Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (80 page)

A resonant susurrus came in his head, as if unearthly reaches had opened to him. From infinity he heard without hearing his father’s quiet voice.

You came
.

A sense of calm welcome.

“The cities are all empty, Father. All the people have gone, everywhere.”

Come
.

“No!” He swallowed, fending off memory, fending off the lure of strangeness. “I think it’s sad. It’s wrong. I’ve found a woman. We’re going to stay and make children.”

The River is leaving, Jakko my son
.

It was as if a star had called his name, but he said stubbornly, “I don’t care. I’m staying with her. Good-bye, Father. Goodbye.”

Grave regret touched him, and from beyond a host of silent voices murmured down the sky:
Come! Come away
.

“No!” he shouted, or tried to shout, but he could not still the rapt voices. And suddenly, gazing up, he felt the reality of the River, the overwhelming opening of the door to life everlasting among the stars. All his mortal fears, all his most secret dread of the waiting maw of death, all slid out of him and fell away, leaving him almost unbearably light and calmly joyful. He knew that he was being touched, that he could float out upon that immortal stream forever. But even as the longing took him, his human mind remembered that this was the start of the first stage, for which the River was called Beata. He thought of the ghost animal that had lingered too long. He must leave now, and quickly. With enormous effort he took one step backward, but could not turn.

“Jakko! Jakko! Come back!”

Someone was calling, screaming his name. He did turn then, and saw her on the little ridge. Nearby, yet so far. The ordinary sun of Earth was brilliant on her and the two white beasts.

“Jakko! Jakko!” Her arms were outstretched, she was running toward him.

It was as if the whole beautiful Earth was crying to him, calling to him to come back and take up the burden of life and death. He did not want it. But she must not come here, he knew that without remembering why. He began uncertainly to stumble toward her, seeing her now as his beloved woman, again as an unknown creature uttering strange cries.

“Lady Death,” he muttered, not realizing he had ceased to move. She ran faster, tripped, almost fell in the heaps of stuff. The wrongness of her coming here roused him again; he took a few more steps, feeling his head clear a little.

“Jakko!”
She reached him, clutched him, dragging him bodily forward from the verge.

At her touch the reality of his human life came back to him, his heart pounded human blood, all stars fled away. He started to run clumsily, half-carrying her with him up to the safety of the ridge. Finally they sank down gasping beside the animals, holding and kissing each other, their eyes wet.

“I thought you were lost, I thought I’d lost you,” Peachthief sobbed.

“You saved me.”

“H-here,” she said. “We b-better have some food.” She rummaged in her pack, nodding firmly as if the simple human act could defend against unearthly powers. Jakko discovered that he was quite hungry.

They ate and drank peacefully in the soft flower-studded grass, while the white animals grazed around them. Peachthief studied the huge strewn valley floor, frowning as she munched.

“So many good useful things here. I’ll come back someday, when the River’s gone, and look around.”

“I thought you only wanted natural things,” he teased her.

“Some of these things will last. Look.” She picked up a small implement. “It’s an awl, for punching and sewing leather. You could make children’s sandals.”

Many of the people who came here must have lived quite simply, Jakko thought. It was true that there could be useful tools. And metal. Books, too. Directions for making things. He lay back dreamily, seeing a vision of himself in the far future, an accomplished artisan, teaching his children skills. It seemed deeply good.

“Oh, my milk-beast!” Peachthief broke in on his reverie. “Oh, no! You mustn’t!” She jumped up.

Jakko sat up and saw that the white mother animal had strayed quite far down the grassy ridge. Peachthief trotted down after her, calling, “Come here! Stop!”

Perversely, the animal moved away, snatching mouthfuls of grass. Peachthief ran faster. The animal threw up its head and paced down off the ridge, among the litter piles.

“No! Oh, my milk! Come back here, come.”

She went down after it, trying to move quietly and call more calmly.

Jakko had gotten up, alarmed.

“Come back! Don’t go down there!”

“The babies’ milk,” she wailed at him, and made a dash at the beast. But she missed and it drifted away just out of reach before her.

To his horror Jakko saw that the glittering column of the River had changed shape slightly, eddying out a veil of shimmering light close ahead of the beast.

“Turn back! Let it go!” he shouted, and began to run with all his might. “Peachthief—come back!”

But she would not turn, and his pounding legs could not catch up. The white beast was in the shimmer now; he saw it bound up onto a great sun- and moonlit heap of stuff. Peachthief’s dark form went flying after it, uncaring, and the creature leaped away again. He saw her follow, and bitter fear grabbed at his heart. The very strength of her human life is betraying her to death, he thought; I have to get her physically, I will pull her out. He forced his legs faster, faster yet, not noticing that the air had changed around him, too.

She disappeared momentarily in a veil of glittering air, and then reappeared, still following the beast. Thankfully he saw her pause and stoop to pick something up. She was only walking now, he could catch her. But his own body was moving sluggishly, it took all his will to keep his legs thrusting him ahead.

“Peachthief! Love, come back!”

His voice seemed muffled in the silvery air. Dismayed, he realized that he too had slowed to a walk, and she was veiled again from his sight.

When he struggled through the radiance he saw her, moving very slowly after the wandering white beast. Her face was turned up, unearthly light was on her beauty. He knew she was feeling the rapture, the call of immortal life was on her. On him, too; he found he was barely stumbling forward, a terrible serenity flooding his heart. They must be passing into the very focus of the River, where it ran strongest.

“Love—” Mortal grief fought the invading transcendence. Ahead of him the girl faded slowly into the glimmering veils, still following her last earthly desire. He saw that humanity, all that he had loved of the glorious Earth, was disappearing forever from reality. Why had it awakened, only to be lost? Spectral voices were near him, but he did not want specters. An agonizing lament for human life welled up in him, a last pang that he would carry with him through eternity. But its urgency fell away. Life incorporeal, immortal, was on him now; it had him as it had her. His flesh, his body, was beginning to attenuate, to dematerialize out into the great current of sentience that flowed on its mysterious purposes among the stars.

Still the essence of his earthly self moved slowly after hers into the closing mists of infinity, carrying upon the River a configuration that had been a man striving forever after a loved dark girl, who followed a ghostly white milch deer.

AND SO ON, AND SO ON

I
N A NOOK
of the ship’s lounge the child had managed to activate a viewscreen.

“Rovy! They
asked
you not to play with the screen while we’re Jumping. We’ve told you and told you there isn’t anything there. It’s just pretty lights, dear. Now come back and we’ll all play—”

As the young clanwife coaxed him back to their cocoons something happened. It was a very slight something, just enough to make the drowsy passengers glance up. Immediately a calm voice spoke, accompanied by the blur of multiple translation.

“This is your captain. The momentary discontinuity we just experienced is quite normal in this mode of paraspace. We will encounter one or two more before reaching the Orion complex, which will be in about two units of ship’s time.”

The tiny episode stimulated talk.

“Declare I feel sorry for the youngers today.” The large being in mercantile robes tapped his Galnews scanner, blew out his ear sacs comfortably. “We had all the fun. Why, when I first came out this was all wild frontier. Took courage to go beyond the Coalsack. They had you make your will. I can even remember the first cross-Gal Jump.”

“How fast it has all changed!” admired his talking minor. Daringly it augmented: “The youngers are so apathetic. They accept all these marvels as natural, they mock the idea of heroism.”

“Heroes!” the merchant snorted. “Not them!” He gazed challengingly around the luxe cabin, eliciting a few polite nods. Suddenly a cocoon swiveled around to face him, revealing an Earth-typer in Pathman gray.

“Heroism,” said the Pathman softly, eyeing the merchant from under shadowed brows. “Heroism is essentially a spatial concept. No more free space, no more heroes.” He turned away as if regretting having spoken, like a man trying to sustain some personal pain.

“Ooh, what about Ser Orpheian?” asked a bright young reproducer. “Crossing the Arm alone in a single pod, I think that’s heroic!” It giggled flirtatiously.

“Not really,” drawled a cultivated GalFed voice. The lutroid who had been using the reference station removed his input leads and smiled distantly at the reproducer. “Such exploits are merely an expiring gasp, a gleaning after the harvest if you will. Was Orpheian launching into the unknown? Not so. He faced merely the problem of whether he himself could do it. Playing at frontiers. No,” the lutroid’s voice took on a practiced Recorder’s clarity. “The primitive phase is finished. The true frontier is within now. Inner space.” He adjusted his academic fourragère.

The merchant had returned to his scanner.

“Now here’s a nice little offering,” he grunted. “Ringsun for sale, Eridani sector. That sector’s long overdue for development, somebody’ll make a sweet thing. If some of these young malcontents would just blow out their gills and pitch in—!” He thumped his aquaminor on the snout, causing it to mew piteously.

“But that’s too much like work,” echoed his talker soothingly. The Pathman had been watching in haggard silence. Now he leaned over to the lutroid.

“Your remark about inner space. I take it you mean psychics? Purely subjective explorations?”

“Not at all,” said the lutroid, gratified. “The psychic cults I regard as mere sensationalism. I refer to reality, to that simpler and deeper reality that lies beyond the reach of the trivial methodologies of science, the reality which we can only approach through what is called aesthetic or religious experience, god-immanent if you will—”

“I’d like to see art or religion get you to Orion,” remarked a grizzled spacedog in the next cocoon. “If it wasn’t for science you wouldn’t be end-running the parsecs in an aleph jumpship.”

“Perhaps we end-run too much,” the lutroid smiled. “Perhaps our technological capabilities are end-running, as you call it, our—”

“What about the Arm wars?” cried the young reproducer. “Ooh, science is
horrible
. I cry every time I think of the poor Armers.” Its large eyes steamed, and it hugged itself seductively.

“Well, now, you can’t blame science for what some powerhounds do with it,” the spacedog chuckled, hitching his cocoon over toward the reproducer’s stay.

“That’s right,” said another voice, and the conversation group drifted away.

The Pathman’s haunted eyes were still on the lutroid.

“If you are so certain of this deeper reality, this inner space,” he said quietly, “why is your left hand almost without nails?”

The lutroid’s left hand clenched and then uncurled slowly to reveal the gnawed nails; he was not undisciplined.

“I recognize the right of your order to unduly personal speech,” he said stiffly. Then he sighed and smiled. “Ah, of course; I admit I am not immune to the universal
angst
, the failure of nerve. The haunting fear of stagnation and decline, now that life has reached to the limits of this galaxy. But I regard this as a challenge to transcendence, which we must, we will meet, through our inner resources. We will find our
true
frontier.” He nodded. “Life has never failed the ultimate challenge.”

“Life has never before met the ultimate challenge,” the Pathman rejoined somberly. “In the history of every race, society, planet or system or federation or swarm, whenever they have expanded to their spatial limits they commence to decline. First stasis, then increasing entropy, degradation of structure, disorganization, death. In every case, the process was only halted by breaking out into new space, or by new peoples breaking in on them from outside. Crude, simple
outer
space. Inner space? Consider the Vegans—”

“Exactly!” interrupted the lutroid. “That refutes you. The Vegans were approaching the most fruitful concepts of transphysical reality, concepts we must certainly reopen. If only the Myrmidi invasion had not destroyed so much.”

“It is not generally known,” the Pathman’s voice was very low, “when the Myrmidi landed the Vegans were eating their own larvae and using the sacred dream-fabrics for ornaments. Very few could even sing.”

“No!”

“By the Path.”

The lutroid’s nictitating membranes filmed his eyes. After a moment he said formally, “You carry despair as your gift.”

The Pathman was whispering as if to himself. “Who will come to open our skies? For the first time all life is closed in a finite space. Who can rescue a galaxy? The Clouds are barren and the realms beyond we know cannot be crossed even by matter, let alone life. For the first time we have truly reached the end.”

“But the young,” said the lutroid in quiet anguish.

“The young sense this. They seek to invent pseudo-frontiers, subjective escapes. Perhaps your inner space can beguile some for a while. But the despair will grow. Life is not mocked. We have come to the end of infinity, the end of hope.”

The lutroid stared into the Pathman’s hooded eyes, his hand involuntarily raising his academic surplice like a shield.