The Dark Side of the Sun (5 page)

There remained the official progress through Tau City. Dom would walk while the others rode, and would wear nothing but the lead and iron chain of office and seven invisible shields of various types, incorporated in the links. Most of the human worlds and one or two alien ones would have the route bugged, of course, and several had bribed Korodore. He ...

... leant forward. Someone had walked into the field of one pinhead and was looking at him. Korodore had an uneasy certainty that the man was laughing. He looked like a man who had laughed all his life.

Korodore thumbed through the guest list. Blue cloak, tall... the man was a minor official at the Board of Earth's agency in Tau City, newly-appointed...

The man in the screen had lifted one foot so that he was balancing on his right leg.

'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.

'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!'

'Who are you?'

'I can hear you. What are you?'

See?

He sensed a light
above,
tinted with green.

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 ...

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:

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
...'

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

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 memory, 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?'