The four nodded in agreement. Chief Technician Precious, clad tightly from neck to feet in dark green plastic, spoke. "You observe the power node now produces our maximum power yet, Captain? We progress toward the enemy at 2.144. More acceleration is needed."
Hungaman asked, "Latest estimate of when we come within destruction range of enemy galaxy?"
"Fifteen c"s approximately. Possibly fourteen point six niner." She handed Hungaman a slip of paper. "Here is the relevant computation."
They stood silent, contemplating the prospect of fifteen more centuries of pursuit.
Everything spoken was recorded by SJC2. The constant atmosphere control was like a whispered conversation overheard.
Provost-Marshal Shappi spoke. His resemblance to a rat was increased by his small bristling mustache. "Reps and revs numbers reduced again since last mensis, due to power node replacement."
"Figures?"
"Replicants, 799. Revenants, 625."
The figures were instantly rewired at SJC1 for counter-checking.
Hungaman eyed Crew Commander Hole. She responded instantly. "Sixteen deaths, para-osteoporosi-pneu. Fifteen undergoing revenant operations. One destroyed, as unfit for further retread treatment."
A nod from Hungaman, who turned his paranoid-type gaze on the member of the quartet who had yet to speak, General Barakuta. Barakuta"s stiff figure stood like a memorial to himself.
"Morale continuing to decline," the general reported. "We require urgently more challenges for the men. We have no mountains or even hills on the Beat.i.tude. I strongly suggest the shipagain be enlarged to contain at least five fair-sized hills, in order that army operations be conducted with renewed energy."
Precious spoke. "Such a project would require an intake of 106 mettons new material aboard ship."
Barakuta answered. "There is this black hole 8875, only three thousand LY away.
Dismantle that, bring const.i.tuent elements on board. No problem."
"I"ll think about it," said Hungaman. "We have to meet the challenges of the centuries ahead."
"You are not pleased by my suggestion?" Barakuta again. "Military Morality must always come first. Thank you." They raised ceremonial flasks. All drank in one gulp. The audience was ended.
Barakuta went away and consulted his private comp, unaligned with the ship"s computers.
He drew up some psycho-parameters on Ship"s Captain Hungaman"s state of mind. The parameters showed ego levels still in decline over several menses. Indications were that Hungaman would not initiate required intake of black hole material for construction of Barakuta"s proposed five hills.
Something else would need to be done to energize the armies.
Once the audience was concluded, Hungaman took a walk to his private quarters to shower himself. As the walkway carried him down his private corridor, lights overhead preceded him like faithful hounds, to die behind him like extinguished civilizations. He clutched a slip of paper without even glancing at it. That had to wait until he was blush-dried and garbed in a clean robe.
In his relaxation room, Barnell, Hungaman"s revenant servant, was busy doing the cleaning.
Here was someone with whom he could be friendly and informal. He greeted the man with what warmth he could muster.
Barnell"s skin was gray and mottled. In his pale face, his mouth hung loosely; yet his eyes burned as if lit by an internal fire. He was one of the twice-dead.
He said, "I see from your bunk you have slept well. That"s good, my captain. Last night, I believe I had a dream. Revs are supposed not to dream, but I believe I dreamed that I was not dreaming. It is curious and unscientific. I like a thing to be scientific."
"We live scientific lives here, Barnell." Hungaman was not attending to the conversation.
He was glancing at his standalone, on the screen of which floated the symbols miqoesiy. That was a puzzle he had yet to solve-together with many others.
With a sigh, he turned his attention back to the rev.
"Scientific? Yes, of course, my captain. But in this dream I was very uncomfortable because I dreamed I was not dreaming. There was nothing. Only me, hanging on a hook. How can you dream of nothing? it"s funny, isn"t it?"
"Yes, it"s very funny," agreed Hungaman. Barnell told him the same story once a mensis.
Memories of revs were notoriously short.
He patted Barnell"s shoulder, feeling compa.s.sion for him, before returning down the privatecorridor to the great public compartment still referred to as "the bridge."
Hungaman turned his back to the nearest scanner and reread the words on the slip of paper Ida Precious had given him. His eye contact summoned whispered words: "The SJC1 is in malfunction mode. Why does its report say it is seeing orange blossom drifting in s.p.a.ce? Why is no one else remarking on it? Urgent investigation needed."
He stared down at the slip. It trembled in his hand, a silver fish trying to escape back into its native ocean.
"Swim away!" He released his grasp on the fish. It swam across to the port, swam through it, swam away into s.p.a.ce. Hungaman hurried to the port; it filled the curved wall. He looked out at the glorious orange blossom, falling slowly past, falling down forever, trying to figure out what was strange about it.
But those letters, miqoesiy-they might be numbers . . . q might be 9, y might be 7. Suppose e was = . . . Forget it. He was going mad.
He spread wide his arms to press the palms of his hands against the parency. It was warm to the touch. He glared out at the untouchable.
Among the orange blossom were little blue birds, flitting back and forth. He heard their chirruping, or thought he did. One of the birds flew out and through the impermeable parency. It fluttered about in the distant reaches of the control room. Its cry suggested it was saying "Attend!" over and over.
"Attend! Attend! Attend!"
They were traveling in the direction of an undiscovered solar system, coded as X377. It was only 210 LYs distant. A main sequence sun was...o...b..ted by five planets, of which spectroscopic evidence indicated highpop life on two of its planets. Hungaman set obliteration time for when the next watch"s game of Bullball was being played. Protesters had been active previously, demonstrating against the obliteration of suns and planets in the Beat.i.tude"s path.
Despite the arrests then made, there remained a possibility that more trouble might break out: but not when Bull-ball championships were playing.
This watch, Fugitives were playing the champions of F League, Flying Flagellants. Before 27 and the start of play, Hungaman took his place in the Upper Echelon tier. He nodded remotely to other Uppers, otherwise keeping himself to himself. The dizziness was afflicting him again. General Barakuta was sitting only a few seats away, accompanied by an all-bronze woman, whether rep or real Hungaman could not tell at this distance.
The horn blew, the game started, although the general continued to pay more attention to his lady than to the field.
In F League, each side consisted of forty players. Numbers increased as leagues climbed toward J. Gravdims under the field enabled players to make astonishing leaps. They played with two large heavy b.a.l.l.s. What made the game really exciting-what gave Bullball its popular name of Scoring "n" Goring-was the presence of four wild bulls, which charged randomly round the field of play, attacking any player who got in their way. The great terrifyingpitiable bulls, long of horn, destined never to evolve beyond their bovine fury.
Because of this element of danger, by which dying players were regularly dragged off the field, the partic.i.p.ants comprised, in the main, revs and reps. Occasionally, however, livers took part. One such current hero of Bullball was fair-haired Surtees Slick, a brute of a man who had never as yet lost a life, who played half-naked for the FlyFlajs, spurning the customary body armor.
With a ma.s.sive leap into the air, Slick had one of the b.a.l.l.s now-the blue high-scorer-and was away down the field in gigantic hops. His mane of yellow hair fluttered behind his mighty shoulders. The crowd roared his name.
"Surtees . . . Surtees . . ."
Two Fugs were about to batter him in midair when Slick took a dip and legged it across the green plastic. A gigantic black bull known as Bronco charged at him. Without hesitation, Slick flung the heavy ball straight at the bull. The ball struck the animal full on the skull. Crunch of impact echoed through the great arena (amplified admittedly by the mitters fixed between the brute"s horns).
Scooping up the ball, which rebounded, Slick was away, leaping across the bull"s back toward the distant enemy goal. He swiped away two Fug revs who flung themselves at him and plunged on. The goalkeeper was ahead, rushing out like a spider from its lair. Goalkeepers alone were allowed to be armed on the field. He drew his dazer and fired at the yellow-haired hero. But Slick knew the trick. That was what the crowd was shouting: "Slick knows the trick!"
He dodged the stun and lobbed the great ball overarm. The ball flew shrieking toward the goal.
It vanished. The two teams, the Fugitives and the Flagellants, also vanished. The bulls vanished. The entire field became instantly empty.
The echo of the great roar died away.
"Surtees . . . Surtees . . . Sur . . ."
Then silence. Deep dead durable silence.
Nothing.
Only the eternal whispered conversation of air vents overhead.
Hungaman stood up in his astonishment. He could not comprehend what had happened.
Looking about him, he found the vast company of onlookers motionless. By some uncanny feat of time, all were frozen; without movement they remained, not dead, not alive.
Only Hungaman was there, conscious, and isolated by his consciousness. His jaw hung open. Saliva dripped down his chin.
He was frightened. He felt the blood leave his face, felt tremors seize his entire frame.
Something had broken down. Was it reality or was it purely a glitch, a seizure of his perception?
Gathering his wits, he attempted to address the crew through his bodicom. The air was dead.
He made his way unsteadily from the Upper Echelon. He had reached the ground floor when he heard a voice calling hugely, "Hungaman! Hungaman!"
"Yes, I"m here."
He ran through the tunnel to the fringes of the playing field.
The air was filled with a strange whirring. A gigantic bird of prey was descending on him,its claws outstretched. Its apose-matic wings were spread wide, as wide as the field itself.
Looking up in shock, Hungaman saw how fanciful the wings were, fretted at the edges, iridescent, bright as a b.u.t.terfly"s wings and as gentle.
His emotions seemed themselves almost iridescent, as they faded from fear to joy. He lifted his arms to welcome the creature. It floated down slowly, shrinking as it came.
"A decently iridescent descent!" babbled Hungaman, he thought.
He felt his life changing, even as the bird changed, even as he perceived it was nothing but an old tattered man in a brightly colored cloak. This tattered man looked fl.u.s.tered, as he well might have done. He brushed his lank hair from his eyes to reveal a little solemn brown face like a nut, in which were two deeply implanted blue eyes. The eyes seemed to have a glint of humor about them.
"No, I said that," he said, with a hint of chuckle. "Not you."
He put his hands on his hips and surveyed Hungaman, just as Hungaman surveyed him. The man was a perfect imitation of human-in all but conviction.
"Other life-forms, gone forever," he said. "Don"t you feel bad about that? Guilty? You and this criminal ship? Isn"t something lost forever-and little gained?"
Hungaman found his voice.
"Are you responsible for the clearing of the Bullball game?"
"Are you responsible for the destruction of an ancient culture, established on two planets for close on a million years?"
He did not say the word "years," but that was how Hungaman understood it. All he could manage by way of return was a kind of gurgle. "Two planets?"
"The Slipsoid system? They were 210 LYs distant from this ship-offering no threat to your pa.s.sage. Our two planets were connected by quantas.p.a.ce. It forms a bridge. You destructive peo- ple know nothing of quantas.p.a.ce. You are tied to the material world. It is by quantas.p.a.ce that I have arrived here." He threw off his cloak. It faded and was gone like an old leaf.
Hungaman tried to sneer. "Across 210 LYs?"
"We would have said ten meters."
Again, it was not the word "meters" he said, but that was how Hungaman understood it.
"The cultures of our two Slipsoid planets were like the two hemispheres of your brain, I perceive, thinking in harmony but differently. Much like yours, as I suppose, but on a magnificently grander scale. . . .
"Believe me, the human brain is, universally speaking, as obsolete as silicon-based semiconductors . . ."
"So . . . you . . . came . . . here . . ."
"Hungaman, there is nothing but thinking makes it so. The solid universe in which you believe you live is generated by your perceptions. That is why you are so troubled. You see through the deception, yet you refuse to see through the deception."
Hungaman was recovering from his astonishment. Although disconcerted at the sudden appearance of this pretense of humanity, he was rea.s.sured by a low rumbling throughout the ship: particles from the destroyed worlds were being loaded on board, into the cavernous holds."I am not troubled. I am in command here. I ordered the extinction of your Slipsoid system, and we have extinguished it, have we not? Leave me alone."
"But you are troubled. What about the orange blossom and the little blue bird? Are they a part of your reality?"
"I don"t know what you mean. What orange blossom?"
"There is some hope for you. Spiritually, I mean. Because you are troubled."
"I"m not troubled." He squared his shoulders to show he meant what he said.
"You have just destroyed a myriad lives and yet you are not troubled?" Inhuman contempt sounded. "Not a little bit?"
Hungaman clicked his fingers and began to walk back the way he had come. "Let"s discuss these matters, shall we? I am always Prepared to listen."
The little man followed meekly into the tunnel. At a certain point, Hungaman moved fast and pressed a b.u.t.ton in the tiled wall. Metal bars came flashing down. The little man found himself trapped in a cage. It was the way Barakuta"s police dealt with troublemakers on the Bullball ground.
"Excellent," said Hungaman, turning to face the intruder. "Now, I want no more conjuring tricks from you. Tell me your name first of all."
Meekly, the little man said, "You can call me Manifold."
Manifold was standing behind a leather-bound armchair in a black gown. Hungaman was on the other side of a desk, the top of which held nothing but an inset screen. He found he was sitting down on a hard chair. A ginger-and-white cat jumped onto his lap. How the scene had changed so suddenly was beyond his comprehension.
"But-but how-"
The little man ignored Hungaman"s stutter.
"Are you happy aboard your ship?" Manifold asked.
Hungaman answered up frankly and easily, to his own surprise: it was as if he was glad to find that metal bars were of no account. "I am not entirely happy with the personnel. Let me give you an example. You realize, of course, that we have been making this journey for some centuries. It would be impossible, of course, without AL-aided longevity. Nevertheless, it has been a long while. The enemy galaxy is retreating through the expanding universe. The ship is deteriorating rapidly. At our velocities, it is subject to strain. It has constantly to be rebuilt.