Crompton Divided (5 page)

‘Now, finding a suitable FHda. … Excuse me a moment, folks. … Okay, I’m back now. Our starboard sensor just came up with a fat one, and I’m just about to ease this little old ship right into the FHda helix – because it isn’t really a
hole
, folks. It can be best visualized as a hollow tube twisted into a helical shape, and us as going
into
that tube. Spatial configuration always follows helical routes, except in the vicinity of gray stars. That’s Von Gresham’s Law.

‘Okay, we’re approaching it now, folks. Soon our ship will be flowing smoothly along the helical path that in n-dimensional space describes a straight line. We’re approaching. … Ease her to starboard, chief bosun. That’s it, steady as she goes. … Guide by the flare line along the outer orifice. … Just a touch more left rudder. … Now meet her, meet her. … Steer small, damn you! Trim those cephoid flaps back to zero! Reset the tabulating skin surface totalizer to zero zero niner! Retract the sponge antenna! Give me seven degrees on the bivalvular de-quenching remoulade!’ (Here the captain’s voice became indistinct, and his words blurry and capable of misinterpretation.) ‘Okay, now the drumhead marshtide ripcurrent is closing fast! Give me a tune on the fiddle!’ (That couldn’t be right, Crompton thought: he must have heard wrong.) ‘Now take a turn around the double avunculars and collapse the spread-fragment tourniquet glide-runners! Watch the drag-timer, it’s gaining turbulent-spontaneity! There we go! Now trim ballast and it’s downhill all the way!’

There was a moment of silence. Then the captain said, ‘Well, folks, there you are, a blow by blow account of how a star ship gets going. We’ll be traveling through the FHda helix for some twenty hours of subjective time, so relax and get comfortable. Our hostesses will now be taking orders for psychedelics for those among you who want to spaceout while going through space. There is a movie in the forward lounge that sounds mighty good, something about Albert Dekker. Enjoy yourself, folks, this is Captain Eddie Remonstrator signing off.’

Crompton rubbed his nose vigorously and wondered whether he was hearing things or if Captain Remonstrator was conducting himself in an unusual manner. Or a little of both, perhaps. …

‘Yes, actually, it is,’ the person in the seat next to Crompton remarked.

‘What is?’ Crompton asked.

‘A little of both.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Crompton asked.

‘I am referring to your last thought before this conversation began. You were wondering if you were hearing things or if Captain Remonstrator was behaving in an unusual manner. Then you thought perhaps it was a little of both, which is the correct answer, and refers to your instinctive understanding of the degree of variability possible on either side of the observer-observed dichotomy.’

‘So you can read my mind,’ Crompton said, and looked at the person with attention. He saw a fresh-faced young man with a crew cut, wearing a gray sweater and brown slacks and white buckskin shoes.

‘Yes, I can, when I put my mind to it.’

‘That is an invasion of my privacy,’ Crompton declared.

‘What makes you think so? When you broadcast words, you expect anyone around to hear. Why not when you broadcast thoughts?’

‘I want to select the thoughts I broadcast,’ Crompton said.

‘Do you? What a curious attitude. One thought is very much like another, you know. They’re just a sort of vibration and there’s nothing personal about them. Creatures have been broadcasting words and thoughts at each other for a long time now, and no one is much better or worse for it.’

‘Aren’t you sort of young to be spouting all of this deep stuff?’ Crompton asked.

‘I am not quite a million years old,’ the person replied. ‘On a galactic scale, that’s pretty young. Still, I’ve seen a thing or two in my time.’

‘I don’t find that a very amusing joke,’ Crompton said.

‘I am an Aaian,’ the young man said. ‘I always tell the truth, even when I lie. And all Aaian jokes are in bad taste because we’re too old to bother being subtle. I see that some proof is called for.’

‘I should think so,’ Crompton said.

‘Then dig this.’ The fresh-faced youth reached up and touched his nose. Immediately his face changed to the deeply furrowed mask of an old man. His clothing changed to a tattered gray bathrobe, and his voice rose to a squeaky soprano as he said, ‘One good metamorphosis is worth a million words.’

‘Please don’t do that,’ Crompton said, shaken.

The old man changed back into the fresh-faced youth. ‘Want to see some more demonstrations of my superhuman abilities?’

‘I’d rather not,’ Crompton said, ‘I believe you. Just give me a little time to adjust.’

‘Well, really, Crompton,’ the Aaian said, ‘if you want to survive out here you’re going to have to get on the ball. Some peculiar things happen out beyond Earth, and there’s no time for standing around being astonished. Your attitude must be,
Nu
, so strange things happen, so what else is new? Otherwise you’re going to malrespond when something really tricky comes along.’

Crompton took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He said, ‘All right, so you’re an Aaian and you’re a million years old and you have superhuman powers. So what else is new?’

That’s much better. What’s new? Well, here you are on a starship and your seatmate turns out to be a member of the race to whose planet you are going. Obviously I know a lot about you. Obviously I’ve got plans of some sort for you. Obviously you and I are going to have to come to terms with each other.’

Crompton nodded. ‘Obviously. And what else is new?’

‘Don’t be a wise guy,’ the Aaian said. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know what this is all about?’

‘I’m waiting for you to tell me.’

‘Crompton, we Aaians are the oldest intelligent race in the galaxy. We’re also the smartest. We are immortal, more or less. We’ve seen it all come down the pike. Long ago we conquered this island universe, but we found it wasn’t much good for laughs so we gave it back. There’s nothing left for us to do, nothing meaningful in our terms. So we do nothing but play our Game.’

‘I’ve heard about the Aaian Game,’ Crompton said. ‘But nobody seems to know much about it.’

‘That’s not because we’re secretive,’ the Aaian said. ‘It’s simply that our Game cannot be subsumed under a static description. It can’t really be described at all because it is changing constantly, according to rules that we make up as we go along.’

‘Is that really all you can find to do?’ Crompton asked.

The Aaian shrugged. ‘Ancient and accomplished races have their peculiar problems, Crompton. I mean, after perfect enlightenment, what do you do? You can’t expect us to just stand around grinning at each other. So we play our Game. Our idea of a good laugh is to go one up on each other. We are, of course, always aware that each of us is all of us and scoring off another is just the same as scoring off oneself. That’s fine with us, because a game should not have a serious outcome. But it should be played hard and fair, and that’s what we do according to the rules of the moment.’

‘That’s all very interesting,’ Crompton said. ‘But why are you telling me all this?’

‘Because you happen to be in my Game, Crompton. Or you will be as soon as this aspect of the Game begins. You are going to be one of the pawns I will manipulate. Doesn’t that sound like fun?’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Crompton said. ‘Count me out.’

‘Calm down,’ the Aaian said. ‘
I
am also one of the pawns
you
are going to manipulate in
your
Game.’

‘Look, I’ve got a lot on my mind these days,’ Crompton said. ‘I don’t have any time for this stuff.’

‘Recovering your missing personality components and achieving Reintegration are vitally important to you, are they not? They constitute your Game. To succeed, you are going to need my help. Without it, you might as well stay on Earth and do crossword puzzles.’

‘Specifically,’ Crompton said, ‘what do I need your help for?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ the Aaian said. ‘How can I know anything like that until the Game actually begins?’

‘If you can’t know that,’ Crompton said, ‘how can you know the circumstances will even arise in which I will need your help?’

‘Because I
can
know that much,’ the Aaian said. ‘After all, I am a being with superhuman powers.’

Crompton thought about it, and the more he thought the less he liked what was happening.

‘This is all going too fast,’ he said. ‘It’s not the way I thought things would be.’

‘Of course not,’ the Aaian said. ‘Like most people you want what you want, and only when and how and for as long as you want it. I’m sorry the universe isn’t being run according to your requirements, Crompton. But there it is! You can sulk and play hard to get and try to have things your own way and probably get killed before you get to do anything interesting; or you can get with it and maybe we’ll both have some fun.’

‘All right!’ Crompton said. ‘I don’t seem to have much choice in the matter! What happens next?’

‘Next I tell you my name. It is Secuille. Remember it. We will meet again, later, for the first time, and then we can get right down to business.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Crompton said.

‘This time doesn’t count,’ Secuille said. ‘It’s completely out of temporal sequence. It’s as good as didn’t happen.’

‘Are you telling me that we haven’t actually met just now?’

‘That’s right. Interesting, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s a bore to let things go along until they actually happen, and these spaceflights are mostly dead time anyhow.’

‘I don’t see,’ Crompton said, ‘how we can meet later for the first time when we’ve met now for the first time.’

‘But I explained to you,’ Secuille said, ‘this meeting doesn’t count. I do have to pay a penalty for doing it this way, however: I won’t remember any of this when we actually do meet.’

‘That makes no sense at all.’

‘Rules never do, do they?’ Secuille said. ‘But there it is. I won’t remember you, but you will remember me, and you’ll tell me what happened, and I’ll catch on quick due to my superlative powers of adaptability, and the Game will begin.’

‘You may be superhuman,’ Crompton said, ‘but I think you’re also crazy.’

‘Well, it looks like it’s going to be interesting,’ Secuille said. ‘Now I seem to have used up all my lecture material, so I must be off.’ He smiled at Crompton and vanished.

Crompton sat very still for a while. Then he signaled the hostess.

‘Excuse me, miss, could you tell me the name of the young man who was sitting here?’

She said, ‘You must be joking, sir. That seat has been vacant throughout the flight.’

‘I was afraid of that,’ Crompton said.

‘Would you like another orange juice?’

‘I think I’d better,’ Crompton said heavily.

8

Traveler, we welcome you to the planet Aaia, and to its capital city, Cetesphe, and to the Hotel Grandspruinge located in the interesting and historic downtown Nevratidae district, and framed in the distance by the stately Oleonian Alps. We have assembled here a few facts for your greater appreciation and enjoyment of our unique civilization.

Aaia, as you perhaps know from
The Guinness Book of Universal Records
, is the oldest planet in the galaxy to be inhabited by a single autochthonous race throughout its history. This rare continuity, plus the fact that Aaia has had no war of any sort for the past 990,000 years, gives this planet an atmosphere of security and down-home coziness not to be equaled elsewhere.

The Aains are a small civilization, limiting themselves to exactly one billion members. They are considered immortal by some, but themselves claim no more than extreme longevity. The oldest living Aaian, Truch Nivera, is
at least
thirteen million years old according to carbon-dating techniques carried out on his toenail parings by the unimpeachable Swiss Bureau of Corroborations. (Mr. Nivera can be seen Friday nights at the Kot Krot Club in West Cetesphe, where he has been giving poetry readings for the last seven hundred years.)

Many people have asked what the Aaians, who have lived so long and experienced so much, do for amusement. This is not an easy question to answer, since Aaians are individualists
par excellence.
Aaians do many different things and learn many curious and useful facts. This is only to be expected of a race that dispensed with fixed personal form two million years ago; a race that consciously chooses its bodies, emotions, values, concepts, etc. In this way Aaians get to live countless lives.

Aaians have no fixed ‘self? to refer to. Aaians are only who they happen to have chosen to be for a period of time. When the moment comes to be someone or something else, they shed their former bodies, feelings, values, etc., and take on those appropriate to their new roles and existences. From this it may be imagined that the Aaians are basically a lighthearted race, though races who do not know their ways tend to consider them unreliable in business dealings. (But there is a simple way around this. Before doing any business with an Aaian, ask him for the date of expiration on his current psychosomatic setup. He is bound to honor his commitments during this term by the oldest ethical rule of the race:
Say what you do and do what you say
, in the words of Amirra Tauba, founder of the Aaian Uniform Code of Ethics for Consciously Sentient Beings.)