He was deep into the mountains. The sun was almost at the zenith and its sombre, fiery glare suffused sky and land in crimson and mauve and indigo and black. Hasub was not a bright world. (How would it be to live in the light of that other star?) It seemed perpetually on the brink of a cosmic cataclysm. Perhaps that was closer than anyone realized.
There, on his right, was the cabin, standing near the edge of a small lake like a mirror of sparkling fire. Noss’s airship was behind the cabin. Noss himself was sitting on their boat, idly throwing stones into the water, and watching the approach of Simde’s craft.
Simde landed beside the other airship and, alighting, went to meet his friend.
Noss skimmed a stone over the smooth surface of the lake and said, ‘I knew you’d come, Simde.’
* * * *
Three
It was warm enough to sit on the terrace. Irah and Atira, in their deep, fibre chairs, looked elegant and beautiful. The hills formed a wide curve behind the house. The sun was high and, below them, the tall, feather-like trees, pregnant with many birds and insects, swayed in the soft breeze. Beyond lay the plains.
‘You must have known for a long time.’
Atira continued to gaze at the view, although Irah’s tension brushed her like static electricity.
‘Yes. You could hardly help but notice that our social intercourse had fallen away to nothing. I couldn’t risk my family or myself being tainted. You understand.’
She looked at Irah; her head was down and her long hair hid her face.
‘Why did you do it, Irah? You are young, beautiful, loved, with everything you want, perhaps two hundred years of life ahead of you.’
‘Noss made me feel old!’
The bitterness of the revelation shocked Atira.
‘I should never have joined with him.’
‘No, you shouldn’t. Simde and I, and many others, always thought that. Noss was much older than you. Maybe he saw in you his last chance for a glimpse of immortality and you couldn’t give him even that.’
Irah’s great green eyes stared at Atira, disbelieving her words and tone, and her lips were drawn back over her gaudily-stained gums. Her breast, normally always flat in adult females, distended with her tremulous breathing.
Atira had never spoken to Irah in this way before, preferring not to interfere, guiding and advising the younger woman whenever possible. But now she pressed on, determined to make Irah realize the enormity of her fall, before society inevitably did so. It might help to ease the impact of what was to come.
‘Noss did everything he could to make you happy—’
‘That’s part of what went wrong. Our whole life together was minutely planned and calculated. I couldn’t bear it all the time. I had to get release somehow.’
She was appealing to Atira as a woman and that drew a response. However, Atira was also a wife and a mother and a devoted friend of Noss.
‘You knew all that before you joined.’
Irah pulled her hair with a distraught hand and said in a low voice, ‘I admit that, Atira. Only, once I knew that I would have to live with it, all the time - I wasn’t strong enough.’
‘But you were devious enough, and thoughtless enough, to endanger Noss.’
Irah was crying quietly and the tears clung to her fine facial pelt like early morning dew.
‘How serious is it with Noss?’
‘The healer wouldn’t say, but I knew from his manner that it must be very bad. Noss knew, too. What am I to do, Atira?’
* * * *
The sound of an airship, coming this way, reached their ears.
Atira went to her and held her. ‘Wait. Simde has gone to find Noss, at the lake, I suspect. He must go for treatment. And you must identify those with whom you’ve been joining. The healers will find out what drugs they have been taking to by-pass their sex-sublimation centre and that knowledge might help to save Noss.’
The airship was recognizable, now. The Custodians. Irah clung to the older woman.
‘We’ll do all we can for you.’
The airship landed at the end of the terrace and one of the two Custodians, in his smart, effacing tunic, jumped out and came to them.
He acknowledged the women and said: ‘Irah Sidl.’
‘I’m ready, Custodian.’ Irah raised her head high.
They held hands briefly, then Irah went to the airship. Atira watched until it was out of sight. Then she, too, cried. It had begun.
* * * *
Four
Noss rowed steadily, with economical strokes, until they were in the middle of the lake and he let the boat drift.
‘I do this often, when I’m here alone. It keeps me in touch with the real world. Mountains, trees, birds, animals, clean air, silence. And the knowledge that I just have to tip the boat too far over and I would take my true place in the scheme of nature.’
Simde, the sunlight beating down on his face, let Noss talk on without interruption.
‘I kept deluding myself that Irah was contented although I think I knew from the beginning that our joining was a mistake. But people will clutch at any chance when they see life passing them by, and I was no different. Probably sillier than most. I was born to be alone and lonely. I think if you hadn’t come, Simde—’
He gestured to the water.
‘You knew I’d come. You said it yourself. And things might not be as serious as they seem. We have to go back and take you for treatment. The advances in technique—’
Noss was shaking his head.
‘It’s too far gone, Simde. I can feel it. Who knows how long it has been here, inside me, killing me relentlessly and efficiently, only now bursting into the open? I’m like a fruit, rotting from the inside. I’m coming back, Simde. But not to go for treatment; to complete the project. I’ve seen it this far and I’m not going to let it fail now.’
‘The healer says you’ll have to go for treatment.’
Noss began rowing towards the cabin.
‘It’s my life, what’s left, and I can do with it as I want. And what I want is the success of the project. That planet won’t wait.’
Noss let the oars rest. ‘We’d better change places, Simde. I don’t want to stop too soon.’
He smiled, but there was no humour in it. Simde rowed savagely, his heart in turmoil. Noss sat silently, letting the essence of the world permeate his being.
When they were back on the beach, beside the airships, Simde said, ‘You can come back to the project provided you at least go and see the healer. That’s reasonable, surely?’
‘It is, Simde. I’ll see you tomorrow sometime. I take it Remlin Dor is doing all that’s required in my absence?’
As he entered his airship, Simde said, ‘Need you ask? You trained him yourself. Till tomorrow.’
* * * *
Five
Simde was always thrilled and excited by the view from orbit. Hasub spun slowly, a thousand miles below. The three continents were caught between the glittering jaws of the encroaching polar ice.
The eight families who were to make the journey were gathered together in the space ship, trailing on the end of its crystal cord, five hundred miles behind the wheel, like an afterthought. They were having another session with the psycho-food plant, after having had the rigorous mandatory check by the healers on Hasub.
The ship consisted of three parts, two five hundred foot spheres and a cylinder of the same length, with inter-connecting tubes all held together by framework. Overall, it was 1,700 feet long. The first sphere contained the food plant and the hibernation cubicles, while the second provided all other facilities for the travellers. The propulsion units were in the cylinder.
The food plant was a triumph of psycho-botanical engineering by Neri Falrac and her team. The problem had been three-fold. First of all, a food plant had to be induced to grow and flourish in conditions of virtual zero gravity. Initially, Neri had experimented with speeds of, or near, one gravity, and had found that the plants died.
It was found that the compression of the soil against the wall of the sphere was too severe, preventing the growth of the genetically-redesigned plants. On Hasub, plants sent roots very deep into the ground. In a 500-ft. sphere, that was impossible. It was Noss who had suggested a thirty-one day rotation of the sphere. That had worked. The plant was in globular form suspended in a network of tendrils. The position and direction of each tendril was calculated for maximum efficiency and access. The complications posed by the provision of the equivalent of the radiation and light strength of an M-type star had been solved.
The third problem was the inducement into the plant of sufficient capacity and resilience to enable it to sustain the abnormally large number of symbiotes. Each person’s psycho-pattern had to be tuned into the plant’s system and the bond regularly reinforced. Assimilation and disposal of even the small amounts of Hasubian body waste provided another difficulty, but dedication and, often, inspiration bordering on genius, had brought solutions.
Neri, her plain, pleasant face smiling, looked into the common room and said, ‘Your turn, Simde.’
He went with the botanist, leaving Atira and the cubs watching the manoeuvres of the fabricators as they unloaded parts for the space ship from a service shuttle.
Neri and Simde made the transition from one gravity to virtual weightlessness and entered the plant chamber. Simde had never quite become used to this experience. They went carefully along the catwalk and strapped themselves into the harnesses grouped around the plant globule at the centre. Simde, as advised by Neri, took a short time to relax and accustom himself to the conditions. Once every six days was enough of this, in weightlessness.
When he was ready, he gently inserted the appropriate digits into the resilient flesh of the food plant. Immediately he was aware of warm surges of soft, friendly greenness filtering into his mind, like water finding its way along runnels in sand. This plant had accepted him at and from the first contact and the bonding was mutually beneficial. Food plants were akin to Hasubians in one respect: their minds were unique. Perhaps comparison was valueless here, as the ship’s plant was the first to be exposed to multiple bonding on such a large scale. Simde always left the bonding feeling refreshed.
But this occasion was different. Suddenly Simde’s mind was submerged by a green tide of unexpected force. He sent out a soundless cry for help. Neri, who was monitoring the bonding, quickly bonded with the plant herself and contrived to draw off some of the power. Almost at once, the plant responded and the pressure on Simde lessened and faded, to be replaced by the normal emanations, overlaid by what Simde could only think of as contrition.
‘Break the bonding gently, Simde,’ Neri said and he complied, sagging in the harness.
Neri broke her own bonding after a few minutes and blew gustily in relief.
‘Let’s go to my office.’
Once there, Simde asked, ‘What happened?’
‘The plant is hyper-sensitive, because of multiple-bonding, and I think it probed your mind to a deeper level than usual. As you know, contact is more of a “layering” than a penetration. Your tension over Noss must have opened you up and the plant poured in. It didn’t mean any harm. Rather the reverse. You’ll discover that for yourself at the next bonding.’
Atesor Seldolf, the ship’s psycho-botanist, was going to be fully occupied on the voyage, but Neri kept the thought to herself. Simde had more than enough to contend with at present.
The bonding had upset Simde and he said, ‘Are you sure that it’s nothing more than that, Neri? Is the plant dangerous, in any way?’
‘No. And I can say that, knowing how vital it is to the survival of you and the others. This plant is unique. It’s the culmination of years of research and we have to expect that it will be different - but not dangerously so - from ordinary plants. After today, I think you’ll have to get used to a more intense contact during bonding. You can adapt yourself to that.’
Reassured, Simde returned to the common room. Atira picked up some of his residual tension but she was discreet enough not to question him. She and the cubs were returning to Hasub, while Simde was going to the wheel. They went with him to the airlock where he put on a suit. Then, from an observation window, they saw him enter a small enclosed robot rocket sled and prepare to ride the crystal cord. He waved to them and set out for the wheel, five hundred miles ahead of the space ship.
* * * *
The sled accelerated and soon the ship was falling behind. He put out the interior light. There, off on the starboard side, hung the shimmering tendril of crystal. All his life, he had watched the wheel and the crystal cord grow.
The sleds usually had a few occupants aboard, service engineers, fabricators and so on, but not on this occasion. As the ship dwindled, he was alone with his doubts, his fears, his insignificance when measured against the immensity of the venture now so near to starting. He couldn’t leave Atira and the cubs behind. But was he right to risk their lives? Anything could go wrong and they would all be doomed. He looked out at space, with its multitude of stars, as if seeking an answer, and finding no solace in those coldly burning shards of light.
He found his thoughts of the project being continually misted by the images of Noss and Irah and the trouble they were in. He didn’t know how it was going to be resolved. Noss had always been such a predictable man. But illness, and betrayal, could change people. At a time when he couldn’t afford to be, Simde was irritated and worried by his inability to help Noss.
He noticed that he was drifting away from the cord. He checked the simple instruments of the sled. The controls weren’t responding. He mastered an incipient surge of panic. Then the motor cut out. The sled was gradually slipping farther away from the lifeline. Immediately, Simde sent out a distress call and this was answered by the radio man on the station in orbit near the wheel. The transmission crackled.
‘It’s flare activity,’ the man explained. ‘We’ll send another sled out from the ship to take you in tow.’
‘Have I time to reach the wheel? I don’t relish getting caught out here during a flare eruption.’
‘There’s no actual flare in progress, Simde Yorea. But due to the increased frequency in the past year, the level of radiation around Hasub is much higher than normal.’
For a time, Simde was occupied in providing readings and measurements to enable the other sled to find him. And then silence. Simde had put on the interior light at the beginning of the emergency and now he put it off again. He felt as if he were under the sea. Diving was one of his pleasures. Until the other sled turned up, apart from a regular signal, his time was his own. Leisure was something he had come to cherish recently, so little did he get of it. The circumstances could have been better. And Atira would be worried, although she would have been told of the breakdown.
Eventually his sled was found and taken in tow and he continued his journey to the wheel. With nothing else to do, he contemplated the great annular crystal expanding in the sky. The half segment in sunlight glowed with a subdued cyclamen colour. As it rotated like a dream in motion, sporadic sparks of scarlet fire flashed, as if it were an anvil being struck by a hammer of light. The space station, containing workshops and other facilities, orbited nearby.
A service shuttle had docked at the station just ahead of the sleds. Two engineers took the faulty sled to the workshops. Simde thanked his rescuer, then, when he reached the radio room, the operator who had connected him with Hasub. After he’d spoken to Atira, he went to the station commander’s office and was surprised to see Noss there. He looked ill. His expression prevented Simde from commenting. Simde greeted the commander, Jaay Hucogum, a life-long friend.
‘This lazy existence up here must agree with you, Jaay,’ Simde smiled, nudging the commander’s paunch.
‘It does - except when it’s disrupted by people trying to sneak off with sleds. I’ll be as interested as you are to find out what went wrong. As you know, maintenance is very regular and strict.’
Si
mde set him at ease. ‘Not everything can be accounted for. Don’t worry.’
He turned to Noss. ‘What brings you up to the wheel, Noss?’
‘An inspection of the electro-magnets. I’m going over now to look at them. Do you want to come?’
Simde sensed the urgency in Noss’s apparently casual invitation, and the commander said that his business could wait, so Simde and Noss returned to the hub and boarded a sled. They headed for the crystal wheel. Simde guided the sled to the hub. The crystal was magical, every conceivable hue and tint and shade ensnared in its sparkling surfaces. As they proceeded along an access tunnel, they would find themselves stepping into a blinding copper and saffron pool or drawn into a terrifying hole of sable and greenish-purple. Nothing seemed real.
New Writings in SF 29 - [Anthology] Page 14