Chung Kuo - The Marriage Of The Living Dark Part 43

"Yes, but even if we can get through, how does that help us? We'll still be out here, between the stars."

"Yes, but in one of those universes, Fve solved the problem. I've mode a s.h.i.+p that can fold s.p.a.ce. Or a machine that can do it, anyway. In one of those universes we can get back. Not a year from now, nor even in a month, but immediately."

"Now?"

"Well, not right now. But soon. Just as soon as I've re-jigged the craft."

"Re-jigged it?"

Kim beamed. "You saw Dcuro's sketch. Thaf s it. I realise it now. That's the little beauty thaf 11 take us back to Chung Kuo!"

Kim was standing at the pool's edge, looking out across the s.h.i.+mmering surface of the water, thinking about what he'd said to Ebert and the sheer difficulty of doing what he'd claimed he could do, when he became aware that there was someone else in the dome with him.

He looked across, then smiled. "I wondered how long it would be before you came."

Tuan Ti Fo stepped over and stood beside him, looking out across the pool. "We have lived this moment before, Kim. This and many other moments. But the time is coming when all things change, when nothing will be predictable." "How do you mean?"

Old Tuan's smile was filled with a thousand years of patience. "You, and many of your other selves, are about to change the rules by which man lives. All creatures, if they are intelligent enough, come to this point Beyond it they must make new rules for themselves, or abandon their quest for knowledge." "You heard, then, what I said to Hans."

"I heard and understand. You must go on. It is in your nature, Kim. But not all of your species are like you."

"My species?" Kim laughed. "You talk as if you yourself were not a man, Master Tuan."

Tuan turned his head, looking steadily at Kim. "You wish to see my real form, Kim?"

"I..." Kim s.h.i.+vered. "I'm not sure."

"Oh, it would not shock you, Kim." He laughed gently. "Indeed, it was more of a shock to me, remembering what I was. I have been a man so long, you see. Much longer than I ever expected.""Then that tale of your birth ..." "Was a metaphor. A way of making you understand. DeVore is my twin, but not as you humans conceive the word." "A doppleganger, then?"

"My dark self? Yes, but more than that Much much more. He was not merely my twin but my mate, the kindred of my soul. So it was, long ago. There was a time when whatever pained him would pain me and vice versa. But we have been apart so long now that I but feel only the faintest echo of what he feels. And he ... well, I think he has come to feel nothing. Nothing but the dark wind blowing at his back." "What do you mean?"

"We are not creatures like you, Kim. We were not born and bred in the sunlight, but in the vast s.p.a.ces between the stars. Such powers as we have were forged there - coded into us, if you like. You do not sense it, for you have not developed the means of sensing it, but there is a dark wind blowing behind reality, behind it and underneath it. Oh, and within it and around it, too. A nothingness. DeVore - forgive me if I call him that and not his true name - senses that. He feels it still, at times. But he has forgotten what it is." "And what is it, this dark wind?"

"It is the nullity that destroys all. The eroding force."

"Entropy, you mean?"

"No. It is a force that, if allowed into this universe of yours, would destroy it in an instant, just as, in those first nanoseconds of your universe, all was created."

Like a tight switch in a vast room, Kim thought Switch it on and you have Creation and all its vast complexities. Switch it off and Nothing. Not even darkness. For how can the dark exist without the tight! "A dreadful pun, Kim, but true."

Kim laughed. "You see all and hear all ... even my thoughts. Why, then, do you need me?"

"Because it was decided thus, long ago."

"Decided? By whom?"

"By ourselves. We met and ... debated it"

"There are more like you?"

"Oh, many more." "And DeVore?"

"You think he is unique? You think this is the only universe this is happening in?"

"If s ... difficult Getting one's mind around the concept of endless realities, endless struggles."

"It is a great war. And the outcome will determine the very shape of existence."

"A war?"

"Yes. A war of directions, not unlike the war you yourselves have been fighting these many years. But our war has been going on for long millennia. When you were yet apes, we had long pursued this struggle." "But now the time has come, eh? The time to decide it all?"

Old Tuan nodded.

Kim hesitated a long while, then. "I find that strange My mind ... well, rebels against it Why now? And why me? I'm too small, too ... insignificant" "You remember the vision you were given, Kim, down in the Clay? The web of light?"

Kim nodded.

"Do you think just anyone is given that?"

Kim stared at him, astonished. "You gave that to me?"

"Not 1.1, remember, was asleep. Yet it was given. And, when I woke, I saw the reason for it Yes, and I saw clearly what you would do with that vision. Up to a point"

"When the rules change."

Tuan Ti Fo smiled, then gave a single nod.

"So?" he asked, after a moment. "Would you like to meet the real me, or are you still not sure?"

Kim grinned. "You know the answer, Master Tuan."

"Of course. Yet politeness is its own virtue, neh?" "Then show me, please, Master Tuan," Kim said, and bowed, his hands pressed together, palm to palm, in the ancient gesture of respect. "Then get suited up, Kim Ward. I cannot show you here."

Jelka met Kim in the corridor outside the airlock.

"Kim? What's going on?"

Kim hesitated, then. "Get suited up. We have an appointment with an old friend." Recognising the teasing tone, she laughed. "Friend? What friend?" "He calls himself Old Tuan, but he has other names, I'm sure."

"You're meeting Master Tuan again?"

"I've met him, and talked. And now I am to meet him again. As he truly is."

Slowly Jelka's eyes widened. "You mean ...?"

Kim nodded. "Get ready, my love. Old Tuan is waiting to reveal himself."

There was a disturbance in the air above the dome. It was as if the darkness blew a kiss. And then Old Tuan appeared. Or rather, something strange and yet familiar.

Kim stared at it a while, then gave a single laugh. "You sensed it," Tuan's voice boomed down at them. "Part of you always knew."

Jelka took Kim's arm. He could feel a faint trembling in her. "You must not be afraid," Kim said, staring up at the giant figure in the sky above them. "It is only Tuan Ti Fo."

She was silent a moment, then. "I see why you had to mask your true form, Master Tuan. It is ... fearsome."

The giant spider, its lower abdomen larger than Kalevala itself, its metallic-looking, jointed legs like ma.s.sive cranes, quivered.

"It is very strange," Tuan said, "You humans consider your form - bipedal, humanoid - the norm, yet this shape I now wear existed long before your own, and when all other forms die out, ours will remain. It is the most common in all the universes."

Kim smiled. "I have no doubt, Master Tuan. Indeed, I'm sure you find us ugly."

Tuan Ti Fo laughed at that, a booming, rasping laughter. "I've grown accustomed to it, let us say. But you, Kim, you've always had an affinity for us. That too, it seems, was coded. Perhaps if s even why you were chosen."

"You see that far, Master Tuan?"

"I see so far ..."

"... and no further." Kim laughed. "So what now, old friend?"

"Ahead lies a time of waiting, and frustration and failure."

'Tailure, Master Tuan?"

"Oh, yes. Did you really think you were there yet, Kim?" The great spider's voice boomed in Kim's helmet "You have but begun to toy with the potential of what you have uncovered. The real task - the using of what you have found - will not be so easy."

"But the equations .. ."

"Are but a beginning. A framework for what follows. But do not give up, Kim. Though I cannot see that far ahead, I sense you will triumph in the end. If anyone can succeed, it will be you."

Kim frowned. "You say you cannot see, Master Tuan. I don't understand. I thought you could see everything up to the change."

"So I can. But ahead of us things grow unclear. The single path of vision splits and splits again, until it is like staring down a hall of distorting mirrors. In some one thing happens, in another something different." "So it is not written then that this will come about?" "Not at all. Only that you would come to the gate. And knock. But whether you will enter ..."

Old Tuan shrugged. At least, it seemed a shrug.

"And now?"

"Now I must go. Kim ... Jelka ..."

"Master Tuan ...?"

But he was gone. The darkness above Kalevala was empty.

Kim turned, looking to Jelka, then drew her close, holding her tightly to him. Only minutes ago he had been elated - full of an optimism that seemed unbounded - but now ...

Now he was afraid. Failure. Old Tuan had seen him fail. But I made a gateway.A small one. Easily controlled. A tiny hole that was gone within seconds. A toy.

Making the real thing would be much harder.

"You say you saw it, my love," he said, moving his face back and staring up at Jelka.

"I saw a wheel of fire burning in the sky above Kalevala, and you and Sampsa laughing."

"Then why did Master Tuan not see it?"

"Maybe he did."

"Yes. And maybe he saw other things. Things too horrible to mention. What if your dream is not the only dream?"

Jelka smiled, then placed her palm softly against his cheek. "Then we shall find that out, neh, my love? But I shall be here with you, whichever way chance falls."

PART FOUR - SPRING 2243.

and three dark flames.

" 'We see,' said he, like men who are dim of sight, Things that are distant from us; just so far, We still have gleams of the Att-Guider's light. But when these things draw near, or when they are, Our intellect is void, and your world's state Unknown, save some one bring us news from there. Hence thou wilt see that al, we can await Is the stark death of knowledge in us, then When time's last hour shall shut the future's gate."

Dante, The Divine Comedy, h.e.l.l, Canto X.

CHAPTER-17.

flowers.

Daniel stepped up onto the ledge of rock, then gazed down the length of the valley, his eyes pausing at the stark, dividing line between the green and the black. That blackness was an ugly scar that stretched for two kilometres east, like a fighter's belt about the waist of the world. The rich greenness of the valley tumbled down towards it with the full weight of Spring, only to falter. Devore had poisoned the land. Burned it, then sprayed it And now nothing grew. Plants stretched their roots out into that blackness, only to see them shrivel up and die, while pollen, drifting in the sunlit air, hissed as it touched that barren strip, flickering briefly, like leaves in a fire, transformed to smoke and air.

The strip had not existed when last they'd been out here. It was four, maybe five days old at most.

Daniel turned, looking back at the other members of the patrol. In their heavy suits they looked like they were on an alien planet. Not that that was so far from the truth these days.

The two boys were staring past him at the blackness, their eyes wide, their lips parted, while the girl was looking at him. Staring at him, as if to read his thoughts.

As always, he thought, looking away, disconcerted by her constant attention.

What did she want, always staring so?