by Phillip Mann
One of the Hammer that sat on a low hill about a hundred yards from the camp beat a brief tattoo.
“You’d think the goddam thing was translating,” thought Milligan.
In silence, before an audience of thousands of pairs of widely-slung eyes, Milligan began to climb down the derrick. Hammer heads arched and dipped as he clambered down the iron rungs, sending curtains of dust from the folds in his gown. At the bottom of the derrick, Milligan saw the gleaming threads of the bolt he had loosened.
“You men all in the shuttle?” he murmured into his mike, and the voice of the engineer answered him. “All here, chief. Just waiting for you.”
“Well, if they start to rush before I get there, don’t wait. Okay?”
Then, with a slight swagger, Milligan carefully fitted the end of his spanner round the nut and began to loosen it.
“What the hell you doing, chief? Get the hell out of there.”
But Milligan didn’t reply. He just worked steadily on, turning the nut, shifting the spanner, turning the nut. The exposed silver thread grew longer with each turn.
“You dumb, crazy, stupid –“ Milligan bit off the connection to the throat mike and spat it out. The nut was nearly loose. One more turn.
The bolt sprang clear and fell to the ground. The derrick was free and all that held it were twin hawsers attached to a brake. Milligan hit the brake with the flat of his hand and the hawsers were released. The derrick began to fall. It toppled gracefully, like a tall tree, and crashed down, throwing up clouds of dust.
Milligan wiped his hands. Pride was satisfied. He had not been hustled. Then he walked towards the shuttle. He felt the eyes on his back.
At the shuttle door stood the white-faced engineer, his hand on the pneumatic boost. Milligan reached the moat of oil which surrounded the shuttle platform and crossed the narrow gang plank. In front of the shuttle door he paused and turned. Then he drew back his arm and with a shout threw the two-foot wrench as high and as hard as he could at the nearest Hammer. It must have been surprised, or else its parallax failed it, but it moved too late and as it reared, the flying spanner bounced off the ridged boss between its eyes.
Drumming detonated from all the Hammer as Milligan dived through the shuttle door, and the engineer hit the boost. The shuttle rocketed into the air as the first Hammer arrived. Its sting grazed the metal underside, cutting a blunt line.
Pressed into the floor by the force of several gees, Milligan still had the strength to laugh.
32
ON LOTUS-AND-ARCADIA
Neddelia was drifting down corridors of sensuousness.
She was obliterating memory, having just returned from a particularly disgusting assignment. Of late she had found her objectivity breaking down more and more as she fulfilled her duties as Death Inspector. She needed to spend more time in the dream chamber when she returned to her villa on Lotus-and-Arcadia.
Neddelia’s sensuousness was special. She had normal dreams in which love, peremptory and gentle by turns, possessed her; but in her best dream she floated free in space and all the comets and stars in creation found themselves in her and roared in her blood and streamed from her eyes and her hands and her womb. She woke from that dream luxurious and cool, stretched and relaxed.
Waiting for her was a message from Pawl Paxwax. It said simply, “Time to jump over the wall.”
Neddelia did not know what she felt about Pawl. Sometimes she hated him for the way he had spurned her in the past. And yet, when she had seen him hurting over the death of his wife, she had felt love flow from her like milk. But she was too wise a woman to delude herself: she knew that Pawl Paxwax did not love her. When she received this message, with all that it implied, she found her heart beating and she felt breathless. She sat down with a bump and laughed at herself.
Time to jump over the wall.
Those were her own words, uttered the first time she had gone to his world to inspect his dead father. Neddelia remembered the conversation well. But what did Pawl mean? That had to be discovered. It was necessary to contact him. And yet she hesitated. Try as she might, she could not believe that the future held happiness for her.
“He is looking thinner. His hair is thinner too. And why has he cut it? Mourning?” Such were Neddelia’s thoughts as she sat facing Pawl. She remembered the thick lustrous hair that coiled like rope.
Neddelia had taken care with her own appearance. She was dressed severely and her hair was drawn tightly back. She eschewed all glamour and seduction.
“Does the Master of Paxwax call to me in his need or is there another death imminent?”
“I am not interested in your authority as a Death Inspector. I want to thank you for helping me. I want to speak to you as a friend.”
“Ha, as a friend. I am not interested in friendship. I am not interested in thank yous. If you had wanted me to stay you should have asked when you had the chance.” Neddelia sat back primly and waited for Pawl’s reply.
“Well, perhaps I misjudged you. Will you not meet with me again?”
“For what?”
“A reunion,” said Pawl, and swept his hand over the vivante control. His image vanished.
Neddelia sat. She did not know whether to laugh or cry.
Then two days later came the signal she had expected. It was a message in the form of the Paxwax emblem and it contained a date and the location of a star and that was all. No promise. No hope. Neddelia knew she had no choice.
*
There was a turning in space, like swirling hair. Particles of light bounded and formed tight curving lines about a point of absolute blackness. Neddelia’s ship emerged as a dark sphere through this wrinkle in space and established orbit round a blue sun. In a billion tiny ways this small solar system adjusted to accommodate the great black ship. The force lines faded and the ship began to unfold.
A smaller sphere emerged from the greater and within minutes the ship resembled the body of a giant shiny black ant. With this shape established it began to move, slipping through space, searching for a particular planet.
Aboard her ship, Neddelia looked out. She did not recognize the constellations. She was in a part of space she did not know. But she was in the right place according to the information from Pawl Paxwax.
A large planet with a swirling yellow atmosphere was located and the black ship matched orbit and drew close. Above the planet turned a bright satellite with an energy spectrum that showed it to be a Way Gate.
“Now, why didn’t Pawl ask me to Gate through, if he wanted to see me?” Neddelia asked herself.
At a reasonable gravity distance, Neddelia’s ship matched speed and established vivante contact.
Pawl was at the Gate waiting for her. His image grew above the vivante plate in Neddelia’s quarters.
“Welcome to a far-flung part of my empire. I am glad you have come.”
“Why all the secrecy?”
Pawl smiled a tight smile when he heard this. The man was not at his ease. Behind him something moved, a small dark shape.
“What’s that?” asked Neddelia sharply.
Pawl glanced behind him. “Ah, a friend of mine. A Gerbes.”
“An alien?” Her tone was incredulous.
“Yes. An alien.”
“What is going on, Pawl?”
“Nothing is ‘going on’. Why not come down and see me?”
Warning bells began to sound in Neddelia’s mind. “Where are we Pawl? This is a lonely part of the Galaxy.”
“Look beyond the blue sun, about a hand’s span high. Do you see eight stars like an arrow?”
The constellation was clear. “Yes, I see them.”
“The star at the tip is Auster.”
“So?”
“Lapis died there.”
“So?” There was definitely something wrong. Pawl seemed stranger than normal. Following her own instinct, Neddelia reached to the side of her vivante and tapped out the brief code that would bring her ship to full alert.
<
br /> “So come down and see me. Or shall I come out there and get you.”
“You will be welcome aboard my ship. But tell me, Master of Paxwax, what did you mean in your message when you said you were going to jump over the wall?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“I remember. But I don’t trust you. I don’t believe you. You are after something. Some concession perhaps? Are you wanting me to use my influence with my family?”
“No,” said Pawl. “I want your ship.”
Neddelia absorbed his words and then moved quickly. “Then you will have to take it from me.” She attempted to break the contact, but when she touched the vivante plates nothing happened. The small three-dimensional replica of Pawl .Paxwax, slightly hunched, still stared up at her with amber eyes.
“Too long,” he said. “You stayed too long. Now I have you.” Pawl raised his hands and clapped them. The vivante space became white and Pawl disappeared. When the space became clear again Neddelia found herself staring at a Member of the Inner Circle. Then a mechanical voice spoke to her in dry neutral tones. “We hold you steady. We are bleeding your power. Prepare to abandon ship.” The representative vanished before Neddelia could ask any questions and the vivante space became dead.
From deep in space, brilliant shafts of light like bars of silver reached out and pinned the dark ship, making its dullness glow. Creeping up through the yellow swirling mists of the planet below came ships. They looked like claws. In all her journeyings Neddelia had never seen ships like these. The smoky blue effulgence of gravity units brightened the ships like haloes.
This is not happening, Neddelia told herself. She was being attacked by alien ships. How? Where had they come from? It was impossible.
But there, rising with steady deadly grace, were the alien ships; while her own ship stood pinned with light.
There came a banging at the door to her quarters and then her Transit Captain burst in.
“We’ve lost drive power and combat power. Even the communication circuits are drained. There’s panic down there.” He pointed to the oval door behind him. “Have you seen what’s coming up at us?”
Neddelia nodded.
“What shall we do?”
“Wait. What else can we do? I am sure the Paxwax will be generous.” The words were spoken distinctly and with bitterness.
An hour later Neddelia and her crew disembarked. They entered transparent pods disgorged like pale eggs from one of the alien ships. They shielded their eyes against the bright silver glare from deep in space and felt a tingling wherever the brilliance touched their bodies. The alien ships were now attached like limpets to the domed sides of the dark ship. Alien crews moved aboard.
A robot transporter towed the pods like a string of beads across the several miles of space to the glittering Way Gate, where members of the Inner Circle were waiting. They took names and issued identity disks and then began sending the crew members through the Way Gate.
There was fear but there was hope too: a willed, blind hope. After the fear of the alien takeover, few of the crew members could face the cold fact that their entry into the Way Gate might be a death sentence. They were told that they would emerge above a pleasant world.
Neddelia tried to make her presence felt but the members of the Inner Circle, their faces completely hidden behind their masks, paid her no attention. “I demand to speak to Pawl Paxwax,” said Neddelia. “He spoke to me from here when I was aboard….” A member of the Inner Circle stopped her with a wave.
“Pawl Paxwax was never here. That was a delayed transmission. There are only the Inner Circle here.”
Neddelia held on to her dignity as she was bustled along. In her heart she cursed Pawl Paxwax. At the same time she was surprised to discover that she still admired him too. In that confused state she allowed herself to be led into a solitary Way Chamber.
*
Later, after transit Neddelia stepped from the Way Gate wondering. She had no idea where she was. She looked out into a velvet darkness where suns of every colour blazed. And there was a greenness in the sky and a stipple of blue and orange. As her eyes adjusted she could see more. She saw a strange shape like a cobra coiled and ready to strike. Then the door leading into the Way Gate opened. A man entered. He was the biggest man that Neddelia had ever seen. Neddelia herself was not small, but this man was a giant. And he was smiling a gap-toothed smile.
“My name is Pettet. Master Pawl told us to expect you. I understand you’ve escaped from the Proctor. Well, good luck to you. You’ll be safe here in the Pocket.”
The brilliant spokes of light that held Neddelia’s starship, which was now occupied by the aliens faded from silver to violet and finally disappeared. Slowly the two parts of the ship joined and it became a dark sphere again, reflecting the blue sun dully. For a few moments it flickered and then it disappeared …
… only to reappear at the same instant out from the cold world of Auster. Several Felice technicians who were still packing up their gear goggled in surprise as the giant sphere drifted past, attracting a family of small asteroids.
Though they hurried they were too late, and their own small Way Gate was wrenched from its orbit and forced to turn round the dark ship. Despite their clamour and attempts at vivante transmission, they and the other small asteroids were obliterated when the dark sphere shed its inertia before opening.
Once unfolded, it did not move towards the Felice mines but headed towards the dark side of Auster, the side which faced away from the blazing heart of the galaxy.
It came to a land of craters and began to settle into the largest of these. A crack opened in the crater floor and split the crater from wall to wall. It received the dark ship and the crater closed.
33
ON SABLE
Helium studied Pawl while the young man spoke. He noticed the stiffness of his neck, the defiant way he stared as though waiting to pick an argument, the abruptness of his sentences. Pawl made Helium feel old and tired … and wise too. He would have liked to reach out to Pawl and say, “Slow down, son. Take your life in long smooth breaths. Everything passes.” He would have liked to teach him simple homely wisdom, that nothing is ever as good or as bad as you think it is going to be. But he didn’t. All Helium could do was listen and be patient until Pawl could find a pathway through his grief … if he ever did find such a path. The glitter in Pawl’s yellow eyes was unsettling.
“Death makes life absurd,” said Pawl and Helium squirmed in his bath. He was heartsick of concentric philosophy. “It makes a nonsense of all hope and ambition. You know, sometimes whole days pass and I can’t remember what I’ve done. At other times all I can think about is Laurel. Some days I play a game. I pretend that she has only gone away on holiday and that she will be back in a week or ten days. And that makes it easier. The lie I tell myself makes my life easier. But I know, deep inside myself, that she is dead and will never come back and the great hole inside me will never be filled though I live to be a hundred.”
“Easy, boy.”
“No. I’m numb, Helium. Nothing matters to me. I’ve turned to ashes inside. Beware of me, Helium. Beware of me.”
Helium sat for a long time after this conversation wondering about Pawl, trying to fathom his mind.
34
ALIEN PREPARATIONS
On Forge, manoeuvres were in progress. A white ship like a bony crab dived out of the blackness of space and tore through the red sky, where it blazed. It dipped low and dab rays clawed the hills. Thunder followed it. It banked over mountains and dived again, pouring a tide of fire from the tips of its spread legs. It turned in a tight curve, slowing until it hung above a rock-built city. A particle field enveloped it as it lowered.
On the ground the whole ship cracked open, like an insect preparing to shed a skin that has become too tight. Its fine white ceramic hull opened along its length and Hammer poured from it. They ran low and fast like the shadows of clouds and they fell on the city and tore it apart.
A Pullah, with its “brain” fully exposed like a bouquet of tufted feathers, was settled with a Diphilus in the ship’s main Gate cabin. They were puzzling over the transformation symbols which allowed the ship momentarily to exist in two places at the same time. They studied the peculiar Leap equations housed in a humdrum grey section of the wall. These equations were able to probe space/time and create a potential future for the whole of the dark ship. Neither creature could raise a response from the bio-crystalline engines though they could tell that the engine was aware of them. The Pullah trailed the fronds of its brain over the gleaming circuit lines and felt a tingle of response. It sensed a shimmer of electricity, the shift of clouds of electrons, a tumult of birds calling together as they turned in the sky: and then the awareness was gone.
But what had been there? The Pullah scratched and blew to itself and touched the hard shining skin of the Diphilus. There had been a yearning in the song of the birds. Something about home. On its own world, the Pullah had often watched the birds and wished that it could fly, but then it had discovered that it could enjoy flying just by watching the birds. All it had to do was enter their shape, their rhythm, with its imagination. Mmmm, that was interesting.
DESIRE SOMETHING, thought the Pullah, nudging the Diphilus.
The Diphilus mumbled something. Desire was a difficult concept for it. DESIRE… UM.
YES, DESIRE. FOR ONE OF THE MOST INTELLIGENT SPECIES YOU ARE SOMETIMES VERY VAGUE. WHAT GIVES YOU DELIGHT?
SHAPE. IDEAS. SYMMETRY. LOGIC.
The Pullah gave up. It was reasonably sure that the fine bio-crystalline brain which operated the Leap equations responded to simpler emotions. The Pullah thought of its own world, and of opening its plumed brain to the sun and mingling its fine fronds with a loved one, one who wanted to open at the same time.