The Dark Side of the Sun Read online

  'I've got orders, er, to take you back,' said the guard. Dom ignored him and stepped aboard his own craft. The guard swallowed, glanced at the stripper and then at Dom, and hurried into the control bubble. By the time he had reached the radio, Dom's flyer was a hundred metres away, bouncing lightly from wavetop to wavetop before gliding up and over the sea.

  Extract from 2001 and All That: an Anecdotal History of Space-Travelling Man, by Charles Sub-Lunar (Fghs-Hrs & Calligna, Terra Novae)

  'Mention should be made of Widdershins and of the Sabalos family, since the two are practically synonymous. Widdershins, a mild world consisting largely of water and very little else, is one of the two planets of CY Aquirii. Its climate is pleasant though damp, its food a monotonous variation on the theme of fish, its people intelligent, hardy and - due to the high-ultraviolet content of the sunlight - universally black and bald.

  'The planet was settled in the Year of the Questing Monkey (A.S. 675) by a small party of earth-humans and a smaller colony of phnobes and there, perhaps, pan-Human relations are better than on any other world.

  'John Sabalos - the first of his dynasty - built himself a house by the Wiggly River, looking over the sea towards Great Creaking Marsh. His only skill was luck. He discovered in the giant floating bivalves that dwelt in the deep waters a metre-wide pearl made up largely of crude pilac, which turned out to be one of the growing number of death-immunity drugs. But pilac was found to be without many of the unfortunate draw-backs of many of the other twenty-six. It became the foundation of the family fortunes. John I extended his house, planted an orchard of cherry trees, became the first Chairman when Widdershins adopted Rule by Board of Directors, and died aged 301.

  'His son, John, is considered a wastrel. One example of his wastefulness suffices: he bought a shipload of rare fruits from Third Eye. Most were rotten on arrival. One mould was a strange green slime. By an unlikely combination of circumstances it was found to have curious regenerative properties. Within a year, just when dagon fishing was becoming almost impossible because of the high injury rate among the fishermen, it became a mark of manhood to have at least one limb with the peculiar greenish tint of the cell-duplicating googoo.

  'John II bought the Cheops pyramid from the Tsion subcommittee of the Board of Earth and had it lifted in one piece to an area of waste ground north of his home domes. When he made an offer for Luna, to replace Widdershins' smaller but still serviceable moon, his young daughter Joan I packed him off to a mansion on the other side of the planet and took over as Managing Director. In her the Sabalos fortunes, hitherto dependent on a smiling fate, found a champion. They doubled within a year. A strict Sadhimist, she executed many reforms including the passage of the Humanity Laws.

  'Her son - she found time for a brief contract with a cousin - was John III, who became a brilliant probability mathematician in those early, exciting days of the art. It has been suggested that this was a peaceful escape from his mother and his wife Vian, a well-connected Earth noblewoman to whom he had been contracted in order to strengthen ties with Earth. He disappeared in strange circumstances just prior to the birth of his second child, the Dom Sabalos of legend. It is understood that he met with some kind of accident in the planet-wide marshes.

  'A body of myth surrounds the young Dom. Many stories relating to him are obviously apocryphal. For example, it is said that on the very date of his investiture as Chairman of the Planetary Board, he...'

  The stars were out as Dom reached the jetty which stretched from the home domes far out into the artificial harbour where the feral windshells were kept.

  Lamps were burning. Some of the early-duty fishermen were already preparing the shells for the night's fishing; one old woman was deep-frying King cockles on a charcoal stove, and a tinny radio lying on the boards was playing, quite unheeded, an old Earth tune with the refrain, 'Your Feet's too Big'.

  Dom tied up at the jetty alongside the great silent bulk of a hospital float, and scrambled up the ladder.

  As he walked towards the domes he was aware of the silence. It spread out from him like a wake, from man to man. Heads rose in the lamplight and froze, watching him intently. Even the old woman lifted the pan from the stove and glanced up. There was something acute about the look in her eyes.

  Dom heard one sound as he slowly climbed the steps towards the main Sabalos dome. Someone started to say: 'Not like his father, then, whatever they—' and was nudged into silence.

  A Class Three robot stood by the door, armed with an antiquated sonic. It whirred into life as he approached and assumed a defiant stance.

  'Halt - who goes there? Enemy or Friend of Earth?' it croaked, its somewhat corroded voicebox slurring the edges of the traditional Sadhimist challenge.

  'FOE, of course,' said Dom, resisting the urge to give the wrong answer. He had done it once to see what would happen. The blast had left him temporarily deaf and the resonance had demolished a warehouse. Grandmother, who seldom smiled, had laughed quite a lot and then tanned his hide to make sure the lesson was doubly learned.

  'Pass, FOE,' said the guard. As he passed, the communicator on its chest glowed into life.

  'Okay,' said Korodore, 'Dom, one day you will tell me how you got out without tripping an alarm.'

  'It took some studying.'

  'Step closer to the scanner. I see. That scar is new. '

  'Someone shot at me out in the marsh. I'm all right.'

  Korodore's reply came slowly, under admirable control.

  'Who?'

  'Chel, how should I know? Anyway, it was hours ago. I...uh...'

  'You will come inside, and in ten minutes you will come to my office and you will tell me the events of today in detail so minute you will be amazed. Do you understand?'

  Dom looked up defiantly, and bit his lip.

  'Yes, sir,' he said.

  'Okay. And just maybe I will not get sent to scrape barnacles off a raft with my teeth and you will not get confined to dome for a month.' Korodore's voice softened marginally. 'What's that thing round your neck? It looks familiar.'

  'It's a swamp ig.'

  'Rare, aren't they?'

  Dom glanced up at the planetary coat of arms over the door, where a blue flamingo and a bad representation of a swamp ig supported a Sadhimist logo on an azure field. Under it, incised deeply into the stone - far more deeply in fact than was necessary - was the One Commandment.

  'I used to know a smuggler who had one of those,' Korodore went on. 'There are one or two odd legends about them. I expect you know, of course. I guess it's okay to bring it in.'

  The communicator darkened. The robot stood aside.

  Dom skirted the main living quarters. There was an uproar coming from the kitchens where preparations were being made for tomorrow's banquet. He slipped in quietly, snatched a plate of kelp entrees from the table nearest the door, and ducked back into the corridor. A phnobic curse-word followed him, but that was all, and he wandered on down to the corridor until it petered out in a maze of storerooms and pantries.

  A small courtyard had been roofed over with smoked plastic that made if gloomy even under a See-Why noon, and the plastic itself was set with thin pipes that sprayed a constant fine mist.

  In the middle of the yard a rath had been built of reeds. An attempt to grow fungi had been made on the patch of ground surrounding it. Dom pulled aside the drenched door-curtain and stooped inside.

  Hrsh-Hgn was sitting in a shallow bath of tepid water, reading a cube by the light of a fish-oil lamp. He waved one double-jointed hand at Dom and swivelled one eye towards him.

  'Glad you're here. Lissten to thiss: "A rock outcrop twenty kilometres south of Rampa, Third Eye, appearss to reveal fossil strata relating not to the passt but to the future, which..." '

  The phnobe stopped reading and carefully placed the cube on the floor. He looked first at Dom's expression, then at the scar, and finally at the ig which was still twined round his neck.

  'You're acting,' said Dom. 'You are doi
ng it very well, but you are acting. You're certainly acting better than Korodore and the men on the jetty.

  'We are naturally glad to see you ssafely back.'

  'You all look as though I've returned from the dead.'

  The phnobe blinked.

  'Hrsh, tomorrow I shall be Chairman of the Board. It doesn't mean much—'

  'It iss a very honourable position.'

  '—It doesn't mean much because all the power, the real power, belongs to Grandmother. But I think the Chairman is entitled to know one or two things. Like, for example, why haven't you ever told me about probability math? And what happened to—how did my father die? I've heard fishermen say it was out there on Old Creaky.'

  In the silence that followed the ig awoke and began scratching itself violently.

  'Come on,' said Dom, 'you're my tutor.'

  'I will tell you after the ceremony tomorrow, it iss late now. Then all will be explained.'

  Dom stood up, 'Will I ever trust you again, though? Chel, Hrsh, it's important. And you're still acting.'

  'Oh, yess? And what emotion am I trying to conceal?'

  Dom stared at him. 'Uh... terror, I think. And—uh— pity. Yes. Pity. And you're terrified.'

  The curtain swung to behind him. Hrsh-Hgn waited until his footsteps had died away, and reached out to the communicator. Korodore answered.

  'Well?'

  'He hass been to ssee me. I almosst told him! My lord, he wass reading me! How can we let thiss thing happen?'

  'We don't. We will try and prevent it, of course. With all our power. But it will happen, or seventy years of probability math go down the hole.'

  Hrsh-Hgn said, 'Someone hass been telling him about probability math, and he assked me about his father. If he assks again, I warn you, for pity's ssake I will tell him.'

  'Will you?'

  The phnobe looked down and fell silent.

  Out to sea the dagon rose by the score, in response to their ancient instincts. The catch was unusually large, which the fishermen decided was an omen, if only they could decide which way fate's finger pointed. They found, too - when the last ripple had died away towards dawn - a small reed island, empty, half swamped, drifting aimlessly over the deeps.

  2

  Korodore strolled silently along the empty corridor, which was lit faintly by the first glow of dawn.

  He was thick-set and, as a sly gesture, heredity had given him a round cheerful face so that he looked like an amiable pork-butcher. But there were advantages to that, and no butcher - certainly not of pork - walked by instinct from shadow to shadow.

  A door opened soundlessly and he turned along a short side corridor and into a large round room.

  A peat fire was collapsing soundlessly into a pile of white ash in the central hearth. The rest of the room was sparsely furnished: a narrow bed, a table and chair made of sections of dagon shell, a wardrobe and a Sadhimist logo on sheet copper on one curving wall comprised its main geographical points.

  There were one or two signs of Directorship, a large rolled map of the equatorial regions, an open filing cabinet, and a Galactic Standard clock on top of it.

  But it was the trappings of probability math that clashed heavily with the strict simplicity of the room. Korodore's eye followed a trail of Reformed Tarot cards across the room to where the bulk of the pack, crystal faces now bland, lay against the wall where it had been thrown. A vaguely disturbing visual array on a portable computer glowed on another wall. Charcoal glowed faintly in a tiny brazier on the shell table, and the air was acrid with the fumes of - Korodore sniffed - the curious Sinistral incense. So Joan had taken refuge in being a cool-head...

  Joan I looked up from the table, where a large black book lay open.

  'Couldn't you sleep either?' she said.

  Korodore rubbed his nose diffidently.

  'As you know, madam, security officers never sleep.'

  'Yes... I know.' She shook her head, 'It was a figure of speech, is all. There's some coffee by the fire.'

  He poured her a cup, and slowly began to pick up the cards. She eyed him carefully as he moved soundlessly across the room.

  'I've been looking at the equations again,' she said, 'There's no change. My son's calculation was correct. Of course, I knew. They've been checked enough times. Even Sub-Lunar looked at them. Dom will be killed today, at noon. They won't let him live.'

  She waited. 'Well?' she said.

  'You mean, how do I feel as the security officer in charge? You mean, what are my reactions to the knowledge that whatever precautions I may take my charge will still be murdered? I have none, madam. I will still work as though I was in ignorance. Besides,' he added, dropping the pack on the table, 'I cannot believe it. Not quite. You could say my reaction is hope.'

  'It'll happen.'

  'I can't pretend to understand probability math. But if the universe is so ordered, so - immutable - that the future can be told from a handful of numbers, then why need we go on living?'

  Joan stood up, crossed to the wardrobe, and took out of it a waist-length white wig.

  'It's obvious you do not understand p-math, then,' she said. 'We go on because to live is still better than to die. That has always been the choice of Humanity, even when we thought the future was a cauldron of possibilities.'

  She combed out the wig. 'We cannot be certain how he will die,' she continued, 'You or I, perhaps, may be the ones the Institute chooses to—'

  Korodore spun round. 'I have checked us all by deep-reach, RGD—'

  'Oh, Korodore! I'm sorry. But you have such a touching faith in cause-and-effect! Don't you know that in an infinite Totality all universes will happen? There is a universe somewhere where at this moment you will turn into a—'

  'Such things are said, madam,' he muttered.

  'You disapprove of me,' she said, and pouted.

  He raised his eyes to the gold century disc on her forehead and smiled thinly.

  'Now, you are too old, madam, to try wiles of that kind. But I do disapprove. This meddling is not a good thing. It stinks of magic, witchcraft.'

  'I haven't studied the pre-Sadhimist religions in any great depth, Korodore.'

  'All right, madam. What happens if Dom doesn't die ? '

  'It's unthinkable. This is the datum universe - he'll die. In a sense, the whole universe depends on the fact. If he didn't die, perhaps he'd discover the jokers world and that could be terrible.'

  'And if he doesn't?'

  Joan adjusted the wig and opened the window looking out over the sea. The fishing fleet was coming in with the tide, lit by the hanging pinpoint of Widdershins' blue sun. On the horizon the light glinted sharply off the Tower in the marshes.

  'It's too hot to sleep,' she said, 'I'll finish this, and then I'll go down to the jetty.'

  'Mystic law of the universe?' asked Korodore, as she reopened the book.

  'They are the household accounts, sir,' she said sharply, 'A great comfort in times of trial.'

  She wondered why she had never dismissed the man as security chief, and the answers queued up in her mind, ranging from his proven efficiency to the mitigating circumstance that he was Earth-born. Perhaps there were many other reasons.

  As he turned to go she called him back.

  'With regard to your question about Dom,' she said, 'In all humility, p-math is a young art. I doubt if there is anyone adept enough to know. Even the Institute doesn't know everything.'

  'Dom might. His tutor says he is showing a disconcerting insight. Oh, I don't question your reasoning. If it is inevitable, perhaps it is better he shouldn't know. You can see he is the type the Institute hunts down.'

  'You see, we can't answer all the questions.'

  He shrugged. 'Perhaps you are asking the wrong questions.'

  PROBABILITY MATH:

  'As with the first Theory of Relativity and the Sadhimist One Commandment, so the nine equations of probability math provide an example of a deceptively simple spark initiating a great explosi
on of social change.

  ' "Probability math predicts the future." So says the half-educated man. A thousand years ago he would have mouthed "E equals MC squared" and believed he had encompassed the soaring castle of mathematical imagination . . .

  'Probability math arises from the premise that we dwell in a truly infinite totality, space and time without limit, worlds without end - a creation so vast that what we are pleased to call our cause-and-effect datum Universe is a mere circle of candle-light. In such a totality we can only echo the words of Quixote: All things are possible...'

  '... vindicated with the predicted discovery of the Internal Planets of Protostar Five. Then humanity could be sure - even from this tiny grain of proof. On either "side" were ranged the alternate Universes, uncounted millions differing perhaps by the orbit of an electron. Further, the difference must be greater - until in the looming shadows on the edge of imagination came the universes that had never known time, stars, space or rationality. What p-math did was quantify the possible time-lines of our datum universe. It did much more than that, however. Perhaps it brought back the essence of science from the days when it was half an art, when Creation was seen as a marvellous, carefully regulated clock - with all parts harmonizing to make the whole...'

  '... As Sub-Lunar pointed out in those early years, p-math depended on a certain innate mental agility. Many superb practitioners were also incurably insane, possibly because of that very fact. Leaving aside that very special sub-group to which Sub-Lunar himself belonged - I say no more - the rest were usually highly educated and, in a word, lucky. (Luck being a function of the p-math talent, of course.) Many of them worked for the Joker Institute.

  'Such a streak ran through the Sabalos family of Widdershins. For those of you who do not know the world, it is...'

  '... just before the birth of his son and his own assassination in the marshes, John III predicted that the boy would die also on the day of his investiture as Chairman of the Planetary Board. The chance of this not happening was so remote as to make a billion-to-one long shot appear a fifty-fifty bet. Yes? I'm sorry. Perhaps I should explain.