Yuri grinned. “I’d love to see you try. But don’t let me detain you any longer—” He gestured to the hatch.
“Maybe if we—”
“Those are my terms, Bohles. If you go, you go alone.”
I could see he meant it.
The cold seeped into my legs. My suit was fighting off the outside chill, but it was near the end of its reserves.
Pink slabs of ice, gray rock, black sky—and always the thin rasp of my breath, throat raw from coughing. My helmet air was thick and foul. I stumbled along.
My beautiful plan hadn’t worked. The footing was pretty bad, and some of the streambeds were choked with runoff—boulders, gravel, slippery ice ponds. A fusion caterpillar must have passed nearby since the last orbital photos.
So I had spent hours struggling over jumbled terrain. Yuri had listened to my complaining, and offered to call the base. But I was damned if I’d get pulled out of it now, and blow any chance of staying out here. My rating was going to stay high, even if I had to bust ass.
That’s what I kept telling myself.
But for the last few hours the confidence had trickled away. I didn’t want to say anything to Yuri, but things were looking bad to me. If he knew how tired I was, he’d call the base and all my sweat would have been wasted. And beyond that, the little bastard would have the satisfaction of pulling me down with him, even though it was his mistake with the tanks, all because of his stupid—
Gravel slipped under my boot. I lurched, twisting my back. A lance of pain shot through me. A small landslide eroded away my footing. I regained my balance, grabbed at a rock and heaved myself up the steep hillside.
My breath was ragged and I was sweating. I longed to wipe the salty trickles away from my eyes. Just wait a few minutes, I knew, and the suit would evap them. Sure. But the waiting took forever.
I worked my way up the side of what looked like a sand dune. Everything around here was broken and jumbled. The ground slanted the wrong way. I kept my orbital position fix updated, so I knew I was going in the right direction. But the map was useless.
The stones and sand gritted against my boots, slipping away, robbing me of balance and speed. I toiled up the incline, angling across the face of it. A few rocks were perched at the top, sheltering purple patches of snow.
I reached the summit, panting, and looked down.
It was a cube.
I squinted at it. A big slab of ammonia ice had melted further up the ridgeline. The runoff had washed this way, scraping and gouging its path. Where the gully turned, a pile of boulders had collected. At the base of the pile, resting almost flat on the streambed, was—
It moved.
No—there were yellow flecks swimming deep in the milky stone face of it. Turning. Glinting. Catching the wan sunlight and throwing it back at me in intricate patterns.
I frowned. Something—
I stumbled down the raw face of the hill, toward the gully.
The cube was a lattice. It formed frames for shifting lines that were buried deeper. Perspectives moved and formed and swirled and reformed. I squinted at the images, seeking to make sense of them.
They were hard to follow. I looked away, beyond the gully.
A broad swath, cut by recent streams, stretched into the distance. I could make out the bright blue and red of the way station. Its signal phosphor winked yellow. I could reach it within an hour. And there was enough oxy left.
Something drew my eyes back to the thing in the gully.
I felt suddenly cold. A prickly sensation rippled over me.
I peered closer. And saw—
—a vast space of darkness, with firey pinpricks wheeling as they flashed and tumbled and danced, green and blue and orange—
—a thing of quivering lines, plunging out toward me—
—and dissolving into a rhythm of billowy masses, clouds scratching a ruby sky—
—shiny surfaces, flexing bright and slick—
—scribbles in black, then in yellow—
—a running animal, so quick there was only the impression of lightning motion, a flash of brown skin—
—rotting pinks and greens, a stench of age—
—encrusted light—
—hair like snakes—
—explosion—
—I looked away, breathing deeply. Each second a layer shifted deep inside the thing and I saw something, something—
I made myself turn and start downslope. The important thing was to get to the way station. The important thing was the air. The Walker. The job.
I tramped on, my mind swirling with impressions, questions, strange shifting emotions.
I could not help looking back. But I marched on.
—but wait, wait, no—
—just a moment longer, please—
—to feel the first time again, I never suspected—
—oh but—just a short time—so bright—I—no—I—
—ah—
—yes, yes, I suppose I do see. It cannot go on for long, there are other needs, yes, but … Oh yes …
I am sorry. It has taken a few moments for me to recover from the tap. I had not suspected its, its power, and the vivid sense …
Can it be true that our youth is so colored? So gaudy? So purely intense? Without the haze of reflection that experience brings?
In a way, I hope not. I sincerely hope not.
For to go through one’s last days knowing that they were filmed over so, that the true world stretches fine and firm, solid and brilliant, but forever beyond your true grasp … That would be too much.
I now see why the good engineers do not allow widespread use of tap.
And especially, use by ones such as me. As old as me …
But let me return to the subject that draws us together. The Artifact.
We know how it came to be there, of course. My first guess was very nearly correct. For a long time it had been buried in the vast ice fields of Ganymede. Once, long ago, it stood above the surface. But the slow grinding and thrusting of ice-plate tectonics submerged the Artifact. It was not crushed. It withstood enormous pressures.
A fusion caterpillar passed near. Ice melted. A random flow swept the Artifact free. And changed human history, forever.
If you will consult the Historiographers, you will find virtually all early discussion of the Artifact focused on its artistic merit. A curious notion arose: that it was a purely aesthetic construct, a work of art and no more.
I see looks of disbelief. But it is true. In those distant days there was a clear division between Art and Science—two concepts we now know to be mere illusions, and not even simplifying illusions, at that.
The earliest—and clearest—clue was obvious, even from the first: I could take my eyes from it only with difficulty. This proved true of everyone who gazed upon its infinite surfaces.
That constantly emerging, forever raw surface. That was the essential fact. The Artifact is in a sense stonework, and in a sense it is totally artificial, constantly remaking itself into new compounds, new substances, new forms and logics. Each basic unit is neither pyramid nor cube—the two most-often-observed forms when closely inspected—but in fact is a ragged, shifting thing of points and angles. Its molecular structure is dictated by the atomic structure, and that in turn comes welling up out of the particles themselves, as the laws governing them change with time. The electro-weak interaction forms and reforms with spontaneous fresh symmetries, hidden variables. The strong force is awash in the same sea.
Thus the Artifact is at basis a recapitulation of the laws which have governed, do now govern, and will govern, the universe. When the universe was young, the laws were young. We see them, deep within the Artifact. Logic and mathematics can burn bright, living through their brief days. Then they sputter out. From them arises the Phoenix of fresh logic, spontaneously broken symmetries, young particles which spill into the welcoming matrix of a consuming universe.
Inward goes time. Outward comes the layered
, changing order of the world.
Oh, sorry. Those last two sentences are a part of our litany; I was supposed to keep this discussion free of religious reference.
As I said before, you must remember that these recollections, lodged so deep in me, are from a very different time. Ganymede did not churn with winds. Humans could not walk the surface without a suit. Even the mono-layer cap over the top of our air, holding in the precious molecules except where the huge holes permit spacecraft to pass—even this commonplace was not imagined, then.
So the thinkers of that time decided the Artifact was an artistic object. A complex one, granted, but “merely” artistic.
The second generation of thinking about the Artifact discovered it was a scientific relic. The Artifact contains the varying laws of the universe. We know that the electro-weak force, for example, will fade away within three billion years. Then a new force will emerge. New particles. A new form for the relativity theory.
Once men believed that fields created particles. This is so. But there are also things—I hesitate to call them fields—which create laws. The laws of the universe are dictated by these, these entities. And the Artifact is such an entity.
… Or perhaps it is only a record of that entity.
Which leads us to the third view of the Artifact.
Only a decade after the discovery of the Artifact did the effect become apparent. A small community had grown up around the site. Then a town.
No one would willingly move away. No one.
When the city reached a quarter of a million souls, something had to be done. But there was no way to persuade the researchers to leave. Anyone who saw the Artifact felt a magnetic pull toward it. A desire—to embrace, to witness, to watch the infinite interplay of its surfaces, its truths …
So the final truth became apparent. It is a religious object.
And perhaps … well, perhaps it is more. Perhaps it is rightly the object of religion itself.
For it contains the very laws of the universe. Despite the fact that the Artifact is enclosed in the universe, perhaps it is not of the universe.
But perhaps I stray too far into theological theory. Let me return to my role here today, which is not that of a priest—though that I am—but as an historical witness. I should mention the one other interesting event of that distant day.
I reached the way station. Got the oxy, and rescued poor Yuri—who was quite frightened by the time I returned. Not that he ever thanked me, of course.
We marched on, through a series of valleys, and reached the Artifact. Our intention was to study it further, make recordings, and report in full to our base camp.
Something bothered me about the Artifact when I saw it again. You can look up my old faxes. There you will see a curious mottled pattern on the surface. A rippling of light, glinting like mica. Shifting. It formed concentric circles, like a great eye. I noticed that no matter where I stood, the eye was always centered on me. On us.
I stood at a distance, focusing the recorder. Yuri was as rapt as, I. He walked closer.
I was fumbling with the recorder, so I did not see what happened next. He approached the eye, I suppose. When I next glanced up, he was reaching out to touch it. The rings of sparkling light were centered on him.
Then—His hand touched the surface. Joined the surface. And at once was in and of it. He did not move.
Quickly, a wave seemed to pass out of the Artifact. It ran up his arm, changing the dull suit skin to a flashing rainbow of colors, like an alive quartz. The wave washed across his back. Over his helmet. Down into his legs and, finally, to his boots. He was a stony figure, glinting, with moving facets deep inside.
I froze. Slowly, slowly, Yuri leaned forward. He made no sound. Not a word. His arm went into the eye, up to the shoulder. Then his head nodded forward, as if welcoming what was to come. And he was in up to his shoulders. The Artifact drew him in, the barrel chest and waist and then the legs. Finally, as the boots, too, oozed into the eye, I remembered the recorder. I took a stat. It is the only record I have of the event.
I was deeply confused. Perhaps I still am, to this day.
The eye vanished, to be seen no more. The Artifact returned to the guise you see today. Never once in the years since has it given any hint of what it did that day.
How should we think about this event? True, the Artifact swallowed a human being. But when we consider all that it might be, and all that we have learned from its endlessly rippling surface—
Such moral issues I leave to others. Since no other person has been absorbed by the Artifact, the question is rather distant from our researches. Some hold that, since the Artifact may be here to follow the evolution of the universe, or supervise it, then perhaps it merely collected Yuri, stored him for use, as fresh information about the working-cut of the evolutionary laws. Perhaps. Perhaps.
I am not concerned with such speculations. When I remember those antique years, one final outcome irks me. I should confess it, for as a disciple of the Artifact, I cannot speak falsely of it, not even a falsehood of omission.
As you approach the Artifact—now mounted on transparent beams, so all surfaces are visible, and the cameras may record each nuance—there is a small plaque. It is old. It recounts the date I first stumbled upon that fresh gully. Other, later dates are given as well—such as the founding of the Temple and the enactment of the Plentitude. My name appears, as the discoverer.
Each day, as I go to my labors, I pass by that little plaque. My eyes involuntarily rise, past the insignificant mention of my own name. Up, to the enormous statue which looms over the leftmost portal. It is a massive tribute to the Martyr of our following, to the sacrifice exacted by the Artifact.
And gazing at those huge features, accurate right down to the superior smile and the narrow little eyes—gazing at them, I know deep within myself that despite the serenity which should come from the Artifact, and all my years, I still hate the bastard.
The Catharine Wheel
IAN MC DONALD
We can expect any project as vast and long-term as terraforming a planet to evolve its own mythology, legends, and folklore. And, as the evocative and lyrical story that follows suggests, perhaps its own religion as well (appropriate enough, I suppose, since we’re discussing the creation of worlds) … a religion with its own gods, gods who have goals and motivations—and priorities—of Their own …
British author Ian McDonald is an ambitious and daring writer with a wide range and an impressive amount of talent. His first story was published in 1982, and since then he has appeared with some frequency in Interzone, Asimov’s Science Fiction, New Worlds, Zenith, Other Edens, Amazing, and elsewhere. He was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award in 1985, and in 1989 he won the Locus “Best First Novel” Award for his novel Desolation Road. He won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1992 for his novel King of Morning, Queen of Day. His other books include the novels Out on Blue Six and Hearts, Hands and Voices, Terminal Cafe, Sacrifice of Fools, and the acclaimed Evolution’s Shore, and two collections of his short fiction, Empire Dreams and Speaking in Tongues. His most recent book is a new novel, Kirinya, and a chapbook novella Tendeleo’s Story, both sequels to Evolution’s Shore. Born in Manchester, England, in 1960, McDonald has spent most of his life in Northern Ireland, and now lives and works in Belfast. He has a Web site at http://www.lysator.liu.se/∧ununicorn/mcdonald/.
“Come on, lad, come …” you hear a voice call, and, peering through the crowd for its source (so familiar, so familiar) you see him. There: past the sherbet sellers and the raucous pastry hawkers; past the crowds of hopeful Penitential Mendicants and Poor Sisters of Tharsis who press close to the dignitaries’ rostrum; past the psalm-singing Cathars and the vendors of religious curios; there, he is coming for you, Naon Asiim, with hand outstretched. Through steam and smoke and constables wielding shockstaves who try to keep the crowd away from the man of the moment: Here he comes, just for you, your Grandfather, Taam Engineer. You look at your mot
her and father, who swell with pride and say, “Yes, Naon, go on, go with him.” So he takes your hand and leads you up through the pressing, pressing crowd and the people cheer and wave at you but you have no time to wave back or even make out their faces because your head is whirling with the shouts and the music and the cries of the vendors.
The people part before Taam Engineer like grass before the scythe. Now you are on the rostrum beside him and every one of those thousands of thousands of people crushing into the station falls silent as the old man holds up the Summoner for all to see. There is a wonderful quiet for a moment, then a hiss of steam and the chunt-chunt of rumbling wheels and like every last one of those thousands of thousands of people, you let your breath out in a great sigh because out from the pressure-shed doors comes the Greatest of the Great; the fabulous Catharine of Tharsis at the head of the last Aries Express.
Do you see pride in Taam Engineer’s eye, or is that merely the light catching it as he winks to you and quick as a flash throws you into the control cab? He whispers something to you which is lost beneath the cheering and the music, but you hear the note of pride in it, and you think that is just right, for the Class 88 Catharine of Tharsis has never looked as well as she does on this, her final run. The black-and-gold livery of Bethlehem-Ares glows with love and sacred cherry-branches are crossed on the nose above the sun-bright polished relief of the Blessed Lady herself. Well-wishers have stuck holy medals and ikons all over the inside of the cab, too. Looking at them all leads you to realize that the cab is much smaller than you had ever imagined. Then you see the scars where the computer modules have been torn out to make room for a human driver and you remember that all those nights when you lay awake in bed pretending that the thunder of wheels was the Night Mail, the Lady was far away, hauling hundred-car ore trains on the automated run from Iron Hills to Bessemer. Since before you were born, Catharine of Tharsis has been making that slow pull up the kilometer-high Illawarra Bank. You have never seen her as she is today, the pride of Bethlehem-Ares, but your imagination has.
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