Enigma

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  Unable to cope with the uncertainty required to further pursue the question, Thackery shifted his attention to more concrete matters. His body was still conspiring to overload him with input—the variation in temperature between his torso and feet, the smell of his own fear-sweat, the hundred1 and one places the suit bound or chafed or pressed against his skin. It was as though every set of nerve endings which he had learned through years of living to ignore was suddenly clamoring for attention.

  Trying to give his thoughts focus, Thackery repeated his call to Munin. There was no response. If only some of this power were available for the ship’s systems—then maybe they could hear me—

  The idea of asserting himself by taking action, even in pursuit of such an unlikely goal, appealed enough to Thackery to loosen his grip on the conduit and send him out into the climbway and down. Though each step, each individual volitional movement, seemed to require a distinct decision, his progress filled him with confidence all out of proportion to the achievement.

  Three bodies were drifting free on E deck, all bearing stomach-turning witness to the sudden decompression Dove had undergone. Barely aware of what he was doing, Thackery brushed past the corpses and moved toward the contact lab. The lab was deserted, the equipment intact but inert.

  There was one last possibility. The gig should be undamaged, and its communication systems were far more powerful than an E-suit’s. If there were still power, he might reach Munin—

  Returning to the climbway, Thackery continued his deliberate descent. From there he could see that the pressure hatch at the foot of the climbway was sealed.

  It took nearly five minutes to manually retract the outer hatch and enter the dress-out compartment. There he found the suit racks full, and two more bodies, both wearing blissful expressions that suggested a quiet drug-aided death.

  Thackery pressed on into the gig bay, where dozens of pieces of equipment loosened from their tiedowns by the collision floated in the open spaces. He made his way through them to the gig itself, which he found still held a pressure-normal atmosphere.

  It had also retained the bodies of two men and three women. This time Thackery could not help but take note of their open-eyed stares and shrunken, gangrenous skin. Cocooned in the protective shell of the gig, the corpses had had days or even weeks to decompose before the systems failed and slowly falling temperatures halted the process. Thackery did not even trouble to try the gig radios; it was clear that the gig’s final task had exhausted its power generators. Fighting a rising gorge, Thackery fled the gig and the bay.

  As revolting as they were, the corpses were as a bright light to Thackery’s mental fog. In their blank, decayed faces he saw Jael and Mike, lying dead on the boards of a Gnivian dray, hanging naked from the branches of a wax tree. The emotional jolt of that reminder awakened Thackery’s somnolent faculties. None of this matters, he chided himself as he climbed upship. Why are you avoiding what does?

  The blue light still filled the drive core, but Thackery climbed past it until he reached the open expanse of the edrec deck, where he used a short tether to secure himself. Only then did he begin to try to come to grips with the responsibility with which Gabriel had charged him.

  He soon began to wonder whether his earlier dimness hadn’t been a defense against thinking about what seemed an insolvable problem. Yes, the Kleine would allow Thackery to reach the other twenty-four survey ships. But that was meaningless, for he did not have anything approaching the authority to recall them. Only the Central Flight Office could do that, or the Chairman of the FC Committee above it, or the Director of the Service above it.

  What all three had in common was that they were based at Unity, a fifty light-year craze away. Would Munin’s log records of the encounter with Dove be enough to persuade them to call a halt? Thackery decided it would have as much impact as throwing a marshmallow at an advancing tank. He did not even know yet if he would be able to convince Amy and Derrel, his closest friends and the nearest witnesses.

  Hell—I barely can believe it myself, and I’m the one that has to do the convincing. If I wanted to, I could probably persuade myself that I’m suffering from a nasty shock to my nervous system and the disorientation that goes with it. I can’t even prove to myself that that experience was real.

  Those thoughts reflected despair, not real self-doubt. Just as he had admitted, Gabriel clearly did not understand the human mind. The D’shanna did not realize that human communication was not restricted to true thought, or that others Thackery tried to tell would require proof. Waiting for the welcome sound of Munin’s page, Thackery started numerous imaginary conversations, none of which he could make end satisfactorily.

  (Supervisor, there’s an alien species inhabiting the Mizar-Alcor system which poses a threat to all the human settlements.)

  (Very interesting theory. Any evidence?)

  (There’s my testimony on the subjective out-of-body experience I had aboard a derelict survey ship, culminating a period of erratic behavior that began when I threatened to lock up one of my officers—)

  (Next!)

  On top of all the other problems, the unhappy fact was that Thackery could not even be sure that the Sterilizers were still in, or only in, the Mizar system. What if, just like humans had, they had gone through a period of expansion? What if they were now scattered all through the Ursa Major Cluster, or even farther afield? If so, then any ship could stumble on them—not just in Lynx, but in any neighboring octant. It’s been twenty thousand years or more. Where might they have gone in that time?

  (Chairman, you have to recall all the survey ships.)

  (Why is that?)

  (Because the Sterilizers could be anywhere.)

  (Well, now, that seems a little extreme. I’ll tell you what, we’ll just send a ship on out where they were last to collect some more data—)

  No, that would not do. The survey ships had to be recalled, or someday they would find—and arouse—the Sterilizers again. Thackery had witnessed their savagery, and knew that there could be no halfway measures, no investigations, no studies, no indecision. That meant that the person he had to deal with was the Director. That way Thackery would only have one performance to give, only one person to persuade. The Director was the highest authority in the Service; decisions bearing that office’s stamp were final.

  Now, if I only knew who the current Director was, Thackery thought, and laughed sardonically. The Director’s authority reached out into the Service’s operating theater impersonally, through channels—the same channels Thackery was determined to bypass. The last Director Thackery had taken note of by name was Anton LeGrande, and that only because it was LeGrande’s name which appeared on Thackery’s commission.

  His ignorance on the subject was not a source of concern. Accessing a complete biography of the Director would be a matter of only a few seconds with Munin’s library. But Thackery’s thoughts kept returning to an obstacle that did concern him: space itself.

  Whoever the Director was, Thackery would have to make his case with him through the Kleine. That was a far from ideal situation; though the lag was only a matter of a few minutes, it was enough to kill off the rapport and feedback a real-time link provided. But there was no other way. Thackery could not even consider taking Munin back to Unity for a face-to-face encounter. The ships were already too far out for that. Every second Munin was traveling inbound, the other ships would be forging farther and farther into unexplored regions, at terrible risk. It had to be the Kleine. As Gabriel had warned, time was short.

  Gabriel—Thackery had a momentary impulse to blame Gabriel for not arming him with some bit of knowledge so compelling that no one could fail to believe him. That was followed by an equally brief urge to blame himself for failing to ask the right questions—the location of the undiscovered colonies, or the exact year of the Sterilization, or some less dramatic but more readily verifiable fact which he could not have learned except through Gabriel.

  But he quickly saw t
hat both impulses were wrong-headed. In his own way, Gabriel was as limited in what he knew as was Thackery. Gabriel had all of time and space open to him—but he was not omniscient. As powerful as he had seemed, he knew only that which he had sought to learn and then made a part of his pattern. To know all there was to know about the Universe, Gabriel would have to become the Universe.

  As for himself, Thackery found it hard to envision what he could say that would have the desired impact. How can I ever make them believe me? I feel as helpless to stop us as Gabriel did. I can’t take the Director where I’ve been, and 1 don’t have the first bit of tangible evidence. How can I make anyone believe?

  And even as he thought the question, he suddenly saw a way—a way so simple, so certain of success that he wondered why he had not devised it sooner. He has to do it. He owes me. Suffused with hope, Thackery unhooked his tether and started back down the climbway once more.

  The glow in the drive core had grown pale and weak, and fluctuated alarmingly as it coursed around its path. Thackery stood where he had stood the first time and called out, “Gabriel! I need to talk to you.” When nothing happened, he moved to the gap in the damaged core and bravely placed his hand in the flux. For a moment, he stood straddling the two realities.—Gabriel!

  =I am here, Merritt Thackery.

  Thackery was shocked at Gabriel’s appearance. The sharp definition and strong amplitude of his inner resonances were almost completely gone. Thackery formed the most perfect namepattern he was capable of for the D’shanna and sent it in Gabriel’s direction. When it was received and absorbed, Gabriel seemed to flicker, then reformed into a better likeness of Thackery’s memory.

  –I need your help, Gabriel.

  =Your ship and companions are near. You will rejoin them soon.

  –Not that. Something else, Gabriel.

  Thackery made the name the center of every thought, and each time he did the D’shannan grew incrementally stronger.

  =Show me.

  –Gabriel—when I transfer back to Munin, I want you to take Dove to Earth through the spindle, the way you did the Weichsel for the reseeding.

  –No, Merritt Thackery. I cannot.

  –Why, Gabriel?

  =Look at me, Merritt Thackery. Look at me. You ship has great mass. It would have been a difficult task for me then. I am too weak to even attempt it now.

  –Gabriel—are you dying?

  =I need the sharing of other D’shanna. As soon as you have rejoined your kind, I must go downtime.

  Thackery thought furiously. The Dove was a unique and unmistakable artifact—to have it suddenly transported fifty light-years, to have it disappear from the screens of Munin and reappear moments later in the skies of Earth, would have given Thackery’s message all the credibility that it required.

  But the bodies downship were likewise unique and unmistakable, and could serve the same purpose. Eagerly he posed the question.

  The answer came back tinted a ruddy red. = No, Merritt Thackery. You have lessened the task, but you have not strengthened me. When I have brought Dove to its rendezvous, I will have only enough coherence remaining to reach the D’shanna downtime. I have stayed too long and done too much already.

  Both chastened and profoundly discouraged, Thackery withdrew from the flux. He hooked an arm around a brace and remained suspended there, shaking his head and muttering, “How, how, how, how? Oh, Gabriel, they won’t listen to me. I’ve tried before to tell them things they didn’t want to hear. And there’s nothing that they’re less eager to believe than what I have to tell them now.”

  But Gabriel had made clear that the most Thackery could expect now was to be reunited with Munin. Coordinating and channeling the energies required to stand in for the damaged drive had already taxed Gabriel to an alarming degree. I sup pose / should be grateful if he isn’t forced to abandon what he’s doing for me now.

  Wait—that’s the key. If Gabriel didn’t have to exert himself with Dove—if he weren’t transporting inert mass, but another intelligence from which he can draw sustenance—

  A hateful thought brought Thackery up short. You’ll pay the cost that he doesn’t, he reminded himself sternly.

  Or rather Amy will.

  It isn’t a choice. There’s no other way to do the thing.

  There’s no other way you’ll be believed. She would understand—just one more Hobson’s choice in a life of them. The truth is that you won’t be hurt by it, she will. You’ll know why. She won’t.

  A tone sounded inside Thackery’s helmet, but he ignored it. It has to be done now. If I wait until I can explain it to her, Gabriel will be too weak, or will have gone downtime, out of reach. The window of opportunity is closing quickly—not just for me, but maybe for all of us. The truth is that I love her, and I don’t want to leave her. But I also don’t want to fail and know that there was more that I could have done, except that I was too selfish or too frightened to try. And I can’t have it both ways—

  So decide! goddamn you, decide!

  A grimness had gripped Munin since Thackery had entered the derelict three hours earlier, a grimness which set jaws in hard lines and put an edge on every utterance. The tension was greatest and the accompanying silence the most inviolate on the bridge, where Koi and the command crew continued to track their decelerating quarry. The two ships were moving toward an intercept less than thirty minutes away.

  But that was not enough to relieve the crew’s concern. Lying ahead of both ships on their current course was the system 211 Lynx with its red supergiant, six planets, and halo of minor bodies. If for some reason Dove again changed velocities, as it had already done four times since it was first detected, it would smash through the system like a self-destructing battering ram, completing the job started years earlier and light-years away at 61 Canum Venaticorum.

  So when the comtech saw an encouraging change on his displays, he offered the news in a cautious tone. “We’re back within range of the Commander’s transmitters. I’ve got a weak locator signal and some telemetry.” Everyone turned toward the comtech as he studied the incoming data. “And he’s alive,” he added at last.

  The words swept away the tension like soap touching water. “Thank God,” Koi said fervently. “Heartbeat and respiration are elevated—,” the comtech went on.

  “Are you paging him?”

  “Auto repeat, every fifteen seconds. It’s on general relay, so you’ll all hear him when I do.”

  Silence returned to the bridge, but it was a new kind: hopeful, anticipatory. The comtech turned up the gain until they could hear Thackery breathing and the grunts of exertion deep in his throat as he moved.

  “Why doesn’t he answer?” Koi demanded plaintively. “Why doesn’t he say something?” The comtech raised his hands in a show of helplessness, and as he did Thackery spoke at last.

  “GABRIEL!” he cried.

  Koi stabbed for her com controls. “Thack! Are you all right?” But there was no answer.

  Thackery’s plan was a thought of greater complexity than he had yet given form to. But at its heart was a strong and simple image, rich in shades of blue and pristine white and smelling of forest.

  Gabriel answered: = You are bound by time just as I am. There is no undoing what has happened.

  A torrent of ideograms, insistently colorful, poured out of Thackery.—Not the past. The present. Not to prevent. To prevail.

  For a long moment, Gabriel did not respond. = Yes. I understand. Will you stop them?

  –I will, Gabriel. I swear I will.

  =Then come to me.

  Ryttn hated being the one to have to say it. She hated the look that she knew she would see on the others’ faces, especially Koi’s. She hated having to follow the Commander’s strange outburst with unwelcome news. But it had to be said, nonetheless. “I mark a change in Dove’s delta vee,” she said with effort. “She’s no longer decelerating—holding at four percent, zero slope. I read normal displacement mass only—no AVLO field. No p
ower generation.”

  Emotionlessly, Koi nodded acknowledgment. “Come on, Thack,” she urged. “Come back on and tell us what’s happening.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to answer,” the comtech said slowly, sitting back from his station. “I’ve lost the Commander’s biotelemetry.”

  “That could be anything—”

  The comtech shook his head, his expression pained. “I’m still receiving telemetry from the suit.” He swallowed hard. “The environmental monitor suit just reported a sudden drop in internal pressure.”

  Refusing to credit the comtech’s pessimism, Koi prolonged the pursuit. Munin paced Dove until, five hours later, deflected by the gravity of the largest planet, the derelict slipped into the gravity well of the massive blood-red star and dove inward toward its seething surface.

  “Commander—with that much velocity, there’ll be a major flare, and probably some X-ray activity when she hits,” Joel Nunn said gently. “We shouldn’t hang around.”

  It was the use of the title as much as anything that forced the truth on Koi. “All right.”

  “Where to, sir?”

  Koi was slow to answer. “I don’t know. Poll the crew and see if there’s any strong sentiment against going back to A-Cyg.” Then she bowed her head and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, Merry,” she whispered plaintively. “Good-bye.”

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  Monody and Monition

  Sunlight from a familiar yellow star warmed his naked body. Hot white sand scorched his feet, and the roar of the surf and the pungent salt smell curled his mouth into a grin. He was home, and he reveled in the thought for a long moment. Then he remembered why, and the grin faded.