A Voyage To Dari Page 12

  She cried a high musical cry: “Hoëné, Croyd! Hoëné! Hoëné!”

  Small bubbles of chicken blood in freefall scarlet-champagned their passional ballet in the Polynesian sky; she exulted and drifted, exulted and drifted, overflowing with his vitality, transfigured by this repetitious, wondrous defloration that should not be happening at all.

  Something cacophonous was beginning to annoy his audio threshold. He ignored it. This was Djeel.

  The noise kept going.

  He found that he was listening to it. The emergency horn. Lifeboats . . .

  It was an insistent hooting! It convinced!

  Resolutely he thrust her away from him; her head lay back, her eyes were closed, her mouth was open; she was totally unready for any sort of action other than one sort of action.

  Twisting his own body, he drifted downward to the bar and manipulated the dial to three-tenths G; when his feet settled on the floor, he moved over and caught her, languorously falling. Laying her on the floor, he restored gravity to eight-tenths G and went into a rapid scattered-clothing retrieval. When in seven seconds he returned with her blue pants and yellow blouse and lua-lua and his own trousers (his shirt and their shoes were eluding him), she was up on one elbow watching him, but apathetic. He got her to her feet, encouraging haste; she responded with lethargy; for speed, he maneuvered on her lua-lua and blouse, and onto himself his own pants, and barefoot, shouldered her, barefoot, and prowled to his door, and palmed it open, and loped with her down the corridor to the lifeboat bulge, trailing her trousers in his left hand. I stood waiting by the bulge.

  Djeel said urgently in his ear, “Let me down!” He swung her around and set her on her feet, his hands on her waist. Her hands on his shoulders, she demanded of his eyes, “This is a real emergency?”

  He said, shortly, “It is. Get into the lifeboat.”

  Her hands bruise-clutched his shoulders, and she smiled hard and told him, “If this is real stuff, Croyd, you are wonderful, but, I have to be with Hanoku.” Twisting away, she turned and ran up the corridor toward the bridge.

  Croyd ran seven paces after her, stopped dead, thought for a tenth-second, watched her disappear, swiveled, and came back to the lifeboat bulge. “Get in, Tannen,” he commanded; “she’s of age, and Hanoku will have a lifeboat”; and he thrust me inside and followed me in.

  Two-G thrust sent us crashing over.

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

  The Castel converted herself into a solar flare and vanished.

  Commandcom fell.

  ON THE BRIDGE of the Castel Jaloux, Gorsky, flanked by Hanoku and a covey of crewmen, stolidly faced apparitions who seemed unaffected by the G forces.

  Coldly she told the apparitions, “I believe that you omitted to salute the quarter-deck.”

  They were vaguely horrible, confusingly luminous, multifaceted, threatening. They held no evident weapons, yet they were clearly dangerous. Gorsky comprehended a reply within her mind—from one of them, or from all of them, no articulate words, but the following meaning: Go to your quarters.

  Clearing her throat, Gorsky said, “Lieutenant Hanoku, you know what you have to do first. Do it now.”

  Hanoku successively pressed two buttons. Horning honking resounded through the ship, but with a bell undertone that signaled crew: “Passengers to lifeboats—but all crew stay aboard on red alert.”

  All of them felt the inward response: We know that the signal will among other things send President Tannen and Governor Croyd to their lifeboat, which has standing orders to depart immediately both are aboard. We are allowing this departure, but no other departure. Go to your quarters.

  “They telepath,” Gorsky observed, “but as yet they do nothing. I wonder if they understand us. Perhaps I should test. Hold still, Mr. Hanoku, I am going to let one of them have it.” With unexpected speed she drew a sidearm and pressed the button. The shot disintegrated the bridge bulkhead. Into her mind came the alien comment: We understand you. NOW, go to your quarters.

  Hanoku barked, “What is this—ghost piracy?” Gorsky silenced him with a warning look. “Very well,” Hanoku snarled, “if that is how it is. Stand aside—you’re blocking the exit.” This blocked exit was now unusually broad, owing to the absence of a bulkhead.

  Two of the appearances drew back; and Gorsky, followed by recalcitrant Hanoku and bristling crewmen, descended from the bridge.

  As they moved down the corridor, pausing at the entrance to the admiral’s cabin, not failing to notice the luminous weirds posted everywhere, Gorsky told her crew without lowering voice: “Go to your several quarters, and I will try to communicate via intercom. If you do not hear from me, all of us are on our own. Save the ship. Repeat: save the ship. That is all.” She entered and closed her door.

  Plodding to his quarters just ahead of two harassing phenomena, Hanoku turned a corner and caught running Djeel in his arms. He stood still, enfolding her, soothing her; the phantoms merely waited, blocking retreat. He told her ear, “Let’s go”; and, cloaking her with an arm, he drew her into his tiny one-man cabin and locked the door. Nothing followed him through the locked door, but presumably they waited outside.

  The man and woman sat on his bunk, he sheltering, she clinging.

  “Why, Djeel,” he mocked, “you are barefoot!”

  She pushed herself roughly away from him and huddled beside him, staring at the floor, intermittently shivering. Concerned, but knowing her strength, considerately he waited.

  She said, dead, “Do you know what they are?”

  “I do not.”

  “Is it anything we can get out of?”

  “I do not know. But somehow I think not.”

  Studying the floor: “I could have escaped with Croyd,”

  “But you did not.”

  “No. Because of you.”

  “I do not necessarily agree, Djeel. But I thank you—and endlessly I love you.”

  Silence. She had moved close to him; his arm cradled her shoulders.

  She licked lips and told the floor, “The, Croyd affair is consummated.”

  “Thank the gods,” he said fervently. “What a co-father! Then he did miss the Tannen angle?”

  She said, low, “No.”

  He considered that. His grip on her shoulder tightened.

  She turned to face her lover fairly. Squaring her shoulders a little, she asserted, “He told me first that it would have to be Tannen. He was honest, manfully containing his own heat, and his heat was mighty. So I too was honest, and I told him that we knew this, but nevertheless . . . And so, then . . . ”

  A great cry of anguish burst from her throat; she clasped his torso and jammed her face against his chest and went into spasms of sobbing.

  He held her, stroking her hair.

  She found strangulated voice. “I was such an egotistical idiot, I was going to be an individual by twisting the lore for the strengthening of our child, and also for my pleasure, I will confess it to you, Onu; but the lore will not be used, I have called down death upon us.”

  “How, Djeelian?”

  “Because Croyd it should not have been, by the lore; but Croyd it was; and now, if you are the next one, with Tannen excluded, the lore will be violated; but if Tannen is the next one, you will be excluded, Croyd and Tannen will be the co-fathers, and either way the lore will be violated; and therefore the gods have sent death upon us and this ship.”

  A playful smile began to steal upon his lips. “Djeel, never worry about what the gods may send, when our whimsical Dari gods have already sent whatever they are sending. Think, Djeel, do not our pleasant gods chuckle at the chicken blood?”

  After a further sob or two, she was still. And presently her wondering face came up to his.

  He said tenderly, “You are looking at it all backwards. You are imagining that two nights from now Tannen or I must finish what Croyd started. Whereas, in truth, it may well be tha
t tonight Croyd finished what two nights ago I started.”

  She digested that. Her lips were wanly enlivened by the start of a small smile, but it quivered and vanished. “Even if that is so, Onu, the Tannen part remains to be consummated, and for the sake of the lore it must be consummated.”

  His own smile vanished. Slowly stroking her hair, he told the ceiling, “This talk about Tannen is academic; we are done with life. Through no doing of our gods, these phantoms are killing our ship, and we are powerless because they are not physical. They do not care about us two, they are after Croyd and Tannen, they are merely throwing us away. So we will marry ourselves now, on the strength of the strength that Governor Croyd has spent in you. And we will pass tonight and tomorrow night in prayerful chastity, praying to our benign gods that for the lack of higher consecration the Croyd passion has been not too much but just enough.

  “If there should be for us a tomorrow night.

  “Or a tonight . . .

  In her cabin, whose instrumentation was a perfect replica of that on the bridge, Gorsky noted with interest that Croyd’s lifeboat had embarked, presumably with Croyd and Tannen aboard.

  Her attention was next engaged by the deflection upward of the Castel’s course.

  Unfortunately she had no controls in her cabin; and, not for the first time, the need for control duplication crossed her mind. But in the name of Saint Stalin, hadn’t she filed requisition after requisition?

  Activating intercom, she announced, “Now hear this, all stations. This is the admiral. I do not know what these apparitions are. They have taken control of my bridge. The captain and I are separated and confined to quarters. Every station is ordered to reply if you hear me. Over.”

  She deactivated and waited for her visiphones to light up.

  Instead, the entire Castel Jaloux lighted up. Externally, anyhow. She could see the fire in the viewplates.

  It died. Metaspace darkness.

  She tried calling Captain Czerny. No response. Evidently they had killed the intercom.

  She tried for Croyd in the lifeboat. No response. The flare had something to do with that; the Castel Jaloux was a total island.

  A voice in her mind: Your ship is headed for deep metaspace. It will dissolve out there. You are done; make your peace.

  She demanded, “Is Croyd your prisoner?”

  He and Tannen.

  “Why do you not take us where you are taking them?”

  The rest of you do not matter. We are flushing you out.

  Gorsky sat stiff in the swivel chair behind her desk. She inquired calmly, “Since we are all headed for death in metaspace, perhaps you won’t mind explaining this to me. Who are you, and what is your motive?”

  Since you are all headed for death in metaspace, why should we bother to explain?

  “Curiosity,” Gorsky bit. “Some of us believe in life after death. I don’t, but I can be wrong. If I am wrong, it would be nice to remember later why we got the death.”

  If you are not one who has that belief, it does not matter.

  Gorsky leaned across her desk toward the absent invisible phantom. “I am able to transcend my indoctrination if the arguments are convincing. Is there life after death?”

  You must find some noumenon to ask. I am only a phenomenon.

  Gorsky leaned back. “Then tell me, at least, why you spooks bother to stay aboard, since we are all done anyway.”

  I do not know. We have been placed aboard. We have not been withdrawn.

  “In other words, you are all pretty stupid, just bohunks for some large character.”

  Perhaps we are just lucky.

  Gorsky stated quietly, “I am now going to test you again. In my desk drawer there is an armed weapon. I am about to use it on you. Will you stop me?”

  I will be fascinated to know how you will aim.

  Deliberately making an assumption, Gorsky opened a drawer, drew a weapon, took aim dead in front of her, and fired. A wall disintegrated, revealing her bedroom beyond.

  The voice said in her mind, That wasn’t where I was.

  Gorsky replaced the weapon, closed the drawer, folded her hands, and thought.

  The uppermost thought concerned a dark young lieutenant and a semidark young princess. Gorsky was old and cynical; nevertheless, Gorsky was always irritated by the futility of young death.

  ACTION AFTER H-HOUR:

  MY BROODING HEAD WAS SNAPPED UP by the abrupt sharp commanding voice of Chloris. She asserted, “I know how to get out of here. I know how to rescue the Castel, if she exists. I need your help, Mr. President.”

  It chopped my yesterday reverie; on the other hand, already I had exhausted yesterday memories without finding any practical pattern. I inquired, “Will this involve also Croyd’s rescue?”

  “Possibly. And possibly also yours. I am interested in your omission of this thought. The Castel has first instrumental priority; your rescues depend on that.”

  I demanded, “How?”

  “We are wasting time, but I see that you must know, and I will tell you crisply. Listen. They brought me down here, they bound me here; but at the moment they have forgotten me, and I am not bound. Internal inspection assures me that their beefing up of my velocity potential and my inertial shield has not diminished. I will hope to find and overtake the Castel, do something about her lack of self-control, and bring her down here to take care of you and Croyd. Must I waste further time in details?”

  I ruminated.

  Chloris, curt: “To confirm flight readiness, I need to have my exterior inspected. Will you be good enough to step outside and look me over?”

  I was on my feet. “What am I to do?”

  “Go out and look at my tail.”

  “What am I to notice about your tail?”

  “My tail must be perfectly clean for perfect launch. If you see any foreign debris in my pipes, clean it out, then come back in.”

  “All right. Open your hatch.”

  “My hatch is open, sir; please act."

  I descended into lush apparitional Gaza grass that had come positive again during my reverie. I went for the lifeboat’s tail, which housed her repulsors. After extremely close inspection: “Chloris . . . ”

  “Mr. President?”

  “You are clean.”

  “Wholly clean?”

  “Clean clean.”

  “Good. Pray stand back while I test-blow.”

  “How far back shall I stand?”

  “For safety, at least ten meters away from my flank, forward of my tail.”

  I turned and moved swiftly away from the lifeboat through luxurious grass in the direction of the Arcadian sea.

  As I turned, I saw the blur of Chloris vanishing.

  Chloris drove vertically upward at an acceleration which she maintained at maximum. Her beefed-up maximum was beyond her own credulity, and it kept growing.

  As for her beefed-up inertial shield, it lagged somewhat behind her accelerative maximum, but she hoped that it would be enough to keep her own rekamatic structure from disintegrating.

  Quietly she reminded herself that it would not have been enough to keep a human passenger from disintegrating.

  Contemporary Action - PAN SAGITTARIUS

  Days 2 - 3

  You will need to apply all your skills to the solution of a most complex situation. Plan to do almost everything yourself, without help.

  —A Representative Horoscope

  HELP WAS ON THE WAY TO US, actually; had been on the way (if you are a fatalist) nearly four years. Whether it would arrive in time, or at all, would have been a problem had I known it was on the way; for Croyd, perhaps it was already too late.

  The help was Pan Sagittarius. And this requires a bit of background.

  In 2502, four years prior to the present brouhaha, our Sol Galaxy (whose economic hub was Erth) was attacked by invaders from a relatively nearby galaxy. The melancholy condition of humanity on Erth, at the moment of invasion, was such that only one man was free to
counterattack. Luckily, that man was Croyd.

  You don’t single-handedly knock off an intergalactic invasion without somewhat unusual tools and aptitudes. Croyd deployed his; we have seen a sampling in action, before, grace to Childe Roland, he lost all of them.

  His defense involved a complex system of maneuvers among several simultaneous probability spheres. In the course of these maneuvers, necessarily he left a Croyd probability body in each sphere that he visited. At the end it turned out that one extra Croyd body was left over, and also, one extra body for his friend Greta. These duplicates, if only to prevent confusion, decided to call themselves Pan and Freya Sagittarius.

  “Admit,” Croyd had remarked to Greta, “that this is a form of reproduction.”

  I permit myself a metascientific parenthesis:

  If Croyd and Pan were physically and mentally perfect duplicates—both having one identical stream of singleperson memories—then, subjectively, which was which? And if one of them should subjectively regard himself as junior to the other, what psychologically would happen to the junior? The same sort of question would apply to Greta and Freya. Some philosophers might offer the swift mordant reply: What difference can it make? But would that reply perhaps be too cheap?

  For me, poignant is the concept of duplicates who are mature in their life histories but somehow newborn, trying to find their own ways as individuals. How much easier it would be for sons or daughters or even identical twins to find individualities! Each of them has a birth start for the search, whereas these duplicates had already matured in psychosomatic identity before they were split.

  Newborn in 2502, Pan and Freya accepted a special heavy responsibility and went their ways.

  In 2504 Pan departed that responsibility, taking Freya with him.

  What follows is new material. I must, I think, take a moment or two over Pan’s immediate action in 2504; but then we will be inspecting immediately pertinent events in 2506 ITC (Intergalactic Temporal Convention, a concord which permits synchronization to the day and even inexactly to the hour among galaxies). These immediately pertinent events begin on what I have herein labeled Day 2.