Timepiece

by Brian N Ball

  “He worked from the fact that the white dwarf material was brought here for a controlled experiment. He isn’t sine what the experiment is, and none of us can know it. It’s something to do with the relativistic ageing of matter—maybe set up in our Universe because ageing works in a different way from theirs: whoever and whatever they are. The monsters, or it, set up a complex temporal experiment. It’s based on the Flying Dutchman effect that happens when a white dwarf star implodes. The math is anomalous. Look at the charts.”

  “A shield around the star,” said the girl. “Particles destroyed and some going on forever.”

  “The Black Shield Singularity,” agreed Del. “The computer said it might be.”

  “These particles. They go on, but forever?”

  ‘In a closed loop,” Del told her. “They’re in thermodynamic equilibrium. Every time they’re here, they haven’t been in that place before. But the words are wrong! There’s no such thing as here, or up, or down, or along or past, or even time!”

  “And the experiment isn’t just to test the math?”

  “No. What’s true for the particles that go on forever is also true of other bodies.”

  “And that’s what they want.” The girl looked in wonderment at Garvin’s probability curves. “He’s put in everything! The gyrational patterns for the confluence of field forces, the movement of the monsters.” Del watched her. She had understood the thing in part, and she could learn the rest.

  “He didn’t put in everything,” said Henry Sokutu. Suzanne disregarded the sombre warning.

  “He’s gone to the focus of it all,” said the girl. “To the centre of the maze. Into the labyrinth! He’s gone to meet them!”

  “A rare encounter,” said Henry Sokutu.

  “But what are they!”

  “Experimenters,” said Del. “Seekers. Like ourselves”

  “But they failed!”

  “Not entirely,” said Henry Sokutu.

  “They lost control,” said Del. “They ran the experiment, if what we think is true, and they let it get out of hand. They were trapped.”

  “But so long ago! Millions of years!”

  “The Planet was new when they came,” said Henry Sokutu.

  “And Gary’s gone to them!” A note of hysteria.

  “You could say that. Or perhaps they’ve gone to meet Garvin.” Henry Sokutu was mildly amused. “I hope you can be present at the meeting, though I don’t see how you’re able to travel. Del?”

  “But why?” from the girl. “Why the cliffs!”

  “A labyrinth leads somewhere,” Del told her. “A maze has a centre. It’s their Key. Their formula. Their way back.” He paused. “And perhaps ours.”

  “Garvin’s visiting them. He’s hoping for the answer,” added the suave tones of Henry Sokutu. “They’re probably hoping for a reciprocal enlightenment.”

  Light burst in the girl’s face as she absorbed the information the two men had been slowly adding together for her:

  “The Commander! They used him too!”

  “Only a probability,” warned Henry Sokutu.

  “They dragged the Commander and his crew back to use them—him—to—”

  “Yes.” Del faced her. “Maybe there was something in his mind that could trigger off their own way back.”

  “Then the pit—it was a trap! A net! They left it there for anything that had intelligence! They were helpless and before they couldn’t act any more, they rigged up that pit!”

  “And before they clawed us out of space, we obligingly came down to meet them,” said Del.

  “I fear for Garvin,” said Henry Sokutu. His tone suggested that his was an historian’s concern only.

  The vessel creaked as the fuel cells gave out. A thin wind blew through the broken remnants of machines. “What can I do, Del?”

  “The data on the plant cell walls.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “An admirable decision,” Henry Sokutu assured them as they sweated. “A surface craft from local materials. And so simple in construction! I do wish, however, you’d give me some indication of when you hope to be on your way. There are developments, you know.” As they turned Del’s deft working sketches into the skin of a vessel, Henry Sokutu told them of the gathering at the cliffs. It was a ritual. The monsters, black and huge, great chunks of shapeless rock, were advancing in what was clearly a pattern towards the cliffs; the shape of the cliff faces was the shape of their procession. Like the penitential maze, Sokutu said. Like the symbol of futurity and completeness.

  Suzanne fed heaps of fronds into the machine Del had contrived: a simple hopped leading to a conversion unit. “How much more of this stuff?”

  “Keep at it. A few more loads.”

  “Nothing from Garvin? Henry, can you see him?” The girl paused.

  “Nothing,” said the voice from the radio. “Is this thing you re building going to work?”

  “It’ll work,” said Del. “The cliffs?”

  “Still the same movement.”

  They worked on in the fading light. “Do you think they influenced Garvin?” Suzanne panted. She was tiring.

  “That’s enough,” said Del. “It could be. Maybe he has the highest tolerance amongst us, maybe they don’t care which one of us goes.”

  “He’s likelier for their purpose than Smith was,” Henry Sokutu said.

  ‘If we just had that drive!” Suzanne exclaimed.

  “It’s waiting for us a mile or so from the cliffs.”

  They rested and ate the unpalatable food. “It’s strange the way things have worked out,” Suzanne said. “The monsters carving that pattern over millions of years in the cliff face. Grinding away, century after century. Imprinting their formula so that at some fantastic time in the future when they were unable to use their powers, they would have the ritual to guide them. A race memory in the cliffs.” She stood up, a slim figure in the early evening gloom. She was shivering. “It’s going to end for them, for us, soon.”

  “Rest now,” Del told her. “I can handle the skin.”

  She smiled gratefully. “Del, I think it’s going to be all right.”

  “You deserve a rest. And it will work out.”

  It hadn’t been too difficult. Del collected the huge billowing folds of the plastic skin that was to be the envelope of the curious craft he had devised. He began to drape it over the skeletal framework of metal. The one source of trouble could be the engine, and he would not test it until the craft was put together. Failure didn’t bear thinking about.

  He had spent little time in considering what kind of craft to build. Wheels were useless on this terrain; air-cushion craft were a possibility, but required a good deal of accurate construction; trucks again were out since, like wheeled and air-cushion vehicles, they would be susceptible to gravitational hazards. The beauty of the craft Del had invented was that it utilized local materials and the Planet’s own ecological answer to gravitational flux. He was building a surface craft which would bend as field variations were encountered. The principle was an old one—the continuous movement of the gastropod whose skin tracked along the surface; and the material for the skin was the smashed cells of fibres from the local vegetation. Del had spotted the use of the plant-life’s adaptive processes at once. With the analyses already carried out he was able to devise a simple machine for smashing fibres and reconstituting them in a continuous form.

  Garvin had seen it too. He had speculated on the possibility of building permanent observation posts on the Planet from local materials. His notes were clear and simple:

  “All molecules of ordinary plant cell walls are of the orthic tetrakaidecahedron or cuba-octahedron form; the mutation here is an ideal shape. Instead of long thin molecules, they are interlocking strips. Useful for shelters?”

  Del had used the plants stabilizing mechanism of interlocking molecules to manufacture a shield against the Planet’s fields. He had threaded the molecular chains together, and woven them into a blanket.r />
  The math for the conversion of the molecules had been easy, but the girl had not believed that they could find a power source big enough to grind down the molecular architecture of the plant cell walls. She had watched Del strip the inspection plates from the inert figure of Charlie Five:

  “You’re not thinking of using him!”

  “Have you seen the power unit in one of these?”

  Del smiled as he used a manual unit to attach the skin of the ship to its anchor points on the inner skin of light plastics. There had been some satisfaction in doing the job; the work was a way of combating his inner conflict over his feelings for the girl. He was able to forget his self-pitying scrutiny of his relationship with her; ignore her efforts to contrive the tenderness they had shared; stop cursing himself as a middle-aged has-been bewildered by the energy and beauty of youth.

  It was finished much sooner than he expected. The power unit; small and heavy, was bolted into the frame. The simple guidance system with its two levers lay ready. A few electronic systems stripped from the remains of the life-raft flickered with life from the feeble fuel cell that was their only remaining source of energy apart from the unit that had once powered Charlie Five. Del called to the girl.

  Suzanne stared at the inelegant craft, at the amorphous billowing mass of reconstituted fibre. ‘In here!” Del called to her.

  “It’s like a damned great sausage!” she said. The walls of silvery plastics shimmered; Del showed her the controls.

  “Sit there. And use these two levers for direction control.”

  He connected the starting circuits: the strange web of metals, plastics, and fibres became a craft. A loud hum from the power unit demanded attention. “Now connect the drive,” Del ordered. Slowly the thing moved.

  “Three problems,” Del told her. “Build this, find the main drive, and survive. Let’s go, Suzanne.”

  She handled the rickety control mechanisms well. Like Ellison, she was good with machines. Del realized that now that she had a Job to do, she was regaining her confidence,' becoming once more the bright and splendid woman who had walked into his life a few weeks before.

  “On course?” Del asked Henry Sokutu. “Check my direction-finding equipment, will you?”

  “You’re right on course. At this speed, your journey will take you about seven hours. You’ll be at the cliffs by dawn.”

  “Were slowing!” said Suzanne. She flicked the rudimentary controls and brought the full power of the

  tiny engine into play. “Still slowing! What's happening?"

  “Gravitational change," said Henry Sokutu. “Nothing serious—though—Delvaney!" The voice had changed from its calm tones to alarm: “Something's happening! Garvin! I am getting a faint call—”

  They felt the billowing folds of the skin of the craft absorbing the shock of a colossal drag of force.

  “Del!” shouted the girl, but she kept the craft under control. Its speed dropped again until the artificial gastropod was crawling like a squashed bug along the surface of the Planet. Del adjusted the controls fractionally, but there was nothing that he could do to improve on her handling of the craft.

  “It was Garvin!” Henry Sokutu called. “You hear me?”

  Gradually the drag fell away, and the ship picked up speed.

  “Where's Garvin?” said Del urgently. “The craft's fine. Was that the monsters again?”

  “They've got him.”

  “Garv!” cried the girl, for a moment allowing the craft to lurch off course. She recovered at once.

  “There was a flood of that peculiar field-force again,” said Henry Sokutu.

  “We felt it.” Del grinned at the girl.

  “So did Garvin.”

  The noise of the engine seemed louder for a moment. Del thought of Garvin caught up in a net of immense forces. He remembered that Garvin had sent Ellison into the drive.

  “Garvin's in trouble,” said Henry Sokutu. “He spoke before his radio went dead. Six words.”

  ‘He said?” prompted Del.

  “Trying' was one: ‘ripping time from my mind!' was the rest. It's the final link we were looking for. It’s just what the Commander said.”

  “What’s happening at the cliffs?”

  “There’s a formula being worked out. On the peripheries there’s an area where nothing happens. No field of any kind. Nothing. Inside, it's like an Act of God. Garvin’s in the middle of something like a great wheel of monsters. They’re moving about inside the carven figures.”

  “The drive,” said Del. ‘It’s safe?”

  “Outside the area. You’ll find it easily.”

  “What are they making?” said the girl. “Garvin. The monsters—what’s happening?”

  “I don’t know, Suzanne,” said Henry Sokutu. “But I think they’ve got what they wanted from us.”

  Del disregarded the girl’s obvious desire to talk. There was a chance of survival, and that was important:

  “What conditions will we have?”

  “The Planet’s quiescent gravitationally speaking. It’s a globe. The only problem is crossing a biggish lake. You’ll reach it soon.”

  Water thundered about them for a while, and then the lake was calm. The outer skin of the unwieldly craft adapted itself bulbously to the small choppy waves. The darkness was relieved by the glow of the small moon. “Can you handle this thing alone?” Del asked the girl.

  When Del awoke, Suzanne was staring at him. She had been crying. Dirt, grease and tears streaked her face: “I thought I saw the cliffs a few moments ago,” she said. “Outlined against the moon. Just a glimpse.” Del looked out through the observation port. Water swirled around them still as the craft rolled swiftly across the lake.

  “Did you think we’d have worked out together— you and me, Del?”

  What could one say? “Yes.”

  “We might have done. People do. I thought we could have had one of those timeless things together.” Del looked at her fine, streaked face. He remembered some of the things she had said, and more of the puzzle fell into place; she had talked in those brief, intense sessions when he had held her writhing body. She had wished for love to last for ever. A woman screaming for eternity.

  “You were right,” said Del.

  “About us?”

  “About the cliffs.”

  He looked at the lake shore, where mud, rock debris and crowned vegetation showed in the dim moonlight. Behind, outlined against a faint haze that could be drawn, were the sheer cliffs. The girl tensed with excitement as the craft surged up the beach. “Del, it's in a shape-flaring out there in the cliffs just then! There it is again! Like a great golden flower!”

  Henry Sokutu’s comment was solemn:

  “Mandala. That’s what you can see. Mandala. The shape of life.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  They stopped a mile or so away from the cliffs. The drive, housed in a makeshift shell, lay abandoned in a crevice. Its stark shape was shown in the weird yellow light suffusing the area. Del was sick with the mind-reeling excitement of the grotesque scene; the girl was wide-eyed, between horror and ecstasy. They were at the end of the search. For there, hanging in the vast carvings in the cliffs, was the pattern of time, the geometry of life.

  The hot centre was brighter than either of the Planet’s two suns, fierier than the implosion of any star, but a cold fire that radiated a sense of the beginnings of time and life. The sight drove out fear and left only awe.

  In their thousands, the great blocks of monsters moved along the lines of the patterns grooved into the cliff faces; the lines slid subtly into one another, blurring and shifting, so that the carvings deepened.

  ‘‘But Garvin! Where is he!” shouted the voice from the crude surface craft. “The mandala—is he in it?”

  “There,” said the girl.

  And he was. Del found he could say nothing. Henry Sokutu had told them what to expect: the awful strangeness of a complete universe forming. Del groped for words to record the e
vents he was watching, but there were no words: the linguistic strait-jacketing of his concepts allowed no verbalizing. It must have been the same at some early time in the history of the human race, Del thought. Millions of years before, a human being had symbolized thought as language. And perhaps at some fantastic time in the future it would be possible for another mind to make the Promethean leap that would allow the symbolization of events like the one he was watching. To stop time. To begin time. To turn time inside out. But the words were wrong, for here was a piece of time. You had to adjust your mind to take in new data.

  Reasonable enough, Del told himself.

  To take in new data, you opened your mind.

  To understand the formula.

  To work out the puzzle.

  To join in the—

  “No, Del! Don't go!”

  He had been ready to move into the mandala.

  “Can't you see, they've worked Garvin into the centre!”

  “He's still alive?” asked Henry Sokutu anxiously.

  Del looked away from the vast complex forming in front of him: “In the central whorl,” he told Henry Sokutu. “He left the suit with the drive. He could be alive.”

  “It's hyperspace now,” the girl murmured.

  “Six dimensions,” said Henry Sokutu.

  “The patterns—they get simpler,” said the girl wonderingly. “What is it they're doing?”

  “Using Garvin’s mind to find their Key,” said Del. ‘Tie's their selector. A component.”

  “Then what are they making!”

  “Making? Shaping? I'm not sure what it is. Maybe controlling something they'd already made. Reactivating an experiment.”

  There was distinct cry from the middle of the lines of light. Tendrils of fire raced up and out ten billion miles and flooded them with a harsh brilliance. A huge roar of sound blasted the two watchers, filling their heads with the ringing of a million cataclysmic bells. The gross roaring vitality of the forming shape washed through them until they felt they were within the gaping pits of hyperspace: the violence of creation shocked them.

  Again a sound of pain and anger echoed around them: they knew it came from Garvin. He was calling for help, but in no human tones. He was making the pitiful noises a man makes when he faces the urgency of pain and death. Canopies of force gushed out from the reeling cliffs.