The Dark Side of the Sun Page 4

  'Madern, get a focus on the guy in the blue cloak. No, better - Gralle, can you get a beam on him?'

  'Got it, Ko. Shall I take him out?'

  Korodore considered. Earth was still powerful. Standing on one leg wasn't a killing matter per se.

  'Hold it.'

  The figure had extended its left arm, pointing the first and fourth fingers directly towards, it appeared, the security room. He had closed one eye and was sighting along the extended arm like a weapon.

  Let's see how you look without an optic nerve, thought Korodore.

  The explosion knocked him sideways. He landed at the crouch, stripper levelled in a reflex action, and dived again as a second explosion and the beginning of a scream marked the weapon control console's transformation into a plume of incandescence.

  The guests applauded politely. Dom, at his grandmother's nod, rose a few metres above the ground and said: 'I thank you all. And I ask that the spirit of holy Sadhim and the small gods of all races give me—give me—' he stopped.

  A low boom echoed from the home domes.

  Dom stared, and heard again in his inner ear the thin crack of a stripper shot in the transparent air around Joker Tower. Images flooded into his mind, with fragments of speech that joined and became coherent, and the memory of the hot pain and the cool green relief of the swamp water ...

  A dot in the air grew rapidly. He heard his mother cry out, a long way off.

  Korodore dived with his clothes smouldering. Raw blisters were his hands, blood was his face.

  He landed heavily by Dom and shouted incoherently at him. Dom nodded, lost in a dream.

  The man in the blue robe stepped lightly towards them, and took his theatrical stance. Ig shrilled.

  Korodore lurched forward, raised the stripper in both hands, and gave a growl and dropped its smoking butt. In the same motion he flung himself towards the outstretched arm.

  The ball of non-light spun up above the blackened lawn and the landscape twisted. See-Why was a bright sun. In the painfully light sky it showed now as a darker speck.

  3

  'Understanding is the first step towards control. We now understand probability.

  'If we control it every man will be a magician. Let us then hope that this will not come to pass. For our universe is a fragile house of atoms, held together by the weak mortar of cause-and-effect. One magician would be two too many.'

  Charles Sub-Lunar, Cry Continuum.

  'The fish swims - vsss! The bird flies - rsss! The fungi-squirrel run - gsrss! The wheel turns and All is one. 'I must scream yet I have no mouth. I must run yet I have no feet. I must die yet I have no life. The wheel turns and All is one.'

  Funeral song of the Deep Rocky region, Five Islands, Phnobis.

  The sound of the sea. Breathe? But he could not breathe.

  It came and went like the surf. It was only a sound, but it carried strange harmonies - warmth, and softness.

  Dom floated somewhere on the breathing sea.

  A man appeared, dressed in the old brown robes of a Sadhimist adept garbed for the ceremonies of Hogswatchnight. The face was familiar. It was his own.

  'Don't be so damn silly. I am your father.'

  'Hullo, dad. Is it really you?'

  John Sabalos gestured aimlessly. 'No, I am an extension of your own deep mind. Hasn't Hrsh-Hgn taught you anything? Chel! Down all the stars, boy, you should be dead. So much for probability math, therefore.'

  'Dad, what's happening to me?'

  The familiar face faded. 'I don't know - it's your dream,' was left hanging in the air.

  Hrsh-Hgn appeared, standing in front of the familiar faxboard.

  'In an infinite universe all things are possible, including the possibility that the universe does not exisssst,' he purred, 'Expand this theory, with diagramsss—'

  Dom heard himself say: 'That is not a theory. That is a mere hypothesis.'

  'Ahh, beware of paradox!' the phnobe shook a finger, 'For once you have a paradox let loose in the universe you have a poiyt.'

  'Poiyt?'

  'And let uss consider...'

  Isaac appeared, doing a soft-shoe shuffle through the mists.

  'Goodness, are robots allowed in this dream? Or do they have to sit in the second-class dream at the back? Now here's the plot, boss, see, really you are the hereditary chairman of Earth itself but because of a palace coup you were sent here—'

  'No,' said Dom firmly. That wasn't right.

  'No, you have this wild talent which is the result of generations of careful breeding and all you have to do is give the word and hordes will—'

  'Not me. Try the Infinity next door.'

  'No, well, the universe doesn't really exist - we can't hide this from you - except in your imagination, and so this secret organization called the Knights of Infinity, they—'

  'Try some other universe, robot.'

  'Well, okay, if you want it straight from the shoulder, you are not important at all but you happen to have this magic bracelet which was made by the God of the Universe and He wants it back and you have got to get together a few trusted friends, such as me, and travel many a weary light year to the searing fires of Rigel and—'

  'Uhuh.'

  'I was only trying to cheer you up, chief,' the robot shed a tear of mercury, 'We Freudian extensions of personality have feelings too, you know!'

  Dom.

  'Who are you?'

  Dom, can yo u hear me?

  'I can hear you. What are you?'

  Dom, if you can't hear me, what can you seel

  See?

  He sensed a light above, tinted with green.

  Good, Dom, you are in pseudodeath. You do not know what that means. We need your earnest co-operation. We need access to your self-memory. Will you perform these exercises? Good. Now we want you to form a mental picture of yourself. We will show you how ...

  A long time passed. Before Dom's mind swam himself, a perfect copy. It danced, and sang, and flexed embarrassing muscles. Then the voice made him go through it all again. And again.

  Understanding was allowed into his mind. The voice was that of a googoo tank operator. Or, rather, a series of them.

  He had seen the men of the hospital rafts after a hard night with the dagons, grinning foolishly under the pallid nutrient bath as they flexed the muscles of their new green-grown limbs. Googoo was one invention Widdershins hugged to itself. The surgeons said that if no more of a body was left than that tiny sliver of brain they called the mommet, a new body could be ...

  No!

  Dom thought it again. He could sense the tank man's panic. Dom started to think questions. Darkness fell swiftly, and was replaced by the green light and no desire to ask questions at all. A new voice said:

  Think coherently. You must breathe. We have some more building to do. Think of something, say it in your mind, now.

  Unbidden, the Green Paternoster floated up through Dom's consciousness, the last words he would say before climbing into his cot as a child, after ending the night prayer with 'God bless the household robots.'

  He galloped through it. It was senseless gibberish now, the centuries had twisted the words, but it still had power.

  'Green Paternoster, Sadhim was my foster, he saved me under the poisoned tree, He was made of flesh and blood to send me my right food, mine right food and air, too ...'

  Good.

  '... that I might be a FOE, and stop at two, To read in that sweet book which the great gods shoop...'

  Good.

  Dom plunged on recklessly, tasting the words: '... open, open, save me, Dead, Dead Chel Sea, Halve the population roster and say the Green prayer PATER NOSTER !'

  In the silence the tank man said: 'Dom, you now have vocal chords. You are breathing. You have built yourself a mouth. There is something you must want to do.'

  Dom screamed.

  He examined himself in the full-length mirror. Everything was there, and in full working order. The tank, working from his body memo
ry, had duplicated nails, teeth, DNA patterns and even healed the scar on his chest. Dom rubbed the place bitterly, remembering the flight in the marsh.

  Isaac creaked across the room and handed him his clothes. He dressed himself slowly.

  There was one alteration. Before he had been jet black and decently hairless, the result both of See-Why's healthy ultra-violet and the tannin injections. Now he had hair to the waist and, like the rest of him, it had a greenish tint.

  The bouncy little Creapii doctor in charge of the hospital tanks had explained it carefully, with a rare grasp of colloquial Janglic. But then Creapii could so easily assume the mannerisms of other races.

  'It's called googoo. Of course, I needn't tell you that. I used to go out on the hospital rafts once, but we've come a long way from those primitive limb replacement tanks.

  'Anyway, Mr Chairman, it is alive in its own right. It is in fact a highly-complex organism under your control. I can guarantee that it matches your body almost on the atomic level. It will have certain advantages, of course - your heat tolerance, for example... ah, yes, at your age I'm not surprised you should ask. Yes, your children will be human in every respect—' and the doctor made a surprisingly apt dirty joke. 'But be careful of misunderstandings. It is now yo u , not some alien slime. The colour? The state of the art, I'm afraid... come back in, oh, ten years and I guarantee that we can turn out a body with not even a trace of green. As for the hair, well, absence of hair is not yet a generic characteristic of a Widdershins. I'm sorry, at the moment it's a warts-and-all process.

  'Before you go, Mr Chairman, I would like to show you the hospital. I'm sure the staff would like to meet you, uh, unofficially. As for myself, I am proud to shake you by the manipulatory appendage.'

  Dom fastened his choker collar and turned round.

  'How do I look?'

  'Pale green, boss,' said Isaac soberly. He indicated a small plastic case.

  'There are some body cosmetics here, boss. Your mother sent them.'

  Dom turned again and ran his pale green fingers over his face. The googoo had tried to follow body pigmentation as far as possible, but even so he looked as if he had been on a copper-rich diet for a year. He had watched himself on the newscasts while he was recuperating. The fishermen were already fiercely proud of a Chairman who was completely green, and didn't seem to mind that it was not as a result of prowess on the hunting sea. But his mother's unspoken comment was that it would offend offworld dignitaries.

  'Beng take them!' he said out loud, 'What do they matter. Anyway, green is a holy colour.'

  Outside the little hospital six security guards stood to attention as Dom walked out, followed by Isaac and, at a discreet distance, some of the hospital staff.

  Hrsh-Hgn waited beside them. He was holding a high-velocity molecule stripper, and looking sheepish.

  'It suits you,' said Dom.

  'I am a pacifist, ass befits a philosopher, and thiss is barbaric.'

  They boarded the Chairman's barge, which was joined by five flyers as soon as it was airborne.

  Dom stared unseeing at the seascape.

  'Who is replacing Korodore?' he asked after a while.

  'Darven Samhedi, from Laoth.'

  'A—a good man.' But still, it took more than efficiency to be security man on Widdershins. 'Will the phnobes take to him?'

  'He is rumoured to have shown shape-hatred. We will ssee,' Hrsh-Hgn looked down at Dom, 'You were fond of Korodore.'

  'No. He didn't encourage friendship, but ... well, he was always there, wasn't he?'

  'Indeed.'

  Dom turned in his seat and looked at Isaac.

  'And if you say one sarcastic word, robot ...'

  'No, chief. It crossed my mind that Lord Korodore was somewhat over-enamoured of miniature cameras but that was his job. He was a regular guy. I mourn.'

  Four months ago, thought Dom, someone killed him and tried to kill me.

  I am going to find out why.

  A light drizzle was blowing when the squadron landed at the second Sabalos home, a small walled dome near the administrative centre of Tau City. Even Lady Vian came out to meet him, bundled in a heavy cloak, and looking slightly happier for being in a city. Tau was not overwhelmingly cosmospolitan, though a sight more so than the Home domes.

  'That is not a becoming colour,' were her first words.

  They dined in the small hall. Down the table Samhedi and the senior members of the household eavesdropped respectfully. Joan, after a polite inquiry about the hospital, was silent.

  Vian looked across at her son. 'Why don't you try those body cosmetics?'

  Dom caught the eye of a security man standing against the wall. He had one green hand and a green patch extended all down one cheek and into the colour of his uniform. The man saw him and winked.

  'I prefer it this way.'

  'Perverse vanity,' said Joan, 'But still, I agree. A piebald grandson I could not bear, but at least he is a uniform colour.'

  She pushed her plate aside and added: 'Besides, green is a holy—'

  'Green is the colour of chlorophyll on Earth, certainly,' said Vian, 'But here the vegetation is blue.'

  Joan glanced up quickly at the Sadhim logo inscribed on the ceiling and then gazed at her daughter-in-law, her eyes narrowing. Dom watched them interestedly - too much so, for Joan sensed him and folded her napkin deliberately. She stood up.

  'It is time,' she said, 'for our evening devotions. Dom, I will see you in my office in one hour's time. And we will talk.'

  4

  Dom entered. His grandmother glanced up, and nodded towards a chair. The air was musty with incense.

  The large white-painted room was completely empty except for the small desk and two chairs and the little standard thurible and altar in one corner, though Joan had a way of filling up empty spaces with her presence.

  In foot-high letters along the facing wall the ubiquitous One Commandment glared down on them.

  Joan closed her account book and began to play with a white-hi lt ed knife.

  'In a few days it'll be Soul Cake Friday, and also the Eve of Small Gods,' she said. 'Have you given much thought to joining a klatch?'

  'Not much,' said Dom, who hadn't thought at all about his religious future.

  'Scares you, eh?'

  'Since you put it like that, yes,' said Dom. 'It's a rather final choice. Sometimes I'm not sure Sadhimism has all the answers, you see. '

  'You're right, of course. But it does ask the right questions.' She paused for an instant, as if listening to a voice that Dom could not hear.

  'Is it necessary?' prompted Dom.

  'The klatch? No. But a bit of ritual never did anyone any harm, and of course it is expected of you.'

  'There is one thing I'd like to get clear,' said Dom.

  'Go ahead.'

  'Grandmother, why are you so nervous?'

  She laid down the knife and sighed.

  'There are times, Dom, when you raise in me the overwhelming desire to bust you one on the snoot. Of course I'm nervous. What do you expect?' She sat back. 'Well, shall I explain, or will you ask questions?'

  'I'd like to know the story. I think I've got some kind of right. A lot has been happening to me lately, and I kind of get the impression that everyone knows all about it except me.'

  Joan stood up, and walked over to the altar. She hoisted herself on to it and sat swinging her legs in an oddly girlish way.

  'Your father - my son - was one of the two best probability mathematicians the galaxy has ever seen. You have found out about probability maths, I gather. It's been around for about five hundred years. John refined it. He postulated the Pothole Effect, and when that was proved, p-math went from a toy to a tool. We could take a minute section of the continuum - a human being, for example - and predict its future in this universe.

  'John did this for you. You were the first person ever quantified in this way. It took him seven months, and how we wish we knew how he managed it, because e
ven the Bank can't quantify a person in less than a year with any degree of accuracy. Your father had genius, at least when it came to p-math. He ... wasn't quite so good at human relationships, though.

  She shot an interrogative glance at Dom, but he did not rise to the bait. She went on: 'He was killed in the marshes, you know.'

  'I know.'

  John Sabalos looked out over the sparkling marshes, towards the distant tower. It was a fine day. He surveyed his emotions analytically, and realized he felt content. He smiled to himself, and drew another memory cube towards him and slotted it in the recorder.

  'And therefore,' he said, 'I will make this final prediction concerning my future son. He will die on his half-year birthday, as the long year is measured on Widdershins, which will be the day he is invested as Planetary Chairman. The means: some form of energy discharge.'

  He switched off for a few seconds while he collected his thoughts, and then began: 'The assassin: I cannot tell. Don't think I haven't tried to find out. All I can see is a gap in the flow of the equations, a gap, maybe, in the shape of a man. If so, he is a man around whom the continuum flows like water round a rock. I know that he will escape. I can sense him outlined by your actions like - damn, another simile - a vacuum made of shadow. I think he works for the Joker Institute, and they are making a desperate attempt to kill my son.'

  He paused, and glanced down at his equation. It was polished, perfect, like a slab of agate. It had an intrinsic beauty.

  The distant glint of the Tower drew his gaze again. He glanced up. Not the right time, not yet. Another hour ...

  'And now, Dom, as you stand there torn between shock and astonishment, what do you see? Does your grandmother have that tight-lipped, determined look she wears at times of stress? How was the party, anyway?

  'Dom, you are my son, but as you are perhaps learning, I have many sons - untold millions. Have, I say, but "had" I mean. For in those billions of universes that hedge us about on every side, they are dead as I predicted. You, who are flesh and blood, are also that one chance that lies a long trek behind the decimal point. That chance that I am wrong. But a student of probability soon realizes that by its nature the billion-to-one chance crops up nine times out of ten, and that the greatest odds boil down to a double-sided statement: it will happen, or it will not.