Watson, Ian - Black Current 02

by The Book Of The Stars (v1. 1)

  Till now Yorp had been hanging out entirely with Exotics from various worlds, who felt the same way. So I was a sort of psychological bridge for him; I was an abnormal normal.

  This all spilled out as we talked.

  "Mine was a heavy world," sighed Yorp. "Here I feel just like a puff of dandelion-down about to float away.

  "Mine was a darkly cloudy world, with the thickest storming gases. Here, there just doesn't seem to be anything to breathe! Though of course I do breathe easily. . . .

  "And now I've only two legs! I feel as if at any moment I'll fall over!"

  We were making our way together to the service-hatch. And a crab-like sideways way it was too! The sun was up in the sky by now, shining from the same inland direction as we were heading. To my eyes there seemed nothing unduly bright about the sun of Earth. But Yorp flinched from it. His cherub eyes were adapted to it, just like mine. He never acted as if they were. He was a crepuscular person, a person of the dusk and the pre-dawn—happiest then. If his new eyes could have seen in the dark, he might have lived noc- tumally. But they couldn't; so he didn't.

  On Yorp's world, the parent seedship made huge changes in those multi-million-letter words of life, the genes. The resulting bodies were squat, bulky and armoured with two arms and four legs; the tough hide was beautifully marbled in distinctive pastel shades. The leathery bellows-lungs breathed poison gases under pressure. The crystalline eyes saw heat as well as light. The genitals were hidden in a homy slot. Oh yes, Yorp was exotic. Now he was just a shadow of his former self, a crab robbed of its shell, with two legs broken off. (I hadn't at this stage seen the animal called a "tortoise", which could pull its head right inside its shell!)

  When we got to the service-hatch I met his gang: Marl and Am- broz, Leehallee and Sweets. All of them felt equally out of step in different ways.

  Leehallee and Sweets had been merpeople of a shallow water world. Now, as though the plug had been pulled on them, they were exiled on dry land. They grieved that they could no longer breathe water and swim with the fish, like fishes. The swimming ability of the human body seemed a joke to them; and the need to keep an earthly body dry for comfort went against their basic instincts. Nor could they now echo-locate, and see (quite literally) through each other. Now they could only see surfaces. When they spoke they heard no echoes from within. For them a screen had come down, isolating them inside their new bodies. (In this respect their sadness was the opposite of Yorp's; he felt terribly exposed.) These two girls went naked. Even bare flesh was too much clothing of the inner person.

  Marl, on the other hand, was grounded on the Earth. He and his kind had been fliers: hollow-boned, hugely airy-chested, with great wings sprouting above their skinny arms.

  They lived in eyries in honeycombed mountains high above a wind-whipped marshy world whose surface was plagued by vicious little beasties swarming and slaughtering each other.

  To the tune of the winds blowing through the organ pipes of porous cliffs they warbled songs. On the treasured bone-flutes of the dead they piped the music of their ancestors. From one cliffy minaret to the next they whistled messages.

  And now Marl the airy flier was a heavy little runt. He'd been condensed. His voice had sunk way down the scale. Highpitched back home, his name had been a bird's mewing cry. These days it sounded more like a clod of soil. Yet Marl still clad himself in a coat of bright feathers: borrowed plumes.

  And Ambroz? Ambroz was the most exotic of all.

  His world was as flat as a platter. Only huge, deep-rooting vegetables broke the monotony; and in the atmosphere of his world there existed a curious form of energy-life—which was attracted, devastatingly, to any motion faster than a snail's pace or the growth of a plant. Ambroz's people surmised that the surface of the planet itself, over millions of years, had been rubbed down by the action of these energy-beasts. They surmised, too, that this energy life was somehow related to the giant local vegetables, or even generated by them. If a cabbage can have a free-ranging Ka! Perhaps the energies had been bom aeons earlier as a defence against grazing animals. Of which none now remained. This wasn't proven, nor was there any communication with these energies, if indeed they were alive at all.

  A world where there was no way to move without being blasted —and not much point in moving, since everywhere was just as flat! The decision to colonize such a place with plant-people—who would stay rooted and immobile most of their lives, only occasionally uprooting and waddling very slowly indeed—might have seemed a cmel joke on the part of the Godmind. Yet the inner lives of Ambroz and his kin had been vastly rich and contemplative. Besides, there was always the promise of an afterlife when they would all be able, at last, to move freely about . . . The plant- people communicated with each other by means of "radio waves", a sort of heliograph signal employing not light but other invisible vibrations.

  Now that he was in Eeden Ambroz could walk wherever he wished, through a world full of ups and downs, and ins and outs; and he was disenchanted. For no journey brought him any closer to himself. Ambroz's cherub body was tubby and brownskinned, his hair was curly black, the pupils of his eyes were chips of coal; and he wore a grubby blue dhoti.

  Over the next few weeks we all wandered about together, mostly on foot, occasionally taking capsules through the tubes from one service-hatch to another chosen at random. Generally we avoided other cherubs. We visited mountain and seacoast, desert and forest.

  And we talked, of course. I told them about my world, though without betraying myself. They told me more about theirs. Marl and Yorp and the two mergirls talked most. Ambroz was inclined to be taciturn, verging on surly. Besides, there wasn't much to tell about a flat platter of vegetables; and his inner life and musings remained his own.

  I did manage to coax Yorp out of his shell once or twice. He even skinny-dipped with me in a lonely lake.

  I learned from him (what I could have asked my Cyclopedia or any service-hatch, if I'd been a bolder spy) that the Godmind didn't have any precise location. The Godmind was a whole set of communicating systems buried all over the planet. There was no single centre, no headquarters. So much for one half-baked idea, of breaking into its den clutching a hammer. (But why should I try to smash it? The Godmind didn't seem particularly malign, in the way the Worm had pictured it. Did it?)

  I also learned from Yorp that the whole colonization programme had been—and possibly still was being—launched not from the Earth itself but from the huge Moon out in space. Thereafter I used to stare up at the Moon even more avidly, when it was in the sky and when the sky was clear, hoping to see some fire or flash of light; but I never did.

  "How do you get to visit the Moon?" I asked Yorp.

  He cringed. "Visit it? There isn't any air on the Moon! The Moon isn't heavy enough to hold air—it's even worse than here!" He retreated inside his burnous; I'd undone my good work.

  One afternoon we were camping on the edge of redwood forest when Ambroz broke a broody silence which had lasted for the best part of two days.

  "There doesn't seem very much direction, ” he groused. I assumed he was grumbling about our aimless wanderings. But no.

  He went on: "What a huge purposive thrust there has to be behind this colonization project! Yet what's it all for, Yaleen? So that we cherubs can eat lotuses a while in Eeden, then dispense our alien wisdom out among the Earthfolk—who are all living in a huge museum! Is that the only way to unify and conquer the cosmos? By turning people into toys on strings?"

  "Conquer?" I asked. "Who's conquering?" This was getting interesting.

  "The Governor. The Godmind. It's using people as von Neumann machines to fill as many worlds as it can."

  "As what?"

  He bulled right on. "Why doesn't it use machines pure and simple?"

  This was something that the Worm had wondered.

  "What's the point in cluttering up the universe with junk?" asked Yorp.

  "I suppose we shouldn't complain," said Sweets. "If there hadn
't been any colonies, we wouldn't have been alive!"

  Ambroz was really worked up after his long silence. He was like a constipated hen, nerving itself to lay an egg.

  "The clue is A^-space," he said. "People die. And people have Kas. Kas can come back here very quickly to spill the beans on how it's all going out there. Radio messages would take hundreds of years. Thousands! Aa-space is a way of keeping in touch."

  "One-way only," said Marl. "The Godmind doesn't talk back to its family of worlds."

  "I've thought about this a lot," said Ambroz. "Half my life, it seems! So have a group of us on my world. Perhaps it's because we couldn't move about, and because of the way we communicated . . . but we suspect that when voe were made, we were made as a sort of model of the colonies. Each of us a separate world unto ourselves, but able to project ourselves—and thus try to plumb all sorts of philosophical depths. Old Harvaz the Cognizer came up with this theory, and I was working on it till I died. Some of us swore we would keep this secret till we could walk about freely and find an answer."

  "Go on," said I. "You can walk about now."

  "Well, the colony programme seems like . . . like the building of a very big radio telescope—made of minds! Like a giant array with an enormous base-line spanning hundreds of light years."

  "What's a radio telescope?" Leehallee wanted to know.

  "It's a machine for listening to things very far away and very long ago. If you have two of those a good distance apart but slaved to each other, you get much sharper reception. Suppose you had a hundred of them whole star-distances apart . . . they'd be too far apart to keep in touch or act in concert using radio waves. But suppose you could build your machine of minds linked through Ka- space, and then switch it on—"

  "Wouldn't you have to kill everybody on all the worlds, to do that? So that they'd all be dead?" asked Sweets.

  "Would you?" cried Ambroz. "Would you indeed? A star which explodes lights up the whole galaxy for a day. Does a species dwelling on a hundred worlds, all of whose minds explode at once, light something else? Something far vaster? Universal?"

  "Go on," I encouraged him.

  "Well, I suspect—in fact I'm sure—that when the Godmind has all its colony pieces in place, when it has enough of them—"

  We were interrupted by the noisy arrival of a party of boys. Six or seven boys rushed out of the forest towards our impromptu camp, whooping and shouting. They were naked to the waist, above buckskin breeches, and their chests and cheeks were daubed with slashes of pigment. They wore sweatbands with feathers stuck in them round their foreheads.

  The leader ran directly up to Marl, tore a plume loose from his bird costume and jammed the trophy into his headband. He pranced around us, stamping his feet and hollering in triumph. His followers capered after him.

  "Hey!" cried Marl, springing up as if to take flight into the sky.

  Leehallee shrieked a little. Yorp shrunk into his burnous. Ambroz went rigid.

  I jumped up. "What's with you guys? Cut it out!"

  The boys straggled to a halt. Their leader squared up to me. He had fair hair, keen blue eyes in a thin pinched face. Those eyes looked rather mad. He was tall and gangly but I thought I could take him if I had to, given the edge on weight.

  Of course I couldn't take all of them, and most of Yorp's gang weren't going to be much help in a fight. Though why the hell should it come to a fight? We cherubs were all grown-ups. This was the first sign of trouble I'd come across in Eeden.

  "Okay," the leader said evenly, "just a bit of fun. By way of saying hullo." I didn't care for the way he said "fun"; he fairly snarled the word.

  He gazed at me hard. "Should we not all enjoy bliss in Eeden? The bliss that the Godmind promised us! How better to bless the Godmind than by being perfectly the children He has made us? Until our serious mission of sainthood starts!"

  Oh dear. He was nuts.

  He returned the stolen feather to Marl, with a sardonic bow and a sneer on his face. Marl managed to grasp the feather, but only just. The other lads applauded and hooted until their leader clapped his hands for silence; which he got.

  "Eeden is the promised Truesoil!" the boy shouted. And my heart sank further. I knew all too well what sort of people talked about Truesoil. None other than my old friends, the obsessed and vicious Sons of Adam!

  "Are we not the Godmind's best beloveds?" the boy harangued his team. "Those who struggled, while most other worlds dwelled easy in his bosom?"

  There was, I decided, something horribly familiar about this particular boy. . . .

  . . . whipping up fervour, to win followers—and thus win approval of the Godmind? Or to persuade himself that Eeden really matched his zealous expectations, when in fact he had suddenly become a minnow in an ocean?

  "If I was as heavy as I used to be," I heard Yorp growl from his burnous. His head emerged. "And if I had my armour on, and all four legs to bear me. . . ." He adopted a crouching stance. "You!" he bellowed. "How dare you talk about other worlds having it easy!

  How dare you burst in on us! What do you know, you painted savage?" He was really incensed. This was a new side to him; but believe me, did I welcome it!

  The leader of the boys pursed his lips. "Savages? Ah, I see. Here we have a sophisticate. So what if weTe savages?" he snarled. "We'll wear our savagery with pride in the service of the Godmind! As His true soldiers!"

  "What does the Godmind need soldiers for?" asked Sweets.

  "Why don't you just go away?" sighed Ambroz.

  "Are we not all true Sons and Daughters of the Godmind here?" the boy demanded, staring at each of us in turn.

  I was beginning to wonder whether it was pure chance that this band of Sons had turned up at our camp. I fervently hoped that none of Yorp's gang would utter my name. . . .

  "I wasn't aware," drawled Ambroz, "that the Godmind is greatly bothered what we think of it. Unless you lot happen to be its special buddies, and can advise me otherwise?"

  "You: what's your name?"

  Don’t anybody say my name!

  "Not that it's any of your business, but I'm called Ambroz." Weak, weak! You should never answer the questions of a bully. "Go fry your face" is the best reply. Maybe Ambroz realized this, a little late, since he added, "What's yours?"

  Proudly the boy said, "Edrick." His followers all nodded, as though that name said everything

  Which to me, it did.

  If Edrick was here, then he hadn't survived my murder by too long; which was nice news. Less nice, to run across him again light years away from home. Since there were millions of us cherubs bumming around Eeden, this roused my deepest suspicions. Still, coincidences happen. Sometimes our lives are chockful of that delightful ingredient. I kept a pan-face.

  "And you? What's your name?" Edrick was addressing me now.

  My heart thumped. (Never mind, he couldn't hear it thumping.) "Go fry your face," said I.

  Yorp glanced at me oddly; and I realized that I'd spoken deeper and rougher than usual. I'd altered my voice in case Edrick somehow recognized it.

  For a moment I thought Edrick was going to assault me then and there; or order his troops to thrash me. Instead, he sucked in his breath.

  "Not very friendly, are we? The Godmind wishes us all to live together as little brothers and sisters, doesn't He? Let's try again."

  "How do you know what it wants?" I retorted. "Did it tell you to come here and proclaim all over us?"

  "Yeah, how do you know?" Sweets sang out; and from the speed with which Edrick swung to confront her, I decided a few things.

  I'd told the Cyclopedia my real name. And why not? As far as Cyclopedia or Godmind were concerned I hailed from Pleasegod in the west. The only way Edrick could have come hunting for me personally was if he'd told his own Cyclopedia a hell of a lot about me and how I was such an agent of evil, and if the Godmind's bits and pieces had done some checking, and sent him. In that case, he should have known what I looked like, right off. My Cyclopedia had alway
s been able to recognize me without any bother. Probably I was safe. Edrick's arrival was an unfortunate coincidence. Edrick just wanted to browbeat anyone; Sweets would fit the bill.

  Yet . . . could Edrick and I possibly have some sort of affinity for one another? Not a pleasant kind of affinity, I hasten to add! Maybe this sort of thing happens when you murder someone, or when you think long enough and hard enough about killing them. This perverse affinity had guided him here, without his being aware of it.

  Edrick glared at Swets, but he didn't answer her. I'm sure he would have done so, if he'd had some special commission from the Godmind to fulfil. His troops would expect it of him—all six of them. (How were the mighty fallen!)

  At this point one of the other boys chipped in.

  "I've figured it out, Ed ... I bet they're Exotics, right? They think they're better them us. That's why they won't tell you their exotic names—'cept for fatso in the blue sheet there. Bet you can't get a human tongue around their names." He spat a gob of saliva on the soil.

  Edrick looked pained at the coarseness of his follower. Or did he? Spitting their juices at the Truesoil seemed to be a bit of a habit with Sons. Edrick knit his brows. Was he trying to connect something, remember something? Slowly he turned back towards me.

  I chose my words carefully in the hope that my companions would realize I was giving them a message, about me. "That's true, we're all Exotics here. All of us, aren't we, Gang? And proud of it."

  Alas, things went downhill from there.

  Yorp had said how his people grew body-armour on their heavy world. He hadn't said why exactly ... I'd associated these two facts as though one explained the other. Heavy worlds, heavy bodies.

  Yet if everything weighed heavier, armour was the last thing you would want to haul around. You would only do that if you needed to, because of vicious beasts you might have to fight. You would only wear armour if rough-houses tended to happen. . . .