Twenty Trillion Leagues Under the Sea (37 page)

‘No,’ conceded Lebret.

‘Comets. Billions of comets. They fill a vast sphere, around your central matter-knot sun. Mostly they stay there, the comets, although occasionally they fall in and hurtle near the inner planets,
trailing great fishy tails of steam behind them. But if you measure your system from its matter-knot centre out
to
its heliopause, it has a radius of about a light year. It is almost all vacuo, of course; but let us describe it as a single unity. Well, the waterverse is a similar size.’

‘Though filled throughout by water,’ Lebret said.

‘Indeed.’

‘But how does it not
collapse
upon itself?’ Lebret pressed. ‘I don’t understand. Why does not gravity
compress
the water, over time?’

‘A good question. Indeed, it is already starting to happen. But my waterverse has existed for only one-10^30th as long as your vacuuverse. A long time, measured by the days and years you use to measure the passing of time; but not long enough for the inexorable forces of gravity to create first whirlpools and tourbillions, and eventually gravitational densities strong enough to rip hydrogen and oxygen apart. That is in the future – the far future.’

‘Are you seeking to escape? Is that what you are looking for, in my world?’

‘That you ask such a question shows that you do not understand the larger structure,’ rebuked the Jewel.

‘You mean, the … tetraverse?’

‘Your ghostly vacuuverse, vast and tenuous. My waterverse. And the rest? There is also a cosmos consisting entire of matter.’

‘A matterverse! Is it inhabited?’

‘It is. Although its inhabitants are utterly other to what you would consider a life form.’

‘Gas, liquid, solid. What, then, is the fourth? Surely those three exhaust the different ways in which atoms may be arranged?’

‘The fourth is immensely smaller, by a large margin the smallest of all – an almost incomprehensibly dense cosmos. It is comprised of matter in a state of fusion-plasma.’

‘Fire,’ said Lebret, nodding slowly, and causing his hair to waft in the water. ‘Universes of air, of water, of solid matter and – of fire!’

‘Poetic, but imprecise.’

‘So – you do not wish to conquer us? To rule our vacuum cosmos?’

‘What is there
in
it to rule? To be king of nothingness? That is no ambition.’

‘You wish to pass
through
our universe!’ Lebret guessed. ‘Your true aim is to reach the universe of rock – or perhaps the realm of fire!’

‘Still you do not understand. The relationship between the four universes is a function of
infinite
geometries,’ said the Jewel. ‘Perhaps you are picturing these different cosmoses as strung out, like pearls on a thread – a very large sphere for the vacuuverse, much smaller ones for the waterverse, the matterverse and a miniature one for the fusionverse. If so, you are picturing them wrongly. Quite wrongly! When one infinite geometrical figure intersects another, they intersect
at all points simultaneously
. Or, to put it another way, if you put infinite geometrical figure A inside infinite geometrical figure B, you are at the same time placing infinite geometrical figure B inside infinite geometrical figure A. You cannot help but do this. Think of the tetraverse …’

‘Hard to do!’

‘Then you must exercise your intellect. As far as I have been able to determine, these four nesting universes are the sum total of absolute reality. But you interrupted me! Think of the tetraverse as four boxes, each inside each: the vacuuverse containing the waterverse containing the matterverse containing the fusionverse …’

‘Russian dolls,’ gasped Lebret. ‘Well, that is not a bad way of conceptualising it. So long as you also understand that the order is reversed – the vacuuverse is simultaneously
inside
the waterverse, which is inside the matterverse, which is inside the fusionverse. And actually, we must factorial four to arrive at the full description of these hierarchies.’

‘But why should there be four universes? Why not three – or five? Or a million?’

‘Or an infinite number – yes, quite, quite. It is a good question. Perhaps because matter can only occur in four forms – gaseous, liquid, solid and atomically fused? We might as well ask why are
there only four dimensions, length, breadth, height and time. Why not three, or five? Or an infinite number?’

The blue-green Jewel was spinning rapidly now, stirring the water and making Lebret’s lifeless body wobble. The edges were blurring. ‘You did not answer my question,’ Lebret said. ‘What
is
the nature of your designs upon my cosmos?’

‘The balance of the tetraverse is a precarious thing. It is not a permanent structure. It is surrounded by a shell of pure fusion fire – and that fire is also
what is contained
within the structure, at the centre, and at every level – a flame that threatens to consume everything. The presence of your vacuuverse insulates the other realms from this destructive potential – because it is not only the outermost layer of the tetraverse, but also the hollow core of ultimate reality, and the intervening layer between all other cosmoses.’

‘Like a thermos keeping heat and cold apart. Why should it have a special role?’

‘Infinite geometries are complex. But the relative immensity of your cosmos is a relevant detail.’

‘And?’

‘And your planet, the world upon which you and your fellows live – though an infinitesimal
speck
within the larger whole – nevertheless, your world threatens the entire tetraverse. It is the weak link in the larger structure.’

‘How?’

‘It is a nexus, a world of land and oceans, blanketed with air and curled around a sphere of fiery magma. But populated – swarming with living beings.’

‘My people.’

‘You are ingenious, your kind. You do not understand the danger.’

‘Of what?’

‘If you are left to your own devices you will develop fusion energy. Already – as your iron-metal craft shows – you have developed simple nuclear power. But if you create fusion, not in the interior of vacuum moated stars, but upon your
four-elemental world – in structures built upon land, beside the sea, open to the air – if you do this, then you will
break the seal
. You will breach the barrier that keeps the terrible power of the fusionverse, and give it and its inhabitants access to the other three universes. You are concerned as to what will happen if I invade your world – you should be more concerned as to what will happen if the fusionverse ever gains access to your cosmos. And through it, to mine.’

Lebret pondered these words for a long time. The Jewel was now spinning very rapidly, an ovoid blue-green blur. Something occurred to him, ‘What if you are lying?’

‘It makes no difference,’ said the Jewel. ‘I am drawing the structure you currently inhabit through the waterverse. It will take time, but eventually I will have direct access to you – and your companions. I do not need you to believe me.’

Lebret felt a painful twist of the awareness of his impotence, and the indigestible perspective of sudden cosmic perspectives he had been granted. But he could not close his eyes, or move any part of his body. His mind was awake.

‘I will have your iron craft,’ the Jewel said. ‘I will have new examples of your kind, these
homo sapiens sapiens
who play such a dominant role in your world. I will have your nuclear-power engine. I have learnt a great deal since my last experimentations upon mankind. I will be able to control you, and I will have your device. It will be a simple matter, thereupon, to break through into your planet, and put a stop to your species and their meddling.’

Lebret’s spirit quailed within him; but he existed in a state of perfect passivity. There was nothing he could do.

Years passed, or perhaps they did. Lebret had the sense of a great deal of time passing, but he had that perception, as it were,
from an external source
. It is difficult to explain how this felt for him. Ten trillion kilometres. Fifteen trillions kilometres. If his consciousness now only worked when the Jewel stimulated the quasi-crystalline pattern of neurones in his brain, how could he
gauge the passing of time? Perhaps the Jewel switched him off (as it were) for decades at a time.

‘Stop him,’ somebody said.

Lebret could not be sure where this other voice originated, or who it was. It might have been Dakkar – although Dakkar was dead, and (unlike Lebret) beardless.

The Jewel was rotating so fast now it had lost its sharp-edged and pointed features, and resembled a blurry skull. Lebret might even fancy a face upon it.

‘How can I stop him?’

‘Name him,’ said the other. Who was this other?

What name to utter?

And Lebret could not name him, because the entity was alien, and he did not know the name, and Lebret was altogether powerless. Dead, and, anyway – and anyway – what power did names have? Lebret did not know the name. There was no conceivable way that he could find out the name. He did not even know whether the Jewel had a name, beyond Jewel – whether his manner of life-form had any use for names. Names, Lebret thought, are a strange business, really. Animals don’t need them – why should men and women? Yet we do; and names possess legal and religious and social and symbolic power. And then, with a little spurt of inspiration, the name arrived in Lebret’s consciousness. He couldn’t have told you from whence, but he sensed the rightness of it.

He had died twice; twice he had been brought back from death. He would die a third time. That was the potent death, that third. And the name was there. ‘I understand,’ he said.

‘Understand what?’ demanded the Jewel, suddenly, unaccountably furious.

‘I know your name.’

‘You
cannot
know my name! You
do
not know my name!’ the Jewel shrieked, spinning so fast that the water around it was twisted into muscular flows and pulses. The edges were no longer visible – the Jewel was an elongated sphere, blurred at the edges.

‘I know your name,’ Lebret repeated.

This reiteration, oddly, appeared to calm the entity. The shrieking stopped; and for a while the structure simply span. ‘And what
is
my name?’ hummed the Jewel.

‘Verne,’ said Lebret. And everything went black.

32

TWENTY TRILLION
KILOMETRES UNDER THE SEA

Fifty years had passed –
more
than fifty years. Closer to sixty. Back in his home, the calendar would be well into the twenty-first century by now. To be honest, Jhutti had long since lost track of the time. Mostly this was because of the sleeping – it was impossible to know what proportion of his life was swallowed by sleep, but it was evidently the majority. This, he had long since realised, was the Jewel’s doing. It was clear that working at a distance, even through this ‘infraspace’ of which Lebret spoke, was limiting for the Jewel. He could do certain things: manifest a three-dimensional avatar of himself (although he had not done that since Lebret named him); draw the material substance of the base towards him, and even influence Jhutti’s body chemistry, flooding it with narcotic hormones. If it were in any sense possible, Jhutti did not doubt that the Jewel would put him to sleep for the whole length of the journey – a coma. But he could not, of course – Jhutti would die of thirst and hunger. So, instead, the overwhelming wave of sleepiness swept over Jhutti’s brain in a tide-like pattern; days and days in dreamless sleep, to wake – groggily, his head throbbing with migraine – for half a hour, just enough time to relieve himself, to drink like a dog at the hatch and nibble what food he could reach. Then the sleep would come like a wave, and he would slip under again.

Jhutti met this assault (for an assault is most assuredly what it
was
) with what defences he could. Pricking himself with sharp points only postponed the sleepiness for a short time. Immersing
himself in water worked rather better, but only because he woke choking and coughing, and spent long minutes recovering, with burning lungs and thundering heart. After a time, Jhutti became more adept at holding off the sleepiness by sheer willpower, but these small victories lasted half an hour or more; and as he explored the space, and brought his considerable intellect to bear upon the various technical gee-gaws it contained, attempting to make them work – all the time he was having to fight off sleep. Eventually he always succumbed.