The Soul Eater

by Mike Resnick

  “Indecision, I should suspect,” said Vostuvian. “It knows who you are now, but it also senses the entropy weapon.”

  It remained, motionless and pulsating, for another hour, and Lane didn't dare move the Deathmaker up to meet it. Once again he removed the safety devices from the diluter, and waited.

  Finally the creature began inching forward again, slowly and hesitantly. When it got within eighty thousand miles it stopped.

  “Now what?” asked Vostuvian. It was the first curiosity he had displayed since learning how to pilot the ship.

  “Now we wait,” said Lane. “It seems to know the limits of the diluter, so it's probably going to take some time to muster up enough courage to come any closer.”

  It took almost a full Standard day, but finally the creature began approaching them again. Now it was within maximum range, now sixty thousand miles, now forty-five.

  Suddenly Lane began shaking in earnest, and he knew that he was en rapport with the creature again. He locked the diluter's sights onto it and waited.

  “Shoot now!” rasped Vostuvian, and Lane saw that his companion was trembling even more than he was.

  “Not yet,” said Lane. “I've got to be sure this time.”

  “Now!” screamed Vostuvian.

  “Shut up!” snapped Lane.

  “It's within range!” shouted Vostuvian. “What are you waiting for?”

  The creature was within twenty-five thousand miles now. It was approaching the ship more gingerly, but still approaching.

  Lane could feel it, feel fear and apprehension and excitement and lust and longing. And something else he had never before felt.

  Loneliness.

  Vostuvian was jabbering insanely now, and suddenly he lunged for the diluter's firing mechanism. Lane shoved him away.

  “Kill it!” shrieked the Dorne.

  Lane rose from his chair and stood between Vostuvian and the diluter.

  “Keep away from this weapon or the creature's not the only thing I'm going to kill,” he said, trying to control his voice.

  The creature was close enough to be seen on the main viewing screen now, and Lane turned to look at it. It was throbbing gently, its colors changing back and forth subtly, as it continued its inexorable approach.

  Lane placed his hand on the firing mechanism, and now, along with the fear and the lust and the loneliness, came yet another feeling: trust.

  Lane tried to fire the weapon, tried with every ounce of willpower he possessed—and found that he couldn't. His hand moved, almost independently of his brain, along the master control panel until it came to the vibrator's firing mechanism.

  In the tiny section of his mind that was clear and rational, he computed how much time it would take to recover from using the vibrator and still get off a shot on the diluter. Fifteen seconds, possibly twenty. Could the creature get away that quickly? He didn't know, but he doubted it.

  And, cursing his weakness, he fired the vibrator.

  Vostuvian was hurled back against the far wall of the cabin, but Lane remained on his feet, rigid and unblinking. He let wave after wave of the creature's sensations and emotions cascade over him, suffusing him in a warm, pulsating, satiated glow.

  Then, as the creature began retreating, he moved his hand back to the diluter. It was forty thousand miles away now, and moving leisurely. All he had to do was press the firing mechanism and it would be dead.

  But he wanted to be certain.

  He lined it up again, cleared his previous order to his tracking and locking mechanisms and gave it to them again, checked his panel to make sure the creature hadn't applied any evasive actions.

  And then, at one hundred twelve thousand miles, he fired the diluter.

  And missed.

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  * * *

  CHAPTER 20

  It was many minutes before Lane came to a full realization of what he had done, and many hours before Vostuvian was completely conscious.

  “It's changed directions,” said Lane, when he saw that the Dorne could understand him. “It's heading toward the core.”

  “I knew it,” muttered Vostuvian. “I knew you wouldn't kill it.”

  “I fired the diluter,” said Lane. “It was out of range.”

  “Out of range?” repeated Vostuvian. His voice was barely audible now, probably as a result of his earlier yelling. “Lane, it was within twenty thousand miles.”

  “You broke my concentration,” said Lane. “I had it beaten, and then you started going for the diluter. Up until that instant I was in control.”

  “You were never in control,” said Vostuvian, once again inscrutable and unemotional.

  “I was!” snapped Lane. “I was fighting it off! I was ready to fire when it got closer, and then you messed everything up.”

  “Not so, Lane,” said the Dorne. “Don't you know yet that you can't destroy it by yourself?”

  “I'm not convinced that I can destroy it with you on board,” said Lane. “Now just shut up and leave me alone.”

  He checked his panel. The creature was almost six hundred thousand miles ahead of them, and once again going at light speeds. After another hour he had Vostuvian take over the controls while he went back to the galley for something to eat.

  He stared at his storeroom of concentrates, decided he wasn't hungry after all, and sat at the mess table, staring unblinking at a bulkhead.

  Just how much of what he had said to the Dorne was true, and how much was a rationalization? He didn't want to come to grips with it, but he had to. He had to know what he would do the next time he got the creature in his sights, had to know which weapon he would use.

  And, as he thought about it, his rage transferred itself from Vostuvian to the creature. It was the creature that had warped his mind and his judgment and his senses, not Vostuvian. It was the creature that made him fire the vibrator rather than the diluter, that made him wait too long to finally bring the entropy weapon into play, that had turned him into an obscene thing with unthinkable longings. Vostuvian didn't inhabit his nightmares and his daydreams and his fantasies; the creature did.

  He'd had it within his grasp and let it get away. But he'd taken everything it had to give, and missed it only by a matter of seconds. Now he knew what it could and couldn't do to him, what he could and couldn't do to it. The battle lines were drawn. Next time he would be ready for it, next time there would be no hesitation, next time he'd take a chance on winging it if he had to.

  Next time...

  But the next time didn't materialize as soon as Lane had hoped it would. Their mad flight continued for days that stretched into weeks that stretched into months, back toward the galactic Greenwich. The Outer Frontier was behind them, and soon they passed through the Democracy as well, and then they were at the Inner Frontier. Man hadn't built his empire from the galactic core outward, but from Earth and Deluros VIII and half a dozen other major worlds in huge, ever-widening circles. And, while he hadn't expanded anywhere near the rim yet, he also hadn't gone much farther toward the geocentric core than Northpoint and a few hundred other worlds on the periphery of human civilization.

  On and on they raced, past millions of unexplored worlds, and finally into an area that was not only unexplored but uncharted.

  “If it doesn't slow down one of these days,” said Lane as he tried, for perhaps the thousandth time, to entice the creature by firing his vibrator at regular intervals, “I'm going to shoot the damned diluter after it anyway. Maybe we'll get lucky.”

  “The greatest stroke of luck in such a case would be not to outrun the beam and be destroyed ourselves,” said Vostuvian.

  Lane grunted an answer that was neither positive nor negative nor complimentary, and turned his attention back to the board.

  And then, so unexpectedly that it made both of them jump, the Deathmaker received a radio signal, its first in years.

  “Repeating: Mayday,” said a thin but recognizably human voice which was barely discerni
ble due to excessive static. “Repeating: Mayday. Condition urgent.”

  Lane reached over and switched on his transmitter.

  “This is the Deathmaker, Nicobar Lane commanding, forty-five months out of Belore.”

  “Thank God!” said the voice. “This is Jonas Stonemason, captain of the Rachel. All our power is gone, and we have at most another two days of air and water remaining.”

  “What the hell are you doing out here?” said Lane.

  “This is a colony ship,” said Stonemason. “I was searching for an agricultural world on the Inner Frontier when all my power went dead. We were going at about fifty percent light speed when it happened, and our inertia has carried us here. We only just got the radio working four days ago. Will you help us?”

  “I can't,” said Lane. “This ship has urgent business elsewhere.”

  “Damn it, man!” snapped Stonemason. “I have more than six hundred women and children on board! We've homed in on your signal, and estimate our paths will cross within half a million miles in about five hours.”

  Lane switched off the radio and checked his instrument panel. The creature was still racing its accustomed margin ahead of them, and he knew that if he even slowed down, let alone effected a rescue operation, the hunt would be over, perhaps forever.

  He opened communications again.

  “Rachel? This is the Deathmaker. I have a small ship, too small to aid you in any way. I will pass word of your situation and give your coordinates and speed to any and all ships I encounter.”

  “Damn you, Lane!” bellowed Stonemason. “You're condemning more than a thousand colonists to die!”

  “It can't be helped,” said Lane. “You'll have to believe me when I tell you that I regret it deeply, and would aid you if it were at all possible.”

  “There's nothing more important than saving the lives of your fellow men!” said Stonemaston. “I beg of you, Lane: please give us your help.”

  “I can't,” said Lane, trying not to think about a thousand bodies with black, bloated tongues and huge popping eyes.

  He thought he detected the sound of a scuffle, and then a feminine voice, half sobbing and half screaming, came on.

  “Mr. Lane, I speak not only for myself and my two daughters, but for the whole ship. What is more important than performing an act of mercy?”

  “You wouldn't understand. Believe me, I'd help you if I could.”

  “Mr. Lane, I beg of you, please—”

  Lane reached over to the radio and broke off communication.

  Then, turning the controls over to Vostuvian, he walked to his hammock and lay down, hands behind his head. He should have helped the Rachel; or, failing that, he should at least have felt guilty. But he didn't. All he felt was eagerness to come to grips with the creature once again.

  And suddenly, as he thought of all those doomed colonists, and the members of the Roanoke Colony, and the miners on Bastion, and the Mariner, and the seemingly endless years in space, and the entropy weapon that was never fired until too late, he knew the creature's name. Not Dreamwish Beast, or Sunlighter, or straigor, or Starduster, or Deathdealer, or any of the other labels that had been given it, but its true name, the only name that could ever describe it.

  And in that instant, Nicobar Lane rededicated himself to the slaying of the Soul Eater.

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  * * *

  CHAPTER 21

  The chase continued unabated for another fifty-three days. The ship's fuel and food supplies were holding up well, but Lane estimated that they'd be out of water in another month or so; and, since he had no idea how soon he would be able to kill the Soul Eater, he set Vostuvian to the task of jury-rigging a recycling system.

  And then, fifty-four days after leaving the Rachel to flounder and die in the trackless wastes of space, they came to the galactic core.

  And found the granddaddy of all black holes.

  It had been postulated for centuries that every spiral galaxy had an enormous black hole at its center. Now this one stretched before Lane, some three hundred thirty million miles in diameter, almost as large as the orbit of Mars. He couldn't see it, of course; by its very nature it absorbed all light and reflected none. But the Deathmaker's instrument panel picked up its gravitational field and recorded the limits of its event horizon.

  “Get ready,” Lane said, taking over manual control of the ship. “It's got to change directions any minute now.”

  But the Soul Eater, approaching the hole at an angle, veered neither right nor left, neither up nor down.

  “I've seen it pull this stunt before,” said Lane. “It'll run right up to the hole and shear off at the last second.

  “It will have to do so soon, Lane,” said Vostuvian. “Another three minutes and it will be inside the hole.”

  Lane released the diluter's safety devices and tried to lock onto the Soul Eater, but the creature was too far away.

  “We'd better slow down, Lane,” said the Dorne, “or we will be unable to escape the hole's gravitational field.”

  “Uh-uh,” said Lane. “First, a hole that big doesn't have as much of a field at the event horizon as a smaller one. And second, I'm not letting the Soul Eater get away this time.”

  “You're not thinking clearly,” said Vostuvian. “Its field will be immense. It has already absorbed most of the stars from the core.”

  “You've been planetbound too long,” said Lane, never taking his eyes from the instrument panel. “The event horizon doesn't cause the field; the singularity—the point that all the matter is drawn to—does. And the event horizon of a hole like this is much farther from the singularity than it would be on a small hole. We're going straight ahead.”

  The Dorne made no answer, and the chase went on. Far ahead of them the Soul Eater raced headlong for the hole, and even Lane wondered how much longer it could wait before veering away from the yawning black pit.

  “It's going to go into the hole!” said Vostuvian. “Bank away from it now, Lane, before it's too late.”

  Lane made no answer, and suddenly the Dorne pushed him away and reached for the control panel.

  “Get away, Vostuvian,” said Lane. “I'm only going to tell you once.”

  The Dorne paid no attention to him, and Lane drew his screecher and fired it. Vostuvian screamed, went absolutely rigid, and then collapsed in a lifeless heap on the deck.

  Lane kicked the body out of the way and ran to the panel, making sure that the ship was still matching speed and direction with the Soul Eater. It was, and he turned a portion of his attention to the diluter. If he guessed which direction the creature would veer, he'd be able to get a shot off; if not, he'd lose another seven hundred thousand miles before he got the ship squared away.

  And then his jaw fell open as he realized that Vostuvian had been right. The Soul Eater had no intention of veering away from the black hole; it was too late now, even if it wanted to. In another five seconds it would disappear beyond the event horizon, swallowed by an enormous negation that had crushed cosmic debris, planets, even giant stars, down to a dimensionless point.

  Lane had bare seconds to make a decision, and realized that it had been made long before. With a bellowing curse, he directed the Deathmaker into the yawning chasm of nothingness that had just clutched the Soul Eater to its unknown and unknowable bosom.

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  * * *

  CHAPTER 22

  Lane expected to be stretched almost to infinity and crushed to death at the same instant.

  Neither happened.

  Later, when he realized that he was going to live, he spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out what had occurred, but never quite understood it.

  He knew everything in the universe rotated—including, especially, collapsing stars. Neutron stars, which hadn't been quite massive enough to collapse beyond that stage to become black holes, rotated on their axes at a rate of once a second or even faster. What Lane didn't know
—and wouldn't have cared about had he known—was that when a black hole begins forming, the collapsing star's rotation rate speeds up almost beyond computation. By so doing, it distorts the black hole to such a degree that it forms not one, but two event horizons.

  Had the Deathmaker gone beyond both event horizons, everything Lane had expected would have occurred. His feet, being almost two meters nearer the singularity, would have been drawn down toward that awesome point at a faster rate than his head. He would have been literally pulled apart, though the excessive gravitational field would have killed him long before that happened.

  But the Deathmaker did not pierce both event horizons. It followed the path of the Soul Eater between the two horizons, and was flung completely out of its own time and space by the unimaginable power of that rotating field.

  It was not the mystical hyperspace or superspace imagined by fanciful writers, nor the wormholes in the fabric of space postulated by speculative scientists, nor even the bending and curving of space hidden in Einstein's calculations. Nor was it a timewarp or spacewarp, though those words perhaps best describe the effect. It was, plainly and simply, the momentary negation of all time and all space, the only such negation possible under the laws that govern the universe.

  Lane experienced no dizziness, no nausea, no sense of disorientation. He knew who he was, and thought he knew where he was, at all times. None of his instruments worked, his clocks started doing crazy things, and his viewing screens made absolutely no sense.

  And, suddenly, after an indeterminate and undeterminable passage of time, he was—elsewhere.

  The Deathmaker's systems began working again, and he tried to determine exactly where his ship had been hurled. None of his standard galactic reference points were visible, and he was unable even to guess where he was.

  Then he looked out through his viewing screen, and realized that he didn't even know when he was.

  He was in some universe, but whether it was his own or not he couldn't tell, nor did he ever learn. But whatever universe it was, it was in its infancy. Huge as it was—and, by their very definition, all universes are huge—it was more compact than the one he had known. There were precious few stars as such, but in their place were millions upon millions of superstars, each the size of a red or blue giant, but burning with an intensity that almost blinded him even from thousands of parsecs away. They hung against the velvet background of space like huge sparkling jewels, shooting off their unbelievably bright substance in billion-mile streams and jets, spinning so rapidly that he could almost see the minute variations in their intensity.