Watson, Ian - SSC
Page 20
ence that way. We’ll be most interested to learn his tricks when we strip him down again, and the little Swedish witch has her mind peeled to yield up her memory imprint of that bit of fractured mind she fell in love with. We’ll have the full picture then.”
Habib’s eyes met Mara’s urgently, begging her to believe him, not Boyd. Her own mind swam with doubts. Had that only been a simulacrum of Habib she had met in there, and all the symbols telling her of how the universe was nothing, only lies—part of a cheap trick?
No—he couldn’t have contrived it; couldn't have invented a whole alien presence, a viewpoint that reversed the universe! It had to be real!
Boyd was still talking.
“The most important thing of all to know is how Habib did this thing. I don’t just mean from the security angle. Once we know how the noncausal force operates in conjunction with the universe of cause and effect, given a stretch of luck we can discover how to build a noncausal stardrive. I feel it in my bones. Imagine instantaneous travel, Captain—the power, the expansion, the control! Imagine the whole galaxy in our back yard—and all the other galaxies!”
Lodwy Rinehart could imagine. Still, one thing puzzled him.
“Why did the Hole act up, just then? It’s stabilized now. But it expanded by two or three percent in a matter of minutes. If I remember my physics, that should require the swallowing of something of the order of a whole sun—”
“We’ll know all about it when we analyze the data, but if you want my snap judgment on that, just remember we were tampering with noncausal forces there, at their physical interface with the causal universe. You can take it as an indicator of the kind of power we’ll be able to tap ...”
They played more tapes, but the poetry degenerated into a verbal mishmash—a semantic white noise that sounded like the very entropy of language itself, except where occasional words and phrases came through, treacherously, twisted out of context.
What Boyd was saying about Habib’s “Plot” had to be the maddest fantasy. Perhaps he could be right about harnessing the energy of the void. But he didn’t understand the danger. She had known what the danger was, as the alien mind dilated to receive her. They might build themselves a machine that would wreck matter and reality itself, instead of a stardrive. But for all she cared, they could wreck the whole galaxy of stars. Her sex ached so fiercely, and her soul . . .
“Incidentally, Boyd,” the captain inquired casually, “what would have happened if you’d sent Habib in there as medium, with his little witch riding him? Do you suppose he’d have sacrificed her to escape?”
“It’s not true, Mara,” cried Habib. “They are mad, not us. They can’t stand the knowledge that all is based on illusion in the universe!” However, he began to giggle stupidly, because the effort of subterfuge—or the effort of explanation—was too much for him (since she knew anyway). It was one of the two, but which?
Boyd glanced at her ironically, as Nielstrom slipped a sedative needle into Habib’s arm.
“I imagine he was pretty desperate, sir.”
“No!” moaned Mara. “It isn’t true. You don’t know anything.”
It wasn’t you in there, Habib. It was Him. Though I could share with you. He was big enough, my Lover.
They’re celebrating in the lounge. Fat Ohashi. The Prussian. The Chicano. Boyd and Nielstrom. Rinehart has spliced the mainbrace in true old Navy style, as we race away from the Black Hole and away from . . . love.
The autopsy on my love will be starting soon; the unpeeling of my mind; the final rape.
What shall I do, Habib? Kill myself?
For I’ve known an inch of loveliness. And an inch is all I’ll ever be allowed to know of loveliness.
Little witch.
Big nightmare.