The Golden Space

by Pamela Sargent

  As they emerged from the trees, the dome brightened. The sky was blue and cloudless. Karim was opening his dome. Merripen looked up nervously, then opened his own. He smelled dewy grass and wet ground and, beneath that, the stink of rotting wood. The ridge to their left sloped, becoming a small, treeless hill. They circled around the hill and moved west, the sun at their backs. Karim had talked about danger in the west; perhaps he knew a route around it.

  Merripen thought of his lifesuit. He had not put it on because Andrew refused to wear his, and he had not wanted to suit up under the other man’s mocking gaze. Karim scorned the suits, saying that they made one careless. It was probably true. They might guard people from injuries, but not from weapons. He tried to tell himself that he would be safe enough inside the craft, while longing for the extra protection.

  They floated over a wide field, the grass swishing as they passed. Andrew was wiping his knife, which Karim had returned to him; then he attached it to his belt.

  “Do you really need that, Andrew?”

  “Of course.”

  “I haven’t seen you doing any carving.”

  “I haven’t found the right kind of wood.”

  A black cloud rose in the south. Merripen watched as it grew larger, and heard a high, musical note; the cloud separated into small, winged shapes. Andrew began to close the dome; Karim was closing his as well.

  “Should we stop?” Merripen asked.

  “I don’t think we’d better.” The birds were flying toward them. They swooped down, and Karim’s dome disappeared under the small, feathered creatures. Their dome darkened. Merripen looked up and saw tiny clawed feet and flapping wings. The birds sang sweetly, fluttering their purple feathers.

  “They’re Terry’s,” Andrew said, “and harmless. At least they were meant to be, but they’ve multiplied.” The trilling was so loud that Andrew had to shout. “They were tame once. Terry used to wander around with a few on her shoulders and arms.” Had they been in the open, Merripen thought, outside their craft, the birds would have landed on them, caroling their songs while they struggled to brush them away.

  He saw patches of light above; the birds were leaving. They lifted, a few at a time, and flew away, soaring to the north.

  “Terry should be more careful,” Merripen said. He could see Karim’s craft again; he decided to keep his dome closed.

  “They won’t survive out here,” Andrew replied.

  “They seem to be doing well enough.”

  “They’re gentle things. Other creatures will prey on them.”

  “They’ll adapt.” Ahead, under the grass, Merripen sighted jagged pieces of asphalt. They floated over the shards, following the old road.

  They stopped at noon. Karim got out and stamped his feet. “What now?” Merripen said as Karim came up to him.

  “I need to stretch.” They stood on a crag overlooking a river. “I think we’d better go south, detour. There are some mysterious settlements straight ahead.”

  “What do you know about them?”

  Karim frowned. “I’ve never seen them myself. I had a friend who did. He came back to Pine Point with stories about unchanged primitives. He decided to go back for another look, and that was the last I ever saw of him. It’s unlikely anyone there could help you anyway.”

  Merripen walked to the edge of the crag and gazed at the muddy waters below. “There’s a small town south of here I know,” Karim went on, “because I’ve talked to the people there over the holo. I tried to contact them before we left, but I got static, so they might be making repairs. You know how easy it is to procrastinate on maintenance, we don’t check as often as we should.” He stretched his arms. “Those people might know something, and we have to go that way anyway.”

  Merripen nodded. Andrew wandered toward them, waving one arm. “Someone’s out there,” he called. “Look.”

  Merripen saw only grass, trees, and small hills. “There it is,” Karim murmured. Merripen saw a flash of silver behind some maples. “I suggest that we get into our vehicles and press on.”

  “We could be followed.”

  “We can worry about that if it happens.” Karim lifted his head. Merripen heard the chime. He looked down. All of their Bonds were lighted; someone was calling.

  “Let me speak,” Karim said, spinning around and striding toward his hovercraft. He climbed inside and pressed the front panel, peering at the screen.

  “Hello,” a woman’s voice said. Merripen leaned over Karim’s shoulder and caught a glimpse of a face framed by short blond hair before Karim waved him away. “I didn’t expect to see anyone out here. Where are you going?”

  Merripen stood up and stared at the distant craft. It was still moving slowly toward them through the trees on this side of the river. “South,” Karim said.

  “Really? How nice. Have a good trip.” Merripen peeked inside again. The face had disappeared from the screen. Karim was scowling.

  “We’d better go,” Karim murmured.

  “Want some company?”

  “If you like.”

  Merripen turned toward Andrew. “You ride in our craft. I think I’ll travel with Karim for a bit.” Andrew nodded and went to the other vehicle while Merripen climbed in next to Karim.

  They moved south, passing the other craft on the way. The woman smiled and waved at them; her dome was down. Karim lifted a hand.

  “I guess she’s just another traveler,” Merripen said.

  “She’s alone.”

  “She must be brave. Or very young.”

  “I don’t like her manner.”

  Karim was silent after that. Merripen stared through the dome at the river for a while, watching the sunlight dance on the water as its gleam followed them. At last Merripen said, “I should have liked to see your lab.”

  “I don’t have anything your Citadel doesn’t have.”

  “I meant your own work. What have you been doing? Seda said you’d been in space for a while.”

  “That was a long time ago.” Karim paused. “We think we’ve changed things here, but it’s nothing to what happened there. Those born on Luna already had bodies adapted to that world, and the same was true of those living in orbit. Their skeletal bodies seemed normal enough to them; the environment had already altered them, so what difference did more changes make? They no longer lived on Earth, and they could build their own ecologies, so why worry about changes in themselves? They were already living in the most unnatural of environments, and they were free to be whatever they liked. So they believed. They did not realize what limits they had placed on themselves until much later. Each group became a prisoner of its own artificial world, and it was too difficult to adapt to another. There they are.” He gestured at the sky. “I think they built their own tombs.”

  Merripen shook his head. “That didn’t have to happen.”

  “Of course it didn’t have to happen. They had the universe before them, but instead they turned inward rather than looking out. Only the people on the moon saw what was happening in time. They exult in their humanness and, strange as those bodies might seem to you, those skinny, pale, elongated forms, they are at least human. I’m surprised you didn’t live in space. Your ideas certainly have been tested there.”

  Karim’s talk had only made Merripen doubt the purpose of his journey. He leaned back in his seat. “What sort of work have you been doing since you returned?”

  “Not very much.” He turned toward Merripen. “Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had my doubts, but I don’t object to the idea of change. I simply believe that it’s very important to understand your goal, your purpose.”

  “You can’t always know that ahead of time.”

  Karim looked away. It was obvious that he did not want to discuss his work; perhaps he felt that it was too trivial. Merripen watched the river, then said, “What brought you to Pine Point?”

  Karim folded his arms. “Originally, it was the solitude. Of course, there hasn’t been any solitude there for a while
. People joined me by ones and twos. Soon, I was rarely alone. Not that I minded—being alone can become disturbing, especially in such an isolated spot. But the presence of others doesn’t always mitigate one’s loneliness.”

  “I know,” Merripen responded, thinking of the Citadel.

  “The sameness of it was reassuring, though, after what I’d seen off-Earth. We developed our own rituals and customs. I would have been happy simply to live in the forest itself, unencumbered.” He was silent for a moment. “That would have been impossible, I suppose. We do need our support systems.”

  Merripen nodded, thinking of the hovercraft that shielded them from the world outside.

  “I went home once. I mean my real home, the place where I was born and raised. I could only get a shuttle to the coast, and then I had to make my way home by glider, because the jungle was impassable by then. My home had been just outside Kampala. I searched. For a while, I thought I had made a mistake, had forgotten where it was. But I hadn’t. It was gone, as though it had never been. Don’t ever go home, Merripen.” He leaned forward and studied the board, then pressed a panel. Merripen heard a metallic whine. “We’re being followed, tracked.”

  “By whom?”

  “By that woman, I suspect.”

  Merripen looked around, but saw only Andrew’s craft. “But why?”

  “I told you I didn’t like her manner. She wasn’t cautious enough. I think she’s a Rescuer.”

  Merripen tensed. “What do you think she’ll do?”

  “She may do nothing. She may get bored and go away, or she may contact us again.”

  Merripen leaned back. Rescuers were probably the only truly fearless people left, because they did not fear losing their lives. There was no defense against such a person. The Rescuers looked beyond this life, to the afterlife they believed would be theirs. He thought of the distant craft and shuddered. He wondered how many Rescuers there were now; perhaps not many. Their ways were not conducive to long life. He tried not to be afraid. There was one Rescuer, if that was what she was, and three of them. Even so, she had the advantage. Her life was one of her weapons.

  Karim said, “It must have been hard for you to leave the Citadel.”

  “It was. I had to bring Andrew. I couldn’t have traveled alone.”

  “Few people can. I wouldn’t have relished traveling alone myself, even though I wanted to leave. I had to leave.” Merripen again wanted to ask him why, but something in the other’s tone discouraged him from doing so.

  At dusk, they stopped on the top of a hill. Below them, a dirt road wound through underbrush and came to a dead end at the bottom of the slope. Karim got out and stretched. Andrew was pacing. He stopped, shading his eyes with one hand. As Merripen approached him, Andrew said, “She’s out there.”

  “Can you see her?” Merripen peered at the long shadows.

  “No. But she’s there.”

  Karim walked over to them. “I have a suggestion. I think we should keep going and sleep on the way. I don’t care for the idea of traveling at night, but—” He waved a hand at the land below. “We’d reach Harsville sometime tomorrow, and we can set the crafts to follow old roads and clearings, so we shouldn’t run into obstructions. We’ll be safer once we reach other people.”

  “And what happens,” Andrew asked, “if we should get stuck somewhere? At least here we have a view of everything below.”

  Karim smiled. “You won’t be able to see much by night. We’d be safer on the move. Up here we’re exposed. We’d have to sleep in the vehicles anyway. We might as well keep moving.”

  Andrew stared sullenly at the ground, then lifted his head. “Very well.” He frowned at Karim’s back as the other man returned to his craft.

  Merripen rejoined Andrew. Their hovercraft floated down the hill after Karim’s. Merripen adjusted his seat, lowering the back. Andrew was already stretched out on his side. Merripen closed his eyes.

  He stood on the wall and lifted his face to the warm sun. He turned and gazed at the houses below. The research center and the nursery had disappeared; instead, a stone castle stood in the center of the town. He saw young people walking toward the castle and recognized his children. They had come back to him at last. He flew, soaring over the people below. Their faces were turned up to him. He was falling.

  He jerked, and raised his head. The sky was black and starless. He sat up slowly. Andrew mumbled something sleepily and turned over on his back.

  Merripen reached out cautiously and touched a panel. The craft was silent; the woman was no longer tracking them. He stretched out again, trying not to think of her.

  Shadows danced across his eyelids; he saw a red glow. He opened his eyes. The sky in the east was scarlet.

  Andrew was already awake; he was in the back, hovering over the dispenser. He handed Merripen a cup of tea, a muffin, and jam. Merripen ate his breakfast silently and handed his cup and plate back to Andrew, who dropped them into the cleaner and then crept toward the toilet, closing the door of the booth behind him.

  The road ran past a forest. Merripen stared out at the abandoned apple trees, barren of fruit. He tried to imagine being without the craft out here, without their dispenser. He would not have known how to survive. Karim, at least, knew how to hunt and could find edible plants. The thought of eating dead animals and dirty leaves made him feel sick. He glanced at the materializer as he raised the back of his seat. Once people had thought it would be possible to travel using a variation of such a device; this long, dangerous journey would have been unnecessary. He could have stepped into a booth and, in an instant, stepped out at his destination. A safe way to travel; everyone had wanted it. But the man who would have stepped out would not have been him, only his duplicate; the safe way to travel would have killed everyone who used it. Would he have known? Probably not. He would simply have vanished, and another Merripen would have led his life.

  “I wonder how close we are,” Andrew murmured as he climbed back into his seat. “I hope Karim knows what he’s doing.”

  “He’s more experienced than we are.”

  “So he says.”

  The sky was growing cloudy; Merripen wondered if it would rain. Karim’s hovercraft floated into an opening in the trees, and they followed. The darkness seemed reassuring. The sun gleamed on the dome of Karim’s craft as it floated back into the open, came to a stop, and settled to the ground. Merripen took over his own craft and pulled up to Karim’s side.

  In the distance, near the horizon, another hovercraft stood on an old bridge leading over a small river. A blond woman stood beside it.

  Karim got out of his craft; Merripen and Andrew hurried to him. “She must have guessed where we were going.” Karim sighed. “There’s only one thing to do. We can’t show her that we’re afraid. We could just go over the water and avoid the bridge, but she would only follow us anyway. If she says anything, act friendly and sympathetic.” He turned toward them. “You realize, of course, that we can say nothing to her about our work, or what we’re trying to find out.”

  Merripen nodded.

  “It’s unlikely she’ll do anything, unless we provoke her.”

  “What if she follows us to that town?”

  Karim frowned. “They’ll keep her out.”

  “There must be something else we can do,” Andrew said angrily.

  “What would you suggest?” Karim narrowed his eyes. “Ride up and shoot her? I haven’t become a murderer yet.”

  “That isn’t murder,” Andrew said. “It’s self-defense.”

  “It’s nothing of the kind.”

  “We could shoot her with a rod and sabotage her craft. We’d be far away by the time she came to her senses.”

  Karim seemed to be considering this; his dark face was taut. “We might miss,” he said at last. “And even if we don’t, her craft or her Bond might call Rescuers. I suggest that we continue on our way.” He turned toward his vehicle, then paused. “One more thing,” Karim said. “Don’t use your screen t
o talk to me. She might tune in.”

  She was waiting on the bridge, leaning against the side of her craft. She held no weapon; she had left them room to pass. She was a small woman. The hands at the edges of the sleeves of her baggy white jacket were slim. She wore boots and brown pants. She smiled as they drew near; her mouth was broad, her cheekbones high, her pale eyes large. Her strong features did not seem to match her small body.

  Karim’s craft slowed to a stop; Andrew pulled up behind it. Karim opened his dome, and Andrew did the same, glancing apprehensively at Merripen as the dome slid back.

  “Hello,” the woman said.

  Karim growled a greeting.

  “I thought I’d see you again. Please do get out. You must want to stretch a bit.”

  Merripen waited until he saw Karim moving around the front of his craft, then climbed out himself. “Go ahead,” Andrew muttered. “I’ll wait.” He rummaged at his side and picked up a silver wand. Merripen shot him a warning look, then joined Karim. The taller man wore a bland, placid expression.

  “You’re going to Harsville, aren’t you?” She did not wait for an answer. “I thought so. I took a shortcut. Do you know anyone there?”

  Karim mumbled something that could have been yes or no.

  “I don’t. I’ve never been there. In fact, I don’t know this area at all well. What’s the matter with your friend?”

  “He’s not feeling well,” Merripen replied.

  “That’s too bad. I can help him.”

  “He’ll be all right. He’s just tired.”

  “My name’s Eline. Who are you?”

  “I’m Merripen. This is Karim. The fellow over there is Andrew.”

  “What are you doing out here alone?” Karim asked.

  Eline poked at the asphalt with her toe. “Oh, just moving around.” She narrowed her eyes. “I’m a Rescuer.” Merripen tried not to betray his surprise that she had said it outright.