by Bob Shaw
Suddenly Lessen's voice, augmented by his command transmitter, cut through the din. "Quiet, please! As you will have noticed, our suit radios operate on a common frequency. Stop all unnecessary talk immediately, otherwise … Well, I'm sure you can all see the need for speed and efficiency… His voice was lost in a renewed burst of sound which was followed at once by a guilty near-silence.
Dallen became aware of the inner skin of his suit tightening itself against his limbs. A few seconds later a different set of lights began to flash on the outer wall of the chamber and he realised he was surrounded by vacuum. The uneasy novelty of the experience faded from his mind as the airlocks's outer doors parted to admit a shaft of sunlight beaming out of a breathtaking blue sky.
Until that moment Dallen had thought of the ship as hovering above the outer surface of Orbitsville—now, with a mind-wrenching shift of perception, he found himself peering upwards. The portal was a one-kilometre lake of blackness set amid Orbitsville's endless pampas, a circular well of stars, and anybody standing at its edge and looking downwards would see the Hawkshead as a huge submarine trapped below the surface. Inhabitants of the Big O lived with stars beneath their feet.
There was a multiple gasp of surprise from the assembled company as the airlock doors retreated fully and a section of the Orbitsville shell became visible at one side of the rectangular opening. It had an alien aspect, one never before seen by human eyes. In place of the inert and non-reflective darkness was a sheet of pale green radiance of an intensity which almost equalled that of the interior sky. The light was pulsing in a way that made the shell seem alive. Dallen stared at it, strickenly, filled with superstitious awe.
Orbitsville doesn't catch fire for nothing, he thought.
It's all part of a … What frequency of pulsing did Renard mention? Was it once a second? Surely what I'm seeing is faster than once a second…
There was a flurry of activity near the edge of the airlock and the white-armoured figure of a man flew from the ship towards the portal, a line uncoiling behind him. He traversed the open space in only a few seconds, but missed the portal's edge by a short distance and Dallen saw him rebound from the invisible surface of the diaphragm field. He twisted sideways, with the brief flaring of a reaction torch, and managed to catch hold of a short ladder which was clamped to the edge. He went up it, visibly forcing himself through the field's spongy resistance, and other men—dressed normally, moving freely in Orbitsville's airy, sunlit warmth—were seen momentarily as they helped him to safety. There was a spontaneous cheer from the watchers below.
He made it, Dallen thought bemusedly. He made it, and it was so easy, and everything is going to be all right, after all…
"That single line is enough for our purpose," Lessen announced. "We will move along it hand-over-hand, starting with the supernumeraries. Attach yourself to the line with one of the short tethers you will find at your waists. There will be no difficulty, so don't worry. Now let's go!"
Dallen moved forward through the crowd with his weightless human encumbrances, steadied and assisted by willing hands. Ahead of him, figures were already linked to and ascending the line. Captain Lessen, distinguished by red triangles on his shoulders, was positioned at the rim of the airlock, personally checking that each departing passenger was properly clipped to the line. The direct sunlight glittered through crystal helmets and Dallen was able to recognise Silvia just as she set off across the void, closely followed by Renard. She went upwards towards their promised land with the fluid athleticism he would have expected.
The last passenger due to go before Dallen reached the bottom of the line was Gerald Mathieu. While his tether was being checked he gazed fixedly at Dallen, but without any sign of recognition, his face as colourless and immobile as marble. Without glancing into the starry gulf at his feet, he gripped the line and went up it slowly like a patient machine, barely advancing one hand beyond the other. Dallen. tried to clip Cona on next, but Lessen prevented him.
"It'll be easier if you go first and bring your wife along behind you," Lessen said. "How is she?"
"Asleep on her feet."
"Just as well. Don't worry—we'll get her there."
"Thanks." With Lessen's help, Dallen linked himself to Cona at the waist, then connected both of them to the lifeline. The crib tethered to his waist was an additional complication, but the absence of weight and rope friction worked in his favour and he found it surprisingly easy to progress upwards with his two human satellites. Mikel had stopped sobbing and was staring placidly through the transparent panel of his ovoid. Dallen tried to concentrate all his attention on the sunlit blue sanctuary above, but there was a hungry blackness all around him and—even more distracting—the Orbitsville shell seemed to have grown brighter. The light from it was so intense as to interfere with vision, but the superimposed pulsing seemed to have increased its frequency to two or three times a second.
At this rate it will soon be continuous, Dallen thought, the first ice crystal of a new dread forming at the centre of his being. What will happen then?
He was now near the midpoint of the lifeline and was so close to Orbitsville that he could see the minutest details of what was happening at the edge of the portal. He saw Silvia and Renard, aided by other hands, force their way through the closure field and stand up, figures greatly foreshortened. Silvia removed her helmet immediately and he saw her breasts rise as she drew deeply upon Orbitsville's pure air. She stood at the very run of space, her face troubled as she looked downwards in his direction. Dallen tried to climb faster and made the discovery that he had caught up on Gerald Mathieu, who had stopped moving and was clenching the line with both fists,
"Mathieu! What the hell are you doing? Dallen positioned his helmet close to Mathieu's, looked closely into his face and recoiled as he saw the blind white crescents of the eyes and the fixed, frozen grin.
Captain Lessen's voice sounded clearly above a background hubbub. "What's happening up there?"
"It's Mathieu," Dallen replied. "I think he's dead. He's either dead or cataleptic."
"Christ! Can you push him ahead of you?"
"I'll try." Aware of the people below him on the line crowding nearer, Dallen gripped the nearer of Mathieu's gloved hands and tried to prise the rigid fingers open. Then he gasped in purest terror as the impossible happened.
The universe split into separate halves.
On Dallen's left, below him, was the partially sunlit bulk of the ship, looming against the spangled backdrop of the galaxy. Down there he could see the red-glowing rectangle of the airlock, with spacesuited figures awaiting their turn to ascend the lifeline. Lessen was peering up at him, one hand raised to screen his eyes from Orbitsville's sun.
On Dallen's right, above him, was the inconceivable hugeness of Orbitsville itself. Up there, in one segment of his vision, he could see Silvia London and others outlined against a delicately ribbed blue sky. The remainder of his field of view on that side was taken up by the awesome green brilliance of the shell material, pulsing now at a frenetic rate, many times a second.
But in the centre, separating the two hemispheres of the universe, was a layer of utter blackness. It was narrow—barely wide enough to contain Mathieu, Dallen and his family—but he understood with an uncanny clarity that it stretched from one boundary of the cosmos to the other, that it was a dimension apart, at a remove from the normal continuum.
How…? Thought processes were painfully slow in the cryogenic chill that had descended over his brain. How can I understand what I shouldn't be able to understand?
A figure moved in the black stratum ahead of him, perhaps close, perhaps very distant. It was elongated, unlikely to be humanoid, and almost impossible to see—black sketched on black, a glass sculpture concealed in clear water.
Have no fear, Garry Dallen. Its voice was not a voice, but a thought implanted in Dallen's mind, perceived by him in the form of words, but cognisable beyond the limits of language. I serve Life, and therefore yo
u will not be harmed. Let it be known to you that I am a member of a race which has almost complete mobility in time and space. We are the ultimate embodiment of intelligent life. A meaningful comparison cannot be made, but you would say that we are farther ahead of humans in our evolution than humans are compared to, say, trilobites. We do not apply a generic name to ourselves, but a convenient noun for your use—fashioned according to your linguistic principles—is Ultan. I repeat that we Ultans are servants of Life, and there is no reason for you to be afraid.
I can't help being afraid, Dallen responded. Nothing could have prepared me for this.
That is true. Chance has placed you in what may be a unique situation, but its duration will be very brief even by your standards—only a matter of seconds. All we require of you is that you do not break Gerald Mathieu's grip on the line or in any way force him towards the instrument you know as Orbitsville.
Why? What is happening? Even as he formulated the questions Dallen understood that he had already been altered by his mental contact with the other being. The mere fact of his being rational and self-controlled in the circumstances indicated that he had borrowed, no matter how temporarily, inhuman attributes from the dweller in the black dimension. He also understood that what his mind structure forced him to interpret as a human-style sequential dialogue was a near-instantaneous transfer of knowledge.
You are a fellow servant of Life, came the reply, and the ethic demands that you be informed of matters concerning your existence.
Be warned, Garry Dallen! The intervention by a different Ultan "voice" jolted Dallen, drawing his attention to another quadrant of the layer of blackness in which he was framed. As the second Ultan invaded his mind he saw it moving, blackness modifying blackness, a barely perceptible presence.
You are about to be given a false interpretation of the Ethic, the later arrival continued. I urge you to reject it and all its implications.
Wait! The human must now be allowed to reach his own conclusion and act accordingly, the first Ultan countered.
I concede that, in our present situation of deadlock, no other course is possible, but the Ethic requires that you present him with facts only. You must not influence his judgement.
I am content to let reason be my advocate.
As am I—it can only be to my advantage.
Dallen sensed he was listening to implacable enemies, beings who had long been engaged in some awesome struggle and who were reluctant to arrange an armistice. While their attention was concentrated on each other he became aware of the figure of Mathieu clamped rigidly by his hands to the line just above him, and the essential mystery of what was happening grew deeper. The first Ultan wanted to prevent Mathieu reaching Orbitsville—but why? What could be the…?
Garry Dallen, an agreement has been reached. Dallen's individuality was again lost in that of the entity which had first made him aware of it. The circumstances of our meeting will be fully explained to you so that you may choose to obey the Ethic in the full light of reason.
As a foundation upon which to build your understanding, let it be known to you that the universe you inhabit is not Totality. I can see, though, that you have already encountered ideas relevant to this subject, and therefore I shall use compatible language.
It is necessary for you to know that at the instant of the Primal Event, known to you as the Big Bang, four universes are created. The one you inhabit—Region I in the terminology of some of your philosophers—appears to you to be constructed of normal matter and to have a positive time flow. It is counterbalanced by another universe—Region II—which from your viewpoint is composed of antimatter and has negative time flow. The Region II universe is moving farther and farther into your past, although its inhabitants naturally regard their matter as normal and their time flow as positive. They can never observe your universe, but they would conceive of it as being composed of antimatter and travelling into their past.
In addition, as postulated by some of your cosmogonists, there is Region III—a tachyon universe, which is rushing ahead of your universe in time; and there is Region IV—an anti-tachyon universe, which is fleeing into your past ahead of Region II. In the natural scheme of things, the four universes are not due to confront each other until the curvature of the space-time continuum brings them all together again—at which point there will be yet another Big Bang and a new cycle will begin again.
Dallen caught a memory-glimpse of a fantastic glass mosaic with its intricate petals. I confirm that these ideas are not new to me, although I personally cannot cope with the concept of time itself being curved.
The phrase "time itself" is at the heart of your difficulty, but it is enough for you to accept my statement. We Ultans are inhabitants of Region III, your tachyon universe, and our mobility in time and space gives us an overwhelming advantage in dealing with such concepts.
But I am more puzzled than before, Dallen responded. You have explained nothing.
The groundwork has to be extensive. It follows from what I have said that the universes created by each Big Bang have to be closed universes. The attractive force in each universe has to be strong enough to recall its myriad galaxies from the limit of their outward flight, thus reassembling all the matter in the cosmos in preparation for the next Big Bang.
Were it not so, all the galaxies would continue to disperse. Eventually they would grow cold, and would die, and absolute darkness would descend over a cosmos which consisted of black cinders drifting outwards into infinite blackness. There would he no more cycles of cosmic renewal. Life would have ended for ever.
All that is clear to me. Dallen, in his altered state of consciousness, was aware of his infant son gazing with darkly rapt eyes from the interior of his egg-like crib. But, still, nothing has been explained.
The reason for our intervention in your affairs is this. After an unknown number of comic cycles an imbalance has developed. We have learned that Region II is an open universe. It cannot contract. It is destined to expand for ever, and without the contribution of its matter the nature of the next Big Bang will be radically altered. We foresee a catastrophic disruption of the cycle of cosmic renewal.
Dallen strove to concern himself with the fate of an anti-matter universe which had come into being perhaps twenty billion years earlier and had been travelling into the past ever since. How would such an imbalance occur? If the mass of the Region II universe is equal to this one its gravitation must be…
But gravity is not all, Garry Dallen. There is another and equally vital force which can augment and influence gravity, which can permeate and inform matter.
Dallen, transcending himself, made the intuitive leap. Mind!
That is so. The graviton and the mindon have a clear structural affinity, though it is one you are not yet equipped to understand. There is a major difference, however. Gravity is an inherent, universal and unavoidable property of matter—whereas mind arises locally and uncertainly, by chance, when there is sufficient complexity in the organisation of matter, and when other conditions are favourable. It then propagates throughout galactic structures, enhancing the chances of mind arising elsewhere, and at the same time potentiating the action of gravity.
Most of your philosophers regard mankind as insignificant in the cosmic scheme, but your race and a million others are the cement which binds universes together. It is the thinker in the quietness of his study who draws the remotest galaxies back from the shores of night.
So Karal London was on the right track! There was no time for Dallen to be swamped by awe—the information exchanges continued at remorseless speed. You are telling me that mind did not flourish in the Region II universe.
That is correct. The conditions were never favourable. Even we Ultans cannot say why, but the probability of that situation arising naturally is so low that we suspect a malign intervention at an early stage of Region II's history.
I protest! The second Ultan stirred in the blackness. I have allowed you uninterrupted access to
the human, but you abuse my forbearance by applying terms like malign to the natural forces which shape Totality.
I apologise, but the important thing for Garry Dallen to understand at this stage is that we have never regarded the situation as irretrievable. We have taken steps to normalise it.
But that means… Dallen's mind was a sun going nova. Orbitsville!
Yes. Orbitsville is an instrument, one which was designed to attract intelligent life forms and to transport them back through time to the Region II universe. And the moment of departure is close.
No! The rapport between Dallen and the Ultan began to weaken, but he was still sufficiently in thrall to the near-invisible alien to react logically rather than emotionally. It won't work! It can't make any difference—one sphere to an entire universe.
We have deployed more than one sphere. To be sure of capturing a viable stock we constructed similar instruments in every galaxy in your universe. Each galaxy, depending on its size, has anywhere from eight to forty spheres, all of them in localities favourable to the development of intelligent life. Your race's discovery of Orbitsville was not entirely fortuitous.
A hundred billion galaxies, multiplied by…! Dallen faltered, numbed by immensity, as he tried to calculate the number of Orbitsvilles scattered through the universe.
The total may be large by human scales of magnitude, but the Region II universe has as many galaxies as this one—and all have to be seeded. The Ethic requires it.
WRONG! The forceful contradiction from the second Ultan disturbed and confused Dallen, further weakening the inhuman persuasive force of the first. He took one step nearer to his normal state of being, and as emotion began to pit itself against intellect his thoughts homed in on Silvia London. She was on Orbitsville. And Orbitsville, now pulsing so rapidly that the eye detected only a frenzied hammering on the retina, was about to depart…
