Probability Sun (26 page)

“Of course. I never intended anything but the good of the project.”

“I believe that. Others won’t.”

She smiled wanly. “At least now you’re being honest. There isn’t too much to report. Yes, the Faller recognized the artifact, immediately. He recognized the holo I programmed, too, which suggests to me that they’ve discovered how to use the directed-beam destabilizer at setting prime one. That was as far as I got. I’d planned on programming a holo to demonstrate the spherical wave-effect destabilizer, too, to see if he recognized that. But you came in before I got to it.”

“Was there anything in his nonverbal or sign language that told you anything more than that he recognized it?”

“Yes. He was disturbed that we knew about it, or had it. Very disturbed.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else. I didn’t have time.”

Her nearness was beginning to disturb Kaufman. She looked at him so levelly, without bitterness, seeming to understand his position as well as her own … There was no other woman like her. Her scent came to him, distinctively Marbet.

She smiled, and he knew she knew his thoughts. To his intense annoyance, he felt the blood rise in his cheeks.

She said, “It’s all right, Lyle. I like you, too. If things were different…”

Was it another manipulation? No, not now. Or maybe he just wanted to believe that. He said stiffly, “Anything else?”

“Just one thing. But it’s important. You have to convince Grafton to let me talk again to the Faller.”

“That’s not possible, Marbet. Can’t happen.”

“It has to. The Faller was
very
disturbed that we have this artifact, Lyle.”

“You’d expect that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. But as far as I can estimate, his disturbance went beyond his discovering our new strategic advantage. He was trying to hide something, Lyle. Something important, that we might need to know about the artifact.”

“Could you tell what?”

“Not a clue. But I’m positive I’m right. You shouldn’t have had me arrested so quickly. You should have listened to me first, and weighed all the alternatives, and made your usual careful decisions. But you didn’t. You went off half-cocked because your personal feelings for me overwhelmed you with disappointment that I did what I did. It was a mistake, Lyle. And if what you say about Grafton is true, I don’t see how you’re going to rectify it.”

*   *   *

On his way back to the observation deck, Kaufman stopped at the secret cell where the other prisoner was being held. In the corridor Grafton’s MPs stood guard. Inside the anteroom, Kaufman saw on the viewscreen that the Faller’s free hand had again been manacled.

He asked the computer for a five-minute summary of the Faller’s behavior since Marbet’s arrest. The program didn’t need five minutes. It told him that the Faller had done nothing unusual: feed, sleep, stare straight ahead. Analysis of real-time recordings had revealed to the computer no significant body movements or changes of expression.

But, then, the computer wasn’t Marbet Grant.

TWENTY-ONE

GOFKIT JEMLOE

E
nli sat with Calin in her room in the Voratur household. The door and window tapestries, fully unfurled, shut out the sunshine, and so Enli had lit a lamp. Throughout the household most tapestries were unfurled; people huddled in small groups, as though the loss of shared reality were somehow easier if fewer people were around.

Calin said, “Tell me again, Enli.” She had washed away the blood from his fight with Justafar and bandaged his head and arm. Below the head bandage Calin’s honest, bewildered eyes gazed at her like a child asking why a beloved pet had died. Occasionally a cry came to them through the tapestries, an outpouring of anguish from someone whose reality had been stretched so far it had temporarily broken.

Perhaps temporarily. Perhaps not.

Enli held Calin’s hand tightly. “Once more. Then I must go to Pek Voratur to explain.”

“Once more.”

“This is what Pek Sikorski told me.” Pek Sikorski—was she still asleep in the guest court? Enli must rouse her before she went to Pek Voratur. She spoke faster to Calin.

“Our shared reality comes from something invisible in the air, as the perfume of flowers is invisible. We breathe in shared reality with the air. And like flower fragrance, the shared reality we breathe in comes from an object. Perfume comes from flowers; shared reality comes from a manufactured object that for all of history has lain in the Neury Mountains. It—”

“If it lay in the Neury Mountains, it is a gift from the First Flower.”

“Perhaps. But now the Terrans in the large flying boat have taken the manufactured object away in their smaller metal flying boat. And so shared reality no longer perfumes the air of World.”

She watched him struggle with this. “But why did they take it? It was our gift from the First Flower! Why do they want our shared reality? Haven’t they any of their own?”

“No,” Enli said. “They don’t. And when the nine of us Worlders went up to the large metal flying boat, we didn’t, either.”

“If they have no shared reality of their own, then they are unreal! They have no souls!”

“I was not unreal when I went to the flying boat. I retained my soul. So did Pek Voratur and Pek Forbin and Essa Criltifor.” Again she saw the little girl running and laughing with the human child Sudie. “We are real, we still have our souls, even if we do not share reality any longer, Calin.”

“You’re speaking unrealities against the First Flower!”

She was silent. Could he embrace this new strangeness, this blasphemy? Eventually, he must … They all must. But if he blamed her for telling him about it, then their mating would not happen. Enli’s chest tightened.

He said, “But you’re only repeating what the Terrans told you, aren’t you, Enli? They’re the ones with no souls. They did this terrible thing to us.”

“Yes,” she said, and could have wept with relief. He was going to blame the Terrans, not her.

He took her in his arms. “How can we get the manufactured object back?”

“I don’t think we can, Calin. They took it away from World, out into space. We have no metal flying boats to follow them.”

“True. Oh, those filthy unreal soulless people! I would kill them all!”

Pek Sikorski.

Fear clutched Enli. She jumped up and pulled Calin with her. “Come with me. Now. Please, Calin, don’t ask questions yet, it’s very important…” She tugged him up, ran with him through the deserted courts and gardens to the guest court.

Pek Sikorski still slept, unharmed. Few in the Voratur household knew she was here, and fewer still gave her a thought in their own bewilderment. And, Enli belatedly realized, no one but her knew that the Terrans were the cause of the loss of shared reality, of the unmaking of the world.

Except Calin. When he saw Pek Sikorski asleep, his skull ridges creased and his neckfur bristled. “There is one of them! This one at least I can kill!”

“No!” Enli cried, appalled. She should not have brought him here, what was she thinking, none of them could think anymore …

She threw herself on Calin, between him and Pek Sikorski. He had little experience of violence. He stopped instantly. “Enli? What?”

“She didn’t do it, Calin. She wanted the other Terrans to leave the manufactured object here. For us. She didn’t go away from World with them because she hated that they took away our shared reality.”

He shook his head like an animal, a jik shaking off water. “I don’t understand.”

“I know. It’s all hard,” she said, and something in her voice must have touched him. He was a tender man.

“It is hard, dear one. And especially for you, who had … who must … who lived with these Terrans. But if you say this one is real, then that is shared reality.”

Enli moved into his arms. Grateful … she was so grateful. He had held. It was going to be all right.

He said, brokenly as a child, “Enli … I … don’t know how … to live like … this.”

None of them knew. “We’ll learn, my Calin,” she whispered. “We’ll learn.”

She saw that Pek Sikorski was awake, quietly listening to them. Enli broke free of Calin and knelt by her pallet.

“Pek Sikorski, it happened. Shared reality stopped.”

“Are people locking themselves away in fear? And crying and wailing?”

How had she known? “Yes. But that’s not what I came to tell you. Something else, something very important. You cannot tell Voratur, or anyone, that shared reality stopped because of Terrans. If you do—”

“If I do, they’ll decide I have no soul and kill me.”

Enli said in astonishment, “You know that?”

“Yes. I know.”

“Then why didn’t you go away with the other Terrans? With your mate, Pek Gruber?”

“I couldn’t,” Pek Sikorski said, and Enli understood the deep sadness but not the reasoning. She would never grasp a Terran reality whole. Never. Pek Sikorski continued, “I have to explain now to Pek Voratur what happened. He’s a rich and powerful man. He can help keep people calm, keep them from
rioting
.” The word was Terran.

“Yes, but … all right. Tell Pek Voratur that something has happened to the manufactured object that perfumed the air with shared reality, and that we must learn to live without it. But don’t tell him the Terrans took the object Say that the Terrans just saw—” she had an inspiration, “—saw with a big
telescope
, much more powerful than the one Pek Kaufman traded to Pek Voratur, they saw the object … die. Say it was a … a…” What would sound important and strange enough for the First Flower to have created? “… a living rock. Not a manufactured object, but a living rock, which the Terrans saw die. And that’s why shared reality is gone.”

Pek Sikorski said bleakly, “Would you prefer that? Would that be easier for Worlders to accept?”

“Yes,” said Enli, and wondered if it were true. She looked at Calin. His skull ridges creased again. “Enli—you are telling this Terran to say unreal things.”

“Yes.” And there was no head pain—not now, and not when Pek Sikorski eventually talked to Pek Voratur. Enli saw Calin, dismayed, realize this. No head pain. “But it is for everyone’s good.”

“But anyone can say anything now! Even if it is unreal!”

“Yes,” Enli said again.

“I don’t want to go with you to Pek Voratur to say this,” Calin said abruptly. “I am going back to Gofkit Jemloe. I must see that my sister’s soil stays rich, and my mother’s.”

Enli stood. “I will give you that bicycle, Calin.”

“I don’t want a bicycle from you.” His eyes grew darker. “Maybe shared reality is gone. Maybe anyone can say anything. But people should still say what is real.
You
should, Enli.”

He turned abruptly and left. Enli stood rooted to the floor. If she moved, she thought, she would shatter. No pain from unshared reality could have rivaled this one.

Pek Sikorski put her hands over her face.

*   *   *

They told Pek Voratur, deep in his personal rooms with his ailing wife Alu, his children, and an elderly cousin. Pek Sikorski told him the reality she had unfolded, the untrue reality, that the Terrans had seen a great living rock die in the Neury Mountains. Pek Voratur listened carefully, and Enli saw relief spread over his fleshy, well-oiled face. Here was something he could understand. A sacred rock, created by the First Flower—and what could the First Flower not create, having created the World? A sacred rock, now dead as all living things must die, and so the perfume of shared reality gone.

“Yes, we must get sunflashers to tell everyone on World. Yes, yes. I will see to it. Pek Treenifil!” he bellowed for his household steward.

“Shared reality will be gone forever?” Alu Pek Voratur asked falteringly from her sickbed.

“Yes,” Pek Sikorski said, and Alu Pek Voratur pulled the blanket over her face.

It proved difficult to find a sunflasher; they, too, cowered in their homes. The village had come to a standstill. No cookfires in the communal hearths, no herders with their jikib, no children racing between bicycle sheds and gardens. But eventually Pek Voratur, walking fearlessly through the stillness, found a sunflasher prostrate before his flower altar.

The sunflasher towers averaged seven cellib apart, circling all of World at the equator, where its principal landmass lay. The towers were constantly staffed on all sunny days. If the weather cooperated, any message could travel halfway around World from dawn to sunset, and all the way around the next day. Branch towers spread to the north and south, after which bicycle messengers took the information to remote villages. Although it was seldom used all at once, the whole sunflasher system could reach everyone on World. Reluctantly, the Gofkit Jemloe sunflasher mounted his bicycle and rode to his tower, set on the highest hill some distance away. Later, Enli and Voratur and Pek Sikorski saw the bright glints from his tilting mirror. Over and over the message glinted. Later still, the sunflasher rode back to Gofkit Jemloe.

“Pek Voratur, there is no answer. The other sunflashers have abandoned their towers, too. I cannot share anything with anybody.”

Enli, Pek Voratur, and Pek Sikorski looked at each other. Silently they made their way back to the Voratur household.

The gate servant was not at her post. Someone had broken the delicate wood carving on the gate: smashed it to pieces, senselessly, in rage.

“So it starts,” Pek Sikorski said wearily in Terran. Pek Voratur looked at her blankly, but Enli realized, in grief, that she knew what Pek Sikorski meant.

*   *   *

Then, next morning, it was over.

Enli was the first awake, very early, heavy-eyed from poor sleep. There was a foul taste in her mouth. She had slept in Voratur’s personal room, along with many others. Pek Voratur seemed to have decided, since the smashing of his gate, that it was better to have many people around him who would not smash anything. Thirty householders crowded together in pallets on the floor. She staggered from the room out to the piss closet off the garden and made her morning stream.

A man waited outside the piss closet for his turn. Enli didn’t recognize him; he wasn’t one of the people who’d spent the night in Pek Voratur’s room. In fact, he didn’t wear the tunic of the Voratur household at all. His hands were rough. A laborer who did not belong here.