Exodus to the Stars

by Andreas Brandhorst

  Deshan supported himself on his walking stick as he stood up and walked through the open door into the bedroom. He stretched out on the bed just to relieve his back a little, but amazingly, he fell asleep within a few seconds—he had not even noticed how tired he had been

  And he dreamed.

  In his dream he found himself in a small rowboat out on the lake, and sitting in front of him in the small bow was Mira, with large eyes and a gentle smile.

  "Is it really you?" Deshan asked.

  She reached her hand out and he touched it, actually touched it, feeling her fingers and their skin grown rough with age.

  "I will come to you," Deshan said. "Let me come to you."

  "No," Mira replied. "It is not time for you yet. I will wait here for you, Deshan, even if I must wait for hundreds or thousands of years. Time has no meaning in this place. You are with me now, whether you come here a thousand years from now or even long after that."

  Deshan looked at her and yearned to take her into his arms. But although their hands had touched, he knew that something separated him from her, even here in the realm of dreams. The thin line between life and death.

  "I have something for you," Mira said, and brought out an egg-shaped object on a chain. "Wear this. Wear it for me. I'd like for you to have much to tell when you finally come to me."

  "Is that really your wish?"

  "Yes, Deshan. Please wear the Activator. For me."

  And then Deshan took the chain, put it around his neck, and felt the weight of the egg-shaped object on his chest. He reached his hand out towards Mira once more ...

  ... and then he was awake. Numbly, he sat up, looked at the terrace, and saw that the table was empty. The Activator no longer lay there—he wore it on the neck chain and felt it against his chest.

  "For you, Mira," he whispered, lay back, and closed his eyes.

  27

  Decisions

  "How is he doing?" Pearl Laneaux asked, looking down at Perry Rhodan.

  "His dream coma is continuing." Dr. Hyman Mahal, the PALENQUE's medical officer, stepped closer to the examining table where Rhodan lay. "Just see how his eyes are moving underneath the lids. It resembles the REM phase of sleep." He indicated the readouts on the medical equipment, then the dark data storage unit on a nearby table. "He's receiving information from the data module over a mental bridge."

  "Could that hurt him?"

  Mahal had an idea where the First Officer was leading with that question. "That is difficult to determine. From a purely physical standpoint, everything is fine. There is nothing wrong as regards Rhodan's bodily condition. Psychological changes can't be ruled out, although I consider them unlikely."

  "Could the mental contact with the data storage unit be interrupted?"

  "That shouldn't be a problem. If the module were enveloped in a force-field that didn't let any psychic-psionic signals through, Rhodan couldn't receive any more information. Destroying the data storage unit would have the same effect, I think."

  "What would happen then?"

  "Without the mental contact, Rhodan would theoretically reawaken."

  "Theoretically?"

  "To be perfectly honest, I consider such an interruption of the connection to be dangerous. It could lead to a mental shock that would affect both his mind and body."

  For several seconds, Laneaux looked mutely down at Rhodan. Then she turned and pulled her long blond hair back. "I have to make a decision."

  Mahal waited.

  "Four crawlers and their crews have disappeared," the First Officer said, "along with Icho Tolot and his ship. We haven't heard from the two groups led by Sharita and Lethir for hours. And nothing here shows that Perry Rhodan is likely to come out of his dream coma any time soon."

  "You're wondering if you should inform Terra and call for help."

  "Rhodan is the Terran Resident."

  "Yes, but calling the Earth for help won't especially please the Akonians."

  "It's a difficult situation, to put it mildly." Laneaux again looked at the sleeping man, whose eyes continued to move back and forth beneath the closed lids. "I just wonder what he's dreaming about."

  "He'll tell us. When he wakes up." Mahal realized the First Officer's dilemma. "Wait a little longer. Set a time limit. When Sharita and Lethir started out, they knew that something strange was going on in the asteroid belt. They were prepared. We're sure to hear something from them soon. And Rhodan ... I'm certain that he'll awaken when he's received all the data."

  "One day," Pearl Laneaux said. "If the situation doesn't change during the next twenty-four hours, I'll have to contact Terra whether the Akonians like it or not."

  With that she left the med-station.

  28

  Jorgal

  "Now only we three are left," Memerek said lowly. "Darhel, you, and me. The others are dead."

  "Dead?" Jorgal asked and tried to remember what that word meant.

  "They don't exist any more," Memerek added and came somewhat nearer. He saw her white down in the half-light and there seemed to be more bare patches than before. Her green eyes had clouded. "Only three out of nineteen are left."

  Jorgal wondered if he had slept more soundly and deeply than usual because he found it difficult to remember. He felt the itching of further Uncertainties and wondered what they would do to his body. His third leg had already changed and other things in his body were growing. Many of them hurt and some words occurred to him, perhaps spoken at some point by Memerek: Only death is without pain.

  He raised his head tiredly when something moved in the darkness. He saw a large round head supported by rods on a much too small neck—Darhel.

  "I didn't find anything," he said, sounding disappointed. "Neither water nor anything to eat." Darhel sat down on the floor and leaned his back and heavy head against the wall.

  Jorgal heard the words without paying any attention to them. He was listening to the song of chaos in the distance. It was changing: the dissonances in the extremely complex and yet incomplete symphony were increasing, becoming shriller, and causing a different kind of pain when he concentrated on it. He got the impression of ... sickness, and that was strange. How could a machine be sick?

  "I found a lighted area," Darhel said after he had rested a little. "A shaft with ... reversed gravitation leads to it. Perhaps Jorgal can make a connection with this base's systems there. It's our only chance. We are already very weak."

  "Let's not wait any longer. We'll set out at once." Memerek helped Jorgal stand on his two walking legs, which seemed more bent than before, although the Machine Whisperer did not know when "before" had been. He walked with difficulty because his legs did not obey him properly any more. Again and again, they gave out beneath him, and he did not fall only because Memerek, the beautiful Memerek, was supporting him.

  When they reached the shaft, Jorgal felt a force that wanted to pull him both up and down. Darhel took an object, lifted it, and let go of it. It floated in the shaft, then rose.

  "Do you see? Reversed gravity. It will carry us to the light."

  They held each other's hands, and Darhel with the heavy head full of knowledge was the first to entrust himself to the shaft. When Jorgal was seized by the force-that-pulls-upwards, he felt a very unpleasant sensation of falling instead of rising, and apparently Memerek felt the same way because she squealed softly.

  Light awaited them above, along with new machine songs as hideous and discordant as the others that Jorgal had already heard. He now sensed that they were part of the song of chaos that played in the distance, of the symphony that he had already touched once before.

  The tingling of Uncertainties increased within him, no longer affecting only his body but also his mind. He felt his third leg growing longer and more sensitive, and things hardened inside of him that had all been soft before. And even in his mental world, a transformation was taking place. The songs of the machines seemed to acquire new notes, and he heard them better than ever. At the same time
, he perceived two other melodies, very soft, hidden behind the songs of the machines that they were approaching. Jorgal tried to concentrate on them and determine their origin.

  The image before his eyes blurred when they reached the light at the end of the shaft. The force-that-pulls-upwards first pushed Darhel out into a brightly lit corridor, then Jorgal and Memerek as well. The Machine Whisperer could no longer make out any details beyond brightness and darkness. He realized that one of the Uncertainties was taking away his eyesight.

  "I can hardly see now," he said.

  Memerek's hand gently touched his cheek. "I will see for you."

  The two melodies became somewhat louder than a whisper. They did not consist of tones, but of ... scents and touches? Jorgal tried to identify what he was perceiving with a sense that until a short time before he did not possess at all.

  And then he suddenly understood.

  "You're alive!" he blurted.

  Memerek appeared at his side, barely more than a blur in a world of shadows even though there was light in this corridor. "Yes, we've survived," she said. "Just the three of us. Darhel, you, and me."

  "No, no, I mean, you sing! I hear your melodies!"

  Darhel came somewhat nearer, but Jorgal saw only that his head wobbled. The face was a blurred spot. "Does that mean you can ... read our thoughts?"

  "No, but I see your songs. They are completely different from the songs of the machines."

  "Perhaps you're developing a new ability," Darhel said, and went on speaking as though Jorgal also had a heavy head, as though he could understand everything. "You're changing all the time. Just like us. It's because of our genetic instability."

  And this, too, was strange. Words were losing more and more of their meaning for Jorgal as the songs became more important. And astonishingly, he was also beginning to see them. His eyes were perceiving less and less, and could now only distinguish between light and dark, but with his mind's eye Jorgal saw more than ever before. He not only heard the songs of nearby machines, but now he also admired their visual echoes: beautiful geometric forms on the basis of octaves and consonances. They were in constant movement, shifting back and forth, melting into each other to form more complicated forms, then separating from each other once more to float alone through the cosmos of machine life. And in this world filled with sounds and wondrous structures there were two small, sparkling globes that seemed more massive than the many other changeable forms—Darhel and Memerek. Jorgal even knew that he could touch them if he reached out the hands that he had in this world, mental hands.

  They continued on their way, and Jorgal let Memerek lead him as he explored his expanded inner world. There he discovered delicate webs where the geometric forms were connected to the songs of the machines. The two glistening spheres floated nearby without any connection to the ever-changing structures.

  "You are two spheres," Jorgal said after a while. How much time had gone by? And what did the word time mean, anyway? "Two beautiful, shining spheres."

  "I'm afraid he's hallucinating," Darhel's voice came from somewhere close by. "He is very weak and the growths in him are weakening him still more."

  Jorgal wondered if Darhel, the clever Darhel, meant the Uncertainties that were always surprising him.

  "You said earlier that you could hear our songs," Memerek said, turning to him. He could still understand her words.

  "Yes, but I now see the songs, too." Jorgal tried to describe the world within him, but that was just the problem with words, they did not have enough meaning. Each single note of the machine songs—and the songs of Darhel and Memerek as well—meant more than all the words that Jorgal knew. "I see the words, but otherwise I see nothing more. I am blind. My eyes are dead."

  That was the meaning of the word "dead." Things that did not function any more. That did not sing. That did not produce a single tone.

  "Memerek?"

  "Yes, Jorgal?"

  "I have grown, Memerek. I am still growing. I am growing larger within myself and I am hearing and seeing more. That pleases me. But I also feel very weak."

  Memerek did not answer at once. She whispered with Darhel, then said, "We're almost there. Perhaps you can absorb a little strength from the machines."

  Machine strength, yes. The machines had always been good to him. You could depend on machines. He escaped the weakness of his body when he thought about his new spiritual world. Most of the machine songs he heard nearby were still shrill and dissonant, but the false notes that lacked harmony no longer caused him pain. He observed their images, saw imperfections, and knew that he could give each one of them perfection—if he only wanted to. And as he began, as he reached out his mental hands and straightened the bent lines of a rectangle, the other nearby structures started to move. The forms flowed together, formed a corridor, a long hallway. At its end stood a woman wearing a robe as white as her hair, and her blue eyes promised safety. Jorgal went towards her, at first walking and then running with outstretched arms ...

  "Jorgal?" Darhel's voice tore him out of the dream. "Please, Jorgal, wake up. Memerek—she is in a very bad way."

  The gentle, beautiful Memerek, whose eyes promised almost as much as the Mother of Machines ...

  Jorgal opened his eyes but saw only gray brightness and a blur of somewhat darker gray. "I don't see anything. I ... "

  "Jorgal, listen to me carefully. This is perhaps our last chance. I think we're in one of the base's peripheral control rooms. The energy supply is functioning. Have you heard? Here ... the machines don't whisper, they sing loudly. You're lying in front of a console. Please try to connect with the systems here. We need water and food. We need help. We can't do it alone. Memerek is dying ... "

  Jorgal saw large green eyes in his memory. How weak he felt. The body seemed to be much weaker than usual, and Uncertainties burned within him. But the world inside of him had grown still larger and more beautiful. What did the Outside matter when the Inside beckoned with such beauty? But the Outside also included Memerek.

  He moved his third leg, touched the console, and immediately felt the power within it. He took a portion of it, a small portion, and used in an attempt to overcome his weakness. But this time the weakness was more persistent than usual and resisted his efforts, resisted stubbornly. He heard the song of chaos, louder than before, and individual machine songs resounded towards him from out of the complex, dissonant confusion. He carefully shoved their partly distorted geometric forms aside ...

  "Security alarm," announced a voice from the outside world. "Security alarm in Control Sector Fourteen. Three alien lifeforms. Energy tampering."

  "Jorgal, you'd better hurry." Darhel's voice sounded worried. Robots might come here. Machine beings that are hostile to us. Do you have contact with the system? Can you control it somehow?"

  Jorgan began to smooth out crooked lines and add his own notes to the shrillest songs so they had more harmony. That was much more interesting than looking for this or that. Darhel's heavy head held much knowledge, but he understood nothing of these things, of the wonderful, splendid, breathtaking artistry of correct machine songs.

  "Jorgal, the door is opening and two robots are floating in ... "

  He heard a humming from the outside world, but paid no attention to it and instead admired the first geometric structures that showed no more distortions—their acoustic counterparts sounded much better than before.

  There was a hissing in the Outside and pain shot through him, an agony that reached him even in the Inside. It threatened to tear apart the inner observer and listener, and Jorgal reacted instinctively, reaching for the form of the first machine song and holding onto it tightly, riding on its dissonant melody. A wind seemed to seize the two shining spheres near him, as though trying to blow them away, but Jorgal reached for them with two mental hands while keeping a firm hold on the song with a third and fourth.

  A storm raged within the Inside, and when it died out, the feeling of weakness and heaviness was gone. J
orgal's attempt to move his third leg failed, then he realized that he no longer had a third leg at all. There was no Outside any longer, only the Inside remained, and of that he was glad.

  What is this? Where am I?

  "Memerek!" Jorgal said, but he did not say the name, he sang it, letting it be part of the machines' song.

  We are dead. A second melody, coming from the second sphere. The robots killed us. And yet we still live in this place, which isn't even a place, at least not in the usual sense.

  "This is where true life is lived," Jorgal sang. The strength of the machines flowed around him, and he passed it on to Memerek and Darhel.

  Are we energy? Darhel asked, and Jorgal wondered whether it was possible here, too, to have a heavy head. Are we a part of the energy that flows through the base's systems?

  "We are we," Jorgal said, in his opinion the only reasonable answer.

  The two globes swelled and shone, and Jorgal absorbed their light into himself, feeling a pleasant warmth as he did. This was his world, and now he had company in it.

  And then he stood in the corridor, facing the Mother of Machines for whom he had sought for his whole life long. Only a few meters separated him from her, and she spread out her arms for him, to welcome him at last. Non-existent wind ruffled her robe and hair.

  "Come," said the Mother of Machines. "Come to me."

  A smaller figure stepped out from behind her, also wearing a white robe, also with white hair and blue eyes.

  "Don't listen to her," said the smaller figure. "She is sick. I am little Alahandra. I have seen and heard. And I know about the danger."

  The woman next to the girl grimaced, opened her mouth, and screamed.

  29

  Deshan Apian

  Lemuria, 4560 dT (51,840 B.C.)

  The sky was all people and humming consoles.