Rhapsody in Black

by Brian Stableford

  It is, as many philosophers have observed, a hard life.

  As the ledge narrowed, I was forced to stand sideways, with my heels to the wall, in order to move along it. The flashlight was now useless and I was forced to feel my way along the passage by fluttering my right hand over the surface of the rock face. I dared not lift up my feet but slid them along the ledge. As I progressed, the floor beneath the ledge, along which the stream ran, began to fall away at a much steeper angle. The water became noisy as it rushed down the declivity, perhaps ultimately to fall into a vertical pit. Once I was certain that to fall off the ledge meant death, I lost interest in the precise geometry of the watercourse.

  Suddenly, my right hand encountered empty space, and I stopped dead. There was no question of reassuring subvocal patter now. I was frightened. I drew back my hand and blew on the cold-numbed, flesh-stripped fingertips to make sure that they were still adequately sensitive to touch, and then sent them scuttling along the rock.

  I discovered the edge, and found that it was not simply a bend, but a hairpin reverse. The rock at my back was a wedge of what seemed to me then to be fragile thinness. Almost reflexively, I pulled myself erect, so that I did not lean on it so heavily. I inched forward, hoping that the ledge would not give out. As I reached the ultimate projection of the rock face, I shut my eyes—I could see nothing in any case, with the flashlight pressed to the rock behind me—and pushed my foot slowly around the corner, toe down.

  In my mind’s eye, I could see myself balanced on the end of a chisel-shaped spur of rock projecting into nowhere, with an immeasurable abyss beneath me. The susurrus of running water now contained an ominous gurgle which suggested abysmal depths to my sensitive imagination.

  Then my toe found a floor. It might only be a ledge as narrow as the one on which I was now standing, but I dared not contort my leg any further in order to explore its whole extent. The simple fact that a way out did exist was enough for me at that moment.

  I had to turn round in order to negotiate the corner, and that offered difficulties. I transferred the flashlight from left hand to right, but decided it would be no more convenient there. I couldn’t stick it in my belt, where it would get in between me and the wall. It was too big to hold sideways in my mouth, as pirates were once reputed to have carried cutlasses. I came to the conclusion that the only place it would be out of harm’s way, and also in no danger of being lost, was dropped down the neck of my shirt at the back. This, of course, meant that I would be denied its light. Not that the light would be particularly useful, but it was a comforting thing to have around.

  However, when needs must...

  Turning myself face in to the rock wasn’t too difficult. The wall was almost plumb vertical, fortunately. Had it leaned towards me, I would very likely have lost my balance and fallen.

  Once my body was correctly orientated, I began to curl myself around the chisel-head, with my arms at full stretch on either side of the hairpin, and my feet as close together as I dared put them without endangering my equilibrium. It took me only a few seconds to ooze my body around the corner, but they were precarious seconds, and living them was by no means easy.

  When I had recovered myself fully, I began to explore with my toe again, sending my left foot out cautiously to investigate the width of rock available to me.

  There was an awful lot of it.

  I turned around where I stood, luxuriating in the space which made the manoeuvre comfortable, and then fished the flashlight out of the small of my back—a feat almost as difficult as rounding the corner.

  When I switched it on, I saw that although the wall turned through an angle of about one-sixty-five degrees, the floor only turned through eighty or so. There was another wall some six or seven feet away.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ I said with feeling. It had been a lot easier than I’d thought.

  Caution never did anyone any harm, said the wind, comfortingly.

  ‘Go to hell,’ I said. Then I began to walk along the tunnel, playing the light along the floor in front of me. It wasn’t so cold, either, though I was still walking down the airstream. The current was slower, here, though. I didn’t know nearly enough about the aerodynamics of alveolar strata to judge exactly what that meant. It was presumably a venous shaft rather than an arterial, but whether the strength of the current was determined by the architecture of this element in the system, or by the connections it made with other tunnels, I couldn’t say. Probably both.

  I could hear the faint rustle of water behind the walls, and that too would have its part to play in maintaining the local temperature clines which determined the precise pattern of the airflow. The water itself was recycled by evaporation and dispersion throughout the infundibular hotshafts which dropped all the way from the summit of the alveolar rock-tissue to the surface of the hotcore.

  I began to move quickly again, now that it was easy. There was no sense in dawdling—I was still chilled, and I would have to find warmer air than this in order to thaw out properly.

  At first, the tunnel was high and wide, and might have been tailored. But there was no sign of stoneworking. I wondered whether there was some obliging principle of physics which determined that the optimum tube dimensions in alveolar rock were just about right for accommodating people. Or, conversely, there might be some ironic principle of the life sciences which determined that humans should grow to a convenient size for the troglodytic existence, rather than the star-conquering existence which many of them seemed to prefer (or at least aspire to).

  In actual fact, it was only the fact that these honeycombs seemed to have been designed with man in mind that enabled worlds like this one to be colonised. A system like this one could take only so much knocking about. Once the architecture was altered beyond a certain point, extreme changes could take place in the air-and-water circulation patterns, with potentially disastrous consequences for cultures whose livelihood depended on things staying the way they were. Some highly civilised worlds of this type had the science and the scientists to determine exactly what they could and couldn’t do to a warren. Some could even alter warrens in order to make the air and water do what they wanted. But Rhapsody wasn’t a highly civilised world. It was a galactic slum—a religious alienist culture with a high regard for hardship and none for efficiency or safety.

  So where are we going? the wind wanted to know. It’s all very well to play by ear and make up the plan of action as you go along. But we have to start somewhere. So where?

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we have to eat. To find food we find people. This offers us a choice between the shanty towns which are undoubtedly sprinkled around this big Swiss cheese and the mine-faces and conversion plants at which the world earns its collective living.

  ‘Now, as we have already observed, the miners have decided that they have a crucial part to play in this silly drama, and that part involves waving guns around. Assuming that the conversion plants, as the lifeblood of the culture, are protected from all forms of social irresponsibility, I therefore conclude that if we are going to eke out a temporary existence as a thief and a vagabond, the place to do it is the townships. Fair enough?’

  He didn’t say anything, so he was obviously satisfied for the time being with my declared intentions. When I was going well, he was always content to leave me to it. He didn’t argue for the sake of it, as I was occasionally prone to do. I am a confirmed opponent. Say something, and I’ll disagree with it. On principle. And while I might not know what the hell I am talking about, I am occasionally disposed to defend it with considerable passion and obstinacy.

  We all have our faults.

  The corridor funnelled into a capillary, and I was forced to crawl. The passage seemed to be an unduloid rather than a cylinder, which meant that on occasion I had to lay myself out snake-fashion and work my way through bottlenecks, whereas at other times I was permitted to employ a fast shamble in order to progress. The air current became stronger as the air was pressured through the irised colla
rs of rock, and its coldness became a great inconvenience. No doubt, of course, I caused the air concomitant inconvenience as I acted as a considerable obstacle to its natural flow. I was extremely glad that it was a tailwind. To crawl the other way would have been well-nigh impossible. When I stretched myself through the bottlenecks, I felt like a dart in a blowpipe.

  It wasn’t a great way to travel.

  ‘Worms must feel like this,’ I said, half complaining, half sympathising with the lesser brethren of humankind.

  The walls were slightly damp, and I occasionally came across patches of slime and grease that were undoubtedly protoplasmic. Despite the fact that alveolar systems lack the encouragement and assistance of solar radiation, they almost invariably contrive to evolve quite prolific life-systems. Because they are networks and not surfaces, and because a planet-wide stratum might contain hundreds, or even thousands, of unconnected warrens, the lifesystems tend to be incredibly diverse, and it is not unusual to find four or five separate evolutions in the one warren. The prospects of niche diversification are strictly limited, and unless the life-system is highly imaginative, it can rarely manage more than half a dozen different plasmid forms. Owing to the consequent lack of selective pressure, speciation tends to be very cursory, and divergent development tends to take place across boundaries which are solely defined by nutritional stratification. A life-system which might be regarded as ‘typical’, therefore, would probably consist of one ‘plant’ superorganism—a thermosynth, not a photosynth—one ‘animal herbivore’ type and one secondary consumer (often given a little assistance by a secondary thermosynthetic capability, and therefore unclassifiable as plant or animal). Plus, of course, the customary couple of parasites thrown in for the sake of that immortal ecological principle:

  Big bugs have little bugs

  Upon their backs to bite ’em,

  And little bugs have lesser bugs,

  And so ad infinitum.

  Which is probably the only universal ecological rule.

  Worms, contributed the wind, somewhat belatedly, have to eat out their own tunnels.

  I hoped that this particular passage wouldn’t get so narrow that it would take an excavator to get me through. But that was unlikely, bearing in mind the confidence of the air current. At the time, I was extremely thin, having been given no period of free time long enough to allow me to recuperate from my sojourn on Lapthorn’s Grave, where I had been on the brink of starvation for two years.

  And as it turned out, I was all right. The hole finally ducked into a sharp downslope and emerged into the ceiling of a much wider, taller tunnel. This one was engineered, if you can call beating your way through inconvenient outcrops with a pickaxe ‘engineering’.

  I had been an hour or more squirming my way through the slimy sheath before I achieved this outlet, but the rock had become noticeably warmer as I progressed, and although I had never contrived to be comfortable, I had begun to worry less about dying of exposure and more about skinning myself alive.

  After I dropped from the bottleneck into the new corridor, I took the rest to which I’d been entitled for some time. I curled myself up into a seated foetal position, and switched out the flashlight, which was still heroically shining on, although still weakening inexorably.

  There was no light—natural or artificial—in the tunnel. Neither was there a groove or a set of rails for vehicles to run along. This was highly unusual in an alveolar culture, and I presumed that the religious tenets on which the colony was founded included the assumption that God gave us legs for walking on. The passage was obviously a thoroughfare despite its lack of provision for transport. The evidence of stone-clearing was quite obvious, and nobody clears rock unless they intend putting the cleared passage to regular use. I reflected on the inconsistency of a society’s being forced to employ sophisticated heat-powered food-producing conversion machines, with all the careful organic husbandry which that implied, yet at the same time denying itself even primitive—and cheap—wheeled transport systems. There’s no accounting for the way people choose to exist.

  The air in the corridor flowed from left to right as I sat with my back to the wall below the hole from which I had emerged. Unless my sense of direction had totally betrayed me, the capital lay to my left, and this was an afferent vessel. The air was a little too cool for my personal taste, and a lot colder than warren dwellers usually preferred, but I put that down to the world’s personal eccentricities, and decided that it was not incompatible with the theory that this was a main road connecting the capital to a smaller township. The lack of traffic would also have argued against this hypothesis, except for the fact that there was something like a national emergency and the normal routines would have been completely obliterated.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ I complained unenthusiastically. Complaint is an unimaginative seed for a conversation, but the wind seemed to have nothing to say, and I was becoming bored with sitting in silence. The alternative—the resumption of my wandering—did not immediately appeal to me, as I was still extremely fatigued.

  You should have reminded your impulsive friends that jailbreaks are more conveniently situated after meals, said the wind morosely.

  ‘You make the assumption, of course, that these religious maniacs were going to feed us pagans,’ I pointed out.

  Only the nastiest of societies fail to feed their guests.

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  If you could overcome your distaste for religious communities, I think you’d find that there are much worse people to have to deal with than the Church of the Exclusive Reward. You should know, after the years you spent trading on the lunatic fringe.

  ‘The galactic rim.’

  Call it what you will.

  All this merry chit-chat, of course, wasn’t getting us any place. But it was helping to reduce my burden of fatigue. To look at the world with a kindlier eye is to be no less a realist, but serves to make fearsome the possibilities of failure and doom.

  I suppose that I could even become amenable to the hardness of my fortune, if it wasn’t for the delight which Charlot took in keeping me firmly under his thumb. And also for the lunatic notions which he used as chessboards on which to push his pawns. Like recovering the Lost Star treasure from the heart of the Halcyon Drift.

  And, in all likelihood, like the present jaunt.

  Picking up Splinterdrift on Attalus, and giving them a free ride home....

  CHAPTER TWO

  I hated Attalus.

  It was always foggy on Attalus.

  I really don’t know how they ever came to build a major spaceport on a world so blatantly useless. Certainly not in order that it should become a home from home for refugees from God’s Nine Splinters.

  Probably it was because Attalus’s star was practically cheek to cheek with Fomalhaut. Because they were visible targets, early starships had a tendency to head for stars that looked bright and beautiful in the dilute skies of Mother Earth.

  Colonies thus tended to spring up in such regions, even if said stars were no great shakes from the point of view of utility, and pretty run-of-the-mill by transgalactic standards. The first spacemen, of course, didn’t have transgalactic standards, but that doesn’t wholly explain a blithe disregard for economic convenience.

  In any case, Attalus survived by virtue of long establishment and a little extra effort. And, by pure coincidence, it did happen to be rather close to the system where the Church of the Exclusive Reward established God’s Nine Splinters. Even Attalus couldn’t be described as convenient, because the Splintermen had deliberately tucked themselves out of the way, but it was near enough to be the jumping-off point for exiles, and the transit station for such ships as ever did go that way.

  The Attalians accepted as a matter of course that they were the middlemen between the Splinters and Civilisation. As a trade route, it was virtually useless, but on worlds whose continued success is fairly fragile, everybody has to count the last cent and a half. Every little help
s.

  I was in a damp mood anyway, when I set the Swan down on Attalus field, and my state of mind grew progressively worse as I saw the fog, the port and the hotel, in that order. I’d been commanded out here without a word of explanation, and to make things twice as unbearable, Titus Charlot had come along in person. This was his private mission, and couldn’t be trusted to agents and hirelings. Especially not after what had happened with regard to the Lost Star.

  Charlot hadn’t stopped seething yet over that little matter. It didn’t show in his general conduct—especially not where Nick delArco and Eve were concerned—but I detected the occasional edge to his voice and glint in his eyes when he addressed himself to me.

  Even at his best, he was never the life and soul of anybody’s party. With that memory and its attendant suspicions still rankling in his brain, he was a real bastard. The others managed to get along with him, with the possible exception of Nick, who—as captain of the Swan—felt the heaviness of his presence on board rather more than Eve or Johnny. But I found his standing beside me while I rode the bird to be a considerable annoyance. He didn’t care. He had no interest in owning a happy ship. He just wanted a crew that he could manipulate to his own ends, and one that he could be seen to manipulate. A vain man, was Titus Charlot.

  I’d warned Eve and Nick and Johnny before we even lifted for Attalus that they’d be better off working for someone else. But no matter how much better off they might be out of it, they were hanging onto the Hooded Swan. It made sense, in its way. There wasn’t yet another ship in the galaxy that was anything like her, and they were all as close to her, each in his/her own way, as I was.

  Nick had built the Hooded Swan. He had got the contract to turn an idea and a set of drawings and a mound of computer printout into an entity of matter and energy, a living being with a soul. And then they had offered him another contract—this one to become her captain. How could he have refused? How could he back out?