A Voyage To Dari Read online

  On the cover . . .

  . . . of this book we use the phrase, “a cosmic extravaganza.” There is really no other way to describe this astonishing work of science fiction. There is no other writer quite like Ian Wallace and no background as logically complex and as endlessly fascinating as the one you will find in this remarkable novel.

  There is a trip between galaxies. There is a parallel universe which may or may not be the one in which we all dwell. There is a man named Croyd. And there is a something which seeks to control all the galaxies for its own inscrutable purposes.

  The man named Croyd stands in this something’s way. This is possible because Croyd is a lot more than what he seems. He has, for instance, an identical twin somewhere out there who may or may not have similar powers. As to what those powers are, perhaps even Croyd does not know their full extent.

  It is best to say that A VOYAGE TO DARI most closely resembles the sort of mind-tingling novel that A. E. van Vogt might have written had he, in addition to his own talents, those of Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and others skilled in hard science and psychological insight. But then those are the talents of Ian Wallace. And A VOYAGE TO DARI is by Ian Wallace, not anyone else.

  —D.A.W.

  from the back cover:

  THE UNIVERSE AND

  A MAN NAMED CROYD

  "The policy of Sol Galaxy as that of planetary self-determination is historic hypocrisy. They will smother my Moudjinn, and when they find out about us, out here between galaxies, they will come out and smother us.

  "No! We must take total command of all the galaxies, first! We must reduce all of them to subjection, first! And we have the power, almost; but there are a few mental ingredients that we lack . . . and also there is a collection of antagonistic powers in a mind named Croyd.

  "You will go now to Sol. You will find this Croyd, enter him, neutralize his extraordinary powers, and bring him to me no more puissant than an ordinary man. And I will deal with him.

  "And then we will master our galaxy and his galaxy and other galaxies, and the metagalaxy will finally be safe for the purity of our feudalism."

  Definitely, a cosmic extravaganza,

  by the author of DR. ORPHEUS . . .

  —A DAW BOOKS ORIGINAL—

  NEVER

  BEFORE IN PAPERBACK

  Copyright ©, 1974, by Ian Wallace.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Peter Manesis.

  Conjointly,

  TO FATHERS, SONS, AND BROTHERS

  First Printing, November 1974

  PRINTED IN U.S.A.

  Forenote

  Although Croyd has appeared in other tales, you need bring no Croyd background to this one; all that you may require to know comes out between these covers. As for Pan Sagittarius, who leads the secondary and late-introduced leitmotif, I suppose we can say that between these covers he performs for the first time as the Pan-person.

  Erth with her environing metagalaxy is not quite perfectly our Earth with her environing metagalaxy, although the family resemblance is strong; perhaps they are imperfect duplicates.

  Djinn, Moudjinn, and Dari are invented place names, of course. I was insecure about Dari—surely on Earth such a simple place name must exist—and so I looked it up in my Atlas; the nearest approaches I could find were Dariyah in Saudi Arabia and Darn in New Guinea; I still think there must be a there-unlisted Dari, but I don’t care, because the name is just right for my gentle planet. Names and personalities of all on-scene people are author-invented, and nobody is meant to resemble any real person. As for Darian wedding rites, they rather resemble Margaret Mead’s descriptions of Samoan practices in Male and Female and Coming of Age in Samoa, with some major departures. The Rolandic fissure fantasy owes much to The Cerebral Cortex of Man, by Wilder Penfield and Theodore Rasmussen.

  For the numerous Americans and others who are versed in one or another Earth Polynesian tongue, be it specified that Darian expressions in this novel are not Polynesian but are Darian. Thus a lua-lua is a Darian lava-lava; and at one point of excitation, Djeel’s outcry “Hoëné!” is purely emotive, meaningless except in situational context.

  I acknowledge with gratitude the kindness of G. P. Putnam’s Sons in allowing me to quote in two places from my Dr. Orpheus, copyright 1968 by the author.

  Ian Wallace

  PROLOGUE IN A BRAIN

  Now listen, Roland. We have out here a magnificent pure feudalism. We have to establish it, ruthlessly. In every case in any planet’s history, every pure feudalism has perished, but always because of unfair pressure from neighboring empires; even when a feudalism has perished of inward corruption, the contamination has seeped in from neighboring empires. Consider my own planet Moudjinn; now it has knuckled under the pressure from alien Sol Galaxy, its feudalism will perish.

  But my liege, it is my understanding that the policy of Sol Galaxy is a policy of planetary self-determination, indeed even of national self-determination.

  And there you are wrong, Roland! That is Sol’s historic hypocrisy. They will smother my Moudjinn; and when they find out about us, out here between galaxies, they will come out and smother us. No, we must take total command of all the galaxies, first! We must reduce all of them to subjection, first! And we have the power, almost; but there are a few mental ingredients that we lack; and also, negatively there is a collection of antagonistic powers in a mind named Croyd.

  Eh, my liege. And this Croyd is about to embark from his Sol-base to our galaxy Djinn, is he not?

  Exactly, Roland, to become treaty governor of our primitive planet Dari, which he will corrupt, with easy access to our dominant planet Moudjinn, which again he will corrupt, whereafter he will turn to us here. And that is where you now come in.

  Command me, Liege.

  You will go now to Sol, using our Brain for your instantaneous self-dispatching. You will find this Croyd, enter him, neutralize his extraordinary psychophysical powers, and bring him to me no more puissant than an ordinary man. And I will deal with him. And then we will master our galaxy and his galaxy and all other galaxies, and the metagalaxy will finally be safe for the purity of our feudalism.

  But, Liege—

  Roland? Another but?

  The Croyd powers that I am to destroy are precisely the powers that we lack and need in order to beef up our Brain for galactic subjection!

  Ironical, is it not? Luckily, Roland, there exists right in Djinn, only hours from my Moudjinn, a man who is another irony. He has all the special powers that Croyd owns, and he is wealth-corruptible and power-corruptible, which Croyd is not—and l have wealth to offer, and we have power to offer.

  What is his name?

  He calls himself Pan Sagittarius.

  I do not know him.

  Never mind, Roland. I will get Pan; you destroy Croyd. When may I expect delivery?

  My lord duke, at a preliminary estimate, soon after the Croyd ship breaks out into the metagalactic fissures.

  That will do nicely, Roland. By then I will have Pan; and if Pan should unexpectedly prove recalcitrant, there always remains to us a lethal scansion of the Croyd brain to exhume the traces of what we need. When do you embark, Roland?

  Now, my liege, an it please you.

  Good; then I will embark now on my business.

  My liege . . .

  Roland?

  Finally, how can I be sure that your ultimate purpose is the universal sanctity of feudalism?

  Childe Roland! How can you doubt me? Remember the fealty that we have sworn, the fealty which is the purest heart of feudalism!

  Phase One - OUT OF THE UNIVERSE

  Day 4, uptiming to Day 1

  (sometime during 2506)

  A long voyage offers the most
wonderful climate in the world for romance or for good high conversation—either, or both together-rendered gradually more piquant by the growing tension of goal approach, and always with a carefully ignored undertone of possible goal frustration by ship disaster.

  — Ule Vennen, Vennen's Voyages (1983)

  ACTION AFTER H-HOUR:

  CROYD THRUST ME INSIDE THE LIFEBOAT that we knew as Commandcom, and he followed me in, and the lifeboat hatch slammed shut, and two-G thrust sent us crashing over. With difficulty recovering, Croyd pulled me into control, got me into the copilot seat, and settled himself into the pilot seat. He and I were the only occupants, and the two-G acceleration continued; two hundred G, actually—this craft had a 1:100 inertial shield.

  We had fled our ship, the Castel Jaloux, on the dismal horning-honking signal that meant lifeboats!

  Crisply Croyd addressed Commandcom, “What in Hell is up?”

  The computer’s contralto voice floated in, “The admiral ordered me to take off as soon as you and the President were aboard. I do not know what in Hell, is up. What is Hell?”

  “Open your viewplates and let’s find out.”

  Viewplates opened. We stared at the image of the Castel Jaloux, football size in metaspace-distance, floodlighted, diminishing.

  The Castel converted herself into something resembling a solar flare . . . and vanished. We were awash without a ship—outside the universe.

  Croyd demanded, “What other lifeboats are out?”

  “None, sir. Only we. As nearly as I can make out, the Castel Jaloux was invaded by hallucinatory images.”

  “Describe these images.”

  “They are indescribable in your semantic system.”

  “Indescribable!” I disbelieved.

  Pause. Commandcom, contralto very deep: “Mr. Croyd, I recognize the other voice as that of President Tannen. To which voice am I to accord command priority?”

  I interjected, “Croyd will issue most commands; but in the unlikely event that I should countercommand, this would supersede.”

  Commandcom: “Croyd . . . confirm?”

  “Confirm,” said Croyd. Lightly I punched his biceps; even in shipwreck, and without trying, he was one-up: reassuring it was, amusing it was . . .

  After something like a computerized sigh, Commandcom stated, “Immediately after the appearance of the indescribable alien images, the Castel apparently shot upward—that is, away from the pit of the metagalactic fissure. I cannot explain the flare associated with her disappearance. Meanwhile, we have been deflected or drawn into a downward course, toward the pit of the fissure.”

  Croyd demanded, “Have you attempted to correct our course?”

  “Yes, sir. However, something external is interfering with my controls. It is nicely maintaining my maximum acceleration of two-hundred G—but downward; our velocity is now two thousand thirty-one kilometers per second and accelerating; we will attain light-velocity in approximately forty-one hours and . . . ”

  Commandcom stopped.

  Presently, tense Croyd encouraged: “A change, Commandcom?”

  Contralto, slightly strangulated: “Something external has accelerated my acceleration.”

  “But we feel no change . . .

  “Something external has compensatorily boosted my inertial shield. My normal acceleration is increasing as its own square. We will attain light-velocity within minutes.”

  “Is there anything you can do?”

  “Nothing, Governor Croyd. I have all my sensors and computers, but absolutely no locomotors.”

  I suggested to Croyd, “I believe, my friend, that this is one of those situations where one doesn’t worry, because worry leads nowhere.”

  “One doesn’t worry,” he returned, “about oneself, because worry leads nowhere. But that shouldn’t stop us from inventorying the possibilities about whither we are bound, whether the Castel exists—and who done it.”

  “Why do you say, who done it?”

  “You are imagining that the deflections of the Castel upward and of our lifecraft downward, together with the squaring of our acceleration and the compensatory strengthening of our inertial shield, could be accidents of metaspace about which we know next to nothing. And so they could. But the hallucinatory images, my friend—the ones detected aboard the Castel by Commandcom, who is definitely not prone to hallucination—these things are mind projections; and since Commandcom detected them objectively, it appears that they were not projected by anyone aboard ship. I think we may be dealing with a who.”

  “Should that be maybe with a whom?”

  “That should be maybe deferred until the next metascience.”

  Commandcom, silky-low: “You men confuse me. This is a mortal emergency. You are supposed to be tense.”

  Croyd, soft: “How can we be tense? We have you!”

  Then hard: “But Djeel we do not have—or Hanoku, or Gorsky. With your permission, President Tannen, I shall continue to worry; somewhere eventually it may lead me.”

  We did a lot of falling after that; we had hours to meditate, between brief exchanges, and neither of us wasted meditation time with broodings about personal tragedy. Croyd, I knew, was intently engaged in diagnosis and hypothesis projection, mentally preparing himself for anything that might eventuate should we survive, leaving it to Commandcom to do what she could about survival. My own mentality is political-intuitive, it wasn’t up to logical manipulation; nevertheless, I was very busy feeling over memories of the immediate past, so loaded they were with cues—expressed or subliminal—relevant to what had happened to us, and what might happen. (I did not quite understand, though, why he now was barefoot.)

  I had been personally in on most of it. But when I report what I was not in on, don’t imagine that it is mere hearsay- or conjecture-reporting. For Croyd has put it into me as subjective experience, as though I were a phantom watching.

  PRIOR ACTION: H-Hour minus 63 hours:

  THE INTERGALACTIC FLAGSHIP Castel Jaloux, retroluminous for approach visibility as she neared Nereid-off-Neptune (the space-rock capital of Sol Galaxy), looked like a flying fortress, a Rhine-type fortress flying: her bridge a forward round-tower citadel, her aft repulsor assembly a postern curtain wall, (Exterior shipshape doesn’t matter much in hard space, where there is no atmosphere opposing friction to excrescences.)

  Much of the Castel's rugged-irregular two-cubic-mile volume, whose exterior was made feathery all over by assorted intake and output antennae, was occupied by devices for manufacturing fuel, food, water, and other energy from space; and her mighty bowels womb-housed the gigantic spherical Differential Mass that permitted translight velocities limited only by inertially shielded acceleration capabilities and the length of the run. Her crew catacombs were capacious; and her Visiting Admiral’s Suite had been luxuriously adapted for Tannen the Interplanetary President (me); while the slightly smaller Visiting Captain’s Suite had been polished up for Croyd, who had just pulled out of Galactic chairmanship to become the new governor of the planet Dari in the remote Djinn Galaxy. Beyond this, beehives of staterooms, usually officers’ cabins housing two to four officers each, had been redone to house one or two embassy officers each; so that two to four ship’s officers were, just for this intergalactic cruise, fouring and sixing elsewhere. Nevertheless, no doubt about it: the Castel Jaloux remained a battleship of the line.

  Governor Croyd and new Temporary Chairman Greta Groen and I debouched horizontally in Croyd’s scouter from the major landing berth in one side of Nereid, the little satellite of Neptune that was the capital of Sol Galaxy. It was night, of course: all space far from any star or reflecting planet is night; Neptune, to our right, was a pale sky-filling moon, but otherwise we were in darkness except for the local bluish fluorescence in the cabin of our scouter. Ahead, through the rounded crystal of the bridgepane, between and around the black head-and-shoulder silhouette of our pilot, we watched the pinpoint glow of the distant Castel Jaloux grow larger and brighter, grow starlike, begin
to take shape, flare into her ugly-rugged floodlighted irregularity, grow, grow . . .

  Invisible to us, Childe Roland, taking off from an obscure corner of the scouter, began treacherous progress across the fifteen feet toward Croyd. Molecule-sized Roland had to handle big restless atmospheric molecules body-to-body.

  “You guys talk,” murmured I (rotund-jocund, seventyish). “I am watching the Castel Jaloux. I am paying you no mind.”

  They sat together on a flank bench; I sat on the other flank.

  Greta (tall, slender, ash-blond, green-eyed, thirtyish) moved closer to Croyd (taller, muscular-lean, thirty-sixish, hair auburn, blue eyes meaningfully deep). They inter-squeezed four hands.

  He said, “Madame Chairman, that ship is so ugly it is inspiring.”

  She said, “I would give a pretty to see her take off from Erth. With water from her departed moat dripping off her flanks.”

  Prolonged intimate dual musing.

  Croyd and I were embarking on a risky voyage to Moudjinn in Djinn Galaxy to sign an intergalactic treaty that would open up new horizons and incidentally would terminate five years of intergalactic piracy that occasionally had erupted into fiery battle. I had no business going, I suppose; but as Interplanetary President I wanted to be the co-signator with the Emperor of Djinn. Croyd was traveling as governor-by-treaty of the piratical planet Dari, fief planet of the dominant planet Moudjinn, having resigned the Galactic chair for the post. His assignment was to neutralize Darian piracy and rehabilitate the planet.

  I hated to see him go, even though his dear friend (and mine) Captain Greta would temporarily replace him. During a decade as chairman—which is to say, prime minister to me as constitutional monarch—he had more than once deployed astonishing personal powers including mind mobility and space-time mobility to head off planetary and even galactic disaster. Prior to his chairmanship, for two decades he had exhibited a genius for high-level intrigue as a Galactic agent. I accord him major credit for negotiating the Sol-Djinn treaty, working by remote control through a fleet admiral. Obviously his apparent age of thirty-six was deceptive: he hadn’t changed in all the years I’d known him. Apart from all this, he was a hell of a good friend.