Nova

by Samuel R. Delany

  "What's heterotropic?"

  "Mouse," said Katin, "by the end of the twentieth century mankind had witnessed the total fragmentation of what was then called 'modern science.' The continuum was filled with quasars and unidentifiable radio sources. There were more elementary particles than there were elements to be created from them. And perfectly durable compounds that had been thought impossible for years were being formed left and right like KrI4, H4XeO6, RrF4; the noble gases were not so noble after all. The concept of energy embodied in the Einsteinian quantum theory was about as correct, and led to as many contradictions, as the theory three hundred years earlier that fire was a released liquid called phlogiston. The soft sciences— isn't that a delightful name?— had run amuck. The experiences opened by psychedelics were making everybody doubt everything anyway and it was a hundred and fifty years before the whole mess was put back into some sort of coherent order by those great names in the synthetic and integrative sciences that are too familiar to both of us for me to insult you by naming. And you— who have been taught what button to push— want me— who am the product of a centuries-old educational system founded not only on the imparting of information, but a whole theory of social adjustment as well— to give you a five-minute run— through of the development of human knowledge over the last ten centuries? You want to know what a heterotropic element is?"

  "Captain says we got to be on board an hour before dawn," the Mouse ventured.

  "Never mind, never mind. I have a knack for this sort of extemporaneous synthesis. Now let me see. First there was the work of De Blau in France in two thousand, when he presented the first clumsy scale and his basically accurate method for measuring the psychic displacement of electrical— "

  "You're not helping." The Mouse grunted. "I want to find out about Von Ray and Illyrion."

  Wings gentled the air. Black shapes settled. Hand in hand, Sebastian and Tyy came up the walkway. Their pets scuttled about their feet, rose. Tyy pushed one away from her arm; it soared. Two battled above Sebastian's shoulder for perch. One gave, and the satisfied beast pulled his wings now, brushing the Oriental's blond head.

  "Hey!" the Mouse rasped. "You going back to the ship now?"

  "We go."

  "Just a second. What does Von Ray mean to you? You know his name?"

  Sebastian smiled, and Tyy glanced at him with gray eyes. "We from the Pleiades Federation are," Tyy said. "I and these beasts under the Dim, Dead Sister, flock and master, born."

  "The Dim, Dead Sister?"

  "The Pleiades used to be called the Seven Sisters in ancient times because only seven of them could be seen from Earth" Katin explained to the Mouse's frown. "A few hundred B.C. or so, one of the visible stars went nova and out. There are cities now on the innermost of its charred planets. It's still hot enough to keep things habitable, but that's about all."

  "A nova?" the Mouse said. "What about Von Ray?"

  Tyy made an inclusive gesture. "Everything. Great, good family is."

  "Do you know about this particular Captain Von Ray?" Katin asked.

  Tyy shrugged.

  "What about Illyrion?" the Mouse asked. "What do you know about that?"

  Sebastian squatted among his pets. Wings shed from him. His hairy hand went soothingly from head to head. "Pleiades Federation none have. Draco system none either have." He frowned.

  "Von Ray a pirate some say," Tyy ventured.

  Sebastian looked up sharply. "Von Ray great and good family is! Von Ray fine is! That why we with him go."

  Tyy, more softly, her voice settling behind the gentle features: "Von Ray fine family is."

  The Mouse saw Lynceos approaching over the bridge. And ten seconds later, Idas.

  "You two are from the Outer Colonies?"

  The twins stopped, shoulder brushing shoulder. Pink eyes blinked more than brown.

  "From Argos," the pale twin said.

  "Argos on Tubman B-12," specified the dark.

  "The Far Out Colonies," Katin amended.

  "What do you know about Illyrion?"

  Idas leaned on the rail, frowned, then hoisted himself up so that he was sitting. "Illyrion?" He spread his knees and dropped his knotted hands between. "We have Illyrion in the Outer Colonies."

  Lynceos sat beside him. "Tobias," he said. "We have a brother, Tobias." Lynceos moved on the bar closer to dark Idas. "We have a brother in the Outer Colonies named Tobias." He glanced at Idas, coral eyes netted with silver. "In the Outer Colonies, where there is Illyrion." He held his wrists together, but with fingers opened, like petals on a calloused lily.

  "The worlds in the Outer Colonies?" Idas said. "Balthus— with ice and mud-pits and Illyrion. Cassandra— with glass deserts big as the oceans of Earth, and jungles of uncountable plants, all blue, with frothing rivers of galenium, and Illyrion. Salinus— combed through with mile-high caves and canons, with a continent of deadly red moss, and seas with towered cities built of the tidal quartz on the ocean floor, and Illyrion— "

  "— The Outer Colonies are the worlds of stars much younger than the stars here in Draco, many times younger than the Pleiades," Lynceos put in.

  "Tobias is in ... one of the Illyrion mines on Tubman." Idas said.

  Their voices tensed; eyes stayed down, or leaped to one another's faces. When black hands opened, white hands closed.

  "Idas, Lynceos, and Tobias, we grew up in the dry, equatorial stones of Tubman at Argos, under three suns and a red moon— "

  "-and on Argos too there is Illyrion. We were wild. They called us wild. Two black pearls and a white, bouncing and brawling through the streets of Argos— "

  "— Tobias, he was black as Idas. I alone was white in the town— "

  "— but no less wild than Tobias for his whiteness. And they say in wildness we, one night, out of heads on bliss— "

  "— the gold powder that collects in the rock crevices and when inhaled makes the eyes flicker with unnamed colors and new harmonies reel in the ear's hollow, and the mind dilate— "

  "— on bliss, we made an effigy of the mayor of Argos, and fixed him with a clockwork flying mechanism, and set him soaring about the city square, uttering satirical verses on the leading personages of the city— "

  "— for this we were banished from Argos into the wilds of Tubman— "

  "— and outside the town there is only one way to live, and that is to descend beneath the sea and work off the days of disgrace in the submarine Illyrion mines— "

  "— and the three of us, who had never done anything in bliss but laugh and leap, and had mocked no one— "

  "— we were innocent— "

  "— we went into the mines. There we worked in air masks and wet suits in the underwater mines of Argos, for a year— "

  — a year on Argos is three months longer than a year on Earth, with six seasons instead of four— "

  "— and at the beginning of our second, algae-tinted autumn, we made ready to leave. But Tobias would not go. His hands had taken up the rhythms of the tides, the weight of ore became a comfort on his palms— "

  "— so we left our brother in the Illyrion mines, and came up among the stars, afraid— "

  "— you see, we are afraid that as our brother, Tobias, found something that pulled him from us, so one of us may find something that will divide the remaining two— "

  "— as we thought the three of us could never be divided."

  Idas looked at the Mouse. "And we are out of bliss."

  Lynceos blinked. "That is what Illyrion means to us."

  "Paraphrase," Katin said from the other side of the walk. "In the Outer Colonies, comprising to date forty-two worlds and circa seven billion people, practically the entire population at one time or another has something to do with the direct acquisition of Illyrion. And I believe approximately one out of three works in some facet of its development or production his entire life."

  "Those are the statistics," Idas said, "for the Far Outer Colonies."

  Black wings rose as Sebastia
n stood and took Tyy's hand.

  The Mouse scratched his head. "Well. Let's spit in this river and get on to the ship."

  The twins climbed down from the rail. The Mouse leaned out over the hot ravine and puckered.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Spitting into Hell3. A gypsy's got to spit three times in any river he crosses," the Mouse explained to Katin. "Otherwise, bad things."

  "This is the thirty-first century we're living in. What bad things?"

  The Mouse shrugged.

  "I never spit in any river."

  "Maybe it's just for gypsies.

  "I it kind of a cute idea is think," Tyy said, and leaned across the railing beside Mouse. Sebastian loomed at her shoulder. Above them one of the beasts was caught in a hot updraft and flung into the dark.

  "What that is?" Tyy frowned suddenly, pointing.

  "Where?" The Mouse squinted.

  She pointed past him to the canon wall.

  "Hey!" Katin said. "That's the blind man!"

  "The one who busted up your playing!"

  Lynceos pushed between them. "He's sick." He narrowed his blood-colored eyes. "That man there is sick."

  Demoned by the flickering, Dan reeled down the ledges toward the lava.

  "He'll burn up!" Katin joined them.

  "But he can't feel the heat!" the Mouse exclaimed. "He can't see— he probably doesn't even know!"

  Idas, then Lynceos, pushed away from the rail and ran up the bridge.

  "Come on!" the Mouse cried, following.

  Sebastian and Tyy came after, with Katin at the rear.

  Ten meters below the rim, Dan paused on a rock, arms before him, preparing an infernal dive.

  As they reached the head of the bridge— the twins were already climbing the rail— a figure appeared at the canon's lips above the old man.

  "Dan!" Von Ray's face flamed as the light fanned him. He vaulted. Shale struck from under his sandals and shattered before him as he crabbed down the slope. "Dan, don't— "

  Dan did.

  His body caught on an outcropping sixty feet below, then spun on, out, and down.

  The Mouse clutched the rail, bruising his stomach on the bar as he leaned.

  Katin was beside him a moment afterward, leaning even further.

  "Ahhh!" the Mouse whispered and pulled back to avert his face.

  Captain Von Ray reached the rock from which Dan had leaped. He dropped to one knee, both fists on the stone, staring over. Shapes fell at him (Sebastian's pets), rose again, casting no shadow. The twins had stopped, ledges above him.

  Captain Von Ray stood. He looked up at his crew. He was breathing hard. He turned and made his way back up the slope.

  "What happened?" Katin asked when they were all on the bridge again. "Why did he ...?"

  "I was talking with him just a few minutes before," Von Ray explained. "He's crewed with me for years. But on the last trip, he was ... was blinded."

  The big captain; the scarred captain. And how old would he be, the Mouse wondered. Before, the Mouse had put him at forty-five, fifty. But this confusion lopped ten or fifteen years. The captain was aged, not old.

  "I had just told him that I had made arrangements for him to return to his home in Australia. He'd turned around to go back across the bridge to the dormitory where I'd taken him a room. I glanced back ... he wasn't on the bridge." The captain looked around at the rest of them. "Come on to the Roc."

  "I guess you'll have to report this to the Patrol," Katin said. Von Ray led them toward the gate to the take-off field, where Draco writhed up and down his hundred-meter column, in the darkness.

  "There's a phone right here at the head of the bridge— "

  Von Ray's look cut Katin off. "I want to leave this rock. If we call from here, they'll have everybody wait around to tell his version in triplicate."

  "I guess you can call from the ship," Katin suggested, "as we leave."

  For a moment the Mouse doubted all over again his judgment of the captain's age.

  "There's nothing we can do for the sad fool."

  The Mouse cast an uncomfortable glance down the chasm, then followed along with Katin.

  Beyond the hot drafts, night was chill, and fog hung coronas on the induced-fluorescent lamps that patterned the field.

  Katin and the Mouse were at the group's tail.

  "I wonder just what Illyrion means to handsome there," the Mouse commented softly.

  Katin grunted and put his hands under his belt. After a moment he asked, "Say, Mouse what did you mean about that old man and all his senses having been killed?"

  "When they tried to reach the nova the last time," the Mouse said, "he looked at the star too long through sensory input and all his nerve endings were seared. They weren't killed. They were jammed into constant stimulation." He shrugged. "Same difference. Almost."

  "Oh," Katin said, and looked at the pavement.

  Around them stood star-freighters. Between them, the much smaller, hundred-meter shuttles.

  After he'd thought awhile, Katin said: "Mouse, has it occurred to you how much you have to lose on this trip?"

  "Yeah."

  "And you're not scared?"

  The Mouse grasped Katin's forearm with his thin fingers. "I'm scared as hell," he rasped. He shook his hair back to look up at his tall shipmate. "You know that? I don't like things like Dan. I'm scared."

  Chapter Three

  Draco, Triton, Hell3, 3172

  Some stud had taken a black crayon and scrawled "Olga" across the vane-projector face.

  "Okay," the Mouse said to the machine. "You're Olga."

  Purr and blink, three green lights, four red ones. The Mouse began the tedious check of pressure distribution and phase readings.

  To move a ship faster than light from star to star, you take advantage of the very twists in space, the actual distortions that matter creates in the continuum itself. To talk about the speed of light as the limiting velocity of an object is to talk about twelve or thirteen miles an hour as the limiting velocity of a swimmer in the sea. But as soon as one starts to employ the currents of the water itself, as well as the wind above, as with a sailboat, the limit vanishes. The starship had seven vanes of energy acting somewhat like sails. Six projectors controlled by computers sweep the vanes across the night. And each cyborg stud controls a computer. The captain controls the seventh. The vanes of energy had to be tuned to the shifting frequencies of the stasis pressures; and the ship itself was quietly hurled from this plane of space by the energy of the Illyrion in its core. That was what Olga and her cousins did. But the control of the shape and the angling of the vane was best left to a human brain. That was the Mouse's job— under the captain's orders. The captain also had blanket control of many of the sub-vane properties.

  The cubicle's walls were covered with graffiti from former crews. There was a contour couch. The Mouse adjusted the inductance slack in a row of seventy microfarad coil-condensers, slid the tray in to the wall, and sat.

  He reached around to the small of his back beneath his vest, and felt for the socket. It had been grafted onto the base of his spinal cord back at Cooper. He picked up the first reflex cable that looped across the floor to disappear into the computer's face, and fiddled with it till the twelve prongs slipped into his socket and caught. He took the smaller, six-prong plug and slipped it into the plug on the underside of his left wrist; then the other into his right. Both radial nerves were connected with Olga. At the back of his neck was another socket. He slipped the last plug in— the cable was heavy and tugged a little on his neck— and saw sparks. This cable could send impulses directly to his brain that could bypass hearing and sight. There was a faint hum coming through already. He reached over, adjusted a knob on Olga's face, and the hum cleared. Ceiling, walls, and floor were covered with controls. The room was small enough so that he could reach most of them from the couch. But once the ship took off, he would touch none of them, but control the vane directly with the nervous impulses
from his body.

  "I always feel like I'm getting ready for the Big Return," Katin's voice sounded in his ear. In their cubicles throughout the ship, as they plugged themselves in, the other studs joined contact. "The base of the spine always struck me as an unnatural place from which to drag your umbilical cord. It better be an interesting marionette show. Do you really know how to work this thing?"

  "If you don't know by now," the Mouse said, "too bad."

  Idas: "This show's about Illyrion— "

  "— Illyrion and a nova": Lynceos.

  "Say, what are you doing with your pets, Sebastian?"

  "A saucer of milk them feed."

  "With tranquilizers," Tyy's soft voice came. "They now sleep."

  And lights dimmed.

  The captain hooked in. The graffiti, the scars on the walls, vanished. There were only the red lights chasing one another on the ceiling.

  "A shook up go game," Katin said, "with iridescent stones." The Mouse pushed his syrynx case beneath the couch with his heel and lay down. He straightened the cable under his back, beneath his neck.