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JAN DARZEK
Among the myriads of dead worlds in the universe, few had numbered a private detective among their mourners. This world was one of the rare exceptions - because it had been murdered.
The cracked and eroded street was dotted with irregularly shaped traffic islands, where flame - colored shrubs thrust up unruly masses of large, brittle leaves that tinkled like metal in the dry wind. Around the islands, in clusters - also irregularly shaped - lay heaps of crumbling bones.
Jan Darzek, standing on a world remote beyond his comprehension (for he was no astronomer) and confronting a catastrophe whose dimensions defied his understanding, could find no expression for impotent anger except to gape stupidly at the magnificently disproportional artifacts of an extinct civilization while with one heavily booted foot he clumsily sifted the crumbling remains of the civilized.
URSGworl, his acting chief assistant, stood nearby, waiting respectfully for the next wish that would be his command. Finally he spoke. "Razonl says their ground vehicles were electrically powered. The storage system utilizes a new principle."
Darzek made no comment.
"Wusqom thinks the beams in those buildings are an alloy he's not familiar with. He'd like to take samples."
Again Darzek made no comment. Wusqom knew better than to ask. They had no evidence that disease had done this thing, and Darzek felt certain that it had not; but until they knew, they would garb themselves in protective clothing and take no risks whatsoever.
Once more he tentatively extended a boot, this time to touch a bulging rib cage located in the vicinity of an oddly structured pelvis. The blackening bones suggested, to Darzek's untutored eye, a skeletal system based on something other than calcium, but so unimportant was the chemistry of these remains that he did not bother to ask the nearest chemist, who stood nearby.
The ribs crumbled at his touch, but that, too, was irrelevant - as was the curiosity Darzek felt about an intelligent race that found symmetry abhorrent and produced exquisitely lopsided buildings and ridiculously unbalanced designs and yet lived in cell-like rooms whose symmetry was absolute.
A remarkable world - wide civilization, in full flower, had been brutally plucked and trampled on. Every major life form on the entire planet had been exterminated. Darzek's own ancestors had survived overwhelming disasters and massive tragedies on their planet Earth, including many of their own making, but none of that compared with the mind - shattering stupendousness of world catastrophe.
And this world was one of many. Someone, or something, was systematically laying waste a galaxy. Darzek's self - appointed task was to track it down and stop it. Thus far he had found only the weathered ruins of one civilization after another, each gruesomely ornamented with random heaps of decaying bones.
"These remains are no fresher than the last," Darzek said. "We'll leave a message beacon for URSDwad and take some long jumps and try again."
They formed a line and moved through the transmitter frame to the decontamination chamber on their spaceship. No one, not even Jan Darzek, had a backward glance for a devastated world too long dead to tell them what they so urgently needed to know.
ROK WLLON
He was EIGHT, the Eighth Councilor, the eighth member of the Council of Supreme, and so secretive was the galaxy's ruling body in all of its endeavors that only three other members of the council knew his natural name.
He had convoked an emergency meeting of the council, as was his right as a councilor, and now he anxiously awaited the response.
Gul Darr, who was ONE, the First Councilor, had sent an emissary to ask that this meeting be called, and Rok Wllon had done so despite deep misgivings. Gul Darr was an admirably competent person when action was called for, especially violent action. No one was better aware of that than Rok Wllon, who had known Gul Darr since he was a private detective named Jan Darzek, on the planet Earth.
Unfortunately, Gul Darr was much more inclined to exaggerated dramatization than to a dispassionate evaluation of facts. He had furnished a message for presentation to the council, and Rok Wllon knew that the moment the council heard it, at least four members would disgustedly move for adjournment.
A ping sounded. On Rok Wllon's communications console, the second segment of a circle had lighted. Another ping; another segment. When Rok Wllon had counted five, a quorum, he got to his feet and began to don his robes. This was a time - consuming ceremony because of his insistence that they hang precisely at the angle he favored. By the time he had them arranged correctly, the glowing circle of light was seven - eighths complete.
He flashed the signal of assembly.
His own mind was made up. He did not doubt that Gul Darr had discovered a serious problem, and very likely the fate of a number of distant worlds hung in the balance. His request was reasonable enough; it was his manner of asking that offended.
Rok Wllon would revise the message. If Gul Darr received what he asked, he should have no complaint. If he did complain, Rok Wllon would speak frankly to him. For the real issue before the council was vastly more important than Gul Darr's discovery in the Lesser Galaxy. The real issue was the leadership of the Council of Supreme.
Gul Darr had furnished him with an opportunity, and he intended to make the most of it.
With a final glance at his robe lines, he stepped through his private transmitter to the Hall of Deliberations.
DOCTOR MALINA DARR
She sat in her shabby office and contemplated the day's mail with stark despair. It contained five bills - four of them long past due and one small remittance. Creditors sometimes made allowances for a young widow with children, especially one with professional status, but eventually they wanted their money.
The year 1994 had been a financial disaster, but at least the future seemed bright, and she had faced it with cheerful confidence. Now 1995 was proving only slightly less disastrous, and the one remaining question was which would come first: 1996, or her bankruptcy.
Abruptly she brought her meditation to a halt. A middle - aged woman and a teen - aged boy were coming up the walk. Even at that distance, she could diagnose a rampaging case of acne vulgaris, and the woman looked prosperous enough to pay cash for the consultation and medication.
If she did, for the first time in a week Malina and her children could drop their diet of dehydrates and have fresh food for dinner.
MISS EFFIE SCHLUPE
Jan Darzek's former secretary and partner in galactic intrigue had retired with what she considered the perfect exit line: "I'm glad I saw the galaxy, but I want to die in Brooklyn."
But in Brooklyn there was little for her to do except cultivate her rocking chair, and her urge to make something happen became irresistible. It was either that or be consumed by boredom.
So Miss Schlupe became the proprietress of the Greater Brooklyn Natural Health Food Store, a tiny hole - in - the - wall shop offering tastily packaged, nutritious tidbits as well as such staples for cleansing and fumigating the digestive tract as desiccated ragweed, extract of octopus bile, and pine cone flour. In one corner Miss Schlupe operated a small health bar where she prepared whimsically contrived blends of juices squashed from complacent fruits and vegetables of certified good health. Food faddists had not discovered the place, or perhaps there weren't many food faddists in 1995 Brooklyn. Miss Schlupe did very little front - door business, for which she was grateful.
It left her more time for her alley trade in illegal homemade beers and wines, and that business was booming. She brewed and fermented them from the purest ingredients and lavished loving care upon them, and all of them were excellent exce
pt her rhubarb beer, which was superb.
She had hoped that an occasional raid by the local revenuers would add spice and variety to her existence, and she derived no small amount of amusement from her elaborate preparations for such an eventuality. Unfortunately, except for the cop on her beat one of her best customers - no official had viewed her establishment as anything except a yogurt emporium operated by a lively little gray-haired woman.
Confronted with such an ultimate humiliation, Miss Schlupe again felt an irresistible urge to make something happen.
SUPREME
It made galactic government possible.
No individual, no bureaucratic army of individuals, could administer a governmental synthesis consisting of millions of worlds. Supreme could. Supreme was the ultimate computer. Its location was Primores, an artificial world that orbited the central sun of the Milky Way Galaxy. Supreme was Primores - a computer the size of a world.
Supreme maintained the records of a galaxy - the vital statistics, the cultural and historical records, the, business records, the legal records. It handled and recorded exchanges of property and solvency transactions, from the inconsequential to the infinitely complex, and maintained the code to the solvency or identification credentials by which the uncounted (except by Supreme) citizens of the uncounted (except by Supreme) worlds of the Galactic Synthesis were able to pursue an orderly existence. Supreme was the ultimate reference and legal library for a galaxy and the final authority on the laws and statistics of all of its millions of member worlds. It also was the repository of information concerning non-member worlds, such as the planet Earth, and its tersely summarized rendition of Earth's history coincided with no version extant or even imagined among Earthmen.
Supreme recorded laws, and it interpreted and explained them, but it could not make laws. It could not issue orders or instructions except to those engaged in undertakings specifically authorized by the Council of Supreme.
Being unique, Supreme had no position to maintain. Being emotionless, it had no pride. It did what it was built to do, and it did that superbly. It had no conception of error, or of blame, or of guilt. Nor was it capable of a sense of responsibility if its conclusions or suggestions misled or were incomprehensible because the facts upon which they were based had long since been forgotten - except by Supreme - and its reasoning processes, entwined as they were through the labyrinthine interior of its world-sized mass, frequently were as difficult to follow logically as they would have been to trace physically.
Supreme's builders had carefully prevented it from issuing instructions except under carefully defined conditions. It was not their fault, and Supreme was totally unaware of the fact, that by a process of slow evolution some governmental officials had begun to accord Supreme's suggestions the full impact of law.
URSDwad
He waited.
He was a native Primorian, with a head that protruded from his chest and a body that terminated above it in a bulging hump. His tiny face, with large eyes surrounding a single enfolded nostril and a mouth hidden under the chin, would have won him no awards for pulchritude even in galactic circles; but the misshapen body hump housed an enormous brain, and despite his quiet, meditative manner, he possessed superb powers of intellect.
He had served Gul Darr faithfully and well for many years, and now Gul Darr had entrusted him with the most important task of his career. He was a special emissary, sent back to his own galaxy to deliver masses of data, a selection of recordings, and Gul Darr's personal report to an individual named Rok Wllon. He also transmitted Gul Darr's request that the data, recordings, and report be presented to an emergency meeting of the Council of Supreme, as well as to Supreme itself, and Rok Wllon had promised that this would be done.
And now URSDwad could do nothing but wait.
Beneath his placid exterior, he was badly frightened. At Gul Darr's side he had walked the surfaces of one decimated world after another and stirred the dust of exterminated populations with his footsteps, and he believed fervently in the crucial importance of his mission. He knew that what was happening to a neighboring galaxy could happen to this one. His species had dedicated itself to the service of the Galactic Synthesis and to Supreme for countless generations, and the fact that his native world was artificial did not mean that he loved it less. From what he had seen in the Lesser Galaxy, it required little imagination for him to envision the population of Primores transformed to rippling dust and Supreme itself left unattended. The thought terrified him.
He had deep misgivings about Rok Wllon. He did not know what his official position was, or how it happened that he had access both to the council and to Supreme itself, but URSDwad feared that Rok Wllon would not faithfully transmit the report Gul Darr had prepared.
And that message must reach Supreme and the council. "Tell them," Gul Darr had said, and URSDwad could not forget the terrible intensity with which he spoke, "tell them that this Unidentified Death Force, this Udef, has got to be checked somewhere, by someone. If it isn't, it'll exterminate all the intelligent life in the universe."
2
They were members of the Council of Supreme: seven starkly contrasting and improbable life forms that aptly demonstrated the fecund diversity natural evolution could achieve given unlimited time and millions of worlds upon which to practice its mistakes.
They sat around an enormous circular council table in the vast Han of Deliberations, each poised on a massive piece of furniture custom designed to accommodate the shape of the councilor who used it. Six of the seven councilors had turned their contrasting and improbable organs of sight on an empty chair. ONE, the First Councilor, was absent.
The privilege of chairing a special meeting belonged by tradition to the councilor who had convoked it. Rok Wllon, the Eighth Councilor, waited irritably for their attention and finally rapped on the table. He began, "ONE sends his greetings - "
THREE, a large ball with an upper hemisphere bristling with eye stalks, inflated its vocal sack with a deafening hiss. "Why couldn't ONE come here and speak for himself?" it demanded.” ONE is always having emergency meetings called that he is too busy to attend."
The question was out of order, the interruption rude, and the declaration untrue. Rok Wllon sniffed indignantly and drew himself up to his full width. THREE muttered something that might or might not have been an apology in its own language but could be construed as one, and Rok Wllon began again.
"ONE sends his greetings from the Lesser Galaxy and asks for our council."
Now he had their full attention. Even THREE stopped twitching its eye stems and focused all of them on Rok WIlon, staring. TWO, an enormous head and body completely surrounded by a tangle of telescoping limbs, straightened up abruptly and demanded, "What is Gul Darr doing in the Lesser Galaxy?"
That breach of ethics set THREE's eye stems fluttering, jarred SEVEN into regurgitating its weekly meal from one stomach to another, and left Rok Wllon breathless. All of the councilors were aware that ONE was Gul Darr, a notoriously eccentric galactic trader. Probably aU of them knew TWO as E-Wusk, a less notorious but equally famous trader and an associate of Gul Darr's. But never in Rok Wllon's memory had a councilor had the bad taste to refer to a colleague by his real identity.
E-Wusk muttered an apology for his absent-mindedness and lamely corrected himself. "What's ONE doing in the Lesser Galaxy?"
Rok WlIon waited until the flutter of resentment had subsided.
Then he again drew himself up to his full width and struck what he considered a dramatic pose. He was immensely broad when viewed from the front, but unbelievably thin in profile, and when he became excited his eyes enlarged, crowding his single gaping nostril until his breathing became a shrill whistle and the distinctive light blue hue of his epidermis deepened to violet.
"All of us vividly recall the invasion of our galaxy that preceded and in fact brought about our appointments to this council. I don't need to describe to you the seriousness of
that invasion - "
"Then don't," THREE muttered.
Rok Wllon ignored it. " - because we all remember it so well. ONE, in his capacity as First Councilor, has attempted to discover the source of the invasion, so that the council can take steps to prevent its happening again."
"Entirely commendable," SEVEN remarked. It was a massive lung in a sluglike body - now largely concealed because, like Rok Wllon, it wore its robes of office to conferences - and its speech was a hoarse wheeze.
"When ONE concluded that the invaders came from the Lesser Galaxy," Rok Wllon continued, "naturally he went there to investigate."
"Naturally," SEVEN wheezed. SEVEN was the council's peacemaker. A neckless uniped, its custom chair swiveled so it could turn its body to direct its single sensory organs, and now it was watching THREE's fidgets uneasily.
"Concluded how?" THREE wanted to know.
[Jan Darzek 03] - This Darkening Universe Page 1
