The Dark Side of the Sun

by Terry Pratchett

  The Emperor recovered first. He poured out more wine, proffered the glass to Ways, and smiled thinly.

  'Would you explain how you got in?' he said. 'I must review our alarm system.'

  'Certainly. I brought my ship down on the terrace. I expect most of your alarms failed.'

  'You are lucky,' said Ptarmigan mildly.

  'I was built so. You made me, in fact.'

  'Ah yes. Luck as an electronic faculty. I remember supervising the plans myself. What a pity we didn't think of incorporating some kind of switch.'

  'It wouldn't have worked,' said Ways. 'But enough of this chitter-chatter. How can I kill Dom Sabalos, who is invulnerable? If I dropped a rock on his head Brownian motion would contrive to knock it off course.'

  Sharli swung her koto. It flashed towards Ways' chest and collapsed like tinfoil. She stared at it in disbelief.

  'Don't worry,' he said. 'A statistically-possible chance can happen to anyone. Excuse me.' He drew a simple United Spies official-issue assassination gun and fired at Dom again.

  The bullet stopped in mid-air and boiled.

  A faint tremor ran round the universe.

  'Molecular resistance,' said Ways. 'Damn.' He sat down on the mat and took up the glass of wine. He smiled at them, and gestured with the stripper.

  'There must be a hundred more ships up there,' he said. 'Phnobic, drosk, Creap, Spooner, Pod. All watching this place and each other. How many planets in this system, your Eminence?'

  'Since the First Sirian Bank shot out of his orbit and into interspace, I expect there are now six,' said Ptarmigan.

  'Correct. The Bank is now in orbit forty million miles out beyond - what's the name of your outermost world?'

  'Far Out,' said Tarli.

  'So you see, everyone feels a burning interest in Dom's moves during the next few days. Me too. The arrangements have been modified slightly. We are all going to Jokers World.'

  He waved them into silence. 'Dom and I are lucky. He is protected - by the Jokers, it is believed - while my luck is genuine silicon-chip certain. However, I am afraid the rest of you aren't lucky. Do I make my point? The terms 'hostage' and 'kill' are unsavoury, and therefore I will not use them . . . '

  A mechanical bat wheeled into the dusk as they trooped across the terrace. Ways' little ship was there. It was small, small enough to have its shape dictated by the single matrix engine it contained. A saddle for the pilot and a frame for the auxiliary equipment were wrapped over the front of the coil, and landing gear was simply welded on to the engine housing. It was a machine for getting from place to place with the minimum of comfort and the maximum of efficiency - and it was fast. It had no name.

  Dom climbed into the saddle, closed the transparent housing and inspected the controls. Ways' voice with its final instructions was muffled by the plastic.

  'Let us be quite clear. Should I lose contact with you, or should you make any improper move, I shall be forced to take steps. Wait for us in orbit.'

  The ship lifted smoothly. Once out of atmosphere Dom could survey most of the Tau Ceti system on the tiny scanner screen. The ships showed up as blue pinpoints. A long way out was something else - the scanner kept flickering from red to blue as the Class Two brain built into it tried to decide whether it was a ship or a world. As Dom watched, the blip disappeared. The Bank had ducked into interspace. Dom remembered seeing the huge matrix engine in one of the caverns. It wouldn't take much to float a planet.

  Ten minutes later the Drunk With Infinity was a bright star over Laoth's terminator. Ways had chosen a good ship. Dom set up the co-ordinates he had been given on the matrix computer and sighed.

  The jump was short, lasting barely half an hour subjective time. It ended in the middle of a fleet.

  Ways said: 'Open up the communicator circuits.'

  He saw the main cabin of the Drunk, with the hostages standing mutely in the middle of the floor. Most were, at least. Joan I was being supported, and Isaac was sprawled on the floor.

  Ways walked into the field of view. 'I've run into a little pocket of resistance,' he said. 'Don't let that worry you.'

  'What's the fleet for?' said Dom.

  'Company. Who knows if we may have to fight, survey, or merely land on a dead world?'

  Dom laughed hysterically in the tiny cabin, and stopped only when he saw Ig cowering away on the control panel and gazing at him in wide-eyed terror.

  'You're fools, ' he told the communicator. 'You think I will lead you to a planet?'

  The scene of the Drunk flickered out, and another face looked at him. It was thin, topped off by a mop of black hair, and had unmistakably been born on Earth.

  'I am sorry about this,' it said. 'My name is Franz Asman, of the Joker Institute. This is our fleet. Ways is our tool.'

  'Earthman, eh?' said Dom. 'That means you don't really think the threat of reprisals is enough to stop me running away. An Earthman would let his grandmother fry if he saw any personal profit in it.'

  'Sadhim preserve us from interworld animosity,' said Asman wearily. 'As a matter of fact, you know, I've been studying you for some time. There's a staff of two hundred at the Institute who have been studying you for some time, too. We know exactly what you will do in any given situation, and in this one you won't run.'

  'Studying me?' Behind Asman's head he could see vague figures, in front of a long panel covered with intricate patterns of coloured lines.

  'This is our job. Do you know what an astrologer was?'

  'Sure,' said Dom. 'I was born under O'Brien the Hunter.'

  'We are the new astrologers. We evaluate—'

  —by the mathemagic of probability, sifting through the population of the galaxy to find those whose probability profile matched the theoretical one for the discoverer of Jokers World. That particular profile had been in existence for some time. For no known reason questions relating to Jokers World usually became nonsense when rendered into p-math, but it was possible, just possible, to make up an equation from the outlines round the logical holes.

  Then it meant sifting again. That had not been difficult. There were only three potential discoverers this year. One was a phnobic monk, the other a three-month-old girl on Third Eye. Both had been killed easily.

  But Dom was a different matter. The Institute was at a loss to understand why. His father had also been a high-probability Discoverer, and there had been no difficulty there. Yet something prevented Dom from being conveniently removed. He was too lucky.

  Something wanted him to discover Jokers World.

  'Yes,' said Dom. 'It's the Jokers.'

  'So we think,' said Asman. 'Do you know why we can't let you?'

  'I think I can follow your reasoning,' said Dom. 'You fear the Jokers. That's because you don't know them. You think that contact with even the remnants of their culture will destroy us. I expect you have some idea that men are better off without gods.'

  'You laugh at us. Oh, we can't deny that the Joker artifacts have done something to stimulate interracial co-operation.'

  Dom heard himself shout: 'They caused it! The Creapii invented the matrix engine just so that they could find other lifeforms to help them answer the Joker riddles!'

  'That is so. But Dom, listen. Before Sadhim, before star travel even, you know that most men believed in some kind of omnipresent god? Not the Sadhimist Small Gods, answerable to natural forces, but a real Director of the Universe? But if it had turned out that He really did exist chaos would have been let loose on the planet. He would have ceased to become a matter of comforting Belief but a matter of fact - you don't believe in the sun, either. And men would have perished of a cosmic inferiority complex. You can't live and know of such greatness.

  'We need the idea of Jokers because they are a unifying force among the races, but we can't afford to find their world. Supposing it is dead - is that the end of even the greatest race? If they still live, will they enslave us or ignore us? Or worse, befriend us?'

  'We can only let you go now to
the dark side of the sun. But you must understand that we can't let you return.'

  'I know what the Jokers World is,' said Dom slowly. 'I've known for some time, I think, without realizing it. And I think I'm coming to realize where it is. There is only one Sun in the universe - our universe - and the Jokers gave it to us. Will you lock your fleet on to this ship?'

  Asman nodded.

  'Then follow me.'

  Interspace glowed around him. Dom switched off the set and tried to ignore the orange-gold glow that filled the ship and in which it floated.

  To no one he said: 'Why now? And why me?'

  Ig shrugged, and turned his pointed, rat-like nose towards him. He spoke. The words arrived in Dom's head without the need for a cumbersome physical route.

  'The trouble was that we never found a way to become empathic. Telepathy - that's merely a higher form of speech. But to know how another being, another creature feels - that is impossible.'

  'You were lonely,' said Dom. 'All those empty years ...'

  'Isaac would say: close, but no cigar. We searched even the alternate universes, it is true, right along to the dark impossible ones that are the stuff of nightmares. There was life. The Bank and Chatogaster are small fry. In some universes the very suns live. There is a galaxy that sings. In one universe, over there—' a paw pointed and one claw disappeared momentarily into another continuum— 'there is nothing but thought, which pervades all. Not only thought, but understanding. But it is alien to us. How blithely you use the word alien: you have no idea how alien a thing may be.

  'We discovered - as the Creapii are discovering - that the ultimate barrier is one's viewpoint. Dimly they realize that even their most objective statements about the universe cannot be freed from the Creapii taint because they ultimately derive from Creapii minds and emotions. That's why they are the great ambassadors of inter-racial harmony, and why they try so hard to be everything but Creapii.'

  'So you invented us,' said Dom. 'At least that theory is true? You wanted to get, uh, different points of view?'

  'Close again. All we had to do was make it easier for intelligent life to evolve. That at least is not difficult; it's well within the range of your sciences. Though it was damn difficult to hit the right combination for cold-helium life. By the way, I have a small bomb surgically implanted in me. The Earthmen did it. Very subtle. I wouldn't worry; I have inactivated it.'

  Ig paused and scratched an ear.

  'We left artifacts to tantalize,' he said. 'I'm afraid we cheated. Be sure that before we left we were very thorough in cleaning up the galaxy. On some worlds we had to build an entirely new crust, down to the fossils. We had to replace metals in the grounds as ores, replenish oilfields, relay coal measures - we wanted to make sure you had a start in life. We gave you reconditioned worlds, but we left you the Towers and the Chain Stars and so on. All cultural fakes, I'm afraid. Made to awe rather than inform. But we had to leave the clue. That was artistically correct.

  'The dark side of the sun,' said Dom. 'It was two clues. If you hadn't wanted us to translate it, we never would have done. That was clue one. After all, we couldn't even have translated Phnobic without the phnobes there to help us out. And the sun - you turned your back on intelligence, and became dull-minded animals.'

  'Please! Swamp-igs are reasonably bright, considering their environment. We selected our new selves with care. Believe me, it is pleasant to have no enemies and to lie in the warm mud. We had to build in safeguards - a genetic twist to make us lucky animals, so that we were venerated rather than hunted. And an alarm, so that when the time came we would remember. These little bodies have made good hiding places.'

  'I'll just ask again: why me?' said Dom.

  'You live at the right time. You are naturally cosmopolitan. You come from Widdershins. That was our world, once. Long ago, of course. You are rich, there is a certain amount of glamour attached to your position. Let's say it was fate.'

  He squinted through the canopy at the glowing, heatless fires of interspace.

  'Excuse me,' said Dom. 'But you don't look like a super race.'

  Ig's paws were darting rapidly across the console of the matrix computer. He looked up and stared at Dom -

  - Dom rubbed his eyes. 'I'm sorry,' he said. A few seconds later he tried to remember what he had seen during that moment of contact, but it had gone now, leaving only an impression of greatness and understanding.

  'Thank you,' said Ig quietly. 'You see, people expect an advanced race to land in golden ships and say, "Throw away your weapons, cease fighting among yourselves, and join the great galactic brotherhood." It isn't like that. Young races do that.'

  'What happens now?'

  'Now?'

  . . . we will meet you, came the thought. Together, perhaps, we will see the universe as it really is. And when we meet you, we will do so as equals. We are all mere sub-species of the one race of bright sun dwellers, after all. And the whole is infinitely greater than the sum of the parts. Now...

  'Now,' said Ig, 'we will talk.'

  The fleet hung against the shimmering bulk of Widdershins. Other ships were flashing into existence all through the system, as the followers homed in on the interspace shadow. The radio was a gabble of many tongues.

  'They're going to fight it out!' moaned Joan. 'Oh my God, they're going to fight!'

  The control deck of the Earth command ship was dominated by the big state-of-space circlescreen. They watched the incoming ships form a rough pattern. Their commanders had been doing some very rapid diplomacy.

  Asman walked over from one of the control desks, shaking his head.

  'I'm sorry,' he began. 'Widdershins eh? Are you Widdershines Jokers, then? You were only a small colony to begin with, it's not inconceivable . . . '

  The ship trembled. Something was rising out of interspace, a great bulk with a voice that boomed through the pickup system.

  'ho there! i will prosecute economic sanctions AGAINST THE FIRST RACE TO MAKE AN AGGRESSIVE ACT!'

  The Bank took up a watchful orbit closer in towards See-Why.

  Dom slid back the hatch of the small ship and stepped out into space.

  He walked carefully, unsure of his footing, and stopped a dozen metres from the ship. The faintest of shimmers hung around him. He was holding something in his outstretched hands.

  Ig stood up on his ridiculous hind pair of legs and spoke.

  In the command ships lights dimmed, circuitry blew out and the walls trembled to the roar of the sound.

  There was a short pause. Then the little Joker lowered his voice. The message was clearer then, but almost as devastating. It was: Land. We, the Jokers, the galaxy-striders, the star-shapers, ask it.

  You have a great deal to teach us.

  * * *

  After a struggle Dom pacified the wild windshell and coaxed it around towards the shore.

  Five miles away, by the joke that was the Joker's Tower, more ships were landing. Quietly, trying to avoid catching each other's visual apparatus, the fifty-two races were making their way into the swamp.

  Dom had left Ig seated in the mud, the focus of a wide and growing ring of listeners. And other Igs were dog-paddling along the water lanes. Something new was going to happen to the universe. It would involve all the races. They were, after all, only aspects of the one great race of thinking creatures - the dwellers on the bright side of the sun. It would take time, but one day something would come back out of interest to Widdershins, in the dank swamp, and say: it began here.

  But just for once - for twice - Dom was playing truant. Though there was still one duty to perform. Balancing on the rocking shell he removed the stopper from the small bottle and tipped its contents into the sea. Then carefully, to avoid the shell's stings, he stuck his head into the water to hear, far off and faint, the words Thank you in sea-noise.

  He looked back to the distant beach. A figure had wandered down to the surf line, wrapped in a golden glow. She was watching him thoughtfully.

&
nbsp; Dom urged the shell through the breakers. Now, he thought, we will listen.

  THE END

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