by Phillip Mann
When he arrived back at his sleeping cave, Pawl found Laurel deep in conversation with her brother Paris.
“Paris doesn’t want to go. He says he’s been invited to stay on, and that Raleigh’s daughter had arranged to take him on a tour of the whole of the Pocket.”
“Lucky Paris,” said Pawl. “Do you think you can be trusted on your own?”
“No.” Paris grinned.
“Well, we hope to see you back on our Home world for the birth of your niece or nephew.”
Paris’s eyes opened wide and he looked back to Laurel and then back to Pawl and then to Laurel again. “You never told me about that.”
“I was keeping it as a surprise.”
“Well, of course I’ll be back.” The young man looked suddenly cocky. “You never know. We might have more than one surprise.” But he would say no more. He quickly shook Pawl’s hand and then kissed Laurel and ran out of the cave and down to the lake. He dived with a somersault. And as Pawl and Laurel watched him depart they saw him joined by another swimmer in the middle of the lake.
Paris did not know that was the last time he would see his sister alive.
The next morning they arose early and joined with Odin and Raleigh and journeyed up to the Way Gate. The only news that had been received from Pettet and the crew aboard the Lotus was that they were holding course for the new worlds and preparing to make a short jump.
“They’ll be all right,” said Pawl to Raleigh. “Probably having the time of their lives.”
“But I wish I’d insisted and gone with them,” she said. “All the same.”
They moved into the Way Gate proper and made their last goodbyes. “So I’ll expect to see you in about six months,” said Laurel, giving Raleigh a hug.
“We’ll all be there,” said Raleigh.
“Send Peron straight back when he returns,” called Pawl as the Way Gate slid closed.
Alone now, they moved into the Way Chamber and settled on the long silver platform. Pawl helped Odin, gripping him about the waist and lifting him until his sucker could gain purchase on the highly polished surface.
Then the lights began to flicker, dipping from white to violet as the transformation generators took effect.
Within minutes they were on their way.
The next sound that they heard was the refrain of the Paxwax anthem, sung by a welcoming choir.
They had arrived above Pawl’s Homeworld.
12
DEEP IN SPACE IN ELLIOTT’S POCKET
At about the point where Lumb could no longer be seen by the naked eye, Haberjin aligned the bright sun called Candle in the cusp of the transformation generators and set the guidance computers in action. Candle was about 15 lems distant and the jump had to be carefully planned. He wanted to arrive just above the mottled purple planet, Erix. That jump was at the limit of the ship’s capability.
He made sure they were all comfortable and then fired them into a tunnel of blackness. At the end of the darkness lay a point of purple light, which expanded until it filled the entire cabin. When they awoke they found Erix peering through all their windows. Every shiny surface within the cabin glimmered with its mauve light.
The crew climbed from their bunks and peered out at the vast planet.
“Do you know what I think that planet looks like?” said Haberjin. “I think it looks like an eye.”
“Where’s the iris and the pupil?” asked Wystan.
“I didn’t say it was an eye. It just looks like one. The same wetness. The same softness. I mean, an eye outside the body is just a bag of jelly, isn’t it? And it looks so vulnerable. I feel that if we were to land we would cut it open and that purpleness would ooze out and stain everything.”
They looked in silence as the planet slowly turned.
“Can you feel anything down there?” asked Pettet, directing his attention towards Cordoba.
The old woman sat forward with her eyes closed. “Something,” she said. “Not life. Not life as we know it. No, definitely not life.”
“I would like to get closer,” said Tank. “I would like to land and wade in that purple sea.”
“Purple is the colour of poison,” said Wystan. “Purple plants are invariably poisonous. I would like to see what causes that purple.”
“And you, Peron. What do you make of it?”
The scholar studied the planet through slit eyes. “I agree with Haberjin. I think it looks vulnerable. But I don’t think it is. The colour makes me feel sick.”
Pettet nodded. “My feelings exactly. Take us down Haberjin. But with care. Be ready to lift if anything starts to happen.”
The descent was slow. Haberjin experienced some difficulties in the upper atmosphere as a result of fluctuations in the planet’s gravity. The ship behaved like a skittish horse. But eventually they found themselves skimming through the upper pink clouds. They were dense and cloying and slowed the ship.
They sank lower.
Pink became mauve….
Mauve became a clotted purple which pressed all round the ship.
It began to drag them down.
Cordoba screamed and covered her ears, and at that moment the ship tore free of the upper atmosphere. Above them the sky boiled like froth. There was a great gash where they had cut through and, as they watched, it closed like tight-pressed lips above them.
Then the pain began. It began as a dull ache in the mind which quickly grew to a searing, brilliant anguish which spread out via the throat to the arms, chest and legs. They stumbled apart, clawing at themselves.
They hurt till they were numb and then the pain slowly ebbed away, leaving a residue of despair. In that moment, each of them lost something of their store of innocence, and knew it.
They stared down, faces pressed white against windows, and each of them looked at the surface of the planet. Each saw a version of Hell.
Haberjin stared at a rocky desert. It stretched to infinity, bleak and featureless on all sides. There was no life. No possibility of life. No games here. No bright tavern with the laughter of girls at the long day’s end. Just a slow, lonely death. A pointless life followed by a meaningless, insignificant death.
Soon, inevitably, they would crash. The stones would tear through the flimsy ship. The ship would turn cartwheels in the murky air as it came apart.
Why wait? Why not get it over with now. All so pointless. Better oblivion soon and the fine pall of drifting purple sand.
Haberjin reached forward and routinely began to close the doomed ship down. The instrument readouts froze and then faded. The lights in the cabin flickered and died. The fans which wafted air through the ship ran down. An alarm bell sounded briefly and then it too stuttered to silence.
In absolute silence Haberjin sat in the purple gloom and waited for the ship to crash.
Cordoba lay in a pool of her own blood. She wanted to bite as the contractions racked her, but there was nothing to bite. She reached out for loving hands, but there were no loving hands, just a distant, mocking laughter.
An easy birth. Ha! No one had told her that it hurt so much. She wondered what manner of creature it was that lay coiled in her great humped belly. She felt so sweaty and dirty and out of control … wouldn’t someone come to help her? Where was he? Why wasn’t he there with his strong hands, helping.
Between her legs there was darkness and in that darkness she saw her husband, as he laughed and kissed his way into another woman’s heart and body.
Up! She wanted to be up and away. She twisted and flailed with her arms but everywhere she turned he was there. Killing love as easily as you can crush an egg between the palms of your hands. “I hate you, witch-woman,” he murmured.
The words burned her. Burned her mind to flakes of black ash. Burned her throat and her stomach. Burned in her veins. There was no relief. Where could she turn? Hands against ears like doves to stop the voice. And the doves blossomed in flame.
Relentlessly the baby chewed its way from her like a maggot and
departed.
Still her husband laughed….
Wystan stood on a bank above a lake. In the clear depths fat, brown-backed trout nosed the weeds which billowed as the water moved. Wystan was preparing to dive when he saw faint wisps of steam rise from the still surface of the lake.
As he watched the fish flicked with their tails, darting about. They were trying to escape. Something was wrong. One fish turned and drove upwards, breaking the surface and leaping for the sky. It fell back, landing in its own lather. The fish were becoming frantic. They blundered and bit. Large bubbles rose from the lake bed.
Slowly the lake came to the boil.
The fish died and bobbed to the surface, bellies up. The water weed cooked and shrivelled.
The lake became a white cauldron.
The water boiled away. The last beads scurried round the lake bed like insects and then were gone. The stones whitened and cracked. The dead weeds puffed into blue smoke, writhed and were gone. The bones of the fish crisped and broke. Gone. All gone.
A searing whiteness at the end of life. Wystan felt himself fall spread-armed into that whiteness.
Peron heard the march of soldiers. He stood in a library. On the shelves around him were volumes and cubes which contained the entire accumulated wisdom of the human race. He was the defender.
He heard beating at the door. He saw the door blacken with fire. He saw it splinter and split. Soldiers with the faces of wolves burst into the library and began firing. They set the library alight. They tied him by the wrists and suspended him above the pyre of books.
They laughed as he screamed, lifting his legs up to his chest, and then lowered him into the glowing ashes.
Pettet watched himself helplessly as his hand reached out and picked up a blue porcelain vase by one of its lugs. He held it up. So fine was the working that the light revealed patterns where the potter’s fingers had rested. It was a vase for fine aromatic oils: useful and beautiful, the cornerstones of all art.
He took the vase and dropped it down a well. It turned as it fell until it smashed, and the world came to an end in a spatter of broken fragments.
Beautiful objects hold entropy at bay.
Pettet stared at what he had done and felt accursed.
Consider then Tank. Tank saw chaos. A jabber of sparks against blackness. The ghostly flicker of thoughts without form, almost unimaginable.
Then he saw a universe gather and die and gather again and die again … and so on … An interminable round of senseless creation and destruction.
He saw his own pictures march past like playing cards and on into darkness.
He saw a torn bellows. A portrait with a knife in it. A statue with the face eroded to blankness.
He saw these things and was tempted to despair, but still he stared.
About him gathered a sea of bright particles. He reached out and they flowed round his hand. When he tried to seize them they poured away. When he tried to scoop them into piles they collapsed with idiot giggles. Useless. Useless to try and do anything with these.
Tank felt tiredness … but his eyes would not close. Tiredness … but a question formed. Who tore that bellows? What fool would tear a bellows?
The question was funny. It made him laugh. And at the same time it made him sad and angry. And what kind of mind sticks a knife in a portrait? And who allows the sand to destroy the beauty of a face?
There were no answers. Certainly the idiot particles which swarmed round and over his hand were not stirred by the questions. Tank stared and his eyes were grey and unblinking. He stared at the tumbling particles and devoured them with his eyes, drawing their madness from them. He cupped his hand as though holding water and bade the particles stay. Slowly he closed his hand and squeezed. When he opened his hand he held mud. He shaped the mud with his thick artist’s fingers and it held the form he gave.
Obedient to his will the teeming landscape came to a halt. Time held while Tank gazed into the frozen darkness and knew it for what it was.
Subjective time. Who knows how long Tank stared into Hell, the uncreative centre of the universe, before he rose and groped his way across to Haberjin.
Haberjin was crouched, staring into destruction. He had died within. Pettet lay crying. Blood ran from a self-inflicted wound in Cordoba’s stomach, though she was still breathing. Peron was twisted in a corner whimpering to himself. Wystan lay flat with his tongue bitten and his eyes white as eggs in his coal-black face.
Outside the landscape did not move under Tank’s gaze, but the pressure upon him was enormous.
Tank banged the controls of the ship. He swept his hand across all switches.
The fan started. An alarm bell clanged. Music blared. Lights flashed. Guns fired. Beds warmed. Toilets voided. Water boiled. The ship came alive all at once. Tank turned the ship and pointed it upwards. Light as a feather under his will it began to rise.
There was no growl, for Hell has neither will nor anger.
Looking up through the great window Tank saw the boiling cloud base. He fed power to the engines and the great transformation generators meshed. He edged the ship to full acceleration and it leaped forward and ripped a hole in the pink and purple clouds. Behind it was left a maelstrom which quickly closed.
The Lotus dived into the clean blackness of space. As it left the atmosphere of Erix behind, the nightmares which had paralysed the crew retreated. When it was high above the planet, Tank cut the power, and let the ship drift.
Haberjin was recovering. He crawled through to the toilet and returned in a few moments, looking pale but capable of action. Tank pointed to Cordoba. Haberjin carried her as quickly as he could to the sick bay and began to treat her wound. Pettet too was recovering. He was on his knees blinking in disbelief. “I thought I killed the beauty of the world,” he whispered to Tank, and then shrugged, for he did not understand the meaning of his own words. Tank concentrated on Wystan. He released his tongue from his throat and administered a mild shock which made the man’s eyes close and his fingers and toes clench. Then he sat him up, but Wystan drooped.
Tank did not know what Wystan had experienced, but having seen Hell he had some idea of how it worked. He picked up the semiconscious Wystan and lugged him through to the shower room. He sat him in the shower and turned the water on. He let it run cold and soak into Wystan’s hair and clothes. Having made certain that there was no way that Wystan could drown, he left him to steep.
Then Tank made his way to his cabin. He locked his door and collapsed on to his bunk. He lay and shook like an animal that sleeps in pain. For though it is true that Hell has no will, it can stain, and Tank had looked on it and it was in his mind, it was in his hair; something of it would always be in his eyes. He would never again draw a line without thinking of deception.
Many hours passed.
In the sickbay Cordoba began to recover. As soon as she came to herself she knew what had happened, and she cursed herself for being such a fool. She above all should have been safe. She, mother of seven, who had brought forth babies with careful hands and laid out dead men: she should have recognized the pattern of anti-life. She who knew what it was to love and be loved.
Propped up beside her was a picture of her husband holding their first son. It had been placed there by Haberjin, who sometimes surprised himself with his thoughtfulness, and who was never wrong when he followed his instincts. Cordoba picked up the picture and held it, rubbing her thumb across it.
She willed herself to remember. She remembered lying in the cabin with the frightful laughter in her ears. She remembered calling out and reaching for the big man with the long blond hair who sat with his fists clenched, fighting. She knew he was fighting an invisible enemy and she knew it was Tank. Then he stood up in the dark cabin and shouted in pain and defiance – it was the cry of a baby – and it was the first sound of hope.
And where was Tank now? She let her mind flow out through the ship and found him curled and shaking. She brought what balm she could. S
he laid blessings about his head. But she knew the limits of his power and could only hope.
Sitting up in her bed and with the picture of her husband beside her, she combed her long grey hair. Then she manicured carefully, cleaning every scrap of dirt from under her fingernails.
Pettet entered the sickbay. He had a ribbon in his hands. “Here, tie this in your hair. Make you look a real Romany.”
Pettet glowed. He had stood in a particle shower and the accumulated static electricity made his thick black curly hair stand out like a corona. “Feeling better?” he asked.
“Better. Calmer. A bit of a fool. It came so suddenly, I was not prepared. But that is the way of accidents, isn’t it? Where are the others?”
“Wystan’s in the greenhouse. Where else? He wants to be alone. Peron is in his cabin trying to write in his book.”
“And Tank and Haberjin?”
“Tank’s door is locked but I spoke to him. He just wants to be alone. Haberjin’s on his way here. You’ll know when he’s coming. He smells as though someone’s dragged him through a lilac bush.”
“And you?”
“Coming right. But I still have this feeling of guilt, as though I’d done something unforgivable and something in me had died. Where are we? What was that place?”
Before Cordoba could answer Haberjin approached the door. As Pettet had predicted, the smell of synthetic flowers preceded him. He was shaved and oiled, and looked like Mephisto. He had trimmed his beard to a fine point and set drops in his eyes to make them sparkle. He had changed his usual overalls for a brilliant blue and yellow shirt.
He crossed to Cordoba’s bed and took one of her hands between his. “Feeling better, old woman? Does it hurt?” He pointed to Cordoba’s stomach, where she had wounded herself.
“Of course it hurts. And the pain is helping me. Keeping my feet on the ground. But we will none of us ever be quite the same again.”
“Let’s not talk of it,” said Haberjin. “See, I’ve brought a bottle. What say you, captain, to a drink?” He broke the seal and fetched three glasses.