10000 Light Years From Home Part 22

And so Cammerling went away; and as soon as he took off, all the old hairy chiefs and priests and tribesmen came out and rose up and started joyfully flogging everybody and everything in the name of their sacred G.o.dolphian way of life. But the young people, whom Cammerling had thoughtfully instructed in the use of advanced weapons as well as Ixhualca's karate, were easily able to handle them. And in no time at all they had the situation totally under control and were able to proceed with energy to fixing up the planet truly nice, all over.

And after many years had pa.s.sed, a faint message reached Groombridge 34 Nu by sublight, saying: "Hey, Cammerling! We have fixed up this planet all over truly nice. All is blooming and partic.i.p.atory and ecological. Now what do we do?"

Well, Cammerling was out when this message came, but his secretary got hold of Cammerling's wife, who pa.s.sed it to his therapist, and when the therapist thought Cammerling was ready he gave it to him. And Cammerling and the wife and the therapist conferred, and at first nothing much came of it, but finally Cammerling got off by himself and messaged back, saying: "Suggest you now proceed to develop an FTL drive and offer the option of Terran enlightenment to other planets in your vicinity. Computer program on FTL-drive theory follows by faxblip. Carry on.

Love, Cammerling."

And so many more years pa.s.sed, and pa.s.sed, until one day a new, quite strong message came in from G.o.dolphus Four. It said: "We have built an FTL drive and we have gone forth and communicated Terran interstellar enlightenment to ten thousand three hundred and eighty-four planets. That's all the planets there are.

Their peoples join with us in asking: WHAT DO WE DO NEXT?"

But Cammerling never got that message.I'M TOO BIG BUT I LOVE TO PLAY Sorry, Jack. You're right. Yes, I'm upset. No, it's not the campaign, for G.o.d's sake the campaign is perfect. It's not the crowds, either, I love them, Jack, you know that. Strain? sure it's a strain, but- Jack. Listen. Frightened. That's what happened to Manaha.s.set. Scared out of my mind.

Because of, because of this feeling I get, this sensation. Too big! Every time now when things are going well, when I'm getting to them- the rapport, ifs working-all of a sudden this awful build-up starts, this sensation I'm swelling up too big. Terribly, ghastly too big! Listen, Jack: brain tumor.

Brain tumor.

I can't go to a G.o.dd.a.m.n doctor now, there's no way, they'd find out. I can't tell Ellen. I can't- Started? Oh, Christ, I know exactly when it started, it started after the Tobago weekend.

At Tobago. That night. I know, you told me. But all I did was swim out and loaf around. Unwind.

By myself. I had to, Jack. That's when it started. The Monday after, at the Biloxi airport. You remember, I cut it off fast?

That was the first. The mayor, and that dot from Memphis, d.i.c.k Thing, you know, they were shouting questions, and the crowd started singing, and all of a sudden, Jack, I looked over at the mayor and you. And you were about two feet high, both of you. And the plane. Tiny! I couldn't get into it! And this feeling, this churning- Jack. Don't. I know about infantile omnipotence. You don't suddenly get delusions of infantile omnipotence at eleven-fifty on a Monday in Biloxi airport. Not unless there's something physical.

It's physical, Jack. The bigness, the swelling, the-vortex-like I'm starting to explode, Jack. It's got to be brain- Alone of his kind, perhaps, he did not outgrow joy. Play-joy in the crowded galaxies, the nursery of his race. Others matured soon away from the pleasures of time and s.p.a.ce and were to be found immensely solitary, sailing the dimensionless meadows beyond return. They did not know each other, nor he them. How could they? For him, still the star-tangles. To ride-how rich-riding the swirling currents between the stars! How various, the wild-swarm photons upon his sensors! And games could be invented: For example-delicious!-to find some solitary little sizzler and breast close against its radiance, now tacking artfully, now close-hauled in the shadow of its planet, now out again to strive closer and closer to the furious little body, to gain the corona itself, to poise, gather-and then let go! Let all go! All sailing nucleus over ganglia out and out in a glory-rush-until that sun's energy met another's, and he was swept whirling down the star-streams to flounder roiled in some sidereal Sarga.s.so.

Here he would preen and sort his nearly immaterial vastness, amusing himself with bizarre energic restructurings, waiting for a new photon-eddy to catch his vectors and billow him off again.

Sometimes what served him for perception gave him news that a young one of his kind was-or had been-following him. This lasted but briefly. They could not match his skill and would soon veer off. Of his equals he saw none. Was he alone of his age in his preoccupations? It did not occur to him to wonder. No member of his race had ever exchanged information. That he might be alone in his games of exostructure he did not know nor care, but played.

New games: resting behind a ball of matter on his approach to a red sun, his temporary nucleus snug in the shadow, his perimeter feathering out past the system turbulence-it occurred to him to invest his receptors more closely round the little ball's surface. What he sensed there diverted him. Energy distributions-but tiny! And how complex!He curled more closely around it, concentrating himself to the density of a noisy vacuum. Here was an oddity indeed: pockets of negative entrophy!

To him, as to all his race, the elaboration and permutation of field-energies was life. But he had never before conceived of energy-interaction of this density. And to conceive, with him, was not a pa.s.sivity but a modeling. A restructurement into knowing. He hauled in a half-pa.r.s.ec of immaterial relatedness and began ineptly to experiment. Scarcely had he begun to concentrate when an incautious unbalancement exposed him to the red sun's wind and sent him sweeping out of the system with his ganglia in disarray.

But what pa.s.sed for memory among his kind persisted, and now and again he would hover to inspect a likely lump. And he found, oh, attractive, the patterns! A vast gamesomeness grew in him; he played Maxwell's demon with himself, concentrating, differentiating, substreaming complex energy interchanges. Skill mounted, fed back to structure. He tackled subtle challenges. And on planetary surfaces where scaled, skinned or furry creatures focused dim sense-organs on the skies, one and another across the galaxy would be shaken by the sight of incorporealities vastwavering among the stars.

Shaken more especially, when they could recognize monstrous auroral versions of themselves. For technique was coming to obsess him. What had been play was becoming art. This phase culminated in the moment when he was fas.h.i.+oning-without in the least knowing it-a Sirian monitor shrimp family. His tension was great, and at its peak a resonance somehow ignited and held through the glorious backlash of release!

Greater feats! Were they possible? A new era of experimentation opened and claimed him.

High on the dunes of Lake Balkhash, Natalia Brezhnovna Suitlov surveyed the beach, which was unfortunately deserted. Natalia c.o.c.ked her white-blonde Baltic head. From the far side of the dune, faint but throbbing: music. Not the most advanced, but promising.

Natalia strolled a bit higher, studying the lake. She paused. Face sun-rapt, she stretched prolongedly. Then one hand dropped absently to the knot of her diaper. With fluent ease, first the diaper and then Natalia slowly sank from sight into a hollow.

Here she disposed her bronze body for maximum sun. The music ceased. Natalia hummed a few beats, husky but true.

From the far side of the dune came a scrabbling. Natalia's eyelids drooped. A bullet-shaped shadow appeared in the gra.s.s at the top of the dune. Natalia's expression became very severe.

For a long moment the tension-system held beautifully. The receptors in the bullet-head belonging to Timofaev Gagarin Ponamorenko focused upon Natalia. Natalia radiated strongly back. The system grew, recruited.

Action became imperative. Timofaev gave a perfunctory glance around-and inhaled yelpingly.

A hundred meters up the little ridge something huge was happening. Part of it was a ga.s.sy figure resting on the ground in Natalia's same posture. It was Natalia-but fifty meters long and obscenely distorted. Giant-Natalia solidified, took on color. But it was not alone! On the ridge above it, a great head-Timofaev's head-and his hands -and- Natalia herself was up in a crouch and staring too. The giant head of Timofaev lacked hair, the hands lacked arms, they were floating in the air. And floating behind them were other portions of Timofaev, partly unrecognizable, part plain as a pikestaff-those portions of his being which had been energetically and reciprocally resonant with Natalia.

The youngsters screamed together and the monstrous images began to boil. Sand, air and gra.s.s rose whirling, and the dune imploded round them in thunder.

SOMETHING WRONG! WITHDRAW! REDEFINE SYSTEM!Guerero Galvan swung his legs against his burro and gazed sourly down into the great barranca beside the trail. He was hot and dry and dusty. When he was rich he would ride to Xochimilicho in a private avion. But when he was rich he would not live in Xochimilicho. Very surely, he would live in a concrete palace full of girls at Mazatlan, by the sea. The sea? Guerero considered the sea. He had never seen it. But all ricos loved the sea. The sea was full of girls.

The burro hobbled on. Guerero kicked it reflexively, squinting at the trail ahead.

Coming toward him was another rider.

Guerero prodded his mount. The trail was narrow here, and the stranger was large. He too was prodding his mount, Guerero saw. But where had he come from? The trail had been clear to the pa.s.s a few moments before. He must have dozed.

As they came abreast Guerero raised three ringers in a studiedly casual greeting. The stranger did likewise. Guerero came fully awake, began to stare. There was something odd here. A diligent student of the mirror, Guerero saw that the stranger, though larger, looked very much like himself.

"Bueno," he muttered, tracing his own dark, slightly adenoidal features, his own proud gold glitter of biscuspid. And the burro-the same! The same tattered blanket! He crossed himself.

"Bueno," said the stranger, and crossed himself.

Guerero took one long look and began to scream prayers, hauling, wrestling his animal, flailing his legs. Next moment he had leaped free and was racing down the trail.

The voice had been his own voice, but it had come from the burro.

Careening, Guerero risked a look behind and redoubled his speed. The false Guerero-devil was trying to dismount too-but the flesh of its legs seemed to be joined to the sides of the devil-burro.

Behind the devils the mountain was convulsing. Guerero flung himself into a gully and cowered while trail, pa.s.s and devils vomited themselves into the sky.

MISTAKE! WITHDRAW! SUBCIRCUITS IMPRECISE!.

Through the noise of his party Ches Mencken was keeping one ear on the moonlit terrace. Majorca moonlight could get chilly. The three couples who'd gone skinny-dipping with Elfa had come dripping and giggling back and were applying themselves to the juice. Where was Elfa?

He mixed rock-vodkas, peeking at the electroquartz timepiece in the wide reptilian band around his wide mammalian wrist. Thirty-five minutes. He jerked his jaw clear of the turtleneck and pressed a gla.s.s into La Jones' steamy paw. She breathed at him. Sorry, Jones-baby, Elfa is my score... Where the h.e.l.l is she?

Jones-baby gurgled through her hair. Those earrings are real. But Elfa's got all that glue. Pity Jones doesn't fall on his head and leave you with the basic Xerox, things might be different for you and me, know that?

Automatically his eyes gave her the message: You-me-different- Only it wouldn't be, he thought. It'd be the same old rata.s.s. Christ but he was tired! Whacked out.... Young c.u.n.t, old c.u.n.t, soft, sinewy, bouncy, bony, wriggly, lumpy, slimy, lathery, leathery c.u.n.t squeaking shrieking growling-all of them after him, his furry arms, his golden masculinity, his poor old never-failing poker-Oh Ches I've never oh Ches it's so it's oh Ches oh Darling darling darlingdarlingdarling- Wonder what it'd be like to go gay? Restful, maybe, he brooded, checking bottles. Better yet, go off the juice onto pot. They say you don't, with pot. After he landed Elfa that's what he'd do: go on pot and retire. Surprise for Elfa. Only, where was Elfa?

Oh G.o.d no.

A pale form was wavering about the moonlit terrace. Not a st.i.tch on and slugged. She must havehad a bottle down there.

He disengaged fast and raced around through the bedroom, s.n.a.t.c.hing up a rebozo.

"Darling you'll get chilled!" Capturing her in the wool lace, leading her into the bedroom. She was slugged all right but not out.

"Don't know... clothes? What this?"

"Warm you, baby. What a doll, num-num-"

Automatically moving in, his expert hands. Really a d.a.m.n good stack for her age, she's kept herself up. Careful, now. Mustn't upset her. With Elfa it's got to be love. Elfa is special. Elfa is the retirement plan.

"Ches!"

"Sorry baby, I'll be good,"

"No, I mean, I feel so-Ches!"

"Little girl, you're-"

"Ches, so intimate, I never-I mean, I loved Maxwell terribly, you know I did, Ches?"

"Yes, little heart?"

"But he never, I never! Oh, Ches-"

Oh G.o.d it was the pitch, he saw, and that d.a.m.n crowd outside. They'd have to go. Life or death.

"-Drink this down for Ches, Ches wants you to drink it so you won't get chilled, see? My little girl sit down right here just one minute, Ches is coming right back-"

"Ches-"

As he closed the door she was saving plaintively, "Ches, why am I so big? So terribly, terribly-"

Somehow he got them out. She was sipping and crooning to herself where he'd put her.

"Li'l bitsy!"

"Ches loves you."

"Ches! Li'l bitsy moon!"

"Li'l bitsy you, m'm m'm." Taking the gla.s.s, carrying her to the bed, she saying again, "Ches, I'm so big! Li'l you!"

He didn't hear her. This was serious, this was make or break. She'd remember tomorrow, all right.

It had to be the big tiling. Was she too drunk? Her head lolled. O Jesus. But his technique was good.

Presently he knew he needn't have worried. She was coming into it beautifully, puffing and panting. The nose knows. Mellow relief; I am good. Maybe I should be some kind of guru, give lessons.

She was gabbling incoherently, then suddenly plain. "Oh Ches I'm getting bigger!" Real panic?

"It's good, honey," he panted. "It's what you want, let it happen, let it happen to you-"

He didn't register the white figure wavering on the terrace outside until it stumbled into the gla.s.s and began to mouth. He glanced up, blurry-it was Elfa out there! How Elfa? No! ELFA?

The thras.h.i.+ng in his arms went rigid, arched.

"Ches I'm go-oo-ing explo-OO-OOO-"

Under intolerable stress the nebulous extension which had been compressed into a mimic of the woman by the water reverted to its original state. A monstrous local discontinuity comprising-among other things-the subatomic residuals of an alligator watchband, bloomed into the thermosphere from the Majorca cliffs.

NEW ERROR! ONE-TO-ONE INTERMIX? OOH HOW MORE?.

Standing on the wet rocks, Colin laughed. Laughing Colin laughed more. To feel! To know feeling!To know knowing! A past flooded in-voices-speech-patterns-events -concepts-MEANING!

Laughter roared.

The little subsystem was right! It worked. It lived!

But the little system was not right. The system was under strain, it demanded closure. It demanded to be itself, be whole. Something was outside, disequilibrating it, intruding alien circuits. The little system had integrity, it would not be a subsystem. It fought the disequilibrium, hauled and pulled on the incongruent gap.

He fought back, idly at first, then strenuously-fighting to keep his nucleus outside, to retain the system subsystem hierarchy. It was too late, no good.

Soundless as a soap-film snapping, the great field reorganized. The system inverted, closed and came to equilibrium with everything crammed in.

But it was not the same equilibrium.

...The moonlit surf creamed and hissed quietly around the rocks at his feet. Something he did not examine floated further out. After a moment he lifted his head to watch the little moon slicing cirrus cloud.

The breeze dried his skin. He felt an extraordinary... Pleasure? Pride?

Perhaps that he was still young enough to break a business trip with an impromptu swim?

He began to climb up the rocks. Beneath the pleasure was something else. Pain? Why was he so confused? Why had he come here? Surely not just for an idle swim. Not now. But yet he was happy. He let himself slide into pleasure as he found his clothes, dressed.

Dressing himself was actively enjoyable; he'd never noticed. A moment of panic seized him as he climbed back to Overlook 92 where he had left his car. But it was there, safe. With his briefcase.

Images of the spinning surf, the streaming clouds, wheeled in his mind as he drove, merged with the swirl of the car as the huge coastal cloverleaf carried him up and around over and dip down through the mercury lights flas.h.i.+ng-sweeping- Ooee-ooee-ooee! went his signaler. As his power cut the cop rolled in beside him. He answered automatically, produced his papers. The interchange excited him. It seemed delicious to see the cop's thick lips murmuring into his 'corder. From ID card through the eyes through the brain through the sound-waves through the 'corder tape pulse- "Who reads the tape?" he asked.

The officer stared at him, tight-lipped.

"Does a human being listen to it? Or does it go to another machine?"

"Where did you say you're going, Doctor, uh, Mitch.e.l.l?"

"I told you. San Berdoo Research. My meeting up north ended early, I decided to drive back. Fine night."

In fact, he remembered now, he had been unspeakably depressed.

"Doing one fifty in a ninety kay-em zone. Keep it down." The cop turned away.

Mitch.e.l.l-he was Mitch.e.l.l-drove on frowning. His dashboard needles fanned, dial lights blinked.

Giving him information. The car communicated with him, one way. Whether it wanted to or not.

I was like the car, he thought. He made me communicate with him one-way. There was a roiling inside him. Where is the circuit, he wondered.