by Bob Shaw
"How did you save his life?" she said.
"Marksmanship." He related the episode that had taken place in the quietness of the Altamura countryside one morning, in what now seemed a distant summer. The events had rarely surfaced in his mind during the intervening years, and as he spoke he could almost believe they were part of someone else's life. By the time he had finished describing the grim aftermath – his disposal of the remains – the narrative, even to him, had something of the quality of a fevered dream.
"In case you're thinking that was another Nicklin special," he melded, "I can assure you it all happened."
"I believe you," Zindee said. Her eyes were scrutinising his face and her expression was oddly intent, like that of a person searching for a valuable which had been lost or stolen.
Suddenly uncomfortable, he gestured towards the ship. "I wish Hepworth would get his backside out of there."
"I don't need to go inside."
"The old sod is bound to come out soon."
"Perhaps I'll walk over to the edge of the portal and…"
Zindee let the sentence go as her attention was drawn to a car which was drifting to a halt close by. It was a convertible with the top folded back. In it could be seen Danea Farthing with a man and woman and two children, obviously new arrivals being given their first look at the ship.
"Zindee's expression changed. "Isn't that…?"
"That's Danea, all right," Nicklin said. "Lock up the silver."
"I didn't realise she had so much style." Zindee's voice was appreciative as she took in Danea's tight-belted peacock blue silks and stetson-like sun-hat. She impulsively raised her hand and waved as Danea glanced in her direction. Nicklin, remembering the natural antagonism that Zindee had displayed towards the older woman on their first meeting, was surprised by the action.
"She has a style all of her own," he agreed, giving the words a private bitter connotation, as Danea said something to her charges and came towards Zindee. His reaction to the sight of the sleepy-lidded eyes, bruised-looking mouth and hipless easy-striding figure was the same as ever – a blend of hatred and unadulterated, knee-weakening desire. For three years she had eluded, fended off and frustrated him, displaying an adamantine side to her character which no amount of guile could undermine, and which – though it tortured him to admit it – had brought her total victory in their running battle.
"Hello," Danea said, her gaze solely on Zindee. "Suddenly I'm persuaded that all little girls should be fed on a diet of ice cream sundaes."
Zindee smiled. "You've got a good memory."
"For faces – I'm not so good on names."
"This is Zindee," Nicklin said, putting an arm around Zindee's shoulders in a proprietary manner which Danea would not be able to miss. "Zindee White."
"It's good to see you again, Zindee," Danea said. "You're not joining the ship, are you?"
"No."
"I thought not. We have one family of Whites, but they don't have any connections with Orangefield."
"I'm here on holiday with my parents," Zindee said.
"I wish you were joining us." Danea gave her a look of rueful warmth. "Time is running out for Orbitsville, you know. Corey Montane has told us that many times, and we all know in our hearts that he is right."
Nicklin squeezed Zindee's shoulder. "Corey Montane is the man who thinks he's married to a sardine."
"I have to go now," Danea said, still without looking in Nicklin's direction. "I wish you well, Zindee."
"What did you think of that performance?" Nicklin murmured in Zindee's ear as he watched Danea walk back to the group by her car. "That woman is, without doubt, the silliest and most–" He broke off, shocked, as Zindee pushed him away from her with surprising force.
"Keep off me," she snapped, her eyes flaring with white coronas of anger. "You're not making me part of your pathetic little game."
"Zindee!" He took a step towards her, but was halted by the look of contempt which was distorting and ageing her features. "Look, there's been a misunderstanding somewhere. Let's go back to my hotel room and–"
"Goodbye, Jim!" Zindee snatched the bronze coin from her throat, snapping its chain. "And here's something to remember me by!" She threw the coin to the ground at his feet, turned on her heel und walked quickly away.
"But – " Stupefied, he looked down at the coin and a dam seemed to burst in his memory. I gave her that – on the day I left Orangefield.
He picked the coin up, with the intention of running in pursuit of Zindee, and had taken a single step forward when silently – and with the abruptness of a door being slammed – the entire world turned black.
Nicklin gave an involuntary cry of fear as for one pounding moment he thought he had been struck blind. The blackness seemed so absolute – there were no street lights, no office lights, no vehicle lights, no floodlights surrounding the ship – that it had to come from within, and he was being punished for his transgressions. Then his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and slowly, like a design emerging on a photographic plate, the delicate ribbed pattern of the night sky unfurled itself above him, spanning the horizons.
Nicklin looked up towards the zenith and saw that the sun was hidden behind one of the opaque bands whose progression across the heavens created day and night on Orbitsville.
His fear returned with renewed force as he realised that somehow – and for the first time in humanity's experience – Orbitsville had leaped from the brilliance of morning into the blackness of midnight.
CHAPTER 16
"You can see for yourselves that the trap is closing." Corey Montane's face was grey and haggard as he addressed the group of about twenty workers who had assembled in the mission's third-floor office. To Nicklin he seemed dejected and slightly irresolute, just when he needed to rally and inspire his followers.
"You don't need me to tell you that the Devil is rubbing his hands tonight," Montane went on. "We must get away from this cursed place very soon, my friends – otherwise it will be too late."
Nicklin listened to the message, and for the first time since he had known Montane, felt no urge to scoff. The glowing display of the office holoclock, apparently floating in the air near a wall, showed 12.06 – but the windows were jet black. In place of the usual midday panorama of sunlit buildings and distant hills there were the stacked, serried and scattered lights of Beachhead City at night.
Nicklin's body clock was telling him that something had gone terribly wrong with the natural order of things, but even more disturbing was the feeling that vast supernatural forces were at work. A mystical and superstitious element of his character – one he would have sworn did not exist – had been alerted, and it was whispering things he had no wish to hear. He had often tried to visualise the helplessness and despair experienced by someone caught in an earthquake. What must it be like, he had wondered, knowing there is no place to run to when the very ground has become your deadly enemy? Now he no longer had to imagine that sense of bleak futility. Where is there to hide when a great hand parts the curving blue canopy of the sky, displacing night and day, and its owner casts a baleful eye on all that lies below?
"How soon can we go, Corey?" a man called out. Nicklin glanced round and saw that the speaker was the electrician, Jock Craig.
"It has to be as soon as possible," Montane replied. "I'm going to the Space Transport Department when – " He broke off, looking surprised, as his words were lost in a rebellious outcry from at least half of his audience.
"Nobody cares about certificates at a time like this," Craig shouted, abandoning the slightly obsequious tone with which he usually addressed the preacher. "We should cut the locks and go right now!"
His words produced a widespread murmur of approval. Montane quelled the sound by the familiar trick of raising both his hands and making a damping movement. The gesture was not as effective as usual, however, and the ensuing silence was less than complete.
"Do I hear you properly, Jock?" Montane said. "Are you pro
posing that we should leave most of our brethren behind? Don't forget how many of them are still waiting at home all over Pi." He pointed at the communication panels, where columns of winking orange lights showed that dozens of callers were waiting to be answered. "What do we say to them? Do we tell them to go to the Devil?"
"It's better for some to be saved than none at all," Craig insisted, looking about him for support.
"I think we're all jumping the gun a little," Scott Hepworth cut in, booming, projecting his voice as though addressing a much larger audience. "We've seen one minor disturbance of the solar cage, and apart from that nothing has changed. Some kind of self-regulating mechanism could have been activated up there, something which routinely balances forces and adjusts the shadow pattern now and then. Don't forget we've been on Orbitsville for only two centuries, and that's no time at all in astronomical terms."
Hepworth's admonitory gaze swept around the assembly. "My advice is that we shouldn't panic."
There speaks the voice of cool reason, Nicklin thought. Trouble is that nobody believes a word of it – and that includes me.
"Scott is absolutely right," Montane said loudly, doing his utmost to reassert his authority. "We will begin calling in every one of our families, starting this very minute, but in the meantime I want…"
His voice faltered – hushed by a silent burst of light – as the daytime world in all its brilliance sprang into view beyond the office windows.
It materialised instantaneously, looking normal and serene and eternal, as though nothing out of the ordinary had ever taken place. Nicklin saw birds wheeling in the sunlit air, and flags stirring gently on the masts above the main passenger terminal. The scene remained pulsing on the eye for several seconds – during which nine the people in the room exchanged stricken, speculative glances with their neighbours – then it vanished into blackness again amidst a chorus of terrified shouts and screams.
Nicklin was one of those who gave an involuntary cry because, on the instant of the new advent of night, he felt the entire floor of the office drop away beneath his feet. He knew at once that the building was collapsing, and that he was about to plunge down into its ruins. Then his eyes confirmed the curious fact that the office, and everything in it, was still firmly in place. Ashen-faced men and women were clutching at the furniture for support, but – astonishingly – the building showed itself to be perfectly intact and undamaged. A moment later the floor resumed its pressure on the soles of his feet.
The sensations normally associated with space flight were alien to Nicklin; he had never even ventured on funfair parabola rides – but his mind was quick to concoct an explanation for what had happened.
"There has been a temporary loss of gravity," Hepworth shouted above the hubbub, confirming the worst suspicions of all those present. "That's all it was – a temporary loss of gravity … nothing to become too alarmed about."
Nicklin gaped at the physicist's untidy figure, wondering if he had any idea how ridiculous he looked and sounded while trying to pass off the loss of gravity as though it had been a minor occurrence like an interruption to the local electricity supply. Nothing like this had ever happened on Orbitsville before. Even the sudden switching of day into night, terrifying though it had been, had not created the same degree of visceral fear, because light was only light after all, and everybody knew how simple it was to flick it on and off. But gravity was different! You did not fuck around with gravity. Nobody had ever succeeded in tampering with it or modifying it in any way. When gravity vanished every man, woman and child immediately became a learned professor of physics with a deep understanding of the fundamental forces of nature, knowing that where something so basic to existence could go wrong existence itself was in the balance.
As though the Gaseous Vertebrate wanted to endorse and applaud Nicklin's thought processes, the sunlit world outside the office blazed into being once more, but only for the time it took Nicklin to snatch a breath, then there was night again. The effect was so similar to lightning, or perhaps a thermonuclear flash, that he winced in dread of the appalling detonation which had to follow. Instead there was a profound silence in which came a series of shorter appearances – day, night, day, night, day, night – a calendar month compressed into a dozen stroboscopic seconds. Once or twice during the staccato sequence gravity slackened its bonds, but not so completely as before – then it was all over. Peaceful night reigned outside. The ceiling lights reasserted themselves, shining calmly over the humdrum microcosm of the office and its cheap furniture and all the frightened people who had expected to die.
"My God," a woman said quietly, "this is the end of the world!"
It would be more correct to say that Orbitsville has become unstable, Nicklin mused. Of course, it comes to the same thing in the end…
Hepworth pounded a table with his fist. "Does anybody know where Megan Fleischer is?"
The mention of the pilot's name was all the catalyst that was needed to convert apprehension into action. Not much was said, there were few outward signs of mortal fear, but everybody began to move, to busy themselves, and Nicklin knew they shared the same objectives – to warn their relatives and friends, to gather up vital belongings, to get on board the ship as quickly as possible. He knew exactly what was going on inside their heads because, suddenly, he was one of them.
Orbitsville was home for countless millions of humans and for two hundred years it had been a good home. Its mountains and prairies and oceans appeared to have the permanence of old Earth, but there were few of its inhabitants who had not, at one time or another, felt a pang of uneasiness over the fact that the Big O was a bubble. It was the most insubstantial object imaginable – a film of enigmatic material with a circumference of almost a billion kilometres and a thickness of only eight centimetres.
Nicklin's life had been one of blissful unconcern about such matters. He had insulated himself from them, or had dismissed them along with other concepts he found difficulty in handling. Nevertheless, a simple distaste for the idea of living on the inner surface of a bubble was part of his primal subconscious. It was out in the open now. The time bomb had detonated, and he had entered a new mental state in which his actions were governed by the compulsion to get away from Orbitsville before the unimaginable happened.
In that land-locked, self-oriented condition his perceptions of what was going on around him became patchy and flawed, magnifying some events and diminishing others.
At one stage he was very much aware of Montane hovering on the fringes of the action, virtually ignored by most of his subordinates. Montane looked like a man on the verge of collapse. He gave the impression of being bewildered, of not quite believing the evidence of his senses. It occurred to Nicklin that he might never have accepted in his innermost self that this day would really arrive. Given the choice, he might have gone on and on until he died, making endless preparations to lead the escape from Orbitsville, delaying the actual event for increasingly trivial reasons.
In another disconnected fragment of time Nicklin found that he was standing at the telephone in a smaller office, with no clear idea of why he was there. He stared at the instrument for a few seconds, waiting for his hold on reality to improve, then told it to connect him to the Whites' room in the Firstfooter Hotel. Almost at once Cham White's red-gold head appeared at the set's projection focus. He was wearing the unnaturally polite smile of a man who has just been sentenced to death.
"Jim!" he said. "Jim Nicklin! What's happening, Jim?"
Nicklin shook his head impatiently "There's no time to talk about it. Do you want to get out?"
"Out?"
"Out of Orbitsville. On the ship. Do you want to go?"
At that moment sunlight washed through the room in which Nicklin was standing, showing that the banded pattern of the sky had shifted again. Cham's image, transmitted through a kilometre of cable, brightened simultaneously.
"I'm afraid, Jim," he said, his squirrel-brown eyes wide with shock.
"We're all afraid, for Christ's sake," Nicklin snapped, losing his temper. "That's why I'm asking you if you want to take off out of here. How about it?"
"Nora and I thought about it more than once. We used to look out for you on television, and I guess that put the idea into our heads, but we never took it seriously enough. We never dreamed it would come to this. We have no tickets or whatever we would need for–"
"The ship will be travelling half-empty," Nicklin cut in, amazed at Cham's Montane-like ability to waste time on senseless trivia. "Is Zindee with you?"
Cham glanced to his left. "She's in the bedroom with her mother."
"Get them both down to the ship," Nicklin said urgently. "I'm talking to you as a friend, Cham. Get them down to the ship – and do it right now. I'll wait for you at the foot of the main ramp. Have you got that?"
Cham nodded unhappily. "What should we pack?"
"Pack! If you wait around to pack anything you'll end up fucking well dead!" Nicklin shook his fist in Cham's face and his knuckles went into the image, causing it to swirl like coloured smoke. "Get to the ship right now – and don't let anybody stop you!"
He turned away from the telephone as the last sentence he had blurted out sank into his own consciousness. Other people would want to scramble on board the Tara in this extreme hour; people who had no connection with the mission; people for whom the enterprise had been nothing more than an extended piece of silly-season journalism – until the Big O's Day of Judgement had arrived.
Half the population of Beachhead will want to ride, Nicklin told himself. And they won't take no for an answer…
In another fragment of time's mosaic he found himself in the ill-ventilated room, across the corridor from the main office, where miscellaneous effects belonging to mission personnel were stored.
Opening his own locker with a thumbprint, he took out the radiation rifle, which had been a useless encumbrance since that far-off morning in Altamura. When the Fugaccia mansion was being vacated he had taken the weapon for no reason other than a feeling that such a dangerous artefact ought not to be left lying around, perhaps for inquisitive children to find. Now it no longer seemed an encumbrance. It looked functional and deadly – qualities which were entirely appropriate to the situation.
