The Transmigration of Souls (9 page)

Sky going all white, blinding them.

Crying out, covering their faces.

Alireza peered out through the dome with aching, teary eyes, blinking hard, saw brilliant golden sparks flying away on long trajectories, bouncing in slow motion across the dusty plain, saw a glowing ruby hole in the plain where
Ming Tian
had been,
al-Qamar
still standing there beyond it...

Filling his lungs, shouting, full of panic, shouting at the radio, “
Mahal
!
Tariq
! Get out of the ship!
Now
...”

Another tongue of liquid fire. Another blinding sky. Another livid hole bracketed by bounding sparkles of incandescent ruin, fading, fading...

The Americans’ winged spacecraft dropping slowly now on its column of fire, descending on an empty Lunar plain. Into the long silence, Ling Erhshan suddenly whispered, “We’re not going home, then...”

Two. Sartor Resartus.

The view from an infinite height.

The view from the Command Module, like the view from the center of some endless, multi-dimensional flower, petals of bright white light going out and out, stretching like brilliant shadows, shadows cast by the Throne of God, out in directions no human mind can conceive.

I know these directions. Know them now.

Know of colors beyond any prismatic fathoming.

Know of times without number.

Worlds beyond kenning.

Effortlessly, I know everything, everywhere, everywhen.

I know when a sparrow falls.

I feel it in my heart.

View from an infinite height changing, shifting, malleable. The putty of creation molded to my touch. I imagine. There is being. I sigh. The reiterated powers to numbers no mathematician could construct unfurl. I imagine darkness. Darkness falls.

Pointless.

Why am I here?

Why do I... persist?

Is it because I still fear to go out into the eternal night?

Surely not.

They say God is Love.

I am not love.

That much is certain.

For a long time after I got the job, I feared I might really be God Almighty. Trembled with terror and longed eternally for the surcease of human sleep. No more. Not for me. Maybe the Other had these longings as well. I knew him not, though he almost certainly knew me.

I know when a sparrow falls.

Feel it in my heart.

The Other must have felt my fall, felt it as a pinprick, somewhere inside. If the Other had a heart. One of those things beyond my knowing, though I know all, see all, with a simulacrum of Odin’s All-Seeing Eye.

Out the window now, brilliant blue galaxies flowed by, blue spiral arms winding round fat red cores. I could reach out and touch the cores. Make them flame with renewed youth. I do not. I could reach out and change the decay rate of protons. I do not. I could reach out, let the ghost wind of the neutrinos sift like dust through my fingers. Could tell them all that their mass was changed, that the history of this universe or that one, or all of them put together, was changed. I do not.

Stars, like dust. Galaxies like grains of sand.

Let them be.

Let them live out their lives.

They don’t know.

Let them live on in the darkness, with their small fear, their fear of inevitable oblivion. I can remember when I feared that oblivion. Oh, God, I remember! Remember when I wished for the reality of God and feared it at the same time. Must I die? Now? Forever? Unfair. Damn you.

Sometimes, when I take these moments alone, when I look out through the Command Module’s infinite windows, I remember those fears and laugh. If you’d told me then, what was to become of me, I don’t think I would have had the sense to feel horror. No. I think I would have felt joy. First, no death. Then, the infinite power to create. The power to change.

I will... and it is so.

Sometimes, even when the work of Creation presses on me, I remember and, remembering, I laugh, striking fear in a million, billion, trillion... transfinite number of souls. I point to the idea of an idea, the spirit of a notion, I murmur, “Make it so...” and I laugh. No one gets the joke, though I could will them to understand.

Then the black despair descends.

I could will this all away.

I could make an End to All Things.

I didn’t ask for this job. It fell upon me, unbidden. (Oh, that lie! That lie!) Sometimes I tire of the task, as the Other must have tired. I thought of that, before I had more than an inkling of the Truth. I could let it all go, let it fall away into the darkness and be done. I could.

And yet.

I know when a sparrow falls.

I feel it in my heart.

Even God can’t imagine the pain of Creation’s End. If He had, He might never have spoken the Word. Might never have let there be light. Certainly, knowing what I know now...

Well.

In any case, I am still afraid of the Dark.

In those last few weeks, those few weeks before the Jug, I think I knew what was coming. Maybe we all did. But the NASA/NSF bureaucrats, the military authorities, politicians greedy for wealth and power, university scientists so wistful about the possibilities of their new knowledge...

And me?

Gone mad, absolutely mad, with the splendor of it all.

If I’d known what was to come, would I have done the right thing? Would I have known the right thing when I saw it? I still don’t know. Maybe I did the right thing after all.

Maybe, if I’d known what was to come, I would’ve gone right through the gate, following poor Astrid Astride and her fleeing troopers. Would have helped her shut and wreck the gate under the Moon. Would have gotten aboard the ship and ridden home to America in her arms.

Maybe. Just maybe. We could have lived happily ever after.

Is it too late now?

Could I step back into the byways of the Multiverse and lead her home?

Or even lead her here?

I feel the great pang of her in my heart now.

The pang of a sparrow falling.

My own personal sparrow.

She deserved better than the likes of me.

Too late now, even in the multiverse. Even in the land where all things are possible. When I came here, the datatracks merged. All the universes where Dale Millikan lived converged. Converged on this spot. Others have their separate infinities. All I have is infinite Oneness.

I remember how Jesus laughed when I said it: I am that I am.

Oh, you fool. You arrogant fool.

So we fooled with the infinite knowledge base. That filthy knowledge of good and evil. Found the gate under the Moon, went out in the footsteps of the Scavengers, in the footsteps of the Colonials, walked the byways of the multiverse... and so the Space-Time Juggernaut came to set things right again.

The Bird of Fire coalesced in the sky, and we wondered if we were looking on the face of God, if this was indeed the bright Angel of Death.

Death, it seemed then, was the right answer.

Troopers become bones, clean bones gone... a smile, even then, in the face of eternity. I never can stop thinking these things.

Somehow, the scientists and I were trapped, wise men and women wide eyed, looking to me for guidance. Imagine that. You. You, Mr. Millikan. A man of action, someone who can do, while the rest of us merely be.

 Now, we can’t go back through the gate on Mars-Plus. Can’t get back to the cavern under the Moon. The Jug is there now. Fire in the sky. Snapping up the trooper-girls one-two-three... are you alive, my beloved Astrid Astride? Or will I find you no more than a pile of clean bones one day?

I fancied I heard her voice, I still live.

On a little desert world in a galaxy far, far away, where we’d been following the trail of the last Scavengers, reading their words, written on scraps of this and that, I stood before the gate controls and considered. Stay here? Wait it out? What if the Jug takes Earth? What do we do then? Go back to Mars-Plus? No. Jug is there. Waiting for us, perhaps.

Will he find us here?

No way to know.

Have to do something.

Please, Mr. Millikan. We trust you.

Well, shit. Fancy that.

So I spun the dials and snapped the switches and watched bright rainbows spill out on hot, white-lit gypsum sand, and looked through at a red sandstone world, pink sky above a rubble-field of frosty red stones, sky dark toward zenith. Men there, inside the dome we’d set up over the gate, turning to look at us, wide-eyed with fear.

Outside the dome, I could see one of the new Scavenger-model spaceships we’d been fooling with. The one that had brought this gate hardware to Mars. The real, red Mars, our own Earth a blue-white spark in its sky.

“Let’s go!”

Watched the scientists scuttle through, until only I was left.

Now me.

Go home, you fool.

Go to Mars. Destroy the gate. Fly home to Earth in the spaceship. Wait things out. Maybe the Jug will just pinch off our gates, once we’ve all gotten home. Maybe it won’t finish us off.

Like the Scavengers, apparently.

Like the colonials.

Go home, Dale Millikan.

Go home to Astrid Kincaid.

Maybe she’ll love you, even without the romantic backdrop of the Multiverse to fool her. Go home. So what if the Multiverse is closed to us now? We still have the Scavenger technology. Still have... my God. Spaceships! We have their spaceships. Go home.

One day. One day perhaps. You’ll stand with Astrid Astride on the surface of Iapetus, looking up at brilliant, yellow ringed Saturn and... oh, God. Those old dreams shrunken away to nothing at all in the face of all we’d found.

If I go home, I abandon the land of all my dreams and... I stood staring through the gate at them for a long moment, scientists and technicians looking back at me curiously, wondering what was keeping me. I spun the dials, punched the buttons, watched rainbows spill back into the gate, and then Mars was gone.

Stood alone for a long time on the white sand surface of a world with no name, fallen Scavenger ruins half buried in the background, low mountains rising above the distant horizon under a pale, blue-white sky in which hung three small, bright white suns.

 What do I do now?

Go.

Go back to the world of your dreams.

Cringe of fear.

What about the Jug?

What if the Space-Time Juggernaut finds you?

So what? You’re almost sixty years old now, Dale Millikan. Not going to live forever... I thought that then, used it to soothe my fear. What if I’d know that, going home, I’d’ve walked into an immortal time-frame where I could, truly, live with Astrid Astride, happily ever after? What would I have done?

But I didn’t know.

Just knew that I couldn’t bear to lose all the worlds of all my dreams.

Somewhere, out there, perhaps, Valetta the Slave-Girl waited for Dorian Haldane to come. Or maybe, somewhere out there, Valetta the Slave-Girl waited for Dale Millikan to come. Somewhere out there was a dream that overshadowed reality. Somewhere out there was a dream that washed Astrid Kincaid away.

So I dialed up a world of bright lavender skies and stepped on through.

Maybe, later, I would change my mind. Go on home. Live out my life and die. Maybe she’d forgive me. Maybe she’d understand. Oh, Astrid Astride, you deserved better than me. And now I feel the pang of your fall...

Three. Children of the Lens.

Underground, continuing to work their way through all the dials and switches of the control panel, Inbar and Rahman were uneasy, ignoring their feelings...

Should we be up there now?

What good would that do?

Our duty...

But... this.

Thoughts universal, however unspoken.

Next to the “Power Main” switch was another one, almost identical, similarly caged, with a red label tape that said Link. Subaïda Rahman eyed it, knowing there was nothing left to do. Either we act, or we do not. Fretful fears: Only a fool does things like this. Meanwhile, up on the surface, the Americans would be landing about now.

Inbar said, “We’d better wait for Alireza. Maybe we should go up and see...” The ground twitched under their feet, a barely perceptible movement, fine dust sifting down from the ceiling.

Nothing. Motionless. Looking at one another, faces drained of color, filling up with fear. The ground twitched again. More dust. Rahman thought, That’s it then. I’ll never know if... She reached out and uncaged the switch, reversed its position.

Pale golden light, a luminous hint of rainbows splashing at their feet. Abandoned scrap of paper with its cryptic numbers and scrawled English words suddenly lifting off from where it’d been set on the edge of the console, blowing away out over the bushes. Dust flying off the ground, gusting around their space-suited ankles.

Inbar turned toward the wall, gaping, and said, “In the Name of God.”

o0o

It felt very strange to be standing on the familiar, dusty surface of the Moon after all these years. Standing there in old-fashioned combat tans, mottled desert-warfare fatigues of the sort she’d worn, way back in the late 2020s, when America had what turned out to be its penultimate foreign adventure, the destruction of Morocco’s nuclear weapons capability.

Soldiers, if you could call them that, gathering in a ragged row at the foot of the ramp, by the Scavenger ship’s landing jacks, each muscular dwarf, each tall, grinning gargoyle, shouldering pack and rifle, each surrounded by a pale, intangible nimbus of silvery light.

Take a deep breath. Nice, clean air, at standard temperature and pressure. Faint smell of gunpowder. Lunar dust sifting in through the curtainfield, where it’s compressed by our boots. Brucie and his boys were standing in a little knot nearby, grinning, goggling around at the scenery, staring over at those two bubbled craters, cooled already to the point where they were just black glass, little rims of dull red light showing through here and there.

Brucie said, “Man, that sumbitch really
worked
.”

Kincaid turned over a bit of twisted metal with one foot. Sure did. No way of even knowing what this used to be part of.

One of the other techies said, “Radio traffic seems to indicate there were two crew on each vessel at the time of attack.”

Four dead then, which meant there were five more somewhere else. Looking up at the dome, which should have been dark. Someone has turned on the lights, then. Four more Arabs. One last Chinaman. Poor fucking bastards. The communicator on her belt chirped. She put it to her ear, and said, “Here.”

“This is Athelstan. Thought you should know the Arabs assaulted our observers at their launch complex. We’ve blown their autodestruct mechanisms. Hammaghir is gone.”

Observers
. Teleoperated androids, with bigger-than-usual bombs in their heads. Cooling radioactive holes in the sand. So why did we wait? Why did we let it get this far? Who knows? Politicians and generals make their decisions. Maybe they argued about Pearl Harbor or something. Argued ‘til it was too late for anything but... this.

“We saw your explosions. Are you finished up there?”

“No. We’ve got to go inside the base and catch five survivors.”

“Inside the base?” You could hear the upset in Athelstan’s voice. “Too bad about that.”

“Yes sir. Too bad.” As you say sir. She put the communicator back on her belt, not bothering to sign off. All right. Time to go.

o0o

Looking out through the dome, Alireza whispered, “Trust to the Americans to send Djinni for us.”

 Zeq, voice fainter still: “Djinni are saved as well, some of them. Allah sent a separate revelation to all their kind, to be accepted or rejected, just as with men. Djinni, the Book says, have their own
Quran
...”

Ling, edging backward, feeling fear curl through his abdomen, said, “Something more has been going on in America than we ever suspected.” All those years of satellite photos, of skulking along the borders with Canada and Mexico, spies trying to get in, always failing, never a chink found anywhere in the walls of Fortress America. Watching the embassy, with its magic planes. Shadowing the tourists here and there. Picking mysterious flotsam from the ocean. Now, here were the Americans, like things from some old movie, bounding toward them across the Lunar plain. Coming for us.

Why am I afraid? Why am I so afraid? I’ve played out scenes like this in my imagination a thousand times. American scenes, from old American books, old American movies. But this is real. And Chang Wushi is dead. Da Chai is dead. Blown away to... not even dust. Blown away into the sky as vapor and fire. Soon, most likely, I’ll be dead as well. This is real. That’s why I’m afraid.

Even Dorian Haldane would be afraid.

Alireza said, “We’d better get back down to Inbar and Rahman. We should face this together...”

Then...

Trying to run, pretending to run, in a spacesuit of hundred-year-old design, Ling Erhshan imagined he could feel every one of his fifty-five years. Could count them, see them flashing before his eyes like still frames from his personal movie.

Such a simple movie. Confused scenes of infancy. Those people who might or might not have been his parents. Ice and snow. Mountain scenes. I never knew my name, or who I might be.

Then the fast drumbeat: Orphanage. School. Books. Scholarship. College. Politics and grantsmanship. Graduate school. Science awards. Doing real science. Working toward a goal. Bureaucracy. Politics. Moonshot. Politics...

And monsters running at you across a dusty black plain, Earth hanging bright in the sky.

That inane voice, refusing to shut up as they scurried into the tunnel, closing the door behind them: You’re having an Adventure, Ling Erhshan. Having an adventure at last. I wonder if Chang Wushi and Da Chai were afraid, in that last moment of theirs. If they had an instant of regret, just before being burned away to nothing, being torn to pieces and...

Then they were out on the balcony, closing another door behind them, as if, somehow, its flimsy metal would keep the monsters out on the plain at bay.

That one
thing
, out in the lead,
taking point
they’d call it, looking like the cover illustration from my old paperback of
Number Thirteen
, the one I stole from the orphanage library the day I went away to school, so I’d have something to read on the train, all eyes and long, sharp teeth and dark, ragged hole of a nose...

Running through all these crazy bushes now, crazy American bushes in a cave under the Moon, while dust swirled around them on winds of... winds of...

Scientist mind waking up.

Winds of what?

I’m in a cave, buried under the surface of an airless world.

Winds of what?

And that soft golden light, coming from the back of the cave, where they’d left Inbar and Rahman...

Rahman, who’d already had the temerity to touch those mysterious controls, put power to whatever it was that had lain here, silent and alone, for three long generations. Whatever it was that had... given the Americans their magic. And made them into the things you saw up there. Things coming for us now.

They came out of the bushes and stopped. Stared.
There
. Almost as if you
knew
this would happen. As if the old stories had
prepared
you for it.

Inbar and Rahman, bulky in their spacesuits, standing together, facing what had been a featureless wall. Staring out through it. Long, long vista of rolling yellow hills under a pastel pink sky that could not, could
not
be making this mellow golden light. Pale silvery clouds up in that sky. Small, pale, metallic sun, fiery disk of molten gold.

Fine yellow dust, blowing in through the opening in the wall, drifting across the floor, seeming to hover above it, swirling like liquid. Alireza’s voice, dry, very dry in their earphones. “Well,” he said. “I wonder where they parked the flying saucer?”

Ling Erhshan suppressing an urge to giggle, suppressing a momentary fear that he would have one of those “nervous breakdowns” Americans in old books and movies loved to fret about. Not I, not I, because this is... He said, “This explains a lot, doesn’t it?” His own voice so very laconic, English so very precise and crisp. Calm now. Because this is... looking out at that golden-pink world, because... because this is
glorious
.

There was a crack of thunder behind them, making them turn way from their window. An explosion, gouting flower of crimson fire, the door above the balcony flying outward, tumbling as it fell down into the garden, leaving behind a pale contrail of faint gray smoke.

Ah, yes, thought Ling Erhshan. The monsters. I did forget about the monsters...

o0o

Kincaid up on the balcony with her troops, looking out across the lush, level expanse of the Pierre Boule Memorial Lunar Gardens: Always wondered if that was a penname, French “boule” the source of English “bull,” nothing to do with manure after all, merely an old-fashioned word for “lie.” Garden looks well too, looks just like it did when we shut the door here, 76 years ago.

Except, when you looked over your shoulder, one last time, on that long-gone day, there was no golden light spilling across these beautiful lawns... God
damn
you, Stanley Krimsky. You were supposed to
spin
the fucking dials before you shut off the gate.
Spin
them, then kill the power and
run
...

But Millikan’s team is still out there, Sarge...

I’m giving you an order, Corporal. Spin ‘em.

Yes, ma’m.

Hell. I should’ve done it myself. Right. And you should’ve obeyed fucking Major Grimaldi and emptied your clip into the Gate’s control console too, while you were at it.

Dale Millikan would’ve understood.

Brilliant golden light on the far wall though, making you remember what it’d been like the first time you saw those yellow hills, that pale pink sky, that sun of molten metal... Or the last time. Angel of Death hovering over those yellow hills, thrum of a thousand wings, Angel of Death like a flock of half-invisible birds, taking on some strange, indefinite shape, hovering over the ruins of Koraad.

Snap. Snap.
Snap
.

Human artifacts disappearing from the landscape, like
that
.

Men and women bringing their weapons to bear, opening fire...

Snap
.

Men and women gone.

Sergeant-Major Astrid Kincaid, USMC Lunar Expeditionary Forces, ordering her soldiers to turn and run away. Live to fight another day. Sometimes a better soldiers’ motto than good old
Semper Fi
...

Turning to run herself, but not before casting one long, regretful glance at old Koraad, tasting a memory of making love with Dale Millikan far into the alien night... Made me giggle by calling me “Astrid Astride,” the silly bastard. Cried my last tear ever on the flight home from the Moon.

Brilliant golden light on the far wall now, shadows of humanoid shapes moving within it. Kincaid motioned to her soldiers and went on down the stairs. Too late maybe. Or maybe not.

o0o

Down in the garden below, Alireza watched the Americans descend, and formulated his command decision. Not much of a decision, really. Hope their officer was a reasonable fellow. Hope he’d let them surrender. Chinese had
fired
on them after all. Destruction of
al-Qamar
merely a reasonable precaution. Which didn’t make poor Mahal and Tariq any less dead of course.

Mahal and Tariq, who’d never see this... this...

Maybe the American officer would offer some kindly explanation, before he shot them down like offending dogs. He glanced at nonplused Zeq, who glanced at frightened Inbar, standing beside bright-eyed Ling, bright eyed, curious, seemingly unafraid, standing there, staring through this magic portal, at what appeared to be some other world. Appeared to be...

In English, Ling whispered, “So much trouble to go to, for a mere diorama.” Wind still whispering around their booted feet, stirring the vegetation of the garden.

Subaïda Rahman said, “Too much trouble, yes. Far too much trouble.”

She glanced at Alireza, a daring look, daring him to do something, as if the American soldiers were forgotten, and stepped up to the image. Hesitated. Looked at Ling. Eyes wide, full of unnamed fear, but...

Took one step forward, stepped through into the diorama chamber. Stood stock-still, stood looking around. Turned, looked back through the portal at them, then looked up, above the portal, at something apparently far away.

Alireza said, “I don’t want to believe. I do not.”

Ling said, “
E pur si muove
.” Shuffled forward, clumsy in his antique spacesuit, stepped through the portal to Rahman’s side. Turned to look around. Broke into a bug-eyed grin of obvious disbelief.

In English, an amplified voice bellowed, “
HALT! DO NOT PROCEED
!” It was the voice of the barbaric woman. There was a crisp, muffled report, a sparkling explosion from the ceiling above them, small rocks falling, spattering on the ground.

Alireza to Zeq to Inbar. One last look back at the soldiers, visible now through the bushes, silvery light sparkling around each one. They went through the gate together.

o0o

Kincaid burst through the bushes, still thinking, Maybe not too late, rushing forward to the Gate console. Golden light still flooding through, soft wind still blowing, crossing the curtainfield boundary to stroke her skin, just as it had so long ago. Five people in old fashioned space suits standing there on the other side, outlined against yellow hills and familiar pastel pink sky. She leveled her rifle, opened her mouth to bark one final warning.