Lucifer Comet (2464 CE) Page 19

  “I theorize,” began Ombasa, “that the answer to the first part of your question is, Yes: a person can enter the past and change it. I will simplify the explanation. Every living thing—and that includes every atom of everything organic or inorganic—leaves the track of its past existence in the past. That is what the continuing past is—those tracks; and every track is unchangeable and imperishable. But along each track is an indefinite series of what I call if-nodes: it is a place where the person or the atom might have done one thing but instead did another thing. Do you follow me so far, Captain?”

  “Possibly. Go on.”

  “All right. If the person invading the past should stimulate an if-node, this might start germinating a whole new course of history parallel with the still-unchangeable old course.”

  “Doctor, I have a feeling from what you say that the man who entered the past and killed his own grandfather would not thereby eliminate either his father or himself.”

  “Beautifully deduced!” cried Ombasa with admiration. “There is, however, a catch to it; and now as you see we are already into the second part of your question.

  “To avoid absurdity, let’s forget the grandfather murder. Say that a man goes into the past and, by his presence, stimulates new directional growth at a number of if-nodes. He does not thereby change what is past; but he starts the growth of a parallel past.”

  “Would it grow at the same rate of speed as the old past?”

  “Again, aha! I have contorted myself over exactly that question. It is a most significant question, because on it depends the further question whether this newborn past could change the present. Do you see that, Captain?”

  “I do. Where are you with it?”

  “Only as far as logical hypotheticals. The new track could develop slower than the old one, or at the same rate, or faster. In the first two instances, it could never affect the present, because the present would keep on moving away from it on the basis of the old track. But in the third instance, the new track might burst into the present, and something would have to give.”

  “Pray pursue that possibility.”

  “In that case, if nothing gave, the same world would contain two parallel sets of mutually exclusive conditions, which is absurd. The absurdity might be eliminated if the two sets of conditions immediately made war on each other, until one annihilated the other—or, if the two were to merge, so that out of the merger a single course of novel history would proceed.”

  “I see. Do you prefer one or the other possibility?”

  “Captain, obviously I have no way to determine a preference.”

  “But you do think it not impossible that a person might enter the past and stimulate development of a new past parallel to the old—and that the new past might develop faster than the old had developed, so that the new might break into the present?”

  ‘‘I think it not impossible.”

  “How much faster than the old past would such a new past develop? I mean, if the past were changed, say, fifty thousand years ago, would it take fifty thousand years for the new past to catch up with us?”

  “Obviously not, Captain; for if the new past took fifty thousand years to develop its own fifty thousand years, at the end of that time the present would still be fifty thousand years ahead of it.”

  “Okay, Doctor: faster, then. How much faster?”

  “Who can measure that, Captain, in the absence of known cases? The new track might develop one-third faster than the old, or two-thirds faster; or different changes might futurize at different rates, one twice as fast as the old, another five times as fast. I simply don’t know.”

  “But still we are talking about what seems not impossible?”

  “That is right.” Ombasa was engrossed: the captain obviously had something definite on his mind.

  Methuen breathed and demanded: “Might a new-burgeoning past traverse fifty thousand years in five days? or even in one day?”

  “Within my theory, possibly; or one new track in one day and another in five days—I have not yet developed any basis for rules.”

  Methuen pondered; Ombasa waited.

  Methuen plunged. “Doctor—scientifically, can there be any such thing as prevoyance of the future?”

  “That is an abrupt switch,” Ombasa averred, “and the rules are different. The future is a cloud of yet-unrealized potentials gradually coming into concrescence as our present behavior narrows the scope of future probabilities. Are you following me?”

  “Yes—”

  “In other words, Captain, trends can develop among concrescing potentials; and, as you well know, some minds are more sensitive than others to developing trends. Such trend-detection can be called prevoyance; but careful prophets hedge their predictions, because some new event in the present can destroy any trend.”

  “You have been talking in terms of intelligent wide-awake foresight.”

  “Yes.”

  “What about prevoyant dreams? I mean, dreams that seem to preview the future quite independently of any wide-awake foresight?”

  Ombasa sipped and sighed. “Such dreams have occurred; they have been extensively documented along with outcomes. Some are truly prevoyant, some are not, some may have been prevoyant before events changed trends.”

  “Then a prevoyant dream does not forecast with certainty?”

  “If a dream is truly prevoyant, it forecasts what is certain to happen unless something intervenes to change the trend which the dreamer is subconsciously detecting. Given an appointment in Samara, one need not always meet it.”

  “How can one tell whether a dream about some future is prevoyant?”

  “The quality of the dream will be circumstantial and convincing. However, many non-prevoyant dreams are also circumstantial and convincing. So circumstantiality and conviction are necessary to, but do not denote, prevoyancy.” Methuen wet his lips. “What if there is a series of three apparently prevoyant dreams, all sequential and consistent, with the succession of acts and dates being logical in terms of what is dreamed?”

  Ombasa hesitated. “I know that your questions are hypothetical, but—would you mind hypothesizing how far in advance the predicted events are previewed?”

  “Let us say—less than a year in advance.”

  “I think then,” ventured Ombasa, “that there might be reason to enter into tentative action anticipating the happenings—but always with careful guards, until something in waking life strongly supports the probability.”

  Sipping brood.

  Draining his drink, Methuen said with a slight fuzziness: “You know, Doctor, those drinks were strong, and I do have duty tomorrow morning—”

  “Of course,” Ombasa acknowledged, rising; and he departed leaving half his own drink and knowing that Methuen was not drunk but wanted to meditate.

  24

  Day Twenty

  The marriage of Dorita to Narfar, of an Erth-human woman to a winged god-man, was the most dramatic event that had ever transpired in anybody’s memory or in the legends—or, for that matter, in die life of Dorita up to that point.

  It took place two days after the Dora-bound Farragut, a thousand light-years from Dora out in deep space, reached its velocity peak, rotated, and began its stem-first braking approach to Saiph orbit. Two days later—yet fifty thousand years earlier.

  Fiendishly Dorita had planned the wedding, and joyous Narfar had built it up with extra-fiendish touches. They staged it outdoors so all the townsfolk could turn out to watch. In the event, it took place during a two-hour drenching gulleywasher, everybody, including the ceremoniously unclouted men, being naked or the next thing to it, nobody cared. s The witch doctor (let’s call him simply ‘witch), wearing a wooden joy-mask which he had carved for the occasion, awaited them outside the palace door, flanked by senior leaders Herdu and Gians. Arrayed behind the three men were Narfar’s other three women, with Merli in the middle; Kosa was an exception to the general nakedness, it was a bad day for her, she wore a stuffed br
eechclout. The masks of the witch were an interesting example of Narfar’s delimited creativity, being at least ten millennia ahead of his era in Erth terms.

  The parade formed at city outskirts, with hard rain wetting the celebrants while churning up dust and plastering it on their bodies. Ahead marched half of the town’s music group, seven men and six women chanting offbeat and hip-wriggling in counter-time; the men were beating together hollow sticks for tympani. Behind them strutted five senior leaders other than Herdu and Gians. Behind them, riding in a chair-car carried by four young blue-green bucks, gay Dorita, naked except for a rain-bedraggled flower wreath in her hair and a flower lei around her neck, threw kisses left and right; above her, totally naked unbedecked body-dripping Narfar flew slow-low, grinning left and right and shaking his wet-clasped hands. After the bridal couple danced five more senior leaders, then the twenty-four younger sub-leaders, then the final thirteen members of the chorale, all flower-lei naked. And thousands cheered.

  In front of the witch and his flankers drew up the procession, and broke. Ranging themselves in semicircles, the ten-marching senior leaders joined Herdu and Gians, the twenty-four junior leaders crude-straggled into formation behind the seniors, the twenty-six musicians scurried into rank behind the juniors without missing more than two dozen beats—leaving alone, precisely in front of the witch, the four young bucks with the chair-car and Dorita and over-hovering Narfar. Thronging spectators handclap doubled the music’s rhythm.

  Narfar now drifted downward with stately deliberation, clasped Dorita from behind (one carrying arm about her waist, one symbolic arm about her breasts) and lifted her above the chair, whereat the four carriers hastened off to set down their chair and kneel at one flank of the wedding assembly. Acting on Dorita’s prior suggestion and Narfaris direction, five musicians parted from their line and arrayed themselves on the other flank for aesthetic balance: four kneeling like the chair-carriers, the fifth on hands and knees to simulate a duplicate of the recumbent chair.

  Silence fell.

  While Narfar holding submissive Dorita floated two meters in the air in front of the witch, that official (pre-schooled but not dictated-to by Dorita) commenced his leadership of the utterly new sacrament of marriage.

  Witch: “Why you come here?’”

  Narfar: “We get married.”

  Witch: “What that mean?”

  Narfar: “You tell us, you the witch.”

  Witch (as coached by Dorita): “That mean, you always first with Dorita, she always first with you. Okay?”

  Narfar: “Okay. Make us married quick.”

  Witch to Dorita: “You too?”

  Dorita, feebly: “Yes.”

  Witch: “Hold still, I marry you now.” He went into a hellish dance around them, noisily brandishing his bean-gourds; Narfar held stolidly stationary, but Dorita’s head swiveled after the witch until it strained her neck and dizzied her….

  Coming in front of them, the witch leaped high in the air with legs in an open scissors and yelled “YOW!” He dropped to the ground still open-scissored; Narfar winced. From the ground groaned the witch: “I guess you married now. I all through.”

  The crowd went into hysteria as Narfar embraced his bride: embraced her with arms and wings, clasping her high and low against himself. Dorita, hugging him necessarily, surmounted her own arousal for an instant and whispered into the spread of his hairy ear: “Not now—they all watching— we go inside!” Maybe in the palace she could head him off, although at the moment she didn’t particularly want to head him off: her garbled thought was that she should withhold his reward until after he would take her to see the secret north-pole box. But panting Narfar mind-informed her: They have to see the schlurping, it make the corn grow.

  That was too much even for Dorita: she didn’t care for exhibitionism even when it suited her purpose, which now it didn’t. Gathering her forces, she pierced him with a negative imperative. Wilting then rallying, he roared at the people: “All done now for you guys! You all go home, the rest for me alone, I do it up high over the com!” Catching up his quivering bride from the grass, he flew her into sky so high that nobody on the ground could see them as more than a double speck; and lofty over the com, he visited upon Dorita the most ecstatic anguish she had ever known. It crescendoed while he flew her over jungle, while the afternoon passed and the evening waned and one by one stars appeared: Hatsya, Rigel, Alnilam, Alnitak, Mintaka, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Heka, Tabit, three nebulae….

  It was perhaps midnight when he held her passively, idly overflying jungle, gazing down upon her eyes-closed mouth-opened face with ultimate devotion, totally satisfied for now, loving her supremely forever. Inert in his arms, exhausted, ultra-replete, Dorita let her eyes come part-open and watched stars past his shoulder for a long time with no thoughts at all.

  25

  Day Twenty-One

  Dorita awoke struggling with semi-smotheration as though bedcovers had worked up over her face. Convulsively freeing her face, she discovered the real trouble: she lay nude on her back in a woodland bower; and Narfar snored prone beside her, an arm over her chest and a wing (until she had thrust it away) over her face. She lay there for awhile, pleasantly achy, lethargically replete: it had been quite a night!

  Presently with gentleness she removed the arm from her body (Narfar merely grunted), sat up, got herself oriented, inspected the back and bottom of her new husband. He was quite a specimen, enormously powerful, skull broad and squat, neck broad and squat, shoulders and back bulging under their natural mandarin hair-blanket (she enjoyed a little whorl in the small of his back), buttocks broad and hard, thigh-backs heavy-muscular, calves back-bulging, feet flat and huge. And well she knew about the power now hidden beneath all that!

  Yet, god or no god, wings or no wings, he was a primitive. A full modern Erth-human would call him somewhat mentally retarded, on the borderline between moronic and slow-normal—not in brain-power, but at the level of intellectual use. He did have intelligence, he had as much language as any man in his city, he could conceptualize to a limited degree (but so could a chimpanzee), he had memory and foresight and could distinguish between them and present perception. And did he have force and tenacity of will! But Narfar was fundamentally a child-god, so near to being purely passional that he never used intelligence more than enough to serve his momentary whim.

  Well, perhaps that was in part unjust. From Narfar’s thoughts and Quarfar’s reporting, she knew that Narfar had, during thousands of previous years, held to the complex task of creating and organizing the city after his own desires carried out in terms of earlier positive and negative inspirations from Quarfar. After all, did even a weak-minded god go through some eons of life without learning some tenacity, without forming some plan and holding to it until it was done? Erth had seen morons with interest and self-discipline acquiring in their later years considerable verbal fluidity and a noticeable amount of fundamental human wisdom.

  Her contemplation turned from her husband to herself; and she became aware of a physical state of affairs, unrelated to her bladder, which caused her to smile with amused rue. Being messy-dirty-sticky didn’t bother any brittle nicety in Dorita, but she did hate to be uncomfortable.

  Noiselessly she stole off a little way to a nearby hummock; atop it, she surveyed the surrounding jungle (they were in a relatively sparse area) and saw water gleaming in early sunlight a little distance away. She went there slowly, exercising tutored jungle caution. Having eliminated the probability of nearby serpents or crocodiles or piranha (or their Dorian equivalents), she plunged, luxuriated, then emerged and by turns stood or squatted in sunlight allowing herself to dry and to think. (She knew better than to sit on the ground or on a fallen log without first finding out about the neighborhood insects.)

  And what did Dorita think about?

  Some, but not much, about the driving sexuality of Narfar, its wild ecstasies and its ultimate torments; for last night, that was done, she was sated; it would prob
ably pick up again some time this morning, and she would enjoy it, but she wasn’t longing for it. At best, lying with a hungry batman had been an along-the-way box to be opened, but not at all an ultimate goal.

  She did not meditate on her stupidity, if it was that, in getting herself trapped as the wife of this brute-god: she didn’t feel trapped. Her attitude about marriage was the attitude of Erth in her day: you can get out of it easily if you like, or you may want to stay permanently with the guy even without marriage (although there may be civil advantages in having the union registered, and the occurrence of children always puts a different face on the matter). Nor did the aspect of having children occur to her: the concept of being fertile with a bat-winged Neanderthal was bizarre beyond her imaginings.

  She did not consider herself excessively rash in getting herself marooned on a primitive planet nearly seven hundred parsecs from Erth. It had been risky, yes; but not foolhardy, she was fairly sure. Just about now or very soon, she imagined, Methuen would be arriving here in the future-distant 25th century: if he didn’t drive himself into coming here, his task force would; and a stay of a month or two or three by the task force could be envisioned, with continual wide exploration. This meant escape for Dorita, if at any time within the next limited number of weeks she would resolve to chuck it all and foretime into Methuen’s present.

  What Dorita thought about primarily, beside the pond after her swim, was her ultimate objective in coming here and instrumentally getting herself married to Narfar. And she worried a bit that since he had stripped down her defenses and consummated and reconsummated their marriage, she may have lost an incentive-hold which she had maintained upon him in order to get him to take her to that ultimate objective.

  Also she considered the difficulties of that goal, that frigid North Pole goal! She was on a planet which had no man-husbanded fire, no source of warmth other than the sun. She had almost frozen when Narfar had flown her up high right here in the tropics! She thought she knew how to “invent” fire, but she also knew that Narfar would not take kindly to this— would, indeed, violently kill this. He had his own personal tabus. She had to think carefully about preparing herself for such an expedition, since assuredly Narfar wouldn’t be thinking about it without her prompting: he needed no protection, she needed much. Systematically she thought in terms of fur layers along with a high-caloric diet; and even then, she frowned as she confronted the difficulties of athletic maneuvering as a befurred cocoon.