The Fugitive Worlds (21 page)

That is good
—II
reduces their potential for causing damage
and at the same time makes them easier for us to capture.
Divivvidiv shifted his thinking to the high-brain mode to exclude the Xa from his deliberations. Obtaining specimens of the Primitives for Director Zunnunun's personal study was in a way a frivolity, something quite extraneous to the great project, and if the Xa were to be damaged in the course of it the penalties would be dire. He, Divivvidiv, would almost certainly be subjected to personality modification as a punishment for allowing himself to be diverted from his duties. After all, the project was the single most important undertaking in the history of his people. The future of the entire race. . . .

Beloved Creator!
The Xa's call was an unexpected intrusion. I
have a question for you.

What is it?
Divivvidiv demanded, hoping the Xa was not about to make more of the increasingly tiresome enquiries about its own future. The Xa would not have been able to build itself had it not been provided with a powerful artificial intelligence, but its designers—in the remote high floors of the Palace of Numbers—had not anticipated the development of self-awareness.

Tell me, Beloved Creator,
the Xa said,
what is a Rope?

The shock of the question was so sudden, so forceful, that Divivvidiv experienced a momentary giddiness and a dangerous weakening of mental control. For one perilous instant he almost gave the Xa access to all high-brain networks, and the effort of closing off hundreds of neural highways left him feeling chilled and sick.

Practicing eye-of-the-hurricane rituals to induce a state of calmness, he said,
Who told you about Ropes?

There was a slight delay before the Xa responded.
Not you, Beloved Creator. Not anybody. The word has lately begun to exist all around me. It must be continually in the
minds of millions of intelligent beings, but the concepts behind
it are too elusive to be captured. All I know is that the
word is associated with fear . . . a terrible fear of ceasing to
exist. .
. .

It is nothing for you to be concerned about,
Divivvidiv said,
using every mental reinforcement technique he knew to
give strength to the lie.
The word is little more than a sound.
Its origins lie in certain aberrations of the human mind
—
logical lesions, you might say
—
metaphysics, religion, superstition.
. . .

But why has it begun to impinge on my consciousness?

For no particular reason. A tide, a current, an eddy. You
trouble yourself with things that do not concern you. I command you to be at peace and concentrate on your given task.

Yes, Beloved Creator.

Grateful
 
for
 
the
 
Xa's compliant
 
attitude,
 
Divivvidiv severed the telepathic link and floated to the airlock which was closest to his living quarters. As he pulled on the suit which would enable him to survive the outer cold he pondered, with some disquiet, on the Xa's acquisition of the term "Rope". Did it simply mean that the Xa's direct communication capability had increased? Or was there a new degree of alarm on the home world, a heightening of fear which had driven telepathic ripples through the surrounding regions of space?

Divivvidiv entered the airlock and completed the inner seal. As soon as he opened the outer door the bitter coldness stung his face and eyes, and breathing became so painful that he almost gasped aloud. The metallic plazas of the station stretched away before him, flat and bare in some places, replete with engineered complexities in others. The antennae of the teleportation unit projected into the sunlit air—slim and delicately curved sculptures—and occasional flickers of green fire at their tips showed that a consignment of the Xa's nutrients was currently being received. Beyond the angular boundaries of the station the Xa's body, now grown huge, formed a sea of white crystalline brilliance stretching into remoteness on all sides.

Divivvidiv's eyes were not able to focus on infinity without artificial aid, and so the universe beyond the white horizon was simplified into a vision of the sun and one of the local planets on a background washed and speckled with blurs of luminance. He was, nevertheless, able to gaze directly at the mote of blue light which was his home world of Dussarra, and within seconds was in contact with Director Zunnunun.

What is it?
Zunnunun said.
Why do you interrupt my work?

I have good news,
Divivvidiv replied. II
was an unfortunate and freakish circumstance that the sampling of Primitives I
supplied to you consisted entirely of females. Also, we were unlucky in that the second ship
—
containing Primitive males
—
became aware of the Xa in time to guide their ship success
fully past its perimeter.

You said you had good news.
Zunnunun tinted the words with the mind-colors of growing irritability.

Yes! The same Primitive ship is now ascending towards the
datum plane, and those on board believe
—
or hope
—
that the
lost females have taken refuge within the habitats I found here.
This time, Director, there is no doubt at all that I will be able
to send them to you, because—as a simple consequence of
previous physical contact—the sole purpose of the males in
making the new ascent is to retrieve the females. They will come directly to me.

This is quite incredible,
Zunnunun said.
Are you sure of your facts?

Absolutely.

You bring me good news indeed
—I
had no idea that such
powerful bonding could exist between individuals of any species. I look forward to receiving the Primitive males and to carrying out appropriate experiments.

It is my pleasure to serve you,
Divivvidiv said, pleased that he had regained the Director's approval.
While we are in private discourse, may I raise another matter?

Proceed.

The Xa's consciousness continues to reach new levels, and
it has just made an initial enquiry about the Ropes.

Does it have any understanding? Any insight?

No.
Divivvidiv paused, qualifying the statement.
But I sensed undertones . . . Has there been a new development?

I have to say
—
yes.
There was a brief silence, and when Director Zunnunun spoke again his words were clouded with strange colors indicative of doubt and apprehension.
As you know, a powerful faction in society has forced those in the Palace of Numbers to carry out a new assessment of
the local situation, and the latest data have strengthened the opinion that the Ropes really do exist. It also seems highly probable that as many as twelve Ropes once intersected near
our galaxy
—
compared with the original estimate of seven.

And if that is truly the case, not only will our own galaxy
cease to exist
—
as many as a hundred other galaxies in the cosmic region will be annihilated.

I see.
The surrounding cold seemed to invade Divivvidiv's clothing with relentless force as he broke the mental contact.
This is strange,
he thought.
Why should a force which promises to annihilate a million other galaxies be feared more than a force which threatens to destroy only this one
—
when my personal fate will be exactly the same in either case? And
why should I trouble myself over my people's plan to obliterate
a pair of undeveloped and sparsely populated minor worlds when the cosmos itself is bent on such monstrous feats of destruction?

During the last fifty miles of the ascent Toller and Steenameert had turned the ship on its side at frequent intervals. The purpose had been to get an early view of the small line of wooden stations and spaceships so that they could steer directly towards them by countering lateral drift. Even in good viewing conditions the artifacts would have been hard
to find, but with a sea of crystal spanning the sky and diffusing
the sunlight into a uniform white brilliance Toller had expected his task to be doubly difficult. He had therefore been surprised when, at a range of some thirty miles, he had begun discerning a mote of solid darkness at the center of the translucent disk. As the ship crept closer to it, binoculars revealed that the object—although irregular in its general outline—was bounded by straight lines and square corners. Its silhouette resembled the plan of a very large building to which numerous extensions had been added in quite a haphazard manner.

For a time Toller was able to reject the implication—there simply was no room for it in his scheme of reality—but eventually the painful mental
shift
took place. . . .

"Whatever that thing is," he said to Steenameert, "I cannot visualize it growing there by itself like a crystal of ice. It has to be a midpoint station of some kind, but. . . ."

"Not built by the likes of us," Steenameert supplied.

"You speak truly. The size . . . We could be looking at a palace in the sky."

"Or a fortress." Steenameert's voice was low, almost furtive, in spite of the fact that he and Toller were alone on the ship in the vast reaches of the weightless zone. "Could it be that the Farlanders have at last decided on conquest?"

"They are going about it in an odd way, if they have,"
Toller replied, frowning, instinctively rejecting the idea of a military invasion from the third planet. Bartan Drumme was
one of the two men still alive who had been on the single
epic voyage to Farland many years ago, and Toller had often
heard him declare that its inhabitants were insular in their
outlook, totally lacking in the colonial urge. Besides, the
enigmatic sea of living crystal and the gigantic midpoint
station were obviously connected in some respect, and what
military commander—no matter how alien his mind—would
set about an invasion in such a pointless manner?

"No, this is something new to us," Toller went on. "We
know there are many other worlds circling distant stars,
and we also know that on some of those worlds there are civilizations much further advanced than ours. Perhaps, my
friend Baten, what we see above us is
...
is .. . but one of
many far-flung palaces belonging to some unimaginable king of kings. Perhaps those reaches of ice are his hunting grounds
...
his deerparks. . . ." Toller paused, lost for the moment
in the exotic grandeur of his vision, but was recalled when
Steenameert posed a crucial question.

"Sir, do we go on?"

"Of course!" Toller pulled his scarf down from over his
nose and mouth so that his words could be heard with perfect
clarity. "1 continue to assume that the Countess and her crew have taken refuge in one of our stations, but if we fail to find
them there . . . Why, we now have one other place to look!"

"Yes, sir."