by Bob Shaw
“Fuse gone?” Bryant ventured, wishing he had a technical background.
“The capacitors are fully discharged,” Marzian said. “The machine did everything it was supposed to do!”
Bryant had another look around the office, searching for small signs of change. “Does that mean we’re all in a different reality?”
Marzian shook his head impatiently. “That can’t happen. What it means is that there is somebody in our reality who actually thinks that dumb remark of yours about fishing for truth is the wisest thing ever said.”
“But that’s impossible! I only made it up a minute ago, so nobody could have…” Bryant’s voice faded under the impact of a startling new thought. He turned to face Miss Cruft.
She lowered her gaze and began to blush.
“What have you done?” Bryant demanded, advancing on her. “You’ve wasted my third shot! At least, I think you’ve wasted my…” His voice trailed away again as it came to him that although Miss Cruft was undeniably plump, some parts of her were plumper than others, and concerning those Nature had made a judicious selection. She also had a charming smile and wore sexy perfume, but the thing that attracted Bryant most of all was Miss Cruft’s intellect—not many girls could appreciate genuine wisdom when they heard it. Looking down at her, he found himself falling deeply and irrevocably in love.
“I can’t apologize enough,” Marzian said, still scrutinising his control panels. “Under the circumstances, I guess you’re entitled to a fourth transfer free of charge.”
“Forget it.” Bryant was so elated that he was unable to resist composing another aphorism. “Far-off pastures are green with fool’s gold.”
The saying, even to his own ears, seemed to have a flaw somewhere, but the gratified smile it drew from Miss Cruft was assurance that she knew exactly what he meant, and that they were going to share a wonderful future in the best of all possible universes.
STORMSEEKER
For several moonspins now—like a field lying fallow, like a steel blade shedding its fatigue—I have been waiting and resting. But lately a sense of imminence has grown and I have taken to night-riding in the silent sled, soaring over the city’s trembling lights or drifting low in a Debussy prelude ambience of moonlight and towers, fulfilling childhood dreams of flight. At times I hover close to stolid old buildings, filling my eyes with the details of their crenels and corbels, but such things look strangely irrelevant when viewed from close anchorage on a tide of dark winds. They produce a sense of unease and vertigo, of a dangerous ending to the volant dream, and I turn the sled away, wondering what the birds must think of us.
Selena has gone with me on several of these aerial excursions, on nights when neither of us could sleep, yet I know they make her unhappy. Percipient to a wonderful degree though she is, a streak of practicality in her nature forces her to question my “profession”. We talk about having children—I have been assured I will breed neither mooncalves nor mutants—and while she nods in agreement her eyes grow smoky with doubt. Who could blame her? Only I can sense the ethereal migration of electrons and scry the shadows of lightning flashes yet unborn.
It is coming at last—the first storm of the season.
Archbold called me this morning but I had been aware for hours and said so. Even had the weather satellites not fallen dumb in their orbits I would have been the first to know, I told him haughtily. But his sole concern, of course, was that I could deliver.
As a true child of World War Three Point Three Repeating, I feel sorry for Archbold. He sits there in his underground rooms like a mole, his whereabouts marked by that single steel mast and the blankets of meshed cable whose oxidation has done odd things to the colours of the surrounding vegetation. The same political and nuclear forces that brought me into being have reduced his kind to their present lowly station. Scientists are generally unloved but GlobeGov is too wise and experienced to ban their activities. All that was necessary was to withdraw fiscal and fiduciary support. Now Archbold, the archetypal physicist, languishes underground, dreaming of the 300GeV accelerator that has lapsed into decay at Berne and relying on biological sports like me.
If the truth were told, some of his colleagues would like to get me under the knife and probe for extra organs or neural abnormalities which might explain my existence. But even Archbold would never countenance dissection of a goose that lays a billion golden eggs in every clutch.
It is almost here, this first storm of the season, and I can sense its strength. All day warmly humid air has been streaming upward over the streets and quiet terraces of Brandywell Hill. Water from the sea, the river, the pale rectangular emeralds of the private pools has been swirling aloft into a white anvil of cloud ten miles high. Scrying into the misty universe of cumulo-nimbus I was able to “see” the moisture of its central up-seeking column condense and freeze into hailstones which, having strayed from the geometries of the normal world, were unable to fall. Dancing on the awesome chimney current, they rose higher and higher until the force of the current was exhausted, then spewed out in all directions, carrying cold air down with them. And as the vast process continued my excitement grew, for the electrons within that cloud had begun their inexplicable migration to its base. Up there, not far above the coping stones of the city’s towers, they gather like spermatozoa—and their combined pressure grows as irresistible as the force of life itself.
Selena sees nothing of this—but I am delirious with pleasure over the fact that, for the first time, she is accompanying me to meet a storm. Tonight I will be able to make her feel with my senses, let her know what it is like to ride herd on a billion times a billion elementary particles. Tonight I will drink fulfilment from her eyes. Our sled soars high in the fretful air. Selena lies, pale and nostalgic, in the cup beside me as the shivering craft describes slow circles in the darkening sky. But for once my eyes are elsewhere.
“Look, my darling.” I point down to the patient, shimmering lights of an isolated suburb glowing broochlike in the shape of an anchor.
She looks over the edge and her face is expressionless. “I see nothing.”
“There’s nothing for your eyes to see—yet—but a ghost is slipping through those houses.” I pick up the sled’s microphone. “Are you ready, Archbold?”
“We’re ready,” his voice crackles from the darkness trapped in the hollow of my hand.
“In less than a minute,” I say, setting the microphone down. This is where my work begins. I try to explain it to Selena. Above us the cloud is tumescent with electrons as its incredible negative charge increases, and on the ground beneath it an equally great positive charge is formed like an image in a mirror. As the cloud drifts, the earth’s positive charge—a shadow only I can “see”—follows it, hopefully seeking its own fulfilment.
The image glides silently and eagerly across the ground, climbing trees, scaling the mossy steeples and towers. It races into houses and ascends water pipes, television antennae, lightning conductors, anything that can bring it closer to its elusive cloud-borne partner. And none of the people and dreaming children and watchful animals can even feel its transient, engulfing presence.
Suddenly Selena is sitting upright—the electrical potential has come so close to orgasm-point that it manifests itself to normal senses. A thin white arm reaches down from the base of the cloud.
“Archbold calls that a leader,” I say through dry lips. “A gaseous arc path, reacting to electricity like the gas in a neon tube.”
“It seems to be searching for something.” Her voice is small and sad.
I nod abstractedly, spreading the net of my mind, once again awed at my power to control—even briefly—the unthinkable forces gathering around us. To our right the leader hangs, hesitating a moment, thickening and brightening as the electrons in the cloud swarm into it. Then it reaches down again, extending to several times its former length, I glance toward the ground and realise it is time for me to act. The activity of the positive particles on earth has inc
reased to the point where streamers of St. Elmo’s fire are snaking upward from the highest points. Yearning arms stretch from the tops of steeples. At any second one of them will contact the down-seeking leader—and when that happens lightning will stalk the brief pathway between earth and sky.
“I see it,” Selena breathes. “I live.”
At that moment I strike with my brain, exerting that miraculous power, that leverage which can be obtained only when one’s neural system branches into crevices in another continuum. The leader, flame-bright now, changes direction and moves southward to where Archbold is waiting in his underground rooms. On the ground beneath it the positive image also changes course, its white streamers reaching higher, in supplication, in—love.
“Now, Archbold,” I whisper into the microphone. “Now!”
His telescopic steel mast, driven by explosives, spears up into the sky and penetrates the leader, absorbing its charge. The ground image leaps forward eagerly but its streamers are sucked down as it encounters Archbold’s carefully spread blankets of steel mesh. Both charges—cloud-borne negative and earth-bound positive—flow down massive cables. In an instant their energy is expended, far below ground, in one of the experiments with which Archbold hopes to achieve a true understanding of the nature of matter by accelerating particles to speeds far greater than they ever achieve in nature. At this moment, however, I am not concerned with the physicist’s philosophical absurdities and arcana.
“They’ve gone,” Selena says. “What happened?”
I hold the sled on its course with unsteady hands. “I delivered the power of a lightning strike to Archbold, as I promised.”
She examines me with dismayed eyes, her face a calm goddess-mask in the instrument lights.
“You enjoyed it.”
“Of course.”
“You enjoyed it too much.”
“I—I don’t understand.” As always, a strange sad weakness is spreading through my limbs.
“I won’t give you children,” she says, with the peacefulness of utter conviction. “You have no instinct for life.”
The storm season is almost over now. I have not seen Selena since that night and I often muse about why she left me. She was right about the nature of my work, of course. There would be no vegetation or animals or human beings on Earth were lightning not there to transform atmospheric nitrogen into soil-nourishing nitric acids. And so by diverting the great discharges into Archbold’s lair I am, in a very small way, opposing my mind and strength to the global tides of life itself. But I suspect that my infinitesimal effect on the biosphere is of no concern to Selena. I suspect she has a more immediate, more personal reason for rejecting me.
There is no time to think about such things now, though. Another storm is coming, perhaps the last of the season—and I must fly to meet it.
ALIENS AREN’T HUMAN
“What a beautiful day!” Kston said in his thin, lisping voice. “How pleasant to be at peace with the cosmos, and to enjoy the companionship of good friends! How wonderful it is to be alive on such a day!”
That was five seconds before the car hit him.
President Johnny Ciano, who was walking across the plaza with the little Dorrinian diplomat, saw the speeding vehicle first. It registered at the edge of his vision as a silver-blue shape which was changing its position with unusual rapidity, and the instinct for self-preservation—ever strong in his family—prompted him to check his stride. The car had swung off the street which formed the plaza’s southern boundary and was hurtling between an ornamental fountain and a soft drinks stand at over a hundred, its magnetic engine emitting an angry whine.
Ciano’s immediate thought was that the vehicle had gone out of control, then he made out the figure of his own cousin—Frankie Ritzo—crouched over the steering wheel, his eyes gleaming like miniature versions of the car’s headlights.
The fool! Ciano thought, turning to warn Kston. The grey-skinned alien had moved ahead of him, oblivious to all danger, and was still prattling happily about the joys of existence when the car swatted him skywards in a parabola which would have cleared a large house. At the top of its trajectory his body struck the outflung arm of a bronze statue, one of a symbolic group, bending it to an unfortunate position in which its owner appeared to be fondling the left breast of the Mother of Creation. Still spinning, the alien’s compact form came down on a marble bench—converting it to a heap of expensive rubble—bounced twice and rolled to a halt amid a knot of elderly female shoppers, several of whom began screaming. The car which had initiated the grotesque sequence slewed its way across the plaza and disappeared into a narrow street on the west side.
“Holy Mary,” Ciano sobbed, running towards the fallen body. “This is terrible! Send for a priest, somebody.”
“A priest will be no use for this job,” Kston said, springing to his feet and picking up a piece of the shattered bench. “Unless, of course, your clergy also serve as stone-masons. Forgive this humble being for not being familiar with human…”
“I’m not talking about the bench.” Ciano gaped at the diplomat’s grey hide which was unmarked and miraculously intact.
“The statue, then.” Kston looked up at the metal sculptures. “This humble being considers that the arrangement has been improved. It’s more symbolic than ever, if you know what this humble being means.”
“I’m talking about you, Kston—I thought you were dead.”
“Dead?” Kston closed one eye, which was his way of showing puzzlement. “How could this humble being die while he is still young?”
“That car was doing at least a hundred when it hit you. I don’t know what you must think of us, Kston, but you can rest assured that no effort will be spared in the search for the driver. We’ll find him no matter how long it takes, and when we do…”
“But this humble being thought your cousin was joining us for lunch?” Kston said mildly.
“My cousin?” Ciano felt both his knees partake of a loose circular motion. “You saw the driver?”
“Yes. It was your cousin Frankie, the Secretary for External Affairs.”
Ciano stared numbly at Kston, and then at the shoppers who had sorted themselves out and were beginning to take an interest in the conversation. “Let’s move on,” he said hastily, his brain racing as he tried to think of a way out of the situation in which his cousin’s assassination attempt had placed him. Ritzo’s lack of finesse had always made him something of an embarrassment to the government of New Sicily, but with this latest piece of crassness he had become a downright liability. Ciano made up his mind that Ritzo would have to be sacrificed, that he was prepared to go as far as a public execution if it would save the top-level talks.
“Are you positive it was Secretary Ritzo?” He made a last effort to save his cousin’s life. “I mean, there are lots of cars just like that one.”
“It was Frankie, all right.” Kston showed his slate-like teeth. “This humble being can see why you put him in charge of External Affairs. It is rare for anybody to show such consideration for a visitor. His car obviously was not designed for playing boost-a-body, and yet he went right ahead and boosted this humble being. He just didn’t care how much damage would be done to his vehicle…and this humble being finds that really heart-warming. Don’t you?”
“Aw…ah,” Ciano said. Even to his own ears the comment seemed to lack incisiveness, but for the moment he was unable to improve on it.
“It’s obvious that Frankie has studied Dorrinian customs and has learned that boost-a-body is one of our favourite games. It was a nice diplomatic gesture, but…” Kston smiled his dark smile again. “This humble being is afraid it doesn’t change his mind about our heavy mineral deposits.”
“I need a drink,” Ciano mumbled. He escorted Kston across the street and into the hotel, owned by his uncle, which had the catering contracts for the Department of Trade. They went straight into the VIP bar, a large room decorated in Earth-style traditional, complete with a high-mount
ed television set showing sports programmes. Ciano ordered two triple whiskies. While the drinks were being served he covertly examined the Dorrinian, whose physique could best be described as pyramidic humanoid. The grey-skinned body grew steadily wider and thicker from the top of a bald, pointed head to the short, immensely powerful legs which ended in slab-like feet. Kston was nude, but this condition was acceptable to human eyes, partly because his genitals were internal, partly because his smooth hide created the impression he was dressed in a one-piece garment of supertuff.
Ciano examined that hide carefully while sipping his drink and was unable to detect the slightest sign of lacerations or bruises resulting from impacts which would have burst a human body like a ripe tumshi fruit. He guessed that the high gravity on Kston’s home world had led to the evolution of incredibly robust inhabitants; and from there his thoughts went on to the fact that Dorrin was also the only planet in the local system with an adequate supply of elements heavier than iron. Proper development of New Sicily was impossible without access to those elements, but the Dorrinians were adamant about refusing mining rights.
“Listen, Kston,” he said, adding generous quantities of warmth and sincerity to his voice, “there must be something here on New Sicily that your people would like to have.”
Kston blinked to signify agreement. “Indeed yes. Sulphur in particular is prized by our chefs as a condiment, but our supplies are almost exhausted.”
“Then we should be able to work out an exchange deal.”
“This humble being fears not. The word ‘exchange’ implies the existence of two parties, each of which is the sole owner of a commodity.”
Ciano weighed up the comment and failed to see its point. “Well?”
