Orbitsville Trilogy

by Bob Shaw

  To the dreaming mind such epic flights, far from seeming preposterous, are perfectly natural and normal, and that was the vision Dallen's unconscious elected to repeat most, its poignancy magnified by the very factors which divorced it from reality. At first he expected the dream to retain its full power, then he realised that his grief over the loss of Silvia was following the merciful and inevitable course of all passions. Pain softened into sadness, sadness mellowed into resignation, then it came to Dallen that he was truly a different person. The change had begun when he had finally acknowledged that he deserved to love Silvia and be loved by her in return, and it had been accelerated by his having, for the first time in his life, work he found absorbing and worthwhile.

  Cosmogony and cosmology were only part of Project Recap's domain—there was the subject of the Ultans themselves. As the one who had had the closest mental contact with the enigmatic beings, Dallen was assigned the position of leading expert in the brand-new field of study, but he was well aware of his human inadequacies. In common with all other members of the original encounter group, when he tried to empathise with the Ultans, to penetrate their minds, all he divined was an overpowering sense of coldness. For Dallen the feeling was reinforced by his recollection of the icy calmness of the aliens, of their dispassionate reliance on logic as they tried to influence him mere seconds before the Orbitsville departure.

  There were arguments and counter-arguments, all based on speculation. Perhaps the humans, like receivers tuned to a single radio frequency, had been oblivious to a wide spectrum of telepathic transmission. The Ultans, it was reasoned, must be capable of human-like feelings because they were engaged in conflict and were not above using subterfuge. On the other hand, perhaps they had betrayed no trace of emotion because—and this was the argument which had dismayed many people—the fate of Orbitsville, so important in human terms, was infinitesimal in the Ultan scheme of existence. After all, what did it matter about one sphere when more than a million times a million of them had been deployed in an olympian struggle to shape a future universe? Nothing could be deduced about the probable outcome of that struggle, nor about the super-dimensional symmetry of the next Big Bang, using the fact that Orbitsville was now located in Region II. Orbitsville was too insignificant, a single grain of sand on a storm-swept shore…

  "This is the last call for coffee," Dallen bellowed. "If nobody shows up I'm having the lot."

  There was a scuffling and the sound of laughter from the direction of the bedrooms, and a second later Nancy Jurasek and Mikel jostled their way into the kitchen. Nancy was an engineer with the Industrial Reclamation Office in Winnipeg. She devised ways of reactivating municipal services for the benefit of people drifting back into the cities from the old independent communes. She was dark-haired and vivacious, and in the two years she had been living with Dallen had built an excellent relationship with Mikel, playing the role of substitute mother or sister when required, but in general simply being herself. One of her most valuable contributions had been in bringing out the irreverent and fun-loving side of Mikel's nature, characteristics he had had little chance to develop in the cloistered atmosphere of the Foundation.

  Mikel accepted a beaker of coffee from Dallen, sipped it and made a grimace of distaste. "The thing I look forward to most about the Columbus," he said earnestly, "is getting a break from Dad's coffee."

  Dallen pretended to be hurt. "I was going to make a big flask of it to send with you."

  "There's a law against shipping toxic wastes."

  Mikel dodged a playful swipe from Dallen, sat down at the breakfast bar and began to eat toast. Although not quite eleven years old, he was taller than Nancy and had an unruly appetite. He also had a prodigious talent for mathematics and physics, and had fully earned his place on the Columbus science team. Dallen's feelings had been mixed when he was giving his permission for Mikel to go on the exploratory flight. His instinctive parental feeling was that the boy was too young to leave home and venture into space, even for two months, but in his regressions to the Ultan encounter he had had repeated glimpses of the infant Mikel's face, the eyes blackly luminous as they gazed from the interior of the ovoid crib. It was something he had never discussed with the others, and there were no relevant criteria, but Dallen could half-believe that his son had been born again in that moment, a true child of space, with a mind/brain complex which by a freak of destiny had been readied by Gerald Mathieu for a singular congress with the Ultans, a tabula rasa for alien stylii.

  If that were the case, if Mikel had been uniquely prepared to lead new generations to the stars, it could be seen as a curious atonement for Mathieu's original crime. Thinking back to the awesome events nine years in the past, Dallen could find in himself no residue of the hatred which had dominated and disfigured a part of his life. When Gerald Mathieu had been reeled back into the Hawkshead's airlock he had been found to be dead, with no apparent physiological cause. His body had been consigned to the Orbitsville sun and it was as though Dallen's negative emotions had gone into that stellar crucible with it. Now the entire episode seemed like a dream, and all that remained to him from it were echoes of feelings, stray reflections of things that might have been.

  Had the group which reached the portal also been in mental contact with the Ultans? Dallen posed himself the familiar, unanswerable questions as he sipped his coffee. Were they telepathically appraised of their situation? Or had they been mystified when the ship and all connected to it had ceased to exist and strange constellations had flared beneath their feet? Had Silvia and Renard had children? What was she doing at that very moment, forty billion years ago in a different universe?

  "You seem a little quiet this morning," Nancy said. "Worried about Mikel?"

  "'No, the Columbus is a good ship," Dallen replied, glancing at his son who was still munching toast. "And he'll only be gone for two months."

  "Two months for this trip," Mikel said, his eyes growing darkly rapt in the way that Dallen remembered so well. "In that time we'll travel farther than anybody has ever done, but that's just for starters. Soon we'll be able to do anything … cross the galaxy … go hunting for Ultan spheres…"

  Nancy gave a delighted laugh. "Dream on, child!"

  "It isn't as far-fetched as you might think," Mikel said, a solemn expression appearing on his face as he tapped into his prodigal's intellect. "Here's a possible scenario for you to consider. We know that the Ultans put a minimum of eight spheres into this galaxy, and we were also told that they selected locations favourable to the development of intelligent life. Well, when we have improved our knowledge of this region of space sufficiently we will be able to decide what characteristics it has that make it a good site for a sphere. Then we can search for other similar areas in the galaxy and track down other spheres."

  "Easy as pie," Nancy said scornfully, "but what happens if you bump into the Ultans themselves?"

  Dallen enjoyed the way in which Nancy and Mikel were consciously playing word games, building an edifice of purest fantasy, but at some point they had begun to stray close to the chimerical never-never land of his old recurrent dream. He found himself oddly intent as he waited for the boy's answer.

  "But that's what we'd be trying to do," Mikel said. "The spheres themselves are of no value to us. What we want is to find the Ultans, study them, learn from them, communicate with them."

  "And what great message would you pass on?"

  Mikel frowned, and for an instant his boyish features were overprinted with the face of the man he was to become. "For one thing—I'd let them know we don't appreciate being treated like cattle."

  Dallen turned away thoughtfully, realising he was almost afraid of his own son, then it came to him that he was listening to the voice of a new age. The Orbitsville phase had ended. In future when men' set out to straddle the galaxy they would be searching for more than just areas of grass on which to pitch their tents. Equipped with superb tachyon ships, girded with mindon science, consciously immortal, t
hey would have aims which could be incomprehensible to men of Dallen's generation. But there was nothing wrong with that, he reasoned. It was a sign that mankind was on the move again, and he should feel nothing but gladness that he had contributed to the process of vital change.

  In the afternoon Dallen stood with one arm around Nancy at the Winnipeg spaceport, watching the shuttle carry his son up to an orbital rendezvous with the Columbia. There was no denying the sadness he felt over parting with the boy, at the idea of Mikel spending his eleventh birthday farther from Earth than men had ever been before. But the transcendental mood of the morning still lingered, sustaining him as the shuttle dwindled to a silver point and disappeared in the wind-scoured blueness of the sky.

  Ultans, he thought, we'll see you around!

  Orbitsville Judgement

  BOB SHAW

  LONDON

  VICTOR GOLLANCZ LTD

  1990

  …could thou and I with Fate conspire,

  To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,

  Would we not scatter it to bits – and then

  Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

  Omar Khayyam

  PART ONE:

  THE HAMMER RISES

  CHAPTER 1

  The ancient constellations – star groups which had presided over mankind's entire history – vanished in one quiet instant, and were immediately replaced by new stars arrayed in unfamiliar patterns.

  It was the most astounding event in the annals of astronomy, but it was witnessed by relatively few people. Only those who happened to be working near portals and looking outwards at the crucial moment saw the cosmos being transfigured. The news of it spread to the far interior of Orbitsville, of course, but the process took time and had little impact on the complacent market town of Orangefield. Most of Orangefield's inhabitants had never made the journey to a portal – and therefore had never even seen a star – and happenings in the outside universe tended to be of secondary importance to them.

  Distant suns might have changed their positions; remote galaxies might have done a strange shuffle – but crops still had to be gathered in the apron of cultivated land surrounding the town. The wheels of commerce and local industry still had to turn; no man or woman had been excused any chores; and infants still had to be fed, bathed and powdered before being tucked into bed for the night. During the hours of darkness the Orbitsville sky, which had never known stars, continued to exhibit its watered-silk striations, hundreds of delicate arches of blue and darker blue spanning the horizons – and life gave every indication of proceeding very much as usual…

  Jim Nicklin's home, lending library and workshop were combined in a single timber-framed building which occupied a pleasant site on the north edge of the town. It was constructed of fortwood, a local timber which, even when left unpainted, had a satisfying appearance and the durability of stone. Considered simply as a building, it was somewhat lacking in architectural merit – having been added to in a haphazard manner at various times in the previous fifty years – but it suited Nicklin's needs and life style very well. It was easy to clean and maintain, and yet provided ample space for all his activities. It was within easy reach of the town's amenities, and yet for the most part looked out on farmlands and distant savannahs.

  There was a good fused-earth road a little more than a hundred paces from Nicklin's front porch, but his property was separated from it by a broad stream. The clear water contained several varieties of fish which had been imported from Earth more than a century earlier, and now were as well established as if they had been there for geological eras. In addition to providing Nicklin with sport and occasional fare for the table, the stream gave him a comforting sense of being partitioned from the outside world.

  To reach his premises, personal visitors and customers were obliged to make use of a small wooden bridge, at the far end of which was a gate which he could lock when he was in the mood for solitude. The fact that the stream could easily be waded, and also was well provided with stepping stones, was immaterial. When would-be callers saw that Nicklin's gate was closed they understood they had chosen an unsuitable time, and – unless their business had a fair degree of urgency – would turn away. Respect for a person's wish to be alone was basic to society in most regions of Orbitsville.

  Although Nicklin had the reputation of being a moody and changeable individual, his unsociable spells usually manifested themselves only when nightfall was drawing near. That's what he gets for being a bachelor, was the view of most of Orangefield county's women and quite a few of the men. It isn't right for a normal, healthy young man to be living on his own and going to a lonely bed at night. However, in spite of their reservations concerning Nicklin's bachelorhood, very few of the eligible females had ever seriously thought of trying to attract him into the socially acceptable state of marriage.

  He had not yet turned thirty, was tall, fair-haired, reasonably handsome and had only the faintest trace of a bulge above the belt buckle – but his boyish face, with its small nose and blue eyes, was slightly too boyish. It often bore a philosophic and mildly puzzled expression, as though he had just worked out how many angels could stand on the head of a pin and was dissatisfied with the answer. His eyes sometimes seemed amused when the folk about him were engaged in serious debate; or they could mirror a deep concern when there was nothing but laughter all around. In spite of his acknowledged genius for the repair of domestic appliances and light machinery, he gave the impression of somehow being impractical. He struck people as being soft, a dreamer who was ill-equipped to deal with the hard knocks which rural life could deal out on a plentiful basis. The women of Orangefield township and county were conditioned to respect tough, pragmatic men who had the potential to be tireless workers and good providers – so when choosing husbands they tended to overlook Jim Nicklin.

  That arrangement suited Nicklin quite well. Orangefield was a low-tech community which was modelled on the ideal of a small town in the American mid-west, circa 1910, with some elements borrowed from equally idealised English villages of the same period. The quality of life was good – enhanced by the fact that high-tech resources could be called upon from outside when emergencies occurred – but Nicklin had observed that married men always had to work harder than bachelors, and led lives which on occasion were marred by domestic troubles. Not being greatly enamoured of toil, he was quite satisfied with his mode of existence, especially as there were more than enough times when he got himself into ample trouble with no assistance from a marriage partner.

  He had an uneasy suspicion that one of those times was near at hand as he watched the heavy-shouldered figure of Cort Brannigan cross the bridge and come striding towards the workshop entrance. It was early on a fine spring morning, the sort of morning which might have been designed to uplift the human spirit, but there was something about Brannigan's gait and out-thrust jaw which suggested that, if anything, his spirit was in a meaner and more joyless condition than usual.

  He was a sixty-year-old farmer, who had a mixed-produce spread eight kilometres north of the town, and in spite of being obese he was renowned as a brawler. His great belly, which could absorb strong men's best punches, surged as he walked, glowing intermittently as it moved in and out of the cylinder of shadow created by his wide-brimmed hat. Several of the cinnamon sticks he habitually chewed to obliterate the smell of alcohol projected from his shirt pocket. He had no time for Nicklin as a person, and only dealt with him because there was no other competent repair service in the county.

  Some ten days earlier he had brought in his wife's sewing-machine, which needed to have a bracket welded or brazed, and had demanded priority service. Nicklin was afraid of the big man, although he did his best to conceal the fact, and had promised the repair would be taken care of within a couple of days. He had intended to pass it over without delay to Maxy Millom, his part-time employee, but Maxy had not been around that afternoon. There had been a flurry of urgent work the following morning, a
nd somehow the sewing-machine had been forgotten. When Brannigan had telephoned to enquire about it Nicklin had put him off with a hastily concocted excuse, and then – incredibly, it seemed in retrospect – had forgotten the machine all over again.

  At that very moment it was being worked upon by Maxy in the shed he used for welding operations. The job would take only a few minutes, so Brannigan would not have to leave empty-handed, but the machine was bound to reek of hot metal when finally produced, and the big man would realise at once just how much priority his esteemed order had been given…

  "Good morning, Cort," Nicklin said, mustering a smile as Brannigan came into the shop and approached the low counter. "Great morning, isn't it?"

  "Hadn't noticed." Brannigan glanced over the shelves behind Nicklin. "Where is it?"

  "It? Oh, the sewing-machine! Maxy will be bringing it through in a minute."

  "Isn't it ready?"

  "It's been ready for ages, Cort … sitting right here and ready to go…" Nicklin forced his brain into higher gear. "I just noticed a rough spot on the welding – just a minute ago – so I told Maxy to take it back and smooth it out. We don't want your good lady scratching her hand, do we?"