Clarion: The Sequel to Voyage (Paul's Travels)

by C. Paul Lockman

  “Good restaurant, this,” Paul observed, bulging happily. “I think I’ll become a regular.”

  “We are offering discounts for customers who show loyalty,” Hal said in a lilting Indian accent. “We will be happy to be serving you again in the near future.”

  “You never cease to amaze, old buddy.” Paul allowed himself to laugh, but what he truly wanted were clear answers. “Want to catch me up on the journey?”

  This gigantic leg of their trip to intercept and defeat Julius had taken them a great deal of the way to their final destination. Clarion would be both a vital fueling stop and, Paul had been assured, a spectacular place in its own right.

  “We’re fine,” Hal announced. “Nothing untoward about the journey. You slept well, didn’t dream much. We had to do three very minor course corrections to make sure our path wasn’t diverted by some near-misses, but nothing to write home about.”

  As his language became increasingly idiomatic, Paul had the impression that, somewhere underneath, Hal’s own thinking was, itself, gaining a greater nuance; he seemed to become more complex, idiosyncratic, perhaps one might have said human as he studied people and their ways. It was a shame, Paul observed as his stomach gurgled gratifyingly, that the Earth-bound Hal delegates so carefully placed in deep and inaccessible places would not receive this same wisdom until Phoenix neared the Earth once more. At present, of course, the Delegates did not yet exist, nor would they for several centuries. It made Paul’s head spin to think of it.

  “Are we doing OK for time?” Paul instantly noted how routine this question would have appeared during a regular day on Earth. Here, it had a very different significance.

  “Mistress Eliria has updated our intercept models. We’re on track.”

  His remarkable meeting with Eliria on the beach at Araj Kitel had been among the strangest of Paul’s life. Even if Samuel L. Jackson had chosen to show up again, he’d barely have been as surprised as he was when Eliria had come gracefully sidling across the sand. Even the memory of that image was enough to begin the stirrings of arousal.

  “She’s a helpful lady,” Paul quipped. “So, once we’ve dealt with Julius, we’ll be how far from Earth, exactly?”

  “About a hundred and fifty light-years. We’ll actually be closer to Takanli.”

  Paul blinked. “We will?”

  “Yes, but don’t get too excited.”

  “Why the hell not, Hal?” he objected. “I mean… It can’t have escaped your notice that there are certain people who live there that I’d just love to see.”

  “It hasn’t,” Hal said. “But you need to know something. I’d have told you earlier, but I only just got word.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “She’s on her way to Earth,” Hal told him. “Daedalus is frying her engines to reach Earth orbit in time to be sure they aren’t caught up in Julius’ insanity.”

  He thought quickly. “Before Julius travels through the Vortex, in 2034?”

  “Yup.”

  “What if they’re late?” Paul asked, horrified at the possibility.

  “Then, provided Julius successfully goes on to destroy the Lawrence, back in 2008, and prevents your abduction, there will be a pretty awful paradox,” Hal warned. “Daedalus will arrive in a timeline which can no longer exist.”

  Paul waited. “And?”

  “I really can’t say. But it won’t be good.”

  Paul sighed and rubbed his face. “Just one more reason to get our asses moving and make sure Julius doesn’t get access to that ship.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So, like I was saying,” Paul said, pulling his thoughts back to their mission, “once we do knock him off his timeline, I’ll be 150 light-years from Earth, some time in… what, the late twentieth century?”

  “Somewhere early in Ronald Reagan’s tenure,” Hal replied.

  “Awesome. And you still don’t want me to exceed 1C in the Phoenix, right?”

  “I’d really, really rather you didn’t.”

  “So,” Paul continued, “how do I get home in time to meet Daedalus when they arrive?” When there was no answer for a frustratingly long moment, Paul said, “Hal, you’re not planning to leave me stranded while my girlfriend is 150 light-years away, right?”

  Hal took one more moment, then said, “Paul, I know you’re still waking up, and you’re chock-full of terrific curry, but come on, would you?”

  “Huh?” Paul shook his head as if to clear it.

  “Do you believe me incapable of empathizing with the most basic human needs?”

  “Well, I hope you’re not,” Paul replied.

  “Will you simply, therefore, trust me when I tell you that certain things will happen, in between now and then, which will render the problem moot?”

  The tired, confused Welshman rubbed his face again, noticing a few days’ rough stubble. He ran his hands through his hair, which needed a wash, and had begun to drape haphazardly. I haven’t had a shower since it was 2033, he muttered to himself. I must stink.

  “Hal... can we talk about a few things?”

  “Sure,” the machine replied, as if nothing untoward had passed between them; no surreptitious tweaking of their flight plan, or initially spurious diversion to Triton, or less than serendipitous meetings with Garlidan’s friends.

  “It won’t have escaped your attention that since I finished that little solo vacation on the moon,” he paused, pondered just how plain-spoken to be, “I haven’t had a fucking clue what’s been going on.”

  “Er... Yeah. You’ve been pretty out of it,” Hal agreed.

  “True that. And do you know why?” Paul asked.

  “Because of me.”

  “Correct, Hal. Would this be, do you think, a good moment to put that right?”

  “Well, I was going to wait until we were on Clarion, but I guess it’s as good a time as any.”

  Paul strapped himself into the pilot’s seat. “I’m ready, Hal. I don’t want you to miss anything out, OK. Just give it to me, unvarnished.”

  “Right you are,” Hal said. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

  “Just tell me,” Paul intoned, his patience expended.

  “OK.” Hal stopped for a long moment. Then came, “Please turn around.”

  Paul was suddenly aware of a presence. There was someone there. His heart banged percussively in his chest as he slowly turned to see the most unexpected, and among the most ridiculous sights of his life.

  Garlidan was floating in the mid-deck, stark naked.

  ***

  “Paul, my dear boy, it’s simply great to see you.”

  He stared at the beaming, naked form which had appeared out of nowhere. “Hal?” Paul asked in a timid voice. “Would you compute something for me? Figure out the exact amount of time I have experienced since arriving back in Earth orbit from the moon. You know, ‘back’ in 2034.”

  “Certainly, Paul. Including the brief periods of sleep during a pair of multiple-century hypersleep journeys, you have experienced approximately twelve Earth days of time.”

  “Less than two weeks, you’re saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “And in that time, if I may sum up briefly, I’ve discovered that there’s a lunatic touring the galaxy, eliminating people who like trying time travel. I’ve happened upon, and for some reason rescued, a pair of lesbians on a moon of Neptune. I’ve pioneered a brand-new type of long-distance hypersleep. I’ve persuaded two genius madmen geneticists to trust nature and stop meddling. I’m approaching a planet whose very existence is disputed by some. And then you,” he said pointedly, glaring at the new arrival, “you of all people decide to randomly show up on my ship, unannounced.”

  “Ain’t that just a hole in the boat?” Garlidan exulted.

  “And you decided to show up bollock naked,” Paul added.

  “Well, there wasn’t time to change.”

  Paul steadied himself against the wall of the cabin. “Hal, get some gravity
in here. If he’s going to be ‘tackle out’, I’d rather his schlong wasn’t waving around.”

  Garlidan glanced downward and grinned proudly, but then found himself becoming heavy, sinking downward suddenly, with an invisible force pressing him to the cabin’s floor. He arrived with a grunt of complaint. “Oh, the vestibular system and its tedious needs.”

  “I know how it feels, Garlidan,” Paul said acidly. “The need for a firm footing, for a clear sense of knowing ‘up’ from ‘down’. We all thrive on that kind of thing.” He ordered the Replicator to produce some clothes, and gave Garlidan a moment to dress.

  “Sorry, dear boy,” the old man said. “Hal requested that I make an appearance, you see.”

  “Did he now?” Paul said. He wasn’t sure if this was the prelude to some blinding moment of understanding, or the final loosening of some critical screw. He had the feeling that, in perhaps only a few moments, he’d find the great, unifying answer, or utter insanity. From where he sat, it was a toss-up.

  “He felt it better that this comes directly from me,” Garlidan offered.

  “Because you’re responsible for all of this,” Paul said.

  “I am,” Garlidan replied.

  “My abduction. The whole mad business in the Outer Rim. My trip to Holdrian.”

  “All true,” Garlidan confirmed.

  “My sudden acquisition of the Phoenix,” Paul continued. “And Hal.”

  “Well, Cyto recommended that you bring a top-level supercomputer with you,” Garlidan said. “But your trip to Earth, your incredible successes with Dvalin and the reform of your world’s economy and society, those were all down to you.”

  Paul gave him a look which demanded nothing but complete honesty. “And Julius? Was that your doing?”

  “Oh, good heavens, no!” Garlidan cried. “No, my dear boy, I had nothing to do with that. He’s a psychotic madman. Even in the midst of my most lavish caprice, I would never choose to trouble you with someone so obviously deranged.”

  This brought a certain peace, and it was much needed. “You hungry? Hal makes a first-rate curry.”

  “Actually, yes. I’m starving.”

  He let his visitor eat, but then insisted on asking the one questions which refused to remain unasked. “Where, and what, is Clarion?” Paul asked.

  “Ah,” Garlidan began, setting aside his lamb rogan josh. “It’s a remarkable place. An artificial system, a little like Araj Kitel, I suppose, but with a rather larger population. Although,” he admitted, “given that the endless beaches of that extraordinary planet are home only to quirky, old philosophers and their guests, I’m sure that’s not a surprise.”

  “Go on,” Paul said.

  “Well, Clarion is deliberately remote. It orbits the galactic center as a free-floating planetary system, rather than circling a star. Its orbit is actually very peculiar, and highly inclined to the ecliptic plane. They make use of some rather unusual methods to ensure that no telescope would ever have a genuine chance of detecting them. Clarion does not, therefore, appear on any civilization’s charts of the galaxy.”

  Hal chipped in, “Those who inhabit Clarion like to keep themselves to themselves, he’s saying.”

  “I’m with you,” Paul said.

  “The reason for this excess of secrecy is the purpose of the place itself. People like me,” Garlidan said, and then paused. “Well, other seekers, those who feel that their life’s journey is the quest for a satisfyingly complete answer, they are somehow drawn to Clarion.”

  “Paul,” Hal said, “are you familiar with the writings of George Gurdjieff?”

  He dragged up some old memories. “Meetings with Remarkable Men, right? I read it on a plane, going to a meeting in Australia,” he remembered. “Some time in 2018?”

  “That’s the one,” Hal confirmed. “Interesting man.”

  “I met him once,” Garlidan tossed in, apparently without the desire to elaborate further.

  Hall pressed on. “Do you remember the legend of the Sarmoung Brotherhood?”

  It took a moment, but Paul brought the information to mind. Every book he’d read since his Takanli treatments was available - essentially verbatim, if he were patient – in his long-term memory. “Yeah. No one’s quite sure whether it’s real, or not…”

  “Oh, it was real,” Garlidan informed him. “That’s where I met Gurdjieff.”

  “It was some kind of esoteric school for ‘Seekers after Truth’, as I remember,” Paul said. “And Garlidan, what the hell are you talking about? Gurdjieff claimed he was there in the 1920s, or something. How could you possibly have…”

  “Don’t worry about it,” the old man said. “Say, does that Replicator produce Bephran knotweed? I’m dying for a smoke.”

  “He’s changing the subject,” Hal said, “because it he didn’t, he’d completely blow your mind.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a second,” Paul replied, watching Garlidan load a newly-created pipe with spindly, green strands. “So, what’s Sarmoung got to do with Clarion?”

  Garlidan lit the pipe without recourse to a flame, simply willing it into ignition, and puffed contentedly for a few moments. “They’re both very remote, very important, and poorly understood, even by the tiny numbers who have heard of them. Clarion is a monastery, of a kind. The people there come because they must. And they stay for as long as they need to.”

  “With what aim?” Paul asked, watching Garlidan become wreathed in slightly green smoke.

  “The only true aim, dear boy. The only one worth bothering with.” He smiled. “Enlightenment.”

  ***

  Chapter 27 – Revenge

  Aboard the Larssen

  1.18 light years from Holdrian

  Three days would be sufficient, Danny decided hundreds of years before, for Julius to prepare for their arrival. He spent the first six hours eating and drinking, his system crying out for genuine sustenance after a millennium of drip-fed vitamins.

  “Something from back home,” was one of the first things the bleary-eyed young man found it possible to say. “Eel stew with big chunks of hydrotube.”

  “Very well,” Danny said. He’d computed a 92% probability that Julius would request the comforts of home upon first waking, and his instructions to the Replicator would mimic very precisely the stew served in Julius’ village, right down to the precise proportions of spices. “Would you like to eat here, onboard the Orion, or aboard your new vessel, the Larssen?”

  The choice was a natural one. The Orion was a relic of the past. Danny had kept the ship in immaculate condition, of course, and the lounge was so neat that the former crew would barely have recognized it. But every moment spent there was a reminder of them.

  Even with Flek and his crew eliminated, Zak’s trio would face very long odds. Short on fuel, probably unable to leave orbit around their barren, dusty moonlet, they would have faced decades of tedium before any rescue would have been possible. And who, Julius wondered, would have gone light-years out of their way to rescue the trapped crew of an illegal mining operation? Even with Zak’s investment maturing in a Qelandi bank, he’d have been hard pressed to bribe a fellow ‘entrepreneur’, though that couldn’t be discounted.

  In any event, Julius was now a thousand light-years away, and Zak, Arby and Mesilla were certainly long dead. But this had been their ship. And Julius would rather celebrate his arrival in the Holdrian system by eating aboard his own.

  Julius made his way down the access tunnel from the lounge to the docking canister which was now home to the Larssen. In contrast to the lashed-together improvisation which was a hallmark of Zak’s leadership, Danny had converted the canister into a fully-functional spaceport. It was richly lit, all along its interior, and through a spacious Perspex bubble at the end of the access tunnel, Julius could see the spherical main module of his new ship. Its superstructure stretched beyond the edge of the canister, jutting out perpendicular to the Orion. It was as though the lumbering freighter had been pierced throug
h its side by a mile-long lance.

  The Larssen gleamed white, sensationally beautiful and wonderfully new. No one could have linked this ship in any way to the half-assed contraption which had been the Fiddler’s Elbow. It seemed as related to its roughshod predecessor as was Julius’ Qelandi noise machine motorcycle to a toddler’s pushbike. The powerful new engines necessitated generous fuel tankage, which was arranged in neat, white cylinders along a slender central column nearly a mile long. The main module, a gleaming sphere, was already lit and waiting his arrival.

  “Danny?”

  “Yes, Julius?”

  “Thank you for this.” Julius took a ladder from the bubble to a new access tunnel which led directly to the Larssen’s main airlock.

  “You’re very welcome. I hope you don’t mind, I took some liberties with the interior design.”

  The Larssen looked and felt like the executive office suite of a major multinational. Plush leather and gleaming surfaces gave it a refined, curated air. It wasn’t ostentatious, and some of the features were distinctly minimalist, but overall it felt like a command center, a place where weighty decisions were made.

  Julius ate at the main table in the galley, which would have seated six. A server droid brought endless helpings of eel stew, scented breads and flavorful, dried meats which were identical to those of Julius’ village on Qelandi. Small glasses of hydrotube nectar were served between courses. “Excellent,” Julius said, more than once. “Truly excellent.”

  After dinner, Danny caught him up on their plan. “We are fifty-eight hours from our arrival at Holdrian. I have three orbital insertion plans awaiting your approval. To save fuel, I recommend that we keep the two ships docked, and execute a long, slow burn until our velocity has…”

  “No,” Julius said. “We will undock from the Orion very shortly. The Larssen will carry out its own burn.” He dabbed his mouth with a napkin.