George Zebrowski (10 page)
Authors: The Omega Point Trilogy
“In order not to die?”
“I’m not afraid of dying — I don’t see what I could do with a longer life, unless I changed. I can’t imagine what it would be like.” He paused and looked directly at Kurbi. “Would it be hard, Raf?”
“To do what?”
“To live as you have lived.”
“As hard as it is for me to be here. It can be done.”
“Would you help me if I … changed?”
“Of course, Nico.”
The rain stopped its clatter. Kurbi got up and went to stand looking out the office window. Mists rose from the iron and concrete street and nearby walkways. Night had fallen during the rainstorm. Craning his neck to peer up at the overcast sky, Kurbi realized that he had not seen the stars in months.
“… everything is permitted.”
— Dostoevsky
THE EXIT BEACON for New Mars was a black dot pulsing on and off in otherspace, sweeping the continuum in sections that covered a sphere once every hour, an interstellar lighthouse that could be seen by any ship, regardless of approach vector. The Whisper Ship came out automatically, asserting again its claim to being an object in Einsteinian space. A billion kilometers below the ship, the twin suns of the New Mars system floated in their fiery embrace of shared plasmas and magneto-gravitic force fields.
Young Gorgias woke up only a few moments before exit, feeling empty and without the usual memory of dreams. The view on the screen shifted to a schematic of the solar system below the ship; the nonorganic intelligence was searching for an asteroid of sufficient size and orbital path, according to orders.
Gorgias watched and waited. One ellipse after another appeared, both inside and outside the orbit of New Mars. As soon as a suitable object was found, the ship would move to acquire it.
Finally all the ellipses faded from the screen except one. It intersected the orbit of New Mars at less than a million kilometers from the planet, and the object orbiting the primaries in that path was nearing the intersect point rapidly. The screen showed the orbit of New Mars in green, the rock’s in red. The two bodies would be at their closest approach within a day.
The schematic map faded and the stars reappeared as the ship descended toward the orbit of New Mars. The twin stars grew brighter, filling the cabin with a yellow-white light.
Gorgias heard the door slide open and shut behind him. Turning around, he saw his father standing in front of the exit.
“I’ll help, if you want,” the old Herculean said.
Again, Gorgias felt suspicious. “You’re still divided within yourself.”
“I am still a soldier,” his father said, “even if this is not a war.”
“This is a different kind of war!” Gorgias shouted. “You still fail to understand that.”
“I hope you are right.”
“I am,” Gorgias said in a lower voice. He would have to order the older man around, make some use of him. At any rate, he would not have to worry about active opposition. “You’ll do your part as long as I command this ship and we’re both alive.”
Four hours later, the screen acquired a view of the rock, three kilometers of nickel-iron, a hilly surface pitted with small craters, veined with cracks and deep crevasses, encrusted with small mountains huddling together under the silence of stars.
The ship passed over the rock and took up a forward-station position, retreating before the flying mountain toward the rendezvous with New Mars.
The ship’s intelligence threw an abstract of the asteroid on the screen; small red dots appeared, marking the places where the gravitic units would be installed in order to change the asteroid’s path.
The normal view reappeared as the ship circled the rock. Laser tongues reached out to mark the surface as well as to scoop out the depressions that would receive the gravitic pushers. Its task completed, the ship returned to the forward-station point.
Gorgias went aft to the side lock and checked the scooter. He put on the light space suit and felt the cool oxygen begin to circulate over his body. Then he turned around and saw his father putting on the other suit.
“I’ll give you a hand,” the older Herculean said over the intercom. “I could handle the second unit.”
He wants to stop me
, Gorgias thought.
“I can manage by myself.”
“I’ll come along as a backup, in case of accident.”
“There’s no time to discuss it,” Gorgias said and turned to press the lock touchplate. The inner door opened and he drifted the scooter into the chamber. They both mounted the seats as the inner door closed.
The outer door opened and Gorgias ran the scooter out from the ship; fifty meters out he turned the steering stick to the right and faced the asteroid. Ahead, the rock floated against the background of the central galactic regions.
Gorgias ran the scooter forward. The asteroid grew larger. It appeared to bear down from above; in a moment, it seemed, it would crush him and his father against the ship; but the illusion passed as he oriented himself with a backward glance at the ship. He was sitting upright on the scooter; the ship was behind him, not below; the rock was ahead, and down was where his feet happened to be resting.
He turned right again and passed across the shorter face of the rock, then left as he circled around to the longer face. Three quarters of the way he noticed the red glow where the rock was still hot from the laser lash.
Turning to face the rock, he pushed the scooter toward the first marker, in the upper right quadrant. The rock wall grew to cover the whole sky, and the heated area became a staring eye. His mind quickly pictured a mouth for the face, in a faint slash cutting across the lower quadrants; a central mountain straddling the quadrant corners passed for a nose. The left eye was invisible because it was closed. In a moment the illusion fell apart as the scooter came in close.
Reorienting himself again, Gorgias turned the small craft to run parallel with the surface. The rock was glowing ahead, throwing a red light out of the crater. Gorgias stopped the scooter at the rim and dismounted. Taking one of the grav units off the rear carriage, he stepped up to the depression and went over the edge, floating down slowly in the asteroid’s minimal attraction.
Reaching bottom, he knelt down on the warm rock and pushed down with the unit until the attachment fingers entered the surface slightly; in a moment, he knew, the four probes would telescope into the harder rock, expanding to form a strong hold.
Turning, he jumped out of the hole and landed near the scooter. His father was standing at the crater’s edge, looking down.
“I didn’t need you,” Gorgias said.
“I was here if you did,” his father said without turning around. He was still staring down into the hole.
“Let’s go,” Gorgias said and mounted the scooter.
The figure of his father turned slowly and drifted toward him, finally reclaiming its rear seat.
The scooter went straight up for a thousand meters; then Gorgias turned around and circled to the other side of the rock. New Mars floated two million kilometers away, a brown, green and blue disk slowly growing larger.
Gorgias brought the scooter level with the rock’s surface and moved toward the crater’s glow, stopping a meter from the edge. Again he got off and removed the grav unit from the rear. His father sat quietly in the backseat, as if reproaching him, or confirming something.
Gorgias walked up to the excavation and dropped over the edge. He touched bottom, secured the device and jumped back up to the rim.
“You didn’t have to come,” he said to his father.
“I’m here if you got hurt or needed help.”
So you say
, he thought as he clambered into the front seat.
Overhead, New Mars was growing larger.
The ship passed behind the asteroid, blotting out the planet. The rock would make the ship invisible to scanners. The twin stars blazed as the vessel’s motion brought them into the screen.
“It’s not pushing away,” his father said at his side. “The gravitics may be too weak.”
Gorgias whirled his chair around and glared at the old Herculean. “You knew this would happen all the time!”
“Look, it’s moving!” his father shouted.
Gorgias turned and saw the rock pulling away from the screen. The ship had activated the grav units, accelerating the asteroid. By the time it reached the planet’s atmosphere, the rock would be moving at more than a hundred kilometers per second; it would strike the surface with devastating effect.
Schematics confirmed the rock’s course. A map of the planet’s western hemisphere flashed the point of impact: in the ocean, just off a large port city.
The asteroid continued to shrink as the ship fell behind, revealing the growing disk of New Mars.
“O waste of Loss, in the hot mazes, Lost Among bright stars On this most weary unbright cinder, Lost!”
— Wolfe
RAFAEL KURBI sat in the open door of the freight car and watched the flat countryside rush by him. Once in a long while he would see a lonely house on the horizon, its smoke a thin wire joined to the sky. There was a sense of independence in the sight that he admired, as well as a bit of pride. The dark blue sky was striated with silky cirrus clouds as far as the eye could see.
Spring had been dry, and would hurt the newly planted grain crops if it continued moistureless. People would flock to the railway towns to receive the Federation’s relief supplies that were stored there regularly and replenished from the port city. Only the diehards would stay on their homesteads and use up their own stores. Again, many would settle in the towns; slowly the planet’s culture would continue to change; the way of life for which the planet was first settled would have to coexist with newer ambitions.
He was more than four thousand kilometers from the port, on the single rail line that crossed the major continent. In addition to the two other continents, there was a group of large islands in the western ocean; most of these lay below the equator and were of volcanic origin. One day in the distant future, this large continent around him would break up and the pieces would drift away from each other. It was a young world, too young for native intelligent life. Much of the larger animal life had been killed off thousands of years ago when the early colonists had arrived, during the first wave of interstellar expansion. The grass on the plain before him was originally from Earth, as was much of the vegetation, though he had been told there were native forests still flourishing untouched on the islands.
Most of the human population lived on the coastal plains, east and west, joined by this rail line. The northland was too cold, the south too hot. The central plains supported a third of the planet’s twenty million people on an area of one hundred million square kilometers; the coastal settlements, with their fisheries and small farms, supported the other two thirds. The seasonal contrasts were milder on the coast, more severe on the plains.
Whenever the train slowed, Kurbi had the urge to jump off and head for the nearest house; although he had met hundreds of people in family groups, he was still curious to see how the next group lived, how they would receive him. It meant that he would have to live with them until another train came through to carry him further west or back to the port, but he did not mind; for a time, his past life would again seem far away, almost as if it had never existed. The people here lived in a great religious dream of world and sky and growing things. He could enter into their lives, and leave at any time. A part of him knew that he was using New Mars to bury his past, but he did not care; that he felt better was enough.
All the past lives in the Federation Snake
, he thought.
Worlds exist at every stage of development and its variation, each experiment and utopian scheme strives to continue, each failure struggles to survive
.
As the train slowed, Kurbi threw his rucksack out and jumped to the grass, rolling on the gentle slope. He got up, picked up his rucksack and crossed the eastbound tracks, walking back toward the house he had passed earlier.
The house was farther away than he had thought. After an hour of walking, it still seemed distant, as if defying him with its peaceful appearance. He stopped and sat down on the grass to rest. A cooling breeze passed across his back. He turned and saw the rain clouds sweeping toward him from the other side of the tracks like a curtain being drawn across the plain. Dark clouds were slipping over the horizon, bringing the much-needed rain at last. When he saw lightning brighten the prairie with its pale flash, he got up and ran.
The rain caught him while he was still a quarter-kilometer from the house. The sky flashed and the thunder rumbled, vibrating the ground. A bolt hit the grass a hundred meters to his right. He wiped the rainwater from his face as he ran, tasting its freshness on his lips; the smell of ozone was distinct as he drew a deep breath and quickened his pace.
The door of the house opened when he reached it, startling him. He stopped for a moment, then went inside.
Three women sat in wooden chairs. A man closed the door and sat down at the head of the table.
“You are welcome,” the oldest-looking woman said.
“Thank you — I’m dripping water all over your floor.”
“It will run through the boards,” the man said. Kurbi looked at him now. His hair was black and his eyes brown; he sat with his elbows on the rough board. All four people wore the same expression as the man, a look of tolerant interest. “You are the offworlder,” the man added.
“How did you know?”
“From the rail town, from those who run the train. Are you the only one?”
“I think so,” Kurbi said. “You’ve never met an offworlder?”
“We have not,” the man said as if he were proud of the fact.
Kurbi took a step forward. “My name is Rafael Kurbi.”
Thunder followed, lending an absurd portentousness to his introduction.
“I live here with my wife and daughters. We do not exchange names with strangers … but since you have told me yours and do not know our ways, you may call me Fane Weblen.”