The Shores of Death (2 page)

Andros had a dark, tanned face, slightly slanting eyes and cheekbones, full lips and a wry expression that seemed a little studied. He was dressed in a deep blue pleated shirt, grey leggings, with a grey cloak. She had liked him, just as she’d liked her husband, and had enjoyed her life with both of them. But now there were deeper emotions to be satisfied.

As Andros walked lightly through the cerise flowers towards her he smiled and she smiled back.

“Hello, Andros. Are you happy? Look at the sun, the sky—what a wonderful day!”

He laughed. “You’ve been avoiding me, Fastina. Yes, I’m happy enough. I’m sorry to intrude, but for all their passion, their logic and their urgency, my recordings, you know, were unanswered, my roboids dismissed with polite messages. I had to see you, to ask you to live with me, once again. I
have
to ask you personally. Will you?” She smiled at him as he took her hand. “Wait until I’ve finished this pursuit of mine, Andros, and then if I’m unlucky, ask me again.”

He shrugged and gave a mock frown. “My vanity is mortally wounded.”

“I hope not, Andros,” she said lightly, “for vanity makes for variety in a man, whereas humility offers only the humdrum—and I’d hate you to be that.”

“Then Clovis should not attract you—for his lack of vanity is well-known. Can I at least take you to the meeting?”

“Is there a meeting?”

“Is there a meeting! You must be more distracted than I guessed. That’s why Clovis is here. Everyone interested is in the Great Glade discussing the question of the intergalactic flights for the final time. It will be decided today whether to continue them or abandon them when the last ship comes home.”

“
When is it due?”

“A day or so, I think.”

“I thought it was agreed to abandon the flights.”

“Some disagree—one or two—thus the debate. I thought that’s where you were going.”

“You can take me there now, Andros, if you like. I hope Clovis hasn’t spoken yet.”

Andros put a small instrument to his lips and blew soundlessly into it. He waited, looking up, as his carriage moved down through the flower trees, hardly disturbing a leaf, in response to the subsonic call. It hovered a foot above the ground, its ornate metal scroll-work glistening red and yellow. Andros helped her on to the plush couch and lay down next to her. He blew on the instrument and the carriage rose into the hot sky. Through its transparent floor, she saw the mass of brightly coloured flowers, some measuring twenty feet across, moving swiftly past.

She said nothing, for she was busy composing herself. Andros probably noticed, because he didn’t look at her, but stared with apparent interest at the flowers until the carriage had found a space for itself among the hundreds of other carriages hovering above the Great Glade where that part of Earth’s society sufficiently concerned with the problem of intergalactic flight had met to debate. For a second she thought she felt Andros probing her mind. But she dismissed the idea, guessing that it came from her own abnormal mental state.

“I can see you aren’t wearing a gravstrap,” Andros said, reaching under the couch. He handed her the thin, tubular belt and fitted a similar one under his arms. She copied him. They left the carriage and drifted down among the packed tiers until they found two vacant chairs and seated themselves.

Below them, on the central dais, a man was speaking. He was a squat man with a pointed, black beard. He wore a purple headress, like a turban, a red, knee-length coat, open at the neck and flared at the waist, and flat-heeled, calf-length boots. Evidently one of the unfortunates who had to spend months or years away from Earth, supervising the agricultural or industrial worlds which supplied Earth and left space free for gardens like the Flower Forest.

“Barre Calax,” Andros whispered, “Chief Controller of Ganymede Metals, born in space and a bit of deviation-ist. I think he even likes living on the Ganymede Complex,” he smiled as she looked a little surprised. “He’s the only man strongly opposed to the abandonment of the project.”

She did not listen closely to Barre Calax until she had seen Marca, sitting with his arms folded, dressed in a dark red toga, listening intently to Calax from his seat in the first tier. Beside Clovis was Narvo Velusi, dressed as soberly as Clovis in a russett toga, his high-heeled black boots stretched out before him, his body bending forward slightly. Velusi had been Marca’s right hand man in the disbanded government. He had a thin, aesthetic face, veined but unwrinkled, a lot of white hair and sharp, almost black eyes that were alive with intelligence.

In spite of the effort he was making to emulate the musical tones of the Earth people, Calax’s voice seemed harsh to Fastina. He was speaking urgently and bluntly.

“I’m not ignoring the facts. I know all the arguments against making more flights. I know what they say happens to the crews and I agree that what happens is disgusting. But it doesn’t matter.” He paused to judge the effect of his words, he looked around at the polite, composed faces. He wiped his sweating forehead and breathed in heavily. His words seemed to have had no effect. He continued:

“In two hundred years—maybe fifty more at the most —the whole race will be dead. Surely it’s better that we send something of ourselves out there—something that is going to be found, something
alive
that might breed on a new planet in a new galaxy, that might start the race again? Let’s keep trying. We haven’t tried everything, have we? New discoveries are made daily. I know all our conditioning and training is failing to date, but we’ve got to go on trying.” He paused again. “It’s a valuable human trait to go on trying...” Calax wiped his forehead and waited for the response. None came. “That’s all.” He went to his seat, obviously aware that the only response he had awakened was one of slight uneasiness.

Narvo Velusi got up and looked at the mediator who sat slightly to one side of the dais. The mediator was a fair-haired young man who stroked his moustache continuously. He nodded and Velusi walked on to the dais.

“I think we all sympathise with Barre Calax’s sentiments,” he said slowly. “But most of us feel that the degeneration of mind and body that comes to inter-galactic astronauts is so
gross
that it would be a crime even to continue asking for volunteers. Secondly, we feel that if there is an intelligent race in another galaxy we should not want it to see the—-contents of one of our intergalactic ships.” He sighed. “Thirdly, as Barre Calax knows, we rarely get one crew-member back alive. They commit suicide almost before they’re out of the galaxy. I agree that we should leave something behind, though nothing physical can survive the cataclysm. I have an idea which I shall publish soon for your approval. Tomorrow the last ship we sent out arrives back here. We have already gained some idea of what we shall find inside—our laser-screens gave us a hint before transmission ceased. Three men and three women went out. If there is anything alive now it will not be what we should like to think of as human. Barre Calax is now the only dissenter. If there are others, let them speak. If there are not, then we shall have to regard the project as closed. Although I and my colleagues are no longer officially members of the Direction Committee, it will be our duty to tidy up the final details of the project we encouraged and, perhaps, organise work on the new project which I have in mind. Are there any other dissenters?”

There were none. Someone spoke, and the silvery phonoplates hanging in the air around the auditorium picked up the words and amplified them to the others.

“May we hear Clovis Marca on the subject?”

Velusi glanced at Marca. Marca said: “I can add nothing more to what Narvo Velusi has said. I am sorry —there is little consolation. The invading galaxy is already approaching the speed of light and when it exceeds that speed it will convert to energy—converting us with it. The end of both galaxies. There is nothing we can do but live our lives to the full in as civilised a manner as possible. Many of us will be—many of us will be dead before that time. We have agreed that no more children shall be born. Those still alive will be old and ready for death, I hope. Our only destiny now is to die. Let us do it well.”

There was silence. Fastina felt overwhelmed by Marca’s reminder. She felt miserable and she felt proud. The human race hadn’t been going all that long, she thought, but it had grown up quickly. What a thing it could have been, given the chance. There had been a certain amount of mild panic the year before, when the government had first released the facts, the explanation of what the new stars in the sky signified. A whole galaxy swinging off course towards our own, its speed increasing at a fantastic rate. A tremendous conception that many still could not quite accept. Death. The death of everything. Yet, in reality, merely a transformation, a metamorphosis of matter from one state to another. The human race was merely a small piece of that matter on a slightly larger piece, ready to be transformed along with the rest. At length, perhaps, new galaxies would form, new suns and planets would arise—and perhaps a new race similar to humanity—but even Earth’s most enthusiastic scientists could not completely convince themselves of the relative unimportance of their race, for after all it did seem to be the only intelligent one in the galaxy. But was intelligence important, she wondered. It wasn’t the first time she’d asked herself that question, and it wasn’t the first time she’d been unable to answer.

Nobody was leaving the auditorium yet, people were talking quietly amongst themselves. Marca, Velusi and Calax were deep in conversation.

Perhaps centuries ago, she thought, when there were religions and the promise of some sort of super-physical after-life, we should have accepted this end as the work of a god. Yet people had resisted death then, so maybe in their hearts they hadn’t really believed in their religions. Now there was only the code of decent behaviour, of personal control and civilised demeanour. It was a nice way of life, but it didn’t offer any hope.

Nothing offered that any more.

She saw that Clovis Marca was standing up, probably preparing to leave. He was pointing into the air, towards a black carriage hovering above him. Barre Calax was nodding. Automatically, she restrained her impulse to go to the carriage. Then she thought, No, it could be now or never, and without saying anything to Andros, she squeezed her arm against the gravstrap and began to rise into the air, guiding herself gently towards the black carriage.

Andros shouted after her. Then he saw where she was going and shrugged. He moved aloft towards his own carriage, shouting something to her which she didn’t catch.

She reached the black carriage before Marca and his friends. She drifted over the side and sat down on one of the deep blue couches, waiting for him.

As he, Velusi and Calax came into view, she noted his quickly-controlled look of surprise and then the amused smile. He hovered beside the carriage. “Do you want a lift?” he said lightly. He moved upwards and then drifted down beside her and switched off his gravstrap. She had never been close to him before and his presence was so vital that she almost backed away from him.

Calax and Velusi were talking, seating themselves on the opposite couch. They nodded to her and continued their conversation.

“I think you know me,” she said. “Fastina Cahmin.”

“Aha—my female nemesis—not so odd as the male. You’ve caught up with me at last.” He was looking at her with curiosity. “Do you know a pale man who wears dark clothes and holds his head in a peculiar way?”

“I don’t think so,” she frowned. What does he think of me? she thought. She had to make a good impression. Perhaps she had been wrong to do this. She smiled. “I wanted to make you a proposal. I want to know if you’ll marry me?”

He seemed relieved. “I had an idea it was something of the sort. But you must know my reputation—I like women very much, but I’ve never found one I’ve wanted to marry. What can you offer me?”

“Very little besides myself. Can I share your company for a few days—see what comes of it?”

“It would be impolite to refuse—but you know that I’m involved in something very important to me. Something much more important than sex, or even love. I am a happy man, Fastina. There is only one thing that mars my happiness, and I’m afraid that it is becoming the dominant factor of my life.”

“Will you tell me what it is?”

“No.”

“Well, are you going to be impolite? Refuse me my chance?”

He smiled. “No. I am staying at Narvo’s house for the time being. You can come and stay with me there if you wish—though I’ll be busy most of the time.”

She felt elated and she felt confident. Without realising it, she had sensed a weakness in him—a weakness that she could employ to keep him.

The car was moving away from the Flower Forest, passing over the occasional house or village. There were no social centres, now, no conurbations, simply the vast underground computer network and the villages or houses surrounded by gardens, mountains, lakes and forests, where a man and his friends or family could land their buildings in the scenery they preferred. Calax’s house was situated at the moment close to Lake Tanganyika in what had once been known as the continent of Africa.

Soon she could see the lake ahead, a sheet of bright steel flanked by hills and forests, the sun hot and the air still as the car drifted down to land on the mosaic roof of the tall house.

Clovis helped her out—gentle, civilised, but with an odd look in his eyes that did not seem at all civilised, as if he stared into some secret part of her that she did not know existed, some organ that she possessed which, if inspected, would tell of her real ambitions and her future. She thought of him, at that moment, as an ancient, sombre shaman in his dark clothes, who might cut the organ from her, steaming in the still air, to make some unholy divination. He smiled a quiet smile as he gestured for her to precede him into the gravishute which gaped in the centre of the roof. Dropping into it, she felt as if she were condemning herself to an irrevocable destiny, and she savoured the idea until they were standing on the balcony of Narvo’s main room, drinking cocktails and admiring the view over the lake.