Land and Overland Omnibus

CHAPTER 10



The room was large and almost bare, its principal item of furniture being a blue oblong which looked like a bed except that it lacked restraint nets. Ranged around the walls were rectangular and circular panels which continuously changed colour, slowly in some cases, rapidly in others. The floor was of a grey-green seamless material closely perforated with small holes. Toller noticed that his feet tended to stick to the floor, obviating the need for zero-gravity lines, and he guessed the holes formed part of a vacuum system.

He was, however, giving little thought to his surroundings—his attention being concentrated on Divivvidiv, who was busy removing his skysuit. The silvery garment had seams which opened readily when a toggle was drawn along them, an intriguing feature which enabled Divivvidiv to shed the suit in only a few seconds, revealing a frail-looking body of humanoid form and proportions. The alien's thin frame was clad in a one-piece suit made up of dozens of sections of black material which overlapped like birds' feathers.

The outlandishness of the costume; the bald grey cranium; the virtually noseless, corpselike face—all of these combined to inspire in Toller a powerful xenophobia which was augmented by the discovery that the alien had a smell. The odour was not unpleasant in itself—it was sweet and soupy, like a rich beef broth—but the incongruity of the source rendered it highly distasteful to Toller. He glanced at Steenameert and wrinkled his nose. Steenameert, who had been surveying the strange room, did likewise.

You may be interested to learn that you also have an objectionable smell, Divivvidiv commented. Though I suspect that yours is much to do with inadequate hygiene and would draw complaints from members of your own species.

Toller smiled coldly. "Recovering from your little bout of the shakes, are you? Backbone beginning to stiffen again? Let me remind you that I can still end your life at any second and am quite prepared to do so."

You are a blusterer, Toller Maraquine. At heart you doubt your ability to fulfil the role you have assumed in society, and you try to disguise that fact in various ways—one of which is the issuing of flamboyant threats.

"Take care, greyface!" Toller was disconcerted at having a ghoulish figure from some distant region of the universe so casually penetrate the innermost recesses of his mind and then blurt out its findings, revealing secrets which he scarcely ever admitted to himself. He glanced at Steenameert, but the younger man had resumed his scanning of the room, almost certainly being diplomatic.

I advise you to divest yourselves of those clumsy insulated suits, Divivvidiv replied unconcernedly. Crude though they look, they are probably quite efficient and will soon make you highly uncomfortable at these temperatures.

Toller, who was already sweating, gazed suspiciously at Divivvidiv. "If you are hoping to surprise me while I am entangled with—"

Nothing could be further from my thoughts. Divivvidiv was now free of his silver suit and was standing close to Toller, swaying slightly above anchored feet. You know that.

The multiplex levels of communication inherent in mental contact left Toller with no doubt about the alien's truthfulness. But, he wondered, could that be a telepathic technique? Could super-speech be a vehicle for a super-lie, one which carried total conviction for the listener?

"Keep the pistol on him while I get out of this suit," he said to Steenameert. "If he moves … if he even blinks … put a ball in him."

Your thought processes are unusually complicated for a Primitive. Divivvidiv seemed increasingly at his ease, and his silent words might have been shaded with amusement.

"I'm glad you realize you are not dealing with simpletons," Toller said as he struggled out of his skysuit. "And why are you becoming so satisfied with yourself, greyface? What reason is there for it?"

Reason is the reason. An incongruously human chuckle escaped Divivvidiv's black-rimmed mouth. Now that I have had the opportunity to appraise your mental structure more thoroughly—and find you fairly amenable to reason—I realize that I can protect myself and my interests simply by making your position clear to you. The more information I impart to you, the more stable our relationship will be. That is why I suggested moving to these more comfortable surroundings, where we can converse without so many distractions.

"Nothing can distract me in this matter," Toller said, wondering if the full extent of the lie would be apparent to Divivvidiv. The mode of communication alone was enough to swamp his mind with wonder, and when the outlandish nature and appearance of the alien—to say nothing of the bizarre circumstances of the meeting—were taken into consideration it was a matter of some surprise to him that his brain was able to function at all. He would have to keep Vantara in the forefront of his thoughts at all times. Nothing else mattered but the need to find and rescue her, and return her to the safety of Overland…

There is no need to keep pointing that barbaric weapon at me, Divivvidiv said as Toller got free of his skysuit and took the pistol from Steenameert to enable him to strip down as well. I told you that logic will prevail over force.

"In that case you have nothing to be alarmed about," Toller replied comfortably, "if it comes to a falling out, you can fire syllogisms at me and I will have to make do with firing mere bullets at you."

You grow complacent.

"And you grow tiresome, greyface. Tell me how you plan to retrieve the women and thus preserve your own life."

Divivvidiv projected feelings of exasperation. I have a question for you, Toller Maraquine. It may seem irrelevant to our circumstances, but if you will control your impatience for a short time understanding will come. Is that reasonable?

Toller nodded reluctantly, with an uneasy suspicion that he was being manipulated.

Good! Now, how many worlds are in your planetary system?

"Three," Toller said. "Land, Overland and Farland. My paternal grandfather—whose name I am proud to bear—died on Farland."

Your knowledge of astronomy is deficient. Has it not come to your attention that there are now four worlds in the local system?

"Four worlds?" Toller stared at Divivvidiv, frowning, as he half-remembered someone having spoken to him in recent days about a blue planet. "Now four worlds? You speak as if a new world had been added to our little flock by magic."

That is exactly what has happened—although no magic was involved. Divivvidiv leaned forward. My people have transported their home planet—which is called Dussarra—across hundreds of light years. They plucked it from its ancient orbit about a distant sun, and they placed it in a new orbit about your sun. Does that suggest anything to you about their powers?

"Yes—powers of imagination," Toller said with a show of scorn in spite of a dreadful conviction that the alien was presenting the unvarnished truth. "Even if you could move an entire world, how could its inhabitants survive in the coldness and darkness between the stars? How long would such a journey take?"

No time at all! Interstellar travel has to be accomplished instantaneously. The concepts are far beyond your grasp—through no fault of your own—but I will try to implant analogies which will give you some measure of understanding.

Divivvidiv's inhuman eyes closed for a second. Toller felt a wrenching sensation within his head, disturbing and yet curiously pleasurable, and he gasped as—like a slewing beam from a lighthouse—a flaring intellectual luminance swept through his mind. For one tantalizing instant he seemed on the verge of knowing everything that a complete being ought to know, then there came a wavering, an accelerating slippage, followed by an aching sense of loss as the light moved away from him. The philosophical darkness which rolled in to take its place was, however, less oppressive, less monolithic than before. There were twilight areas. Toller had a fleeting glimpse of vacuums within vacuums; of interstellar space as a spongy nothingness riddled with tubes and tunnels of a greater nothingness; of insubstantial galactic highways whose entrances coincided with their exits…

"I believe, I believe," he breathed. "But—between us—nothing has changed."

You disappoint me, Toller Maraquine. Divivvidiv stepped over his discarded suit, which had been drawn to the floor by air currents, and moved closer to Toller. Where is your curiosity? Where is your spirit of scientific enquiry? Do you not wish to know why my people embarked upon such a mammoth venture? Do you think it is a commonplace thing for the members of an intelligent species to transport their home world from one part of a galaxy to another?

"I have already told you—those things are no concern of mine."

Oh, but they are! They are also the concern of every living creature on every planet of this system. Divivvidiv's mouth underwent further asymmetrical changes, tugged by the invisible tides of emotion. You see, my people are fleeing for their lives. We are fugitives from the greatest catastrophe in the recent history of the universe. Does that fact not make you the least bit inquisitive?

Toller glanced at Steenameert, who appeared to have frozen halfway through the task of removing his skysuit, and for the first time in days his preoccupation with Vantara and her fate began to loosen its hold on his mind.

"Catastrophe!" he said. "But the stars are billions upon billions of miles apart! Are you talking about some manner of great explosion? If it ever happens I cannot see how—"

It has already happened, Divivvidiv cut in. And it matters little that stars are billions of miles apart—the scale of the explosion was such that upwards of a hundred galaxies will be destroyed by it!

Toller tried to conjure up a mental image to go with the alien's words, but his imagination baulked. "What could cause such an explo…? And if it has already happened why are we still here? How can you know about it?"

Divivvidiv was now very close to Toller, and his sweet body odour was thick in Toller's nostrils. Again, the concepts are beyond you, but…

The slewing beam from the lighthouse was fiercer this time, and Toller's instinct was to shrink away from it, but there was nothing he could do to protect himself. He shuddered as, within a tiny fraction of a second, his inner model of reality was torn apart and rebuilt, and he found that his newly vouchsafed vision of space as an emptiness riddled with transient wormholes of greater emptiness was a simplification. The cosmos—he now knew, or almost knew—was born in an explosion which was inconceivable in its ferocity, and within a minute its entire volume was permeated by seething masses of ropes. The ropes—comparatively ancient and decaying relics of a period of cosmic history which had spanned a length of time equal to one human breath—had a diameter approximating one millionth of that of a human hair, and were so massive that a single inch weighed as much as an average-sized planet. They writhed and twisted and oscillated, and in their blind contortions they decided nothing less than the disposition of matter throughout the universe: the patterns of galaxies, the patterns of clusters of galaxies, the patterns of sheets of clusters of galaxies.

As the universe grew older—and intelligent life made its first appearance—the ropes grew fewer in number. Their incredible stores of energy squandered by their frenzied threshings and twistings, by the propagation of gravitational waves, they became more of a cosmic rarity. As they slowly erased themselves from existence the universe became more stable, a safer place for frail biological constructs such as human beings—but it was not homogenous. There were anomalous regions in which ropes remained plentiful, so plentiful that interactions and collisions were bound to occur, with consequences beyond the descriptive powers of any system of mathematics.

At one location no less than twelve ropes had intersected and yielded up their total energy in an explosion which was destined to annihilate perhaps a hundred galaxies, and to have a profound effect on a further thousand. No living creature would ever see the explosion, so close was the speed of its fronts to that of light, but intelligent beings—using data gathered by subspace probes—could deduce its existence. And once the deduction had been made there was only one thing left to do.

Flee!

Flee far and fast…

Toller blinked vigorously, momentarily certain that a watery ripple had passed across his vision, but he realized almost at once that the effect had been subjective and illusory. His internal model of the universe had been torn asunder and rebuilt in drastically different form, and now he, too, was different. A quick glance at Steenameert's pale face and blanked-out eyes confirmed that he also had undergone a similar chastening metamorphosis.

A voice from Toller's distant past whispered a warning: Your defences have been breached! Should he choose to do so, grey face could overwhelm you in this very instant!

Responding to the warning, Toller alerted himself. He triangulated his gaze on the alien's face and saw nothing there but a growing display of relaxation and satisfaction. There was no sense of physical threat, but that in itself might have constituted another kind of menace. They were in Divivvidiv's stronghold and there was no telling what semi-magical forces the alien might be able to summon to do his bidding without so much as having to raise a finger.

Striving to assimilate all that he had learned, Toller shook his head as though recovering from a blow. His mind had been swamped in the influx of pure knowledge—to the extent that all normal thought processes were being prorogued—but, even so, he had a dim awareness that one great question remained unanswered. What could it be? He had been told too much in too short a time, and yet he was troubled by a nagging conviction that he had been told too little. And, all the while, the hideous alien in his costume of wafting black rags gave the impression of being more and more content with the situation…

"Why do you seem so pleased with yourself, greyface?" Toller growled. "After all, nothing has changed between us."

Oh, but it has, Divivvidiv assured him, shading his words with a kind of glee. You are not immune to reason, and therefore in this situation logic has to work for me and against you. Without admitting as much to yourself you have already begun to realize how pointless it would be for you to pit yourself against representatives of the greatest civilization in the galaxy.

"I refuse to…"

And now that you have come so far, Divivvidiv went on relentlessly, I will complete the edifice of logic which to me is an impregnable defence and to you an insurmountable barrier. You were on the verge of asking why your insignificant pair of little worlds had to become involved with Dussarra's flight from annihilation.

The answer is that binary planets sharing a common atmosphere are extremely rare. Dussarran astronomers are aware of only three other examples in this galaxy—all of them very distant and less well matched than Land and Overland. As you already know, we can move our home world instantaneously from star to star, but energy limitations prevent us from leaping more than a few light years at a time. That fact means that the annihilation front, which even now is roiling outwards through this region of the galaxy, would always have been at our heels … unless … unless, Toller Maraquine … we found the way to make the leap to another galaxy.

Toller became aware of his own breathing, a regular and impersonal sound, like waves subsiding on a distant beach.

We designed a machine which was capable of transporting the home world across the required distance, but for its construction the machine required a very special physical environment. There had, of course, to be freedom from gravity to prevent the machine from distorting under its own weight—a factor which posed us no problems. There also had to be a limitless supply of oxygen and helium to facilitate accretive growth of the machine—and that is why we chose to position the Xa at the very centre of your two worlds.

In addition to all the other knowledge which I have impressed on your mind, Toller Maraquine, it is necessary for you to appreciate that the Xa is almost complete. It will be activated in approximately six days from now, and when that happens the planet Dussarra will simply vanish from your sight. It will have been instantaneously relocated in another galaxy—one which is nine million light years from here.

Absorb what I am telling you, Toller Maraquine—for your own sake, for your own peace of mind.

There is nothing you can do to retrieve your females. The massed resources of a thousand civilizations like yours would be powerless in this situation. I urge you—accept what I say and return to your home world in peace and with no qualms of conscience, knowing that you have done all that any individual could possibly do…

Toller stared into the black-drilled orbs of the alien's eyes, tranced, communing with himself and with another—that heroic figure from heroic times past whose example and counsel, although inferred, he prized above all else. "What would the real Toller have done?" he asked himself, silently moving his lips to frame the words. He remained immobile for several seconds, half-seduced by the blandishments of the alien logic, then he recoiled, eyes widening, like a man evading the jaws of a steel trap.

"Take this pistol from me," he said to Steenameert. "And give me my sword."

I have lost you again. Divivvidiv cowered back from him. You are acting without thinking. What are you going to do?

Toller accepted the weapon from Steenameert, closing his fingers around the familiar mouldings of the haft, and pressed the tip of the blade to the alien's throat. Crimson stars sparkled across his vision.

"What am I going to do, greyface?" he whispered. "Why, I am going to part your head from your foul body unless you stop telling me what you want me to hear and start telling me what I want to hear. Has your wonderful intellect absorbed that message? Tell me—now!—how I can rescue our women." He bored with the steel blade into Divivvidiv's throat.

The alien's black-rimmed mouth distorted and his frail body began its convulsive trembling, but this time the threat of instant death did not entirely destroy his self-control. I have told you all there is to tell. You have to understand the situation—there is nothing you can do.

"I could kill you!"

Yes, but what would that achieve? Nothing! Nothing!

"I…" Toller refused to be diverted. "You said the women were transported to your world … instantaneously … by one of your machines…"

Yes?

"In that case, we will pursue them by the same mode of transport," Toller ground out, shocked by his own words.

The quaking of Divivvidiv's body grew less severe. Is there no end to your obtuseness, Toller Maraquine? You ask to be transported to the heart of a Dussarran mega-city, the population of which is in excess of thirty millions! What do you think you and your companion could achieve there?

"I would have you as a hostage. I will bargain with your miserable life."

The tremors in Divivvidiv's frame ceased altogether. This is quite incredible, but there is just a chance—infinitesimal though it may be—that in your blind and primitive stubbornness you could succeed where vastly superior beings would have been doomed to failure. What an intriguing concept! This could even form a major topic for discussion at the next meeting of the…

"Enough!" Still gripping the alien's shoulder with his left hand, Toller lowered his sword slightly. "You will do as I command? You will take us to Dussarra?"

You leave me no choice. We will go immediately.

"This is more to my liking." Toller released his grip on Divivvidiv's shoulder, then tightened his fingers again, so fiercely that the alien winced. "Or is it less to my liking?"

I do not understand you! What has happened?

"You ceased your shivering, greyface. You ceased being afraid."

But that was a natural reaction to your new proposal.

"Was it? I don't trust you, greyface." Toller produced a cold smile. "This is the way we Primitives conduct ourselves when negotiating with an enemy. We rely to a great extent on our brute instincts—the instincts which are so despised by an advanced being like you—and mine are telling me that you would like us to proceed to Dussarra by way of your magical machine. I suspect that were we to do so I would be immediately overwhelmed, or rendered unconscious, or disadvantaged in some other way which would put me at your mercy."

There would be no point in my pitting reason against your

wild and uninformed imaginings. A note of challenge had begun to insinuate itself into Divivvidiv's manner. May I therefore be informed as to what fresh proposals you are going to put forward under the aegis of your treasured primitive instincts?

"Certainly!" Toller thought of his grandfather and smiled again. "I am taking you to Dussarra as my hostage—exactly as planned—but the journey will be completed without resort to geometrical sorceries. Two good Kolcorronian spaceships—built of the finest wood and fully provisioned—are waiting close by.

"One of them will carry the three of us to Dussarra."