"Tupelov?" she asked in wonder.
"He"s out here with the task force. Stand by one, El, let me get this into the pipe." Frank began spouting detailed galactic co-ordinates, which in their very remoteness from any she had been expecting to hear were somehow all the more convincing. " . . . and I"m bringing her straight back to the Big K. Towing the lifeboat on a cable beam, about fifty klicks behind me, just in case the bad machines tried any funny business with it." He interrupted his transmission to turn part of his attention back to her. "What do you know for sure about what"s happened to the kid?"
She went into more detail about her last minutes aboard the goodlife ship; Frank sent off a little more information.
"So there"s a task force," Elly said, when he seemed to have completed his transmission.
"Yeah. Well. I don"t know how much of the story you know. If you were on that ship when we hit it, you must have been on it at the proving grounds. Don"t tell me you"ve turned goodlife, though; I"m not going to believe that."
"No. No, I was taken along by force." She stumbled through an attempted explanation of her abduction from the Temple.
"Okay, if you say so. Good enough for me."
Quite possibly, Elly realized, not good enough for some others. But even to be accused of being goodlife seemed like a very minor problem at the moment. "There were goodlife on the ship, of course. Three of them still alive, at my last count. I don"t know what happened to them when you people hit us. You"ve been chasing us, all the way from Sol?"
"More than a standard year now. More trying to intercept than chasing, and we finally did it. Tupelov"s gathered a regular b.l.o.o.d.y armada as we"ve come along. Every system we"ve put in at, people have been ready to contribute a ship or two.
"Then we found a berserker base near here-I guess the bra.s.s on several worlds have known about it for some time, at least that it was in this general region, but n.o.body could get up the nerve to hit it.
Marvelous what a crisis can do sometimes. After we hit the base we left the hulk of it in place, with some fake devices to respond to signals. Parts of our force went home again after that, but the Sol System people stayed; we"ve been on ambush station for the better part of a standard month. And then you-the goodlife ship and escort-finally showed.
"Tupelov"s good at his job, you"ve got to give him that. He even brought the kid"s mother along, just in case we might be able to get Michel back without wasting him. I admit I never thought there was a chance of that."
"Frank. I"m his mother."
There was a silent pause. Then: "You"re wandering, El. They"ve done things inside your head."
"No. Why do you suppose they kidnapped me? He represents my terminated pregnancy-it must be thirteen years ago now, or thereabouts. It has to be that long."
"Terminated pregnancy-I never knew you had one. Lady, I still think the bad machines must have stuffed all that into your head."
Elly shook her head, which felt quite clear. "Of course Michel must have had an adoptive mother somewhere, too. It might be her that you"ve brought along with your task force. But I don"t know her name."
"Name"s Carmen Geulincx. ButInever heard anything about her being adoptive. That doesn"t prove she"s not, of course." Frank"s voice became slow and doubtful. "But . . ."
"She comes from Alpine, doesn"t she?"
A few seconds pa.s.sed, in which Frank"s boxes gave no sign of being any more than inert machinery.
Then his speakers commented, "I guess you had some time aboard that ship to talk to him."
"A lot. But I wouldn"t have had, unless I were his mother. The berserkers knew it. And Tupelov knows it, too."
"Well, when I get you back to the Big K you can talk all this over with him. . . . Hey, wait. Alpine, almost thirteen years ago? That"s when you and I put in there. That was just shortly after-"
Again the boxes apparently went dead, this time so abruptly that some main power switch might have been thrown on them. Elly waited. At last Frank asked, "A very early pregnancy?"
"Very early. That"s right, Frank. Michel is your son."
"You were ready and willing to kill him. You ordered him to be killed. Didn"t you?" Carmen"s voice hadn"t quite broken yet, but any moment now. Her face was transformed into a stage mask of rage and hate.
Tupelov was watching her warily from across the big cabin, almost a luxury stateroom, that made up part of flag quarters aboard theJohann Karlsen.He was thinking that Carmen was certainly ent.i.tled to some kind of a blowup, after all she had been through. But at the same time he felt he had to correct the exaggeration.
"Not exactly, Carmen. That"s not fair. I just ordered that his ship and its escort be stopped at all costs."
"Not exactly," she echoed in a weak shout, and with that her voice gave way. Suddenly Carmen was looking about her as if for something to throw at him. There was of course nothing worth the throwing, since furniture, decorations and objects in general on warships had to be secured in place against sudden shifts of gravity or acceleration.
As she turned away from him and back again he had to listen hard to understand the rest of what she said: "For a year you"ve been trying to kill my son, chasing after him to kill him, ever since they took him away. And even now when that woman reports he"s still alive, you give more orders that we"re going to chase him on all the way across the galaxy if necessary, to shoot . . ." She broke down momentarily.
"To shoot if necessary, I said. If there"s no other way to keep the berserkers from having him. Carmen, he"s been with them more than a year now. How do you know he wouldn"t be better off dead?"
Carmen got herself together and stood up straight. There was something new in her eyes. "Tell that to his father. Tell that to Colonel Marcus. After a year in s.p.a.ce I"ve come to know the Colonel, a little bit. He"ll killyouif you tell him that."
"He cares nothing about kids, even his own."
"Is that what you think? You never talk to him."
"Well. Regardless. Let him get Michel out of the berserkers" hands, one way or another, and Lancelot too. Then he can kill me if he wants." Not, he thought to himself while speaking, that there was really going to be much likelihood of that.
Carmen was at least listening to him again, and now he added, with concrete patience, "I really do want Michel back alive. Of course. Dammit, why do you think I brought you along-just to keep my bed warm? It was because you might possibly be of use to him and to us, keeping him functional, if and when we ever do get him back alive. Now it looks as if there is a real chance we might. Why do you suppose I"ve got the whole task force spread out right now in search formation? And if the search fails here, you"re right, we"re going to go on looking for him across the whole d.a.m.n galaxy if necessary. Until we find him or we die of old age, or the berserkers learn to use him and they win."
"Why do you do that? Why? Because you want your weapons system back."
"We"re fighting a war." Then Tupelov thought to himself that there must have been something better for him to say than that.
THIRTEEN.
I"m going even faster than before.
That was his first clear thought, coming as soon as he had begun to be aware of himself again and of the world around him, and for a good long while it was his only thought. The next one, after some interminable time, was a question: Should he open his eyes, or not?
Michel was somewhat afraid of what he might see if he did so. But certain physical discomforts had arisen, and Lancelot for some reason was not coping with them perfectly. They came in the form of unpleasantly constricting sensations on each of his arms and legs, also circling his neck and the middle of his body. Still they did not prevent his moving freely. Grimacing, eyes still closed, Michel turned and stretched in s.p.a.ce, almost as though he lay under snug quilted covers upon a carven bed. But he knew that he was still in s.p.a.ce, and he sensed something about his speed, something he was not anxious to confirm with eyesight.
The sense of speed was quite internalized. And a similar inward feeling a.s.sured him that his flight was straight, in the sense that it was proceeding along the most economical course that Lancelot could find, toward his goal. What their pa.s.sage might look like in terms of an objective pathway drawn across the sky was of course quite another matter.
It was necessary that he open his eyes soon, but he was really afraid to do so. With lids more tightly closed than ever, he willed first that his flight should slow. And with the willing he felt, as he might have felt aboard a slowing starship, the delicate inward jolt that meant a c-plus jump was ending.
Brought fully awake only now, by that fine jolt, Michel blinked about him at the scenery of the galaxy.
With no atmosphere around him to impede vision, he had perhaps half a million stars in view as clearly focused points; only a spoonful out of the galaxy, most of whose suns were as usual obscured behind ma.s.ses of nebular material, light and dark. And with his first glance he felt sure that the nearer stars were not the same ones that had been closest to him during his last clear look at undistorted s.p.a.ce, before his building speed had blurred the universe around him.
The dark nebula that he had seen so clearly as Blackwool, and had yearned toward so desperately, had now disappeared, as completely as a sunset cloud searched for in the sky of dawn.
The bodily discomforts that had helped to wake him nagged at him still. Trying to investigate, he was surprised to discover that he could no longer see his own body at all except in outline. Lancelot had changed markedly, or had been changed by the experience of flights.p.a.ce. What had been gauzy, tenuous-looking fields were now grown opaque. The whole apparent structure of Lancelot had turned into something more like a sheath of vaguely glowing leather than fine draperies, though it still trailed behind Michel in a comet-like tail. The fabric was now molded much more closely around Michel"s head and shoulders. His arms and torso and most of his legs were opaquely covered. And it was at the places where Lancelot was fastened to his body that the feelings of irritation had arisen.
He could see out through Lancelot, with Lancelot"s eyes, as well as ever if not better. But under the new surface of the protective fields, he could no longer see the fasteners. Groping to adjust them, Michel made the additional discovery that his clothing no longer fit him; in fact the garments were now grossly too small. His unseen shirtsleeves no longer reached much past his invisible elbows, and he could only relieve the pressure round his middle by undoing the waistband of his trousers completely.
No reason for this strange shrinking of his garments suggested itself at the moment, and he made no real effort to understand. Even as he regained his physical comfort by adjusting his clothes and Lancelot"s clasps, Michel"s mind was drawn back to the seemingly more important problem of the disappearance of Blackwool. Only now did the possibility occur to him that he had simply been mistaken all along about the nebula, that in his fear and confusion the first dark blotch he saw had appeared to him as home.
The more he thought about this the more probable it seemed. Still there remained a chance that he was somewhere in the Alpine region of the Galaxy, and one of the dark puffs presently in view-there was an enormous number of them, scattered in front of starfields and visible against bright emission and reflection nebulae-might be Blackwool after all. It was easy to understand how distance could make the appearance of galactic features change drastically. Apart from the fact that to see a thing at different distances meant seeing it at different times, there was a simple a.n.a.logy with planetary features as modest as ordinary mountains. Get close enough, and local details could not only change the appearance of the whole, but even prevent awareness of it. He might be now among foothills of brightness or darkness that were hiding behind them the one dark nebula he sought-even as Blackwool, when you were in it or beside it, could hide from sight the Core itself.
He could see nothing of the Core right now. This hardly proved that Alpine was near, but still he was free to take it as a hopeful sign, and chose to do so. It still seemed to him that the Core lay somewhere ahead, in the direction he had been traveling while he slept.
That was the direction in which he wanted to proceed. And proceeding, if he was going to get anywhere at all, meant making another c-plus jump. It had already been demonstrated that such a thing was not beyond the capabilities of Lancelot; it only remained for Michel to establish full conscious control over the procedure.
For the first time since he had awakened, Michel deliberately drew in a breath. The air that Lancelot manufactured for the purpose was no doubt excellent, but still Michel"s lungs felt strange as they expanded to the full. Somewhere the fabric of his loosened shirt gave way. Wanting to make as sure as he could of his orientation, Michel rotated himself slowly in s.p.a.ce, coming back after a full circle to face in the same direction he had started from. He still could not see the great starclouds of the Core, but he was convinced that it lay there.
The power required for c-plus travel was more than Lancelot, or any starship"s engines for that matter, could extract from any known kind of fuel. So Lance was going to have to duplicate the functions of the much larger ma.s.ses of machinery that made up an ordinary starship"s drive-to detect and lock onto and follow into flights.p.a.ce the force currents of the galaxy itself, the inexhaustibly rich streams of power that pulsed endlessly through the modes of s.p.a.ce wherein mild worlds and human beings could have no natural existence.
He understood, now, that he was only beginning to know Lancelot. But included in the knowledge already gained was a certain understanding of the ways in which the wordless questions he put to his partner should be framed. To do it properly it was necessary to relax and concentrate at the same time.
Now, focusing his attention inward, Michel found and once more entered a door that Lance held open for him, a door into the strange and almost timeless realm that until now Michel had known only during combat. Now he could see that the currents that he and Lancelot must ride flowed here too, somewhere just below the floor of normal s.p.a.ce.
This time Michel"s eyes remained open during the transition, this time he watched all the fireworks of the c-plus jump. Chaotic radiation, unknown in normal s.p.a.ce, fell in a random rainstorm, omnidirectional.
Lance held a bubble of normality in place about him, and somehow found a pathway that made sense.
Distance became something other than it ought to be. The shadows of gravitic ma.s.ses existing in normal s.p.a.ce extended here, and had to be avoided.
The shadows made an ominously thickening pattern.
The fireworks show ended abruptly, some time before Michel was ready to will its termination. Lance had, for some reason, aborted the jump midway.
For just a moment, when stability returned, Michel was not sure that Lance had returned him to normal s.p.a.ce at all. They were drifting almost motionless amid a cloud of some kind of crystallized solids, a cloud incredibly dense for interstellar matter. The folds and billows of it reached away to mind-stretching distances, lit in remote parts by interstellar fires. Through Lance"s vision, Michel could see each nearby particle as a regular geometric shape, exceedingly hard and pure. Lance could sense the atomic and crystalline structure of the substance, but neither he nor Michel could give it a name. None of the particles was more than a thousandth of a millimeter wide, and the average distance between them seemed to be nowhere more than a few score meters at the most.
The substance reminded Michel of something . . . in time it came to him. A hard stone that his mother had sometimes worn, set in a gold ring on her finger.
Just how far the fields of diamond-dust extended, Lancelot could not see. Certainly, in most directions at least, to distances beyond the merely planetary.
To slip back into flights.p.a.ce here, amid matter of such density, was clearly an impossibility even for Lance, who could pa.s.s amid gravitic shadows where the hull of even the smallest starship would be far too large. Michel set Lance to carrying him ahead at the best sublight speed that could be managed.
Then, overcome again by sudden weariness, Michel slept again.
When he awoke his mind felt clearer, and he was rea.s.sured to find himself still rushing forward, still with the strong feeling that he was going in the direction that he must go. The blockading particles had thinned out somewhat. Shielding at least as good as that provided by most starships glowed in the shape of a blunt cone, protecting Michel"s head and shoulders. The fields of the shielding flared now and then with the impact of a particle, when Lance decided it was more efficient to hit one than to try to dodge around it.
Again, in Michel"s arms and legs and neck, a strange sensation had grown up-not tightness and irritation this time, but a new kind of oddness. Still unable to get a look at his own body, he tried to investigate the difficulty by touch. Running his right hand round his left wrist, he was disturbed by the discovery that he could no longer locate the clasp whereby he and Lancelot were joined. Forcefields and flesh seemed to have interpenetrated each other to such an extent that Michel could no longer distinguish which of his sensations originated in which substance.
Trying to fight down a rising anxiety, he rubbed at his neck and legs and arms. The strange new sensations were not intrinsically unpleasant, and it seemed likely that he would soon get used to them if they did not fade. They gave no sign of fading; and presently he realized that his body was not only joined to Lancelot, but altered in itself. He seemed to be built more thickly than he ought to be. And his clothing, which had been growing painfully tight before, was no longer to be found at all.
He clung to the idea that these peculiarities were only a result of Lance"s necessary protective measures, making his body look and feel strange. Changes must have been necessary, for them to travel faster than light. When he got home, all could be restored to what should be. Lance would take care of it all, change him back . . . then Michel"s parents would put their arms around him, and he would be able to leave to them any problems that might remain.
Getting home was the important thing. Then all would be well. And Michel would be able to sleep then.
Real sleep, long sleep, in the great carven bed.
His sense of the pa.s.sage of time was still distorted; maybe, he reflected, it was gone altogether now.
Because when he again took a careful look at the scene around him, he found that it definitely changed.
The diamonds were entirely gone. Clouds of stars, looking thick as smoke but not with the utter density that marked the Core, hung before him and behind him. The starclouds were apparently motionless. Was Lance learning to compensate for the visual distortion that came with approaching lightspeed? Ahead of him there was also a lot of dark matter, material that might or might not be part of Blackwool.
Against the black matter ahead-and perhaps it was this sight that had roused him, brought his full attention back to externals-a patch of light was visible. It must be an enormous object, greater than any conceivable sun, yet it was irregular in shape as well as in intensity. Its spectrum, strong in blue light and the shorter wavelengths, indicated that Lance was screening Michel"s eyes from the full impact of its radiance.
Michel at once changed course, to head directly toward the thing. Pure cold wonder made him forget, for the moment, that he had ever had any other goal. Even at sublight speed, the white apparition grew steadily in angular diameter. With an abrupt change of perception, Michel realized that it was not a bright thing seen against a more distant dark background, but instead a glimpse of light penetrating darkness from far beyond the dark.
With his approach the brightness widened, and intensified seemingly without limit. As Michel flew through the last barriers of intervening dust, he realized, with surprising calm, two things: first, that his flight had probably never yet brought him within sight of Blackwool; second, that he had a real chance to find it, now.
Before him shone the Core.
There followed an immeasurable interval in which it seemed to Michel that he was climbing. The sensation of the climb made him think of swimming uphill. To get where he was going he had to work his arms and legs, and this he did tirelessly, a physical effort that thanks to Lance brought no exhaustion though it continued without pause for a long time.
His arms spread like great wings, he swam, or flew, the galactic forecurrents almost to their upper limit at Galactic north. The globular starcl.u.s.ters of the galactic fringe burned round him and below him here like great bluish lamps. From each of his fingers Lance reached out with a kilometer of quasimaterial webbing. From Michel"s moving legs there trailed a tailfan enormously great and tenuous, more like flame now than gauze or leather.
He reached an alt.i.tude where even to maintain his position required from him an a.n.a.log of energetic swimming effort. His climb had reached its zenith, and it had brought him what he wanted. Spread out below him now was the only existing map of the whole galaxy: the map that was the thing itself.
In very general terms, the view was like that from a low flyer hovering at night above the central lights of some great and distorted city. The enormous thoroughfares of the spiral arms were apparently bent a bit more than they really ought to be, a consequence of the remoteness of their outward portions from Michel, who therefore saw them at different times in the agelong cycle of rotation. The fiery clouds of the Core, some ten thousand light years just below him, were unresolvable into individual stars, even with Lance"s vision.
And a first impression, which Michel had been disinclined to accept at first, remained: the Core, like that berserker base some time ago, had something wrong with it. Something . . . no, he could not guess the nature of the wrongness yet.
While he thus contemplated the map that ought to guide him home, he kept tasting distracting things, new kinds of radiation, through the shielding of Lancelot across his back. Incoming were particles of kinds Michel had never sensed before, and things that were more and less than particles. Things never allowed to reach the inner worlds, the cloud-shielded roads and ways where all humanity had led its small existence until now. The starship had not yet been made, Michel felt sure, that could climb here to sample them.
The unknown tapped his shoulders, beckoning.
With a swimmer"s motion he turned his back upon the great map with the troubled heart. The deep-s.p.a.ce siblings of the galaxy looked as they always had. From where Michel swam on his back, real s.p.a.ce stretched out, holding the red-shifted spirals and barred spirals and squiggles and oddities, scattered out to the last faint sparks at the limits of even Lancelot"s vision.
The beckoning was clear, and clearly there was no way for him to answer it. He turned back to his search for home.
The old s.p.a.ce stories had mapped the arms of home for him to some extent, as had stray bits of conversation with people who knew some astrogation, in that short period of his life when such people had been around him. Now Michel decided, taking his time to make the decision, which spiral arm of the great map below must be the right one for his search. Once he had chosen an arm, he scanned it near its root, with patience almost that of a machine.
Until at last-and how much time that "last" involved, his mind refused to speculate-at last he could discern in that chosen arm a single small black nebula, of such apparent size and shape that Lance and Michel agreed it might be reasonable to think of it as Blackwool. A dot of pepper, one of a thousand similar dots, on a white sheet.
It was no more than a few hundred light years in diameter at most, and he was seeing it in a configuration of many thousands of years ago. There was no way in which he could be sure, yet something about that single dot continued to feel right. As if Lance could have senses transcending s.p.a.ce and even flights.p.a.ce, could be developing capabilities Michel had yet to guess.
The arms of the galaxy were reaching up for him, and he was starting down again toward his home.