Orbitsville Trilogy

by Bob Shaw

  "Captain Garamond,' Mason shouted above the background noise, 'I can't tell you how much …'

  Garamond shook his head. "We'll talk later. Have you a car?'

  "It's outside.'

  "I've got to get out of here right now.'

  Mason hesitated. "There's official Starflight transportation laid on.'

  "Remember the first day we met, Colbert? You needed wheels in a hurry and I… .'

  "Come on.' Mason lowered his head and went through the crowd like an ice-breaking ship with Garamond, hampered by the bulk of the suit, struggling in his wake. In a matter of seconds they had reached a white vehicle which had "TWO WORLDS NEWS AGENCY' blazoned on its side in orange letters. The two men got in, watched by the retinue which had followed them from the hall, and Mason got the vehicle moving.

  "Where to?' he said.

  "The Octagon – as fast as this thing will go.'

  "Okay, but I'm not welcome out there. The guards won't let this car in.'

  'I'm not welcome either, but we're going in just the same.' Garamond began working on the zips of the spacesuit.

  That was a good line to hand the Press, he thought as the yammerings of panic began to build up. That was an authentic general-purpose man of action speaking. Why do I do these things? Why don't I let him know I'm scared shitless? It might make things easier…

  Mason hunched over the wheel as he sped them through the industrial environs of the city. 'This is the part you flattened, but they rebuilt it just as ugly as ever.'

  'They would.'

  'Can you tell me what's going on?'

  Garamond hesitated. 'Sorry, Colbert – not yet.'

  'I just wondered.'

  'Either way, you're going to get another big story.'

  'Hell, I know that much already. I just wondered … as a friend.'

  'I appreciate the friendship, but I can't talk till I'm sure.'

  'It's all right,' Mason said. 'We'll be there in less than ten minutes.'

  For the rest of the short drive Garamond concentrated on removing the spacesuit. In the confines of the car it was an exhausting, frustrating task which he welcomed because it enabled his mind to hold back the tides of fear. By the time he had finally worked himself free the octagonal building which housed the Starflight Centre was looming on a hilltop straight ahead, and he could see the perimeter fence with its strolling guards. As the car gained height, and greater stretches of the surrounding grasslands came into view, Garamond saw that there was also a northern approach road to the Octagon. Another vehicle, still several kilometres away, was speeding down it, trailing a plume of saffron dust. It was too far away for him to distinguish the black-and-silver Starflight livery, but on the instant a steel band seemed to clamp around his chest, denying him air. He stared wordlessly at the massive gate of the west entrance which was beginning to fill the car's windshield. The car slowed down as guards emerged from their kiosk.

  'Go straight through it,' Garamond urged. 'Don't slow down.'

  'It's no use,' Mason said. 'It would take a tank to batter down that gate – we'd both be killed. We'll just have to talk our way in.'

  'Talk?' Garamond looked north and saw that the other vehicle seemed to be approaching with the speed of an aircraft. 'There's no time for talking.'

  He leaped from the car as soon as it had slid to a halt and ran to the kiosk at the side of the gate. A sun-visored guard emerged, carrying a rifle, and stared warily at Garamond's stained travesty of a Starflight uniform.

  'State your business,' he said, at the same time making a signal to the other two guards who were seated inside.

  'I'm Captain Garamond of the Stellar Exploration Arm. Open the gate immediately.'

  'I don't know if I can do that, Captain.'

  "You've heard of me, haven't you? You know who I am?'

  'I know who you are, Captain, but that doesn't mean I should let you in. Have you an authorization?'

  'Authorization?' Garamond considered putting on a display of righteous indignation, but decided it would not work coming from a man who looked like a hobo. He smiled and pointed at the dust-devil which was now within a kilometre of the northern gate. 'There's my authorization. President Lindstrom is in that car, coming here specially to meet me.'

  'How do I know that's true?'

  'You'll know when she finds out you wouldn't let me through. I think I'll go back to my car and watch what happens.' Garamond turned away.

  'Just a minute.' The guard gave Garamond a perplexed look. 'You can come in, but that other guy stays where he is.'

  Garamond shrugged and walked straight at the gate. It rolled out of his way just in time, then he was inside the perimeter and heading for the Octagon's west entrance door, not more than a hundred paces away. A second before it was lost to view behind the flank of the building, he glimpsed the other car arriving at the north gate. It was black and silver, and he was able to see a pale feminine figure in the shaded interior. The certainty of being too late made his heart lapse into an unsteady, lumping rhythm. He was breaking into a run, regardless of what the watchful patrolmen might think, when his attention was caught by a flicker of movement as a window opened in the transparent wall of the uppermost floor. Again he picked out a womanly figure, but this time it was that of his wife. And she was looking down at him.

  He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted. 'Aileen! Can you hear me?'

  'Vance!' Her voice was faint and tremulous, almost lost in the updraft at the sheer wall.

  'Pick up Christopher and bring him down to this door as fast as you can.' He indicated the nearby entrance. 'Did you get that?'

  'Yes – I'm coming down.'

  Aileen vanished from the window. Garamond went to the door, held it open and saw a short deserted corridor with four openings on each side. He debated trying to find stairs or elevator shaft, then decided that if he tried to meet Aileen part way he might miss her. Elizabeth was bound to be in the building by this time and on her way up to the private suite. Aileen and Christopher should be on their way down – but supposing there was only one central stairwell and they met Elizabeth head on? Garamond entered a chill dimension of time in which entire galaxies were created and destroyed between each thunderous beat of his heart. He tried to think constructively, but all that was left to him was the ability to be afraid, to feel pain and terror and…

  One of the corridor doors burst open. He caught a flash of brown skin and multi-coloured silks, then Aileen was in his arms. We've made it, Garamond exulted. We're all going to live.

  'Is it really you?' Aileen's face was cool and tear-wet against his own. 'Is it really you, Vance?'

  'Of course, darling. There's no time to talk now. We've got to get…' Garamond's voice was stilled as he made the discovery. 'Where's Christopher?'

  Aileen looked at him blankly. 'He's upstairs in his bed. He was asleep…'

  'But I told you to bring him!'

  'Did you? I can't think …' Aileen's eyes widened. 'What's wrong?'

  'She's gone up there to get Chris. I told you to . …' Voices sounded behind him and Garamond's hunting eyes saw that two guards had followed him almost to the entrance. They had stopped and were looking upwards at the building. Holding Aileen by the wrist, Garamond ran to them and turned. High up within the transparent wall, where Aileen had been a minute earlier, Elizabeth Lindstrom was standing, pearly abdomen pressed against the clear plastic. She stared downwards, screened by reflected clouds, and raised one arm in languorous triumph.

  Garamond rounded on the nearest guard and, with a single convulsive movement, snatched the rifle from his shoulder and sent him sprawling. He thumbed the safety catch off, selected maximum power and raised the weapon, just in time to see Elizabeth step backwards away from the wall, into shelter. Garamond's eyes triangulated on his wife's ashen face.

  'Is Christopher's room on this side of the building?'

  'Yes. I…'

  'Where is it? Show me the exact place?'

  Aileen po
inted at a wall section two to the left of where Elizabeth had been standing. The fallen guard got to his feet and came forward with outstretched hands, while his companion stood by uncertainly. Garamond pointed at the power setting on the rifle, showing it to be at the lethal maximum. The guard backed off shaking his head. Garamond raised the weapon again, aimed carefully and squeezed the trigger. The needle-fine laser ray pierced the transparent plastic and, as he swung the rifle, took out an irregular smoking area which tumbled flashing to the ground. A second later, as Garamond had prayed it would, a small pyjama-clad figure appeared at the opening. Christopher Garamond rubbed his eyes, peering sleepily into space. Garamond dropped the rifle and ran forward, waving his arms.

  'Jump, Christopher, jump!' The sound of his hoarse, frightened voice almost obliterated the thought: He won't do it; nobody would do it. 'Come on, son – I'll catch you.'

  Christopher drew back his shoulders. A pale shape appeared behind him, grasping. Christopher jumped cleanly through the opening, into sunlit air.

  As had happened once before, on a quiet terrace on Earth, Garamond saw the childish figure falling and turning, falling and turning, faster and faster. As had happened once before, he found himself running in a slow-motion nightmare, wading, struggling through molasses-thick tides of air. He sobbed his despair as he lunged forward.

  Something solid and incredibly weighty hit him on the upper chest, tried to smash his arms from their sockets. He went down into dusty grass rolling with the priceless burden locked against his body. From a corner of his eye he saw a flash of laser fire stab downwards and expire harmlessly. Garamond stood up, treasuring the feel of the boy's arms locked around his neck.

  'All right, son?' he whispered. 'All right?'

  Christopher nodded and pressed his face into Garamond's shoulder, clinging like a baby. Garamond estimated he was beyond the effective range of Elizabeth's ring weapons and ran towards the gate without looking back at the Lindstrom Centre. Aileen, who had been standing with her hands over her mouth, ran with him until they had reached the perimeter. The guards, frozen within their kiosk, watched them with uncomprehending eyes. Colbert Mason was standing beside his car holding up a scene recorder. He glanced at a dial on the side of the machine.

  'That took two minutes all but fifteen seconds,' he said admiringly, then kissed the recorder ecstatically. 'And it was all good stuff.'

  "The best is yet to come,' Garamond assured him, as they crowded into the car.

  Garamond, made sensitive to the nature of the benevolent trap, never again went far into the interior of Orbitsville.

  Not even when Elizabeth Lindstrom had been deposed and removed from all contact with society; not even when the Starflight enterprise had made way for communal transport schemes as natural and all-embracing as the yearly migration of birds to warmer climes; not even when geodesic networks of commerce were stretched across the outer surface of Orbitsville.

  He chose to live with his family on the edges of space, from which viewpoint he could best observe, and also forget, that time was drawing to a close for the rest of humanity.

  Time is a measurement of change, evolution is a product of competition – concepts which were without meaning or relevance in the context of the Big O. Absolved of the need to fight or flee, to feel hunger or fear, to build or destroy, to hope or to dream, humanity had to cease being human – even though metamorphosis could not take place within a single season.

  During Garamond's lifetime there was a last flare-up of that special kind of organized activity which, had Man not been drawn like a wasp into the honeypot, might have enabled his descendants to straddle the universe. There was a magical period when, centred on a thousand star-pools, a thousand new nations were born. All of them felt free to develop and flower in their own separate ways, but all were destined to become as one under the influence of Orbitsville's changeless savannahs.

  In time even the flickerwing ships ceased to ply the trade lanes between the entrance portals, because there can be no reward for the traveller when departure point cannot be distinguished from destination.

  The quietness of the last long Sunday fell over an entire region of space.

  Orbitsville had achieved its purpose.

  ORBITSVILLE

  DEPARTURE

  by

  BOB SHAW

  LONDON

  VICTOR GOLLANCZ LTD

  1983

  Chapter 1

  They had decided to spend the few hours that remained to them walking in Garamond Park.

  Dallen had been there several times before, but on this occasion his senses were heightened by a blend of excitement and apprehension. The sunlight was almost painful and colours seemed artificially intense. Beyond screens of trees the coppery roofs of the city shone with a spiky brilliance, and the nearby shrubs and flowers—gaudy as tropical plumage—seemed to burn in the sun's vertical rays. Lime-green lawns sloped down to the only feature of the scene which gave relief to the eye—a circular black lake roughly a kilometre across. Its nearer edge was obscured in part by low mounds of masonry and metal which were all that remained of an ancient fortification. Small groups of sightseers, their hats shifting ellipses of colour, sat among the ruined walls or wandered on the lake's perimeter path.

  "Let's go down there and have a look," Dallen said to his wife, impulsively taking her arm.

  Cona Dallen held back. "What's wrong? Can't you wait?"

  "We're not going to start all that again, are we?" Dallen released her arm. "I thought we had agreed."

  "It's all right for you to…" Cona paused, eyeing him sombrely, then in an abrupt change of mood she smiled and walked down the slope with him, slipping one arm around his waist. She was almost as tall as Dallen and they moved in easy unison. The feel of her body synchronising with his made him think of their prolonged session of love-making that morning. It occurred to him at once that she was deliberately working on him, reminding him of what he was giving up, and he felt a stirring of the resentment and frustration which had periodically marred their relationship for months. He repressed the emotions, making a resolution to get all he could from the hours they had left.

  They reached the path, crossed it together and leaned on the safety rail which skirted the dark rim. Dallen, shading his eyes, stared down into the blackness and a moment later he was able to see the stars.

  The surrounding brightness affected his vision to the extent that he could pick out only the principal star groupings, but he was immediately inspired with a primeval awe. He had lived all his life on the inner surface of the Orbitsville shell and therefore his only direct looks at the rest of the galaxy had come during his rare visits to this aperture. When I get to Earth, he told himself, marvelling, I'll be able to drink my fill of stars every night…

  "I don't like this," Cona said. "I feel I'm going to fall through."

  Dallen shook his head. "No danger. The diaphragm field is strong enough to take anybody's weight."

  "Meaning?" She gave him a playful shunt with her hips. "Are you suggesting I'm too heavy?"

  "Never!" Dallen gave his wife a warm glance, appreciating the good humour with which she faced her weight problems. She was fair-haired and had the kind of neat, absolutely regular features which are often associated with obesity. By careful dieting she had usually kept her weight within a few kilos of the ideal, but since the birth of their son three months earlier her straggle had been more difficult.

  The thought of Mikel and of leaving him disturbed Dallen's moment of rapport. It had taken him the best part of a year to secure the transfer to Earth, with its consequent promotion to Grade IV officer in the Metagov civil service. Cona had been aware of his plans throughout her pregnancy, but not until after the birth had she revealed her determination to remain behind on Orbitsville. Her overt reason for not accompanying him had been that Mikel was too young for the journey and the drastic change of climate, but Dallen suspected otherwise and his pride was hurt. He knew she was reluctant to lea
ve her ailing father, and also that—as a professional historian—she was deeply committed to her current book on Orbitsville's Judean settlements. The former had allowed no scope for recrimination, but the latter had been the source of many arguments which had been none the less corrosive for being disguised as rational discussion or banter. Being Jewish is like a religion with some people…

  Something huge moved in the black depths below Dallen, startling him and causing Cona to jump backwards from the rail. After a second he identified it as an interportal freighter slipping through space only fifty metres or so beneath his feet, like a silent leviathan swimming for the opposite shore of a black lake. His gaze followed the ship until it was lost in the mirages which overlay the more distant parts of the diaphragm field. At the far side of the kilometre-wide aperture was the space terminal where he would soon embark for Earth. Its passenger buildings and warehouses were a dominant feature of the scene, even though the principal installations—-the giant docking cradles for starships—projected downwards into the void and were not readily visible.

  "This place bothers me," Cona said. "Everything's more natural in Bangor."

  Dallen knew she was referring to the fact that their home town of Bangor, 16,000 kilometres into Orbitsville's interior, was situated in Earth-like hilly terrain. Its official altitude was close to a thousand metres, which meant that amount of sedimentary rock had accumulated there in the Orbitsville shell, but Dallen understood that the geological structure counted for little. Without the enclosing skin of ylem, the enigmatic material of which the vast sphere was formed, the inner layer of rock, soil and vegetation would quickly succumb to instabilities and fly apart. It was an uneasy thought, but one which disturbed only visitors and newly arrived settlers. Anybody who had been born on Orbitsville had total faith in its permanence, knew it to be more durable than mere planets.