The Rape of The Sun

by Ian Wallace

  Arising, they entered. And great doors slid shut behind them.

  Silence between the disembodied upward-watchers on the museum balcony. Then the grating voice-thought of Dhurk: “I have been in there with her. I would follow them in there. Ariel, I insist that you have me follow them in there.”

  “You have been looking at the past,” answered the voice-thought of Collins. “I do not know where they are now. Anyhow, why would you intrude?”

  The Dhurk-voice was dangerous. “I think you have invented this horror. I wish to discover for myself whether you have invented this horror.”

  “Our bodies, you know, are here in your ship off our star. Only our souls are here. But since our souls are already into this past, 1 see no reason why the force of your own mind-soul cannot follow them. You do not need me to spirit you there.”

  We felt the torpedo-departure of Dhurk.

  He was gone during many minutes. Silence from the Collins mind.

  We felt Dhurk’s hot return; his restrained rage was soul-shriveling. “I have seen what I should not have seen,” was the thought that he forced. “Worse, I have seen him see what nobody but myself should ever have seen, and that is a small mole that I know, a mole that I have cherished as hers alone to be mine alone. Ariel, I am clinging to my doubts, you may have ensnared me diabolically with inventions. But even by reading my deep mind, I cannot imagine how you could have discovered that small mole whose existence I have carefully hidden even from myself.

  “And I think it is time for us to return to my ship.”

  Part Eleven

  THE PRICE OF EARTH

  32

  Our minds returned to us in the Mazda salon. I became semi-aware that Bill was with us again. He and Sven and I were blank-staring at each other, not really conscious of each other, possessed by the debacle of the Dhurk-Hréda love. Presently Bill muttered: “Why, that horny old Horn—”

  But Sven was inclined, unexpectedly, to be moderate. “We can’t impose our own morals upon a different species on a different planet. All the inhabitants of Dhom are inbred, it could be said that on Dhom the concept of incest does not exist and would be absurd. The relationship between the Horn and his granddaughter is no different from the earlier one between the Horn and his daughter, her mother—”

  Hostile to him, I snapped, “Sven, you are missing the point. The point is not the incest. There are several points, and they are otherwise. To Dhurk, this was a holy mission; he had pinned his idealism on his knightly worship of the Great Dragon and its two just and merciful vicars the Horn and the high priestess; now they are revealed as unjust, merciless liars, and the meanings of his religious idealism are trembling in his soul. But the all-consuming emotional point for Dhurk is that Hréda was to be his alone, that she had declared her abiding love for him, that he has risked his life and reputation across space and time to bring her our ladiolis as his love-gift, that Hréda and her total self-giving to him had become his life—” I broke off, thinking about Wel who finally and properly had chased me away. Bitter ashes, bitter ashes. . . .

  Out of his cubicle Wel floated toward us, and trailing him was Collins. Alighting on the shell at our level, Wel stood breathing heavy and trembling hard; above him, Collins floated at the no-gravity axis, and Collins was ashen.

  Wel said, ‘The captain is sending for all of us; we must suit up instantly. He turned and hurried aft with Collins following. After a moment, resolutely 1 sprang up and went along. When I arrived, they were partly into their suits; I went for mine, and while donning it I saw that Sven and Bill were here suiting up.

  A voice-roaring resounded through the ship: it was a summons. Our hatch was open, a dragon-face nearly filled a bubble around it. We squeezed ourselves out into the bubble around the head; our hatch doors closed, and the bubble dissolved. The wing-arms of the dragon encircled all five of us; the dragon w'as Rind, and he swam away with us at such velocity that the blue atmosphere drove our heads back.

  He deposited us on the captain’s worktable, then withdrew to a distant wail of the cabin. Captain Dhurk towered above us, his hominid-mantoid face registering profound anguish. He examined us five. Fixing his gaze upon Collins, he said with difficulty (and again wc could understand him perfectly) : “Ariel, I need you for this. Pray perch on my shoulder.**

  Quickly Collins obeyed, launching himself upward. Settling beside the ear of the giant, he told the ear: “Here I am, sir, and by your leave, I am including First Officer Rind in the mutuality of our communion. Pray proceed as you may think best.”

  Dhurk queried: “Which of them is Prospero?”

  “Sir, it is Carr.*’

  “Step forward, Carr.” Wel did so. “Carr, sir—Prospero—it is a rare drama which you have concocted through your Ariel, to overwhelm me with it. Tell me, Carr—at any time, have you deceived me?*’

  Wel found courage to answer, corroborating Collins: “Only at the beginning, sir, when we influenced your dreaming in order to get some of us freed. After that, all has been truth. And I want you to know that it has not been me entirely; it is Collins, your Ariel or your Iago, who has the Sight, who has truly seen what has been transpiring on your Dhorn."

  “And what, pray, may be the difference between Ariel and Iago?”

  “Sir, that is a subtlety of Earth-culture. We need not go into it now.”

  The breathing of the dragon-captain was labored. “In any event, it was well done, Prospero and Ariel or Iago—bitterly well done. Now which of you is Jensen? It is hard for me to tell through your face plates.”

  Sven stepped forward and stood there unflinching. Again I found myself admiring him. Oh hell, why make judgments on emotion? I had loved him for me, then I had depised him for me; but ultimately Sven was Sven, let me now simply admire him. . . .

  “Captain Jensen,” said Dhurk, “I inform you that I am giving consideration to releasing your star and yourselves—at a certain price. If I should release the star, it would be done most gradually, allowing it to fall back into its proper position at a deceleration of one hundred nanometers per second per second, so that its subsidence would not further damage any of your planets. Having released your star and withdrawn its net, we would linger only long enough to neutralize the niedersinken that is anchoring you downward in time. And then we would go away, and we would not return. I respect you, sir. Your comment?”

  Sven’s reply did not immediately come; he was searching for the right one. He said then: “And I respect you, sir, and your officers. And so do all of us. But I think you mentioned a price.”

  Dhurk nodded, then went into abstraction. Out of it, he said dreamily: “A price. Yes. Ariel tells me that all of you shared the witnessing of Hréda’s infidelity. I perfectly understand that Prospero and Ariel between them are capable of having hallucinated all that upon me out of my own mind, even including Hréda’s damned spot. But much that has been festering in my subconscious now emerges to convince me that even if the particular scene in question was deception, there have been similar scenes that make it truth. And so I am convinced, and I must act upon it.

  “You must understand that I could tolerate a lapse by Hréda under the powerful influence of her grandfather—but the circumstances proved that her avowal of love for me was a mockery. This l cannot tolerate. I will not present Hréda with her ladiolis; that is established. It is why I am considering the release of it—for a price.

  “You see, I am a career officer who has been entrusted by the Horn with the task of bringing home this ladiolis. It would be very hard for me to return home as a failure, without the prize. Rather than release your star, I might choose to bring it home, fling it in the face of the Horn and his incestuous mistress my betrothed, and then use my power and prestige to attack the Horn and drive him out of power. That is an enticing alternative. Bringing it off might in the end drive me to use the same disgraceful methods that the Horn used; nevertheless, should you not be willing to pay my price, that is the alternative which I would take.” />
  Sven broke in impatiently: “I keep listening, Captain, and I keep not hearing what your price is.”

  Actually Dhurk smiled, but he was melancholy. “Thank you for reminding me, Captain. But let me lead into it at slightly more length.

  “My long-range view of my home culture, the Horn’s culture, is that it is a dead-end culture, a self-stifling culture. I have just met, and have virtually won, the greatest challenge offerable by that culture. Even if I should overcome the Horn, the best that I could do would be to replace the Horn in that culture—and eventually I would have replaced him anyway.

  “On the other hand, this admirable Ariel has poured into me an image of your Earth’s melange of diversified and often conflicting cultures. I consider the challenge of your technology, so inferior to ours and yet so promising and forward-looking: why look, you might have destroyed us! And it is clear to me that your Earth has not found its way, that its fate is dismally precarious, that the problem of wise and strong leadership is as great as the problem of securing consent to such leadership and the problem of continuing your creative diversity under such leadership.

  “I find in your Earth a greater challenge than any I have known. And in this vein, your Collins has revealed to me, and demonstrated to me, a power that he has which is greater than any he has shown to you. He is able to displace a mind-soul from one living body into another.

  “So we come to my price, Captain Jensen, all of you. I Want the consent of one of you to exchange his mindsoul with mine. That one of you could return to Dhorn with my. ship and my fleet and my brained body and with all my memories and competencies—but entirely himself in his memories and his spirit. He would face the Horn for me, as me, either to win or to lose. And I would return to your planet in his body and with his memories, but entirely myself in memory and spirit, to enter into the curious new circumstances and challenges of your semi-civilized world.

  “This is my price. With that exchange effected, your star can be released by the one of you who consents to donate his body and inherit mine.”

  The astonishing proposal made mincement of our minds. While we tried to pull it all together, it was Wel who responded: “Sir, were you thinking of any particular one among us?”

  Dhurk brooded above us. “It cannot be Ariel,” he said finally, “since it is Ariel who must bring off the trick. It cannot be Cavell, your pardon Cavell, because I would not feel right as a female, and she would not feel right as me. And I fear that your other comrade, the astronomer, would not be right for it either; he is a man of thought, I am a man of action.

  “It does seem to come down to a choice between Jensen and Carr. I urge you not to make a sudden decision; I suggest that you all now go back to your capsule and work it out, while Ariel stays with me. When a decision is made, Ariel will know. I will have my officer return you—”

  He nodded to Rind, who came forward, scooped up the four of us, and swished us back to Mazda. And sealed us in.

  33

  We stood in our salon, four inward-facing comers of an irregular quandrangle. Wel and Sven were appraising each other; my head was down, I was trying to think in an emotional swirl. I kept glancing up at them; Bill was appraising the three of us.

  Abruptly Bill said, “Since I am out of this, I feel that I’m intruding; excuse me if I hit my cubicle. Wel, Sven, since I may never see one of you again—cheers and good hunting, wherever and whoever you may be.” He departed.

  Now my head was up. I was looking back and forth in agony between my two men who were about to decide my own fate as much as their own.

  Suddenly Wel smile-crinkled at Sven and at me. “If ever we needed a drink,” he suggested, “now is when.”

  “Yea verily,” I exclaimed, and I went to the bar while they sat and looked at each other. I made their favorite drinks rather stiff, and mine also. I served the drinks to both of them, restraining myself from stroking each man-face as I served. Then I sat and tried to relax, watching them.

  Having glugged, both of them turned to consider me. I forced myself to sustain it calmly, looking alternately into the eyes of each, trying to give both pairs of eyes equal time.

  Then Wel turned to Sven. “I do think one of us ought to do it.”

  “I quite agree,” said Sven. “Are we also agreed that the stakes for either of us are high?”

  Slowly said Wel, “Figuring highest among those stakes for me—is Hel.”

  “For me too,” Sven told him, “she is highest. But Wel, it was no part of my intention to get rid of you in order to monopolize her.”

  “It wouldn’t have been necessary,” Wel remarked. “At any time when Hel might decide that she wanted you to monopolize her, I would let her go freely.”

  Both looked at me. Probably I was crying; certainly I was dying.

  Sven said, “This might be cruel to her—but perhaps we should let her make the choice.”

  “No!” I cried in panic. “No—”

  “She’s right,” Wel mused. “That would be a dirty thing. What say we flip a coin?”

  “Wait,” Sven commanded. “I want Hel to tell us why she does not want to choose.”

  Good beneficent God, help me through this. . ..

  This is what I was able to bring out. “I love you, Wel. I love you, Sven. Wel, I love you as my friend and my husband, and if it were only a question of deciding which of you should have me exclusively forever, I would choose Wel now, without hesitation, without later regret. But that is not the simple totality of the question, is it? Quite apart from love, and even if you were only two dear friends whom I respected as I do, the question is finally, which of you two is to depart our Earth and Sun forever. Do not ask me to make that decision, I cannot make it.”

  Sven declared: “I think she has already made the choice. It’s settled, then; I’ll do it”

  Impulsively I arose, intending to run to Sven—but Wel's voice stopped me. “By her own specification, she has not made the choice,” Wel insisted, “and she does not want to do so, and I will not permit her to do so. I call again for a coinflip. Who has a Susan B. Anthony dollar?”

  Miserably I fished in a pocket and found one. Why did I have one?”

  “Poise it on your thumb, Hel,” said Sven. “When you flip, don’t catch it, let it roll around on our cylindrical shell, we may have to chase it for hours before it lights. Wel, you call.”

  I recognized his crinkle: it was resignation. Sighing, he uttered symbolically: “Tails.”

  “Meaning,” Sven queried, “that if it comes up tails, you do the switch?”

  Wel said, “Right. Flip, Hel.”

  I sent the coin high, praying. It descended slowly; I was praying in one particular way, as though the decisive uncertainty had cleared my mind for good and all. . ..

  It hit the shell on end, rolled several meters upward and forward, and came to rest. We scrambled for it

  Tails. ‘

  Yelling “No! No!” I catapulted myself upon my husband and went into a babble of hysterical disuasion. He hugged me, held me, calmed me. He whispered poignant things to me that I do not propose to set down here; some of them he had never whispered before, they were soul-fulfilling news to me now that it was too late.

  I subsided in his arms, weeping. It was done. Too late I had learned his meaning for me—and the much lesser meaning of Sven for me. But it was done. I groped for courage to turn on Sven and demand that he go instead; I could not do this, I had already rejected my power of decision. Maybe this was my pay.

  Behind me, Sven: “So now we know how this beautiful triune friendship will terminate. What do you think, Wel? One last drink? I’m buying.”

  “Make it stiller even,” Wel urged. “Probably Dhurk’s body will be sober for me, and I don’t care how mine is for him.”

  Soothing me, loving me, Wel drew me back to my chair and sat me in it and sat on its arm with his arm cradling me while Sven made the drinks and brought them. I couldn’t see mine very well through my tear-blur; an
yway, it was Wel's face that I was trying to see. Yes, his crinkle system was the good loving one. .. .

  Standing, Sven proposed: “What do you say—bottoms up?”

  “What else?” queried Wel, and we drained our drinks.

  Under low gravity, the slumping of Wel was gradual; his body eased off my chair arm, hesitated in midair, arranged itself illogically on the floor.

  When I comprehended that this had happened, I panicked, knelt, bent over him. .. .

  “Worry not, Hel,” came the voice of Sven. “It’s only a heavy sedative that I purloined from Collins; our best buddy will come around in due course, with a hell of a hangover—” I was lifted by my armpits and turned, and Sven was holding me against his body; he embraced me heartily and kissed me fully and released me and considered me fondly while, distraught, I stared at him.

  Sven said to me with deliberation, “I love both of you. Happy days.” Then, lifting his face, he cried out: “Collins, this is Sven Jensen, I’m thinking aloud at you, do you read me?”

  The thought-answer from Collins filled my mind too. He said, “Aye.”

  Sven spoke more quietly. “It’s going to be me, Collins. Whenever you are ready, go ahead and execute.”

  Collins answered: “Ready here. Executing.”

  Horrified, I watched the Jensen eyes glaze and the Jensen body collapse onto the floor not far from the Carr body. And this time I could not move.

  The Jensen body stirred. It began to collect itself. It thrust itself up from the floor, tried to stand, fell, tried again, fell again; it pushed itself up onto hands and knees and twisted its head upward toward me, the face was taut with concentration. And still I was frozen, watching.

  The Jensen voice addressed me—awkwardly, with intonations bad and words most hesitant: “Cavell. I—Dhurk. Your—atmosphere—thin—can not balance—hard breathing—”

  Unexpectedly we were in freefall; the Jensen body floated, rather quickly relearned the freefall self-maneuvering tricks, found hand-anchorage on a chair back, looked at me who had settled myself weakly into a nearby chair. Dhurksven remarked, the words coming rather better: “Good. Jensen in my body, thought I would have trouble, turned off gravity. Or maybe Rind did. Either way, good, I used to freefall, I learn later how to walk with gravity in your thin atmosphere—”