The Shores of Death (8 page)

Retorsh seemed surprised. “An honour, Clovis Marca,” he waved a hand towards the building. “Come inside. You’ll feel better there—more like Earth.”

Marca felt enervated and depressed. He drifted behind Retorsh as the man led the way to the spacefield building. “Glad you didn’t need any help from me,” Retorsh lifted the kit-box. “Sometimes I have to fight with new arrivals. They’re not all as sensible as you. How they manage to get here without using the automatic system, I don’t know. We had another distinguished visitor a little while ago ...” They reached the door of the building and he stepped aside to let Marca go in first. It was artificially lighted in the reception hall and there were no windows.

“This is better.” Clovis switched off his gravestrap and walked with weak legs into a pleasantly furnished room decorated in quiet pastel colours.
“
Your planet’s certainly impressive.”

Retorsh shrugged. “I suppose so. I was born here and I’ve committed suicide three times.”

“Three times? That’s unusual.”

“I suppose I was unlucky. Each time I was found in time and revived. I’ve no wish to for death, yet—” Retorsh smiled wistfully and walked over to a low chest. He lifted the lid. “Drink? ”

“Not alcohol, I think,” Marca same over to the chest “I don’t know how it will effect me so soon after the trip. Better make it a coaci.” He took the beaker Retorsh handed him and sat down on one of the comfortable couches. He sipped the drink. “You say you’ve had another visitor recently.”

“Yes, the madman.” Retorsh brought his large scotch over and sat at the other end of the couch. “As you know, we’ve got something of a regular population here, such as it is. There’s a whole small town about four hundred kilometres north-west—and we have our rugged individualists. Most of them are self-sufficient, so I don’t know how they get on.”

“You never visit anyone? ”

“There are a couple of women I see occasionally— religious cranks, but quite attractive—you know. Only one’s any good for anything at all and the other’s wired herself up so much she looks more like a gravcoil than a woman. Luckily the one I’m interested in prefers internal re-wiring, but she can’t last much longer and stay human. Apart from them, I see one old man who lives in the nearest mountains—Sadivan. He was a member of your predecessor’s cabinet I believe.”

Clovis thought the name was familiar. “I believe so. What’s he doing here? ”

“He’s writing philosophical essays and setting them to subsonic music. He’s tougher than the girls, manages to keep going on drugs mainly, though most of die time these days he believes he’s on Earth. He’s got a very elaborate set-up—trees, grass, the lot—and and the highest wall around them you’ve ever seen. Sometimes he doesn’t mind our sky intruding, sometimes he rigs up a blue force-curtain and keeps it all out. I thought you might have come to see him. Who have you come to see, Clovis Marca? ”

Marca decided to be frank. He had already burnt his boats on Earth. “I heard of a scientist who was living here. He had a name something like Zarvis.”

Retorsh frowned. “Sharvis—Olono Sharvis. He’s been on Klobax some time.”

“How much time? ”

Retorsh laughed. “Well, he was here when my father and mother landed in 57 and there was some sort of legend that he had been here since Klobax was discovered. That would make him pretty old wouldn’t it.”

“About three-hundred-fifty.”

“Yes, about that.” Retorsh shrugged. “But you know how unreal everything is away from Earth. Things get mixed up.”

“Yes.” Marca finished his drink and refused another when Retorsh went to the chest for a refill.

Coming back to the couch, Retorsh asked: “I don’t know your preference — whether you’ve got anything aboard your ship—but I’ve got a wire kit here that would last you for a couple of months, or drugs, or ... ”

“No thanks,” said Marca. “At least, I don’t think I’ll need them. I had a cocoon job done on me in the ship.”

“They’re the best for a short stay. But at least you’ll need some of these.” Retorsh pointed at his large black eyes. “Lenses,” he explained. “They help a bit to subdue the colours. I’ve worn mine most of my life.” Marca nodded. “I’d appreciate a pair. Have you been on Klobax all your life? ”

“One trip to Earth was enough for me. I nearly stayed, of course, when I got there. I thought it was bad here— but it’s a thousand times worse in space. I’m well looked after, I’m as adapted to Klobax as anyone could ever be.”

“How do you spend your time? ”

Retorsh grinned.
“
I’m an artist, like so many here. I spend my time working out the funniest ways of killing myself. I’m nuts I suppose.”

Marca said nothing. Retorsh was, in fact, one of the sanest permanents he had met. He sat back on the couch knowing that he would not be able to relax completely. He needed to keep tight control of himself. To weaken would be to allow his body to remember that they were not on Earth. It was best to pretend as much as possible. The drugs, coils or radiation processes helped as well, but only a very small percentage of people—usually born away from Earth—could make any kind of permanent life on another planet.

Now that he knew for certain that the scientist was here, he felt no further need to rush. Perhaps he would take a trip to the village Retorsh had mentioned, try to find out a bit more about Olono Sharvis before he went to see him. But the rumours, the half-legends, the drunken ramblings and space-maddened ravings
had
meant something. That was the important thing. A scientist who lived alone on Klobax and had been there for 350 years—an immortal. A tiny piece of information which had taken him a year’s careful work to find. It was a whisper of this that had sent him into space when he had resigned his position as Cabinet Leader, along with the other members of his government.

Soon he would be facing Olono Sharvis. And now that this was imminent, he realised that he was not prepared for the confrontation. How would he approach the man? How would he ask him what he wanted to know? What kind of man would he meet? A man who had spent 350 years in solitude on an alien planet. Yes, he decided, he would visit the village first. Make his way gradually. He had been moving swiftly until now and he must rally his mind, restore his self-control.

Retorsh said: “I lead a philosophical sort of life, really. It may be aimless, but I’m used to it. I once felt I could terminate it whenever I chose—but things seem to be against me. Three times unlucky. Do you know anything about Sharvis that I don’t know? ”

Marca shook his head. “What don’t you know? ”

“Everything. You’re never very curious here. As I say, things are so unreal that what you don’t come in direct contact with doesn’t really have any existence for you. I hardly believed Sharvis
was
here.”

“I hope you’re wrong.” Marca looked around the room. “Isn’t it all right to sleep here for a while? ”

“I don’t advise too much sleep. If I were you I’d take a session in the revivobath.”

“That would probably be best.”

Retorsh got up. “I’ll show you where it is.” He led the way.

Lying in the familiar timeless, spaceless, weightless comfort of the revivo, Clovis Marca was doing some heavy thinking.

Since the resignation of the government, he had felt his integrity slipping away, and with it he had slewed off many other qualities—his self-control and his selflessness, his principals . . . everything he had regarded as valuable on Earth. And he had given them all up for what? A hope and a whisper of a legend? Perhaps. What he sought was time of his own, and as much as he wanted. He had enjoyed life on Earth to the full, never to excess, but he had only experienced a little of what was possible. He enjoyed life and feared death. Stronger: His enthusiasm for life was such that he would do anything to keep it. He
was
doing so. Yet was it possible that the very transcience of life made it enjoyable, worth having? Or even that in giving up the qualities he had valued in himself, he could no longer find in life what he had enjoyed. Maybe there were other values?

Die Wahrheit ist konkret.
Which German writer, how many centuries ago? The truth is concrete. What is true is immutable. What is true is valuable and what is valuable. . . No, not necessarily. What was now valuable to him might be only an illusion.

The ambiguities and anomalies of life could be forgotten on Earth. In Space, where little seemed real, where everything, from the human viewpoint, seemed disordered and abnormal, it was easy to believe that truth need not be concrete. Indeed, to the individual, it might have no existence at all.

He realised that he was confused, that he had been confused well before he first went into Space. The revelation that the galaxy as he knew it was soon to be destroyed—he had thought that that had been the original cause of his confusion, but there were probably deeper causes. In two hundred years, the end would come. He could expect to live another ninety years. There would be no children to live on through, no future, no posterity. That understanding, hard to reach, harder to remember, was what had driven him here in his useless search.

Yet in a way he had recaptured his innocence, his belief that he could make the impossible possible. So maybe he still had something of value. If this were so, then the irony returned, for he had the cash but couldn’t spend it and, he feared, if an opportunity to spend it arose—then he would no longer have the cash.

Outside, on Klobax, the sun beat down on a landscape of rudimentary and primordial colours. Beyond Klobax a spaceship was approaching. In it was a man with a rudimentary and primordial soul. Take had found the right planet.

B
efore he left
the next day, Marca remembered another question he had intended to ask Retorsh.

As he stood at the door, his eyes now black and expressionless from the lenses Retorsh had given him, he turned and said to the small man: “I heard on Earth that the artist Alodios came to the Bleak Worlds. He didn’t visit Klobax did he? ”

“He did. He was the man who arrived before you.” Retorsh frowned. “The one I told you about—didn’t I mention his name? The madman I had to fight with. That was Alodios.” He smiled. “He may be a great artist, but he’s a fool of a man.”

Marca looked ahead of him. The raw Klobaxian colours were now muted and easier to bear, but they still retained their primary impression.

“Where did Alodios go?”

“He stayed on Klobax—his ship’s down there,” Retorsh pointed at the ground. “In the hangars where I’m going to put yours.”

“But where did he go here? ”

“I had him here for about a week. He seemed to calm down in a way, but he also seemed drained—you know, like a machine. Everything he did seemed mechanical.” Retorsh appeared to notice Marca’s impatience. “He went to the village first. I don’t know where after that. He may be dead by now. Some of them come here to die. What about you? ”

For a confessedly incurious man, Retorsh asked plenty of questions.

“Me? I’ve come here to—live,” said Marca.

Retorsh bit his lip and patted Marca’s arm. “I’ll see you before you leave Klobax.” He pointed. “That’s the way you want to go—in the direction of that tall bluff.”

Marca said some formal words of thanks and squeezed his gravstrap. He rose slowly into the lurid sky. Another pressure on his strap and he was heading towards the bluff.

Multi-angled surfaces of flashing metal were what he saw first as he approached the village from above. In the distance it looked like a vast static mobile, only momentarily at rest. It lay in a depression ringed by rocks that all leaned inwards so that the village seemed to lie in the gullet of some sharp-toothed beast. The rocks were long black fangs casting a network of shadows into the depression. Sometimes the individual surfaces would merge as he turned his head, and then the whole would combine—a blaze of bright metal—and as suddenly disintegrate again.

It was a shanty-town of the 30th century. The shacks were golden, silvery, rubied, emeralded, diamonded hovels of sharp sheets of harder-than-steel plastic and metal. They seemed to lean against one another for support, were placed at cluttered random, forming a jumbled jungle of artifice in that barren, natural landscape.

As he got closer, he could observe individual buildings —all single-storied—and notice patches of cultivated land, small deep reservoirs, featureless boxes of machinery, thin cables—all still under the sun. He began to descend.

Reaching the ground within the circle of black rocks but beyond the limits of the village he saw one or two figures moving in slow motion between the buildings. Attached to his belt was a kit-box given him by Retorsh. It contained a supply of drugs and a hypo-gun in case he should need them. Though he had not mentioned this to Retorsh, he had realised at once that the hypo-gun, loaded with the right drug, could become an effective weapon. Now he paused, opened the box, took out the gun and fitted a cartridge of sedadin into the chamber, enough for twenty or thirty shots. He did this because he had no way of knowing how he would be received by the inhabitants of the village.

From the ground, the village did not have quite such a surrealistic appearance, did not look quite so makeshift, though it was evident that the ‘ shanties ’ were not made of prefabricated parts but constructed primarily of sections that had once been fragments of spaceship hulls and bulkheads.

Marca walked cautiously forward.

And then a tall old man, with curling white hair, a
cream-coloured cloak, yellow tights and a huge box strapped to his naked chest, appeared from around a building and greeted him.

“Stranger, you are welcome,” he said gravely, dropping his chin slightly and starring hard at Marca. “You enter a mythical place, a holy place, the Seat of the Centre, Influencer of the Spheres—come pilgrim.” With a great show of dignity he swept his arm to indicate a low, narrow doorway. Marca did not move. He recognised the jargon. The man was a member of the New Deistic Church of the 30th Century Zodiac. There weren’t many of them.

“Thank you,” said Marca, “but I am alone in my soul.” This meant that if he were an NDC-er he was going through a course of intensive meditation which another’s presence would interrupt.