In Other Worlds

by Attanasio, AA

  - love has claimed him rather than the archon of power. I'm sure that's the doing of the urg. It wants Carl back. The inertial displacement between them must be immense, and every' cell in Carl's body must be craving to return to the Werld. No wonder dominance of this faraway planet seems puny.

  But I have no inertial homecalling to dampen my imagination or quell my will to power. Carl has seen me looking at the lance in reverie. It is not the power itself I crave:

  The power is a shadow of the metaconscious.

  The lance is merely a symbol of what I want.

  "A balmy wind spills off the Hudson," Zeke wrote, watching a breeze unpleat the drapes of his window and fill the bedroom with the smell of the river. "I've nightmared Nam again. Like everything of this temporary earth that tries for something greater, my mind strains to understand why I am living in two different worlds, one of peace and one of pain. The answer I sense through my inspelling is almost unbearable: Contrastive thinking is an elaborate hallucination.

  Worse, it is the viper I have mistaken for a rope."

  Zeke turned off the light, and in the shuttered darkness, a hypnagogic spun before him. It was a retinal mandala, a rosemaling of torn limbs and glutinous napalm-melted flesh, all blurring together in the surfglow of his closed eyes. Before shutting his journal, he wrote in it by feel: "The hand is not different from what it writes down."

  Galgul was a cloud of rubble. Two black spheres and three cracked egg shapes were the only traces of order in an amorphous sprawl of floating debris. Blasttwisted shards of metal and coils of black dust looped with the fallpaths.

  Anything organic had been seared to ash by the firestorm that had gulfed the exploded, structures. Inert, jagged forms hovered like a black aura around the ruins of Galgul.

  Five of the twelve clustered city-spheres had been destroyed. Their three-kilometer-wide plasteel shells had been shattered into junk by a gravity wave that had bounded out of a lynk in one of the spheres. The lynk had connected with a four-space, positively curved stellar zone one hundred and thirty billion light-years

  away. Three zotl needlecraft had established the lynk after following a Foke-shaped gravity echo into the Rim. The conclusion was obvious. A Rimstalker had armored a Foke, had sent him to a Foke-fertile planet where the food lure to the zotl would be irresistible, and had used the lure to attack the zotl through their own lynk. The plan had been a cunning and devastatingly effective one.

  Like two spider gods, the remaining city-spheres of Galgul hung in a web of broken metal, misty against the whorl of the Cloudriver. The broken hulks of the ruined spheres dangled like torn roots among clots of fused metal. Needlecraft sparkled among the rocksmoke and the avalanches of destroyed shapes.

  Camouflaged by the tumult of devastation were jumpships, black boomerangs with laser cannon, waiting in ambush for any Foke or Rimstalker aggression.

  Zotl and Rimstalkers had warred since the zotl first arrived in the Werld, seventy-two cycles ago. Though the two species occupied the two distant poles, a Werld apart, they were both four-space creatures, and they conflicted in the tesseract range that contained the Werld. Their battles were timeflux distortions in superspace, and they fought over which species would occupy the narrow tetrad vector field that connected the Werld with the multiverse.

  The Rimstalkers had dominated this gateway to infinity for the three hundred cycles of their time in the Werld before the zotl arrived. Rimstalker technology was by far the most advanced, but zotl four-space awareness was innately more adroit. After forty cycles of zotl incursions into the disputed tetrad vector. field, the spider people established a beachhead and, by dint of their elusive four-space awareness, were able to evade Rimstalker timeflux distortions and develop a lynk technology of their own. In another two or three

  cycles, .they would have begun establishing a multiversal empire.

  The zotl had been taken by surprise when the Rimstalkers abandoned their superspace forays to attack Galgul with a three-space gravity wave. Within moments, the zotl capital had been reduced to ruins. Only two city-spheres were left intact. Three were crippled, and the rest utterly demolished. And now, Foke-zotl food-were using the rubble-clogged fallpaths to penetrate zotl defenses and sabotage the cleanup and repair work.

  This was the darkest time the zotl had known in the Werld, and their keening warbled across the tesseract range to Rataros, where the Rimstalkers were equally shocked. They had issued the, armor to Carl Schirmer as a favor to an eld skyle that had opened a channel to the tetrad vector 'field when the Rimstalkers were in need. Unlike the zotl, the Rimstalkers did not rely on organic sustenance. Their nourishment came directly from the hyperphotons of the tetrad vector field, and when the zotl began to expropriate vast swaths of the tetrad field for their own expansionist strategies, Rimstalkers starved.

  Eld skyles, as five-space beings, were in a position to direct the four-space vector field to some degree.

  One eld skyle had been able to channel enough hyperphotons to save the lives of over a thousand Rimstalkers.

  In return, the Rimstalkers had armored Carl and sent him to fetch the three-space substance that the eld skyle needed for its own survival. ''

  . The Rimstalkers had never guessed that the zotl would detect the fraction-of-a-second echo in the tetrad field, let alone follow it to its destination. That the armor had demonstrated the wit and initiative to wait for, the zotl to set up a lynk and then use the zotl lynk to assault Calgul was not as surprising. The armor, after all, had its own artificial intelligence loyal to its creators, and it was only slightly hampered by the emotional organ the creature it occupied called a brain.

  But now the Rimstalkers had a problem.

  If the Rimstalkers had planned this offensive, they would have used a light lance with the power to destroy all of Galgul.

  Instead, the zotl had been badly hurt but not eliminated. The Foke harassing them could not hope to overcome them. So, in a cycle or two, the zotl would be back in the tetrad vector field and more aggressive than ever.

  Some of the Rimstalkers wanted to armor more Foke and direct an assault against the remnants of Galgul. But that idea was dismissed at once in the face of the realization that the zotl, if pressed to the wall, could use their budding lynk technology to disrupt the gravity matrix that gave the Werld its shape and collapse the entire Werld into, the black hole that held them all.

  The Rimstalkers understood: A three-space war against the zotl was. out of the question. They had to capitulate.

  In return for a zbtl agreement to stay out of the tetrad vector field for five cycles and then only to occupy regions designated by the Rimstalkers, the Rimstalkers acknowledged that the gravity wave that had blasted Galgul was an accident, not the prelude to a three-space war. As a token of retribution, the Rimstalkers gave the zotl a light lance and armor of their own.

  The appeasement was tiny. The armor and lance were designed to implode if their interiors were tampered with, so the zotl could learn nothing from them. Also, they were useless anywhere near Rataros, so they were no good against the Rimstalkers. The only immediate use for the armored lance was as an instrument of revenge. The Foke who had fired the gravity wave into

  Galgul would be destroyed, and the Foke-fertile planet that had served as a lure would become the first conquest of the zotl's multiversal empire.

  To celebrate this new determination, the best of the suspended Foke were revived and milked.

  The choice stock of Foke delicacies was located in one of the mangled spheres. There, behind fumestained glastic panels, were several thousand human bodies asleep in no-time. The myriads of Foke were individually encapsulated and stacked upright to facilitate -their gravity-pumped life support.

  Among the stock was a slender woman with a quiet face and strawberry flecks in her drowsy gray eyes.

  "Evoe is alive," Zeke told Carl. Zeke's eyes were blurry with drowsiness. His bear-sized frame leaned in the doorway to his bedroom, his baggy black silk paja
mas scarred with sleep creases.

  Carl had already shaved and dressed, though dawn was still a dark hour away. He wore a beige pair of trousers, sneakers, and a purple pullover sweater. He was sitting in the living room practicing touch control with his lance by changing channels on the TV from across the room. When he heard Zeke, his hand twitched, and the TV flew off its stand and smashed into the wall. Sparks and glass spurted, and Carl leaped up from the cushioned chair where he was slouched. "tire you sure?"

  Zeke stepped over the shattered corpse of the TV and stretched out on the sofa. "I saw her in Galgul," he replied in a sleepwrung voice. "The place is a bigger mess than that TV You really rocked it, buddy. Ewe's okay, though. I saw her in a kind of suspended animation. The zotl are saving her for a special dinnercommemorating the conquest of the earth."

  "You sure this is a real lynkdream?" Carl asked, his head effervescent with euphoria. He wanted to believe him, but Zeke had been in a loose frame of mind since Carl had gotten him out of Cornelius. His attention had been wavery as a candleflame, and he had slept as much as he had been awake. Carl had purchased a spacious apartment on Claremont Avenue near Columbia University, and they had holed up there while Zeke suffered through the withdrawal from the chemistry set Dr. Blau had hooked into him over the past year. Today was the first day that Zeke had woken with a clear face, unscowled with confusion or pain.

  The last month had been tedious for Carl. Manhattantwo was a quieter place than the New York he was used to. The hum of the electric trafc was not audible from their top-floor suite, and the serenity was driving him mad: He had used his armor to visit all the round corners of the earth while Zeke slept or Caitlin and Sheelagh were watching him. The quiescence of the cities, the geometric order of the farmlands, and the harmony of the people wherever he went spooked him. The world was closing in on utopia, and with his perpetual anxiety about Evoe and the zotl he felt out of place and even dangerous to the world. He had already decided then if Evoe was dead he didn't want to live. It sounded stupid, but it felt right. So when Zeke told him she was alive, his blood shimmered.

  The flesh of Zeke's face looked tired, yet the wakefulness in his stare was strong as black coffee. "The hallucinations are over," he announced. "The lynkdreams have begun again-only now I know they're lynkdreams."

  "What about your nightmares?"

  "I was in Nam again last night. Before Galgul. Still can't figure out how. Some kind of inertial-"

  "--resonance," Carl said with him. "I know. What'd you see in Galgul?"

  "Ruins. The fallpaths are so clogged with fired

  debris you can walk on them. In one of the half-gutted spheres there's a stock vault, ripped open to external view. I saw-tiers of bodies stacked in transparent shells. They're all alive but sleeping, waiting to be milked of their pain. Evoe was there. I recognized her at oncefauny hair, flecked eyes, and those cheeks, hollow as a cat's."

  Carl looked up to the ceiling and howled, arms outflung.

  "Don't get too excited," Zeke warned, when Carl was done and his face, red and polished with joy, was looking at him. "We've got some time left before we can lynk to the Werld."

  "ZeeZee, you've just put meaning back into my life!"

  Zeke watched him somberly. "Well, you'd better hear the rest of what's going on." He told him about the Rimstalkers giving the zotl light lancer armor. "And you know it's you the spider people are going to hit with that armor."

  .Carl's heart became a paperweight. "Maybe well get out of here before they show up."

  His hopefulness cowed before Zeke's stare. With his head and face shaved, Zeke had. the sober demeanor of a monk.

  "You can't avoid them, Squirm," he said with certainty. "But you don't have to fear them. You didn't destroy more than half of Galgul. Your armor did. Let it' protect you."

  Carl spun about and ran both hands through his hair.

  That gesture usually reassured him, reminding him that he had been remade, that life was new. But now he felt closed in, and he went to the tall sliding window gazing west over the Hudson and opened it. The winter air cleared his sinuses.

  The dark sky seemed empty: in the direction his armor told him to look. The lynk of his lance to the Werld manifested in the space of his immediate vicinity and in a larger probability zone a mile above his head, tilted twenty-six degrees toward the north magnetic pole. The lynk space around him was big enough only for human-sized transits like blood beetles, which his lance could easily disperse as they appeared.

  The jumpships and needlecraft would come in above him where they could scatter quickly and avoid his lance fire-until their own light lancer armor came through. His armor did not know if it could match the zotl armor. .

  The wind turned, and the air smelled of burning leaves. A new feeling glided in under his fear and elation, elusive as an unwritten poem. It was -awe. "Geezus, Zeke," Carl said in a slow voice. "It's strange."

  "It's always been strange," Zeke confirmed, "only now it's gotten weird enough for you to notice." He sat up. One hand tugged at the ghost of his white beard before finding his chin, and he gazed at Carl, ruminative as Moses. "Carl, I've got to talk with you."

  Carl turned from his window reverie. Zeke had never appeared as composed as this before, and the poise in his stare drew Carl closer. "What more can you possibly have to say?" he asked, sitting in the plush chair beside the sofa.

  "Ever hear of Egil Skaldagrimson?" Zeke asked.

  'An uncle of yours?"

  "He was ancient Iceland's most original poet," Zeke said.

  "But in his own day he was better known as a ferocious manslaughterer called a berserkir. One day late in his life after earning the fierce respect of his people as a warrior, a poet, and an autocrat, he was out for a stroll. As he passed one of his men who was bending over, adjusting a sandal, Egil swiftly drew his sword and--zockl-cut the man's head off. The reason

  he gave for doing it is famous: 'He posed so conveniently for a blow."'

  Carl looked at his friend more closely to see if he was launching into one of his ."surges." The strong face was as sensible as the Buddha's. "Okay. So what about it?"

  "You're like Egil's soldier," Zeke replied. "You're picking your toes. You carry a sword, but you've lost the spirit of the sword."

  °` I'm not sure I follow you, old buddy," Carl confessed in a piqued tone. "If you're worried about the zotl's surprising me, dolt. My imp has a warning tone."

  "The enemy I'm worried about is you. You're in some kind of trance."

  "Me?" Carl was surprised. "This is the first day since I got here that I've seen both of your eyes working together."

  "Sure, I've been chemically pummeled. But you've been adamized. You're supposed to be perfect."

  "I'm nowhere near it."

  "That's for sure. But to the urg, you're perfect. A perfect gofer. It's got you locked into its strategy, friend. You have the power, but your will has been castrated so that it won't interfere."

  "Aw, cut it out, Zee." Carl sank back in the chair. "Caitlin's been trying to save my soul. Sheelagh wants to make love to me. And you think I'm a will-less zombie."

  "Not a zombie, just a sleepwalker." Zeke's bushy white eyebrows, lifted. "And why don't you make love to Sheelagh?"

  Carl sat back as if slapped. "I'm in love, Zeebo.

  Remember that feeling? It's a little ways north of lust."

  "Love has blinded you."

  "Blinded me to what?"

  "To power." Zeke's hand flashed out, and he picked up the lance -from where Carl had placed it on the coffee table.

  "This is powerl" He waved it under Carl's nose: "When are you going to use it?"

  "When I have to," Carl answered softly.

  "If you don't use the power you have, the will weakens,"

  Zeke said, returning the lance.

  "Hey, keep in mind whose weak will uncanned you last month."

  "I'll never forget it." Zeke smiled briefly. "But that was last month. What've you done since?
"

  "What's to do? I mean, the eld skyle didn't send me after the Golden Fleece or the Grail. We're just waiting for the lynk to convert some pig stool and then we're gone. Unless the zotl stop us."

  "Forget the zotl." Zeke's gaze pressed into him. "If you're just waiting for the lynk, why'd you come back for me? And why'd you spill the beans to Caitlin and Sheelagh?"

  "What the hell are you driving at?"

  "Don't get excited." Zeke was glad to see that Carl could get excited.

  "Just what are you trying to tell me? That I'm loose-tipped?"

  "That you're talking in your sleep. The urg has put you in a trance, and you're not seeing things clearly. If you're loose-tipped it's because there's some of your old self left that wonders what's going on. That's why you sought out your old friends, to connect with your past and the old meaning of your life. You've lost that, and now you don't know what's-up or down."

  "And you do?"

  "I know only one thing for sure." He leaned closer.

  "We're made out of light. And light is action."

  "Huh?"

  "Light is action." Zeke looked amazed. "Come on, Squirm, you remember quantum theory: Light is trans

  mitted in whole units. Those units are called quanta of action. They're photons: Don 7t get me started on this subject. The point I'm trying to make is this: All creation acts. Continuously. There is no stillness. Even the void between galaxies buzzes with Field particles.

  Action is reality. For a human, that reality is choice.

  You have to act positively, and by that I mean your choices have to be creative, not historical."

  "All right, already ZeeZee. I get the idea. You think I'm lazy"

  "Well, when's the last time you worked out?"

  "I don't believe this."

  "The urg gave you an adamized body, but how do you expect to keep it strong without using it?"

  Carl was on his feet. "Riding a fallpath is a workout and a half, believe me." He strode back to the window and slammed it shut.

  "The only fallpath here is down."

  Carl shrugged. "My heart isn't here, Zeke. Working out's too much of a pain. I'd just as soon wait till I get home."