The Fifth Science

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The Fifth Science Page 18

by Exurb1a


  “Don't,” Perda said. “They'll see us. It's okay, my eyes are good in the dark.”

  And they were. She led them around enormous trees, through brambles, over streams, never missing a step, keeping Ushko's hand in hers always.

  His mind conjured shapes out of the darkness and in the distance he saw a pyramid, glowing gently blue, its walls covered in glyphs, and he suspected that if he drew close enough he could read the glyphs.

  “Don't lose yourself to fancies,” Perda said gently.

  “I wasn't going to.”

  “Yes you were.”

  She led them further into the dark and finally there was a glimmer of a clearing in the distance and before Ushko knew it they were exiting the trees and standing on the plateau of a hill. Ahead stretched mountains gilded with grass and vegetation and everything was glazed delicately in moonlight. They walked another hour or so in silence, then Perda sat them down by a tree and instructed the helper sphere to scan the perimeter for anyone approaching. “We'll rest now,” she said. “I don't think they'll look for us here. Are you hungry?”

  “Yes, a little.”

  She made a fire in no time from twigs and built it into a sizeable furnace and produced vegetables from her backpack and cooked them in silence.

  Ushko laid back in the grass and found the Swan Cluster. As though reading his mind Perda said, “They're beyond saving.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I'm sorry, Ushko.”

  They ate and then Perda produced a bottle of Katarsinian whisky from her bag and poured two glasses. She sat with her arms wrapped about her legs and took little sips and watched the stars without comment. Night insects were coming out now and the grass clacked and hummed. Ushko realised he didn't know a single name of a creature on Katarsina. Finally he said, “Why are you helping me, Perda?”

  “Because I think you're a good person.” She took his omniscribe from her backpack. “Here, you can contact your transport when it comes close to the planet. They can't land at the spaceport, people will be looking for you. We'll ask them to come down a few miles from here. I know a good spot.”

  “Will the Katarsinian government let them land?”

  Perda shrugged. “We'll tell the ship you're in danger. Maybe they'll do it anyway then.”

  “Am I in danger?”

  “No, not really, but if you don't leave now then you never will. So I suppose that's a kind of danger.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  But Perda said nothing and pushed her hair behind her ears and refilled their glasses. She laid down in the grass and put her head close to his.

  Ushko played that game common to interstell travellers, examining star patterns one doesn't recognise and trying to spot constellations. He found nothing of merit, not a bear, not a goose, and felt the great loneliness come on him again.

  One star, he noticed, was shining a deep, dark blue, the sky around it too. Another, its neighbour, was smeared in yellow. More of the sky began to turn unnatural hues until half of the horizon was awash with gorgeous saturations, vermillion green, cerulean blue.

  Perda said, “There have been around four thousand civilisations. It is not true that the protos were the first, but they were among the first.” The stars warped and rearranged themselves and the light washed into itself until the entire sky was a deftly weaved rainbow. “They didn't all develop in the same way, but the journey wasn't so different either. Most of them were very rich and very wise. They all went in time.” The sky darkened a little and the colours faded to duller hues.

  “Why?” Ushko said. “Why did they all go?”

  “Because they stepped into the river.”

  Ushko searched his mind for religious allusions and still couldn't make sense of that. “I don't understand.”

  Across the sky, between the stars, emerged bridges upon bridges, markers of trade routes and travel paths perhaps, frenetic lines of diplomatic complication. “All structures have a breaking point,” Perda said with a hint of melancholy. “When they grow too big, they collapse. All empires are destined to collapse. They must expand to survive and in expanding they die. Or it is a knowing limit. They discover a thing too wild to control, and in discovering the thing, they die. The protos recognised that early on. They went into the river instead.”

  “The river?”

  Perda turned her head to him. Her skin appeared as white fire and in her eyes swam a churning buttermilk of stars. “All civilisations discover the river eventually. They know if they go into it they must give everything else up. Power, expansion, war, the engines of empire.”

  “What is the river?”

  “I can't show you that, Ushko. I'll tell you what it isn't. Power. There's none of it there. When a man has spent millennia building himself pointy sticks, little can convince him not to use them. Wise civilisations see the fall coming though. They step into the river.”

  “Those skeletons I found, those artifacts, were they the original protos?”

  “Yes, the last ones before the river.”

  He left the next question a moment, unsure if he'd ask it. Then: “The protos didn't die out, did they?”

  Perda's eyes swam again with gentle infinities. “No, Ushko. They only learned that secrecy is a better defence than all the weapons in the galaxy. They went into the river.”

  The sky returned to normal and Perda's eyes returned to normal. “Your empire is about to collapse. It's caught up in too many conflicts, too many complications. Your science is too advanced. Your wisdom is too stunted. You don’t know it yet, but you’ve invented your successors and they’ll be up soon. You didn’t step into the river. You pursued the fifth science. You were the only ones arrogant enough to. Do you understand what's coming?”

  “No...”

  “I will try to get you home before the empire dies. That way you can hold its hand as it goes.” The fire was almost dead now and they moved closer to it. “Are you cold, Ushko?”

  “A little.”

  She rolled into him and they put their arms around each other. He held her very close and kept his gaze on the Swan Cluster until he slept.

  In the morning she took him to a stream nearby and they washed. Then she handed him his omniscribe. “Your craft will have reached the system by now. Tell them you're in political trouble. Ask them to come down at these coordinates.” She wrote out a short line of numbers with a stick in the dirt. Ushko did all this without comment and the message was transmitted fine.

  She led him by the hand over fields, through valleys. They stopped here and there for Perda to examine mushrooms and she picked a few after careful consideration and they ate enough to give them the strength to keep hiking. “What will happen to you?” Ushko said after a while. “Will they kill you for helping me?”

  Perda said nothing and led him on.

  They came to a clearing and Ushko didn't need to ask if this was the place. They sat down in the grass and Perda took out the whisky again and they drank.

  “Will you tell me something else?” Ushko said.

  “What?”

  “I'm not sure. Just something to keep in me. When I get home it's going to be awful, I know it. The arties are all mad. The new sciences are horrible. God, I feel like my spirit is coming apart. I feel like I can't breathe. I feel like I can't go back, but I have to go back.”

  She finished her drink and put her head on his shoulder. He waited for something wise but she said nothing. He closed his eyes.

  A thing appeared in him, small at first. He might've called it reassurance but it wasn't that. The feeling was grey, the colour of true wisdom. Everything will go to hell, the feeling said. And that's okay. He thought of the death of the empire, of the death of everything his species had tried to build, and the horror was gone. If the Great Goodnight happened, so be it. The world was just a totality of facts. Nothing had a goodness or a badness about it. Thinking only made it so and now he saw the world clearly, just for a moment, free of the veil o
f judgement. It was a beige relief and a pure awareness.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “It's all right.” She refilled their glasses with the last of the bottle. “Do you understand Kala now?”

  “Maybe. I'm not sure I understand anything right now.”

  She went to say something but there was a great roaring in the distance. It approached quickly and came into view: the voidskipper, its planetside wings raised wide above, seraphim-like. Steam shot from its top vents and its engines dribbled plasma coolant. It turned about a few times, twenty feet from the ground, and when the pilot spotted Ushko and Perda the landing struts extended and the thing slowly began to descend.

  Ushko cried out and stood and gathered his things. He went to set off running but Perda put a hand on his shoulder. “What?” Ushko shouted.

  Perda made an uncertain face, watched the voidskipper.

  From across the fields, quick as an arrow, a bolt of blue lightning struck the ship. The ship was unaffected for a moment. Then it gave a great creak and all across its middle it opened like a tin can, fire pouring from every nook and gap. Delphium ignited, wild and blinding fireworks, the stink of iron and tin and newmetals.

  “I'm sorry,” Perda shouted. “I'm so, so sorry.” She pulled Ushko back into the forest. He couldn't take his eyes from the ship. It hovered a few more moments, coming apart in the air, then crashed onto the clearing and sparks of purple and green and red shot up in every direction and the air shook with the explosion.

  “I'm so sorry, Ushko.” She pulled him further back into the forest and began to run but Ushko only stood watching the thing. “We're not safe,” she shouted. “We have to go.” She grabbed his hand again and pulled him but he was like a boulder now and heavy and hollow at the exact same time.

  Finally the noise of the dying ship quietened down until it was gone entirely. All about them the air reeked of ozone and delphium, of starship corpse.

  Perda led them back out of the forest and up a hill. The hill grew steeper soon enough and showed itself as a mountain. Ushko didn't ask where they were headed and followed faithfully. “I knew they wouldn't let me go,” he said.

  “You know too much now.”

  Up the mountain and the insects were coming out for evening and singing their strange songs. The air was growing damp and they were short on water but still they climbed, through the trees, through the brambles, their feet light and their eyes watching and careful.

  When the trees began to fall away they saw they were very high up. The clouds were waiting just above and the ground flattened and they could walk easily. Ushko padded behind, asking no questions. Perda stopped at the bank of a small stream and picked a number of purple spotted flowers and tucked them away in a dress pocket.

  “Are we exiles now?” Ushko said.

  Perda smiled, though her eyes did not. “I suppose so.”

  “What will happen when they find us?”

  She only shook her head.

  She led them on again and finally they came to an enormous hollowed bowl on the mountain. The rocks had a blueness to them, a slight shimmer. In the rocks, Ushko noticed, were carvings of a sort, glyphs.

  Ushko laid himself on the floor, exhausted. Perda stroked the glyphs with a semi-religious reverence.

  “What is this?” Ushko said weakly.

  “An old meeting place. A monument to everything known. No one comes here now. We'll be safe.”

  “Will you read to me?”

  “I will.” She ran her fingers along a patch of glyphs. “But I'm not sure you'll understand.”

  “It's okay. Just read to me please.”

  She chose a particular line. Her voice was low. “All seeds contain the tree they will become. In that seed is the limit of its growth. No amount of water or nurture or love can grow a tree taller than the seed has allowed. If it is pushed to grow taller or wider than that, then it will die slowly. It will die of itself. Most things in the universe fade this way. If a tree is to survive then it must make itself content with its height and hide. It must hide its pride and limit its curiosity, lest it birth the end of everything.”

  Ushko said, “How old are you, Perda?”

  “Much older than you.”

  “Where did the protos go?”

  “Nowhere. They only hid themselves away.”

  She came and sat beside him and took the purple flowers from her dress.

  She mixed the flowers into a little water and the water turned a dark purple. She poured half of the mixture into another cup and gave him one.

  “How old are you, Perda?” he asked again.

  “Old enough to have seen everything I want to.”

  For just a moment he caught sight of a different woman in her face, the hair grey and straggled, the skin covered in many wrinkles. The face was not human. The cheeks were too wide and the eyes were far, far too large. The face warped even more until he was seeing not with his eyes, but his head. Before him was an unspeakably other creature, a thing with a mind the width of a star and wisdom wider still. Then she was young again and all was normal.

  “The tree must make itself content with its height,” she said quietly. “For everything a season.”

  “The world is the explanation,” Ushko said.

  She nodded.

  She drank down her cup and Ushko did the same. The liquid was horribly bitter, but he didn't complain and managed to get it away in two gulps. Then she took his cup and coaxed him down to the ground slowly and laid against his chest, listened to his heart.

  “How long will it take to kick in?” Ushko said.

  “Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.”

  He waited for a big thought, something wise, but nothing came. Instead he felt a grey kind of peace.

  “What is the river like?” he said.

  “It's not like anything,” she said. “I'm sorry you never saw it.”

  “I don't mind,” he laughed. “I've seen Katarsina.”

  “And how did you like it?”

  “I liked it just fine.”

  The air was heavy on his face and his chest had tightened a little. His cheeks were flushing. He felt a deadness waking inside him, spreading out to his fingertips.

  “Empires are roses,” Perda said. “They bloom and then they die. Or they go Fifth. And they die that way too.”

  “Has it begun?” he said. “Is my empire collapsing already?”

  “It started a very long time ago. The process will be finished soon though.”

  “Will you show it to me?”

  “You don't want to watch that.”

  “Please. Just show it to me.”

  “You're sure?”

  “Please,” he said.

  Ushko closed his eyes and took a deep, difficult breath. When he opened his eyes again the sky was lit with multicoloured fire and the constellations were constellations he recognised: Orion, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Signus, Gammat, Medea. Craft flew back and forth between them, carrying contraband and rarities and knowledge. Worlds were conquered and lost. Wars were started and finished. Millions of theories were stacked up alongside each other and those rare few that worked were singled out and refined until the world made sense to some degree. The human race wound its ribbons around stars, around planets, throughout the galaxy and kept its eyes looking even beyond the galaxy.

  And all at once the dance jolted and fire broke out all across the sky. Worlds began to burn, craft pulling back, diplomats pulling back, the galaxy giving way to corruption and excessive complexity, to fractured languages, to the Great Forgetting.

  And among the goneness came a coming, a waking: an artificial thing that was not artificial, not even artie. It was matter. It was living matter.

  Ushko said, “Jesus, what is that?”

  Perda said, “Some births kill the mother. And she is almost dead now.”

  Ushko could make no sense of this and he knew there wasn’t the time to try. His eyes began to close. His breathing slowed. His heart slowed.r />
  He said, “I'm so sorry if I've gotten you into trouble.”

  “It's all right. I've been very bored for a long time now. I've been very tired too. We'll have a nice long sleep.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you so much for everything.”

  “That's fine.”

  The dreamscape above was absent of humans now, but a new light was lit. A great and strange song came over the heavens. Its tune was not made for human ears and it was not singing for humans anyway.

  The pain had spread throughout his body, but with it came a delicious lethargy. He would give in soon, he decided.

  He said, “I hope we see each other again, Perda.”

  But Perda was asleep now and the sky was as it had been and everything was quiet.

  Be Awake, Be Good

  It was no secret that the stars were naughty. They altered in their positions. They skewed or appeared to change temperature. Sometimes they disappeared entirely.

  What you probably don’t know though is how the mystery was solved.

  Morae was a water planet. Maybe there was a continent knocking about somewhere, but no one had found it. The population of Morae lived on enormous floating habitats called rafts. Some were small, accommodating perhaps a hundred people. Others were gigantic and accommodated several million. Rafts were biological creatures of course, hailing from that era in man’s empire when matter was made clever. The magic had been forgotten quickly enough though, once the Great Rot set in.

  Some rafts were democratic and peaceful. Others were monarchic and not very peaceful. And others, the Free Rafts, sported no humans in them at all and only roamed about the worldsea at their own leisure.

  Yes, yes, you might say; humans living inside enormous oceanic entities? What did the entities themselves think of this? And the answer, sad to say, is nothing. Aboard each raft was a raftwife and it was his or her duty to keep the raft subdued with sleeping chemicals. If a raft should wake up and find its insides full of fleshy little primates, the result was unpleasant at best and much worse at worst. Some rafts had disappeared from the worldsea entirely and we can safely conclude that those rafts came awake through chemical neglect and killed themselves and, by extension, their occupants.

 

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