Chung Kuo - The Marriage Of The Living Dark Part 39

"And Chen. Don't brood on it"

Kao Chen gave a little laugh. "Okay. Now you'd better go." He turned, looking towards where the two women were still embracing, still talking, then shook his head and sighed. "w.a.n.g Ti! Let her go now. And Marie, come now, woman. Your husband's waiting for you!"

As the transporter slowly slid along the ma.s.sive wire, Kan-looked back at the diminis.h.i.+ng circle of Ganymede. Once a month he came up here, to take his turn on the bridge of the great stars.h.i.+p, and once a month he found himself confronted by the same sights and thoughts.

Nowhere. It was as if they were in the middle of nowhere. All about them was the darkness - a darkness so vast that some days it scared him as nothing else had the power to scare him. Here, in the sealed pod of the transporter, it felt as if he was the only thing moving in the entire universe, for though both the moon and the four great stars.h.i.+ps that were tethered to it were travelling at a speed that defied the imagination, it still felt as if they were not moving at all, for there was nothing to gauge their rapid progress by. Even the nearest stars were so distant that they did not change from day to day, but sat like painted jewels upon the black To get any sense of the reality of his situation, he had to close his eyes and imagine himself within the bright-lit transporter, like a bead on a thread between the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p and the moon, the two, and their three companion craft, hurtling through the dark between Chung Kuo and Eridani, their velocities matched.

And even then ...

Karr sighed heavily. The vague restlessness he had been feeling for the past few months had now taken a clear and distinct form. He was homesick. More than that, he had begun to think he had made the wrong decision coming out here.

Yes, and he was not the only one. More than half the people he spoke to these days expressed private doubts about the venture. Yet what else could they have done? If they'd stayed, they would have had to fight DeVore, and this time, probably, they'd have lost To survive at all, they had had to come out here. To make a fresh start But what none of them had counted on was just how long it would be before they could make that start Seven and a half years they'd been travelling now, with the prospect of at least five more.

It was time enough for a man to go stark staring mad. Back on Ganymede, lights were coming on all across its surface, as the domed cities woke to another artificial morning. Watching it was like watching bubbles forming on the dark sphere.

They had achieved a lot these past few years. More than any of them had thought possible. Even so, the restlessness remained and the doubts, as if this constant building and expansion of their world were no more than a distraction. Which is unfair, he thought, feeling the transporter slow as it came up under the stars.h.i.+p's ma.s.sive hull.

For one day, if Kim were right, their world would be a proper world, orbiting a proper sun and possessed of a proper atmosphere. Yes, and their children and grandchildren would thank them for the opportunity they had given them. He knew that Knew it almost as if it were an accomplished fact But it did not help him when he felt like this.

Kao Chen is right, he thought, turning to face the hatch as the transporter docked. We need to go back. To break heads and create mayhem among our enemies. He shuddered. Aiya, but he'd missed that! Missed the adrenaline flow that came as one went into action, the sense of danger and the comrades.h.i.+p. Soldiers! he thought, and shook his head, as if saddened by this sudden attack of sentimentality. But deep down he felt nota sadness at his inability to change, but a strange comfort A soldier. He was a soldier before all else. And circ.u.mstance had stopped him being what he was. But now .. . Now he could go back. If Kim was right If his machine could be made to work. The thought of it sent a tingle of pure excitement through him.

There was a sudden hum. The hatch hissed open.

"Marshal..."

The two crewmen stood to attention beyond the hatch, their heads bowed as he stepped through.

Karr straightened, feeling a sudden pride course through him at the thought of what he'd been.

To be a fighter again, and not just a man in a uniform -that was what he wanted. Before his joints got too old and too stiff, his hair too grey. One last time before the darkness took him.

And in his mind's eye he saw DeVore, and smiled. Enjoy the coming days. Make use of them wett. For you've not seen the last of me, Howard DeVore. Not by a long chalk.

Dcuro set down his helmet on the long table by the window, then turned to face his elder brother, his eyes s.h.i.+ning with excitement "Imagine it, Tomoka! A machine that can take you anywhere you want, and at once!"

Tomoka, who had sat down to pull off his boots, merely grunted. "I will believe it when I see it" "But you saw it, brother. Yesterday, in Kim's workroom." "No, Dcuro. I saw a strange apparatus, and I heard a very strange theory. What I did not see was a machine that can travel anywhere." "But s.h.i.+h Ward said ..."

Tomoka gave his younger brother a hard look "s.h.i.+h Ward is a very talented man, and a good man, too, but this time he has allowed his imagination to roam too far."

Dcuro stared at his brother, shocked to be hearing this.

A FRAYING CLOTH.

Tomoka went on. "What Kim does not know about engineering is not worth knowing, and his grasp of physics is beyond the sages of old, but... when I hear him talk of snakes swallowing their tails, then I begin to doubt" Dcuro's mouth had fallen open now. If Tomoka had claimed that their mother and father had never existed he could not have been more astonished. His belief in Kim was absolute. There was nothing Kim Ward could not do. "You cannot mean that, elder brother." But Tomoka's face was hard and unyielding. "Mysticism... thaf s all this is. Otherwhens, otherwheres. Jumping through folded s.p.a.ce." "But we know if s possible. DeVore's s.h.i.+p ..." "May or may not have existed. And anyway, I for one did not see it" "No one saw it," Dcuro said, "but it was there. They sensed it. And as Kim says, if it exists, then there is a way to make another such craft. Maybe even a better one."

Tomoka grunted. Standing, he unbuckled his suit and stepped from it, then went across and hung it in the wall-s.p.a.ce. Turning he looked directly at Dcuro, who stood now at the long, curved window, staring out across the great bowl of Sparta Town which was waking to the day.

"Besides," Tomoka said, "there is another question to be answered. Do we need to go back? Do we really want to get embroiled in all that nonsense once again? Surely that is why we came - to get away from all that foolishness? To go back now..."

Dcuro stood where he was, his shoulders slightly hunched. Tomoka waited a moment, expecting him to answer, but Dcuro was silent "I am right, Dcuro. In your heart you know that I am right" "DoP" "Of course you do. And given time you will understand that Oh, I understand it well, Dcuro. Kim's words have fired your imagination. That is good. But you must not let them rob you of your common sense. There is only this universe, this reality. And we must deal with that, not with some flight of fancy. Wecannot go back, and even if we could, we should not" He smiled. "There. I have said all I have to say on the matter." "And yet all is not yet said." Tomoka shrugged, then went across and put a hand gently on his brother's shoulder. "You will see, Ikuro. Give it time. Then we shall talk again."

Out here, between the stars, time seemed frozen. Though they moved now at a phenomenal speed - almost one fifth of the speed of light - still it seemed that they stood still. True, Ganymede still span upon its axis, displaying the surrounding stars, yet without the presence of sun and moon in that pitch-black sky, it seemed almost a painted thing, no more real than the computer-generated display on the inside of the dome of Kim's pool. Out here, one could quickly lose one's grasp of what was real.

Kim stood at the window of his study, thinking about the earlier meeting. He could hear himself now, sounding off confidently about the possibility of going back, yet for all his talk he had not mentioned the single greatest problem that he faced.

Energy.

Enough energy to make a dent in the s.p.a.ce-time fabric.

To launch his tiny s.h.i.+p he would need an almost unthinkable amount of energy. And he would need to control that energy, for what he wanted was a fuel-source, not a bomb.

But how did he get that energy?

His first thought had been to make a black hole, but how would he get rid of it once the craft was launched? How control it? How prevent it from devouring all of surrounding s.p.a.ce?

So black holes were out.

Resonance, folding, compression ... his mind trawled through a hundred possible solutions. But nothing. Nothing yet, anyway.

Given time, he knew, the answer would come to him, like a gift from the ether.

But this once he was impatient. This once - A FRAYING CLOTH.

and who knew why? - he felt that he could not simply stand back and let the answer come to him: he had to pursue it.

He had five equations now, and a diagram. And who knew if they were right or totally wrong? They were glimpses and no more than that Nothing definite yet Nothing ...

Kim shook his head. The trouble was that normal rules no longer applied in these circ.u.mstances, and all of that vast acc.u.mulated knowledge he possessed counted for nothing; not even the methods he had developed to solve problems. If there was an answer to this, then - or so he sensed - it was not to be had by normal deductive reasoning. A new kind of logic had to be developed - a logic that, to a human mind, didn't seem logical at all: a logic that did not 'link" but "jumped", that did not build brick upon brick, but hung suspended, as if by pure magic.

But how did you get there? How did you step through the looking-gla.s.s?

Mirrors ...

The word filled his mind. Unattached. Nothing trailing from it Just itself. As if it were an answer of itself.

"Mirrors?"

Before he could stop himself he began to play the old, old game - his mind pus.h.i.+ng at the word, cracking it open like a nut to pick at it and a.n.a.lyse it, turning the full glare of his intellect on it as if it were a specimen on a slide Kim stopped and squeezed his eyes tightly shut "No," he said, talking it through for himself. "If s as I said, normal means won't do this once. I need a logic that isn't logic at all" He paused, grimacing in his effort to get to what he wanted. "What I do know is that the reflection is ... not a true reflection. It can't be, else we'd have the answer already. So ... if s not simple mimicry. In fact, if s not..." His eyes popped open, his mouth forming a small Oh of understanding.

Ifs not even a surface at att.

Mirrors. Mirrors had depth. Depth of field. Of course! And there he'd been thinking only of the face of the thing!

Ebert stood in the darkness at the centre of the bowl of rocks, the great dome of Fermi, greatest of Ganymede's fifteen cities, a mile distant, the great curve of gla.s.s glowing softly like pearl.

All about him stood the Osu, more than a hundred in all, their suited forms mere shadows beneath the sky.

Stepping up onto the platform of the rock, Ebert raised his hands towards the darkness overhead, his voice filling the silence.

"The night is our mother. She comforts us. She tells us who we are. Mother sky is all. We live, we die beneath her. She sees all. Even the darkness deep within us."

"So it is, Tsou Tsai Hei. She sees all."

There was a murmur from all sides at Echewa's words. Ebert spoke again. "We must decide, my people. The time approaches and we must make our choice." A voice came up to him from close by. "Is it the dream, Walker?" "It is the dream," he answered, "bat there is something else. There is a way to go back."

"Back?"

He looked towards the hidden voice. "Yes, back. Back to Chung Kuo. But only for a few of us. The rest will go on, to find the new home promised us." Again, a murmur ran through the gathered Osu, like a sigh. Then the same voice spoke again.

"Will you go back, Efulefu?"

Eftdefu, the Worthless One. So the Osu Elders had named him. Ebert smiled at the use of his pet name, then answered the query.

'It is not chosen yet Yet we must decide. If I go back, I cannot go forward. I cannot be your Elder."

"I do not understand," another voice said, more distant than the first "Is that, too, to do with the dream?"

"Yes and no. As you know, I had the dream. The same dream we all had. Yet I also had another dream, this past night A dream that is clearly linked to the first A dream in which I saw myself, as if from above. And when I looked down I saw my still and silent figure shrouded in a mist of white."

"Then you must not go back, Efulefu."

"Oh, I must go back."

"Then the decision is already made," another said, and there was laughter; a gentle laughter which slowly spread to all those in the shadowed bowl. "Yes..." Ebert grinned, then bowed his head to all of them. "Yes, I suppose it is."

A wood surrounded Kalevala. It was an ancient place, a place of earth and rock and pine bordering the great lawn, and Sampsa, stepping in among the trees, felt, as he always felt, how even this simple act had meaning - as if, in entering the wood, he shucked off his ordered, rational self. He moved quickly, silently, until he stood at the edge of the clearing. For a moment he stared up at the solitary tall pine that dominated that open s.p.a.ce, recalling how, as a boy, he had once jumped the circle, leaping from stump to stump - a leap of six or eight feet onto a platform less than two across - before launching himself into the centre.

Now, looking up that long, smooth bole, into its branches, he felt an overwhelming sense of loss. The moon, that had once shone so brightly through the branches, was gone, and in its place was a darkness so intense - a gap so huge - that nothing, nothing could ever fill it. Unless his father found a way.

His eyes, one blue, one brown, flicked round, sensing another presence there.

"Father?"

Kim stepped out from between the trees and took a step into the circle. He was wearing a dark one-piece, as if he had been exercising, and his feet were bare. In the light from the house his hair shone silver.

"I thought you'd gone home."

"I meant to," Sampsa began. "But I've been thinking." "Me too."Sampsa smiled at that. "You never stop thinking." Kim smiled, then came across to stand beside Sampsa, looking up at the pine. "You think I was wrong, bringing you all out here, don't you? You think we should have stayed and seen it through."

"Yes."

"And maybe you're right. But nature has its way ..." Sampsa frowned. "You think this is natural?" "Absolutely. Trees launch their seeds on the wind, insects deposit their eggs. And that's no more than what we're doing. Sending out seeds. In time those seeds will grow and send out their own seeds. And so the galaxy will be filled by humankind."

Sampsa shook his head. "Bearing in mind our past record, I'm not so sure that thats such a good thing."

"Good thing, bad thing, who are we to say?"

"But surely we must say?"

"Must we?" Kim looked down, meeting his son's eyes again. "Are we really that big then, Sampsa, to so buck destiny and the urgings of our own DNA?" "I didn't mean that I meant..."

Sampsa huffed from pure exasperation. This was the trouble with arguing with his father. Kim didn't think on the same plane as ordinary people. His parameters were just so much bigger.

"Would you rather humankind died out, then, Sampsa? Is that your argument? Would you rather DeVore got his way and wiped out the lot of us and put his morphs - his Inheritors, as I'm told he calls them - in our place? Would you rather they got the prize?"

"But it doesn't have to be like that"

"Doesn't it?"

And now there was a hardness in his father's voice he had never heard before.

Sampsa looked at him, surprised.

'Tather?"

"Let me tell you something, Sampsa. For a long time I tried hard not to get involved. I tried to argue that it had nothing to do with me - that I ought just to get on and live my own life and look after those in my narrow little circle. But after a while I realised that I couldn't fool myself any longer. There really was a war going on. And not just any war. This was a war that could decide whether mankind would survive or go under. Once I saw that, the rest was easy. It was a question of taking sides, of choosing which direction I would ultimately follow: for life, or against it You see, I did care what happened to other people. Just as I care now - despite what you think - about what's happening back on Earth. Thaf s why I brought us out here. And thaf s also why I've decided to try to go back. Why I'm willing to risk my life trying out a machine that could, for all I know, blast me into a thousand million tiny little pieces!"

Sampsa smiled. "And what will you do when you get back? Have you decided that yet?"

"No. But I will."

"And DeVore?"

Kim looked away thoughtfully. "I'll let our friend Karr deal with DeVore. If and when the time comes."

Ebert unscrewed the helmet of his suit and, lifting it off, set it down on the table and turned, looking about him at his tiny apartment. Once, back on Chung Kuo, he had had everything a man could wish for - a great mansion, a ma.s.sive company, and command of a great army of three million men. He had been betrothed to a beautiful woman and had had the trust of emperors. Now he had only this.

To some that might have seemed a great descent His old self, certainly, would have felt it so. That self would have equated such a loss of material power with a loss of vitality and strength. Yet in the years since, Ebert had discovered where true strength lay in a man. Yes, and had been richer for it. He had embraced wuwei, the path of inaction. He had become as the stream that flows. But now he had to turn his back on things and become once more a man of action.

One last time.Ebert smiled. It was strange the peace he'd felt in the dream, seeing himself dead. Such peace as he had only previously imagined.

Unclipping the fastenings at his wrists, he pulled off his gloves and went over to the window, looking out through the toughened ice at the ancient surface of the moon.

It was a magnificent view, and his apartment was only one of many that overlooked the surface, but few were occupied these days. His last near neighbour had moved out almost five months ago now, and no one new had moved in. I should say something, he thought, wondering if Kim and the others had noticed this, or whether only he was sensitive to it Anxiety, that was what it was. His fellow travellers were anxious. And as each month pa.s.sed, that anxiety grew. At first it had manifested itself in small ways - a reluctance to venture outside the domes or look up at the open sky - yet as the journey lengthened it had taken on more definite forms. They had begun to dig, deeper and yet deeper into Ganymede's surface, as if to hide away from the void that surrounded them. Two years back they had begun to build long tunnels between the cities, and the old ways - the surface routes -had fallen into disuse. He had listened without comment to the arguments they gave, and no doubt some of them were true. It was safer to build below ground, for there was less chance of decompression. Yet that was not why they did it There were exceptions, of course. Kim, for instance, and Karr. But the rest were slowly turning inward. Burrowing into themselves just as they burrowed into Ganymede.