The soldiers stood over him. They knew that he could not be killed, but they raised long metal spikes over his body.
One spike drove through his head, and he imagined its cold pass through the gray colloid of his brain. Another slid through his heart and pinned him to the black ground; blood spilled into his chest from the ruptured pump. The third shot through his guts, splintering his spine; and the last two spiked through the cartilage of his shoulders.
Myraa’s World held him as he struggled to shatter the vivid impressions, but the soldiers held their spikes as he strained to lift himself.
“We are here,” they said, “nothing can change that.”
The sky flashed and thunder growled. Rain muddied the ground. He turned his head and saw charred bodies rising from the battlefield.
The storms were quiet inside her as she walked down to the ship. The surface of the universe was everything; sunny, grass-green, her planet wore no mask; the Earthship was a curious toy, waiting under a blue sky. The breeze blew through her long hair. She felt warm in the Herculean jump suit.
She came to the bottom of the hill and marched toward the ship. Kurbi looked out from the lock as she came into the ship’s shadow and climbed the ramp.
“Your cabin is ready,” he said as she stepped inside.
An abyss opened within her; she fell in and drifted over a muddy flatland. Puddles became mirrors as a white sun came out. Faces crowded to look out at her.
“This way,” Kurbi said, leading her down a curving passage.
She tensed and followed as the quiet crept back into her. The faces in the puddles fell into shadow and faded, and she knew that Gorgias was still under control.
“Here we are.” The Earthman turned and looked at her. “Are you well?”
She nodded and stepped to the door. “Thank you,” she said as it opened and she went inside.
“We’ll be leaving in a few minutes,” he said as the door closed behind her and the lights came on.
The curved wall of the cabin was a depth mural of the Earth-Moon system with its ring of habitats. A small zero-g bed stood under the view. The bath was a small closet off to the right. A square locker stood at the foot of the bed.
She wondered if Gorgias could see through her eyes without her knowing it.
“Come in, General Crusus,” Kurbi said.
The Herculean took a few steps into the center of the stateroom. “Do sit down,” Kurbi added, shifting in his chair.
The stocky Herculean sat down and looked at him with black eyes.
“I would like to ask your impressions, if any,” Kurbi began, “of the situation on this world.”
Crusus shrugged. “What do you hope to find out?”
“Why haven’t you decided to settle here, after your release?”
Crusus took a deep breath. “I’ve been asked all this before, but I’ll tell you again. I have no religious feelings. I’m done with the Herculean past. There’s nothing else to say.”
“Is that all you can say?”
“What would you have me say? That my past threw me away? There is no past — only a few misguided individuals.”
“I understand. But I have to ask these things. Do you believe there is any chance of some kind of new uprising here?”
Crusus almost smiled. “By whom? There is no force to speak of, no weapons.”
“What about troop cylinders?”
“I understand there were very few of those, perhaps only one. I knew of no others when I was stored.”
“But you do understand that it would take only one to start materializing the same weapons and fighting personnel over and over again? You yourself would be called up again, and each time you would be ignorant of what you know now.”
“I tell you it was a fluke. You have the only cylinder. If there are others, no living Herculean has the means to find them!”
Kurbi was silent for a few moments. “I tend to agree. But, well … there is a feeling on Earth.”
“I know. To settle the matter once and for all by destroying Myraa’s World. The idea has a mind-settling elegance, doesn’t it? We had it ourselves once, so I should know.”
“You see the position I’m in.”
He sighed. “Of course. You have to prove that it can’t ever happen, that we Herculeans will never rise again, and you can’t prove that. No one can. Not to the satisfaction of the suspicious.” He laughed. “You’re wasting your time, Kurbi.”
“But I do care what happens.”
“Do you? How can you, when I don’t?”
Kurbi waited again. “What about the other survivors?”
“They’ve taken to Myraa’s cult, even more so than the others. Just imagine yourself taken out of storage and thrown into a slaughter. And then to find out the war has been over for centuries! What do you expect? Did you have to kill nearly all of them?”
“We’ve spoken before, General, so you know that with me you have the most sympathetic listener possible. Better that I should find out what’s going on than someone else.”
Crusus raised an eyebrow. “Blackmail?”
“I have no such intention.”
“Of course. Circumstances are blackmailing us both.”
Kurbi took a deep breath. “What would you do in my place?”
“But there’s nothing to uncover.”
“It’s an undercurrent. I felt it on Earth, and I feel it here.”
“Isn’t that to be expected?”
“Then you feel it too? What do you make of it? Please — be as explicit as you wish. No one will hold your views against you.”
Crusus smiled sadly and sat back. “It means nothing, and there can be no support for any of my suspicions, nothing at all. We’re talking about bad feelings, which tend to persist.”
“I’d like to hear your suspicions, however unfounded.”
“It’s nothing specific, just something in the back of my mind insisting that it’s not finished, all this, that it can’t be over. Not a bit of evidence. As I said, it’s just the residue left by the war. You feel the same thing. Suspicion, vague fears. It will disappear in time. Fear of the future, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“That should be clear to you. If the numbers of Herculeans increase, it’s inevitable that some of them will continue to resent what happened to them in the past. It seems unbelievable even now. How does a group live down such a destructive conflict, especially when people who lived through it persist? The offending generations died in past wars of this kind. The future could shrug off the past as something done by others.”
“Evil didn’t seem quite so bad when it could grow old and die.”
Crusus was silent for a few moments. “Gorgias — what was he like, Kurbi?”
“He hated me. I stood for everything he hated. I feel that enmity even now. For a while I believed that I could reach an agreement with him. But the war had never ended for him. He believed with such force. And when he had his successes, they were terrifyingly effective. They haven’t forgotten that on Earth.”
“I find that hard to credit, given the erratic leadership I witnessed.”
“Even great generals lose wars,” Kurbi said, standing up. “Well, thank you anyway, General. What will you do after we reach Earth?”
Crusus rose. “Ship out to some obscure world and make a simpler life for myself, as far away from the past as possible.”
“I wish you luck.” Kurbi remembered his own wanderings among the frontier worlds of the Snake. “Will you remove any of your memories?”
Crusus looked at him. “I don’t think so … I don’t know. Thank you for the lift to Earth.”
It’s not finished, Kurbi thought as Crusus turned to leave.
The General stopped and faced him again. “Do you think I’ll be detained on Earth for any reason?”
“I don’t think so, but I can’t promise. Myraa will reassure them. They’ll be suspicious, but the matter may end with that. You’re free to talk with her during the
trip.”
“Thank you. I’m not sure I want to. I’ve already heard what she has to offer. Do you wish me to question her? I can’t find out anything that you couldn’t for yourself, assuming that there is anything to learn.”
“It’s up to you, General.”
Clearly, it was not over for Crusus, Kurbi thought as the Herculean left. It meant something to him to keep his memories, even if he wouldn’t admit it to himself.
|Go to Contents |
IV. The Heart of Fire
“… On every side,
spaces, the bat-wing of insanity!
Above, below me, only depths and shoal,
the silence! And the Lord’s right arm
traces his nightmare, truceless, multiform.
I cuddle the insensible blank air,
and fear to sleep as one fears a great hole.
My spirit, haunted by its vertigo,
sees the infinite at every window …”
— Baudelaire,The Abyss
HE ROCKED THE DARKNESS back and forth, slowly trying to open a space for himself within the rigidity of Myraa’s will; but his struggles created only a painful vibration.
He reached inward, stabbing more deeply into the infinitesimal, probing the quantum realm of softening determinisms, collapsing lengths and fluid energies.
Again the heart of fire seemed unimaginably distant, but he knew that he was kin to its burning assertiveness — an individual pulse shaped by the categories of space-time. If the way out through Myraa’s body was closed, then he would voyage inward.
He moved in closer, diminishing before the unattainable force-center of the will.
“Can you answer me?” he asked. “Do you know me?”
There was no answer, and he realized that it was blind, unknowing, the source of all motive, but without the power of decision.
The fools!
They worshipped it, drew their life from its outpouring, its waste.
But he would learn to use its infinite strength. Its transcendent heart would become his own.
If Myraa would not let him out, he would penetrate all that lay within and master it. Then he would shatter Myraa’s control and reach out through her into the universe of decision, where everything was a facade, the masked will striving to persist, giving the world permanence.
He spiraled toward the force-center, circling endlessly, exerting all his will to draw nearer. He felt its repulsion; it pushed him back by minute degrees, slowly stealing his forward gains.
He threw himself inward, reaching out with all his longing from the endless night. He imagined that the Whisper Ship was around him, carrying him toward the fire. He shrank into a point, concentrating his strength into the tip of a spear, yearning to join his spark with the great conflagration at the heart of all things.
Suddenly a pulse stabbed into him, filling his will to the core. He was hurled away, upward, growing large swiftly, racing outward at the edge of an expanding universe.
He filled Myraa instantly, giving her no chance to resist.
Her eyes opened and he looked around the cabin.
“May I come in?” General Crusus asked over the com.
“Come in,” Myraa said.
The door slid open and Crusus stepped inside.
Myraa leaped at him. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her hands locked around his throat.
“Traitor!” Gorgias shouted, digging into the windpipe.
Crusus gulped air. His arms clawed at Myraa’s back, but there was nothing to grab.
Gorgias felt the windpipe collapse. Crusus fell backward onto the floor. A gurgling sound came from his throat. His eyes stared. The body twitched once, then lay still under Myraa.
Gorgias stared into the man’s face as Myraa’s trembling hands drew away.
“What have you done?” her voice asked faintly.
“He deserved to die,” Gorgias said through the same mouth. He looked toward the bath. “He’ll fit in the disposal when I’m through with him.”
“Wait —”
He pushed her away, drowning her objections in the whirl of his thoughts.
“— let me go …” Myraa cried faintly.
Kurbi was here on the ship.
He would die next.
Myraa gathered her forces.
He had sensed her distant actions while he was cutting up Crusus and feeding the pieces into the round waste opening. She lurked at the horizon of his mind, drawing the others into a circle around him.
He pushed the last pieces of the General’s corpse into the recycler and concentrated on repelling the attack.
Bundles of energy crept over the horizon and combined to form a line of blinding white light. He spun his attention, facing in all directions at once. The circle contracted, touched him, then opened again as he pushed it away. The bright ribbon fled to the horizon and disappeared into the darkness.
Gorgias pulsed, ready to repel the next constriction.
Spears of light shot in over the horizon, making him the hub of an incomplete wheel. He concentrated and stopped the spokes halfway.
Slowly, the wheel turned around him, waiting for him to weaken, but he held the beams back. The wheel burned, straining to complete itself; the spokes yearned to bury themselves in his heart. He opened his will and threw them back into the blackness.
He looked around and saw Myraa’s eyes from the inside; he came up to them and looked out into the quiet of the cabin.
Kurbi paused before the door to Myraa’s cabin.
“Rafael Kurbi,” he said over the com. “May I come in?”
The door slid open.
Hands reached for him as he stepped inside. They closed around his throat, tightened and pulled him down.
“Now it’s your turn,” Myraa said with a hiss.
Kurbi grabbed her wrists, but they were immovable. He managed to stay on his feet, gasping for breath as stars began to explode in his skull.
“What — ?” he started to say as he staggered back. He saw her eyes. There was a joyous look in them. He moved forward and fell on top of her, pinning her to the floor, but she held his throat high as he searched for a vulnerable place to grab. Her legs locked around his waist; finally, his hands found her face and he pressed his thumbs into her eyes.
Myraa’s pain danced through Gorgias as she threw him back from her eyes. He slipped out of her limbs and floated in space.
The wheel appeared again around him.
“No!” he shouted as the bright spokes transfixed him.
The completed wheel pulsed, increasing strength to hold him prisoner at the hub.
Myraa’s fingers loosened from Kurbi’s throat. He wheezed and rolled to one side of Myraa’s limp form. Breathing heavily, he looked up and saw her kneeling near him, watching, ready to pounce when he moved.
“Why?” he asked in a rasping voice.
She touched his shoulder and shook her head; then she closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
“I can tell you now,” she said after a moment. She opened her eyes. “We’ll be safe for a time.”
The beams burned.
There could be no relief, no unconsciousness. If he had still been flesh and blood, the pain would have driven his body to its natural limits and released him. Here there was pain without physical damage, endless agony without the abyss of morphia.
The beams seemed motionless, passing into him; yet there was no body he could see — no hand to hold up to his eyes, no feet to look down at, no throat or gut to feel. He was a point in a special space, but the pain was real, a succession of aches, stabs and twists marching into his deepest places. Mountains of flesh were burned raw, bones and teeth broken, lungs and membranes ripped; bladders of memory were cut open and drained.
The wheel turned slowly, and the spokes became sharp knives. How long could Myraa’s cohorts keep this up? There had to be laws and limits in these regions also, and a way to turn them to his purpose.
Kurbi took a deep breath. How co
uld he believe what Myraa had just told him?
“You’ll have to restrain me,” she added.
Her attack was explained by the situation she had just described, but how to check her story?
“He’ll try to kill you again,” she said.
“But if this is true, I’ll have to restrain you indefinitely.”
“Until he can be permanently weakened, at least. We did not foresee how much strength his hatred would draw, or his will to explore and learn. He’s discovering things we’ve only suspected.”
Kurbi looked into her eyes. “Is all this true? Can it be true?”
“What would I gain by lying?” Her left hand shook.
“You tried to kill me. Perhaps this is a delusion of some kind. You may be very ill.”
“You must not doubt me.”
“Would it stop him if you were killed?”
“I don’t know. If I were taken by another, Gorgias would persist. Perhaps he no longer needs me. But there is no one nearby to take me if I die.”
“What about Crusus?”
“I took him quickly, before Gorgias could notice. Crusus will need time to recover from the shock. I have hidden him.”
Kurbi gazed at her silently.
“You don’t believe me,” she said.
“It’s not easy.”
Her eyes were steady. “Lock me in this cabin.”
Maybe Gorgias’s death had affected Myraa more than she could admit, Kurbi thought as he stared at the grayness of jumpspace on the screen. It was all a delusion, he told himself, wondering how he would explain the General’s disappearance on Earth. The situation was curious, whether Myraa was telling the truth or not; much worse if she had told the truth; Earth’s fears would be confirmed. Myraa’s World would be destroyed.
Searching himself, Kurbi realized that at bottom he believed what she had told him because it also confirmed his own ignorant fears. A massive struggle was going on beneath appearances.
The wheel flickered and winked out.
Free again, Gorgias searched for Myraa’s eyes. They opened suddenly when he slipped into her limbs and looked out into the cabin.
George Zebrowski Page 24
