Effect”—we know from GKSFM science columns by Hilaire Belloc, Jimmy Swaggart, and other fine popularizers that mankind is a fixed genetic type, but just suppose for one terrifying moment that it were not so! Of course the “Should Women Authors Be Allowed In GKSFM?” debate rages on in the letter column: what amusingly outrageous thing will that “Ms.” Cadigan say next? Carl Sagan contributes a devastatingly frank essay on science's inability to explain weeping images or miraculous liquefactions. And our millions of avid readers in the Americas will welcome the coming feature on brash colonial editor Gardner Dozois and his shoestring launch of (at last!) an all-United States SF magazine, called Interzone: we shall have to look to our laurels.…
1. We remind our readers that Mr Philip José Farmer's delightful but unauthorized contributions (Father Brown vs the Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Father Brown 124C41+, Father Brown in Oz, etc) are not regarded as strictly canonical.
2. Flambeau repented, made his full confession to Father Brown and joined the side of the angels on some forty-two occasions, all listed in Martin Gardner's Flambeau, Boskone and Ming the Merciless: the Annotated Father Brown Villains (1987).
3. Older readers will recognize the allusion to that insight which saved the Holy Galactic Empire from the threat of secular “psychohistorians” in Isaac Asimov's classic Foundation and Father Brown (1951).
Counting Cats in Zanzibar
GENE WOLFE
Gene Wolfe continues to produce challenging, complex fiction in fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He has now been publishing in SF for more than thirty years, although he did not draw much notice until twenty-five years ago, in the early 1970s, when his outstanding short fiction began to appear on award ballots. By the end of the decade, with the advent of his masterly The Book of the New Sun, he began to be generally acknowledged as one of the finest SF writers. He is so much a unique writerly talent that one has to stretch to make literary comparisons—if there's anyone in our century in the English language perhaps it is Vladimir Nabokov he is most like. Others have compared him to Borges and to Mozart. Last year he was given a Grand Master award by the World Fantasy Convention. He published the fourth and concluding volume of his The Book of the Long Sun, Exodus from the Long Sun, in 1996, as well as several science fiction and fantasy stories. Each story has such signal virtues that it was difficult to choose the one for this volume. This is a robot story full of questions more than answers. To read it for plot is to risk disappointment. It remains a mystery, disturbingly clear.
The first thing she did upon arising was count her money. The sun itself was barely up, the morning cool with the threatening freshness peculiar to the tropics, the freshness, she thought, that says, “Breathe deep of me while you can.”
Three thousand and eighty-seven U.N. dollars left. It was all there. She pulled on the hot-pink underpants that had been the only ones she could find to fit her in Kota Kinabalu and hid the money as she had the day before. The same skirt and blouse as yesterday; there would be no chance to do more than rinse, wring out, and hang dry before they made land.
And precious little then, she thought; but that was wrong. With this much money she would have been able to board with an upper-class family and have her laundry micropored, rest, and enjoy a dozen good meals before she booked passage to Zamboanga.
Or Darwin. Clipping her shoes, she went out on deck.
He joined her so promptly that she wondered whether he had been listening, his ears attuned to the rattle and squeak of her cabin door. She said, “Good morning.” And
he, “The dawn comes up like thunder out of China across the bay. That's the only quote I've been able to think of. Now you're safe for the rest of the trip.”
“But you're not,” she told him, and nearly added Doctor Johnson's observation that to be on a ship is to be in prison, with the added danger of drowning.
He came to stand beside her, leaning as she did against the rickety railing. “Things talk to you, you said that last night. What kind of things?”
She smiled. “Machines. Animals, too. The wind and the rain.”
“Do they ever give you quotations?” He was big and looked thirty-five or a little past it, with a wide Irish mouth that smiled easily and eyes that never smiled at all.
“I'd have to think. Not often, but perhaps one has.”
He was silent for a time, a time during which she watched the dim shadow that was a shark glide under the hull and back out again. No shark's ever talked to me, she thought, except him. In another minute or two he'll want to know the time for breakfast.
“I looked at a map once.” He squinted at the sun, now half over the horizon. “It doesn't come up out of China when you're in Mandelay.”
“Kipling never said it did. He said that happened on the road there. The soldier in his poem might have gone there from India. Or anywhere. Mapmakers colored the British Empire pink two hundred years ago, and two hundred years ago half Earth was pink.”
He glanced at her. “You're not British, are you?”
“No, Dutch.”
“You talk like an American.”
“I've lived in the United States, and in England, too; and I can be more English than the British when I want to. I have heerd how many ord'nary veman one vidder's equal to, in pint'o comin' over you. I think it's five-and-twenty, but I don't rightly know verther it a'n't more.”
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