Clarion: The Sequel to Voyage (Paul's Travels)

by C. Paul Lockman

  “Dr. Lockman, I presume?” It was a curiously high-pitched voice, energetic and engaging.

  Paul approached the two men, slicking back his hair with both hands. “Forgive my appearance,” he offered, somewhat embarrassed to appear dripping wet among such neatness and architectural symmetry. He searched quickly for the right comment. “It is a most refreshing way to arrive.”

  “Ah, so you’ve felt it?” the rounder man asked. He gestured broadly to the open ocean, his face inviting a response.

  “The temperature is perfect,” Paul tried.

  The man gave him a kindly smile reserved for the compassionate correction of a misunderstanding. “The energy is what my colleague referred to, Dr. Lockman. This sea is powerfully charged. I dare say a longer swim would provide ample proof.”

  Paul brushed the remaining water from his forearms and wrung out the front of his t-shirt. “That is something to look forward to. I wonder if I may ask...”

  “We anticipate a veritable feast of queries from you, Dr. Lockman. Have no fear that our planet is one of openness and truth. You will find your answers in due course.”

  They turned and beckoned to a waiting servant, a shorter humanoid with tightly curled hair and dark skin, who offered Paul a pile of clothing and a towel. No one made any move to provide privacy, so Paul simply stripped off, toweled down and clothed himself in the same purple garb as his hosts, right there in front of them. If this turns into some kinky gay beach orgy, he muttered inwardly, I’m out of here.

  As he fastened the robe into place, he asked, “I wonder how it is that you believe I have a doctorate?”

  The two men, who had still not moved an inch since Paul first laid eyes on them, spoke together. “But, you do!”

  The visitor smirked. “Not as far as I know... I’m sure I’d have remembered finishing a graduate program.”

  “You have had over a dozen honorary doctorates conferred upon you, by some of the most esteemed universities in the galaxy.” The taller, gaunt figure reeled off a list of entirely unfamiliar names, before coming finally to Oxford, the University of Paris and the Takanli Institute for Advanced Studies. “We rarely meet one so well-regarded over such a vast distance.”

  Paul gawped at them for a moment, and then grinned. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it, but then I’ve been asleep for three hundred years.”

  “Ah, dear Doctor, you may be forgiven a little disorientation as the effects of your journey – not to mention the psychological trauma of such frequent time travel – begin to wear off. You are, of course, in your own past, are you not?”

  A couple of neurons clicked back into place. “Yes, I’m sorry. As far as I can tell, it would be around 330AD on Earth at this moment.” He smiled again. He felt a little behind the curve, as if these two strangely immobile men had access to secrets far beyond his experience. “I’m on a rather long journey, you see.”

  The servant returned and handed Paul a small, metallic device which seemed to be a wrist band of some kind. The two lofty observers eyed his reaction. “Unless you would prefer to walk?”

  “I’m not sure I...”

  Paul reached for the device, and a second later, he found himself suddenly indoors. It was a spacious chamber with wooden walls enclosing an undulating floor of carved wood. The ceiling was supported by thick, dark beams from which hung dozens of curled shapes, each casting a slightly different color of light. Green, ivy-like plants had infiltrated the gaps and had climbed almost to the ceiling in a snaking tendril of dark-green leaves.

  “Welcome to Araj Kitel. You may call me Serpyter.” His rounder friend introduced himself as Gojn, which he made rhyme with ‘coin’.

  Pleasantries dispensed with, Paul could no longer contain his curiosity. “Is this some kind of teleportation device? A Relocator?”

  Gojn lit an incense stick, placed it on a side table in the corner of the room, and said, “Of course. Although, to refer to it thus, one would first need to accept the fallacy that our location has, in any way, changed.” Serpyter smiled broadly at this rejoinder; it was clearly a theme of their discourse.

  Their dark-skinned servant had Relocated with them, it seemed, and he began pouring a pale blue drink into tall martini glasses. “A toast to your arrival, and to our mutual trust and understanding.” The three men stood together, carefully clinked glasses, and drank. The liquor had a sweet, cinnamon spice but a background of cognac or brandy, dense and lingering. Paul asked about it. “Every form of food and drink you are offered during your stay,” Gojn assured him, “has been harvested from our forest. There can be no chemical additives... Perhaps I am not mistaken in remembering these issues have become rather pressing on your own planet, in your own time?”

  Paul was gestured to a seat, a high-backed wooden armchair, and placed his drink on a side table. “Quite so,” he confirmed. “There is a global movement which campaigns for healthier food, a reduction in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and which is skeptical,” he added slightly heavily, “about the health effects of genetic engineering.”

  Serpyter leaned forward, stroking his smooth chin with a long, pale finger. “I have read of Earth’s preliminary research,” he revealed. “And, of course, the work which came after.”

  “After what?” Paul asked.

  Serpyter smiled that smile again. “After your own time.”

  “After?” He struggled mentally for a moment. “What can you tell me about it?”

  Serpyter laughed. It was an airy, almost hissing sound, not unpleasant but about as highly unusual as any other aspect of Paul’s visit so far. “Absolutely nothing!” Gojn joined the merriment. Looking carefully, quizzically at Paul, Serpyter said, “I hope you don’t expect me to reveal the future of your own timeline.”

  The visitor relented. “A rookie mistake,” he admitted.

  “It is an action more easily forgiven,” Gojn explained, “to dip back into the past and provide an alternate future...”

  “...than it is,” Serpyter took over the trope, “to know your own future and be expected always to create your timeline accordingly.”

  “How can anyone create a future?” Paul asked, his head swimming slightly.

  “Like this,” Gojn said simply. “Imagine that I am about to tell you of a future event. I’d only be able to know it by going forward in time, observing it, and returning with that information. Say that I’ve done that.”

  “OK,” Paul said slowly.

  He picked up Paul’s own glass and handed it to him. “Take a sip, and I’ll show you how the future is created.” Paul stared at him for a long moment, but then took a taste of his drink. “There. Let’s say that I have returned with information claiming that, in eleven minutes’ time, you will rise from your seat and follow us both along the walkways to our dining room.”

  “That sounds plausible,” Paul said.

  “But that was the future before I handed you the drink.”

  “Won’t it still be the same?”

  Gojn clasped his hands and seemed to focus his mind very clearly on this one point. “It may. But the chances are that it will not. Can you be certain, for instance, that the additional liquid you imbibed will have absolutely no consequences when it comes to taking that walk with us?”

  Paul considered this. “Well, I might be slightly more drunk than I would have been.”

  “Exactly!” Gojn exclaimed. “Will your speed and style of walking be exactly the same? Your words? Your thoughts?” He was standing now, gesticulating. “By inviting you to drink when you otherwise would not have, we have re-organized the probability matrix for this timeline. Things will now not happen as they would have, but as they are going to. And thus it always is.”

  Serpyter refilled their glasses from a slender carafe. “This could not be more important,” he warned Paul, “for your own mission.”

  Paul fixed him with a deliberate stare. “How do you know of my mission?”

  The two men both reacted as if asked
to reveal something inconvenient, uncomfortable, even a sworn secret. “We have... how shall I put this?”

  Gojn took over. “In positions like ours, it’s often necessary to... well...”

  “To network with a broad range of beings,” Serpyter tried again, “in order to bring together the necessary... ah... synergy of events...”

  “Yes, a synergy... a confluence of strands, aimed at achieving something greater than the... Er...”

  “So important,” Gojn continued, distracted seemingly by the grandeur of his point, “to keep open the ancient channels of communication...”

  “And to form new ones, better ones...”

  The two old men gradually stopped and fell into silence. Paul regarded them both at length, perhaps as a teenager would scrutinize a parent who had just unexpectedly announced gender reassignment surgery. They’ve tried to make sense of this for me, but I’m more confused than before. He cleared his head, took a deep breath. “Gentlemen, I hope you won’t think me rude...”

  “No, no. Ask away,” Serpyter gestured.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Both men convulsed into gales of unrestrained laughter. While they carried on, helpless, Paul sat back and quietly drained his glass. What kind of a circus has Hal dropped me into? He watched Gojn and Serpyter gradually regain control, at once disarmed but somewhat unimpressed. This intractable, inscrutable machine decides to meddle with our plan to intercept Julius, he rescues people without orders, he diverts us to a refueling point which just happens to be hosted by a pair of crazies with intimate knowledge of my voyage... Paul needed answers, in depth and quickly.

  Largely recovered, Serpyter apologized repeatedly, drying his eyes and taking deep breaths to calm his cramped diaphragm. “We’ve never found it easy,” he admitted, “to succinctly describe our professions. You might sometimes have the same problem?” he enquired politely.

  Paul smiled and gave a resigned nod. Better to placate than to risk another outburst, either of mirth or of something less benign. “It seems,” he said, trying to sum up what he’d learned, “to be part of a communications matrix, tasked with ensuring a smooth dialogue?”

  “That’s close,” admitted Gojn. “Yes, very close indeed.”

  “Between whom?”

  They stopped, looked at each other and smiled slightly. It was Serpyter who spoke. “Between those who seek, and those who wish to know.”

  Paul blinked slightly and looked at Serpyter with a pleading expression. “You must tell me… Am I such a seeker?”

  The tall, gaunt man leaned forward in his chair and steepled his hands. “Do you feel that you are?”

  “God, yes,” Paul breathed. “I’ve had so many questions. Ever since my journey began. And now, my computer, well…”

  Gojn smiled. “The great ‘Hal’, as I believe you call him.”

  This is what I’m talking about, Paul’s inner voice complained. We travel three hundred lightyears from Neptune, to a place I’ve ever heard of, only to discover that they know everything about me?

  He quelled the racket. More than ever before, Paul knew, he would simply have to roll with these punches. But there was one thing he just had to ask. “Hal claims to be under orders from someone other than myself.”

  Gojn motioned to the servant, who brought them all warmed towels, scented with herbs. “Rather naïve, if you don’t mind me saying so,” Gojn said as he cleansed his hands, “to assume that a machine of such power, brought into being by no less a mind than one of the guardians of Holdrian, might regard you as its sole master?”

  “I agree,” Paul allowed. “But he is manipulating my journey in important ways. Our detour to Neptune, and the nature of this visit, for example.”

  Serpyter stood slowly, as if age were afflicting his joints. “Will you accompany us to dinner, Dr. Lockman? I think we’ll be able to answer those questions better on a fuller stomach.”

  Standing suddenly, Paul blurted out, “Just… Tell me.” The question burned him and would not remain unasked. “You must simply tell me this. Who is Hal working for?”

  The two strange men exchanged a look. It conveyed sympathy and understanding, but also a note of caution. Finally, as though there had been a silent, telepathic exchange, Gojn spoke.

  “My dear friend, please be calm. Hal is a servant of the greatest meeting of minds imaginable.”

  He could have knelt at the man’s feet and begged for the answer. “Who?” Paul croaked, desperate now. “Which minds?”

  He felt a soothing hand on his shoulder. “Hal,” Serpyter told him finally, “is a loyal and able servant of Clarion.”

  For a long moment, it meant nothing. But then, the odd, fractious shapes of Paul’s puzzle, long stubborn and unyielding, began to tessellate. Although he was still some way from the answer, a road through the riddle had now been cleaved. Perhaps soon, Paul began to feel, he might understand.

  ***

  They tried it in the sea, and on the beach, before deciding that the forest was the best place to make love. A soft layer of downy leaves was the perfect bed, and without sand to get into sensitive places, their sex was more relaxed and wonderfully drawn out. Around five hours had passed since their arrival, although the sun still seemed high in the sky, as if it were somehow fixed there. They rested, intertwined, under a tree which was about a minute’s walk into the dark-green forest. Natural paths seemed to form where the giant, thick-trunked trees crowded out smaller vegetation; their arching limbs soared across the spaces, sheltering the couple in a welcome cool.

  Neither could remember such spaciousness. Onboard Aldebaran, they had been allowed to run around in the cavernous cargo and engineering spaces, but there was still the inevitable sense of limitation. There hadn’t been enough space inside their escape capsule to even have a truly private conversation, and hypersleep aboard the Phoenix was about as confining as any experience could be. Here, the beach seemed endless, sweeping away in either direction as though they were poised on the rounded tip of a huge peninsula. With no chores or research to be done, they could do exactly as they wished.

  Their first instinct had been to run as far as they could, giggling and reveling in the sheer vastness, and then rest for a while on the beach before walking, hand in hand, back to where they had been dropped off. With no sign of habitation, they both decided to do without their swimwear, tanning luxuriantly and completely in the warming sunlight, then cooling off in the forest. A handful of different sounds could be heard in the tall canopy, echoing in the huge spaces; high, songlike burbles of sound were answered in attractive patterns, while a rasping sound, surely an animal scratching one of the trees, arrived in groups of seven, nine and eleven, as if the canopy-dweller were communicating in code.

  Lazy and remarkably tame, the little lizards which patrolled the forest floor took no notice of them, even when one happened upon them in the noisiest stages of mutual pleasure. The girls’ nakedness made frequent sex a virtual certainty, and they throughout the day, they paused only to recover their breaths, and to head to the beach for another tanning session, before returning to the cool forest to enjoy each other.

  There were fruits sufficiently similar to those from the hydroponic forests on Aldebaran; they took a bite of almost everything which hung from a tree. A small stream trickled toward the sea, forming a little ford some twenty-minutes from their arrival point, and they filled large, nut-like husks with the water. They ate, they slept, they made love. By the time the strange, high-angled sun had begun to sink to the level of the tallest trees, they were already asleep. It was a long and untroubled drowsing.

  And then, waking together in renewed sunlight under a massive tree, they noticed a figure, standing on the beach.

  Whoever it was had their back to Haley and Kiri and was staring out at the sea. As high tide approached, elaborate and pleasingly decorative waveforms were being created along the jutting coast of the peninsula, and the visitor seemed absorbed by them. Hurriedly finding th
eir clothes and pulling on shirts and shorts, they stood where the beach met the forest, the better to hide among its trees should they need to.

  Kiri tried a greeting. “Hello?”

  The figure turned, and they saw at once that it was a man in his forties, perhaps a decade or so older than Paul. He had a slight paunch and wore an expression utterly relaxation. “What a beautiful place,” he said, beaming. “One could watch forever.” He motioned to the engagingly complex wave geometry taking place, a quarter mile out to sea.

  The girls walked slowly onto the beach and regarded this odd tourist with a benign curiosity. He seemed to mean no harm. “We are visitors here also,” Haley said. “Have you traveled a long way?”

  He smiled beatifically once again, and then sat down cross-legged on the sand with the ocean to his left and the girls, seating themselves cautiously, on his right. “Although I have traveled here through an immensity of space, I cannot call myself a visitor.”

  Kiri cocked her head to one side. “Were you born here?”

  Again, that broad, accommodating smile. “Who can say? Don’t you feel as though this ocean, under this open, blue sky, could have been your own origin?”

  Kiri frowned, confused. Haley tried a different tack. “My name is Haley, and this is Kiri. We are explorers here, brought by a friend who knows people on another island.”

  “And I,” he said, more formally, rising to bow at them both, “am Gar... Gary.”

  “Gar Gari?” Haley repeated, amused at the obvious slip of the tongue.

  “Gary will do fine.” He took his seat once more and looked with great pleasure out over the ocean. It seemed a tonic to him, like a favorite painting. “Can you... Are you aware,” he rephrased, “of the message of this place?”

  Kiri shrugged. “We figured the message was that we should relax, sunbathe and eat fruit.”