TOTAL ECLIPSE

by John Brunner

  He droned on soporifically. Rorschach’s mind wandered again, recalling how eager Ian had been throughout his period of convalescence, how frustrated he had seemed—clear to the point of breaking out in fits of blind rage—at not being able to recapture the dazzling insight he claimed he had achieved.

  For a week or more he had been insisting he was well enough to stand the strain, and Lucas had contradicted him with the evidence of his medical computers to back him up.

  Rorschach himself was nearly as excited. He kept rehearing the comment Rudolf Weil had made, and he had always respected Weil’s judgment. This, the colonel had said, was the person he would bet on to decipher the native language.

  In so short a time…?

  But it wasn’t so short, not really. Back on Earth Ian had studied every available printed crystal, every snippet of data the Stellaris had carried home, had indeed set to work before Igor filed a special request for him to be sent to Sigma Draconis. A man with such an unusual mind, capable of generating patterns where most people would see a jumble of unconnected nonsense—yes, it was entirely possible he had made the breakthrough.

  Hurry up, Lucas! For pity’s sake get a move on!

  He only thought that, though. He was afraid to say it for fear of disturbing the process of induction.

  “Okay,” Lucas said at last, and wiped a trace of sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “He’s in deep trance again now. Funny, it took longer than it usually does, and that’s a bad sign.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh…” A vague gesture. “It could imply that what he consciously wants to remember actually proved to be very painful and is being suppressed. Or it could mean, equally, that on the subconscious level he’s aware that what he mistook for a brilliant inspiration was nothing of the kind, but a delusion caused by the high fever he was suffering. Ever have a dream in which you were sure you’d hit on a marvelous new idea, and then realised on waking that it was completely ridiculous?”

  Rorschach nodded soberly. “I get you. But don’t make too many dismal forecasts, please. You could be wrong.”

  “Sure. Shall we find out?”

  “Yes, go ahead!”

  Lucas turned back to Ian.

  “Ian, can you hear me?”

  “I hear you fine.” Faintly, his voice seeming to come from a long way off. His lips barely moved.

  “Ian, think back now, think back, to the time just before we came to bring you away from Ash. Are you thinking back? Remember it was the time when you were being a Draconian, you’d lived in the native city for a month, you were in a body with four legs and you felt the changing fields all around you… Are you remembering, Ian?”

  “Yes, I’m remembering.”

  “Tell us all about what it felt like to be there, to be in a body with four legs and pick things up with your long hard lips and sense all the pressures and textures of the walls and the land and the currents of the air.” Lucas’s tone never wavered; he maintained the same soothing pitch and almost inflectionless delivery as he had used when performing the induction.

  “It was… different.”

  “How was it different?”

  Rorschach stifled a sigh and composed himself more comfortably on his chair. This was going to take a long time.

  Little by little they teased out of Ian’s memory tantalising hints, and a microphone dutifully recorded every word for later computer study. They heard how he laboriously worked his way from superficial questions—did they trade? Yes, or they would not have been able to feed themselves in the middle of a city; at least they must have used a division of labour—to others, infinitely more subtle, that would barely adapt to human language.

  At one point Rorschach could restrain himself no longer. He muttered, “But this is incredible! He really does seem to have got under the natives’ skin!”

  Pale, Lucas said, “I’m more convinced by the moment. But it would be best if you kept completely quiet.”

  So onward, through the superficial layers of sexuality, and then deeper, and deeper, approaching the central event of a Draconian’s existence: the neuter phase marking a watershed between male and female, active and passive.

  Now Ian’s voice grew hoarse; he took more and more time over each successive answer, hunting for words, repeating himself and then declaring that was wrong and trying again and once continuing for five or six minutes with a series of wild surrealist images, while his face twisted into a mask of agony and tears leaked from his closed lids.

  “What’s hurting him so?” Rorschach whispered when Lucas had instructed Ian to relax for a bit following that long, slow, exhausting utterance.

  “It’s too early to be sure,” Lucas answered equally softly. “My guess is that we’ve tapped into a personal problem—not related to the Draconians, but to Ian himself—which could have given him the clue he was after, or alternatively might have coloured a hallucination and lent it the spurious air of rationality.”

  “What sort of personal problem?”

  “Sexual? Social? Your guess is as good as mine. You know he was orphaned when he was eight, of course. Perhaps being alone in the Ash site, aware no matter how he tried to ignore the knowledge that the city was doomed, or perhaps because his rather peculiar cast of mind has made him a solitary person and he resents this handicap—whatever the cause, it’s clear he’s attained an incredible degree of identification with our hypothetical version of the natives. He looks a little better now. I’ll push on.”

  But not long after he resumed the interrogation, he had to break off again because Ian was clenching his fists and declaring flatly that he was going to die and it was all for nothing and he’d been stupid and wasn’t fit to survive anyhow and…

  Lucas soothed him back into deep trance and ordered him to rest until he wanted to wake up naturally. Then he gave Rorschach a despondent glance.

  “Well?”

  “That last bit,” Rorschach said glumly. “It didn’t sound very promising, did it?”

  “No. Of course it’s premature to say so, but I felt my hopes completely dashed by it. It was as though what he imagined to be an insight into the fate of the Draconians was no more than a renewed realisation, in the context of this ingenious artificial personality, that the species was indeed doomed to extinction.”

  Lucas stretched; he was stiff from long sitting on his stool face to face with Ian.

  “Of course I’ll keep on trying. I’ll put him through at least a dozen sessions before I give up.”

  Rorschach rose and wandered to the window. Gazing out, eyes narrowed against the sunlight, he said with his back turned to Lucas, “Tell me, have you felt that things have been going wrong since we brought Ian back?”

  “Very much so,” Lucas said.

  “How does it look to you?”

  “It’s hard to pin down, but… Oh, mostly there’s a sense of fatigue. When we started out, we were always buoyant because every day saw some new discovery, and some new idea always boiled up at the monthly conferences, which enabled people to go away and put yet another theory to the test. That’s changed, inevitably. We were on the brink of despondency when Cathy and Igor located the four temples—or whatever they are—and that gave us a fresh lease of life. But even that really spectacular discovery hasn’t furnished us with all the stimulus we need. We’re back to the regular grind, comparing scraps of data one by one, and now we have so much more information, so many more possible combinations, it’s making us dreadfully tired.”

  Rorschach nodded. “Yes, that’s part of it, I’m sure. One has noticed how, because Ian has generated several of the most recent new ideas, people are starting to pin their hopes on him. Without his connivance, of course. And when he actually set out on his venture at Ash, there was this slight but definite slackening in other people’s efforts, as though they honestly expected him to come back with the complete solution… There’s one other crucial factor operating, though.”

  Lucas hesitated. He said eventually
, “The fact that we’re past the halfway mark of the current tour.”

  Rorschach exhaled gustily. “Thank goodness I’m not the only person who’s noticed. I haven’t dared mention it before in case it was illusory. After all, on previous tours we haven’t had any sense of—of watershed, if you follow me.”

  Lucas sat down on a nearby bench, his legs dangling.

  “True, true. But never before has the ship brought someone empowered to close the base and abolish the Starflight Fund.”

  “But we sorted that out!” Rorschach said sharply. “Thanks to Ian—” He broke off, his mouth rounding into an O.

  “That’s why everyone is developing this absurd reliance on Ian,” Lucas said with a nod. “Not just his ideas, useful and original though they are. People are aware, even without realising, that quite unintentionally Ian made the difference between continuance of the base and evacuation to Earth. This sense of dependence is bound to grow worse as time goes by.”

  Rorschach was silent a long moment. Finally he said, “And if the ship doesn’t come back…?”

  “I don’t know.” Lucas bit his lip. “But you may wager that you and I are not the only people wondering about that. I—uh—happened to be checking out some computer files the other day, and I noticed you’d been reviewing and updating the long-term survival programmes.”

  Rorschach said defensively, “It struck me as about time.”

  “Quite right. They haven’t been revised since the end of the first tour, have they? I mean, bar the automatic inclusion of data concerning new arrivals. And I must say that even with your recent additions they don’t look promising.”

  “No, they don’t.” Rorschach scowled. “In the first instance, all they were designed to do was keep us alive if the ship had an accident and its return was delayed for some fairly long period, a couple of extra years. Turning them into a blueprint for the permanent colonisation of this planet by human beings is a hell of a tough job. For one thing our gene pool, filtered through the available fertile women, is—” He broke off, obviously annoyed with himself.

  Lucas rose and came to put his arm companionably around the older man’s shoulders.

  “Someone’s got to face it sooner or later, Valentine. Someone has to take the cold-blooded calculations the machines make on our behalf and use them to help us face the idea that the ship may never come back. As director, I’m afraid it’s up to you. I sympathise. Count on me for any help I can offer.”

  Behind them Ian stirred. They turned in time to see him rise, licking his lips.

  “Did you…?” he asked, and his voice failed him, while eager expectation lighted his eyes.

  “Sorry,” Lucas said. “Not yet. But we’ll try again tomorrow.”

  “What’s the problem? I know I had it all clear in my mind!”

  “Yes, but…” Lucas sought for words. “Maybe it made sense in Draconian terms. What we have to do is find a way of translating them into human language, isn’t it?” He smiled reassurance. “We’ll try again tomorrow, shall we?”

  “I guess so,” Ian said dully. “Okay. If anybody wants me, I’ll be in the refectory. I need a drink.”

  XVIII

  Ian sat miserable at his bench in the relic shed, staring at the screen of the computer remote. On it stark letters and symbols reported the result of his latest search through the known patterns imprinted on the Draconian crystals.

  They were fundamentally identical. Checking and double-checking designed to eliminate random noise due to the weight of overlay activating the piezo effect in them, which were supposed to make the differences clearer, had done the opposite. It had shown that what differences might once have existed between one crystal and its neighbour had been so slight the mere passage of time had blurred them past recovery.

  “It’s insane!” he said to the air. “Thousands and thousands and thousands of them, and all alike as peas! Why? We make identical objects, but for use—tools, coins, garments, practical things that are needed by vast numbers of people. An archeologist digging the ruins of Earth would find them scattered almost from pole to pole, not stacked up exclusively in huge central warehouses. And I was so close to understanding what they’re for, so damnably close!”

  He broke off, guiltily aware that it was unhealthy to address himself aloud in this fashion, but tempted to do so in another way. He resisted the temptation for a few seconds, then yielded with a sigh, and pressed a switch which wiped the screen and instead activated a speaker linked to the computers.

  Once again—for the tenth, twelfth time?—he heard the recording made of his last session under hypnosis with Lucas, the one which had reduced him to such a state of hysteria that Rorschach had forbidden him to try again.

  Gabbling pure nonsense, even to his own ears, he heard his voice made harsh by anger and sour by grief. What the hell could he possibly have meant by a phrase like “We all shrank until we didn’t have room for ourselves” or, weirder still, “We got fined and that was the end of us!”?

  Behind him there was a light footfall. He slapped the switch and the recording stopped instantly, but it was too late. The newcomer was Cathy, and she was predictably annoyed.

  “Ian, when you are going to stop this foolishness?” she demanded. “You’ve listened to that until you must know it by heart, but every time I come in I seem to find you at it again!”

  Without looking at her, he retorted, “You don’t believe me any more than the rest of them, do you? You don’t believe I really understood, just for a fraction of a second, what exterminated the Draconians!”

  “Of course,” Cathy said. “I’ve said I take your word for it, haven’t I? But until you—”

  Now he swung around on his chair to face her, eyes blazing.

  “I’m getting sick of the way people are treating me!” he exploded.

  Seeming frightened, she stepped back half a pace. “What do you mean?” she countered.

  “You know damn’ well—or at any rate you should! It’s plain enough, isn’t it?” He jumped to his feet and began to stride up and down, pounding fist into palm to emphasise his words.

  “Everybody’s acting as though I’ve—I’ve betrayed them! Just because Lucas isn’t smart enough to take me back under hypnosis to the stage I reached when he was idiotic enough to drag me away from Ash! Is it my fault that I was interrupted just at the crucial moment? Is it my fault that Rorschach refuses to give me back the simulacrum, so I can have another go? Well, is it?”

  He glared at her.

  Timidly she said, “Ian, you’re letting this prey on your mind. I’m sure nobody thinks you’ve let us down.”

  “That’s what you think, is it? Well, you damn’ well ought to open your eyes and ears! Stop humouring me! Stop making soothing noises to calm me down! Get a grip on what’s actually happening for a change!”

  She looked at him levelly, her face pale.

  “Ian, why is it that every time I try to discuss this with you rationally you break out into a hysterical rage?”

  “I do not!”

  “Listen to yourself, Ian. Do it on tape, if you have to, but listen. You’re disappointed, naturally, but instead of working to put things right you’re making them worse. You ought to be consulting people instead of insulting them!”

  He closed the gap between them with a single long stride and slapped her cheek with a sound like a gunshot.

  Instantly he could have cut off his hand. He stood frozen, watching the paleness of her skin give way to red where he had struck her. She made as though to touch her cheek in disbelief, but cancelled the impulse and lowered her arm again.

  Her tone measured, she said, “You’re not being the Ian I fell in love with. When you get back to where you were, let me know. But for the time being I don’t want any more to do with you.”

  She spun on her heel and stalked away. The door slammed. When he ran after her, shouting, she ignored him, and when he returned to the room they had been sharing, he found everything that belon
ged to her had been removed.

  “Ian?”

  A soft voice pierced the midnight darkness. He was sitting alone on a rock, half a mile from the base, at the edge of the glass disc into which the first arrivals had sterilised the sand. He didn’t look around; he was staring, unseeing, at the heedless stars.

  It was cold. Here as on Earth it was always cold at night in a desert. But he didn’t pay attention to that, either.

  The voice belonged to Igor. Shortly, his dark lean figure appeared from the direction of the base, his feet making little crunching noises.

  “I won’t ask if you mind my joining you,” he said. “But I propose to do so anyhow.”

  There was another rock nearby, of a convenient height for sitting on. He moved towards it. Sat. Did something Ian could not make out. Then, abruptly, a flame loomed hurtfully bright, there were sucking sounds, and a waft of smoke reached Ian’s nostrils.

  He said involuntarily, “A pipe?”

  Igor chuckled. “Ah, you haven’t lost your tongue… Yes, a pipe. I brought it from Earth more as a souvenir than for use. I suppose this is—oh—the fourth time I’ve lit it since I arrived.”

  The red glow of the pipe bowl was just enough to show his sharp features when he drew on it.

  “Hmm!” he commented after a pause. “Synthetic it may be, but it’s convincingly like tobacco. Perhaps a bit harsh—like you.”

  “I guess you’ve been talking to Cathy,” Ian said bitterly.

  “No, right now Cathy isn’t talking to anybody,” Igor murmured. “And so far as I’m concerned what’s happened between you is none of my business. I’m sorry about it, but that doesn’t give me the right to interfere. Not unless you, as a friend, invite me to mediate… which I’d cheerfully do, of course. I was very pleased when you and she got together.”

  Ian didn’t answer. Having drawn twice more on his pipe and tamped the mock tobacco with a handy pebble, Igor resumed, “Still, that’s not why I came out looking for you. I suddenly wanted to ask you why you became involved in archeology.”

  “What?”