Timepiece
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“At last! Yes! You can’t stay more than another
twenty-four hours! Why didn’t you answer before-foolish question!”
‘Is the ship all right?” said Del.
“Why, yes! What do you think I am, some kind of—Now, tell me,” he said, collecting himself, “are you all safe?”
“Battered,” said Del. “Gary’s hurt We can use the ship only for take-off. Charlie Five’s a wreck, and so is most of our equipment. Now, report! What caused the disturbance?”
“You must have lowered your screens,” said Henry Sokutu. “Don’t do it again! Take every precaution against further disturbances.”
“The cause!” said Garvin impatiently.
“Ah. Now listen carefully. There are two things you should know. It wasn’t gravitational imbalance amongst the six cores that caused the upheaval; the instruments recorded a surge in field generation on an unprecedented scale. Nothing like previous gravitational flux. Something moved on the Planet. Big enough to push half a mountain aside. The computer thinks it generates its own colossal gravitational field— ridiculously large-scale for its mass. It flung the local fields out of kilter.” Del noticed that Garvin’s eyes were fixed in that strange unwinking expression he had noted the previous evening. An uncanny look. “The gods know the fields are complex enough,” went on Henry Sokutu, “but with this additional upheaval! Do you follow this so far?” he put in.
“Animal life?” said Del. “What was it?”
“Something intelligent,” breathed the girl. “Dell” “Impossible to distinguish anything under its fields,” said Henry Sokutu. “Certainly there’s a massive core inside its bulk, but the computer won’t guess. It does say there are other things like it on the move. Each with the same apparatus that puts out this colossal kind of field.”
“Moving?” asked Garvin.
“Yes, but so far randomly. There appears to be a pattern—and that's something I want to tell you about.”
“Send the data,” ordered Garvin. “Everything that bears on these things.”
“Stand by,” said Henry Sokutu. A high-speed burst of information followed. “Got it?”
“Recorded,” said Del. He passed on the makeshift machinery to Garvin, who at once began to mark off his flow-charts.
“You've got to get back, so the computer says,” Henry Sokutu added. ‘"You’ve tested the drive? It was most anxious about that.”
“I hope the ship holds together when we move off,” said Del, “but I think it will. Now what else is there? You said two items of information.”
“I know what the Commander was talking about.”
“When?” said Del. “The first Report?”
“The first He mentioned a key. A key, in the context of a search for an understanding of the nature of time.”
“The key to time” whispered the girl.
“The key to life,” corrected Henry Sokutu.
“But how—” began Garvin.
“He was talking in philosophical terms,” said Henry Sokutu. “The key to life.”
In the cabin there was no further sound for half a minute. Only thin distortions of radiophonic noise. The sound of minute creaks as the crafts screens settled to the subtle shifts of gravity. The breathing of the three intent figures as they stared at the ramshackle radio.
“Easy enough when you range about in time,” said Henry Sokutu. “When you rely on the human quality of intuition. Not the machine.”
“Philosophical terms?” said Garvin.
“Smith’s background gave the clue. He was interested in an ancient civilization. The Greeks.”
“A pattern,” Del heard Garvin say. ‘It's the pattern.”
“Of course!” said the girl; she had the faraway look of the dreamer.
“Of course,” agreed Henry Sokutu. “The Greek key pattern. An endlessly interlocked figure, a thing of beauty that any portrayal of completeness must have. Its significance is in a rigid geometrical attempt to break out of the confines of two-dimensional space. And the Commander saw a parallel here.”
‘It's a common symbol,” broke in the girl. “Repeated in later cultures. In mythology it’s the—”
“The mandala,” said Henry Sokutu. “Exactly! A design carved into many temples, though I can’t say I’m satisfied that I’ve thoroughly investigated its meaning. . . . There’s something I can’t quite call to mind. . . . But I digress!”
“No,” said the girl. “You have it! The maze! The ritual dance through the maze!”
Del looked from Garvin to the girl, and to the charts that Garvin was hurriedly tracing. He had the feeling that events were hurrying past him, that first Garvin, then Sokutu, and now the girl, had added another dimension to their understanding of the mystery of the Planet; and that he was the only intruder on this strange world.
“The dance?” said Henry Sokutu. “The ritual! The maze! My dear, magnificent!”
“There was only one carving—” began the girl. “Stone! Frozen! Immobile!” continued Henry Sokutu in a burst of static. “The penitent ritually creeping through the maze—into another form! Into something outrageously unfamiliar!”
‘Into another Universe,” agreed Garvin.
And, suddenly, Del realized the connection. Smith had seen something on this Planet that equated to another attempt to probe a mystery. Here, something else was attempting to wind through a maze to an understanding of a deeper mystery.
‘The Commander saw something here,” said Del. He had never felt so calmly confident.
“Here,” said Henry Sokutu. “Somewhere on this Planet is a symbol of eternity.”
Chapter Seventeen
They discarded the more unlikely interpretations put forward by the main computer.
‘There’s large scale movement,” said Garvin. “Coordinated, we’ve found. There’s a relationship between the core pattern and this large-scale movement—like this,” he said, on a makeshift flow-chart. “The Commander’s first Report works out here,” he said. “The sexagesimal pattern. And the gravitational changes we’ve recorded fit in like this—cycles of force, in an identifiable pattern. Remember? 'A matrix of forevers’?”
“But what about the labyrinth?” said Suzanne. “It fits in with what Henry said about the key design, but where is it? And what exactly are we going to do to find out?”
“And time,” said Del. “Time holding still.”
Garvin looked narrowly at Del. “I don’t know,” he said abruptly. “The second Report still doesn’t have any connection with anything that’s happened so far.” He looked at Suzanne: “The labyrinth is the maze. The Planet itself is the labyrinth.”
“And a common source for all the activity,” said Del. “That’s what the computer says.”
“It’s saying that the whole Planet is controlled ,” said Suzanne. “What did it call the Planet?”
“It was attempting a joke,” said Garvin. “It called it a planetary carapace. A sort of world-brain. The whole Planet a huge computer. It was jealous, I think, in a remote way."
‘It’s absurd,” said Suzanne. “It supposes an intelligence that uses gravitational forces—” She stopped and went on slowly: “—as we use electrical impulses in our brains.”
“A workshop,” Del said. “There was the idea of the Planet being a research station. But where’s the experimenter? Where’s the controlling agency?”
“How about the other idea we threw out?” asked Suzanne. “The idea of the Planet as an organism, with the things moving about it as cells?”
“It’s as bad as the other analogy the computer came up with,” said Garvin crisply. ‘The Planet as a physical organism with the gravitational flux as muscular contraction and expansion, and the upheavals we’ve experienced as a sort of nervous twitch. Neurotic twitches 1” he jeered. “A body with a tic! No! We’ve got to get out and find it. Or, rather, you have to go out. I’ll stay and try to work out what’s happening here. Find the controlling agency, Del, Suzanne.”
“Not necessarily,” said Garvin. ‘Intelligent, yes. Aware, alert, waiting. But not reasoning. I like the idea that the thing’s gone wrong, whatever it is. Get some sleep, Del. We’ll get the gear ready. Then you two can go out.”
“We have about thirty hours,” said the girl. She looked out at the shimmering, insubstantial world beyond the haze of the screens. “And then we have to move off.”
“Don’t worry,” said Del. “Well go. We’ll find the key. The agency. The reason for the Planet.”
“Like Smith?” said the girl slowly. “Will we be dragged down into that pit?”
“Smith hadn’t our knowledge,” Garvin assured them. “With the force-screens up, this ship can withstand anything this Planet can offer. You'll have a warning of further activity. Enough time to get back, so Henry says.”
“I don't like that part of it so much,” said Del. “On foot. Slow progress. But we'll go. We'll at least check the ruin of Smith's ship and the hollow.”
“Curious,” said the girl, as Del felt himself reeling into sleep. “The Planet’s been waiting for millions of years, and now we have a few hours to find its secret”
And there was Garvin, too, talking about the pursuit of the ineffable, an assertive ring of authority about his voice: “We've survived ordeal by the fragmentation of dimensions, and we've been walked over by a mountain. . .
Garvin and the girl had worked hard. Del roused himself from the short but deep sleep and looked at the equipment. He drank the coffee Suzanne had made.
“Latest reports?” he said to Garvin.
“Nothing. A blip of field radiation, but it's settled again. Henry says there's no surge of energy like the thing that trampled on us anywhere within fifty miles of here. He's not actually spotted anything—it's as though the things have gone into hibernation. He did establish that there were more of them. Hundreds. And they all stopped pouring out their own fields of force at the same instant. As if at a signal. So there's no immediate danger of an encounter with them.”
“How's the back?” said Del. He wondered at Garvin’s odd lapses into pain. “You can move about in case we don't make it?”
“You'll make it,” said Garvin heartily. “If not, I’ll come looking!”
“There's no danger,” said the girl. “We just have to stroll over to the hollow and find what's doing all this.” She gestured around the wrecked cabin. “Two go for safety. One stays to keep in contact.”
“Yes,” said Del. “That’s what we’ll do.”
It was strange how every situation resolved itself into a diminishing series of choices of alternatives. In the beginning, he had opted for the crazy expedition rather than remain on the Plots. He had accepted the leadership of as strange a crew as it was possible to get together, from an outlandish historian to an amateur and, as it turned out, a paranoiac Field Theorist; from a beautiful girl to a fop of a telecaster who, against all expectation, had turned out to be an expert in the craft of Field Theory. Ellison’s fatal investigation again had been forced on Del: either that, or risk losing the vessel. And then there had been the matter of landing on B716 Sector 59: a makeshift vessel, or risk the ship; there had been no choice possible but the one he had made. No other crew could have collected the information, found the Thomas Cook, explored its fantastic hyperspace drive, plotted its voyage to the Planet, and, finally, driven Del, here, at this one point in space and time, to step out and face—what? He found himself laughing aloud. For the first time in years, he was free. He had only to face the inevitable. He could suspend reason; rely on intuition. There was no risk of failure. It would all happen with no choice possible.
“Let’s look at this inconstant globe,” he said. He turned to Garvin: “Too bad, Garv. We’ll bring you samples, data, readings on the hollow. Keep a listening watch.” He breathed into the patched-up suit radio. “It’s still working.”
“Find the key,” said Garvin. “Good luck.”
They struggled into the packs. Survival equipment. Flares, weapons, tiny kits of recording instruments; the familiar gear of the cautious, trained investigator on a strange world.
“If anything goes wrong, get back. Fast. One of us
has to get back with information,” said Del. ‘If I say move, then go.”
The girl held his hand briefly as they stepped through the lowered screens. They slid gently to the ground. Looking back, Del saw Garvin slumped in a chair. He remembered seeing that same half-smile of knowledge that was on Garvin’s face in antique pictures: it worried him. But not for long, for there was a new world before them.
Chapter Eighteen
The world was sharply defined, no haze except on the distant, ice-capped mountains. The vegetation was not especially outlandish in shape, not to well-travelled people; its textures were odd, though. Del and the girl picked their way through bushes that recoiled away from the vibration of their footsteps, their breathing, even their heartbeats. They could almost see the cautious seep of fluids through semi-permeable membranes; the careful equilization of concentrations; the delicate adjustment of ecological balances. Leaves and branches were alive with movement; small, subtle movements. Bright greens and brilliant phosphorescent yellows; screaming reds and clear blues: the colours reflected the harsh sunlight. They paused to look at a sluggish stream.
“Feel that?” asked the girl. “The change of gravity ?”
As if on cue, the stream halted. A few flutters on its surface showed that here was at least some form of insect life. They were aware, too, of tiny gastropods in crevices.
“The stream,” the girl went on. “Its changing direction.”
With no fuss at all, the stream carefully began flowing up the shallow rise and into a worn watercourse.
‘There must be a zone of extremely low gravity to the rise,” said Del. “And just where we're standing, a peak.”
“The channel, though, Del—its deeply scored into the rock. It means there is a regular pattern of gravitational change. The water must flow through it for much of the time.”
“Until now. Or until we reached the Planet. Maybe we've disturbed the cycle of gravitational change.” The girl shivered in the warm, orange sunlight. “Come on, Del. We've only a few hours.” Her light steps became sluggish as they passed through the zone of high gravity. “Del,” she said, “don't you have the feeling that we've interfered with some kind of natural process? As if we're being watched? As if something's weighing up our next move?”
Del looked at the lines of her dark-framed oval face. The fine line of mouth, the delicate tracery of her eyes, the sweep of her slim neck. He recognized the cause of his impulse to place her gently on the soft mossy ground: to make this strange world human, to bring into this place of eerie movement and watchfulness something of the great tenderness of human passion. There was danger, there was no time for dalliance, but he wanted the girl now. At once, and with a brazen intensity that left him breathless. He wanted to tell her that she stirred him more than any woman had ever done, that to hang on to her every subtle mood whilst galaxies fell away was his only desire. Life and love with her were a miracle. Where was the cool appraisal of the situation demanded of a man from Disaster Control? Del laughed aloud again.
“Why, Del,” the girl said. *The ideas you have.” She slipped out of the pack she was carrying; he held her for a few seconds and felt soft material sliding down from her smooth body. “Here, on a place like this!”
He felt gentle questing movements from her body,
urgent signals from her pulsing breasts. “No time,” he said. But there was time, all the time they needed. And again, time.
Finally, the abrupt rush of passion quickly satisfied, and the next, slow, long, ecstatic flow of love completed, they lay back listening to the foolish sound of water gently flowing, and the wind brushing the foliage aside. Del looked at her calm face. Suddenly, he had the feeling that he had seen her like this b
efore: calm after passion, lying like this amongst eerie surroundings. He shook his head. She smiled at him. It was the strangeness of the place, Del told himself.
“I had marvellous ideas for us whilst we made love,” the girl said, eyes open now.
She always had ideas, this girl. “You had?”
“A life here. A love-life. On this Planet, Del.” She smiled again as he looked puzzled. “Here, love and the gravitational fields.”
Del laughed aloud again. “We should go.”
But she wanted to wait. “You know, Del, I always wanted you? It was always you right from the first time I saw you. Garvin was just—” She paused.
Del was not listening. “Hear that?” he said.
She listened. “Nothing. What did you think?” “Maybe nothing,” said Del. “Come on.”
Del thought of her, dismissing the faint sound he had heard. If there was to be danger, he would have to meet it They had to go on. What was it that Henry Sokutu had hinted about the girl? That she was more complex than either of them would ever know? And Rosetti? He had warned of some mystery about her, too.
The violet sun abruptly plunged behind a shelf of rock. “The rays would warp,” the girl said inconsequentially. “Small warps over high gravity areas.”
“Garv said they wouldn’t tell us much. Not in the short term.”
‘The crater, then,” said the girl. “That has to tell us the answer.”
"I've wondered,” said Del as they moved off from the mossy bank, “whether we re looking at the right things.”
“But we have to go to the crater! Its the only real sign of activity that we can pin down!”
“Not like that,” said Del. “I mean we might be looking in the wrong way at what's happened at the Planet.”
The girl strode out with a stride matching Del's. "I knew you were the right man,” she told him. “Garv—” and now she looked embarrassed. “Garvin said you could do anything.”
“A drunken agent? Overweight, middle-aged and disillusioned?” laughed Del.