Watson, Ian - Novel 06 (32 page)

           
Presently the pyramid goes
transparent. It becomes a glassy thing, a wraith. Soon all that remains are the
lines which define its outline; now even those lines go away, like the Cheshire
Cat’s smile. In the deck remains simply the square hole through which it once
fitted. Crowding, everybody stares down below decks.

 
          
Captain
K steps back from that hole—all that is left of the engine that once powered
his ship. Understandably, he looks rather diffident.

 
          
“So,
Dove, will you fly us home?”

 
          
“Home
it is, Captain.”

 
          
We
face each other in mind-space. We breathe the quantum breath of the universe as
it exists and ceases and re-exists. With our God-bottle in our hand, we imagine
the reality of
Pilgrim
here and now,
existing, ceasing, re-existing.

 
          
We
shift its existence through imagination space to another here-and-now...

 
          
The
sun 82 Eridani switches off. For the space of an inner breath, the gloaming of
imagination space surrounds us.

 
          
Another
sun bums forth.

 
          
A
familiar world glows too, blue and white, ahead. Beyond in space is a gibbous
pock-marked moon. The world also is gibbous, and ocean-washed in blue. Umber
continents hide beneath woolly windstreams—our lost world, recovered in this
moment of our own recreation.

 
          
“We’re
about fifty thousand klicks from her,” cheers Ritchie. “Five balls! Spot on
over twenty-one lights! ”

 
          
“Not
bad at all,” grins Kendrick. “Velocity’s just under a thousand k.p.h. Any
closer and we’d have had a real panic on.”

 
          
The
God-bottle vibrates as though in protest, but with an unseen hand our Franz
stills it.

 
          
After
a while, Neil seats himself at the communications board.

 
          
“This
is
Pilgrim Crusader
calling
Space
City
, calling Earth. This is
Pilgrim Crusader
. We’re home.” He
glances at the Harxine paracomputer unit. “We’ve brought a friend along with
us—an intelligent machine. We need to transfer it and eleven of ourselves over
to
Space
City
. The remainder,” he frowns at my Amy-self, “intend
taking
Pilgrim
back to 82 Eridani.
She’s got—no,
they
have got business
to attend to—”

           
“Neil, will you please apologize for
any visions people saw in Athens and Szechuan and Fort Dodge and places
recently? That was our doing. Tell them downstairs that they can get on with
their history again. Except, now that the Harxine is here, it’s become
interstellar history.”

 
          
“Will
do.
Pilgrim Crusader
calling
Space
City
—”

 
          
“A
very habitable looking planet,” says the Harxine approvingly, over the
interphone. “We will soon build suitable light- speed transmitters for
contacting Cybercentral and the other Harxine-linkage worlds, including Getka
if your plan has worked. The Getkans will need massive aid to readjust to the
realities of Low Space. They will be very disoriented and out of touch with
each other.”

 
          
“So
we’ll know whether Amy’s . . . whether
their
plan did work,” muses Captain K, “in just about forty-two years’ time.” He
takes stock of himself. “I believe I shall live to know.”

 
          
“You
may know earlier than that, Captain. We shall help you construct a suitable
sublight drive and hybernation tanks. The Harxine in the Eridani system will
already have sent lightspeed messages calling for aid to reconstruct the
societies of all the trapped worlds. However, Dindi is closer to Earth than any
other source of assistance. You should fly to Dindi to help them reconstruct
their society. Or even to 82 Eridani itself. The logistics suggest so.”

 
          
“Amy
will know in a day or two.” Grigory is sad. No, not sad exactly—he envies us.

 
          
Yes,
we shall know. Or shall we then be beyond knowledge in any ordinary sense?

 
          
The Eye of
Menka fills the viewports
with its glorious storm bands—bridgehead of the Veil Being. Menka itself lies
astern, no larger now than Luna. We recreated
Pilgrim
close by God’s World, our two undamaged engines already
firing, and have been falling inwards, into the giant’s clutches, ever since.
Falling down the gravity well.

 
          
We
have, perhaps, five hours left.

 
          
The
effect of
Pilgrim
plunging into the
Eye will be no more, naturally, than dropping a pea into the sea. The effect of
ourselves diving through the Veil, with the God-bottle under our control,
dying the true death, penetrating into the Beyond, will be—no doubt—far greater
...

 
          
Pilgrim
seems quite empty since there’s
no other human being around to see—unless we choose to stare into a mirror in
one of the cabins; but we don’t bother visiting any of the cabins. They’re only
husks of our former lives, empty boxes. Yet at the same time there are the four
of us present: the four-in-one, and with us the ship is full.

 
          
We
adopt a lotus pose before the open viewports. The hull dosimeters report huge
strengthening of the radiation field. The gas giant’s Van Allen belt is
peppering us with charged particles now; we’re already a dead body, which still
lives on.

 
          
—Which
still dies on! (laughs Wu.)

 
          
—Give thanks to King Herod! (sings Franz)
who comes to kill us for a second time We raise our translucent hands in preuse
for the truth revealed to us

           
Three
cheers for Herod!

           
We all sing death songs. Yet none of
them seems right. All are full of either irony or resentment.

 
          
We
shall compose our own song, then.

 
          
But
no. No need. Our own true death shall be that song.

 
          
The
gas giant fills our view, to north, south, east and west. Amazing. Beautiful.
We’re free-falling into a wall of colour which no longer seems to be below us,
but ahead: an enormous tapestry in turmoil, an orange veil behind a saffron
veil behind a salmon veil, scalloped and sheared by jet streams.

 
          
Pilgrim
is heating up. Showers of
electric fireflies and whirling sparklers stream off the nose and bows.
Pilgrim
has no ablative shield; the ship
itself is burning up. Any moment now she’ll rupture and all the oxygen will
whoosh and blaze.

 
          
—Close
our eyes, Amy. The last rites.

 
          
Uncomfortably
hot in here, I suppose. The God-bottle thrusts a bunched fist into our belly,
as though it tries to burst into our womb—ah, it’s me who squeezes it. We
already enwomb it, in mind space.

 
          
We’re
briefly conscious of the minds of millions, billions, reflected in the boiling
gassy veils. All those limbo-lovers, who form the Veil Being’s own existence.
Part of the Being is part of our own being now, a child resorbed into our womb.
Fierce molten brat of energy! Kicking and struggling!

 
          
Something
explodes, too loud to hear. Something burns away our Amy-body, searing it to
ashes (we suppose) too fast to hurt her.

 
          
Flash
visions of sculpted dreams—dream cities, dream gardens, paradises—lure and
beckon us in. Each is a sticky veil, a flypaper for souls, who have the
privilege of visiting other fly-papers at will. We shun them, shrug them off.

 
          
—Where
to?

 
          
—Downward
into true death, carrying the Veil Being with us! We are it, and it is us.
Imagine ourselves back into the Imagining! Let us tear apart—tearing the Veil
as we do so! We’re dead, but not dead yet.

 
          
So
our Franz thrusts away from ourself. Yet he’s still part of us. We stretch
along the axis of his death-flight, deforming like a rubber sheet.

 
          
Our
Wu repels herself now, and we stretch out along another axis.

 
          
—Do not go gentle into that good night!
(sings Peter.) Go bloody fiercely!

           
He pushes off, deforming us along
three vectors.

 
          
Our
Amy-self extends along the fourth. Yes, we’re a rubber sheet, with the Veil
Being imprinted in it.

 
          
This
whole universe (no,
that
universe—for
we have left it) once burst into being from a point source along four necessary
vectors: three of space and one of time, with the energy of the Imagining
creating and defining space and time. We seem to repeat that process in our
dying, yet we aren’t defining space and time. We’re undefining it. Instead of
breathing out along the flux of ‘Be!’, we breathe in as we recede, catching the
tide the other way—the undertow, the reflux. We’re beyond the standing wave in
High Space, dragging it along with us, deforming it. We’re an enormous sail
catching that other breeze, of Unbecoming—a sail that stretches further and
further, a veil-sail sailing into the Otherness, beyond.

 
          
Our
stability is lost forever, now. The Veil Being can’t hold us. We can’t snap
back even if we wish. We’re too far gone from existence.

 
          
We
four rip apart. At the same moment our ‘selves’ part too, opening up, unfolding
. . . Matter is frozen energy, and lives are only frozen presences of the
Imagining, crystallizing out of it. So I melt, I flow. What is this ‘me’? What
was it? Only an aspect, a presence, now returning.

 
          
The
Veil Being is ripping, too, in a different way—ripping all over, becoming a
permeable membrane once again, between the Imagining and reality. Osmosis of
trapped souls resumes in a rush, so huge is the pressure against the membrane
of that doomed quasi-being. A flood follows in our wake, of surprised alien
egos that are also only aspects, presences; which now melt too, and flow.

 
          
Who
was I? For a moment, all my life is present, all at once. And who I am, is
answered.

           
Now that knowledge flows back
into... energy, the creative energy, answering its question into light, the
light beyond light