Galaxies Like Grains of Sand

by Brian W Aldiss

  Entering with your two companions, you were at once lifted to a height just above the rooftops. The disc flicked two blocks to the north before sinking again. The door opened and you climbed out.

  3

  You were in a slaughter yard. No animals were here now, although a wall with a line of fuser marks heart-high showed that the place had not entirely abandoned its ancient purposes.

  Two captains met you under a white flag. They saluted One Eye and led you out of the yard, down a deep ramp. You descended to a part of the old-fashioned pneumatic running under the city, where you removed your radiation suit. Here a maze of new corridors had been constructed; down one of them you were led until a white-painted door was reached. The grim captains indicated you were to go in.

  You entered.

  “Well, you traitor, what makes you think you will leave here alive?” the enemy general asked One Eye. His uniform was trim, if worn, his eyes had a quelling fire to them; he walked as true soldiers have walked since time immemorial — as if the discs of his backbone had all been welded together. And Welded had a little moustache, which now bristled with triumph at the sight of his foe.

  Temporarily forgetting all but his old feud, One Eye advanced as if he would tear that moustache from the others upper lip.

  “Shake hands, you two,” you said impatiently. “Come to terms immediately. The sooner arrangements are made, the better.”

  Welded looked at you for the first time; he seemed instantly to comprehend that it was you rather than One Eye with whom he had to deal. Welded was an intelligent man. Instantly, he was ice cold; his voice ground straight off a glacier.

  “I have no idea who you are, fellow,” he said, “but if I have any suspicion of impertinence from you, I’ll have you beamed. With your friend here I must be more careful — his head is destined for the city gate. You are entirely expendable.”

  “On that I reserve my own opinion,” you said. “We do not come here to bandy threats but to make you an offer. If you are prepared to listen, listen now.”

  In the scale of emotions, there is a stage beyond fury where fury cools, and a stage beyond anger where it merges into fear. As Welded reached this point, he stiffened as if he would snap. He could say nothing. You began to talk of Yinnisfar.

  Welded was a harder man to deal with than his enemy, more seasoned, more sure of himself. Though a faint, concupiscent smile curled his lip when you spoke of the richness of the Region, he never unbent. When you had finished, he spoke.

  “Are you a native of Owlenj, stranger?” he asked.

  “No,” you said.

  “What is your world, stranger?”

  “It is a planet beyond the Galaxy.”

  “There is nothing between the galaxies. What is the name of the world of yours, stranger?”

  “It is unnamed,” you said.

  Now Welded snapped a finger angrily.

  “You have an odd way of trying to win my confidence,” he said. “What do the inhabitants of your world call it?”

  “There are no inhabitants,” you said. “I am the first. It is unnamed because I have not named it.”

  “Then I will name it,” Welded snarled. “I name it Lies! All Lies! Every word a lie! You are a spy from distant Yinnisfar, a dupe, an assassin! Guards!”

  As he shouted, he wrenched a fuser from its holster. One Eye kicked out, caught Welded’s wrist with the toe of his boot, and sent the weapon flying across the room.

  “Listen, you lunatic!” he roared at Welded. “Would you kill this man who offers us so much? Suppose he is a spy from Yinnisfar — would that not make him the ideal man to lead us back there? We need not trust him. Let us seize the advantage of having him in our hands!”

  Even while One Eye was speaking, the ceiling had lifted three feet; through the widening gap, armed men catapulted themselves into the room, pinning you and the rebel leader into different corners. In no time, you were enmeshed in clawed metal nets.

  Welded stayed them with a raised hand.

  “There is a grain of truth in what you say,” he admitted reluctantly. “Guards, leave us. We will talk.”

  Two hours later, when orderlies brought in wine for you and the commanders, the arguing was over and plans were being discussed. By tacit agreement, the question of your origin was abandoned; both men had decided that wherever you came from it was not from the Region of Yinnisfar. No one from that vast empire had bothered with the outer rim of the Galaxy for millennia.

  “I came to you,” you told them, “because this is one of the few planets near my world on which any form of military organization still survives.”

  At that they were flattered. They failed to see that you regarded them merely as remnants of an outdated creed. The only advantage of a military organization over any other, from your point of view, was its ability to get into action without inordinate delay.

  Two hours later still, when one of Welded’s orderlies entered with food, Welded was just making the last of numerous calls to the garrisons of Owlenj.

  “How many interstellar vessels do you hold that can be put into active service at once?” he asked into the speaker. “Yes, all told... I see: fifteen. How many of those are light-drive?... Only five. What type are those five?”

  He wrote the answers down, reading them out as he did so, for your benefit and One Eye’s.

  “One freighter, one liner converted to military use, one trooper and two invaders. Good. Now give me their tonnages.”

  He wrote the tonnages down, scowled, nodded, and said with authoritative sharpness to the unseen commander, “Excellent. You will receive instructions in the morning as regards fuelling and equipping of those five ships. As for the other ten, get your electronics arm on them immediately. I want them equipped with light-drive and ready to bust vacuum within forty-eight hours. Is that understood?... And please confine all your men to camp until further orders. Is that understood?... Good. Any queries?... I leave it all to your ingenuity, commander. Good night. A jolt in the teeth for him,” Welded said with satisfaction as he signed off.

  For the first time, he regarded the orderly who had brought in the food.

  “Is the general cease fire being obeyed?” he demanded.

  “Yes, sir,” the orderly said. “The people are dancing in the streets.”

  “We’ll give them something to dance about soon,” Welded said, rubbing his hands. He turned to One Eye, who was juggling with pieces of paper.

  “What’s our strength?” he asked.

  “Depends how many of these light-drive conversion craft actually materialize.”

  “With our present shortage of men and materials, say fifty per cent,” Welded said.

  “Right.” One Eye scanned his one eye over the sheet of figures.

  “Including my own fleets, say a hundred and ten starships, about two-thirds of which will be military.”

  They looked at each other briefly. Provincial though they were, the number still sounded faintly small.

  “It is ample,” you said confidently.

  They turned to the formidable problem of rations. The fleet could reckon on being vacuum-borne for two weeks before reaching the margins of the Region; another two and a half weeks to reach the heart; another three days to the pivotal world of Yinnisfar itself.

  “And that allows no time for delay caused by evasive action or battle,” Welded said.

  “They may capitulate before we reach Yinnisfar itself,” you said.

  “We must have a safety margin,” Welded insisted. “Let’s call it a six-week journey, eh? And we’ll be five and a half thousand strong...” He shook his head. “We can cope with air supply. The calorie intake is going to be the snag. Those men’ll eat their heads off in that time; there’s just not that amount of food on all Owlenj. Deep freeze is our only answer. Everyone below the rank of major not on essential ship’s crew travels frozen. Get me Medical, orderly. I want to speak to the physician general.”

  The orderly hastened to obe
y.

  “What’s next?” Welded asked. He was beginning to enjoy himself.

  “Weapons,” One Eye said. “First, fissionable material. My forces can’t help much there. Our stocks happen to be lower than usual.”

  “Here’s a report on our holdings as of last week,” Welded said, tossing a stereoed list over. “Stocks are meagre, I’m afraid.”

  You glanced at the list over One Eye’s shoulder.

  “It is ample,” you said encouragingly.

  4

  At first it must have seemed as if the scheme might succeed. Again the feeling must have assailed you that you lived in an unlikely dream whose scenery you could puncture with a finger, as you sat in the flagship with the two commanders. You had no nerves; you did not worry. Welded and One Eye, in their individual ways, both showed strain now that they were embarked on the journey. The captain of the ship, Fleet Commander Prim, had to endure much quiet nagging.

  The early days passed uneventfully. Beyond the ports, space hung becalmed, its blazing stars mere specks in the distance, its ancient splendours nothing more than points to navigate by. The other ships were not visible to the unaided eye; the flagship might have been travelling alone. When they had blasted from Owlenj, the ships in the invasion fleet had numbered 117; by the end of the first week five had had to give up and limp home again, their too hastily contrived lightdrives burned out. It would take them, under normal thrust, half a year to regain port; by then, their crews would be asphyxiated or the survivors breathing the oxygen of murdered men. The rest of the fleet sailed on, holds full of soldiers in suspended animation, all neatly stacked and racked like bottles.

  They had been vacuum-borne sixteen days, and were past those stars generally regarded as outposts of the empire of Yinnisfar, when they were first challenged.

  “A station calling itself Camoens II RST225,” the communications chief reported, “asks us why we have passed Koramandel Tangent Ten without identifying ourselves.”

  “Let it keep on calling,” you said.

  Other challenges were received and left unanswered. The fleet stayed silent as it startled to life the worlds about it. Communications began to intercept messages of alarm and warning between planetary stations.

  “Galcondar Saber calling Rolf 158. Unidentified craft due to pass you on course 99GY4281 at 07.1430 Gal. approx — ”

  “Acrostic 1 to Schiaparelli Base. Look out and report on fleet now entering Home Sector Paradise 014 — ”

  “Peik-pi-Koing Astronomical to Droxy Pylon. Unidentified ships numbering 130 approx now crossing Scanning Area. Code Diamond Index Diamond Oh Nine — ”

  “All stations on Ishrail Link Two. Procedure BAB Nine One into operation immediately — ”

  One Eye snorted his contempt.

  “We’ve certainly set these provincial globes in a flutter,” he said.

  As the hours passed, he grew less easy. Space, almost silent a watch ago, now became murmurous with voices; soon the murmur grew into a babel. The note of curiosity, at first indicating little more than mild interest, showed a corresponding rise through irritation into alarm.

  “Perhaps we ought to answer them,” One Eye suggested. “Couldn’t we spin them some tale to keep them quiet? Tell them we are going to pay homage, or something?”

  “You need have no worry about the messages we can understand,” Prim said. “We are picking up several in code now; they are the ones which should cause us most concern.”

  “Haven’t we some sort of yarn to keep them quiet?” One Eye repeated, appealing to you.

  You were looking out into the darkness, almost as if you could see through the veil of it, almost as if you expected to see the messages flashing like comets before the ports.

  “The truth will emerge,” you said, without turning around.

  Two days later, the parasond picked up the first ship they had detected since leaving Owlenj.

  “It can’t be a ship!” the communications chief was saying, waving a flimog with the report on it.

  “But it must be,” his sub almost pleaded. “Look at its course: you plotted it back yourself! It’s definitely turning. What but a ship could manoeuvre?”

  “It can’t be a ship!” the chief repeated.

  “Why can’t it be a ship?” Prim asked.

  “Beg pardon, sir, but the thing’s at least thirty miles long.”

  After a silence, One Eye asked, “Which way’s it coming?”

  The sub spoke up. He alone seemed delighted at the fish they had caught on their screen. “It has turned since we had it under observation through thirty to thirty-two degrees northerly from a course about due nor’-nor’west with respect to galactic quadrature.”

  One Eye grasped the back of the sub’s couch as if it were the sub’s neck.

  “What I want to know,” he growled, “is if it’s going away or coming toward us.”

  “Neither,” said the sub, looking at the screen again. “It now seems to have finished turning and is moving along a course which is…at ninety degrees to ours.”

  “Any signal from it?” Prim asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Put a shot across its bows,” One Eye suggested.

  “You are not grovelling along the streets of Owlenj now, taking pot shots at all and sundry. Let it go!”

  One Eye turned angrily, to find Welded there. The latter had come up on the bridge early. He stood and watched the blob fade from the parasond screen before he spoke again. Then, beckoning One Eye aside and looking to make sure you were not then present on the bridge, he said in a low voice, “My friend, I have something to confess to you.”

  He looked anxiously and with distaste at One Eye’s whiskery countenance before continuing.

  “My early fears are coming back to me,” he said. “You know I am a man of courage, but even a hero does wisely to be afraid at times. Every hour we dive deeper into a hornet’s nest; do you realize that? Why, we are only two and a half weeks from Yinnisfar itself! I cannot sleep for asking myself if we are not running into something from which there will be no escape.”

  Reluctant as he was to agree with an old enemy, One Eye could not miss this chance of confiding his own anxieties.

  “Ships thirty miles long!” he exclaimed.

  Nodding mysteriously, Welded persuaded the other to come down to his cabin before he would say more. Then he thumped the bulkhead.

  “Only a watch’s journey from here,” he said, thumping again for emphasis, “are many rich planets. They will be as plunder-worthy as the planets in the heart of the Region — but less well guarded. Can’t you just picture them at this very moment: loaded with plump semiblondes with rings on every finger, and fat little men dallying with big bank accounts? They’re wide open! Defenceless! Why go on to Yinnisfar, where undoubtedly we shall meet with resistance? Why not stop here, plunder what we can, and get back to Owlenj while the going’s good?”

  One Eye hesitated, his lip thrust out. He liked the suggestion every bit as much as his ex-enemy had expected he would. But there was one major obstacle.

  “He’s set his heart on getting to Yinnisfar itself.”

  “Yes! I think we’ve put up with him long enough,” Welded replied.

  They did not need to mention your name. When away from the aura of your presence, their misgivings about you were mutual. Welded crossed to a cupboard, taking out a small and tightly stoppered bottle.

  “This should solve that problem,” he said.

  It contained a deadly venom; to smell one drop of it a yard away would give a man headaches for a week.

  “Something to flavour his wine with tonight,” Welded said.

  5

  When the wine went round the captain’s table after dinner, One Eye accepted his glass but could not drink. He felt sick with suspense, and with the sickness went a loathing for Welded; not only did he disapprove of poisoning, as a devious method of killing, but he understood clearly that the little bottle held more than enough to spare f
or him, too, should Welded feel like disposing of all his opposition at once.

  You had no such qualms. You took your glass when it was filled, toasted, as you did every night, the success of the expedition, and drained down the wine.

  “This wine tastes flat,” you said. “We will stock up with better vintages on Yinnisfar!”

  Everyone around the table laughed with you, except for One Eye; the muscles of his face contorted. He could not even force himself to look at Welded.

  “What did you make of the thirty-mile-long object we sighted earlier?” Prim asked you, taking his wine at a more sedate pace.

  “It was a Yinnisfar ship,” you said easily. “But don’t worry about it. Evolution will take care of it, just as evolution took care of the prehistoric monsters that once roved Owlenj and other planets.”

  The captain spread his hands.

  “For a practical man, that seems a strangely unpractical remark,” he said. “Evolution is one thing, superships quite another.”

  “Only if you forget that evolution is nature’s scientific method, and starships, not being organic creatures, are a part of man’s evolution. And man himself is but a part of nature’s scientific method.”

  “I trust you don’t imagine, at this late date in time, that man is not the end product of evolution?” he asked you. “We are constantly being told that the Galaxy is too old for anything but final extinction.”

  “I imagine nothing,” you told him pleasantly. “But remember — what triumphs ultimately is something too vast for comprehension — yours or mine.”

  You stood up, and the others followed suit. Soon the dining room was empty except for two very puzzled conspirators.

  For just over four weeks, the Owlenj fleet had been vacuum-borne. Now the craft were deep within the star-clotted heart of the Galaxy. Suns which carried as an incidental burden hundreds of millions of years of the histories and myths of man burned on all sides like funeral torches. The graveyard air was reinforced by silence over all wave bands, the chatter of alarmed planets had died away to nothing.