Orbitsville Trilogy

by Bob Shaw

  The popular conception of the Big O was of a thin shell of ylem, 320 million kilometres in diameter, completely englobing a small sun, but scientists were very much aware of a second concentric sphere without which the entire system would not have been viable. It was much smaller than Orbitsville and non-material in nature, a globular filigree of force fields capable of blocking the sun's out-pourings of light and heat. It was composed of narrow strips, effectively opaque, whose function was to case great bars of shadow on the grasslands of Orbitsville, producing the alternating periods of light and darkness, day and night, necessary to the growth of vegetation. The inner sphere could not be studied directly, but its structure was observable in the bands of light and darkness moving across the far side of Orbitsville, roughly two astronomical units away. During a day period the banding showed as a delicate ribbed effect, barely noticeable, but at dusk the alternations of paler and deeper blue stood out vividly. And at night the hundreds of slim curving ribs became the dominant feature of the sky, swirling across it from two opposite points on the horizon, merging into a prismatic haze where they dipped behind denser levels of air.

  Cavendish's life—all ninety-two years of it—had been spent on Orbitsville without his tiring of its beauty or its mystery. There were many questions about the incredible construct and he had refused to become dispirited over the fact that no answers had been forthcoming in spite of all the Optima Thule Science Commission's efforts. It was an article of his personal faith that a breakthrough was bound to come, eventually, and if possible he wanted to be on hand when it happened. That was why he was clinging to his job in defiance of all efforts to make him retire. Now that Ruth was gone his work was all that was left to him, and he had no intention of giving it up for anybody. In particular, he was not going to be squeezed out by Phil Vigus, the senior technical manager, with whom he had been conducting a private feud for several years. The intrusive thought of Vigus caused him to snort with anger.

  "Thinks I'm over the hill, does he?" Cavendish said to the encompassing darkness at the eastern end of the Valley. "I'll show the schmuck who's over the hill."

  He unfolded his portable stool and sat down to rest, dismissing from his mind the stray thought that talking aloud to himself could be evidence that Vigus's claims were justified. It was a fine night, with just a few wisps of cloud drawn across the striated sapphire of the sky, and he had the place to himself. All other staff members had gone to their bungalow homes and the absence of lights on the slopes surrounding the Valley showed they were in bed and asleep. Cavendish repressed a pang of envy and regret as he recalled the deep comfort of waking in the darkness and staying awake just long enough to touch Ruth's shoulder and be reassured. They had had a good life together and he was not going to betray her at this stage by starting to feel sorry for himself. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and submerged his identity in the numinous magic of his surroundings, the glowing enigma that was Optima Thule at night.

  So many unanswered questions…

  Who had built Orbitsville? And why? Was it really an artifact, in the limited human sense of the word, or was it—as some religious thinkers maintained—evidence of a Creator who worked in diverse modes? Could it be a manifestation of Nature in a form which only seemed strange to men because of the paucity of their experience?

  As a native of Orbitsville, Cavendish was instinctively inclined to the belief that it was a natural object, yet he had always been perplexed by certain salient features. There was, for example, the question of gravity. By means which no man could begin to understand, the thin shell of ylem generated gravity on the sphere's inner surface—and none on the outer surface—which suggested that Orbitsville had been designed as a habitat. There was also the matter of the portals. To a logical being there could be only one explanation for the three bands of circular apertures. They had to be entrances—but that led to the tricky concept of God as Engineer.

  Some could accept that idea easily; others objected on the grounds that divine engineering should be divinely perfect, whereas there were unaccountable irregularities connected with the portals. Orbitsville itself was exactly spherical, a symmetry to satisfy any theologian, but why were there 207 portals on the equator instead of some number more suggestive of ethereal harmony? Why were the northern and southern bands not at precisely the same latitude, and why were there 173 portals in the former and only 168 in the latter? Furthermore, why did the portals themselves vary a little in size and spacing?

  The arguments had been raging for two centuries, with numerologists in particular mining their richest lode since the heyday of the Great Pyramid, but nothing was settled. Spherology continued with its record of non-achievement. Nobody understood why radio communications were impossible within the Big O. Nobody had analysed the mechanisms which kept the great shell in a stable relationship with the enclosed sun and its remote outer planet. Cavendish was an inorganic chemist and therefore was not professionally concerned with the problems of macro-spherology, but on the personal level he had his yearning for an advance, even a single step forward, to be made in the time that was left to him. It would compensate for the forty-plus years of frustration he had experienced since coming to the Valley.

  His lean frame balanced uneasily on the stool, Cavendish gazed along the line of buildings floating on their lake of ink. Some had been stripped down and rebuilt several times as series of experiments were terminated and others took their places. A number of the buildings and machines had inverted counterparts of themselves, like mirror images, clinging to the outside of the Orbitsville shell and positioned by dead reckoning from the edge of the nearest portal. Although separated from each other by a mere eight centimetres of ylem, no machine had ever been able to communicate with its opposite number. Cavendish was usually positive in his outlook, but there were times when he suspected that his field of endeavour, shell structure, was the least promising in the Commission's programme.

  On a night like this, when the breeze was cool and it was difficult to remember his wife's voice, he could believe that more centuries would pass before ylem yielded any of its secrets—and by then it might be too late. Mankind would have dispersed into and been absorbed by Orbitsville's infinite meadows. A thousand times a thousand rural tribes would be permanently busy re-inventing the steam and internal combustion engines, and would have no use for the blueprints of the ultimate machine.

  Cavendish gave a low sigh, deciding that he should be in bed. He got to his feet and was stooping to pick up the stool when the surface on which he was standing blinked with green radiance. A line of light, glowing on the full width of the Valley's floor, swept by him, travelled the length of the strip and vanished at its western end in a fraction of a second.

  "What the…!" Cavendish stared into the familiar backdrop of night, suddenly feeling unsafe.

  He had lived all his life on the Orbitsville shell and knew the material to be totally inert, changeless, more stable by far than any planetary crust. It was not supposed to pulse with green light … because if that could happen other changes might occur … and he could almost feel the ylem dissolving beneath his feet … hurling his unprepared and unprotected body downwards and outwards … into the space between the stars…

  Mark Denmark was obviously unhappy. He squared up various stacks of paper on his desk, frowning all the while, then went to the window of his office and rocked on the balls of his feet while he inspected the view. The Valley and its wide-eaved buildings and the surrounding slopes reflected the sun's vertical rays, looking exactly as they always did, embalmed in brilliance which had an ancient Egyptian quality to it. Denmark shook his head as though something outside had failed to pass muster, returned to his chair and began tapping his front teeth with a pen.

  "Dan, we've checked every read-out from every instrument," he finally said. "There aren't any spikes. There aren't any blips or dips. In fact, there is simply no trace of any abnormal event."

  "That's not surprising—consi
dering we don't have any photometers aimed at the shell." Cavendish spoke in a matter-of-fact voice, concealing his disappointment over the lack of corroborative readings. He had been awake ail night, voyaging on mental oceans of surmise, elated by the near-certainty that the science of spherology was about to take that long-awaited step forward. Now it was beginning to look as though he had taken a step backwards, lost ground in the battle over his delayed retirement.

  Denmark leaned forward, hunching his shoulders. "Dan, I don't need to tell you that light can't come into being by itself. What you described sounded like an excitation phenomenon, but nothing got excited—except maybe your optic nerves."

  "I'm perfectly healthy," Cavendish snapped. "Don't try that stuff on me."

  "I'm only trying to stop you making a pig's ass of yourself. If you insist on your report going on log you'll draw a lot of attention, then you'll really find out what it's like to be under pressure. Christ, Dan, if everybody else can accept retirement at eighty, why can't you?"

  "Because I'm not ready."

  "Ready or not, one of these days … The Commission can insist, you know."

  Cavendish glanced around the office in feigned surprise. "Have I come to the wrong place? Are you the chief scientist or the personnel manager?"

  Denmark's grey eyes clouded with annoyance and his mouth withered into a thin line. Watching the change of expression, Cavendish wondered if he had gone too far. Denmark was a natural researcher whose temperament had been poisoned by the constant struggle to keep all his projects functioning on dwindling budgets, and in the past months he had become moody and unpredictable. All it takes is one word from him, Cavendish thought, becoming alarmed. Just one interoffice memo and I'm out in the cold with nothing but…

  "Good morning, men!"

  The unexpected voice, coming from the open door, provided what Cavendish hoped would be a welcome diversion. He turned towards it and his spirits sank as he saw the stubby, bull-necked form of his old adversary, technical manager Phil Vigus, entering the office. Vigus, who was ultimately responsible for the reliability of all equipment, took every complaint as a personal insult—a trait which had often brought him into conflict with Cavendish. He had long regarded Cavendish as a cantankerous geriatric, and at that particular moment was the last person Cavendish wanted to see.

  "Take a seat, Phil," Denmark said. "I'm glad you dropped by."

  "Really?" Vigus lowered his bulk into a chair. "What have I got that you want?"

  Denmark gave him a cold fleeting smile. "You've got millions of monits' worth of equipment strung out along the Valley, and I've just been informed by Mr. Cavendish here—who else?—that it's a load of crap. I used to think the shell material was inert, didn't you? Well, apparently ylem can become so agitated that it lights up like a traffic sign, and not one of your piss-poor instruments even gives a quiver. What do you think of that?"

  "That's not what I said," Cavendish protested, shocked by the sheer crudity of Denmark's attack and deducing from it that he had landed himself in a genuine crisis. This was a tailor-made chance for Vigus to come down on him with both feet, to add his managerial clout to that of Denmark. Both men working in unison could have him issued with his walking papers in a couple of hours.

  "I presume, from the scuttlebut I picked up this morning, that we're talking about Dan's wonderful green flash." Vigus's lips twitched in amusement. "They're already calling it his nocturnal emission."

  "That's it," Denmark said gleefully, and having been presented with a joke went on, as humourless people do, to run it ragged. "Some people get hot flushes at night—Dan gets green flashes. What do you say, doc? Is it a serious ailment?"

  "I can tell you one thing about it." Vigus stared hard at Cavendish for a second, eyes unreadable, his expression curiously benign.

  Executioner's compassion, Cavendish thought. Here comes the big knife.

  "Tell me the worst," Denmark prompted.

  "It's infectious," Vigus said. His tone was calm, very neutral, but Cavendish felt a premonition.

  Denmark looked disappointed. "What does that mean?"

  "I read a lot of reliability reports, from all over., Not just on research equipment, on nearly anything.

  Three weeks or so ago a pilot called Jean Antony baled out of an old freighter on the equatorial run, close to 156. The ship apparently was a deathtrap, nothing working right, and she got herself ejected downwards. Her capsule actually grazed the shell before it was recovered, so it was a near-miracle she got out of it alive." Vigus paused for an unnecessarily long time, still looking at Cavendish.

  "Stirring stuff," Denmark said drily, "but I don't…

  "Just before the collision Jean Antony saw a green flash. Just like Dan's. She described it in her accident report, but nobody paid any heed. It was written off as nerves or a stray reflection on the capsule's transparencies."

  Denmark nodded. "I'd say nerves—you know what women are like."

  "This one saw a thin band of green radiance moving fast across the shell from east to west," Vigus asserted. "Something is happening, Mark—something very unusual—and the sooner you report Dan's observations to Commission HQ the more credit you'll be able to grab for yourself."

  "I'd like to thank you," Cavendish said to Vigus as they left the admin building together. "If you hadn't chimed in when you did … Mark was all set to dump me, you know."

  "He'd only have been forced to take you back on again, after you'd become famous." Vigus grinned in the vertical prism of shadow cast by his coolie-style hat. "You're going to be insufferable enough as it is."

  "Thanks a lot," Cavendish said, pretending to be insulted, but feeling better inside than he had done at any time in the three years since his wife had died. Life, it would seem, still had something to offer.

  Chapter 8

  Dallen took the little patrol ship to a height of eight thousand metres—enough to render it invisible from the ground—and drifted in over Cordele from the north. About a third of the built-up area had been destroyed by old fires, but from the air large tracts looked almost as they would have done forty years earlier when the city was being officially deregistered. Only the high proportion of greenery, obliterating the street patterns in some places, hinted at the progressive decay which would eventually erase all obvious signs of habitation. Armies of wood-boring insects were hard at work down there, tidying up the stage for the benefit of future performers.

  The map projected on the navigation screen beside Dallen was decades out of date—in the eyes of the Metagov cartographers Cordele no longer existed—but it was adequate for his purpose. He touched a button which activated the ship's scanning system and a bright red dot appeared in the middle of a western suburb. It was standard procedure with the Madison police to radio tag some personal item belonging to detainees, often a belt buckle, and now the coded signal was telling Dallen exactly where he would find the man he was hunting.

  He watched the glowing speck long enough to assure himself it was not moving, then swung the ship into a curving path which took it out across the blurry-edged strip of solder which was the Flint River. Twenty kilometres west of the city Dallen made a rapid descent through the heavy water-logged air, watching the atlas-page sweep of territory below him expand to become a sunlit reality clothed with vegetation which moved visibly with changes in the wind. At a height of only a few metres he skimmed eastwards, taking advantage of every irregularity in the terrain to hide his approach to the city. The outer ring of abandoned restaurants, motels and commercial buildings appeared ahead of him, many of the structures completely obscured by kudzu vines. Dallen threaded the ship through them in silence, bringing it as close to his destination as he dared, and grounded by the sheared-off side of a small hill.

  He studied the map display for a moment, noting that he was some three kilometres from his target, then took off a print which he folded and put away in his pocket. He was confident that he could go straight to Beaumont without extra guidance, but retu
rning to the ship might not be so simple and he wanted to minimise the risk of getting lost. After checking various pieces of equipment, including his sidearm and quarry finder, he slid the pilot door open and stepped down onto a thick carpet of moss and ground-hugging creepers. Going by the book, he should have retracted the slim tubes of its wing field generators before leaving the ship unattended, but in the interests of a quick getaway he chose not to do so. Nobody was likely to chance upon the ship and in any case the tubes, which were the only vulnerable part, had been freshly coated with repellant paint.

  It was a little past noon and a thickly murmurous heat lay over the surroundings, the main elements of which were overgrown shrubs and ruinous single-storey houses. A plastic-skinned microbus stood nearby, contriving to look almost serviceable after more than forty years, except for the tree which had grown up through the engine compartment.

  Dallen set off in the direction of the city centre, walking quickly, checking his progress with those street signs which were still legible. The tension that was growing within him manifested itself in his increasing jumpiness. He fought it by refusing to think about what lay ahead, absorbing images of his environment, turning himself into a camera. Concrete light poles had crumbled here and there, doubling over and exposing ferrous brown veins. Some houses which had looked quite intact from a distance were revealed as mere clay overlays erected by termites, the enclosed timbers long since digested. On the window of a store, miraculously still intact, some long-departed humourist had sprayed the words, GONE TO LAUNCH.

  Dallen experienced a growing sense of bafflement. Why did people cling on in places like this? He knew there were parts of the world where human labour had again become valuable, where the petty chieftains of the new age—men who could feel their power growing as Orbitsville lost interest in Earth—prevented their slave-subjects from taking the big trip. But it had always had always been different on the NorAm continent-—so why had a few chosen to remain behind in conditions like this? Question to be taken literally: what on Earth possessed them? Dallen cursed as the words of the old song, the one he had always disliked, paraded behind his eyes…