by Nancy Kress
She followed him dumbly. She couldn’t think what else to do. Her head throbbed, and so how much worse must it be for the man on the ground? She had had time to see this unreality of Pek Allen’s. The longer you saw unreality, Enli had discovered, the harder it was to tell the difference.
Her headache eased a little.
Pek Allen walked swiftly and unerringly to the vegetable garden and pulled out the cowering woman. A small girl clutched her around the neck, hiding her own face in her grandmother’s bosom.
“Come out, old mother,” Pek Allen said. “I will not hurt you. Or the child.”
But he had to pull her from among the vegetables. “Listen, old mother. I am David Pek Allen, Terran. I bring a message from the First Flower in the Neury Mountains. Is there a healer in this village?”
The old woman, her scalp furrowed in pain, couldn’t answer.
Pek Allen sighed. He reached for the little girl, which made the woman shriek and clutch harder. For a horrible moment Enli thought he would cut the child’s throat with the knife he’d taken from the young man. Wasn’t that what Worlders had done to the Terran children? But Pek Allen pulled the child free and held her gently. “Come, Enli.”
The woman shrieked and wailed. The child screamed. Ignoring the noise, Pek Allen strode away, along the farm road.
Enli followed. What else could she do? If she could get the child away from him … but he still had the gun. And he was mad. She ran after him. The old woman, crying out incoherently, hobbled after Enli.
He walked so quickly that every few steps she had to run to keep up. The ground was muddy, but he didn’t seem to notice, carrying the wailing child. The grandmother fell rapidly behind. When Enli turned to look over her shoulder, the old woman sat despairingly in the middle of the muddy road, her noise already blotted out by the falling rain.
After a while the little girl quieted, and then Enli, trotting painfully beside, heard Pek Allen singing in World. An old cradle song, tender and low. Learned in the Voratur crelm house, of course. He sang it twice, three times, and Enli saw he stiff little body in his arms slowly relax.
He wouldn’t kill the child. Enli was sure of it. Which left only the question of when he would finally get around to killing her.
His song faltered. And then he stumbled, caught himself, went on. But she had seen. Pek Allen’s strength, that artificial hing blooming from his madness, was waning. And then what? She could escape … but she could do that now, if she chose. He was weakening, and he held the child, and she could go. Where? There was nowhere to go.
This was her reality. All she could do was share it.
A farm cart rose into sight over a low hill, overladen with zeli fruit and harvesters. Two men pulled it and a woman walked beside, steadying the load. When they saw Pek Allen they stopped. When they saw the child in his arms, they started forward again, the wheels of the cart creaking with damp. Enli saw their faces emerge as individuals, horrified and in headpain.
“I am David Pek Allen, a Terran,” Pek Allen said. “I bring an important message from the First Flower.”
“Give me Estu,” one of the men said in the soft slurred accent of the mountain villages, and with admirable calm. ‘Give her to me.”
The child heard something in the man’s familiar tone. Once more she started to wail.
“Listen to me,” Pek Allen said, loud enough to be heard. “I come to warn you of something terrible that will happen to World soon, perhaps today. A shift in shared reality. You must listen to me.
“You know that Tas has gone. The other Terrans stole it, our fast-blooming moon. You know this. What you do not know is that the unreal Terrans will send a sickness from the Neury Mountains, like the sickness that is already there, but much stronger. It will sicken people a little. But it will sicken things—cooking pots, jewelry, flower remembrances—very much. These things will become as dangerous as the Neury Mountains themselves. You must warn everyone of this shift in shared reality.”
“Give me Estu.”
“This is Enli Pek Brimmidin. She will tell you that what I say is shared reality.”
Enli looked at Pek Allen. Did he really think she believed him, or that these people would believe her, who had been declared unreal? He knew nothing about World, after all! Until now, his madness had made a crazed sense, like blossoms that grow twisted but at least grow toward the sun. But this … although Pek Gruber had said the same thing about the jewelry and flower remembrances, as well as a long list of other objects—and Pek Gruber was not mad. Did that mean that this object sickness might really come to World, just because Tas had been taken away?
Pek Allen was still talking. “You must take all these objects out of your houses and throw them away. Or you can leave your houses and stay in the root cellars until the sickness passes. It will not last long. I will tell you when it’s safe. Share this reality, spread it all over World. I, David Pek Allen, say this to you to save you and your children.”
He stumbled forward and handed Estu to the closest man. As the Worlder seized her, Enli heard Pek Allen say softly, “Be good, Bonnie. Be well.”
The man retreated with the crying child. All three adults backed away from the Terran and the unreal Enli, seemingly unsure what to do next. They should kill them both, of course. Everyone on World must share that reality. But these three were unarmed. Quiet people, unused to violations of their quiet reality. They looked at each other, and carefully didn’t look at Enli, and she could feel their confusion and fear, could share it completely.
Pek Allen sagged sideways, took a step to recover himself, sagged again.
Suddenly she knew what to do.
Enli stepped toward the group, who instantly stepped back. She said, “He is dying. The unreal Terran is dying of sickness from the Neury Mountains. He was not sick inside the mountains. No one is sick inside the home of the First Flower. They become sick only when they leave.”
That much, at least, was shared reality.
“But Pek Allen left the mountains anyway. To give you the message from the First Flower. And he is dying for it. Does that not show that he is real? Who but a real soul gives his life for another?”
The woman shrilled, “He is dying because he left the Neury Mountains, as all must die who leave them. He is not dying for us!”
“No. The First Flower uses him to send you a message that reality has shifted. Tas is gone. The sickness of … of manufactured objects will start soon. You must leave all the objects Pek Allen named and go into the root cellars for a little while.”
The larger man started toward Enli, his fists clenched. He had resolved his confusion, or else her blasphemy had agitated his headpain more than he could bear. He picked up a heavy stick.
“What I say is shared reality,” Enli said quickly. “Here is the sign of the First Flower in my words: I have been in the Neury Mountains, too. You know this. Yet I am not sick. Look at me! I am not sick!”
The man with the stick still moved toward Enli. Almost she could feel the blow on her head … she had wanted to die. But not like this. Their priest would put her in chemicals and glass, forever. Not like this!
“I am not sick!” she cried. Pek Allen reached a hand toward her, but it didn’t connect. He stumbled again and this time didn’t recover, falling sideways onto the road. It seemed to her that he fell very slowly, as if the reality of time had shifted along with everything else. The gun slipped from his hand into the mud.
“Wait, Riflit,” the woman said. “She … she does not look sick.”
Riflit growled something and kept coming.
“I said wait,” the woman said, and a part of Enli’s mind realized that she was his wife. Wait, the wifely tone said, or you will regret it in a hundred different small ways for quite a while.
Just so had Tabor ordered Enli to leave the flower altar so he could atone. Only, after that, there had been no more while.
Riflit stopped, scowling, his club still raised.
The woma
n said, “She really doesn’t look sick. Do you think—”
“She is unreal!” said Riflit. “Reality and Atonement said she must die!”
“Then kill me!” Enli said swiftly. “I will die for my message, even as this Terran is dying. But the First Flower spared me the Neury Mountains sickness to give you this message. Share the reality of the message!”
The man holding Estu said, uncertainly and in evident headpain, “She’s willing to die to have her message shared. Riflit … he’s willing to die, too … Shared reality is greatest among those willing to give their lives for others …”
“Oh, I don’t know!” cried the beleaguered Riflit. “I’m a farmer, not a priest!”
The woman stepped forward decisively. “Don’t kill her. If she doesn’t get Neury Mountain sickness, then it is a sign from the First Flower. Has to be. If she gets the sickness, then everything else she says is unreal, too. Then we’ll kill her.”
“You’re not a priest, either, Imino!” Riflit snapped. But he lowered his club.
The man holding Estu said timidly, “If he and she both choose to die to give us this message … Dying for others makes shared reality bloom even in the unreal, my grandmother always said. And she was a priest.”
Weariness overwhelmed Enli. She resisted it; she must not look sick. They would watch her closely, for any sign of weakness or sickness. She must look healthy.
Pek Allen vomited weakly.
Enli knelt over him, held his head, wiped his mouth when he was done. He smiled at her. The skin on his face had begun to redden, as if burned. When he opened his mouth to speak, she saw that his tongue had swollen.
“You are the real people, Enli.”
“And you, David,” she said, although later she would never be sure that she had really used his child-name.
“Tell them … how to save World … from us.”
“Give him here, Pek,” said the man who had been holding Estu, evidently the kindest of these Worlders. He lifted David Pek Allen and laid him atop the zeli fruit in the cart, where Estu already sat. Imino and the ferocious Riflit lifted the pull-bars at the front of the cart and slowly turned it around, and they all started back toward the harvest, where the people were, to start the sharing of this shifted reality with all of World.
TWENTY-FIVE
SPACE TUNNEL #438
Fourteen oh six hours by ship time. In twenty-six minutes, the first flyer would dart through Space Tunnel #438, then back again. The Zeus would detach the artifact and begin engaging the enemy. Four minutes later the second flyer would appear, and sixty seconds after that the artifact would sail into the tunnel. On the bridge the Special Project team and line officers sat silent, watching the displays. Tension prickled in the air like heat.
The Faller warship began to move.
“Shit,” Lee said, breaking the silence. “Commander, change in enemy position. Faller warship accelerating directly toward us.”
“Turn off ship’s drive,” Peres said. “Detach artifact.”
“Turning off ship’s drive,” Lee said.
Syree ran the program on her handheld. She knew that this time there was no dissuading Peres; he would not burden the Zeus with the artifact if actual skirmishing was about to occur. The artifact was now on its own. Twenty-six minutes of acceleration lost. However, the artifact would hit the space tunnel only three point four seconds later than planned, which wasn’t enough difference to matter. Unless someone blew it up first.
Ship’s drive ceased, her thrusters came on to change course, and the artifact left the viewport of the Zeus.
Syree blinked. For over five days it had ridden there, a huge swollen Sisyphean burden, and now suddenly it was gone, dwindling visibly as the Zeus changed direction under Peres’s orders, while the artifact continued on the original trajectory at 4,860 clicks per second. The vibration in Syree’s head also ceased. She had become so accustomed to it that she didn’t notice until it was gone. The Zeus was no longer straining to deliver twenty gees of thrust in order to gain one gee of acceleration. She was in free fall except for her lateral thrusters.
Twenty-five minutes till the first flyer came through the tunnel. Thirty minutes till the artifact would go through.
Syree corrected herself: would try to go through.
“Enemy vessel launching, sir!” Lee said. “A skeeter.”
“what—”
“Skeeter flying straight for the space tunnel. Warship advancing toward us.”
Frantically Syree keyed in data, but she already knew the answer. The skeeter was less than three hundred clicks from the tunnel. It would reach it far in advance of the artifact, which was still four and a half minutes away. When the first human flyer came through the tunnel, the skeeter would zap it. Then the skeeter itself would go through the space tunnel, changing its configuration so that the artifact would sail into Faller space.
Would the skeeter then stay on the other side of the tunnel? If it did, the second flyer would change the configuration back. Dart through, dart back to safety … the Faller warship would be too far away to reach the tunnel, even if it weren’t busy with the Zeus. And the artifact would follow the second flyer into Caligula system space.
Yes.
But then Syree had another thought.
How long did the space tunnel “memory,” if that was the term, hold true? Millennia? More? At some point, whoever made the artifact must have made it somewhere, at some point in space-time. Maybe that point was here, in this system. But maybe not. Maybe it had been manufactured elsewhere and brought here through this space tunnel. If so, would the space tunnel “remember” that, and return the artifact to whatever system it originally came from?
If so, both human and Faller maneuvering would go for nothing.
But it might go for nothing anyway. The mass of the artifact was too big to fit through a space tunnel.
Unless the human calculations were wrong. Unless there did exist that unknown variable, that fudge factor, that loophole.
Frustrated and helpless, all Syree could do was watch the displays. The artifact moved toward the space tunnel. The skeeter went into rapid acceleration around the tunnel. That made sense—the skeeter wanted the protection of its wave-phase alterer, which apparently needed very high velocity to function (why?). The Faller warship and the Zeus moved toward each other. Somewhere in Caligula system, fifty thousand light-years away and just on the other side of the tunnel, two flyers moved toward Space Tunnel #438. To find a skeeter waiting for them, a furious fast death they would never even see. Unless there did exist that unknown variable, that fudge factor, that loophole …
The outcome wasn’t certain, she told herself. Not really. It was all a matter of probabilities.
TWENTY-SIX
IN THE NEURY MOUNTAINS
Dieter Gruber slept in the shallow cave for twenty hours straight. By the time Gruber woke, Bazargan felt better. He no longer vomited, and he could stand.
Ann said soberly, “I’m afraid there’s still worse to come, Ahmed. With radiation sickness, the initial symptoms are often followed by a symptom-free period. But it doesn’t last.”
“I’ll settle for symptom-free,” Bazargan said dryly. He found he could get to his feet, although his knees still felt a bit watery. “I know I’ve probably got tissue damage, Ann, and genetic damage as well. Fortunately, I’m not planning on having any more children. Good morning, Dieter.”
“Morning? Again?” Gruber sat up in the cave, blinking at its mouth. “How long was I asleep?”
“Twenty hours,” Ann said. “It’s actually afternoon.”
“Ahmed?”
“I’m better,” Bazargan said, half truthfully. Slowly he walked out of the cave. In the open space of the small upland valley, now flooded with sunlight, he pulled out the comlink and tried to raise the Zeus. Still nothing.
“Leave the link open,” Gruber suggested, coming up behind him. “That way, if they’ve thought to leave their end open and contact resumes,
we’ll know it. We’ll hear random noises on the Zeus.”
“I intended to do so,” Bazargan said quietly. Gruber, naturally, was unaware of the sarcasm. He stretched his massive forearms, yawned hugely, and laughed.
“I’m starved. Have we more protein powder, Ann? And I will wash in the stream. Making the scientific find of the century is dirty work!”
“Well, it’s not a ‘find’ yet,” Ann said. “Even if you’re right and it generates some sort of probability field—”
“I’m right.” Gruber grinned again.
“—which is responsible for the Worlders’ shared reality, you don’t know what will happen to it when Syree Johnson blows up Tas. If she does. And if Tas is somehow entangled with this buried thing.”
Gruber stopped smiling. “You are right, of course. How much time remaining until those lunatics reach the space tunnel? By our best guess?”
Bazargan said, “Sometime today, I think. But we don’t really know what’s happening out there. Tas could already have been blown up, for all we know. Or gone through the space tunnel. Or anything.”
Gruber accepted an expando of mixed protein powder from Ann. “Not gone through the space tunnel. It will not go. It is too big—I keep telling you this. Syree Johnson will try it, if she tries it at all, from total desperation.”
Gruber drank his breakfast in one gulp. Ann said, “Tas didn’t appear in the sky last night. After the clouds cleared, I checked, while you both were sleeping. I checked several times.”
Bazargan said, “So the Zeus has at least moved Tas out of orbit. I think we better decide where we should be when it blows, if it blows. Dieter, is this cave still the best place?”
“Yes,” Gruber said. “For you and Ann. But, Ahmed, I want to go back to the buried artifact. To see what happens there if its counterpart explodes a billion kilometers away. And if it emits Dr. Johnson’s so-called ‘wave effect.’”
Bazargan had expected this. He said mildly, “It’s not a good idea, Dieter. You yourself said the descent down that one chimney was not easy. It’s dangerous, isn’t it?”
