Infinite Day (78 page)

He was immediately conscious that he was in the presence of something intelligent and wicked.

The creature seemed to leer at him. The mouth gaped slowly. “You know me.” Merral realized he was unclear whether the creature really spoke or whether he just heard the words in his mind.

A rising wind started to shake the lighter branches, and suddenly the scene was rent by sharp, savage flashes of lightning.

“You shouldn't be here! This is
my
world.”

More lightning flashed about. “Your world?” Fat, heavy raindrops lashed down through the leaves. “Nowhere in the real world can keep me out. You can't keep me out of here either.” There was an acidic scornful tone to the voice.

Merral realized that the creature
couldn't
be speaking to him.
There is no sound here; there can be none. This must be a Below-Space trick.

“Get out!” he ordered in fear and anger.

The creature was unmoved. “No. I invited myself here.”

Merral hesitated.
What do I do?

On an almost panicky impulse, he exited the world. He put the glasses down and, still struggling with what he had seen, walked down to the canteen. There he drew Jorgio aside.

“My old friend,” he said, “I have a question. Supposing . . . yes, supposing that someone plants a garden and he finds that something . . .” He was aware of the strange eyes scrutinizing him. “Something
evil
has entered it. Some weed. What should he do?”

“Easy, Mister Merral: pull it out. All of it.”

“And . . . if it will not be pulled out? for whatever reason?”

“
Tut
. Well then, you'd have to sterilize the soil. Burn it. That'd be my advice.”

Merral was silent for a moment before answering. “I was afraid you would say that.”

With a heavy heart and followed by wondering eyes, Merral left the canteen and walked slowly back to his room.
Evil must be purged.

He decided to make one last test. He reentered the simulation. By now summer had passed into winter and the snow was piled high in sharp-crested drifts.

Near the tree, he found strange reptilian footprints with a long, snaking score mark of the tail behind them.

Did I bring this thing in?
He realized that he probably had.
It doesn't matter. It's what I do now that matters.

He stared at the castle tree for a moment, letting his eyes rove up the towering trunk and into the vast branches.

“Good-bye,” he said to the gray silent world. “There's enough evil around already. I don't want any more.”

He ordered the simulation closed and summoned up the operating system. He gave it an order. “Castle tree simulation. Author Merral Stefan D'Avanos.”

A bland, lifeless voice answered. “Identity accepted. Command awaited.”

Merral hesitated before he could say the words. “Total destruction of simulation and all backups.”

“This is irrevocable. Do you wish to continue?”

“Affirmative.”

He blinked at the flash of light. “Total destruction of simulation and backups achieved.”

Then he exited the egg and put it away. Without warning, he knew he was sobbing.

In its way, it is another death.
Perena, Ilyas, Slee, Isabella, and so many others. The toll mounts and the pain gets no less. The cost!

The next morning as Merral was washing his face, he was suddenly aware of a large, black-clad form visible in the basin mirror. With a mixture of emotions he turned, towel still in his hands, to face the figure of the envoy.

“I wondered when I would see you again,” Merral said, trying to suppress the resentment and pain he felt.
I must watch what I say; I can't afford to alienate this being.

The figure standing seemed to bow slightly. Merral saw that he cast shadows about him. Here in this world of shadows, the envoy seemed peculiarly solid.

“I do not come at my own behest. I come only when I am sent.”

“It's not been a good time.”
That's an understatement
.

“I sympathize.”

“Do you?” The phrase came out harsher than Merral had intended. “I mean, can an angelic being truly understand what we . . . what I feel? About Isabella? And Slee? And Ilyas?”

The envoy paused for some moments before answering. “That is a hard question. Yes, I care. But I have no experience of being flesh and blood. So I do not know what you feel when faced with loss. Not exactly.”

“There we are. You don't really understand.”

“But, Commander, what I feel is ultimately irrelevant.” The envoy seemed to somehow gain in stature. “Be assured of this: the Most High cares. And since he became one of your kind, he knows what you feel. He understands loss and grief. The charge you bring against me may be fair, but it is not one that can be brought against him.”

Still hurt and angry, Merral found himself frustrated. “You could have intervened.”

“I have intervened all I can. To help you further would be to disobey the Most High. You would not want that. One rebel of my kind loose is enough.”

By the far corner a manifestation that was a cross between a giant corkscrew and a monstrous caterpillar was emerging from the wall. The envoy did not seem to notice it.

“The one you speak of—the devil—was that who it was? In my created world?”

“Yes.”

“How could evil be there? It was . . . a sterile environment.”

“There are no sterile environments in the worlds of men. Spores of evil are attached to every human creation. Grace restrains them, but they are there. That is why, on the Last Day, there must be the purification of all things.”

The manifestation was drifting just in front of the envoy when he reached out and touched it with his gloved hand. With a popping sound and a sparkle of light, the creature vanished.

“You can just eliminate evil.” Merral heard resentment in his voice. “I had to destroy my creation.”

“There you acted wisely and boldly.”

“Isabella.” The word had come from nowhere. “What about her? Her fate?”

The answer came after a long silence. “I do not speak to people about others. Isabella made her choice; she was warned.”

“Does that mean . . . ?”

“I do not answer such questions. As ever, the Most High will be both just and merciful.”

Merral shook his head in dissatisfaction.

“I came to give you a message, not to satisfy your curiosity. Head to Earth at all speed; a perilous evil grows within the Assembly.”

“
Within?
The lord-emperor can't be there already.”

“He does not need to be. Your response shows the weakness of your race. You recognize evil easily when it comes as fleets and armies and weapons, but you overlook less obvious evils that are just as dangerous. You too easily flee from the evil that is seen into the one that is unseen.”

“Luke has spoken of the danger of the subtle evil.”

“Indeed he has, but have you listened? Humans talk much but often do little.”

“At times you sound like Betafor in your assessment of us.”

“We share an absence of being biological. And even the Allenix sometimes speaks truth.” The bloodless voice seemed to reverberate in the room.

“So we are inferior.”

Merral felt the invisible eyes scrutinizing him, but with what emotion it was hard to tell.

“In many ways, yes. You are frail creatures of flesh and blood who can be slain by a virus or blood clot. You must spend at least a third of your time asleep or you perish. What you prize as ‘logic' depends on more the swings of a turbulent sea of hormones than you imagine. Even now you barely live more than a hundred years. And yet—”

“You do not like us, do you?” Merral interrupted.

“My likes are irrelevant.” The envoy seemed to reflect on something. “And yet the Most High over all has set his love on your race. He did not become one of my kind or of the Allenix but of yours.” Merral heard puzzlement and conflict in the tone. “You are the firstborn.”

Merral made no answer.

“Now two final warnings. First, guard yourself, D'Avanos. As ever, you walk close to the edge. Secondly, you must face other tests.”

“What kind of tests?”

“They would not be tests if I told you.”

“It's all right for you,” Merral snapped back, and he heard the acidity in his words.

A strange quiver seemed to run through the envoy's body. “Is it? Who said it was just humans who were tested?”

Then reality dissolved for a moment, and he was gone.

The journey to Bannermene continued in a way that Merral could only characterize as uneventful. It was strange, he reflected as he watched a seal-like manifestation drift through a metal wall, how normal the abnormal had become.
Is this another weakness of the human race that we so easily find that which should remain objectionable, tolerable?

Under Helga's supervision, much time was spent in drills and training exercises on the ship's weaponry. Merral would have preferred it if these could have been conducted in Normal-Space, but that was not an option. He disliked the endless simulations but worked at them with the others until his responses were fast and appropriate. He felt he had acquired a degree of competency on the drills.

But in reality?

One other task was the compilation of a data package for Earth. This brought together the specifics of the
Sacrifice
and its weaponry, an account of the voyage and what had been seen at the Blade, and Ludovica's full account of the conflict on Farholme. They made several copies.

During these days Merral continued to watch Jorgio, but in his own odd way, the man seemed to have adjusted to being on the ship. He was, however, never happy. “How can I be, Mister Merral?” he protested grumpily. “There's no soil or plants. And if there were, you couldn't see the flowers 'cause it's all gray. And these . . .
ghosts
. Well, I hate 'em. They need a dose of God's good daylight.”

Merral noticed that on the desk in the room were more bits of paper with scraps of algebra written on them. When he inquired, the old man admitted they were his and then shook his heavy head and denied any knowledge of what they were about. When Merral showed him the mathematician's report, the old man looked at it, blinked, and shrugged. “Mister Merral, that doesn't help me. Not one bit.”

Luke also spent much time with Jorgio. Typically the chaplain never revealed what they said together, but he confided in Merral that the gardener was a most remarkable man. “He has extraordinary insights. Very striking.”

“I still don't know what we're going to do with him when we reach Earth.”

Luke smiled. “We can worry about that when we get there. God's time is the best time. But in the meantime, I am glad of his company.”

The manifestations persisted—there was a spectacular one during an evening meal, in which a thing like an immense eel stretched across the entire width of the canteen. The ship surfaced twice and made minor course corrections.

And then, finally, they were on the edge of the Bannermene system.