As on a Darkling Plain

by Ben Bova

  “Hmm.”

  “Wouldn’t cost much,” Childe said, like a Yankee. “Just some pencils and paper and computer time.”

  “Can you really trace the perturbations if they’re so small?”

  “Don’t know,” the mathematician answered with a shrug. “But if we can, we might be able to find out if there’s some pattern to the machines’ operation.”

  “I guess it’s worth trying,” Lee said.

  Childe grinned at him. “Good.”

  When Lee got back to his quarters, Marlene was there.

  “Hello,” he said as he shut the door. Surprises always left him tongue-tied.

  She was sitting on the couch, coiled up, tense.

  “I wanted to talk to you, Sid. I... I’ve been putting it off, but...”

  “What’s the matter?” He sat down beside her.

  Her fists were clenched in her lap. “I want to leave Titan. I’ve got to. As soon as possible.”

  “Leave? Why—” Then it hit him. “Oh, I get it. You want to go with Richards.”

  She almost smiled. “No, it’s not that simple. I’m going back to Earth.”

  “Earth?”

  “Yes. And right away, the sooner the better.”

  Shaking his head in puzzlement, Lee asked, “Marlene, what’s this all about? Why are you so uptight?”

  “I’ve... been offered a position on the scientific staff at the world government headquarters. In Messina.”

  Lee couldn’t fathom the strange expression on her face: there was absolute fear in her eyes, and something more. She was searching for something.

  “Wait a minute, let me get this straight,” he said. “You want to leave and take a position in Messina.”

  She nodded wordlessly.

  “Why?”

  “What difference does that make?” she snapped. “My work here is finished. There’s very little more I can do in the way of atmospheric physics research.”

  “That’s not true and you know it.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “It’s because Richards is leaving and you don’t want to be stuck here with me, isn’t it?”

  “Sid, you’re such an idiot.”

  His temper was rising. “Well then, what the hell is it?”

  “Would it make any difference to you what it is?” she asked quietly. “I’m going to Earth and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  “I can refuse to sign your transfer request.”

  She shrugged. “Then I’ll resign and ship out as a private citizen.”

  “I just don’t understand it....”

  “That’s right, you don’t.”

  “And you’re not going to tell me why you’re leaving.”

  “I’m leaving; that’s the only part of it that you need to know.”

  He slammed a fist on the arm of the couch and got to his feet. Looking down at her, he said, “All right, then. Go! Fill out a transfer form and I’ll sign it.”

  She rose to face him. Her voice shaky for the first time, she answered, “I’ll have the transfer request on your desk tomorrow morning.”

  The yellow coded card was on his desk when he got to his office the next morning, coolly typed out and signed in the proper place.

  Lee sat at the desk and stared at it for a long time. He pictured himself tearing it to shreds, but knew that she would merely make out another. Face it, he told himself. It’s been over for a long time.

  The phone buzzed and he saw her face on the screen before his hand could flick the switch. But it was Lehman instead.

  “Oh. What is it?”

  “Nothing important,” the psychiatrist said cheerfully. “Your annual examination is due, and I thought I’d remind you about it.”

  Lee could feel his face tensing into a frown. “Do you call every staff member with a personal invitation?”

  “No, not usually.” Lehman’s face went serious. “I... uh, I saw Marlene last night. She was pretty upset. She wouldn’t say what it was about, just that she leaving.”

  “So you want to get me into your dream machine and see if I’m about to flip my libido again.”

  With a sudden laugh, Lehman said, “You still have these quaint notions about us psyche-patchers, don’t you?”

  “Listen, Rich, stop trying to be my conscience. Or whatever it is that you’re trying to do. I don’t know how you get your kicks, but they’re not going to be at my expense.”

  Lehman pursed his lips in an inaudible whistle. “My, you’re touchy this morning. I’m only trying to help you, friend.”

  “When I want your help I’ll ask for it.” Lee snapped off the connection.

  He looked back at Marlene’s transfer application, then reached for his stylus and angrily signed it.

  For a week Lee fumed in helpless frustration. Marlene’s transfer request was automatically approved and she would leave on the next ship. It was due at the end of the week.

  The scientific work on Titan had settled back largely into routine. Richards and Kulaki were waiting for their ships and equipment. But Childe and a few computer techs were as busy as politicians a week before election day. The little mathematician was literally burying himself under rooms full of data tapes that went back more than ninety years.

  The day that Marlene’s ship landed, Childe burst into Lee’s office.

  “I’ve got it! It’s all here!”

  Lee jumped out of his chair. “What? What is it?”

  The mathematician was almost too excited to speak. “The data... it’s all here... ninety-four years worth of satellite perturbations... look at them, aren’t they beautiful?”

  He unrolled a long spool of paper tape that was covered with multicolored wiggling lines. Lee blinked at them.

  “There’s the pattern of pulses that the machines have been putting out for the past ninety-four years!” Childe’s grin was face-splitting. “It’s all there, just like I said it would be.”

  Nodding in bewilderment, Lee said, “Okay, fine... but what does it mean?”

  Pointing to the long roll of paper unfurled across his office floor, Lee asked, “What significance is there to the pattern? What does it tell us?”

  Childe frowned. “How would I know? I’m a mathematician, not an engineer. I found the pattern, now it’s up to somebody else to figure out what it’s good for.”

  Lee closed his eyes. “Thanks.”

  He spent that night alone in his apartment, drinking quietly, steadily, until he fell into a dreamless sleep. In the morning—the morning that she was leaving—he awoke in his chair feeling stiff all over, and with a thundering headache. He staggered painfully into the bathroom.

  Showered and medicated, he came out feeling better. Until he saw the clock. My God, she’s taking off right now!

  He raced through the corridors and up the lift tube, bolting out onto the dome’s broad floor just in time to see the shuttle rising up into the dark sky on a sheath of plasma flame. A muted roar shook the dome slightly. There were a dozen or so people standing around, watching the takeoff.

  He stood there burning, burning, every cell of his body feeling the hot flame of the rockets.

  Abruptly he spun about and ducked back into the lift tube. Down to his office he went, slammed himself down in his desk chair and punched the phone switch.

  “Communications center,” he snapped.

  “Communications here.”

  “This is Dr. Lee. That shuttle that just took off, recall it.”

  “What?” The communications tech’s face looked startled.

  “Recall it. Top priority. Now!”

  “But Dr. Lee, it’s due to rendezvous with the main ship... and the schedules...”

  “Fuck the schedules! Call her back!”

  White-faced, the tech nodded, “Yes, sir.”

  “And get me a direct line to Dr. Ettinger, on board that shuttle.”

  “Yes, sir. It’ll take a few minutes....”

  “Stop talking about it and do it.�
��

  The screen went blank momentarily, but almost at once Lee’s secretary’s face appeared on it. “Dr. Lee, Dr. Petkovitch has been trying to reach you... he called earlier, before you arrived at the office. Shall I call him back?”

  “Later.”

  “He seemed very insistent.”

  “Later!”

  The communications tech came back on the screen. “I have Dr. Ettinger, sir. The transmission is a little weak because of the plasma interference.”

  Lee silenced his excuses with a wave of his hand.

  Marlene’s face appeared on the screen. She looked surprised, almost worried.

  “Sid, what’s this all about? They said you’ve ordered the shuttle back....”

  “That’s right. Either you stay on Titan or I go with you to Earth. There’s no third way.”

  Her eyes widened. “Wh... what did you say?”

  “You heard it. Which do you prefer?”

  “You can’t leave Titan.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “But... Sid, I must go back to Earth. I can’t stay.”

  “Then I’m going with you.”

  “No, you can’t. You don’t understand....”

  “You can explain it to me on the way to Earth.”

  “It’s impossible.”

  He made a cutting motion with his hand, a gesture he had unconsciously picked up from Ardraka. “Everything’s impossible until you try. I love you, Marlene. It’s taken me all my life to say it, all my life to realize that I mustn’t lose you. I don’t care what it costs or how much pain there is with it. I love you, and if we’re not going to be together, it won’t be because I didn’t try.”

  Laughing in spite of herself, she said, “You’re crazy!”

  “That’s right. But this is the good kind.”

  “Oh, Sid, if only...”

  “It’ll work, don’t worry. We’ll make it work.”

  “You’d really leave Titan?” she asked warily.

  “Why do you think I’ve called the shuttle back?”

  “After all this has meant to you? You can just walk away from it?”

  He reached both hands out toward the screen, toward her serious, doubting, beautiful face. “Marlene, you mean more to me than anything else. That’s what I’ve learned. I want to spend what’s left of my life with you.”

  And suddenly she was smiling and crying at the same time. “It’s not fair... the things you can do to my equilibrium...”

  Grinning, he replied, “I’ll see you when you land.”

  She nodded and cut the connection.

  Immediately the phone chimed again and Lee’s secretary came on the screen. “Dr. Petkovitch is here; he wants to see you most urgently.”

  With a shrug, Lee answered, “Okay, okay. Send him in.”

  The office door opened and the dark-bearded astronomer shuffled in. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot, but there was a whacked-out grin on his face. He’s high, Lee thought. But on what?

  “Sit down,” Lee said. “You look punched out.”

  Petkovitch slumped into the chair before Lee’s desk. He almost giggled. “Been up thirty... no forty-two hours straight. No sleep. Working with Childe.”

  “On the...”

  “The patterns,” the astronomer finished for him. “They fit. They actually fit. It’s...” He shook his head, completely run out of words.

  Lee blinked at him. “They fit what?”

  “The sunspot cycles.” Petkovitch laughed, almost like the beginnings of a hysterical fit. “The sunspot cycles... what else? What else could it have possibly been. Ali this time, and it was staring us in the face!”

  Lee could feel himself sinking back into his chair. His voice sounded hollow. “You’re certain?”

  Suddenly irritated, the astronomer snapped, “No, of course we’re not certain! We just worked it out roughly. But the correlation looks good. We need the Central Computer Network at Great Lakes to confirm it fully.”

  “The machines are causing sunspots?”

  Petkovitch nodded. “Sunspots, and their associated solar flares and most of the other types of disturbances of the photosphere. No wonder we’ve never been able to predict solar flares with a single theory. We never realized...”

  But Lee had stopped listening. Suddenly it was blindingly clear to him. He saw Sirius’ Pup exploding. He saw the same forces unleashed by the Others on the sun... mankind’s sun... torturing it into an agonized series of upheavals that sprayed radiation throughout the solar system.

  “They destroyed the Neanderthals by making the Pup go nova. And the sun...”

  Petkovitch said, “The sun’s not massive enough for that type of nova. But these machines can cause sunspots, flares, constant agitation. You know, every ten thousand years or so there’s a truly major flare, the kind that caused the Libian Glass—thousands of square kilometers of desert sand fused into glass...”

  “The radiation from flares like that could be lethal on Earth’s surface.”

  Nodding, Petkovitch said, “Unless we evolved resistance to such radiation levels.”

  “The machines were set up to cause the flares, to kill us off, to keep Earth sterilized.”

  His eyes closing with weariness, Petkovitch agreed, “It looks that way.”

  “Then the machines failed!”

  The astronomer’s eyes snapped open.

  “They failed.” The knowledge warmed Lee like sunshine melting frost. “The Others failed... their goddamned machines haven’t killed us.”

  “But we still don’t know how they work.”

  “We’ll find out how,” Lee said. “We can go in there now and dismantle them and see what makes them tick. Think of what’s in there for us to learn! A technology that’s centuries ahead of us!”

  “And it was built millennia ago. What are the Others doing now?”

  Lee shook his head. “No matter. They’re not gods or devils. We can understand what their machines are doing; they’re not beyond the scope of human intelligence. That’s the most important discovery of all.”

  Petkovitch sat up a little straighter. “I had forgotten that aspect of it...”

  But Lee was musing, “Where do the Neanderthals fit in? Did our two species coexist on Earth? And just who are the Others? Where did they come from? Are they still alive out there, someplace?”

  “Good Lord, the more questions we answer, the more unanswered questions there are.”

  The phone chimed and Lee punched at its keyboard.

  “The shuttle will be landing in fifteen minutes, Dr. Lee.”

  “Thanks.”

  Turning to Petkovitch, he said, “Get some sleep. When you wake up, you’ll be head man around here. I’m heading back for Earth on that shuttle.”

  Startled, the astronomer sputtered, “Wh... what... you can’t just... there’s too much...”

  Lee grinned at him. “It’s all yours, friend. I’ve walked my bloody mile. I’m finished with it.”

  “But this sunspot theory might be completely wrong! And there’s still...”

  “You can handle it. And even if your theory is wrong, at least we’re cutting the machines down to human size. Nobody’s going to worship them. Not when we can understand them. Maybe not today... but soon.”

  “You can’t just... leave everything.”

  “The hell I can’t.” In his mind’s eye he could see Marlene, and the troubled look haunting her eyes. There was something she hadn’t told him yet, something deep and aching. But it doesn’t matter, he thought. We can make it if we face it together.

  With an almost boyish grin he got up from the desk and came around it to clasp Petkovitch’s shoulder. “It’s all yours. You’ll have the honor of officially solving the mystery. You’ll get into all the history books. Good luck.”

  “But...” the astronomer still seemed dazed. “But you... what about you?”

  “Me?” Lee laughed. “I’m going to catch the shuttle. I’m going home.”

  AFT
ERWORD: THE SAGA OF “THE OTHERS”

  Ah, love, let us be true

  To one another! for the world, which seems

  To lie before us like a land of dreams,

  So various, so beautiful, so new,

  Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

  Nor certitude, not peace, nor help for pain;

  And we are here as on a darkling plain,

  Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight;

  Where ignorant armies clash by night.

  —Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

  What better image to inspire a science fiction story? What better description of the creative act of scientific research itself, where armies of dedicated men and women have for centuries toiled willingly to shrink their ignorance and shed some light on the “darkling plain” of our existence.

  Yet the novel As On a Darkling Plain originated not with Arnold’s haunting poem, but with the pair of quotations given at the start of the book:

  The Universe is not only queerer then we imagine—it is queerer than we can imagine.

  —J.B.S. Haldane

  Clarke’s Third Law:

  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

  —Arthur C. Clarke

  It was not until the novel was almost finished that I chose the line from Arnold’s Dover Beach for its title.

  As On a Darkling Plain is, of course, part of a series of interlinked novels that may be loosely described as the saga of “The Others.” The first of these novels was The Star Conquerors, the last of them (or perhaps I should say merely the latest) is Orion. Unlike many science-fiction series, in which a “future history” of the human race is plotted out beforehand and stories written to fill in the blank places in the outline, the saga of The Others grew organically. I had no intention, originally, to write a series of stories. In fact, I had no intention to write such stories at all.