The great black shape that swallowed her, the Destroyer, that’s where they are. She fled into this. Is it possible she’s still alive, in whatever mode of life this is, is she trapped in there?
He focusses with all his might in the crazy indirect way he can “see” here. That bright spot. Can it be the very flame, the life-spark he had followed so desperately? Yes! Yes—it is she! He is sure.
Without thought he gathers his strength as a man might take a deep breath, drawing unknowingly on all the lives around him, and hurls a mental cry at the Destroyer’s wall:
“Margaret! MY DARLING, I’LL HELP YOU!”
He falls back, hit by a sense of stunned disengagement.
“Don’t do that again,” comes Waxman’s distant “voice.”
But someone else is exlaiming, “Look! Look!”
Dann’s attention is all on the cloudy pale fires within. The star that he knows is Margaret seems to be drawing nearer to him.
“He reached it.” Val’s “hand” touches him. “Let him try again.”
“All right.” Waxman’s phantom hand comes back too. “But take it easy this time, Doc.”
Trying to modulate himself, Dann grasps at their tenuous touch.
“Margaret! It’s Dann here, Doctor Dann. Can you speak to me?”
More silent swirlings, the starlike point brightens. But no sense of thought or word comes. Instead, as it had done for Ted Yost, an image seems to rise and glimmer in his mind. He recognizes it incredulously—Margaret’s computer screen. Oh God, is this her only mode of communication here? He tries to bring it in focus, tries also to maintain contact with the others. Do they see it too?
Pale blue letters come to life on the ghostly screen:
// DOCTOR*DANN*IS*THAT*YOU//
“Yes! Yes!” he projects eagerly.
But the letters have changed, grown huge and ominous. They march across the screen, repeating meaninglessly:
—I MUST FOLLOW—I MUST SEARCH—I MUST FOLLOW—I MUST SEARCH—as though a vast mechanical voice is intervening.
“Margaret!”
At his cry the letters break down to normal size.
//DOCTOR*DANN*YOU*WON’T*HURT*ME*WILL YOU//
“No, never my dear! Never! Tell me what to do!”
But the silently booming symbols are back, filling the screen. —I MUST FOLLOW—I MUST SEARCH—I MUST—FOLLOW—
“Margaret! Margaret, tell me how to help you!”
—I MUST FOLLOW—I MUST SEARCH—I MUST—
Desperate, Dann pulls on the strengths around him.
“Margaret!”
Again the normal screen comes back.
// CAN’T*TURN*OFF*NEED*MORE*STRENGTH // I*WILL*OPEN*WAY*IN*JUST*YOU// And then her words are swept away by the maniacal huge intruders:—I MUST FOLLOW—I MUST SEARCH—
He senses she has spent all her strength. The next move is up to him.
“I’m going to try to get to her. She said she can open it. Waxman, can you hang onto me somehow?”
“Right.”
Dann has no idea what to do, but he hurls himself across the cold chasm right at the brightness glimmering through the Destroyer’s nucleus. The contact with the wall is horrible, he shrinks and convulses like a soft thing dropped on fiery ice. But in the midst of his pain he feels it—a chink or opening, no more than a small weak spot in the terrifying surface.
Is he to go in that? Yes—because Margaret is trapped in there, he must reach her. But how? Savingly the thought comes to him that he is not a mortal man to be frozen or crushed; he is not more than a pattern of energy seeking to penetrate some resistance. He must, he will flow in somehow. Hold the thought: he imagines the inflowing of safe, fearless, mindless electrons. Flow in, go.
But as he knows he has started in, human imagery comes back and he is a man plunging his frightened arm, his head, into deep fanged jaws that have swallowed his child. Reach, stretch, get in! And the jaws become a frightful glacial crevasse squeezing him with icy menace, about to crush out his life. Still he persists, thrusts himself forward tremblingly, and the image becomes mixed with another; he is crawling through a perilously frail dark tube, a frightened astronaut squirming through an umbilicus to the haven of some capsule. Get on, crawl, squeeze, go.
He feels totally alone. If anyone is holding some rearward part of him he cannot sense it. Scared to death, he curses at himself for a coward. Damn you, Dann, Go on.
Just as his last resolve is failing, with astounding reorientation he or a part of himself is through. His bewildered senses emerge into a swirl of dark light, of power-filled space in which he can half-see a panorama of stars against which are unidentifiable things. He checks, remembering that he must not thrust through wholly but leave himself stretched back toward whatever help may be there.
“Margaret? Margaret!”
And then the starlit place comes alive and he sees her, or what is left of her. For an instant a child seems to be peering at him, a dim elf with huge eyes. “Margaret?” Wait—beyond is another, he sees against the stars the beautiful remembered profile, immobile, eyes hooded: goddess of the night. And now another is near him, brighter than all—a familiar white-coated form, with her arms outstretched in tension. The dark hands are brilliantly visible, grasping what seems to be a gigantic busbar. The fingers are clenched, the arms strain to break open the points.
He understands; she or some part of her is trying to change the controls.
“Help,” a ghost whispers.
His being surges in response, his own imaginary hands reach out to close over hers upon the switch. But his dream-fingers have no force, they pass through hers like smoke.
“No use. Not that way.”
Oh God, he doesn’t have the power. He understands; this is real, this is solid matter in the actual world, before which he is no more than a sighing ghost. She alone has that power here. How can he help her? He would give her all his life, but how?
For a moment his senses quest in helpless frustration. Then abruptly he encounters the one thing he knows—a human wound of pain and need. Here! And his arms seem to grip a straining waist, in a rush he knows he can exert his own small gift, can take to himself her pain and fear and send her out his strength.
It is dizzying, transcendent, transsexual—he hugs, tugs recklessly, opening his very life to her need, pressing himself into her, giving himself to convert to the power of her grip. And for an instant he thinks they have succeeded: her visionary arm brightens, the fingers seem to strengthen, the switch yields imperceptibly.
But no—it is not enough. And he can barely hold. They must have more.
“Help! Help us!” he shouts back through his whole being, hoping that someone is still there to respond, unaware of the tremendous vortex of need that he is generating.
And just when he can hold no more, help comes; surging up through him like a violent sharp wave washing through to the nexus where he holds her, to the crucial point where she holds the unknowable. It’s intoxicating, a renewal of life mingled of human and Tyrenni essence intertwined. He guesses dimly that a great chain must be forming behind him, a desperate linkage of life pouring their strengths through him to the brittle point where her power can actually move and break the will of the Destroyer.
The intolerable strain mounts, individual consciousness is lost. All is focussed on those dream-fingers that control real force. Is it too much, will the dream-hold break? What powers of beast or machine is she pulling back, what cosmic circuit is she trying to thwart?
He does not know, but only throws his life into her struggle. He feels himself the apex of a frail chain of tiny lives trying to wrest control of something horrendously alien and vast, as if a living cobweb-strand should try to hold back the take-off of a mighty engine of the stars.
Chapter 25
I MUST FOLLOW, I MUST SEARCH …
BUT THERE IS RELUCTANCE TO ACT. DRIFTING TOWARD THE LAST DISTURBANCES OF SPACETIME THAT MARK THE RACE’S DEPARTURE-POINT, THE VAST ENTITY IS CONSCIOUS OF THE
SLOWNESS WITH WHICH THE POWER-DOWN IS PROGRESSING THROUGH THE PERIPHERY. WHY DOES IT NOT DEACTIVATE AT ONCE? IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THERE IS ANOTHER MALFUNCTION, HAS IT DISCOVERED A NEW MODE OF EVIL JUST WHEN IT HAS FOUND ITSELF GOOD?
AND PECULIAR SENSATIONS ARE EMANATING FROM ITS NUCLEUS. SURELY THIS IS THE FAULT OF THE STRANGE SMALL ENTITIES TO WHICH IT UNWISELY ALLOWED ACCESS. UNFORTUNATELY, THEY ARE NOW SO DEEPLY MESHED THAT THEY CAN NO LONGER EASILY BE GOT RID OF. ARE THEY MALIGNANT?
THE INTERSTELLAR TENUOSITY THAT SERVES FOR INTELLECT BROODS. TRUE, THROUGH THESE PYGMY INTRUDERS IT HAS EXPERIENCED WHAT NONE OF ITS RACE HAS ENCOUNTERED BEFORE, AND FOR WHICH NO SYMBOLS EXIST. THE NEUTRAL STARFIELDS HAVE TAKEN ON MEANING, BECOME THE GLORY OF THE SIDEREAL UNIVERSE. WITHOUT SENSES IT HAS TASTED THE PERFUME OF FLOWERS, KNOWN THE SUNLIT FOAM OF PLANETARY SEAS. AND WITHOUT A HEART IT FEELS, OR SHARES, A CURIOUS SHRINKING AT THETHOUGHT OF LEAVING THIS LOCAL STAR-GROUP, AT FACING THE ETERNITY OF NOTHING AHEAD, BUT ALL THIS IS NOTHING IN COMPARISON TO THE SACRED TASK! DUTY IS PLAIN: IT WILL NOT DEFAULT AGAIN.
DISREGARDING ALL RESISTANCE FROM ITS CONTAMINATED NUCLEUS, DISREGARDING EVEN A NEW SHARP TUG OF DEVIANCE, THE GREAT BEING WILLS ITSELF TO COMPLY: DEACTIVATE ALL UNNECESSARY SYSTEMS, ASSUME TRAVEL-MODE AT ONCE.
I MUST FOLLOW! I MUST SEARCH!
Chapter 26
In the heart of power, amid the gathering energies, the configuration that had been a human woman fights for understanding. Action that was hers and not-hers has occurred; aligned with her but still closed to her a great will functions. A perception has opened, meaning has come into the universe carrying with it a huge imperative which she shares but does not comprehend.
She could flow with it, allow it to unroll into whatever grand and somehow sad dimension it is destined. Almost she yields. But a spark at the core of her demands enlightenment.
On TOTAL’S small screen words show:
//SUBPROGRAM*COMPLETE//
Define subprogram, she commands it.
//LIFE*IS*PRESERVED//
Yes; That was what she felt when she reached out to the world crying in the fires of the exploding star. And life has come here, to the spaces beyond her stronghold. She can detect its hum, an intricate small vividness like a Brownian dance of particles. It is no longer threatening or displeasing to her; instead she feels an undefined large satisfaction. She is no longer merely a single vulnerability to be impinged on; she is impregnable, part of a hugeness whose proper function has wrought this. That life is nearby is, she feels, correct.
And something else: A sense of life’s preciousness that her human mind never knew seems to have pervaded her. Perhaps it has come to her from the vast entity whose perceptions she shares. Coupled with it is a sense of mission. A vague benevolent thought of carrying this life to some proper discharge-point brushes her mind. Is this what she should do next?
No. Something has intervened. Another reality has intruded into the cloudy centers so close to hers, bringing an overriding command. The Task, she thinks. I must follow, I must search. The words seem to call her to the limitless void. But her still-human part resists: Not without understanding.
Display overall program.
At this command the screen expands out to images of exploding holocausts, of arrays of supernal entities deployed in cosmic combat against cosmic fires. But these visions dwindle to one recurrent image: a fleet of dark beings, their work done, closes ranks and speeds out and away, vanishing to a point in ultimate darkness. The immensity around them holds only a few faint smudges of light, unknown galaxies seen from very far. Urgency floods her. My race—she must follow and find them though it take forever.
I MUST FOLLOW—I MUST SEARCH—
She can feel the great will taking hold. Outside her fortress, energy-levels are changing, ebbing. Preparation is being made for the plunge out into the void, for an endlessness in which time has no meaning. She can feel the pull, the inevitability. Even her mortal part feels the sad seduction; the fatalism that lurks under human will almost betrays her to the imperative.
But—to exist forever among nothing, sensing nothing; all gone, the beauty of the stars and the hum of life? To become only a blind eternal quest in emptiness? Deep inside her a thirteen-year-old child wakes and screams, seeing the descent of a great knife cutting her forever from all life and light. No! No! Help me! Stop it!
But there is no help here. The part of her that is almost merged with unhuman power broods unmoving.
HELP ME! The child wails.
And slowly, in answer, help does come: the cool mind of Margaret Omali, computer programmer, awakens again. To that mind even the most powerful programs are the phenomena of circuitry. It senses that the immaterial will gathering strength around her is in some sense a program. And programs can be changed, canceled. This program is senseless, should be nulled.
She summons TOTAL, defines exit sequences and all-inclusive holds, probing at half-sensed massive complexities. When all is ready, her fingers go to a key and she wills a strong command.
Return to operator. Cancel Program TASK.
But to her dismay the key blurs, melts away under her touch, while on TOTAL’S screen the gigantic letters resume their march-by.
I MUST FOLLOW—I MUST SEARCH—
She has demanded too much, she sees. The small sentience has no such powers here. The child sees the knife come closer, screams desperately. In the shadows her other self is sad and still against the stars, accepting fatality.
But in the mind of Margaret Omali there rises suddenly a tearing anger, the deep unadmitted rage that has lain by her heart and given her the strange power of her will. She has still one weapon left.
TOTAL. Display program address.
And that the small thing appears able to do. Onto the screen comes a shadowy multidimensional glimmer, vectors of directionality or code. She studies it with raging intensity: there access lies, there is the address of this mad program!
All in one mental blow she sends her imaginary hands out, batters with her will against the invisible film that separates her from the cloudy imperatives around her. The barrier yields, gives—and she seizes—something. Her fury is so great that she does not bring the impression clear, but only knows that she got hold of vitals, whether a power input or the ganglia of a living brain. Whatever she can feel the current of energy within, the program carrying her forever to the void. With a vague fierce image of pulling open a great switch, or tearing loose a neural circuit, she grasps with both dream-hands, focussing all her unleashed power, and convulses in a great jerk that will yank it open.
Cancel! Kill it!
But the thing does not give, she collapses forward against barriers, still holding tight to the great alien nexus.
Again she tries, sending all her life into her phantom grip; image of a woman outlined in fire, streaming sparks.
But her power is not enough. Again she fails, falls athwart the implacable thing, feeling the program flow steadily on. She has in her hands the means of control, but all the strength of her life is not sufficient to open the connection and kill the circuit.
More, the child wails. Help, more life!
The mind that had been Margaret Omali’s considers, still holding fast to the immovable power’s heart. Could she gain help by opening her stronghold, by letting the life outside in to aid her while it still has energy? She is sure TOTAL can do that, as it brought her here.
But no. The face of her other self turns away coldly in the shadows. This cannot be. She will have no more of the hot closeness of life even if it means an eternity of emptiness…. So be it. Out there she can sense now the quieting-down, the deactivation progressing. It is almost too late. The child sobs unassuaged. So close, she was so close to success and salvation.
It is then that the strange call comes. Faintly from outside she hears her name.
Distraught, she puzzles; it is not Ted, she has forgotten him. It is someone else, someone gentle who…. Slowly she remembers a kindness that had eased her pain and t
old her of stars. Now it is offering help.
Without letting go on the great nerve or switch, she frames the circuits to the outside and lets the child in her reply.
Yes, it is he, Daniel Dann. She doesn’t wonder how he has got here, only remembers a grey voice saying “I’ll never do anything you don’t want.” Here is one life she might bear to let close enough to help her, if she is not to be carried to eternity in the void.
For a moment she struggles mentally. The face in the shadows frowns. But outside she can feel life dimming and slowing inexorably. The child pleads. Slowly, that which was Margaret Omali makes up her mind. To this small, precise extent she will rejoin the humanity that had harmed her so.
She orders TOTAL to shape the access by which this single life can come in.
She waits, feeling his frightened presence making its way to her. As it nears, the ghost of her painful life stirs again, and almost she wills the channel to close. But the pain is too faint now; it is all right. She waits, gripping her hold.
Visionary reality is strong here. Presently she sees his upper body emerge as if from a tunnel, grey hair disordered, face strained with fright. In his eyes is the same deep offer of help. He seems to “see” her as well; his phantom hands go at once to hers as if to help her pull. But he has no power over matter; it is his living strength she needs to draw on.
Before she can manage to explain, in the thrumming, energy-filled chamber, her desperate need comes plain. The child has flung herself against his breast and she feels, feels the inflowing of his life-strength to hers.
Her grip tightens on the nexus of real power, her fingers strengthen, and the great busbar or nerve yields minutely. But it is not enough. More! More! the child cries recklessly.
Her desperate cry is echoed. She understands that he has some real connection with outside. And in an instant more help does come, a tumultuous surge of living energies rushes up into her so that she rides a crest of brief violent power. The strain on her dream-fingers is all but mortal. Now! Pull now!
She pulls.
With a silent jolt like a tremendous arc of great circuits violently broken, the thing in her dream-hands yields, crashes emptily openand vanishes. Around her the last imperative of the great Task is stilled forever.
Up the Walls of the World Page 30