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

by C. Paul Lockman

“It’s... well... it’s time, isn’t it? Who can claim to control time, but he who created it?”

  Mesilla looked aside, concealing a sudden concern. There was something worryingly familiar about this line of thinking. “Julius, the chances are that neither any of us here, nor our descendents, nor any of their great-grandchildren, will ever meet anyone who’s even working on time travel. You can’t stop them if you can’t find them.”

  “And where should I look?”

  She rose, kissed his forehead with a wonderfully calming tenderness and said, “I don’t think there’s any need to look, darling.” She left him with his thoughts, but her own mind was screaming the true answer.

  For his part, Julius felt more and more that the answers lay within The Will of the Five. He returned to his room and pored over the book for hours, well into his sleep period. He examined the margins, the frontispiece, the index and every page in between. There had been some pencil marks which were erased and apparently unrecoverable, but he only found one inscription in pen, a light blue which had faded almost to invisibility. The symbols made no sense.

  Julius called the ship’s computer to attention. “Danny?”

  “Good evening, Julius. You’re up late. Shall we run some more AGI programs together?” The machine had been taking a measure of enjoyment in training Julius in the complex codes of its own systems.

  “Not tonight, Danny. I need to do some translation and searching which will remain entirely private. Can you do that?”

  “Certainly, Julius. No records will be kept, if that’s what you want.”

  “Yes. Delete these requests from your history, once we’re finished, OK?”

  “Of course.”

  “Scan this page for me, and tell me the meaning of the inscription in blue.” He waited a little impatiently as the remote scanner housed in the room’s ceiling focused on and interpreted the thinly-drawn pictograms. Julius doubted the ship’s language files were comprehensive, and began to give up hope after a couple of minutes. But then, the machine spoke.

  “This is a common language in some parts of the galaxy, but it is not spoken on Qelandi, or anywhere within a thousand light-years of it.” This explained why Julius had never seen it before. “The pictograms are an instruction to the reader, written almost certainly by a man.”

  “And what does it say?”

  “Most of the symbols are pure, with straightforward definitions. It reads, ‘poison the roots to kill the tree’. No analysis will reveal which ‘tree’ is meant, but there is a phonetic transcription of a system’s name immediately following the readable text.”

  “A system?” Julius hands began shaking with excitement, and his mouth went dry. “What is its name?”

  “It reads, ‘Holdrian’.”

  ***

  The crew hardly saw Julius for days. Confident that the computer would not betray him, he’d begun a thorough search for information on Holdrian. It was many dozens of light years away, and actually in the opposite direction to their cruise, which was aimed squarely at a hopefully lucrative rendezvous with a large moonlet in The Belt.

  The more he learned, the more certain he became that Holdrian presented a real danger. The inscription had been neatly penned in the margin of a page which discussed time, one of the many chapters describing just how unchangeable and perfect was the unfolding of events. The elemental truism of cause and effect must, at all costs, be protected, it said; to depart from this sacrosanct path was not only to contravene the Will of the Five, but it was tantamount to assuming control over the universe itself, usurping the sacred power of the Five and attempting some kind of heretical coup. Anyone preparing to do so, the book warned, risked the destruction of all life. There was no more stark a warning than that, and it was one which Julius took extremely seriously.

  Seriously enough, in fact, to alert his Captain. Julius took the unusual step, amidst such a relaxed and informal crew, of requesting a meeting with Zak. They chose a secluded storage bay where Zak stood patiently while Julius described the whole thing: the book, the inscription, the importance of retaining cause-effect consistency, his worries about Holdrian, everything.

  The Captain said nothing for a long time. “You know,” he said at last, “when you said you wanted to meet, I was convinced you were going to ask me if it was OK to bang Mesilla.”

  “Woah, really?” The younger man was taken aback, not for the first time, by the way in which his Captain discussed their mutual colleague.

  “I’d be OK with it, you know. She ain’t anyone’s property.”

  “But that’s not what I...”

  “OK, just relax. This thing hasn’t come as the greatest surprise. You’re not the first member of this crew to get all in a twist about time travel and how dangerous it is. But I need to warn you about something.”

  Julius couldn’t help himself from asking. “Was my predecessor the one who wrote the inscription?”

  Zak sighed deeply, pushed his floppy black hair back and re-tied his pony tail. “It’s time to talk about that, but if we’re gonna, I need a stiff drink. And the others should join us. Come on.”

  The crew was summoned to the bar, where Arby was already mixing huge pitchers of drinks. “Guys, our young friend here needs some guidance, and it’s best it comes from all of us. We need to talk about Tamur.”

  Arby stopped his stirring and stared. Mesilla rose from the couch, face ashen with concern. Zak seated them all and remained standing while he downed a big glass of orange froth, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Here goes. This might sound like bullshit, but every word is true, and if I depart from the true history one jot, these two will set me right. OK?” The crew nodded.

  Zak set out a brief history of his tenure as Captain of the Orion and the dozen or so crew members who had come and gone from her manifest. Tamur, as he was called, had been picked up through a recommendation from a trusted friend in the wholesale ore business. “He was a hard worker, well educated and curious, and knew exactly how to party. He fit right in,” Zak remembered. “We made a lot of money together on a couple of short-ish trips to The Belt, and everyone was pretty happy. Then one day we’re orbiting Qelandi, getting hold of some supplies from a black market trader who hangs out at the L2 point, and while we’re trading, Tamur gets a hold of a book.”

  Julius felt this was his cue. “The Will of the Five,” he said, as if anyone needed reminding.

  “We should have burned the fucking thing right away,” hissed Mesilla, the pain obvious in her eyes. “It’s brought nothing but trouble.”

  “Not on your life, young lady,” he responded sternly. “This is an enlightened vessel with a smart and enlightened crew. We may skirt the rules sometimes, but book-burning ain’t gonna be happening on my watch. People can read whatever they want.”

  “But look what happened when he...” Mesilla began.

  “I ain’t censoring nobody’s reading list,” the Captain said firmly. “It could have been a manual on how to mate with a Qelandi peacock, or how to grow a second dick, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Just reading something ain’t a crime, and I won’t make it one.”

  Mesilla held her fire; Arby was simply a witness to the tale, largely unaware of its significance. “I’ve read it many times,” Julius confessed. “It is a powerful book of great wisdom.”

  “And it sent Tamur fucking crazy,” Zak shouted. The silence after was resounding; he’d never raised his voice before to Julius before. “He read it cover to cover, many times,” he said, “just like you have. But in the end…”

  “Zak,” Mesilla began. “We don’t have to…”

  “He damn near killed us all, jumped ship and headed out to Holdrian on some suicidal fool’s errand,” Zak summed up quickly.

  Julius stared, aghast. It was Mesilla who spoke next. “He was gripped by the idea you shared with me. ‘Time travel is evil,’ he would insist. ‘Its perpetrators must be stopped by any means necessary’. Do those sentiments feel familiar to you?” sh
e asked, her concern for his wellbeing mixed with a yet stronger concern for herself and the other crew.

  “He was right. Meddling with time is a dreadful act of sin.” Julius pulled himself up straight and addressed them all as equals. It took all of his courage. “I’m young and I don’t know much, but if we allow irresponsible experiments like those at Holdrian, we’ll all end up dead.”

  “No-one knows that for sure,” Mesilla countered.

  “Because no-one has tried it yet. The Holdrian team haven’t released any data, so I assume their experiments have not yet been successful.”

  “An unsafe assumption,” cautioned Zak. “Think about it. Holdrian was created,” he reminded them all, “as a secure, totally isolated scientific community where all manner of off-the-wall shit could be tried without it harming anyone else. They’ve kept a firewall around that place since it was built. Whatever you read on the Net is pure conjecture.” Zak was determined not to allow this sorry repetition of history to get out of control.

  “We won’t know until someone goes there to find out,” Julius announced.

  Zak strode over and raised a fist. Julius stood firm, ready for the blow, but it didn’t land. “Tamur stole a shuttle we used to have,” he said instead. “He headed to Holdrian, which was months from our location. Somehow he reached the science station and broke in. From what I hear, he killed some guards and then started shooting the place up. So they killed him.”

  Julius’ confidence seemed to vanish. “Do you know that for certain?”

  “They’re not animals,” Mesilla reminded him, “they’re scientists. Tamur’s body was put in a cargo pod which eventually entered Qelandi orbit. I guess they figured out that we often traded there. I’m not sure. But we recovered it after a tip from our mining partner. They thoroughly killed his ass, let me tell you.”

  There was a long pause before Julius took a deep breath, let it go, and slumped resignedly onto the couch. “Arby, how about a strong one?” The engineer-barman began mixing while Mesilla and Zak tended to the emotionally wounded newbie. “He left you?” Julius asked, incredulous. “To chase down a science experiment, light-years away?”

  “That’s about the size of it. For him, it was a compulsion,” Zak explained. “He had to go. Nothing else interested him. I mean, we understood, but it made everyone very sad for a long time. It felt like a damned waste, so it did,” Zak said.

  The four of them sat together, reminisced, consoled one another, thoroughly warned Julius against flying off the handle, and got steadily, morosely drunk.

  ***

  Chapter 24 – Green and Blue

  Triton

  “I’m absolutely sure,” Anne said for the third time. “Absolutely.”

  Hal’s linguistic circuits were awkwardly straddling the boundary between being helpful and being plain pushy. He was nearing the limits of his persuasive programming. “Very well. I have to say, I don’t understand.”

  Anne set down her tea and rubbed her eyes. It had been a long meeting, their longest to date, and she had important work waiting for her in the lab module. “That’s been clear to me for a few hours, Hal,” she responded. “You see death as a terrible waste, and you’re right. But in my culture, and in almost every other one you’ll meet, it’s accepted as the way we end our lives.”

  “I simply don’t accept,” the machine retorted, keeping his tone mild, “that such an ‘end’ is itself required.”

  “You challenge impermanence?” Anne enquired.

  “I do.”

  “Then what of every other physical process in the known universe?”

  Hal’s etiquette programming prevented his initial response – “In your known universe, you mean” – and replaced it with, “You may have a point there. Everything now happening will, one day, stop happening.”

  “Including me. And you. And Haley, and Kiri and Paul.”

  “But... Why?” It was the only way he could express the bubbling frustration which had bothered him since first encountering the human acceptance of death.

  Anne revisited her thinking on these points, which had become very detailed and nuanced during endless debates with Hal. “What value would an individual day have,” she asked, “if we could look forward to an infinity of similar days?”

  “It would have whatever value we chose to give it,” Hal replied.

  “I can’t agree. A day would be as nothing, a disposable duration. Urgency would be lost. Perhaps even purpose itself. A great deal of good work has been done because a deadline was set.”

  “So, your own death,” Hal said next, “is simply a deadline which prevents your work from ballooning into infinity? An outer limit for your working life? Why not extend the limit?”

  Anne sipped her tea. “I have. You’ve already helped me.”

  “I’ve done nothing to your DNA, or...”

  “No,” she said firmly. “I was brought back from death. I was ready to quit. You remember.” It wasn’t a question. “You coaxed me back to life, gave me hope, provided a place to work and new objectives. And now, look at me.”

  Anne had expected that it would take weeks to shake off the intense loneliness of Haley and Kiri’s departure, but it just hadn’t worked like that, she found. The hurt never left, it was simply less attached to her consciousness, moment to moment. There was an almost childishly simple maxim which had served her well: If you don’t think about it, it can’t really bother you. She practiced this careful placing and re-placing of her attention until it obeyed her inner will, that part of herself which was stronger than the scared, worried woman of the past. Her better self had, with training and Hal’s advice, emerged as the undisputed manager of her life.

  It was a life spent alone, but it was far from empty. Anne worked a very regulated schedule of intense research work and bio-experimentation, fitness, meditation, farming and eating. She had put on muscle and lost fat. Her body had recovered the nutrients lost during her depression, and her brain now fizzed with a cocktail of helpful compounds – some natural, some added – which had helped her to become an outstanding scientist. Volumes of research were piling up, as were dozens of racks of experiments. She had invented more than seventy new species of plant, and the habitat thronged with green leaves, snaking lianas, blossoming plants and hanging baskets bursting with vegetable life.

  “But your work will cease with your own demise,” Hal argued again.

  “Not if it is recorded, and catalogued, with samples frozen and discs backed-up... There will be a repository of useful knowledge here, and on its way to a dozen colleagues by sub-space transmission, by the time I die. For all I know, alien societies might converge on this little place and find it to be an interstellar meeting place,” she said, laughing at the thought. “After all, it’s two hundred light years from everywhere, right?”

  Triton’s remoteness was, Hal knew, somewhat subjective. He pressed on, one final time. “I just hope you won’t come to regret it.”

  “Oh, Hal,” she said, fond of the computer but despairing of his endless insistence. “If you’re that worried about it, why don’t I promise to go into hypersleep, at the end, so that I can be reanimated by the first explorers who arrive here?”

  “An excellent notion,” the machine agreed, audibly relieved. “I will provide a hypersleep unit.”

  “Thank you, Hal.” If only to get you off my back for a while. “May I return to work now?”

  “I’m sorry to have detained you.” Hal returned to his subroutines, assisting in various ways with Anne’s research, and ordered the building of a new sleep unit for Anne. But he also initiated another construction project, one which would not, he knew, be needed for nearly a thousand years.

  ***

  Chapter 25 – Traitor

  Onboard Orion, approaching an unnamed Belt World

  “The Pentastria decide as one mind.

  And once decided, a perfection is created.

  None shall judge such perfection, nor wish it different. />
  For to rail against the perfect renders it imperfect,

  And imperfection offends the Pentastria, who are not patient.”

  Julius marveled at these passages, underlining them, writing copious marginal notes and, eventually, keeping his own green, hard-backed journal which he filled with daily thoughts and commentaries on the unimprovable wisdom the book professed. It became a ritual so absorbing that it dominated his waking life. Beyond his rudimentary chores, and his continued practice with AGI computer code, it became all he ever thought about.

  Especially now that Mesilla had changed her mind. He should have known to expect it. Their initial bond had grown, more so than Julius had understood, and after a night of partying in the lounge, he found himself amid a sudden tumble of emotions as she brought herself against him, on top of him. Welcomed him inside her. Alone in the lounge, the stars their only audience, she showered him with pent-up affection, again and again.

  The next day there was a wave of guilt, but he pushed it away. How could the Pentastria, the sacred Five, object to such a natural, human state as sexual bliss? Was it not how new lives were created? Was it not their encouragement to be fruitful? If they permitted laughter and zero-G water-hoops and endless drinking and drugs and delicious foods, then surely they wouldn’t baulk at healthy, consensual sex?

  The Pentastria might not, Julius found, but something within him certainly did. Though never stated outright, he had the clear impression that The Will of the Five saw great danger and perversity in casual coupling. He dwelled on it endlessly, for days, and then for weeks, seeing Mesilla less and less often, until she cried and hurled accusations. She had even wondered if something deeply unnatural, something so foul as to lack even a polite word on Qelandi, were at the root of his reluctance. He had almost hit her for saying that. And then felt guilty, and sought comfort in the great text, which only reinforced his feelings of doubt and shame, bringing him greater isolation.

  His emotions were a wreck, and no-one understood. Zak saw the solution in more sex, a glib and thoughtless response which Julius regarded as beneath such a man, his friend and Captain. Arby would have been next to useless, offering the bottle as a tonic when sobriety and clarity were sorely needed. Mesilla herself didn’t know what she wanted. Perhaps just for Julius to make sense. And to stop reading that fucking book.