The Dark Side of the Sun

by Terry Pratchett

  They were long-lived. They had travelled up the Tentacle - Creapii mythology saw the galaxy as a giant Creap, with a glittering carcase of stars - to the sparse stars at the rim. They had sailed down the Tentacle to the cathedral of stars at the hub. The stars were barren. There were one or two freak accidents. But generally, life was still merely some slightly more complex chemical changes. Only in the bubble of stars behind them did worlds teem.

  Impetuous races would have reached a definite conclusion hastily , maybe in two or three hundred years. The Creap minds, of which each individual had three, did not jump so readily to conclusions ...

  'And what conclusion did they reach?' asked Dom.

  'The Creapii are powerful, and slow, and thorough. They have as yet reached no conclusion. They are seeking the meaning of life. Why sshould they hurry?'

  'Chel! Isn't the theory that the Jokers seeded our stars before they - uh - moved away? Come on, you know it is.'

  The phnobe nodded slowly. 'That is certainly the hypothesis that the Joker Institute appears to work on.'

  Dom bit his lip, and opened his mouth to speak. Hrsh-Hgn raised a hand.

  'You are about to assk why. Boy, remember that of fifty-two races in the life-stars you, an Earthman—'

  'A Widdershine!'

  'True, a Widdershine of Earth stock - can only vaguely understand the mental workings of perhaps three or four races. Why should we hope to understand the Jokers?'

  'But the Institute did understand Joker Curiform C. It was one of their languages.'

  'Yes, but a written language is merely a machine to convey information, and once we had the key it was remarkably easy to translate.'

  'How was it broken?'

  'They used a poet, and a mad computer.'

  Hrsh-Hgn picked up the cube of pink silica that had been his present to Dom, thumbed the reference face and set it to project. The words of the Joker Testament hung in the air, glowing.

  You who stand before us We have held the stars in the hollow of our hands, and the stars Burn. Pray be careful now As to how you handle them. We have gone to wait on our new world There is but one It lies at the dark side of the sun.

  'Pretty derivative stuff,' said Isaac. 'That last couplet is really a singlet.'

  'I must admit it is better in phnobic,' said Hrsh-Hgn, 'As for the rest, well, you musst know most of it. On a purely practical level, hotheads have searched every sizeable body in the bubble and many out of it.'

  'Now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty,' said Isaac. 'You'd have had to include suns, of course, and the deeps themselves. Although it sounds more likely that the Jokers originated on-planet somewhere.'

  'The popular belief is that Jokers World is laden with wonders beyond belief,' said Hrsh-Hgn.

  'Sitting in here it's hard to get some idea of the deeps, but they must be big enough to hide a world in. The Jokers might have had a world with no sun,' said Dom.

  'It's just conceivable,' agreed Hrsh-Hgn, politely.

  'It's been thought of, huh?'

  'About once every five years,'

  'How about it being invisible?' said Isaac. Dom laughed.

  'Maybe,' said Hrsh-Hgn, 'You'd heard of Ghost Stars, Dom?'

  'Uhuh. So dense that not even gravity escapes from them.'

  'Now this is just an idea to kick about, I'm just dropping it on the plate to see if anyone pours mayonnaise on it, but you could outfit an entire solar system with matrix engines and drop it into interspace,' said Isaac. Dom was about to laugh, but looked sidelong at Hrsh-Hgn.

  'That's the legend of the Prodigal Sun,' said Hrsh-Hgn, 'A low-temperature Creapii story. Yes, you could do it in about fifty years time, at our present rate of technological expanssion. The catalytic power would not have to be too great. But the practical application of the matrix equation makes it impossible.' He caught Dom's blank expression. 'You see, you do not need a great deal of power to drop even a large mass in and out of interspace.'

  Hrsh-Hgn used more technical language to explain that it was the on-board computer that really counted. Since a body in interspace was theoretically everywhere at the same time and would if randomly dropped out almost certainly materialize in the centre of the nearest solar body, the navigational matrix computer was very necessary. It had to be big - 'everywhere' was a large volume to be quantified. The bigger the body, the greater chance of error, so the bigger the computer.

  'The sundog carrying us now registered a current drain in microamps to achieve interspace. 'It's little more than a mental discipline. Four fifths of its body iss a hind-brain designed to locate it accurately with regard to the datum universse, with fortunately just enough sspare capacity to allow for the extra mass of a medium-ssized sship.

  'To get a medium-range star successfully through interspace you'd have to have a computer about one hundred times its mass.'

  'How about one planet?' asked Dom.

  'The graphs meet at planets like Phnobis or Widdershins, small and dense. You could just about do it if you hollowed out the world and filled it with computers. But this is a fruitless line of sspeculation. Personally I believe that the Jokers—'

  Illusion.

  Ig was keening. Dom opened his eyes and blinked. He was soaked in sweat. One arm ached.

  At the far end of the cabin Hrsh-Hgn had been thrown like a doll across the gear locker.

  'Isaac?'

  The robot let go of the handrail that ringed One Jump's cabin.

  'Rough, huh?' he asked.

  'I feel like someone just hit me with something large, like a planet,' said Dom. 'Or a large asteroid. What's happened?'

  'We're between stars. It looks as though the sundog dropped out rather clumsily.'

  Dom floated up, trying to quieten his stomach. It appeared to be knotted. His head ached.

  Hrsh-Hgn groaned and woke. 'Frghsss—' he swore.

  'Sundog?' said Dom to the empty air.

  Apologies. Journey interrupted owing to circumstances beyond control. Disturbance in interspace matrix space-frame. We must detour in datum space.

  Isaac was glued to the deep radar.

  'It's still several million kilometres away - it must be throwing one hell of an interspace shadow. It's taking its time. It's a cone - oh, my, will you look at that!'

  They stared into the screen. On maximum magnification it showed a pyramid tumbling deceptively slowly through space, flashing faintly as starlight caught its polished faces. There was no mistaking the outline of a Joker tower.

  Dom swam into the pilot seat and asked the sundog to take them in closer. In a few minutes they were a few kilometres away. The tower hung steady against a starfield that spun like a mad planetarium.

  'The Institute of Joker Studies pays a million standards bounty for details of new towers,' said Dom, 'I want to catch it.'

  'In a pig's eye,' said Isaac. 'That mass at that speed? It's a job for twenty sundogs.'

  Right.

  'Well, we can plot its course. There's a reduced bounty for that sort of information. We could split it three ways.'

  Four ways.

  'Okay, four—'

  Dom struggled for breath. Something had caught him in a vice, and was squeezing hard.

  He sensed the ship. He was acutely aware of the convoluted atomic structure of the hull. The little deuterium pile in the matrix computer sparkled like a witch ball left over from Hogswatchnight. Isaac was a coruscation of currents flowing over coiled alloy wire, suffused with the sickening feel of metallic hydrogen. The sundog brain throbbed dull purple with vague semi-thoughts.

  Beyond the ship, beyond the tumbling Tower, he felt the other ship. It was waiting for him. Someone had known that he would pass under this area. He felt metallic hydrogen again - the feel of a robot mind.

  He felt inside the sundog's mind. There was a jolt as its field polarized and the Tower receded instantly against the stars. For a moment he felt the rage of the mind in the other ship. Then it was gone, lost in the static as the dog sank grat
efully into interspace.

  And something withdrew from his mind, gently. He had time for a very brief feeling of loss, of the unfair restriction of a mere five senses ... then the reaction hit him.

  He didn't fall, because there was no 'down'. But he hung bewildered, listening to the puzzled protests from the dog. Hrsh-Hgn and Isaac were staring at him. Then the phnobe took him gently in one bony hand and hauled him down to the bunk.

  'I saw everything,' muttered Dom, 'Something was looking through me, there was an assassin waiting at that tower, you know...'

  'Ssure,' murmured Hrsh-Hgn. 'Ssure.'

  'Believe me!'

  'Ssure.'

  'He had a molecule stripper!' shouted Dom.

  'Something made the sundog get the hell out of there,' admitted Isaac. 'Was it you?'

  Dom nodded violently, and then added slowly: 'I think so. But—but just before, I saw... Would you believe I saw probabilities? I saw us powdered by that stripper. But that was in another universe. We escaped, in this one. Chel, I can't describe it. We haven't got the right words!'

  6

  'We have given this case a great deal of thought. We do, of course, find nothing to argue with in the purely geophysical reports put before us. We note that this world known as the First Sirian Bank is a planet with a diameter of seven thousand miles and a crust consisting almost entirely of crytalline silicon and some associated elements. We have also heard some delightful evidence from Dr Al Putachique of Earth, its import being that over the billenia earthquakes and so forth have caused the formation of billions of transistor junctions within that crust, forming by natural means the largest computer in the galaxy. We are of course aware that the Bank has for many years been used as the accounting-house and general information repository of most of the Human and near-Human races, and is officially Treasurer of the Star Chamber of Commerce.

  'The appellant has asked for the legal status of Human. He wishes to be accorded the status of living creature. Is the Bank alive? By every definition he is not. That, at least, is what we have been told.

  'But we disagree. It has been impossible for the Bank to be physically present here today, Roche limits being what they are, but this Chamber has spoken with him at length. Towards the end of this unusual interlude my colleague from Earth made a reference, I understand it to be from some kind of theatrical entertainment, to the fact that it seemed unfair that the merest virus should have Life while the Bank had none at all.

  'We find it nowhere stated that an entire world may not be accorded the status of a living creature, or even of Human. It may be a trifle unusual, a little irregular. Nevertheless, let it be recorded that we find the First Sirian Bank not only alive, but possessed of a universe-view sufficiently advanced to call him Human. And may his orbit never grow less.'

  His Furness CrAAgh 456°, Mediator, the Star Chamber, 2104. (See also Life: A Legal Definition by His Furness 456°.)

  Dom dodged into a booth and waited a minute before glancing out through the clear crystal panel of the door. There were two or three thousand people in the central hall, but none seemed to have noticed him.

  In front of him was a black crystal wall, studded with innumerable pinpoints of red light. They clustered thickly around a plain copper disc, set flush with the crystal. It hummed, said: 'Please state your business.'

  Dom relaxed.

  'Are you the Bank?' he asked.

  'No, sir. I am a Teller, merely a comparatively simple servo-mechanical sub-unit.'

  'Uh, okay. Then please transfer seventeen standards to the sundog racial account,' he said, while invisible eyes tactfully examined his retinal patterns, voice inflections, DNA helix and teeth.

  'Transaction completed.'

  'And I wish to notify the Joker Institute that I have located a Joker building, description and position as noted.'

  He pressed a copy of the One Jump's log into a recess below the disc.

  'Bounty will be paid on verification.'

  Dom wondered if the assassin lurking at the tower had also registered discovery. He knew there had been an assassin. Somewhere in totality was a universe where Dom Sabalos was dead. But of course, there would be many such universes. According to p-math there was at least one universe for every probability, even the unthinkable ones.

  'Business completed?' asked the disc.

  Dom frowned. It was his first visit to the Bank, although it was officially his Godfather. The Bank sent him greetings on the appropriate ceremonies, like his minor 28th-year birthdays, and small, interesting presents like the gravity-sandals he was still wearing. The gifts suggested a thoughtful personality. The greetings cards told nothing at all, except that they were generally signed in crescive High-Degree Creapii IV, a favourite script for multi-dextral amateur calligraphers. The problem now was making contact.

  'I am Dom Sabalos, the Bank's Godson. I would like to see him.'

  'You have only to look around, sir.' The machine meant it seriously. Dom realized it was not equipped to handle figurative speech.

  'I meant that I wanted to confront him, converse with his, uh, seat of consciousness.'

  There was a pause. At last the disc said: 'Very well, sir, I will see what can be arranged.'

  Dom hurried out of the booth. Hrsh-Hgn was lurking suspiciously behind a glittering germanian pillar that soared up half a mile above the paved cavern floor. The next essential was fresh clothing, and then a real meal - there was something curiously unsatisfying about the reconstituted molecules of the ship's autochef. He pushed past a party of medium-degree Creapii and hailed a cab.

  The main cavern of the First Sirian Bank was big enough to need a sophisticated weather control system, to prevent the formation of thunder clouds. The cab looped up from the crowded floor and threaded its way at speed between coruscating pillars, each with its cluster of booths at the base. The red junction points glowed everywhere. Occasionally a ring of static electricity would flash up a pillar and burst vividly into an ozone-reeking haze. And the hot dry air hummed with a million voices, felt rather than heard, as money spoke to money across the light-years.

  In fact, Dom considered, it looked like an early conception of hell. With tourists. Certainly some of the tourists would have fitted the concept nicely.

  In one of the sub-caverns a robot tailor outfitted him with an anonymous grey ship suit, the sort worn on every earth-human world. He also bought a cuber, a cloak striped on the bias in purple, orange and yellow, and hoped that an observer would take him for what he appeared to be - a back-planet rube, a stock Whole Erse character of comedy sketches, the gawping rim-colonist with a nasal twang, unfortunate personal habits and a pocketful of rare earths.

  He turned and looked critically at Hrsh-Hgn, who stood watching in the old ceremonial garb of a beta-male.

  'Couldn't you wear something a bit more colourful? Some phnobes do. I'd rather you didn't look conspicuous.'

  Hrsh-Hgn took a nervous step backwards and clutched at his robe.

  'Is it against the law? I mean, will it offend some sexual more?If so, of course, I—'

  'It'ss not exactly that. I do not think I could carry off the character of an alpha, you understand, they are somewhat more flamboyant, more warlike, lesss given to featss of the intellect ...'

  At Dom's command the little robot dressed the phnobe in a complicated toga of heavy blue and olive green fibres, shot with flecks of silver. A tshuri knife fully twice the length of Hrsh-Hgn's old one hung on an ornate belt.

  'If an alpha challenges me I shall make a poor showing.'

  'Still, you look different.' He paid the robot, and they walked out with Hrsh-Hgn making a brave attempt at a swagger.

  The temperate-lifeforms dining room of the Grand Hotel, the only provision on the Bank for accommodation, seemed almost as big as the main cavern and more impressive because the size was made up in human terms. The long cavern was filled with the roar of appetites in the process of satiation, reeked with the aromas of many foods and narcotics, a
nd looked rather more like Hell than the main cavern.

  Dom found two places at a table in the Human section. The previous occupants, a thickset Earthman with a face criss-crossed with duelling scars and a small battered Class One robot, nodded familiarly at Dom as they passed.

  'Do you know them?' asked Hrsh-Hgn as they sat down.

  'Not that I can recall,' said Dom, 'There's something odd about them. He looked a wealthy type. What's he doing with a mere Class One?'

  'One of life'ss little myssteriess,' said the phnobe.

  They ate in silence. The diner beside Dom was energetically digging him in the ribs with a horny elbow. It was a young Drosk, who looked up, gave Dom a canine grin, and bent back to his plate. Dom carefully refrained from looking at what he was eating.

  On the other side a party of female phnobes of the Long Cloud group were arguing sibilantly. Beyond them was a Pineal-human, performing a complex Third Eye food-ceremony over his rice bowl.

  Dom ordered fish and bread. Hrsh-Hgn had a fungi stew.

  The Class Two waiter trundled up with their bill and tactfully ascertained Dom's credit rating with the Bank.

  'Divert a tenth-standard for yourself,' added Dom.

  'Many thanks indeed, sir,' said the automaton. It added politely: 'I have always had a high regard for Sinistral-humans, sir.'

  'Who said I was from Widdershins?' Dom tried to pitch his voice low. Several of the phnobes looked round. But the robot had rolled away.

  'Your face,' said Hrsh-Hgn simply.

  Dom reached up, and then caught sight of his hand. The greenish tinge of googoo. Of course it was used on other worlds in exceptional circumstances - and under strict licence - but that made no difference. In popular mythology, any green man was a Widdershine.

  'I don't think you need bother too much,' said the phnobe as they walked out, 'Whoever thiss asssasssin iss, I doubt if he will be fooled by dissguises. He iss using probability math to put himself in the right place every time.'