The Crucible of Time

by John Brunner

  "Albumarak," Yull said, returning the farspeaker to Omber's bag, "show us the way to Karg's bower."

  They all went, exuding such a reek of fury that no one dared gainsay them. There they found him, comfortable enough to be sure in a luxurious crotch padded with the best of mosh, with a nursh in attendance to change the cleanlickers on his frostbitten pad, and with plenty to eat and drink ... but dazed, and totally unable to escape the message repeated and repeated by recordimals either side of him. When one grew fatigued the other took over automatically; the programming was impeccable, and— as Albumarak abruptly realized with a renewed access of horror— that meant it had almost certainly been prepared by Quelf in person.

  She rushed forward, snatched up both of them, and hurled them out of the bower, careless of the fact that their passage slashed great gaps in the protective spuder-webs which filtered incoming air of not only wingets but microorganisms.

  "And now," said Yull with satisfaction, after checking Karg and finding him in good physical condition, at least, "we can arrange for this poor fellow to regain his normal senses. I understand that Quelf is only a research professor here. Who is the actual director? I require to speak with her at once!"

  Her voice rang out like thunder, and one might have sworn that it altered the air-pressure like an actual storm.

  The frightened nursh quavered, "I'll go find her!"

  "Does she know about this?" Yull demanded.

  "N-no! I'm sure she doesn't! We have at least eight-score folk in here at any given time, so she—"

  "Then she's unfit to occupy her post, and I shall tell her so the moment she arrives! Fetch her, and fetch her now!"

  VI

  "What's going to happen to Quelf?" Omber asked. Recriminations had continued all day, and would doubtless resume next bright, but by nightfall everyone was tired of arguing and moreover hungry. The city officials had agreed to arrange for immediate recovery of the space-cylinder, and promised to announce in the morning what other compensation they would offer for Karg's mistreatment. The Slah delegation regarded that as acceptable.

  As to Quelf, she had fled the healing-house in unbearable humiliation. Her last message as she mounted her scudder and made for home had been relayed to Albumarak: "Tell that misbudded traitor not to expect any more help from me!"

  So there went her future, wiped away by a single well-intentioned decision ... but how could she possibly have acted otherwise and lived with herself afterwards? Wearily she summoned the energy to answer Omber as they and Yull left the university precincts under a blustery autumn sky.

  "Oh—nothing much, probably. She's just been made one of the Jingfired, you know, and they're virtually untouchable. Also she's far too brilliant a researcher for the authorities to risk her moving elsewhere, to Hulgrapuk, for example. On top of that, her sentiments are shared by just about all the teachers here. They really do regard people from other continents as basically inferior to themselves."

  "Is the incidence of metal poisoning exceptionally high at Fregwil, then?" Yull murmured, provoking her companions to a cynical chuckle.

  And she continued, "I feel a celebration is in order, now that Karg is being properly cared for at last." They had been assured he would be well enough to leave his bower within two or three days. "Let's dine at the best restaurant we can find, and afterwards make a tour of this Festival of Science; I gather it finishes tonight. Albumarak, you'll be my guest, of course. And perhaps you can advise us what we might ask by way of compensation if the proposals made to us tomorrow are inadequate. That is, unless you have a prior engagement?"

  "No—no, I don't! I accept with pleasure!" Albumarak had difficulty concealing her delight. Already she had been favorably impressed by the unaffected way these people treated her: naturally, casually, as though she were one of themselves. Rather than seeking a reward for her assistance, she felt she ought to be performing further services for them, if only to salve the good reputation of her city, so disgracefully mildewed by Quelf.

  "Then where shall we eat? For choice, suggest an establishment patronized by members of the Jingfired. I feel an unworthy desire to snub their mandibles."

  Quelf had invited Albumarak to dine with her the day she decided to cite her as her nominee. The idea of taking her new friends to the same place appealed greatly.

  "I know just the one!" she declared. "And there's a dolmusq bound in the right direction over there!"

  After the meal—which was excellent—they swarmed the short distance to the park where the Sparkshow was coming to its end. Though the weather was turning wintry, a number of special events had been mounted to mark its final night, and throngs of folk were vastly amused at being charged with so much sparkforce that they shed miniature aurorae from claw-tips and mandibles, yet felt no ill effects.

  But Yull and Omber dismissed such shows as trivial, and paid far more attention to experiments with a practical application: gradient separation of similar organic molecules, for instance, and the use of rotating pull-stones to prove that the fields they generated were intimately related to sparkforce, though as yet nobody had satisfactorily explained how. Someone had even bred back what was held to be a counterpart of the long-extinct northfinder, and claimed that its ability always to turn towards the pole must have been due to metallic particles in its pith—a challenge to those who believed that reactive metal in a living nervous system invariably led to its breakdown.

  At last they came to what had proved the most popular and impressive item in the Festival: the creation of artificial lightning by means of a charge sent along a loss-free circuit. Despite having been fired a score of times every dark for a moonlong, it was still operating perfectly, as was the message-link over which news of Karg's crash had come to Fregwil, although the display on which the information appeared had had to be replaced twice.

  Here Yull and Omber lingered longer than at all the other demonstrations put together, insisting on watching two of the artificial lightning-flashes and sending an unimportant message—"Greetings to Drupit from citizens of Slah!"—over the communication link. For the first time Albumarak felt excluded from their company as they discussed what they had seen in low and private tones.

  But eventually they turned back to her, curling their mantles in broad grins.

  "Did you work on this remarkable discovery?" Yull asked.

  "Ah ... Well, yes, as a matter of fact I did. Quelf has the habit of delegating the details to her students, and—"

  "You understand the principle?"

  "I'm not sure anybody does, really, but I certainly know how the circuits are grown. Why?"

  Yull began to pad meditatively downslope, and the others fell in alongside her.

  "Quelf was right in one thing she said to us today," she went on after a lengthy pause. "Our 'costly toy' did fall out of the sky. What served us well when we were only launching spores and spawn and automatic systems designed to fend for themselves in orbit has turned out to be much too risky when it comes to a piloted mission. For a long time we've been seeking an alternative to wetgas-bladders as a means of lofting spacecraft. We even went so far as to consider using giant drivers directly from ground level, or rather from a mountain-top. But the life-support and guidance systems would burst under the requisite acceleration. As for what would happen to the crew—!

  "Have you, though, padded across standing-sparkforce repulsion?"

  "Of course," Albumarak replied, staring. "But it's a mere laboratory curiosity, with about the power of one of those seeds young'uns put under a burning-glass to watch them leap as their internal gas heats up."

  "You do that here too?" Yull countered with a smile. "I guess budlings are pretty much the same everywhere, aren't they? But, as I was just saying to Omber, if one could grow sufficient of these new loss-free circuits ... Do you see what I'm getting at?"

  Albumarak was momentarily aghast. She said, "But if you mean you want to use that method to launch spacecraft, you'd need laqs and craws of them!" />
  "I think we're less daunted by projects on such a scale than you are; the skein of gas-globes that lofted Karg was already more than a padlonglaq in height. And we don't waste our resources on private luxury the way you do on Prutaj. Excuse me, but it is the case, you know."

  "It's often seemed to me," said Albumarak meditatively, "that most of what we produce is designed to keep us from thinking about the ultimate threat that hangs over us all."

  "You're very different from most of your own folk, aren't you?" Omber ventured. Albumarak turned to her.

  "If Quelf is to be taken as typical—and I'm afraid she is—then I'm proud of the fact!"

  "You'd be quite at home in Slah, then," Yull said lightly. "But before we wander off down that particular branchway: do you think we might reasonably, in compensation for what's been done to Karg, ask how to grow a loss-free sparkforce circuit?"

  Albumarak pondered for a long moment. Eventually, clenching her claws, she said with barely suppressed glee, "Yes! Yes, that's exactly what you should ask for!"

  And if they refuse to part with it—well, then, I'll go to Slah with you and bring the knowledge in my memory!

  She did not speak it aloud, but the moment she reached her decision, she felt somehow that it was far more right than waiting for her turn to be made Jingfired.

  On the morrow Yull and the rest of the Slah delegation were bidden to attend a Full Court of Council, held in a huge and handsome bower in the most ancient quarter of the city. Albumarak tagged along, though on arrival she was quite ignored. It pleased her to see her "superiors" in such a plight; the atmosphere was stiff with the reek of embarrassment, and the welcome offered to the visitors, though correct, was a hollow one.

  Sullen, Quelf had been obliged to put in an appearance, and perched with a few of her closest colleagues on one side of the bower. At the center was Ingolfine, old, excessively fat, but the senior of the living Jingfired, to whom all others must defer when matters of high policy were debated.

  "Were there not once Jingfired at Slah?" Albumarak asked Omber in a whisper.

  "Oh yes! Indeed, they still exist. But ours are mostly scientists who do not make their rank the excuse for show and pomp. They regard it as the greatest possible honor to be elected, and they are charged never to boast about it. Yull may be one; I'd rather lose a claw than ask her."

  The more she learned about the way of life at Slah, the more Albumarak approved of it.

  And then Ingolfine wheezed a command for silence, and they composed themselves to listen to what she had to say.

  "It has been concluded by the members of our Council that a grave— ah—error of judgment has occurred in the case of the foreigner Karg, inasmuch as although—and let me emphasize this—he has been afforded the best of medical care, excessive enthusiasm for the merits of life at Fregwil led respected Quelf to overpad the boundary of normal courtesy towards one who was sick and far from home."

  Quelf looked as though she would like to disappear.

  "Honor obliges us therefore to make restitution. We propose to endow a studentship tenable by a young person from Slah for up to a quarter-score of years, to be devoted to any subject taught at our university."

  And she waited for Yull's response to what she clearly regarded as a generous offer.

  It followed promptly. "We would be dreamlost and foolish to commit any of our young people to the claws and mandibles of so-called teachers who regard us as an inferior folk!"

  The insult provoked a furious outcry. When Ingolfine quelled it, she demanded, "Then what do you ask for?"

  "The secret of loss-free circuitry, so we can put it to better use than what you're sure to waste it on!"

  This time the hubbub was reinforced by combat-stink. "Out of the question!" Ingolfine declared after consulting her advisers.

  "Very well, then," Yull said composedly. "We have an alternative demand. Regardless of the medical care given him, which we have certain reservations about, it is an undeniable fact that Karg was maltreated here. We will settle for taking one of your citizens home with us, not against her or his will, in order to demonstrate to the world how much better we at Slah can make a foreigner welcome."

  Ingolfine and the other officials relaxed. If the Slah delegation were content to achieve a mere propaganda coup ... More private discussion followed, and finally Ingolfine announced, "To that we see no objection."

  "You state that publicly, as a matter of principle?"

  Again, hurried consultation. Then, defiantly, "Yes!"

  "Very well. We choose Albumarak."

  There was a horrified hush. Quelf broke it, rising to full height and shrieking, "But she's my best student!"

  "Was!" shouted Albumarak, marveling at how clearly Yull had read her secret intentions. "After what you did to Karg, nobody will respect you again so long as you live!"

  VII

  During the dark that preceded her departure, Albumarak perched alone in one of the shabby neglected bowers of the house where the Slah delegation had been obliged to take up lodging. Her mind was reeling under the impact of the hatred she was having to endure. Even in her fits of bitterest loathing for the "high-pressure citizens" of her bud-place she had never imagined that they, in full awareness of what had been done to Karg, would regard her as the traitor and not Quelf. It showed that they too would have wanted the foreigner to be cheated into turning his mantle, heedless of how much he suffered in the process, in order to delude those who were striving to escape the truth.

  Soft slithering at the entrance aroused her. The bower's luminants were withering and dun, and the night was cloudy; neither moonshine nor the glimmer of stars and comets lent their light. Not waiting to sense the newcomer's aroma, she said in a dull tone, "Who's there?"

  "It's Karg. Do you mind if I join you?"

  "Why—why, certainly you may!" She had met him earlier; he was still weak, but had insisted on remaining at Fregwil until arrangements for recovering his cylinder were complete. Thinking he might need assistance, she moved towards him, but he waved her aside with one claw.

  "I may not be able to walk properly right now, but I can swarm along a branch all right ... There." He settled in the crotch next to hers, where they could look out at the city through gaps between the bravetree trunks.

  "I suspect I owe you my sanity as well as my life," he said after a while.

  Embarrassed, she shifted on her perch. "It was Presthin who actually rescued you. I just went along for the ride. And it was Yull who suggested how we could eavesdrop on what Quelf was doing to you."

  "But you programmed the scrapsaq, didn't you? She told me it was an amazing job, given the time available."

  "Well, we had to keep the snowrither's haodah sealed all the way to Drupit, so I had plenty of time to get to know your aroma. Mimicking it well enough to condition a scrapsaq wasn't hard."

  She found herself feeling a little uncomfortable in the presence of this person who had risked and suffered so much in a cause which, a moon-long ago, she had been accustomed to dismissing as worthless.

  Sensing her mood, Karg inquired, "Are you having second thoughts about going to Slah?"

  "No, quite the reverse!"—with a harsh laugh. "I'm looking forward to it. I never thought my folk could be so brutal!"

  After a pause, Karg said, "I've been talking to Yull about your people. She said ... I don't know if I ought to repeat this. It's indecent to talk that way about another folk."

  "Say anything you like and I'll say worse!"

  "Very well. But there isn't really another folk, is there? We are all one. We're budded, and we die, and in between we make the most of what's offered to us, and afterwards whatever it was that made us us returns to whence it came. Maybe next time it will animate creatures under another sun, so different from ourselves that when what used to make up you and me comes back we won't recognize each other. But of course there can't be any way of knowing."

  Albumarak was not in the habit of debating the mystery of awar
eness; the academics of Fregwil had long ago decreed that certain problems were inherently insoluble and should be left to take care of themselves. She said hastily, "You were about to quote Yull, weren't you?"

  "All right, since you insist. She holds that your folk must be less than civilized because you take no thought for the future, and won't invest effort to promote the survival of our species but only for your own immediate enjoyment. She says this is proved by the way you waste so much of your resources on entertainment and distraction. You don't have enough left over to make sure either that your food-plants are healthy or that the air you breathe has been purged of poisonous metals. If you did, you'd be working to ensure that even though we as individuals can't escape into space our budlings or their budlings may. She's so convinced of this, she's going to insist on all of us being purified from crest to pad when we get home. And she swears that's why the people of Fregwil went crazy enough to want the futile victory of conditioning me by force!"

  He ended on a defiant note, as though expecting Albumarak to contradict.

  And only a short while ago she would have done so. But her journey with Presthin, brief though it was, had given her the shadow of an insight into what Karg must have braced himself for when he volunteered to fly into space. To her the snowbound wastes of the highlands were alien enough; how much more, then, the boundless desert between the stars!

  Hesitantly she asked, "Did it do any lasting harm? The conditioning, I mean?"

  He gave a dry chuckle. "Probably not very much, vulnerable though I was. I had to learn to cling hard to reality a long time ago. I used to supervise an underwater quarry, you know, in an environment nearly as harsh and lonely as outer space."

  "I didn't know! In fact, I know almost nothing about you, do I? This is the first time we've met properly."