Between the Strokes of Night

by Charles Sheffield

  The departure for a second facility could not happen immediately. She and Wolfgang would see each other many times before there was another parting, formal and final.

  But this moment was unique. This was their first goodbye.

  PART FOUR:

  THE ROAD TO ETERNITY

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Kallen’s World

  Sunrise: a recurring miracle, something that no one would ever see in S-space. Peron rolled out of bed and tiptoed to the window. A small sliver of Jezel’s disk already showed above the horizon, its white brilliance muted by a morning haze. As morning advanced and the haze burned off, Jezel would turn to a golden glory in the sky, brighter than Sol or Cassay.

  Wolfgang Gibbs, who seemed to have transferred his disdain for sleep from S-space to N-space, was already outside. He was surrounded by the dozen newcomers who had arrived on Kallen’s World four days ago. Peron, moving quietly so that he did not awaken Elissa, dressed and went to join the group. Wolfgang had his back to the house and did not notice Peron’s approach. “Ready to go at dawn,” he said, “and with a good breakfast already inside you. I hope you all remembered what I told you yesterday afternoon, because we won’t be stopping to rest or eat before midday. Any questions?”

  A girl with an open, innocent face — to Peron she looked about twelve — raised a hand. “I thought we would be walking because of a shortage of aircars. But last night I learned there are scores of them available. Why are we doing this on foot?”

  She was a recent Planetfest winner, which meant she must be at least sixteen. And she must also be in first-rate physical condition. Peron wondered why she was asking. A troublemaker, maybe — the way he and Elissa and their Planetfest group had been troublemakers?

  The group was staring at Peron, which made Wolfgang turn his way. He said, “Good morning,” but his raised eyebrows, invisible to the group of trainees, added, “Here we go again! Same old dumb questions.”

  Wolfgang addressed the girl. “Tilda — it is Tilda, isn’t it? — you must have been briefed about Kallen’s World while you were on the way here. Right?” “Of course.”

  “So I’m sure that you were told you were coming to a pleasant, benign world, well-suited to humans and with few dangers.”

  “That’s exactly what we were told.” Tilda, encouraged by a nudge from the short, dark-haired youth next to her — there’s the troublemaker, Peron thought — went on, “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “It is, Jonas.” Wolfgang had identified the real source of the question. “This is a wonderful planet. In many ways it’s better for humans than Pentecost, or even the original homeworld, Earth. You all volunteered to live and work here, and you’ll enjoy it. Soon you’ll be free to wander around and see the place for yourselves. But there’s a huge difference between few dangers and no dangers. Today I’m going to take you and point out things that can be dangerous. I want you to see ‘em and smell ‘em and hear ‘em — and learn not to touch them. You do those things on the ground. You can’t do them sitting in an aircar. Any other questions?”

  The youth nudged Tilda again, but she did not speak. Finally he said, “Dangerous things. You mean like the karnoos?”

  Peron thought that a reasonable question. The karnoos were big, armored, and possessed a double array of scythelike teeth. They were also fairly intelligent, smarter than the night-lappers of Pentecost that made anyone except determined Planetfest competitors avoid the Villasylvia woods after dark.

  Wolfgang smiled. “You’ve been looking at the pictures, haven’t you? But no, I don’t mean the karnoos. They are herbivores, and all they want is to be left in peace. They could certainly hurt you — take a look at the size of them, and all those teeth — but they are dangerous only if they can’t run away. Get in trouble with a karnoo, and you can bet it will be your own fault.”

  “But we will see some, won’t we?” asked a tall, rangy girl at the back of the group.

  “If we’re lucky. The karnoos are very picky about what they eat. We’ve had agbots planting our own crops in this area, which don’t seem to appeal to karnoo tastes. As our settlement spreads, they stay farther away. You’ll see karnoos when we get out beyond ten kilometers — which we never will do, unless people stop asking me questions and we start moving.”

  “How smart are they?” It was the dark-haired youth next to Tilda again. “Smart enough, Jonas. Smart enough to build dams and avoid humans. The beginnings of language, too, we think — but we’ve never been able to study it, because once a karnoo is captured and realizes it can’t escape it just lies down. Either you have to let it go, or after a while it dies. Which is what you’re all going to feel like doing — of starvation — unless we leave this minute. We have a set amount of ground to cover before we stop and eat. Let’s go.” Wolfgang waved a hand, to show that he would listen to no more questions, and ushered the group away along one of the paths that led through planted fields toward the undeveloped areas beyond.

  “Anyway, it’s not the animals,” Peron heard Wolfgang saying as they went. “It’s the plants you have to watch out for. There’s a fruit that I’m going to show you. The karnoos love it, and we call it a globerry. Like a big yellow plum, smells wonderful and tastes even better. Eat one, and you’re likely to eat another. Which would be a terrible mistake. They contain a hemolytic poison. Unless you throw up at once, you’ll sweat, vomit blood, pee blood, and collapse. Then there’s the papercut bush.…”

  Peron noticed that the group was hanging slightly closer to Wolfgang as they went out of sight. He smiled, and went back into the house. It had been grown mainly from Elissa’s specifications, and was big for Peron’s tastes. But he could not complain about the kitchen. Elissa had programmed in everything that he liked to eat.

  He scanned incoming messages as he ate breakfast. Not surprisingly, there was nothing new from any of the S-space facilities. During the nine hours since he had last looked, only a quarter of a minute had passed in S-space. Also, and more to the point, little or nothing had happened here. Perhaps that was predictable, but no one had foreseen it when they discussed a second facility. And everyone had agreed that if it was not to be in S-space, then a planetary setting would be more attractive than anywhere else to the fresh new talent that they needed. What was less obvious was the amount of time and effort it took to form what was, in effect, a new planetary colony. As the number of people grew, the original settlement had expanded to two, then three, widely separated groups. Soon there would be more, with easy and continuous communication among them.

  All the newcomers needed a lot of teaching. That didn’t seem to worry Wolfgang. He must miss Charlene, but otherwise he seemed totally happy with their new existence. Peron didn’t know much about Wolfgang’s background, but the man was a natural father who just happened to have no children of his own. In the old days he had apparently lavished care and affection on the animals in his charge. Now he was responsible for every new group of arrivals on Kallen’s World, complaining to Peron about their questions while obviously delighting in their youth and enthusiasm. He would never leave for S-space, or anywhere else. And Peron himself? That was a harder question. Food was certainly better here than in S-space, and it always would be. He helped himself to another muffin, sniffing that fresh-baked aroma before he bit into the crisp surface. Sex was better, too. He and Elissa had known that long ago, before the end of their brief visit to old Earth.

  But there was another important variable: knowledge. Stay here, and you would never find out what was changing selected stars of the local arm to red dwarfs. You would never learn if humanity survived the threat. You would be dead, long before humans could meet the aliens or understand the nature of the Pipistrelles and Gossameres. You would be plagued by one of the oldest questions: what comes next, after I am gone?

  Peron heard a noise from the narrow hallway. Elissa was up — at last. Recently she seemed to have been sleeping later and later. He poured another cup in anticipation of her arrival
, then studied again the most recent plan of the settlement. Wolfgang had been an optimist when he said the new group might see some karnoos at ten kilometers. A new clearing by the agbots had already spread beyond that.

  Elissa entered, rubbing her eyes. She came across to Peron, gave him a silent hug, then grabbed the drink that he had poured for her.

  “Not even a thank-you?” He held her robe so that she could not step away, and put his other arm around her waist. “A wonderful bright morning on Kallen’s World, and you with a face so grim.”

  “Not grim.” She smiled down at him. “Serious. Big difference. What are you doing?”

  “Reviewing our progress — or lack of it.”

  “I was afraid that’s what you might say.”

  “I’m wondering if we should be here at all. We were so sure that a second research facility in normal space was the answer, but we’ve discovered nothing. In five years, we’ve not reported one useful thing to Gulf City.” “Five years. That’s, let’s see, a bit less than a day in S-space. They’re not looking for results from us yet — they hardly know we’ve left.”

  “But we know. Almost all our efforts go into the colony, making sure that new arrivals are safe or directing the work of the people already here. I was thinking, five years of that is enough for us. Wolfgang loves it here, and he has everything under control. We could return to S-space for a while, and come back here if and when they need us. What do you think, Elissa?”

  She was standing by his side. Instead of answering, she grabbed his arm that was still around her waist. She pulled open her robe. She was wearing nothing underneath it, and she placed his hand on her bare belly.

  “Feel.”

  At first he felt nothing but smooth skin, but then there was the tiniest quiver under his palm. He gasped and said, “How long?”

  “Five months.”

  “Why didn’t you say before?”

  “I wanted to be sure. This morning I felt her kicking.”

  “Her?”

  “I checked that, along with a ton of other things because we’re on a new planet. It’s a girl, and she’s developing absolutely normally.”

  “She’ll be the first — the first human baby born on Kallen’s World! We have to send a message at once, even if Kallen himself never gets it.”

  “You’re not upset?”

  “Upset? I’m delighted. Shouldn’t I be?”

  “I wasn’t sure. We’re stuck here now. There can be no return to S-space for years and years. Not until she’s grown.”

  “I know that. It doesn’t matter.” Peron stood up. “Come on outside.” “Like this? I’m not dressed.”

  “You’re dressed enough. I just want you to see something, then you can come back in.”

  “See what?”

  “Kallen’s World. Where she’ll be born. Where she’ll grow up. Where we all live. Home.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Jezel was high in the sky. The season was close to midsummer, and the humidity promised rain and a thunderstorm before evening. Wolfgang, pointing out plants, animals, and natural features, kept a close eye on the group. They had all placed well in their different Planetfests, so they were used to pushing themselves to the edge of endurance and beyond without letting it show in either their expressions or their attitudes. However, the last thing that he wanted was a collapsed new recruit on his hands.

  “Gather around and take a look at this,” he said. “Don’t touch it, or come any closer than I am.”

  They were beyond the developed agricultural region, and he had finally spotted an area of rocky hillside clear of bushes. He had been watching for one like it for the past hour, and now he walked to its center. He watched the youngsters as they edged forward. Tired as they must be, everyone moved easily, without stumbling or favoring one foot over the other. A tough bunch. Within seconds they formed a silent ring with Wolfgang at the center. In front of him a purple-brown cylinder about a meter tall and thirty centimeters across jutted up from the ground in the middle of the clearing.

  He crouched down next to it. “If we had come by early this morning, this stalk wouldn’t have been there. If you look closely you will see that it’s growing, a few centimeters a minute. What you can’t see is the rest of it. Underground, where you’re standing and where I am standing, there is a big sphere almost five meters across.”

  The group stared down at the ground, as though trying to see beneath their own feet. One of them asked, “Is it a plant or an animal?”

  “Strictly speaking, it’s neither one. It’s called a grape-plant, but it’s more like a cross between a plant and a fungus. And almost all the time it’s perfectly harmless. It just sits underground, sucking in nutrients and growing steadily, and on one day of the year — today, for this one — it puts up a thick stem. Still harmless. You are perfectly safe.”

  Wolfgang was watching very closely as he spoke, noting the delicate change of hue as the stem grew taller.

  “Now, you’ve had time for a good look. So we’re all going to move. Back up, away from here, and I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  The ring expanded. Wolfgang walked around it, moving a couple of the taller people a little farther from the center.

  “That’s good. All of you remain exactly where you are. I want you to take careful note of how far away the stem is from you. How far would you say?” Some voices muttered, “Six meters,” a few, “Six and a half meters.” “Close enough. Now.”

  Wolfgang deliberately said nothing more. The group stood quiet for four minutes. He had timed it with care, so that they were beginning to fidget and glance at each other when it happened.

  A roar, too high-pitched to be thunder, shattered the silence. At the same time the air filled with a thousand whistling shrieks. Everyone except Wolfgang reflexively ducked and flinched.

  “Look at it now,” he said. The purple stem had split open into a dozen sections which lay flat on the ground around it. “Seed dispersal mechanism. No, it’s no good looking around for them. The nearest ones will be kilometers away. The seeds or spores — call them what you like — are aerodynamically shaped, and they blow out of there at better than three kilometers a second. They mass thirty to forty grams. If one hit you when it was on the way down it might draw blood. Hit you close up, like now, and it would pass right through you and keep going. They always emerge at an angle of at least thirty degrees to the horizontal, so unless you’re more than three meters tall you’re safe at the distance we were at. But you can imagine what happens if somebody is careless and stands right next to one when it pops. Grape-plant doesn’t refer to grapes, or grapefruit. It refers to grapeshot, which was fired at people with the idea of riddling them as full of holes as a colander.”

  Wolfgang stared with satisfaction at the circle of shocked faces. Their natural sass would be back in a few minutes, but for the moment he had them completely. “Right. This seems like a good place and time to stop and eat. After what you just saw, let me give you some good news. All running water on Kallen’s World is fit to drink. I recommend that you use a container rather than drinking direct from any sizeable stream, because there’s a couple of lobster look-alikes that wouldn’t mind a taste of your nose. Do it like this.”

  He illustrated, scooping water into his canteen from a little rivulet that ran down the hill, then sat down on the hillside with his back against a rock. The tall girl who usually hung at the back of the group came to sit cross-legged next to him. He knew her name — Demmy Zeiss — and that she had scored fourth in the last Planetfest. That was about all.

  She smiled at him. “You must have shown a hundred groups like us how to look after ourselves on Kallen’s World. Don’t you ever get tired of it?” “No. I never do.” Wolfgang opened his lunch pack and began to eat. He didn’t intend to say more. If Demmy was trying to suck up to him for some reason, it wouldn’t work. To give preferential treatment to any one of the new arrivals would diminish him in the eyes of the others, and they would th
en discount the advice he had to offer.

  There were also personal reasons that went beyond his job as advisor. The girl seated next to him disturbed Wolfgang. It was not just that she was friendly, she was also tall and dark-haired and had a willowy build that reminded him of Charlene Bloom. He deliberately looked the other way.

  Demmy was not discouraged. After a period of quiet eating, she stared around them and said, “This place seems so peaceful after Pentecost. Not dangerous at all.”

  Wolfgang glanced back at her from the corner of his eye. At some time — probably during Planetfest trials — Demmy’s nose had been broken, and had not set quite straight. It gave her face and her smile an odd and attractive asymmetry. “Not dangerous, unless you do something stupid,” he said gruffly. “The only time I’ve had somebody get into trouble, he went wandering off by himself.” “He died?”

  “No. He fell down a sink hole and broke his leg. His monitor told us where he was, otherwise he’d have been in worse trouble. If the hole had been deeper he’d have been a goner — the monitor signals don’t travel far through rock.” Wolfgang had deliberately raised his voice, including everyone in the conversation. “That’s another thing to remember; even if you take all your clothes off to go skinny-dipping, you still wear your monitor.”

  He stood up. “Right. You’ve finished eating. We came out to see the world, not sit in one place all day. Let’s go.”

  Demmy was on her feet in one easy movement. “Do you still think we’ll see some karnoos?”

  “If we’re lucky. We’re getting close to their territory. But if they hear us they’ll bolt. They run twice as fast as any of you, so from now on we walk quietly, and no talking.”

  It was a little bit of misinformation. It was true about the speed of the karnoos, but they didn’t hear well and they saw even worse. But Wolfgang’s words should end Demmy’s persistent efforts to talk to him.