Ansti, opened himself and sucked in the totality of his senses. He located the destination and willed the vehicle and ship ‘go’. Time slowed, Ansti felt it turn liquid and stick stubbornly to itself, not wanting to let any moment slide into the next. He felt the vehicle let go of their current location and hold tighter on the target location. He felt the ship drawn into the vehicle’s logic, suddenly convinced that their existence on this spot was a fallacy and their existence on the target area was a truth. Neither the ship nor the world believed they could occupy any space but the one Ansti had willed. The mass of ship and people was persuaded it must be somewhere else. Now as time slowly lubricated the transaction, they moved.
For just a moment Ansti felt as if he had lost his footing. He felt his leg jerk reflexively to save him from imagined disaster, and then just as quickly he recovered and drifted, somewhere. He could not say where. It existed but not in a way that his senses could fully grasp. He could sense their point of departure and destination. He felt them as potentially solid places in space and time, but the here and now were elusive; it did not want to be a place or a time. He was confused, but the vehicle was revelling in this space. It radiated elation and fulfilment. For the first time this little ally seemed truly aware of itself and caring for its surroundings. Incredibly he felt it stretch across light years and he gasped at the size and power it hinted at in these illusive dimensions. There was only one way to describe its behaviour; it was frolicking like a caged animal set free, and here it was no small thing, it was a mighty beast.
And then Ansti lost it. The vehicle suddenly ceased to be in his consciousness. It was gone, and with it went Ansti’s connection to the ship and the world and the universe. Total blackness swept over him, wrapped in absolute silence. Ansti felt panic rise. It was a pure emotion devoid of the physical symptoms he would have felt just moments before, and in another shocking realisation Ansti became aware that he could no longer feel his body. He was fighting panic and searching self-contact of any kind, but none was there. Something had gone wrong and he was now adrift in some timeless, spaceless place that had nothing to offer his senses.
Rescue must surely come, Ansti reasoned, and in so doing he persuaded panic to abate. Tannen would be working now to trip failsafe systems and abort the jump, if necessary cutting all power to the ship’s systems and wrenching it back into the world of human reality. Just stay calm and wait Ansti told himself, it will take moments that might feel like hours, but it will be moments. As the thought entered his mind, he began to feel another presence, and panic retreated further to be replaced by growing cautious relief. The presence seemed to hover at the edge of his consciousness and then with a palpable feeling of decision it moved to take form.
Shapes loomed; he did not see them because light had no meaning in this place and no way to reach it. Nevertheless, he felt shape and colour and size as clearly as his eyes would have registered the reflected photons of a sun. His awareness tuned into a billowing gaseous mass, twisting and forming around itself with directed certainty. A feeling registered itself, part recognition, part amusement and part some other thing that had elements of self-reflection. Ansti knew the thing that was emerging from nothing; it was par-born. Then there she was, coalesced from the rippling gases; a being in something like human form. Ansti knew all this even as he tried to see his own body and failed.
She orbited him, circling and rolling around his psyche, the same cloth less human form that he had witnessed before, drifting with weightless purposeful grace. She drifted close floating upside down and moving in until he could sense the colour of her eyes. Ansti did not know how she made colour and shape apparent in this lightless space, but he could not help but acknowledge both. She felt close enough to touch, if she had breath he would have felt it on his face. Gold eyes starred at him. Gold, not the red and green circles of the form that had saved him. Ansti sensed his own alarm rising again. This was not her, but another of her kind, possibly an ally of the vanquished par-born. As Ansti became sure this was not his saviour, he started thinking of this new individual as it.
So far, it had communicated nothing. There was no attempt to reach Ansti, he was simply observed; scrutinised as someone with a microscope watches creatures that swarm in a drop of liquid. He willed greeting and peace at it, and then a question Where am I? It reacted, eyes turning from gold to deep pits of black, and tilting its head in a very human way. Ansti, felt the answer register in his thoughts and feelings without words. It had thrust an accusation and a question at him. He sensed his trespass, and its curiosity, and even amusement . It thought he had made a trap for himself in something he could neither understand nor control. He had somehow blundered here and it found that delightful.
Even as he focussed on this one, he sensed other forms coalescing. More par-born emerged from nothingness with their signature expansion of cloud-like matter. Each moved from not-being into a fully formed individual. They drew themselves closer and crowded Ansti, pure presence moving all around him. He felt the need to gasp for air and in doing so realised that he could not breathe and did not need to. The part of him that needed oxygen was detached elsewhere, irrelevant here. The throng surrounded him, each feeling unique somehow while looking the same. Each presence had its own essence made of unique thoughts and emotions, and something else. Ansti could actually taste this extraordinary otherness. It was an alien sense that drifted into his consciousness as best it could, finding an approximation of itself in flavour.
As far as Ansti knew, no-one had ever communicated with a par-born in transit (and Ansti assumed this place he had stumbled into was a transit-space of some kind). Moments passed with them clamouring to regard him and swirling around each other while he struggled to simply be, without fear taking control. One of them suddenly returned something of his initial curiosity. It wanted to know why he had made a trap for himself. His consciousness sent a signal to furrow brows he could not feel. ‘I did not’, he responded. Waves of incredulity washed across him rippling and warping his emotions. Ansti reeled under the power of their force. These were beings that wielded feelings like weapons. He felt them all suddenly shift perception and feeling, and move at him. The gesture was malevolent and irresistible, it closed the distance between them, and then as Ansti’s psyche squirmed and writhed, they all moved inside him.
Had he had breath and a voice he would have screamed. The violation was total. Every thought and feeling was exposed to this mass of probing alien psyches, and they probed mercilessly, examining all Ansti’s conscious and unconscious thoughts. Ansti hid nothing, and he felt totally naked and vulnerable. Every one of these things examined and judged him. He felt them debate and pull at his deepest feelings, using them as exhibits in their discussion. He was an object on display, shocked and exposed and entered.
To a being used to placing filters between what he thought and what he said this intrusion was total and intolerable. And he could do nothing to resist because he did not know how. The mass of par-born was now a part of him and he could no more hide from them than he could hide from himself. The internal searching continued with pushing and probing and laying bare the essence of Ansti. It was an unrelenting emotional dissection without anaesthetic for the soul.
Ansti squirmed and reeled and clung onto sanity, but he felt it slipping from him. The impossibility of this place and the totality of intrusion challenging all the ways his mind had to define reality. He began to lose his sense of self and fall into the mass of consciousness now inside him. As those feeling rose up in him, he sensed alarm spread through the par-born, accented with pity and tinted with anger. With a sudden sucking, wrenching shock, he felt them all withdraw. Their departure left the residue of emotions and thoughts splattered and torn across his emotional landscape, and a sense of baggy, emptiness as if his mind alone was no longer large enough to fill his brain. They moved out of him and back into themselves, back into a sense of embodiment, drifting close. He could sense form and colour again, and know the
par-born were now separate from him. Ansti felt them project acknowledgement and, astonishingly, sadness.
Ansti struggled to re-arrange his battered feelings, and as he did he noticed that some of the par-born were starting a slow spin. They drifted away, revolving around themselves and letting small droplets of matter spin away gracefully. As they moved they created space for Ansti to sense beyond the immediate. He was shocked to feel hundreds of individuals, all now moving end over end, head and feet describing the circumference of a circle, and none moving at exactly the same speed as any other. Ansti sensed the distancing as one senses a lover falling out of love. It was not a physical thing, but a parting of attraction. He felt each and every par-born wash deep heartbreak at him. And in return he felt himself plead for understanding. What had they discovered that left so many so forlorn? No answer came, and the mass continued to diminish and withdraw.
The par-born began to disappear from his consciousness, individuals fading from his sensory landscape one by one in prefect sequence. The collective consciousness diminished until just one remained. Ansti imagined it was the one that first met him here but there was no way for him to tell. It drifted around him, circling and twisting slowly, and keeping contact. He sensed it exploring itself and searching for expression. Residual waves of focus and intense attempts at empathy drifted into him; this par-born was trying hard to communicate a concept that Ansti was not equipped to understand. He felt its frustration and anger with all those of Ansti’s race who lacked so much but interfered so readily.
It struck him first as pollution; a sense of beauty corrupted by filth, but almost instantly those feelings were withdrawn and replaced with something else. He felt his mother’s disappointment at a petty crime he had committed when young. It rose in him as fresh and pure as the day he had stood shame faced and weeping at his misdemeanour, and yet this suddenly was erased as well. It was too personal. The par-born tried again, and Ansti felt the resigned antipathy of news that a prominent politician had protected himself from censure with self-serving lies. Again this was withdrawn, and now, the par-born found something closure to its mark. Ansti felt the sting of shameful triumph that accompanied the news that his best friend had not developed pilot empathy. He relived the bundle of emotional events; outwardly he comforted and consoled, while inwardly he celebrated and his ego swelled at his own specialness and superiority. Secretly too he believed his friend could have passed and was even more adept than Ansti, but he lacked the determination that a nurturing background had given him. In short he felt relief at another’s failure because it gave him status and approval; not a noble sentiment, but a very human one.
The last par-born let that hang between them, and invoked a feeling of questing for understanding. In words it would have said ‘See! Now do you understand?’ But Ansti did not. His mind sought to rationalise the feelings, to wrap them in logic and events and timeframe and narrative, and in so doing it lost the essence of what had been communicated. The par-born could not persuade Ansti to its point of view. It could only leave him with the frustrating sense that he had been sent a message in a code he could not unlock. The par-born sensed this too and separated from Ansti, it drifted and circled away, pulsing forlorn farewell and a lingering sense that Ansti had failed. He had been offered an insight, a treasure, a secret, and failed to grasp it. The par-born too was frustrated at its own failure to communicate. Its final gift was a warning, clear and unambiguous; be careful here, we will not always help you. Here you are… alien.
Loneliness returned. The par-born was gone, and in its wake there was only blackness and solitude. For a moment Ansti forgot his tasks and his lost body and dwelt on what it had communicated. It had expected something of him, but what? What had the alien expected him to feel? It believed he had brought himself here for a purpose, but he had not. Ansti was simply lost, and his fears and worries were returning. There had been no rescue yet, no jolting return to the world he knew, accompanied by warning klaxons and urgent messages to stand down and reset. He wondered about time and how long he had been lost to his colleagues. He wondered if he could grow old here and die. Living would be worse, as insanity must surely come.
Sun-shit, he had stumbled into something and been offered a gift he could not see, and now he was left alone, bereft and disembodied. He dwelt in his own interior world for moments until a tidal wave of presence struck him. The vehicle manifested itself in his psyche. He felt the scale and power and effortless velocity of its presence. It carried him on confidence that stretched for light-years and awoke the universe for him again. Ansti felt breath in his lungs and the sensation of his couch against his body. Destination flicked back into his awareness and the sense of ship returned. He felt his focus find reality in their destination and fantasy in their departure point. He moved from floating to guiding and with more relief than ever before, felt the treacle resistance of slow-time. He was piloting again.
The vehicle was still persuading the landing site that the ship existed there. It had already conceived of it as more real than the point of departure and was making the translation. It felt like a different entity now, diminished and less playful. The colossus it had been was replaced by a power contained and focussed. While it seemed to have morphed effortlessly, Ansti struggled to stay composed. It appeared that his interlude had not disturbed the steady march of slow-time. No warnings sounded, no alerts or questions flashed at him from Tannen or, suns-shine-dark, Ashur.
His diversion had gone unnoticed, and now Ansti must stay composed and not let his body react to the emotions he returned with. No one was sure what would happen if either pilot or vehicle lost their concentration, and none was keen to find out. It was certainly possible that a miscalculation could end in disaster, planting the ship beneath rock or in magma or smashing them into the planet’s surface at a different rotational velocity. Ansti needed to return to the here and now urgently or risk death for them all, and he had no intention of sharing the episode just past with the militarising Ashur.
Ansti was accomplished, but not even the skills of a pilot could prevent the body from reacting to threat. Tannen noticed the signals, a rising heart rate and perspiration giving Ansti away, and flashed an alarmed query. Ansti replied, camouflaging his true feelings amongst first jump nerves that he had actually controlled perfectly moments before. Tannen believed Ansti’s explanation, especially as Ansti included a rebuke designed to stop Tannen’s questions.
“Let me focus, Tannen. I am fine” he messaged “I don't want to drop us”.
There was truth in the warning too, and Tannen felt it. The questions stopped, and Ansti focused, first on regaining control of his thoughts and feelings, and then on re-establishing a partnership with the vehicle.
Ansti let himself open fully to the vehicle again, and felt its awareness of the universe enter him and expand his senses. He was tempted to send it questions of his own, but they would wait. It flourished in him without any acknowledgement of what had happened, and the exaggerated scale and detail it provided were still there. The landing site felt real, and in peripheral awareness the ship was already there, a ghost reality waiting to be returned to life. Ansti returned to the task at hand and focussed on the landing site. He was starting to feel it. Via the vehicle he could sense the trace movement of atmosphere that must be displaced to accommodate the ship. He could sense the light levels and cold moisture. He could place constellations above and feel details of the landscape; rocks, plants, and the density of bio-mass. Finally, colour and scent flooded in and for the briefest of moments Ansti felt the landing site in his hands; every atom stimulating nerves and providing texture as if he gently brushed a perfect scale model with his palms. He probed their existence and the vehicle’s understanding. Both agreed, they had persuaded the universe to accept a new location for their existence. They had arrived.
The cheers sounded far away to Ansti, cloaked and covered as he was in equipment and probes. Tannen cleared him for release and equipment moved away fr
om him freeing enough space for him to sit up and peel sensors from himself. He was halfway through getting up from the couch when Ashur bounded in, still unsteady on his feet from the jump and so overcome with joy that he did not notice that he bounced from one piece of equipment to another like a pin-ball. Ashur reached Ansti, beaming with delight. He took Ansti’s face in his hands and looked deep into Ansti’s eyes, his own eyes burning with joy and triumph.
“Suns, Ansti, you did it!”
Ashur wrapped arms around Ansti crushing him and pushing still attached equipment in to his flesh. Ansti was still not over the trauma of his experiences, but Ashur’s joy was intoxicating, and, yes, he and done it.
“Ansti, you just made the first ever unassisted jump. You moved us without a sun Ansti. You partnered with the vehicle and moved us!”
Ashur was overcome with emotions and let his words fly out, showering Ansti with a few droplets of saliva. Then Ashur regained some composure and stood, arms on hips. “Suns-shine-dark, Ansti, now they really do have a reason to fear us.”
Ashur’s eyes glowed, and Ansti could not help himself; he felt an eagerness for revenge as the sense of his own power grew.
Chapter 11.
The room was crowded; the entire crew of fifty people crammed into a space not meant for twenty. But it was the biggest space on the ship. Very little about this ship was being used as intended. It was a living laboratory in the science of new possibilities. Tannen moved to a space in the middle and raised a hand to quiet the hubbub. Nothing happened, so he raised his voice and quieted the crew. The conversation stilled and eyes turned to him. Ansti scanned the small crowd, some squatting on the floor, others standing. He saw faces young and old, familiar and new, all brimming with hope and excitement. He wondered what his face showed. Did it betray the mixture of elation, fear and worry that still churned inside him? If it did, he suspected the emotions would be clear but the cause clouded. Everyone knew the massive responsibility he carried, but no one knew the new secret he kept, or the doubts he still harboured.
The Man Who Talked to Suns Page 15