The Creatures of Man (10 page)

"Perhaps, sir. It will take several minutes to correlate the data."

"Sure," I said, opening a beer. Before the drink was gone, the ship flashed a 3D map of the Home Cluster. As usual, it showed our own position with a blue dot. And there were about a dozen markings in green, scattered through seven galaxies.

"The green indicates areas of search such as you described, sir," explained the ship.

"Good. This one looks closest," I said, reaching an arm into the map to put my finger on a green patch. "We'll start with it."

"Yes, sir: Changing course for Stebbins Galaxy."

The next three days I spent filtering around as dusty a patch of backlight as I ever hope to encounter, the ship's receptors full on for any radiator that approached being right for that homemade "sun" of Profanis. It was slow, boring work, but I kept at it. And when I was sure there was no such radiator around there, I told the ship to move on to the next area.

It was bigger, and took over a week to search. My morale was beginning to slip, but I consoled myself that we were looking in the right kind of places. I never realized before just how much of the galactic areas are uninhabited by man, even in the Home Cluster where you assume people are everywhere.

But I could see that this search might take months. Naturally, I didn't want to fritter away my time to that extent.

"Look, ship," I demanded, "how do we know that the DJ agents haven't already searched these same areas, after figuring the problem the same way I did?"

"We don't know that they did not, sir," the ship replied. "In fact, the probability that we are duplicating their effort is .993, sir."

"
What?
" I roared. "Why didn't you
tell
me?"

"You did not ask, sir."

"Oh, sand," I moaned. Nearly two weeks shot! And I couldn't blame the ship. Ships have to be inhibited on information feed-out; otherwise they would talk you deaf on the slightest provocation.

"Well, I've had it with this chore," I said in disgust. "I'm going somewhere and have some fun."

"Very well, sir, but you have instructed me to advise you when your financial status is insufficient to cover an intended activity. Such is now the case, sir."

I groaned. Trapped! Me and my expensive tastes! "Damn it, I need companionship!" I complained.

"Yes, sir. May I suggest one of the mock-ups—"

"
No!
Who wants to fool with
those
things!" I wandered restlessly about the cabin. There was no getting away from it: I needed Admires, and this silly chore of finding Profanis was the only way I had to get them. Of course, I could go back to Greenstable and see if anything else was doing by now, but that would put me in a bad light there, quitting one chore that wasn't done to ask for an easier one.

So, I had to find Profanis.

Profanis.

"Ship, what does 'profane' mean?"

"It is essentially a negative word, sir, meaning 'not concerned with religion, not sacred.' "

"That's what I thought it meant," I said. "Okay, let's approach it from that angle, then. Check for a colonized planet that doesn't have a church."

"Very well, sir."

"Hold on! What's the probability that the DJ agents have tried that?"

"Quite high, sir—.997."

"Forget it, then!" I was in a foul frame of mind—depressed, angry, and frustrated—and I wanted a Hallypuff very badly. But smokes are nonstandard fare, and wanting a Hallypuff as urgently as I did would make me Admire it just that much more.

"Oh, sand! Gimme a beer!"

For a long time I sat sipping and brooding. I still had the notion that the answer was locked up in that word "profane." The trouble was that, while I'm as religious as the next guy, I don't make a big thing out of it. I'm no expert on what is and isn't sacred.

"Ship, what's the probability on the DJ agents consulting church fathers?"

"It is approximately .992, sir."

I grunted. Evidently I didn't have an original idea in my head.

"Of course they would talk to the Pipe, then," I said glumly.

"Yes, sir."

"And the hermit sandpipers?"

The ship hesitated. "The probability there is lower, sir, approximately .26. The hermit pipers are not highly regarded as authorities on questions of religion, sir."

"Well, they handle sand more than the Pipe himself. He's too busy being an organization." I hesitated over the decision, but finally got it out timidly: "Head out to the sand, and we'll hunt a hermit."

"Very well, sir."

The ship didn't change course—after all, the sand is in every direction—but speeded up. I was so scared by what I was about to do that I had the ship untape a mocktwirl.

I didn't tell her what I was doing, but when we zipped past the last of the galactic clusters, she began to get shakier than I was; so I kissed her and put her back on tape.

"How much longer?" I asked. "Perhaps an hour, sir," said the ship. "We are entering the area of edge phenomena now, sir."

"Okay, just don't show it to me."

"Certainly not, sir."

But even if I couldn't see what was happening to space outside the ship, I could feel it. All I could do was lie limply, but not feeling limp. My eyes were squeezing out of my head, and my throat was coming up and out of my mouth.

Through my terror, I wondered how the first man had made it through to discover the sand. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that this would be over in less than an hour. The first explorer wouldn't have known that.

I thought about that for a while, and was still thinking about it when the phenomena started to let go.

"Approaching the sand, sir," announced the ship.

I sat up slowly. "Okay, I'll look at it," I managed to mumble.

The ship revealed the Sandwall stretching completely across the sky. It had a dim creamy glow (or anyway that is the way ships always show it . . . maybe it is really dark) and was featureless. I stared.

It's a strange sight to look at, and even stranger to think about. The sheer size stuns the imagination. A solid surface of stuff that englobes the whole universe like a bubble.

But it's not just a bubble, or even a wall, even if it is called the Sandwall. Maybe it goes on forever, and has other universe bubbles in it by the billions. The Pipe's pipers have probed it to a depth of five light-minutes, and the sand is still there. Just where it is in it that souls go to . . .

I shrugged. I was wasting time mooning over religious riddles. "Are we close enough to detect hermitages yet, ship?"

"Just coming into range now, sir."

"Good. Let's start searching."

The ship went into a search spiral along the surface of the Sandwall.

"A hermitage is just a ship, isn't it, pushing against the Sandwall?"

"Yes, sir."

"If I stayed in the same place all the time, I'd want something more elaborate than a ship," I mused.

"That would be difficult for a hermit sandpiper, sir. If the hermit traveled away from his stationary residence on the Sandwall, he would be unable to return to it."

"Oh? Why not?"

"He would be unable to find it, sir."

"But of course he could find . . ." I started to object, and then stopped. That surface was big, and featureless, and the area of edge phenomena did strange things to navigation. If a hermit took a jaunt into the inhabited part of the universe, he might come back to a point on the wall a trillion lights from where he started. He'd never find his residence.

That thought led to another, and the pit fell out of my stomach. "How many hermit sandpipers are there, ship?"

"Slightly more than six million, sir."

Six million little ships, scattered over a surface that ran all around the universe!

"This," I said with apathetic calm, "is about as hopeless a search as trying to find Profanis by visiting every body in the universe."

"The difficulties are of similar orders of magnitude, sir," the ship agreed.

"Discontinue the search and give me a Hallypuff," I said.

After a pause, the ship replied, "Very well, sir," and lifted me the reefer.

I sat smoking it, not giving a damn how many Units it might cost me. I was beaten. Sunk without a trace. The End. The last of the red-hot twirl-chasers.

I giggled and threw away the butt of my Hallypuff.

"Just two choices left, ship. Suicide or become a hermit, and I'm not high enough for suicide. Push down to the surface."

"Yes, sir."

The Sandwall moved closer. There was a slight bump as contact was made.

"We're there, sir."

"Well, open me a compartment against the wall. I can't pipe sand through your damned hull."

The ship constricted a bulkhead on the wall side, and I climbed over the lip to squat in actual contact with the Sandwall. It was so slick it felt wet, but it wasn't. I could see the sand grains just beneath the slickness, but couldn't touch them.

Nothing but thought, such as a soul or a piper's probe, could penetrate that slickness. I sat still, glared very hard at a sand grain, and concentrated.

Five minutes or an hour later I giggled and gave it up. I couldn't make a mental probe, evidently; so I couldn't pipe sand.

I climbed back over the bulkhead lip and flopped in my lounger to laugh about it.

"I can't do a
thing
, ship!" I roared merrily. "Not one universal
thing!
Isn't that remarkable?"

"Yes, sir."

"How much did that Hallypuff cost me'?"

"Six Admiration Units, sir."

This startled me out of my hysterics. Just six?

But then I realized I hadn't Admired the reefer. I'd been too far overboard for that. I'd just taken it like medicine.

"I can't even go bankrupt," I said, but the hilarity was gone. "Oh, sand, sand, sand. Make a suggestion, ship."

"Your proposal to consult a hermit sandpiper had promise, sir."

"Have you gone back to counting by twos?" I yelped in disdain. "We just tried . . ." I shut up when it dawned on me that I had let something slip by. I nagged myself into remembering what it was. "Okay, so the hermits take trips into the inhabited universe now and then. Where should I look?"

"You might try one of the planets on which they sell their sand, sir. These are in the edge clusters, and specialize in religious tourism. The sand is purchased by novelty dealers for inclusion in sacred mementos."

"Oh, yeah," I remembered. "My great-aunt Jodylyn had one. What planet?"

"Hussbar is perhaps the most famous of the commercialized meccas, sir."

"Well, head for it."

I found me a hermit on Hussbar, all right. He was a big guy with a noncompetitive face and a full dirty beard. I snagged him coming out of a wholesale sand dealer's offices.

"Your pardon, holiness," I said politely, "but I'm told you're a sandpiper. Could I have a word with you?"

He looked me over and said, "Sure, boy. What's on your mind?"

"This," I said, bringing out the Profanis plaper. "I'm trying to find this system. If you can provide information that will lead me to it, I will find your knowledge Admirable, sir."

He took the plaper and glanced through it.

"Sad," he mumbled. "Pitiably sad. The plight of these poor people, living in sinful ignorance."

"What poor people, holiness?"

"The inhabitants of this system, Profanis," he said.

"Oh."

"May the Sandman bless your search with success, young man, that this world may be brought to redemption," he said piously. "I regret that my meager information of the worlds of the universe can be of no help to you."

"Oh, well, that's not exactly what I expected. I want to know what is and isn't profane. In this drawing, for instance. Is there something in it that makes Profanis profane? That burning satellite, maybe?"

He stared at me. "You mean, boy, that you cannot feel the profane feature in this drawing?"

"No, holiness," I admitted meekly.

"Humpf. There isn't much sensitivity in the universe any more. Get out your pen and pad, boy."

I did so.

"Now copy the stars the way they are shown in this ring around the Profanis system."

I did that.

"What did it feel like you were drawing?" he asked.

"Just . . . just stars, with five points," I answered.

"Let's see your pad." He took it and frowned annoyedly. "You didn't get the feel of the original," he criticized. "Look at it again, and try to draw it exactly like it was originally drawn."

I shrugged and tried again with the hermit watching over my shoulder.

"That's better," he approved. "What did it feel like that time?"

I thought about it and said, "Like I was drawing a . . . a
solid
 . . . a wall of stars."

"Ahah!
And since human nature is, in essence, unchanging, the man who drew that sketch of the Profanis system was also drawing a wall of stars!"

"But it looks almost the same as galactic stars are always indicated around a system map," I objected.

"Almost," he agreed, "except for the
feeling."

"You mean the guy who drew that Profanis sketch really
thought
there was a wall just beyond that smudgy seventh satellite?" I asked in disbelief.

"Obviously, and the implication is plain. The drawing represents the cosmogony of an isolated, ignorant society."

I nodded doubtfully. "But if they're so ignorant, how do they know their world's profane?"

"Because, being central, it is the object most distant from the starwall, which the people probably erroneously regard as the dwelling of the Sandman . . . of God, they would say."

We talked on for a while, about such things as how the people could have gotten so ignorant so soon after the planet was given its "sun" and was colonized. The hermit couldn't help with that kind of question. And the questions he did answer offered me no hint of where the system might be found.

Still, that plaper said the government wanted any additional data on Profanis, and what the hermit had told me about the starwall struck me as being worth something.