A Glimpse of Infinity

by Brian Stableford

  In the glass before him, Sisyr could see a faint reflective image of the man who was speaking. He had seen the man before, if only on a screen. In a sense, this man and he had been involved with one another for a considerable time.

  His name was Jervis Burstone.

  He was holding a gun.

  “I was informed that the police had left,” said Sisyr, calmly.

  “They did,” replied Burstone. “When they left, we came in.”

  “We?”

  “There are a dozen of us. There may be more. We’re still making contacts...preparations....”

  “Preparations for what?” Sisyr still did not turn. Burstone inched forward, until he was beside the alien, and he made sure that Sisyr could, by the merest sideways glance, see that he held the weapon.

  “This is a weird place to build a home,” said Burstone. “It’s cold and bleak. Or is that more like home, to you, than the temperate zone? Perhaps you come from a cold, bleak world, full of bare rock slopes, with a snowline right down to the sea.”

  “Perhaps,” said Sisyr. He had lived on many worlds.

  “And the house,” said Burstone. “So many rooms, full of so many things. A museum. All those books...you must have as many as the main depository. All that stone. And, of course, all your plunder from the Underworld. How far into the mountain do your cellars extend?”

  “Far enough,” said Sisyr.

  “What are you?” asked Burstone. “Some kind of custodian, holding the history of Earth’s two worlds in trust? I often wondered what I was doing, in the name of the Plan, trading garbage with the Underworlders.”

  “You did it because you wanted to,” said Sisyr. “You felt that you were doing something worthwhile. And you were.”

  “You tricked us. You made us believe that it was all part of the Plan. You made use of what we believed, of the need we had to be doing something for the Plan.”

  “Is that why you’ve come?” asked Sisyr. “To confront me with your righteous rage? To gain your revenge? Because you’re frightened, as you’ve never been frightened before?”

  “I’m not frightened,” said Burstone. “I’ve been into the Underworld fifty times and more. I’m not afraid of it.”

  “Of course,” said Sisyr.

  But Burstone was afraid of the Underworld. Part of the reason why he went back, again and again, was because he was afraid. He fed on fear—it was almost a kind of pleasure. But from the Underworld, there had always been a return—a return into the utter safety and security of the Overworld. In a sense, Burstone was a man who had spent his life in a ritual parody of return to the womb: the mechanical womb of the host cybercomplex. But now the fear upon which he had fed was feeding on him. The Underworld was threatening to invade his womb. And Burstone had found a gun to hide behind. He had found someone to blame.

  Still Sisyr watched the blizzard beyond the window. Burstone moved round still further, until his back was pressed up against the glass wall and he could look at Sisyr’s blue eyes.

  “You helped the people of the Underworld,” he said. “You kept them alive. And now they’re going to destroy us.”

  “I didn’t keep them alive,” said Sisyr. “I kept them self-aware. I preserved some measure of humanity, not only in the men, but in the others. I helped them keep communication and some degree of civilization. I helped to smooth the path of change, to give them some small degree of control over that change. At the pace of evolution with which they live, you see, they could so easily have lost everything, and had to start all over again, without really becoming anything new. I wanted to give them the chance of becoming something new—of making use of the tachytelic evolution without falling prey to its demands. But that was the Plan.”

  “Your Plan.”

  “If you choose to believe that, you will. But the Plan was neither wholly mine, nor wholly the Euchronians’. At least in part, it was the Plan of the men on the ground. Without some degree of assistance from men on the ground, the platform could not have been built. Surely you realize that.”

  “It’s not true,” said Burstone, flatly.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Sisyr, after a pause. Burstone could almost imagine the sigh which might have preceded the remark, if Sisyr had been human.

  “No,” said Burstone. “Not any more.”

  “Why have you come here?” asked the alien.

  “We want your help,” replied the human.

  “Everyone wants my help,” said Sisyr. “For more than a hundred years, I have hardly spoken to a human being. And now, all of a sudden, they are flocking to my door, asking for help. I will do all that I can. I have promised you this again and again. But what you want is always something different. You always want the help that I cannot give, and you always want it with a gun in your hand.”

  “We need your help. We must have it. We’re prepared to do what we must in order to get it.”

  “What help?” asked Sisyr. For the first time, he moved. His head bowed, as though he had suddenly become too weary to support it. His spidery hands clenched beneath his chin.

  “We want the starship,” said Burstone.

  PART 5

  40.

  Iorga backed up the staircase slowly. No one came after him. That frightened him, because he knew that the Cuchumanates would not give up. If they were not following him, that almost certainly indicated that they knew another way up.

  He knew that he and Nita, at least, were trapped. Unless they killed all their enemies, they would not be able to get out of the building. If the Cuchumanates were so inclined, they could simply wait. But that was not the way of the Cuchumanates. Ahrima might have done that—Men Without Souls certainly would have—but the Cuchumanates would make every effort to find and kill the fugitives.

  The best thing to do, he decided, was to gain time—to go upwards. There was every chance that he could separate the attackers, spread them out while they hunted him on ten or a dozen different levels.

  He felt Nita touch him on the arm. She was feeling her way. It was so dark now, even to his sensitive eyes, that sight was almost useless.

  “Up,” he murmured. “Keep going.”

  “Huldi?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” He hoped that she might, perhaps, have evaded the attackers and got away outside, but it seemed more likely that the Cuchumanates had caught and killed her.

  While they continued the ascent, there was a steady susurrus of noise around them as the larger creatures inhabiting the corridor moved away from them. Much of the clicking and faint buzzing came from insects too small to be worrisome, but they both knew only too well that there might be creatures here as dangerous as the Cuchumanates. Nita remembered the coenocytic creatures which had come out of the blackland to destroy the armored vehicles from the Overworld.

  Iorga felt Nita suddenly flinch, and she swayed back toward him, her fingers grasping at his clothing. The steps were overgrown, and it was easy to fall, so he reached out immediately to steady her. When she was safe, he let her guide his hand out to touch the obstruction from which she had recoiled.

  The passage was blocked by a soft, warm substance. It had the stickiness of the trailing spiderwebs, but it was solid. It yielded slightly to pressure, like a heavy curtain, but it did not tear. He ran his hand from side to side, and then reached upwards, to confirm that the barrier extended all the way across the corridor.

  “Take the left wall,” he said to Nita. “I’ll take the right. Go down slowly until it opens out.”

  They descended together, very cautiously, staying level with one another by adjusting to the scraping of each other’s hand along the wall. Thus they arrived together at the level beneath the barrier. One way seemed to lead towards dim light—perhaps to the external face where there had once been a window. The other way, Iorga could see nothing.

  “This way,” he said, pulling Nita to him, and moving toward the distant gleam.

  He had spoken in a whisper, but he had betrayed hi
s position nevertheless. He did not know from which direction they came, but they were suddenly upon him—at least two, perhaps more. He felt a knife cutting at his head, though it scraped his shoulder blade and only ripped his clothing, and he felt hands grabbing for his arms, trying to stop him bringing the gun into play.

  He swung the gun round, trying to clear space, tracing a full circle at a height which should hit a Cuchumanate’s shoulders but miss Nita’s head. He collided with one body, but at least one had ducked under the swing, and he felt the blade of a bone weapon sink into his abdomen.

  He fired once, and hit the one who had stabbed him. The gun fired without a flash, and still he could see nothing. More hands groped for purchase and fingers fastened on his wrist while he kicked viciously to dislodge someone who had grabbed at his waist. He managed to draw his own knife, and slashed wildly, lefthanded, while he moved rapidly to the side. He grappled desperately with the attacker who was forcing his gun hand outwards, and fired off two shots, without any hope of hitting anything, but trying to startle his assailant into letting go.

  Then, for the second time, a blade went into his belly, and this time was driven home hard. It was not a metal blade, but he felt it tearing inside him, and the pain was so intense that he doubled up. With a convulsive jerk he freed his right hand, and drew it in to his body. He fired twice from the hip, at the places where he judged the attackers to be.

  He waited for another touch, ready to fire again, but no other touch came. His legs buckled under him, and he fell to the ground. For a moment, he tried to sit up, then he allowed himself to sag until he was resting on the full length of his left side. He drew up his knees, trying to confine the gashes in his belly from which blood was coursing, trying to smother the pain.

  A minute passed, and there was no sound save for the buzzing of flies. He was very still. He felt two light touches on his face, then three and four, and he realized that a cloud of small insects was gathering around him. He tried to remember which direction the nearest wall might be, and reached out an explorative hand. His fingers found something soft—the body of one of the Cuchumanates. At his touch, the flesh quivered, but she did not move away, and he guessed that she must be near death. As his fingers explored further, a hand tried to push him away. The hand was hot and wet with blood.

  He whispered: “Nita!”

  There was no answer.

  41.

  “You want the starship,” echoed Sisyr.

  “We want to get away,” said Burstone. “We want to go to a new world.”

  “That’s not what you want,” said the alien. “And if it were, the starship would be no use to you. No use at all.”

  “It can take us away from here,” insisted Burstone.

  Sisyr stared out at the swirling snowflakes for a few moments, and then, abruptly, stood up. Burstone made a defensive gesture with the gun, jerking its barrel up to threaten the alien. But Burstone’s hand was shaking. Sisyr strode away from him, toward the keyboard which controlled the input to the house cyberunits.

  “Don’t touch it,” said Burstone.

  Sisyr reached out a hand, and tapped the keys with the thin, hard fingers. The window blanked out, becoming a solid face of gray—a screen. Burstone moved away from it.

  “Come away!” he commanded.

  Sisyr looked over his shoulder at the man with the gun. “On that screen,” he said, “I can show you the worlds of your neighbor stars—the worlds that my ship could reach in twenty or fifty of your years. There are only a handful. Wouldn’t you like to see? To have a choice of destinations?”

  “No.”

  “No,” said Sisyr. “You wouldn’t. Because you know, in your mind, that you aren’t going anywhere. Humans are not equipped for star travel. The experience would probably kill you, and there is, in any case, nowhere that you could go. Not one star in a million has a planet where you could live. There are a great many such planets, but the distances between them are immense. My starship is not a miracle-machine which defies physics. It cannot travel at the velocity of light—in fact, its acceleration is so slow that it takes many decades even to attain a velocity close to that of light. Once such velocities are reached, subjective time begins to slow down, relative to elapsed time here on Earth and on the planet of destination. But long before then you are old, and the period of deceleration is as long as the period of acceleration. The nearest known world capable of sustaining your kind of life—and mine—is centuries away from here. You could not live to see it. And what if you could? What does an alien world have to offer you that makes it worth going to? What makes it worth all those years of confinement within a tiny metal bubble, sensory starvation and utter loneliness?”

  “You tell me,” said Burstone.

  “I am immortal,” said the alien. “To my kind, the centuries do not matter. The distortions of time do not matter. We are equipped, mentally and emotionally, for the interstellar gulfs.”

  “Then you must make us immortal, too,” said Burstone doggedly. “You have the science.”

  Sisyr shook his head deliberately. “It is not a matter of science,” he said. “Do you think that I have some secret elixir of youth? Do you think that the constant renewal of my body is merely a matter of medicine? It is inbuilt. My kind do not age. Our bodies have defense mechanisms which destroy all parasites, all disease. Our faculties of self-repair following physical injury are almost unlimited. If I were cut in two, one part would regenerate—if the cut were precise enough, perhaps both. There is only one way that I am likely to die, and that is by surrendering life—willful death. Perhaps, if every cell were burned—if my ship fell into a star...but these are not likely events.

  “You must see that my mind is adapted to these circumstances. Time means very little to me in itself—it is only the rate of experience which is important. During a star-journey I am hardly aware of the passing of time. But your mind is adapted to your circumstances. You live at a faster rate, a constant rate. While you are awake, you are the subject of time, not its commander. A star-journey would destroy you, mentally and physically.

  “You do not want the starship. Perhaps, for the moment, that is what you imagine. You are afraid, and you feel a desperate need to escape. You feel, because of your fear, that to stay here—to stay anywhere on the Earth—may mean death or the destruction of your mind. But the star-ship is useless. Death, and the destruction of the mind...the very things which you are afraid of...are all that the starship has to offer you. You must know that.”

  Burstone’s composure suddenly broke. He lifted the gun high and brought it’s butt crashing down on the back of the chair which Sisyr had vacated. The plastic splintered, and a jagged edge ripped the heel of Burstone’s hand. He clutched it to his chest, still clutching the gun. Moments later, he leveled the weapon once again at the alien. There was a small red stain on the front of his tunic.

  “Then what can we do?” He spat out the words as if they tasted foul in his mouth.

  “Wait,” said Sisyr. “Whatever happens will happen in any case. There is no way you can exempt yourself. You may die, but it is not something that you can avoid. Sooner or later, you will die anyway. All that has changed, in these last few days, is that you have come to realize how little control you have over the moment of your death. But the change is in you, not in the world. You have never had the power to determine the length of your life, save within the limits permitted by chance and other men. Your fear comes from discovery, not from circumstance. You must learn to live with what you know.”

  “You’ve got to help us!”

  “You don’t want help,” said the alien, quietly. “You demand help which simply does not exist, and you know that. What you want is to avoid responsibility. You want to blame someone for what has happened. You want to pretend that the world has suddenly turned against you, and wants to destroy you, though all that has happened is that you have encountered reality.

  “You didn’t bring that gun to compel me to give yo
u the starship, or to make me take you to another world. You came here with that gun because you wanted to shoot me, to hurt me, to kill me. You need someone to blame. Rafael Heres wanted exactly the same thing, but he found, in the end, that he couldn’t blame me enough. Perhaps you can. I’ve played a bigger part in your life. It’s easier for you, and the others who shared your work. They’re waiting for you, aren’t they? But what are they waiting to hear? Are they waiting for you to tell them to load their possessions into the starship, and prepare for a great voyage, or are they waiting for you to tell them that you’ve killed me?”

  Sisyr turned his face back to the deck, and his fingers dwelt in the air over the controls, as though hesitating, while he chose between courses of action.

  Just as his fingers descended, to begin punching out an instruction, Burstone fired. Three of the bullets hit Sisyr in the back—the rest went wild, smashing into the control deck and setting red warning lights flickering.

  As Burstone ran, he saw that the blood pouring from the alien’s wounds was brown, like the brown of human skin.

  42.

  When Nita felt the touch of a Cuchumanate hand on her face, she leaped back from it. In so doing she passed behind Iorga, whose large body sheltered her for a moment.

  Had there been more light, she would have stayed to fight, but in the darkness, she had no thought but to get away, to escape. She ran the only way she knew—back up the staircase toward the soft barrier.

  As she ran, she heard—or thought she heard—the sound of pursuit. At least one of the attackers, she fancied, was at her heels. When she came to the barrier her knife was already raised to slash the curtain.

  The soft substance resisted the bite of the blade for a second or two, then yielded. Once cut, the tissue tore easily, and Nita dragged her blade down in a great arc, then brought it up again to slash sideways, rending the skin of the barrier so that the slit became a yawning hole.