In Other Worlds

by Attanasio, AA

  "Not yet. But soon."

  "Eld skyle-please, help me." Carl's desperation flared before the blankness of his' suspension quashed it.

  "I need you, too, Carl."

  The absurdity of that thought dumbfounded Carl. "For what?

  You're a five-space consciousness."

  "But I can't move in three-space. You must move for me."

  Carl hung silent, becalmed with curiosity.

  "I need your full and absolute cooperation in this venture." Its voice went still as the hum of an electrical storm. "You do indeed have free will, Carl Schirmer. And if you misuse it now, you could destroy a world. Your world."

  Carl missed two beats. "Earth?"

  "Then you do remember earth? It certainly remembers you.

  ZeeZee thinks of you quite often. Your abrupt departure has had a profound effect on him. You recall, he was a scientist. Well, what spoor you left behind before coming here has forced him to some very cutting conclusions."

  "Zee-" Carl's soul squirmed. "That's the past, eld skyle. I need your help now, with Evoe"

  "You're also frequently in Caitlin Sweeney's thoughts," the eld skyle continued, heedless of Carl. "You were her friend, her one real friend, lost devilishly, taken in an ungodly way into the Unknown. Her drink has gotten the best of her now, and the Blue Apple is about to be closed. Sheelagh can't run it without you."

  Those names jolted Carl like blows. "I don't want to go back to them. What are you talking about?"

  "You are going back, Carl. I need something, and I want you to get it for me."

  "What is it?"

  "Three point five tonnes of pig manure."

  A zest of levity sparkled through -Carl. "Three point five tonnes of pig manure," he echoed.

  "Yes, Carl. That is the medicine I need to survive. My ecology is off. I've been toxifying for over a century now, and you're the first one to come through me with the chance of helping me. I need to introduce a certain kind of organism, a bacterium, that will redress my biokinesis and stop my body's degradation. That organism does not exist in the Werld. But it does on earthin pig manure."

  'And Evoe?"

  "If 'you get me the pig manure, I'll help you get her back from the zotl."

  "There's not enough time."

  "No, Carl. You are wrong. Here in the Werld, there is all the time there ever was. I have the means to return you to earth for as long as is necessary, then bring you back here in only moments of Werld time."

  Carl's mind prickled with thoughts. "Why are you telling me all this about pig manure now? Why didn't you just send me for it when I first arrived?"

  "And not introduce you to Evoe? Risk your staying on earth and leaving me here alone, sick and dying? No, I had to be sure you would return." `

  -In the gust of the moment, all emotion cooled in Carl. He went calm as a storm-eye. Maybe the eld skyle had shifted his blood chemistry, he thought.

  "Blood physics," the eld skyle corrected. "Chemistry is molecule-size physics. Biology is human-size physics. Astronomy is galaxy-size physics."

  "Okay-okay. Are you jerking me around or not?"

  "If I were not modulating your blood physics you'd be hollowed out with horror now"

  "Try me."

  "Don't tempt me."

  A kelpy feeling wavered in Carl's stomach, hurry ing toward nausea. "Stop it," Carl cried. "You've made your point."

  The axle of calm returned, and the' queasiness passed.

  Unhampered by emotion, Carl's fatefulness looked geometric. "What do you want me to do?" he asked.

  "Listen to me very carefully," the voice responded darkly.

  "You will be endowed with powers more subtle and direct than anything your kind have known. Consider this: Where has everything come from? The calcium in your bones, the oxygen in your brain? All the nuclei of your body more complex than hydrogen were forged in the thermonuclear furnaces of stars that twinkled ten to the ninth years before you were born. And the hydrogen of those ancient stars and all the subnuclear particles that exist everywhere in the universe-where are they from?"

  '"Me Hamptons. What do I know?"

  "They are remnants of the most violent event of all--the gravitational collapse at the beginning of time. The radiation universe, to which your body and' mine belong is the shed skin of a living process bigger than universes. What you know as inertia is the most direct physical link you have with this metareality."

  "And I thought I was an orphan."

  "Have you ever thought about inertia? Few humans have, and then only briefly. There isn't much for a human of your time to think. The best minds of your history had only begun to suspect that inertia reflects the profound unity of the cosmos. What keeps matter at rest or in uniform motion in the same straight line unless some external force acts on it?

  When you take a hairpin turn, what is the force that pulls you to the side? Your scientists believed it was all the distant matter in the universe constraining movement: The Ail acting on the Part."

  "What has this got to do with Evoe or pig manure?" 'As a scientist of your time, Niels Bohr,' said: A great, truth is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth.' The Part can act on the All. Here in the Werld there are beings, far from human, who have mastered inertial principles much as your species controlled electromagnetic laws. They are Rimstalkers, and, as their name implies, they dwell in the Werld's dark zone, Rataros, near the Rim. They are the ones, as my allies, who will provide the technology for our venture."

  "Okay, already. Give me the details."

  "They will give you a portable lynk that you will use to transport the manure here, to me. The thornwings will help me distribute it. The lynk they will give you is nine centimeters long, five wide, and two thick. Very easy to hide. Bury it in the mounds of manure. It will take ten weeks to inertially convert three point five tonnes of manure, and during that time you must protect it. The lynk won't be vulnerable to your fellow humans. It has a field projector in it that will make it impenetrable to all human devices. But the zotl have a radiation technology sophisticated enough to disrupt the field and destroy the lynk." .

  "There are no zotl on earth," Carl told the eld skyle.

  "There will be while you're there. The inertial displacement of your lynk will almost certainly be detected by the zotl scanner in Galgul. Your lynk, for the ten weeks that it is operating, will be an open corridor between the Werld and earth. Not just zotl can follow it to earth but any of the creatures here in the Werld who might accidentally pass through the Werld's lynk maze."

  "Isn't that a bit risky for earth and the four billion like me there? I mean, the zotl have needlecraft and laser cannon-and they eat us. Isn't there some othersafer-way to get your pig manure?"

  "The, danger is greater even than the zotl," the eld skyle said gloomily. "Your body carries the spore that brought you here. If enough of your blood is spilled, you could contaminate the entire world. You'd also probably destroy me. I couldn't stop the spore from collapsing millions of -people to light. Millions of collapsed lives inertially trained on me! Their light would smother me. I gag just thinking about it."

  "This whole thing sounds unwise to me. I could cut -myself shaving and infect a continent."

  "Don't shave. Nicks are dangerous. The lynk is designed to control only trace quantities of spore, like the cubic centimeter of blood normally lost in a bowel movement. Any more is dangerous.

  But you can be careful. And remember, you are adamized. Your hemorrhoids are gone, the capillaries in your nose are stronger, and the occlusion of your teeth is so clean you'll never bite yourself again."

  "That's not enough. It's too risky."

  "I have no other foreseeable chance of surviving my sickness,"

  the eld skyle admitted in a woeful tone. "I need this inclusion. And you're my only way to get it. You must help me, Carl."

  "And expose the earth to maneating zotl and your deadly spore? No way."

  "You'll be armored, and the armor will be fitt
ed with a device that will activate only if you are mortally wounded. Then, in less than a millionth of a second, you will be collapsed to a point smaller than an electron."

  "And that's supposed to make me feel okay about going back?" A clutchful of emotion squeezed Carl, and he felt anguish, not for himself but for everyone else he would be damning if he failed. "Won't you just help me with Evoe and leave the earth alone?"

  "Even if I were indifferent to my survival, I can't help you by myself. The Rimstalkers have the weapons

  that you need to confront the zotl, and they won't give them to you. They are repaying me an old debt, and it is a rare favor from them. I would not waste it in a mere act of altruism. If you won't help me, I can't help you. I'm sorry, Carl."

  Through a spell of sinewed time, Carl struggled with the thought of endangering the earth, until memories of Evoe in the claret light of Midwerld swarmed him. And-with trepidation clanging in him-he decided to gamble the entire human race against Chaos for the love of a woman.

  A shriek, a scream, a shout of submission; a music of horror was his reply. But it was muffled in the silken chords of his suspended body, and what he mentally focalized was: "How do I handle the zotl?" "Your armor is built around a light lance," the eld skyle responded with an alacrity spurred by gratitude. "The lance conducts every range of light, from visible luminescence in all colors through bolts of lightning to gravity waves. And its use will be inbuilt into your brain. You'll be able to fly and maneuver more deftly than needlecraft. And the lance also carries inertial pulses that can pierce and destroy anything. The zotl have no defense against it."

  "How will I get the manure?" Carl asked, the clockwork of his fate clicking with logic. "I'll need money to buy and warehouse the stuff:"

  "You'll have unlimited funds. With the lynk and the light lancer armor, you will receive a third and final artifact, an interfacing magnetic plate=-an imp. It looks identical to a charge card, only it's pure white: Insert it into any bank computer system and you will be credited with large sums of real capital. The imp will also serve as your lynk-monitor. When something malefic of the Werld passes through the lynk to earth, the imp will use a tone to alert you. You must respond at once to prevent the infestation of your planet. Use your light lance to exterminate whatever comes through."

  "And if the authorities catch on to me?"

  "You must be discreet. The power in your hands will be a great temptation. You must resist the urge to use your powers for personal gain. That will only further endanger Evoe and the security of your planet. For the ten weeks that the lynk will be inertially converting the payload, you must try to lie low. We will be out of direct contact. You will be on your own. lf you fail, there is nothing I can do to save you--or Evoe."

  "I won't fail," Carl insisted, though his insides were a vortex of anxiety.

  "Good. Then I have one last strand of advice for you. Forget your name. Don't use it."

  "What'll I call myself?"

  "Make up an unusual name. Something with wit, perhaps, but something obviously unreal, partaking of the anonymity of the archetypes. Why? If you have any dealings with your fellow humans ,and they believe you are fundamentally no diferent from them, they will try to take your power. They may succeed. After all, your weapons are just artifacts. And that would ruin the whole venture. I advise you to stay unknown, nameless or myth-named. Hide in your armor if necessary. You will be surprised how comfortable light lancer armor is.

  "But what'll I tell people who ask for my name?"

  "In the twentieth of a cycle that you've lived in the Werld, have you ever pondered your newness and why you are so unlike you used to be?"

  "teen."

  "You admire your hairy scalp, the sharper definition of your musculature, your keener mind. But who was that bald, podgy, unaware self you lost--and where did it go?"

  The pause expected a reply. "I was converted by you. You extracted my defects and built me up again."

  "I ate you, absorbed your inertia, the substance of your place in the cosmos. And I excreted you. Your perfection is my waste.

  You are toxic to me. You are made of my sludge, animated by my own inertial resonance my pleasure-at the invigorating taste of your old self, its wholeness, its place inside the flow, one hundred and thirty billion years deep in the life of the universe. You are just the shade of that orgasm. The real you has been nutritively dispersed throughout the five-space range of my being. Carl is gone. And the you that will be returning to earth is not, at the core of things, human. Your inertia is unearthly. You belong to the Werld. And the Werld will be much with you. Remain aloof from the humans. Use a name that will bolster your solitude."

  Carl hung mute in the staring blankness. He was nothing. He was just the urge of his senses folded within the mighty power of the eld skyle. He wasn't even human.

  `A name will be provided," the eld skyle said. "It is best that you not think too deeply now. What I have told you has been imprinted in your brain and will be available as you need it. Skills will, come with the weapons. All you need is within you."

  "You could be a priest."

  "In a moment, I will drop you through a lynk that falls the length of the Werld. It empties into the black depths of Rataros.

  Endure the journey and learn. Few humans, Foke, or droppings have, witnessed the mystery of the Rimstalkers. Glad-fortune to you, Carl."

  Carl had no opportunity to wonder then why the eld skyle called him Carl after the spiel about not being Carl, though shortly the question of his identity would

  change the world. At that moment, however, he was mindless, jolted by an abrupt plunge.

  He was no longer hanging in a blue void but falling, tumbling, flying toward a waterdrop of light. The opening irised closer, and he shot out into the silverhot mountain-shouldering spaces of the Welkyn. His throat unclenched, and the streaming air filled his lungs.

  Whales of river-glistening skyles sailed past and then the choked blackness was over him again. The no-world endlessly unwound

  Midwerld's violet shadow-eagled clouds flung by and the sudden black again.

  The blackness was big as a planet. Carl stopped moving. He was standing in the absolute black, breathing shallowly to hear through the darkness. Noises shadowy as music stared at him from all directions..

  Sparks like fangs winced nearby, and Carl jumped. He Was naked and cold with fear. The sparks vipered around him. His feet shuffled, feeling the ground and sensing a firmness without texture.

  "Hello?" he said, and his voice was an astral thinness in a vast space.

  An echo seesawed around him: "Lo.-lo-lo..."

  The snaky lights jagged closer, and by their illumination, Carl glimpsed garish images, torrid shapes, coal-glinting like black flames.

  The fire-slinky forms edged nearer; and the air smelled baked.

  The animal in Carl was running, but he knew that any sudden move would be hurtfully, fatal. He knew with the clarity of his imprinting that he was already seized.

  The monstered dark around him were the Rimstalkers, the alien smiths that in a blaze of blackness were forging his weapons.

  And the skills that went with them. His life was to be subdued to his weapons, to the

  patience in all things. That thought came through him as the air went womb-hot and the circle of nightshapes rushed inward.

  Worm-gut moistness mashed Carl, and he couldn't move or breathe. A dragonish odor of burned clay shook him. The gluey gouts of writhing muscle that gripped his body pulsed like a fever, and he went into a glide.

  The cindered smell of something broken stung him awake. He was blind. For one moment, he sensed the geometry of his body, gaunt and clear as a diamond, filled with transparency, the willingness of light, but held in blackness, replete. He was a thing, waiting to be filled with his own light. He was a purpose and not a will.

  The blackness wrenched away, and Carl was launched into a wilderness of stars. The brute force of light assaulted his brain, and a ga
lactic vista burst open before him.

  Welts of brilliance swelled against the emptiness of space, and as his eyes adjusted he saw the welts were clouds of stars-galaxies.

  As fast as a lazy thought, he vaulted toward one feathery wheel 'of light and arced through lanes of radiance and bands of star-chipped dark.

  A yellow star hurtled closer, and the motes of planets about it caught the light in glints. One glint flashed to a shard and went filmy blue as it marbled into view.

  With the memory of Evoe and their life inside a sunset that never knew night, Carl opened himself to his fall. With the weight of winter in his heart, he fell to earth.

  Alfred Omega

  I went down to Chinatown today for some dim sum and saw a Kwan Yin temple defaced with graffiti: NO BUDDHA! KILL GOD! So I went inside and looked around. The place was empty and cluttered with trays of spent incense and shelves of offerings to the Goddess.

  I sat at an offering table and wrote this poem:

  NO BUDDHA only a statue, gold paint, wood, and a visage calm as a face in a womb-only incense smoke unwrapping in silence, a movement between a ghost and nothingness.

  Ever try to write a story? Notice how the characters get out of hand almost at once? That's because they partake not only of our imagination but also of our will.

  Regrets and expectations. That's all I am when I'm not writing. And when I do write, I am the thing the stories come through. I am less than myself and my characters more than me.

  My science fiction novel, Shards of Time, did pretty well for a first novel. A lot of people read it. It was nominated for a Nebula Award, and I had chances to talk with large groups about my ideas.

  But I couldn't get them to believe. My ideas were just ideas. No one really thinks ghost holes are real. Or that a man could fall into one and appear elsewhere, anywhere, even as far away as the end of time. Perhaps I am mad. My idea for skylands is based on a flagrant interpretation of gravitational geometry. I think I answered the meteorology of the Werld correctly, if my hunch about gravity vacuoles in the cosmic black hole are reasonable. But these are trivialities. To believe that Carl has gone to this place-that is madness.