The Man Who Talked to Suns

by Stephen Andrews

  Under the dark carapace of the world you nearly exist in, the same power lurks on a planetary scale. Immediately you complete transit, every sense you poses will be thrilled. You will be engulfed in a rapport the like of which you have never experienced. No lover, no food, no wine or art has the power to impress and enthral as that world does. The darkness that surrounds it is not there to keep enemies out, it is there to keep the beauty in. It is a guard that confines the power to the trap. It a paradise, a heaven, and nothing you have ever experienced or ever will could match its perfection. Enter and you will never wish to leave. The thought of losing that place even for a moment will appal you, that is, if leaving should ever enter your mind.

  The thing you call an empathy hex, has absolute empathy with your needs and desires Ansti, it wants to be what you want it to be. And, it will be everything to everyone, it adapts to each individual. Once each of you have everything you want, what else is there? Where else is there to go to find fulfilment? The rest of the universe can only offer heartbreaking disappointment. The hex will trap you in bliss until the day you die, and you will die quickly. There is no need to live when there is nothing better beyond the moment of now, nothing that can improve on what it is. It is the confining violence of ultimate gratification. Exquisite isn’t it?”

  Ansti asked himself again if he believed her. He certainly believed that the Helvyani could fight this way. He had lifted then from time to time and felt his ship probe their alienness while it attempted to gain their consent to be moved. Ashur and the planners had expected a fight, they had expected resistance and weaponry, but nothing they had prepared for equipped them to resist an ecstatic suicide. Could there really be such deadly, beauty in the universe? Ansti had no doubt that par-born could see this place, and were perhaps immune to its enticements, but the one thing he desperately wanted now was for the pain to stop and the counsel of others of his race. But, she had offered him a deal; a way out of the trap she described. He did not yet know exactly what he had to do in return.

  “Perhaps you are telling the truth, but what is it that you want from me? I can’t simply stop piloting now. That would doom everyone on this ship and doom my people. I don't want to stop piloting. You, understand how it defines me. It is… what I am.”

  She moved, twisted back and away a little, spinning slowly so her body was finally orientated with his, and her feet rested on the ground. Her posture remained odd, strained for a human body but seemingly natural to her.

  “There is a way Ansti. A way for you to span the gulfs of space and take your race between stars, or at least to feel the sensations of it.”

  Ansti’s confusion showed. A deep frown overlaid the tensed muscles of his face, muscles that were already expressing pain. “But, you want me to stop. What of your others? What of the endless births, and…”

  The words drained from Ansti as he saw her changing again. Her clothing began to disintegrate; scraps of material drifting away from her in a miniature blizzard of slow motion particles. Hair joined the school of bits that moved out, up and away from her, until there she was again, par-born. Grace returned to her and she flipped backwards, her legs arcing up and over her torso as she twisted and moved in the impossible way that still seemed to mimic the movements of a gravity defying acrobat. She half floated and half spun away from him. Her answer seemed to lie elsewhere, and the economy of her trajectory showed Ansti where. She was heading for the vehicle, and as she moved away she left a message hanging in the air. It was simple and clear.

  “Join us.”

  Ansti had no idea how he could do that or how the vehicle would respond to her attention, he had no idea what she could do to it or what her motivation was. He did know that without the vehicle, this jump he was suspended in, and the mission were ruined. With her attention directed elsewhere and a deep sense of foreboding filling him, Ansti started the slow time process of releasing himself from the pilot’s couch. It would drop the jump and leave them all back in Praveen territory, but he had to try and stop whatever interference she planned. The vehicle’s weapons were impotent with it embedded in the entrails of the ship. It had been configured to fight things outside not inside. Ansti felt connections start fading and probes begin the slow process of withdrawing from his body. Slowly he was freeing himself.

  Chapter 16.

  Tannen was letting his thoughts drift. He had taken jumps enough times to know that body and mind operated at different speeds in jump space. They could be united through intense will-power, but he preferred to let the two ease into their own different patterns. It felt like meditation, and if he applied a little focus it was a pleasant experience. His monitors and the guide patch would alert him should he need to do anything, but really he was a passenger, safe in Ansti’s expert hands. He closed his eyes consciously and reminded his body to relax its muscles.

  The alerts jolted him like pinpricks of electricity. Everything happened at once, warning icons flicked in front of his eyes, accompanied by audible pinging for attention. The guide patch started feeding him crash and collision warnings, and just as quickly changed them to jump-dropped warnings and confused requests to reset their default location. Sun-shit, something had gone wrong and Ansti had lost control. The ship sensed its own peril and confusion but did not have the intelligence to find a solution. It had no idea what was real, and so of course, neither did Tannen.

  Tannen flashed mental queries at Ansti and the vehicle, and received nothing in return. He probed for their presence and found only blackness. His connections to them both were gone. The jump must have failed, he reasoned, and yet he was still in the slow-time of jump. They were still moving across realities. That last thought sent a coldness through Tannen. He always had a secret fear of being trapped in a jump failed never-where between worlds, and it was a frequent plot in stories he that he had watched as a teenager. He had been reassured it was not possible, that jumps almost never failed and when they did the ship simply snapped back to the last reality it knew. But this was no ordinary jump. It was a jump without a sun, and perhaps new consequences of failure presented themselves.

  Tannen resorted to the automatic functions instilled in him in the brief and incomplete training he had received under Ashur. The first rule was check the ship’s integrity. If the ship was in one piece then at least they had a secure environment to operate in. Tannen felt for the ship and its dull sense of wellbeing. There was no distress in its little persona and a visual scan of the operating system revealed no breaches in the hull or malfunctioning of equipment. No, it was not the ship’s integrity that was challenged, it was their jump vector. The ship did not know how to find something real. It knew itself and its crew, but everything else, the entire structure of the universe around, it was a mystery. It did not know how to make a journey between places it could not believe in.

  Tannen’s anxiety was growing, and he felt for the ship’s reassuring touch on the universe. It should feel something; the cold of deep space, the boiling touch of sunlight, or the pressure and humidity of atmosphere. Now even the searing touch of weaponry on its hull would be something. What it returned was precisely nothing. There was simply an absence of anything at all. Tannen muttered a curse at precisely the moment Ashur came knocking on his thoughts. A flashed message of concern and a demand for information penetrated Tannen’s concentration with all the understated authority he associated with Ashur.

  “Tannen, where is Ansti and what is happening?”

  Ashur sounded groggy, as the muscles in his jaw and throat struggled to react to the commands from his brain. “I can’t raise him and all hell has broken lose. Has there been a jump failure?”

  Tannen had more questions than answers, but he suspected a far greater calamity than a failure of the ship’s internal systems. He paused for a moment wondering how to express his uncertainty, aware of his own anxieties and Ashur’s dominance and demand for knowledge.

  “It’s not clear Ashur, but I can’t feel Ansti either. He’s not pres
ent in any way I can normally sense, and the ship, it doesn’t feel where we are. There’s no external input. Nothing.”

  Tannen thought he heard a low growl or rumble before Ashur’s words found him. “Suns-shine-dark Tannen, are you telling me our pilot is absent? And we can’t see a thing? If the jump has dropped we must be in Praveen territory. Maybe it’s been bungled and we are at the bottom of some damn ocean or…” Ashur cut short his sentence and his voice returned with the cool tone of self-control that signalled he was managing his emotions. “We’re still in slow-time. Tannen are we still moving?”

  “I don’t know. There’s no reference point, nothing to tell us where we are or if we are moving. The ship is not telling me anything, and without Ansti I can’t tell what’s real to us, our origin, destination, or somewhere else.”

  Tannen’s jaw was aching from the exertion of muscles consciously controlled, and he wondered why Ashur chose to speak when he could flash messages more quickly and with more emotional emphasis. Perhaps Ashur thought his voice had a tone of command, that it influenced Tannen more fully than other means, and of course Ashur would not want his real emotions leaking into flashed messages. Perhaps he was more scared than the rest, or perhaps there was something else.

  “Go find him Tannen. Get down there and see what is happening.”

  Tannen flinched, and started an objection “But Ashur we’re in slow time, it will take me hours and I don’t even know if it’s possible…”

  Ashur cut through Tannen’s words “We have all the time we need Tannen. I wonder just how long a jump could take? Who knows why one jump is longer than another; there’s no relationship between the distance and subjective time. Tannen, we could be meandering through this place of nothing, slowly drifting between here and there for a lifetime. Go get him. Go get him Tannen and make him complete this jump, now.”

  Tannen had once been drunk on a sea voyage. He had staggered, rolled and fallen as the vessel he was on was battered by a storm. His mind, dulled by narcotics, knew it could control his body but it seemed to have forgotten how. The journey he took now reminded him of that time; nothing worked as it should or when it should. Every movement was accompanied by deep frustration as limbs failed to obey commands. He had tried walking, but a series of falls culminated in a terrifying head-first lurch towards a bulkhead had persuaded him that it was suicidal folly. Finally he found a hunched crawl that let him progress and manage the inevitable impacts.

  It took Tannen hours of slow, painful progress to reach the pilot’s room. Normally it was a walk of two or three minutes but Tannen moved with the stuttering uncoordinated jerks of a baby learning to crawl. Getting to his destination was the sum of hundreds of barely directed acts of movement interspersed with thousands of random and failed motions. His last challenge would be to stand and reach the door control. The pilot’s chamber was sealed in transit so that there was no possibility of distraction. It was a sensible safety precaution that now seemed ludicrous to Tannen, having half-killed himself simply to reach this place. The blisters on the palms of his hands, and the bruises all over him were each a reminder of the price of moving in transit space. There had been many moments when he believed the fall he was experiencing would shatter bone, and he was not entirely sure that he was free of fractures, as he contemplated rising to reach the door release.

  Tannen tried three times to reach his feet and remain steady. The first ended in simple failure, with him crumpled on the floor. The second saw him rise and then topple sideways in a slow motion slapstick routine. The third was a slow deliberate rise, that taxed his muscles and concentration to the limit. But it did leave him upright, shaking, panting and pressed against door. He felt initial triumph and then a bite of self-deprecating humour. The simple act of standing was now a triumph. How far that seemed from grand ideas of winning wars and freeing people from oppression.

  All that Tannen needed to do now was flash a message to the ship to open the door and clear the security lock. He could simply transmit the message as an urge to enter the room beyond, but to lift the security lock he needed to verify his physical presence at the door. He’d done that a hundred times before in real time; licked his finger, dabbed it on the genetic sampler set in the door, and anticipated the silent withdrawal of the barrier. Now, that simple act seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. He would have to place a fingertip in his mouth without poking out and eye or smashing the finger into his skull, and then place that same finger on the little sampler. He may as well have been tasked with swimming in space.

  Tannen rated his chance of success at about zero. He would never be coordinated enough to achieve the task in the same way that he could in real time. Another strategy was needed, something that required less precision. It came to him with a smile — the answer was a simple child’s game. He concentrated, focusing on letting his knees bend, and searching for the odd untimely feedback from nerves that told him he was succeeding. For a moment his torso lowered serenely, head dropping towards the sampler, and then with the intensely frustrating and nauseating feeling that dominated his existence now, he felt himself sliding sideways. His nerves still told him that his legs compressed evenly, but his eyes and inner ear told a different story. He was sliding to his right. One knee must be locked straight while the other was bending.

  The lopsided half-fall, was not what he had intended, but it might be good enough. As the drop continued Tannen had ample time to judge and be satisfied with the path he would take. Both knees were bending but one had started before the other. He was sliding down and sideways across the surface of the door, rubbing is face and torso against it. His face would pass to the right of the sampler, definitely close enough to give him the chance he wanted. Moments passed ached past until Tannen judged he was in the right place. He had prepared himself as he slid. His cheeks were puffed full of air and he’d pushed mucus to the front of his mouth. Now he released the air in an explosive burst, and with it a cloud of his spit shot out, spraying in a wide pattern. His aim was off but good enough, and the timing was wrong, but also good enough. Droplets of spray hit the door surface including the sampler, and he felt it begin to move. He was moments away from entering and finding out what Ansti was doing.

  The door slid sideways, moving in the same direction as Tannen’s fall, and adding momentum to it. The speed of Tannen’s drop towards the deck increased and he realized that he would eventually land in another crumbled heap of dysfunctional humanity, just to one side of the opening. He would have to work hard again to get inside. The impact when it came, was taken on his right shoulder, adding more pain to flesh already tenderised and swollen by earlier falls. He winced and grunted, but had the presence of mind to use the rebound to start levering his body upwards. Tannen was learning a new skill.

  A mixture of luck and concentration found Tannen moving back onto his feet. He thought of himself as a rubber ball, his body bouncing him back upright. His left hand had found the door frame and helped to pull him up, even though it felt as if it was unbound from his body. Tannen was nearly upright when Ashur made himself felt. Tannen’s guide patch let Ashur’s wave of impatience waft into his own emotional mix, creating an unpleasant melange of feelings that added to his anxiety, but not his ability to control his body. A reflexive flinch of shock almost sent him reeling away from the door as unchained muscles convulsed with what his mind meant to be a twitch. Tannen cursed and then tried to filter the expletive aimed at Ashur, but he caught it too late. He waited for censure and received a cold grunt of displeasure but nothing more.

  The pilot’s room was becoming visible to Tannen. He could already see a few parts of the machinery and he’d soon have a full view of the whole room.

  “Are you seeing what I am?” he flashed at Ashur, and after a pause received confirmation.

  In slow motion the panorama unfolded. The room, dimly lit and with its seemingly endless tower of machinery disappearing upwards into darkness, was as he remembered. The lighting was blue as Ansti
preferred it for jumps, and the gentle pulsing throb of life support offered a reassuring note of comfort. It was just as well, because as Tannen looked deeper, an image coalesced. It was an image that filled him with instant self-doubt. He must have looked right at it a moment before, but he did not recall seeing it. Maybe his eyes were adjusting to the subdued lighting or slow time was playing tricks on his vision. But now he saw it clearly. There in front of him was Ansti, naked and floating as if weightless, curled in a foetal position, suspended by suns-only-knew what. He rotated slowly end over end in a looping forward roll, and showed no signs of life.

  Ashur instantly flashed a warning. “The life support is malfunctioning. Be careful Tannen there’s no gravity simulation in there, and the ship isn't feeding us the right life support reports; it thinks everything is fine. The damn thing is too dumb to be properly aware of itself.”

  Tannen smiled at the irony of Ashur’s sudden concern. The man was truly focussed on the mission, and Tannen suspected that Ashur did not care about his welfare, but he did care that Tannen restored Ansti to his role. What Ashur was really saying was don’t fail and leave Ansti stranded. We need him more than we need you. Trying to navigate the weightless environment of the room in slow time was a suicidal affair. He imagined launching into the room and getting it wrong, speeding into the tangled forest of machinery unable to move his arms fast enough to protect himself. No, that was not a good way to proceed.

  Ansti had not reacted to Tannen’s appearance at the door. He simply spun slowly like an object in space. Tannen wondered if he was unable or unwilling to communicate. He needed to see if he could grab Ansti’s attention somehow and test his consciousness. So he called to Ansti from the door with a projected whisper that grew into a shout. Ansti did nothing except revolve. Sun-shit thought Tannen, I’m going to have to get closer. He didn't want his first shove into the weightless room to be his last. He would test the trajectory by throwing something at Ansti. Maybe an impact might even get the pilot’s attention. Tannen fumbled in his pocket and found a small pebble. It was a keepsake from a world he’d visited once. Small, dark, dense and round, it was what exactly what he needed.