“Nice place,” said Laura.
“Thank you.”
There were a wealth of plants about as well, some alien, all colorful in a blend that settled well on the eye. An aquarium bubbled in the corner, wherein peculiar creatures swam or crawled languidly.
“We’ve been diverted,” Laura said finally. “Diverted to Earth.”
Zarpfrin took off his glasses, his eyes wide and excited.
“The Starbow is here, then?” he said. “But how could it get past all our sensors? I’ve received no reports. I’m not surprised to see you got through—you’ve got your blip-ship. But the Starbow?”
“It’s … ” She was going to say out on the plane of the ecliptic past Pluto, but instead decided to try a lie. “ … far away, in Underspace, waiting for me.”
Falsehood! said her voice within.
And it touched her gently with its anti-Zernin drug.
Laura went white. She clutched at the material of the couch.
The attack stopped.
Zarpfrin nodded. “The very fact that you are here attests to the value of the implant, Laura. Why you think you need to attempt to lead me astray, I don’t know. But I presume that the Starbow is waiting for you somewhere out past our sensor range. We’ll get to hard details later. For now, I’d like to hear about how our departed Friend Chivon Lasster is doing.”
Laura let out a breath, slow and easy, regaining control over herself.
“A real thorn in your side, huh, Zarpfrin?” she said stiffly.
“That’s right,” Zarpfrin returned. “I am in a very uncomfortable position now with the Council of Five because of her. They are looking a little too closely into my activities of late. Oh, nothing to worry about, and once I’ve succeeded in either destroying or capturing the Starbow—the latter preferred, of course, though the former will do—everything will fall into place quite nicely.”
Laura smiled grimly. “They know about your deals with the Jaxdron?” she said spitefully.
That clearly shook him, though he tried to hide it. “Deals with the Jaxdron? Is that Zernin rotting your brains, Laura?”
“As to your first question, she’s just fine. I think she, feels better about everything, Zarpfrin, as a matter of fact. Yep, old Chivon likes it on the Starbow, hooked up with folks fighting the likes of you! As to the second question, Northern and his crew have begun to smell something rotten in this whole situation. They’ve figured out, Zarpfrin, that you and your Council—or is it just you?—have got some sort of treaty with these alien monsters to scarify the Free Worlds so they come running to Big Daddy for help. But then Big Daddy smothers them with his love … drags them back into the fold.”
Zarpfrin watched her expressionlessly. “Yes. Go on,” he encouraged.
“That’s it. They just put their heads together, Lasster and Northern and Mish, and they came up with that.”
“A deal with the Jaxdron.”
“Yeah. But what they can’t figure is what those aliens are getting out of all this. And they can’t figure out why all the charades with my brother!” Her eyes got fierce. “Something to do with Omega Space, though everything now seems to center on Omega Space. Closest we can figure is that you want to make sure that nobody gets hold of Omega Space secrets, ‘cause you want everything to be nice and cozy here in the Federation, no more expansion until we’re ready to fight the Big Guys out there.”
Zarpfrin nodded, scratching his nose.
“This is what I hear. I’m reporting to you, just like I’ve got to, and I’m not telling a lie, or I’d be on the floor now, right?”
“Interesting,” said Zarpfrin.
“You bet it’s interesting. It’s diabolical is what it is.”
“Delightful imaginations your companions have, “Zarpfrin said in a monotone.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Laura said, triumphantly. “We’ve figured you out!”
“You flatter yourself. But I need not discuss these matters with you, who after all, are in my employ which presumably the others do not know?”
“That’s true,” Laura said, looking down.
“Excellent. Then it can all be tightly wound up right now!”
Laura said, “What do you mean?”
Zarpfrin was looking for something on his desk.
“Ah-ha!” he said, reaching forward and picking up a data pad. “I thought you’d be interested in seeing this, Laura.”
Her hand trembled as she took the pad. “See what?”
“I’ve been doing a bit more digging into the records we have on both you and Cal Shemzak. I always thought there was something peculiar about a flesh pair in a Growschool together. We do try to weed them out, you know.”
“So?”
“So, I went back and looked over the records of your parents, Laura. And of Cal’s.”
“You know who our parents are?” The thought made her excited and frightened at the same time, and she wasn’t sure why.
“That’s right. Of course, I can’t divulge that information. Top secret. But I can give you a little tidbit that should interest you.” He leaned over and snatched the pad away. “You and this beloved brother of yours really aren’t siblings.”
Laura blinked. “What?”
“Apparently, Cal Shemzak has been good with complex systems, programming, games—that sort of thing—since he was a child.”
“Yeah. A real whiz. Always was.”
“So, he managed to access the records. He changed them to make them look like you two were genetically related, no doubt because of some sort of romantic idea he got into his head. Then he showed you that record, said he’d found out on the sly … but you had to keep it a secret, because otherwise the authorities would separate you. This is what you did, and you didn’t announce to everyone that you were brother and sister until you were both slotted in vocations. Is this not true?”
“Yeah.” She looked at the readout. She was stunned. “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Why do you care?”
“I’m just trying to show you that I’m not the only person who has manipulated you, Laura. I just want to help reorient, shall we say, your priorities!”
“How do I know you didn’t fix this up especially for me? You’ve got the power to.”
“You can check up on it in any way you like, Laura. There’s been no tampering with the records other than that done by Cal.”
Laura shook her head. She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. She laughed. She guffawed. She whooped and almost fell over.
“What’s wrong with you?” said Zarpfrin. “Are you having some kind of attack?”
“No,” she said, her eyes teary. “No, I just think it’s pretty goddamned funny, that’s all.”
“Funny? I don’t understand? You risk your life, you betray your government, you go against all that has ever been taught you, and you rebel against what is good for the wellbeing of your self and the collective of humankind … all for the sake of a man whose relationship with you is a lie?”
“You don’t understand, Zarpfrin.”
“I guess! Don’t.”
“I’d do it again.” She shook her head, recovering. “Well, goddamn that Cal, anyway. I’m going to kick his butt once I save it.” She fixed Zarpfrin with a stare. “You see, it doesn’t make any difference. I just love the guy, and he loves me. Love, Zarpfrin. I guess you wouldn’t understand love at all, would you?”
“An aberration,” said Zarpfrin. “A foolish tributary in human development, best ignored for the benefit of all.”
“Yeah, well, I love Cal Shemzak or whatever his name is, and he must love me to want to be my brother.”
“You two can certainly be reunited. I have made my promise on that item, and it will certainly be in the Federation interest, since you’re both valuable in many areas.” He paused and tapped h
is fingers gently on the desk. “However, Laura, let us get down to the real business. First, why have you come to Earth? And second, what is the exact location of the Starbow? I assure you that if they surrender peacefully, no harm will come to its captain and its crew.”
“I don’t understand. First you want me to just spy on them … now you want them.”
“Time and situations change, Laura.”
“Well, as to the first, I’m here to pick up some ghosts.” She smiled. It was the truth, and therefore her voice didn’t punish her.
“What?”
“That’s right … and as to the second … ”
She paused for a moment, looked across the desk at this pudgy little twit, and thought about what a contemptible piece of refuse he was. She thought about Cal, but more, she thought about the Starbow, about Mish, about Gemma Naquist and Dansen Jitt, and most of all, about Captain Tars Northern. About what they were trying to do in this galaxy amongst human beings and aliens who sought to tyrannize mankind.
And she realized, then, that there was something stronger than Zernin inside her.
She loved them.
She couldn’t betray them any longer.
She felt the power of that feeling building … and there was another feeling, a darker feeling, building right along with it.
Hatred.
“As for the other information, Zarpfrin,” she snarled, “you can go search for it in Hell!”
She flung herself across the desk, her hands reaching out for his throat.
Chapter Twelve
Cal could feel the difference immediately throughout his entire physical and mental being as he jumped through the portal between normal space and Omega Space.
Cold.
A raw chill swept through him like a power surge, as though his very flesh realized that it had entered alien territory.
He looked back through the portal to the dimension he had left. The servo-robots were pounding upon poor Wilkins, who had already lost an arm and appeared about ready to topple for good.
Now, if he could just close the thing ….
He directed his mind back, renewing his contact with the matrix … and realized that the hump on his back was going crazy, its lights blinking frantically, its humming raised in pitch, its throbbing increased. It sounded as though the damned thing was about to blow!
He disregarded it, concentrating instead on his contact. He grabbed hold of it, willed the aperture to close … but it seemed to be stuck! It wouldn’t budge ….
The robots were headed this way, he realized. Any second they would come hurling after him into Omega Space. He had to do something quick, and immediately realized what that had to be.
He let his mind go blank, severing the connection ….
The portal began to shrink. The first robot leaped, but got caught as the hole grew inexorably smaller and smaller, cutting the thing in half at the trunk.
Its head and upper torso were trapped in Omega Space. They rattled onto the weird, pebbly ground, sparking for a moment and then dying with a sputter, eyes fading from red to black.
His hump abruptly ceased its fretting and became still and lifeless.
All that remained of the hole was a point suspended in the air … a flat point. And the curious thing was that though it appeared flat and round, about five meters in diameter, from his vantage point, it appeared so from every viewpoint, even though it was not a sphere. A truly two-dimensional point, thought Cal Shemzak, awed. What other kind of anomalies existed in this place?
He wheeled slowly around, examining his surroundings.
He stood on a slightly rolling plain, with jagged mountains on every horizon, as though he was on the bottom of some broken bowl. The sky was a muted swath of violets, magenta, and turquoise: a Van Gogh painting, amazingly stretched out. Though parts of it were pitch black, no stars were visible. The ground was barren of vegetation, a brown expanse of sometimes gravelly, sometimes flat-packed soil.
It didn’t look real good, thought Cal Shemzak, wondering if maybe he should just try to get back into Jaxdronville and forget this mess, give them this stupid place for whatever the hell they wanted it for, and maybe get shipped back home.
He could starve out here.
But this conclusion was a bit premature, he realized. He should explore before he made any rash decisions. So, with the largest rocks he could find—which weren’t very big—he built a ramshackle cairn below the remainder of the portal, to make it easier to find when he returned.
Yes, when, he thought, not if.
When the pile of rocks was big enough to see from a distance, he turned his attention to which way to go. Each direction, at first, seemed equally good—or as bleakly bad. But as he stood in this very alien plain composed of equal parts mystery and boredom, a prickling at the back of his mind made him want to go to his right—an intuition? a hunch? a guess? he wondered—and with no conscious decision made, his feet just struck out in that direction, seemingly of their own volition.
For what seemed a long time he just wandered through this emptiness, wondering what the hell he was doing there and why the hell the Jaxdron wanted to get in so bad.
Kind of anticlimactic, he thought. The wonderfully vaunted Omega Space is really nothing more than a gravel pit.
But that, as Cal slowly discovered, was not true. As he walked farther, he slowly came to the realization that the mountains (or hills or piece of pottery or what ever they were) weren’t getting any closer! He turned around, scratching his head, looking back in the direction in which he had come.
He snorted with shock. His cairn looked as though it was perhaps a hundred meters distant. But dammit, he knew he’d walked farther than that!
Some kind of optical illusion?
Certainly, this was a place that didn’t obey the physical laws of home … but then, Cal thought, laughing, why should it?
This is somewhere else, entirely. He had to shift gears when thinking about it—shift gears entirely!
He turned around and commenced walking again, casting his mind back over his memory of being the focus of the matrix, remembering the skewed formulations and computations, the slew of variables involved, trying to figure Out if there were any rules here in Omega Space, and if so, what they meant to a solitary traveler.
He was thinking: Just what do I expect to find here, anyway? This is a totally different place, another sort of dimension entirely. This line of thinking led him to the question, just what would I like to find here?
Well, for one thing, he told himself, I could use a drink. I’m getting thirsty, and it is a little warm, even though there appears to be no sun here.
He visualized a nice frosty glass of lemonade—yeah, that would be nice.
Almost immediately, something caught his eye to the right. It was close, constructed of wood, with a sign above it marked LEMONADE. On its counter was a glass pitcher of yellow liquid and ice cubes. Beside this was aplastic tumbler.
He wondered if he was dreaming. But he was still thirsty, so he went up to see if this mirage could be experienced.
He picked up the pitcher, poured, took the glass, drank. It tasted great. It slaked his thirst. He put the glass down. “God,” he said. “Talk about viewer-participant physics!”
From a simple need and concept, somehow reality had been constructed. From just a concept! Still baffled, he looked at the lemonade stand, and said, “You’re just an idea, a concept, a word!”
Then, without even a wink out of existence, nor a woof of air filling in a vacuum, the lemonade stand was no more. In its place was what looked like paper. Paper? Cal had actually played with some for fun once. He leaned over and picked it up.
LEMONADE STAND, it read.
Cal shivered. “What the hell!” he said, and let the paper flutter away. He had to think about this. He wished he had a chair
to rest in awhile … nothing fancy, just something to prop him up. And then he had his chair.
It was a straight-backed wooden chair, with a cushion on its seat. And yet, the chair did not pop out of nowhere, like something conjured with magic. Looking at it, Cal realized that it had always been there—he just hadn’t seen it until he had desired to see it.
For something always came from nothing—because that’s all there really was …
… nothing.
Hmmm. He sat down, crossed his legs, and gave that some thought.
Definitely Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland stuff, he realized. But then, this was Omega Space and he simply could not, after all, apply everyday laws that anchored him and humankind to reality.
So … if Omega Space was a nothingness from which something arose, then it was the very Ground of Being for everything ….
It was the end of the universe …
… and its beginning.
Omega Space, thought Cal Shemzak. Alpha Space, and Omega Space!
No wonder everyone wanted to get here so badly!
When he was very young, he used to think about the idea of the Universe just going on and on and on … and the concept just blew his mind.
But it didn’t go on and on, in time or in space. It ended here. And it started here.
But what exactly was here?
More importantly, what could he do here about getting back home?
Now there was an important question.
He decided to try an experiment. He was hungry, so he decided that he’d like a sandwich. A tuna sandwich.
He got his tuna sandwich, with avocado, cherry tomatoes, and mayonnaise on whole wheat toast. Just the way he liked it. It tasted great. Good enough for starters, he thought.
Now, here we are in a deserted plain … but clearly that’s the way my mind is choosing to see it right now for some subconscious reason … simplicity of metaphor perhaps ….
I wonder, he thought, if I’m the first human being to set foot in this place?
And he knew immediately that he wasn’t.
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