The Rape of The Sun

by Ian Wallace

  We looked apparently forward but actually downward upon a molten mightiness, purple in the blue fluidity because of the red incandescence of its heat: looked upon it, not through a tube extension, but at the edge of a high-domed hole whose dimensions were intuitively incalculable. This was the prime computer plexus; and quite apart from its leviathan size, it was like nothing I had ever known. It must have surrounded entirely the ship’s nose; its coils extended right and left until they began to dip away from us at distances so great that they could be called horizons; angry radiance made the coils difficult to look at, even through the heavily tinted Polaroid of our helmet face plates. Also it gave off sound, or rather, vibration that we felt as sound: high, high, making our eardrums and our jawbones buzz intolerably. No chance of analyzing this wiring intricacy, if it was wiring: aggressively it resisted study, blurring our senses and our minds.

  I told Sven low: “It has to be the Mazda blast. And that may well not be enough.”

  “So how do we get Mazda around that double turn?”

  “We don’t. Remember, Sven, that the booster-thrust can be feathered. We used that technique in our course corrections.”

  “So?”

  “Remember also that once we will have escaped Sun and brought ourselves into earth-orbit, we have the ability to divorce ourselves from the booster.”

  “Jesus, Hel. . . . Well, yeah. Yeah! We could ride the face of the separated booster and use the feather-thrust to get it into and up this tube. And it is short enough to maneuver that double twist—”

  “And if we bring it clear out of the tube into this dome, we can rotate it and present its business end to the plexus—”

  “Objection: we have to free ourselves from it by exploding the tie-bolts, which will make a hell of a racket, apart from sending the booster scooting one way and Mazda the other through bulkheads—”

  “Sven, with all our power equipment, are you unable to disassemble those bolts mechanically?”

  He thought. He said: “It is what we have to do. Let’s go do it.”

  We turned—to find the tube blocked by the body of Kritiker who malevolently eyed us....

  Something brought Dhurk into open-eyed wakefulness. In the darkness, he saw a small glow which seemed to be sitting on his chest. Not moving, he stared at it: the glow resolved itself into a figure resembling the captive creatures whom he had interviewed earlier, except that this one wore no spacesuit.

  Presence of mind was Dhurk’s long suit. He did not speak to the creature, he merely thought at it: “I am awake. Who are you and what is in your heart?”

  “Call me Ariel, or Iago. I am he who earlier interpreted for you.”

  “I would like to sit up, Ariel. Can I do so without throwing you?”

  “Pray sit, good Dhurk. You will not throw me.”

  With intentional violence, Dhurk heaved his torso into a seated position; the small glow simply leaped up off his chest and hovered before his face. Bemused, Dhurk rearranged his pillow, leaned back against it, and queried: “Are you one of those who came in the capusle?”

  “Aye. Equally, I am one of those who will go with the capsule.”

  Dhurk was entranced: “I did not know that you creatures could swim.”

  “We can, but your atmosphere is too thin to be swum by most of us. In my case, that is a negligible concern.”

  “How can you manage without a spacesuit?”

  “How can I mediate between our languages?”

  Dhurk leaned forward; the creature receded, leaving itself just in front of his face. Dhurk queried: “Are you here with some thought of harming me?”

  “Can a mosquito harm an elephant?” Collins had named corresponding Dhorn animals.

  ‘Then why are you here?”

  “To persuade you.”

  “Of what?”

  “That stealing our star is an exercise in triviality.”

  Dhurk leaned back, frowning. “As to the contention of triviality, our operation is a religious tribute, and therefore it may not be called trivial. As to the allegation that we are appropriating your star—are you' saying that you creatures understand what we are doing? You have won our game so soon?”

  Ariel appeared to be listening elsewhere. Then he responded: “I had guessed your purpose. If my comrades had discovered it, would they not be here bragging about it?”

  A small beep sounded, vibrating through the gaseous fluidity of the cabin medium. Dhurk reached behind him, touched a button, and said: “This is the captain.”

  “Kritiker here, sir. I am following the creatures. Do you want reports, or shall I not disturb you?”

  Dhurk frowned, glancing at Ariel. “Report,” he said, “and continue reporting whenever it seems appropriate.”

  “They departed their capsule a while ago and have been moving with precision as though they were looking for something definite. Now they stand in front of the hatch cover to the prime computer plexus. They are evidently trying to figure out how to open it. Over.”

  Dhurk murmured, “Fascinating!”

  “How’s that again, sir?”

  “Never mind. Kritiker, stay with them. If they cannot open the hatch, open it for them.”

  “Sir, I heard you say that if necessary I should open it for them.”

  “Exactly. Then follow them, and report. Out.” Disconnecting, Dhurk turned to Ariel and studied the creature narrowly. “Your comrades are uncommonly prescient, Ariel. Already they have—”

  “I heard it, sir.”

  “Now how in cosmos would they have determined where our prime computer plexus is located?”

  “I am not a technical person—but they have their limited abilities.”

  “Limited indeed, in this case,” dryly Dhurk declared. “They have as much chance of tampering with our computers as they have of moving their star.”

  “You can move our star.”

  “That is a matter of entirely different magnitude. Ariel— why did you call our star appropriation an exercise in triviality?”

  Again Ariel seemed to be listening. He said then: “What I meant was, that it is trivial for you, even though you choose to shroud it with a religious blessing. I think I understand your religion, sir: this operation is a travesty upon its inner meaning, and therefore it is trivial in your terms. For us, it is not at all trivial, it is the life-meanings of four billion people on the star’s third planet. I taste your mind, Captain—and I do not taste it as being cruel or ruthless.”

  This comment troubled Dhurk profoundly, bringing him face to face with the question of conscience which he had tried to avoid. Abruptly he flung himself of! his bunk and began to swim slowly back and forth in his cabin. “You under-stand our religion? How is that possible? Have you gone through our cycles of evolution from the primeval dragon-mantas? Have you understood the process with your intellect and comprehended it within your soul? Can you grasp how we have risen far beyond the primitive mantas who did not choose to evolve, but always under the benign thrust of our Dear Ancestor of Ancestors the Great Dragon who smiles upon us as his Chosen People? Can you perceive how we prayerfully honor the Great Dragon in our robots which do not need handedness, by modeling them in His Image—or rather, in the Image of his lower mantas, He Himself being imageless?” (The capitalizations were inherent in Dhurk’s thought.) “Ariel, Ariel, you are benighted, an alien in darkness: what can you know, what experience can you have, that would allow you to empathize with us and with me in our veneration of the Great Horn who is the Great Dragon’s worldly legate, or to worship in your heart as I worship in my heart the immaculate beauty of Princess Hréda who is High Priestess to the Great Dragon and his worshipful bride in the world? And how would you know that I have been raised from the depths as the betrothed of marvelous Hréda, or that she in her majesty has conferred upon me the holy task of procuring this ladiolis for her temple? Good Ariel. I read into you the best motives, I am tolerant of alien religions when they do not interfere with mine; I intend to interc
ede W'ith Hréda to head off the damnation that should properly fall upon you and your colleagues for having the diabolical audacity to intervene against our purpose—”

  Dhurk became aware that Ariel was staying with him, over to one side of Dhurk’s head. The Dhorner paused and faced the creature: “You are determined to haunt me.”

  “Aye.”

  “What if I should crush you?’*

  “Just for the fun of it, try.”

  Malevolently Dhurk clapped hands upon Ariel; somewhat to Dhurk’s relief, the creature evaded. Dhurk barked: “Why do you haunt me?”

  “I want you to change your purpose and leave us alone here.”

  “I am damned if I see why it matters to you! We are going to bring your star and all its planets to a new place in space, that is all. In your new location, all will go as it went before—with the exception of this one hew thing: that we will honor you. Who now in space honors you?”

  “All will go as before, you say. Except that we will be your subjects. Except that we will be on exhibition for your people to admire and exult over and be amused by.”

  “In the Holy Name of the Great Dragon, yes. Pray tell me what is so terrible about that.”

  Dhurk was noticing again that Ariel occasionally seemed to be listening to something from beyond. Then Ariel answered: “Go to, now: are you not a feudal lord, roaming with freedom your domain, expecting respect from all your peers and all your seniors? Well, so are we: not lords, but people free to live our lives with self-respect. It’s true that some of us go seeking admiration, preening our images to please our publics, performing like zoo animals. But note: we do this of our own free will, my captain, and not coerced by others. Oh my captain, believe that all of our vitality depends on being free to choose our ways; and most of us, being free, choose privacy; we would not be exhibits. Think you, now: if you should carry out this hideous thing, the very essence of our lives is lost; for you will make us all a race of puppets performing antics, wiggled by your fingers.”

  Yes, Dhurk was moved. He regarded Ariel, frowning. . . . Another beep interrupted. Going to the intercom, he connected: “Kritiker?”

  “Yes, Captain. They have come to the prime computer plexus, they stand gazing at it. Now they are talking with each other, I am picking up their radio transmissions; what they are saying means nothing to me, but they appear to be arriving at some decision. Now they are turning, obviously to go back to their capsule; I am blocking them, I need instructions.”

  “Kritiker—could you push them into the complex?”

  “I could, sir. Shall I?”

  A wildness of conflict was making hash of Dhurk’s mind. He came to provisional firmness. “Squinch over, Kritiker, and let them go back. But be on your guard: they have unexpected technical abilities—”

  Static crackled in the intercom. Then silence.

  “Kritiker?”

  Silence.

  “Kritiker—answer me immediately if you can!”

  Silence.

  Dhurk pressed another button: an alarm sounded everywhere on bridge-deck. Voice: “Duty officer here, Captain.” “Emergency!” Dhurk snapped. “Enter the prime computer control tube, capture two creatures from the capsule, bring them to me. Watch out, they are dangerous, Kritiker may be inactivated. Execute. Out.”

  Facing tube-blocking Kritiker, I murmured to Sven: “How would you go about getting her to squinch over?”

  Sven said tautly: “I don’t think she is going to squinch. She is moving toward us a little—”

  It happened so swiftly that I had to size it up afterward. Kritiker slumped, glaze-eyed, deactivated. Sven was pointing his circuit-tracer at her.

  When I caught it, I grated: “God damn you, Sven, you lost your cool!”

  He belted the tracer. “I suppose I did,” he muttered. “I thought she was getting ready to push us back into the plexus.”

  “Too late now,” I uttered. “Let’s go.” Seizing his hand, I drew him to the inert monster who lay transversely blocking the tube; with difficulty and repugnance, I clambered over her with Sven following; then, launching ourselves into the fluid medium, we began to swim downward only to be met near the hatch by armed Kritiker-type robots.

  I snarled at Sven: “Up to now we had their semi-trust Talk your way out of this one!”

  Having issued capture orders, Dhurk swung on Ariel—but Ariel had vanished, and Dhurk remembered that it was dark. He hit the lights: still no Ariel. Controlling himself, he said

  loudly: “Wherever you are, Ariel, I will—” He stopped, frowning. He had been about to damn Ariel as the Dhorn equivalent of a Trojan Horse; but on the other hand, there was a possibility....

  He swim-paced, meditating. Beep from the intercom: “Captain, this is the duty officer; we have them; Kritiker is deactivated, perhaps not permanently.” “Bring them here!” Dhurk repeated; and again he paced while Collins, telepathically contacting Wel, queried: “Did you get that action?”

  “I did. This could blow it. Damn it, I told them to lay off—”

  “However, Prospero, excuse me, you did not explain to them why.”

  “Right you are, Ariel. All right, stay with it; we’ll try to salvage it. But now I do distastefully think that we will have to go to the Iago bit.”

  Sven and I stood arraigned before the captain, two spacesuited mites confronting the dragon. Dhurk calmly bellowed something at us; vainly we twittered back; this time there was no interpretative mediation.

  What eventuated was that Sven and I were thrown into a dark hole the size of a chamber in the Carlsbad caverns. We guessed it was the brig. What we knew for sure was that the life-support systems in our suits had a limited time to go.

  Presently Sven said, “I blew it, I know I blew it. But look, Hel, this is not going to be the end. It isn’t just us, it’s our world. We are going to get out of this and win. I insist that we will—”

  I was in too much agony to answer. Not physical agony, they hadn’t hurt us. But—has it ever happened to you that your god turned out to be less than divine?

  Part Ten

  MACULATE DESDEMONA

  30

  Departing his cabin, Dhurk swam rapidly aft to Mazda, accompanied by both his officers, the robot crew chief, and a small squadron of robots—enough strength, one would think, to quell a human army, let alone Wel and Collins and apathetic bunk-bound Bill.

  At the captain’s direction, the chief robot thrust its head inside our outer entry-hatch door while other robots plastically sealed off the chief and our hatch by creating a bubble from neck to edges; then they exhausted Dhomer atmosphere from the bubble, leaving the head-thrust chief in a vacuum—which didn’t trouble it, since it didn’t, breathe. Now our inner door was opened, and the chief pushed its head fully inside. It reported: “No creatures visible, but I sense that two of them are present.”

  That made four, Dhurk reflected; Ariel was the fifth—and Ariel or Iago might be anywhere. At Dhurk’s orders, the chief removed its head, allowing our inner door to be closed; crewbeings dissolved the plastic seal, and the chief came all the way out*

  “Put in food and drink,” Dhurk ordered, “and block the hatch until further notice.”

  It was done.

  “Where are you, Ariel?”

  “Here, Prospero.”

  “Here? Where?”

  “From the viewpoint of your interests, I am here, with you. Where I may physically be is immaterial.”

  “Sometimes I think that you are immaterial. Ariel, we have decisions to make and actions to do. Are you weary?”

  “Not at all, I am gaining strength.” i

  “Our first priority is to get Helen and Sven out of their airless trouble.”

  “We can start with me working on Dhurk for that. If I fail, the procedures remaining to us are chancy.”

  “Agreed, Ariel. Why don’t you apply your own wits to that one, staying in touch with me; 111 help if it seems needful, but I think you can do it alone.”

&nbs
p; “Thank you, sir; done. So much for the first priority in time-order; but now we must discuss the first priority in importance-order.”

  “Right. And I was hoping that we might bring that off with straightforward and mutually trustful argument between you and Dhurk. But Sven and Helen have blown our reservoir of trust. So our next move has to be drastic—and, I am afraid, repugnant”

  “You mean, the Iago bit?”

  “Precisely. Using, of course, your vision that you have shown to me alone.”

  “You think it will shake him?”

  “If it doesn’t, Earth is dead.”

  “This procedure’ confuses me, sir. See, hitherto I have played Ariel to your Prospero; and that was clear enough. But now you say that in this last recourse, I must play Iago. However, I must again take my lines from you, I do not have them in myself. But Iago gave himself his own lines. Do you see how confused it is for me?”

  “I do see, Collins. You are forcing me into a hole that I did not wish to occupy. But I see that I must. All right, so be it. Still you are Ariel, Collins; but you must conceive that you have transferred allegiance from Prospero to Iago. And I am he.”

  “Understood, Doctor Carr. It can be done. To me, also, it is repugnant; but—agreed.”

  Unable to sleep, the captain went forward to the bridge and checked on progress with the star. His captive luminary was easing along nicely: during hours, it had been urged up to a velocity of eleven centimeters per second and had been moved over by a billionth of its own diameter. At these

  steadily increased accelerations, he would have the star moved by a half-diameter in a few days, after which he could pick up the rate of draw. It was a boring operation, but it seemed to be going smoothly, and he was reluctant to press his luck.

  But wasn’t it Ariel who had recommended the leisurely rate? A boring exercise in trivality. . . . Eh, blasphemy! Wasn’t Ariel allied with these capsule creatures? Hadn’t Ariel been playing for time during which they could do damage? Time for something to happen before their star would be irrevocably committed to movement? What sort of insanity had led Dhurk to listen to Ariel at all? Rapture of solitary space?