Galaxies Like Grains of Sand (10 page)

Earth turns through many nights and myriads of individual deaths during that length of time. It all makes no difference. Life, death, and the sun: these are the constants. We call this period ‘The Dark Millennia’ and pass on, because there is no point in looking back. Nor do we find a great deal changed on Earth at the end of ‘The Dark Millennia’. The constants see to that. True, there is a new stratum of sedimentary rock; another Ice Age has come and gone; modifications to the lower jaw and the intestinal flora of humankind are barely discernible; a few modest cities huddle on some of the other solar planets; the continents have changed and fresh sands gleam at their edges; a new animal runs on the savannas, rejoicing in its strength. And, of course, many inhabited planets are in communication with Earth, as the races of the galaxy go about their transactions.,.

The mental-health ship
Cyberqueen
lay quietly against a long wharf. Alone in one of its many cabins, Davi Dael sat waiting. The buttercup in his tunic was beginning to wilt. He half-smiled down at it because it seemed the one connection between him and the Bergharra township he had left early that morning; he had picked it before catching a gyro into New Union. Nothing else Davi could see, either here in the waiting room or outside, had as much colour as his buttercup.

The waiting room was all greens and greys, relieved only by the faumium fittings. Outside, there were only greys and blacks, as evening yawned on acres of shunting yard; on the other side of the ship, the Horby River would echo the same sober tones.

Quiet. Quiet for parsecs around, that treacherous quiet in which nothing stirs but the anxiety deep in the bowels.

In Davi’s mind, the ordinary worries of a busy man were eclipsed by larger preoccupations which grew and grew, as if nourished by the silence. He waited tensely while these preoccupations rumbled as raggedly as thunder around his head. Nothing constructive would come of them; the elephantine anxieties padded head to tail like a series of catch phrases: parsecs, galactic federation, hyperspace, interpenetrators.

These were the words that bothered Davi. His unquick brain turned them over time and again, as if hoping to find something relevant beneath them. Nearing fifty, he had known most of the words for years; they had been just words, without any attachments to experience, dictionary words. Only in this season had they come to unsettle his whole life.

A silent, quick footstep passed the door. Davi was at once on his feet, a sick feeling rising with him. What conclusion had they come to here about Ishrail? Was he born on Earth or not? Or — it was really all the same question — had he been proved sane or insane?

For a minute Davi stood trembling, then sat wearily down again as he realized the footsteps had no connection with his existence. He resumed his bored scrutiny of the marshalling yards; this kind of sight was unfamiliar to him, living as he did deep in the country. Here, the imports of a great, sea-fringed city were borne away to their destination. His interests generally confined to the cattle he bred, Davi would have been indifferent to the spectacle at any other time; now, it did possess a faint tinkle of interest, for he saw it through Ishrail’s eyes. And that changed the pattern entirely.

The uncountable miles of track, from Ishrail’s viewpoint, belonged to a primitive transport system on a remote globe. All around this globe stretched — not sky, as Davi had once idly thought — but the great, complicated highway called space. Not a simple nothingness; rather, Ishrail explained, an unfathomable interplay of forces, fields and planes. Ishrail had laughed to hear that Earth word “space”; he had called it not space but a maze of stresses. But of course Ishrail might well be crazy. Certainly nobody in Bergharra had ever talked as he did.

And through the maze of stress fields, Ishrail had said, rode the interpenetrators. Davi thought of them as spaceships, but Ishrail called them interpenetrators. They apparently were not made of metal at all, but of mentally powered force shields, which fed on the stress fields and changed as they changed; so the people of the Galaxy rode in safety between the civilized planets. At least, that was what Ishrail claimed.

And the planets warred on one another. But even the war was not as Davi understood the term. It was as stylized as chess, as formal as a handshake, as chivalrous as an ambulance, as unrelenting as a guillotine. Its objectives were more nebulous and vast than materialist Earthmen could visualize. Or so said Ishrail, but of course Ishrail might be mad.

Even if he was, that did not affect Davi’s loving admiration of him.

“Don’t let them find him insane! Don’t let them find him insane!” Davi said, in an agony of repetition, speaking to the grey walls.

And yet — if you proved Ishrail to be sane, you had to accept his mad version of reality.

After all his hours of waiting, Davi was unprepared when the cabin door opened. He was standing with his fists clenched to his tunic, and dropped them in confusion as the white-haired man came in. This was Brother Joh Shansfor, the psychiatrist who had interviewed Davi in the
Cyberqueen —
one of the roving fleet of specialist ships which had replaced the old static conception of a hospital — when Davi had first asked for help for Ishrail in Bergharra. Shansfor was tall, thin and brisk, and remarkably ugly, although age had now taken the sting out of his features, leaving them little more than notably rugged.

Davi went straight over to him.

“Ishrail?” he asked.

Under that tense, eager stare, Shansfor flinched.

“We aren’t actually certain yet,” he said in his formal way. “Some of the factors involved invite very cautious evaluation indeed...”

“It’s a month since Ishrail came aboard here, three weeks since you brought him to New Union,” Davi said. “I introduced him to you for his own sake, but he can’t like it here, being under constant observation and everything. Surely in all that time — ”

“A quick decision would only be a foolish one,” Shansfor said. “Ishrail is entirely happy and safe here; and you may rest assured he is not being treated like an ordinary patient.”

“You told me that before!” There were angry tears in Davi’s eyes. He had the sensation that the whole organization of the mental-health ship was rearing up against him. “In the short time since I found him, I’ve grown to love Ishrail. Surely you people here can feel his goodness of character.”

“His character is not in question. We are examining his mind,” Shansfor replied. “Excuse me if I sit down; it has been a trying day.”

He sat down on a hard chair and allowed his shoulders to sag slightly. Davi, old enough to understand the weariness that might lie behind that innocent-looking gesture, felt his wrath deflected. Distrusting psychiatrists enough to wonder if the incident might not be a covert attempt to win sympathy, he still kept hardness in his tone as he said, “All the same, Brother Shansfor, you must have felt his gentle nature. Give me a personal opinion, for heaven’s sake; I’m a stock-breeder, not a lawyer. Ishrail’s saner than you or I, isn’t he?”

“No,” Shansfor said slowly. “If you want a personal opinion, your protégé is sinking rapidly into schizophrenic trauma. Paranoia is also present. He is, in popular usage, a hopeless case.”

Colour drained from under Davi’s tan. He fumbled wordlessly for words among the green and grey slices of whirling room.

“Let me see Ishrail!” he finally gasped.

“That will not be possible, Mr Dael, I regret to say. The medical council have agreed that the patient will be happier in isolation, away from disturbing external influences.”

“But I must see him,” Davi said. He could not believe what Shansfor was saying; for an insane moment he thought the man must be talking about someone other than Ishrail. “I’ve got to see him. I’m his friend, Ishrail’s friend! You can’t keep him here!”

Shansfor stood up. His face, like Davi’s, was pale. He said nothing, merely waiting for Davi to finish. That was more ominous than words.

“Look here,” Davi said, unable to resist argument, although guessing already how useless it might be. “This tale Ishrail has told us about the great civilization of the Galaxy, the stress fields of space, the interpenetrators, all the details of life on other planets, strange animals and flowers — you can’t believe he made it all up in his head? Some of these planets he talks about — Droxy, Owlenj — you surely don’t think they’re just fictitious?”

“Mr Dael,” Shansfor said in a brittle voice, “please credit us with knowing our business here. The patient has a fertile imagination; it has finally collapsed under the stress of too much reading — omnivorous reading, I may add, which has encompassed both learned works and trash.”

“But his story of this galactic war — ” Davi protested.

“Tell me,” Shansfor said with dangerous calm, “do
you
believe a galactic war is now raging, Mr Dael?”

The engine yards outside were floating away on a tide of darkness in which isolated lights strove to act as buoys. The sky was one big cloud, cosy over New Union. Supposing I do believe, Davi thought, supposing I do believe the whole fantastic business, how can I prove I’m sane any more easily than Ishrail can? How can I prove to myself I’m sane? Two months ago, I would have laughed at this galactic rigmarole. It’s just that the way Ishrail told it, it had the ring of truth. Unmistakable! And yet — why, it is all frighteningly farfetched. But that’s
why
I believe it; it’s too tall not to be true. Believe? So I do believe. But I’m not sure. If I were
really
sure, they’d lock me up, too. Oh, Ishrail... No, better play safe; after all, I’m no use to Ishrail once they have doubts about me. Before the cock crows twice...

“Uh — oh, I don’t know what to believe...” He faltered miserably, ashamed of remaining uncommitted, looking away from Shansfor. The yellow buttercup mocked his downcast eyes.

“I actually came to tell you that the medical council is still in session,” Shansfor said, his voice a shade warmer than urbane. “The Arch-Brother Inald Uatt, our director, is there, if you would care to speak to him.”

“I suppose I’d better.”

Stop shaking, you old fool, Davi told himself. But he could not stop; as soon as he had denied Ishrail, he knew he believed in him and in all he stood for. He knew, further, that nobody else believed. So it was up to him, Davi Dael, whether Ishrail was released from what might be a life’s confinement. Larger issues, too, might depend on his efforts, for through Ishrail lay the way to bright, friendly worlds far beyond the sun’s unwelcoming cluster of planets. All he had to do was convince a board of experts, who had apparently already made up their minds on the subject of Ishrail’s sanity, that they were wrong. That was all; but it would not be easy.

“Can I see Ishrail first?” Davi asked.

“You force me to answer that question as I answered it before — with a negative,” Shansfor replied. “Now if you’ll come with me, I think the council will see you...”

They walked down the corridor to an elevator, went up one deck to a more grandly appointed part of the ship, and so into a fur-lined boardroom. Thick curtains had been drawn here, a fire burned, and on one wall hung an original Wadifango, an anatomical drawing of a tiger.

A long table stood in the middle of the room, soft chairs ranged its walls, but the four men present stood stretching their legs by the fire. As the round of introductions disclosed, Arch-Brother Inald Uatt was a small, stocky man with a bald head, clothed from neck to foot in tight blue flannel, his manner reserved, his voice dry.

He shook hands with Davi, crossing to the table to get a bundle of notes secured by a plain silver clasp.

“This is a very interesting case for us, Mr Dael,” he remarked conversationally.

“It’s more than a case to me, sir,” Davi said.

“Er — yes. Of course. You and he became very friendly in the brief time you were together, I understand. Be warned, though, against letting the matter become an obsession.”

“It’s not becoming an obsession,” Davi said. “I take Ishrail’s part, sir, because there is nobody else to take it. I feel it would be easy for him to be victimized. The whole thing seemed pretty simple once, but since he’s been up here at New Union in your hands it seems to have got more and more complicated.”

He was aware as he spoke of sounding less courteous than he had intended. He was confused. The boardroom confused him, the rather restrained members of the council confused him; they differed so greatly from the people of his home hills. Although in his own sphere of dairy farming and stock breeding Davi was well known and respected, here he felt out of his depth, too conscious of seeming the simple countryman among the experts, aware his tunic colour was not as theirs. A horrible feeling seized him that he was about to appear foolish, and from then on it never left him; it got between him and his reason, forcing him to say always the wrong thing.

“I mean, this business is just a question of common sense,” he added, making things worse instead of better.

Inald Uatt smiled kindly as if covering his own embarrassment.

“There are problems, unfortunately,” he said, “where common sense is too blunt a tool to work with, Mr Dael, and Ishrail’s problem is one such. Indeed, we have achieved results only by trying several oblique approaches, as you shall hear.”

“I was just offering my opinion,” Davi said. He intended it to sound penitent, humble even, but it sounded defiant in the befurred room.