The ground streaked beneath the
speedsters, as the trainees skimmed along a route that undulated through
Sycrest’s outer hills.
Midax had rarely ridden a
speedster; travel at such speed was almost never required for any practical
purpose, and its effect – to shrink the known world – was unwelcome under
normal circumstances; people usually preferred to walk, to keep the known world
satisfyingly large. Forty miles (from the centre to the periphery of Sycrest) is
a respectable distance on foot, but a short way only if you ride the
streamlined hover-boats at thirty miles per hour. Still, when time is short,
when the hours must not be wasted, vehicles become necessary.
And when you have to use them,
you do find a zest to them. The odd feeling that he was still alive possessed
Midax. Logically he should still be awash with misery, since his heartache
remained as far from solution as ever, but the ache was in suspension, in a
wider sea. Colourful sun-drenched objects hurtled past him, a thin foam of life
on this ocean of hills. Scraps of variety, bursting into view and falling
astern, resolved into bridges and paths, houses and lawns and mineral beds,
fields, woods and isolated factories. All gradually less frequent, the crowd of
place-names likewise thinning from his mental map as richness of all kinds
gradually diminished out towards the Blerdon.
Nerves became soothed – those of
his companions as well as his own as he swayed along with them, anxiety subdued
by the hypnotic swing of their vehicles as they sped along their invisible
lines of force a yard and a half above the ground. The sinusoidal motion became
mathematically smooth as the hills’ topography relaxed into more regular
ripples amid the increasing gleam of kolv,
the uncompounded substance, the absolute, universal, non-chemical rock,
revealed in widening splotches from under the thinning, fading, rarefying
patches of soils, minerals, plants and human artefacts. Steadily the
kolv-gleams ran more and more together, merged into each other in smudges which
grew purer, while the trainees skimmed along the leisurely scenic route towards
their goal.
Simpler and simpler the landscape
became, yet it never turned completely bland, because gentle colour-trends
became discernible in the growing supremacy of kolv – swaths of never-finished
pattern, blending away to infinity: for, surprisingly, kolv does vary in
colour, despite being non-particulate and infinitely divisible without change
of properties; in fact, as Midax had always known, the stuff varies as widely
as – though more gently than – atom-built rocks. A lesson to us all, he thought
dreamily. There exists a variety which is not bitty, but intrinsic. Otherwise
the ultimate unspeakable unity would be boring.
Beyond some last local hills, he
knew, the ground smoothed finally into one great everlasting curve that took it
beyond the limits of visibility, up behind
the blue haze of sky, up and up overhead, and eventually round behind the
sun to arch back down in the opposite direction… No man would ever tread that
multi-million-mile circumference. It existed for itself, lone and empty. But
his skin could touch it at one remove, for the winds that must have blown
across it filled his lungs with air that had traversed the cosmic immensities,
and he could taste their chill purity with each deep breath.
In his adolescent days, in common
with some other stupidly daring souls he had skated upon the kolv at Sycrest’s
periphery. He heard of skaters who had never come back. They must have launched
themselves in directions in which they then found no opportunity to decelerate.
By the time belated air resistance or a chance-met island of roughness finally
brought their bodies to a stop, they might be anywhere in the million-mile-diameter
hollow of the known universe.
Yes, it was all too easy to
ponder, as one lifted one’s eyes to the sky. What must it be like to hurtle on
and on, till one’s life gave out somewhere on the frictionless surface of Outer
Matter?
Midax sighed with astonishment –
for several minutes, this minor outing had caused him to forget his own misery!
Now, having caught himself feeling definitely alive, he found he was
considering the possibility – nay the fact! – that his smashed ego had
reassembled itself. Seriously, this
looked like recovery! Perhaps he owed it,
in part, to the forbearance, or the indifference, of his companions – the
face-saving fact that not one of them behaved as though they had noticed the
cataclysm of yesterday. What had seemed to him to be a complete disaster, on a
par with the universe cracking asunder, had apparently been of no import to
them.
That was fine by him! And today at least, I have made no
catastrophic blunder; this day at least, considered in itself, is pure.
And the thirty-mile-an-hour speed
had its uses for once – it might not normally be good to make the human world
so small, but amid the lurching emotions of farewell, it was exhilarating to
ride in a group of speedsters: fifteen of them, one third of the forty-five
such toys in existence, their spitting light-bars pushing the ground away from
underneath and propelling them forward from behind as they zoomed out towards
the Blerdon.
Pjerl’s voice drifted back from a
few yards ahead.
Her speedster was skimming
alongside that of Waretik as she said: “I vote we stop beyond the Last Swell.”
“You’re joking,” objected
Waretik. “Let’s be sensible and head for Veed Lake.”
“Too soon.”
“But you can see a lot from
there.”
“Now, look,” chided Pjerl, “we
don’t want to be craning our necks during a picnic! A part-view of the Stain
would be more tantalizing than no view at all! Besides, the lake would be no
good. Don’t you know that it’s bound to be crawling with Splashers? And they
wouldn’t care that this is our group’s last day out together – so you can stow that idea,” she added with a thrum in
her voice which caused Midax’s heart to constrict.
“But,” insisted Waretik, “Veed
Lake is where the supplies are.”
“We’ll obtain our own.”
“Why should we?”
“I mean, they’ll be brought to
us.”
And so it went on, each fork in
the track sparking off disagreement, so that they could not pass an outcrop,
farm or signpost without slowing to argue. Midax himself did not mind which
route was chosen. However, he sympathised with the attitudes of both Waretik and
Pjerl: they were behaving as though this were their one and only chance to make
the trip perfect, and that was true, it was
the one and only half-holiday before the curtain of doom was drawn across
their lives. In this spirit of understanding, he edged closer, daring to plan a
contribution…
Waretik conceded, “Well, seeing
as the farmers are willing to bring us the stuff for free… and after all we are saving them from Sparseworld…”
“Or so we hope,” added Pjerl.
“So let’s compromise,” concluded
Waretik, “and say we’ll stop just before the
Last Swell. That’s actually the most comfortable spot.”
Grumbles still came from Pjerl,
while Midax, intent upon preparing for the right moment to open his mouth,
disguised his approach as a random adjustment in the traffic flow. The risk of
rebuff was enormous, he knew. But so was the even greater risk of self-reproach
should he allow this day to slip by with its final opportunity un-taken.
The optimum moment arrived and he
spoke:
“You don’t really want to head
past the Last Swell anyway, Pjerl.”
“What?” she snapped.
He did not blench.
Those
stretched nerves of his, twanging their fiery tune! They were actually pulling
his will like reins! Leading him – not panicking him. “You,” he explained,
“might decide to settle out there. And
you know what would happen then.”
Pjerl looked askance at him as
their speedsters skimmed almost side by side. Midax returned her gaze bluffly, his emotions temporarily out of harm's way, stretched out upon an icy slab of fatalistic exhaustion.
Waretik latched on: “You’d
crystallize! That’s what Midax is getting at.”
“Ugh!” shuddered Pjerl. For such
things had happened.
“Not straightaway, of course,”
Waretik added.
“No,” agreed Midax while marvelling
that his wits had not died. “Maybe, after all, you could safely picnic there for an afternoon.”
All who were within earshot were
now smiling. Pjerl included! It all goes
to show, exulted Midax, that disaster
does not always reign. Apparently it was possible, even in her presence, for him to take his place in the social game, to use
his wits without being penalised.
As a bonus, there came a
contrasting social blunder from someone else. A typical bit of droning from
Lecturer Inellan. Midax had been surprised to find Inellan in the group at all;
now he was glad that the dry-as-dust fellow had come with them.
“Crystallization,” pontificated
Inellan, “is not strictly the correct term. In any case studies have shown…
decomplexification process… requisite time…” Drone on, drone on, cheered Midax inwardly.
“Shop, shop!” cried Stid, and
Inellan took the hint and quietened – having provided, by his ill-judged
maundering, the most convenient contrast to Midax’s successful lines.
The hills had by now relaxed
around them until only one final cluster of slopes stood in their way. This was
the Last Swell, a lonely circular range surrounding a tarn of pure kolv, hard
and smooth as ice, named Veed Lake. In accordance with the compromise that had
been argued out by Pjerl and Waretik, the picnickers did not continue all the
way round to the further edge of the Swell, as Pjerl had originally wanted to
do. Instead they headed for the top of the ridge at a point about half way
round. From this vantage they could enjoy magnificent views in every direction
– Serenthwards, Lakewards, and out over the cosmic distance of Outer Matter
towards its enigmatic blemish, the Silver Stain.
An ideal picnic spot.
So the fifteen-strong stream of
traffic halted and pooled into a congregation of parked speedsters, around the
umbrella-shaped awning of one of the small refineries the size of coat-racks,
which dotted the grassland at intervals of a mile or more.
It was standard for any
complexifying refinery to be furnished with buttons to press, and Waretik
pressed them, to alert the nearest farm that they had arrived, and to list
their requirements.
After that it was simply a matter
of choosing one’s own patch of grass and waiting for the victuals to arrive,
while enjoying the pleasures of anticipation, the camaraderie of conversation
and the bracing view out over the last of Sycrest to the far beyond.
Dismounting from his speedster,
Midax – a trifle unsteady from the rocking flow of the journey – took careful
steps in the direction of Pjerl.
It was vital that he choose a
strategic place, for the arrangement of seating would be the principal factor
in saving or wasting the afternoon. Placing and timing must be perfect. Two
principles must (he told himself) be strictly observed. On the one hand he must
end up sufficiently close to Pjerl. On the other hand he must achieve this
without seeming to want to. He must deliberately, but accidentally, push
himself forward into the charmed circle…
And somehow he did it – he
actually found himself squatting down among Pjerl and her friends.
Pjerl herself, with her
unfocussed smile, lounged on one elbow. She was the central fuzz of brilliance
around which twinkled the lesser luminaries of her court – the array of talent
whose fortunate tongues weren’t tied in her presence:
Bright young Davlr with his
cynical, mocking tone; Waretik with his treasury of wisdom and his carapace of
dignity; impenetrably dull old Inellan; vivacious Mezyf Tand; cheerful,
uncomplicated, blunt Stid Orpen.
Midax Rale shifted into a
comfortable position with his back to a barrel-sized burr, a simplified bush which
had regressed to the appearance of a giant bud. He had placed himself in that
part of the circle of friends which was closest to the lip of the Great Bowl; thus he sat only about a yard from the edge of that grassy hollow, the patch of unusual opulence which enclosed Veed Lake. If he
turned he could see skaters as little moving spots down on the Lake itself.
In the opposite direction, ahead
of him, some of his companions were twisting round to aim their binoculars at a
narrow twinkling area, a carpet of glistening motion, which rolled down the
flank of one of the facing hills. It was that rare thing, a stream. He’d heard
that streams were the result of condensation, drop by drop sinking to
accumulate in underground basins, up from which they spilled once or twice in a
lifetime – often enough for their nature to be remembered. The strange thing,
on this idyllic afternoon, was how affectionate he had started to feel towards any
scrap of information about his world, as well as towards all the people in his
field of view: the skaters far below, the picnickers around him and then, by
extension, all the people in the world, the ones he knew and the ones he did not
know, the ones he liked and the ones he did not like, as if, in these wide and
breezy spaces, all emotion was liable to be melted down into one simple vast
contentment. Midax thus hopefully encouraged his personal troubles to fizzle
out into the emptiness of the cosmos. Crammed-full emptiness; mystery-stuffed
reality.
More specifically –
Any bunch of picnickers in a
place with a view as good as this was likely, sooner or later, to engage in cheerful whimsy about the nature of the Silver Stain.
The Stain was actually visible
from almost any point within Sycrest – any point not blocked by tall buildings
or trees – and its elevation hardly altered from one end of the country to the
other: a fact which had enabled cosmographers to triangulate a lower limit of
437,000 miles for its distance. But out here, one’s view no longer distracted
by hills, you could always see the thing with plentiful blue sky beneath it,
and it got you thinking: perhaps it was a cosmic fissure, some kind of gap in
the englobement of Outer Matter, in which case it might lead (if you could get
there) to other world-sized cavities in the universe… and so the trainees began
to chat in the time-honoured way of skeptics versus believers, except that
here, this afternoon, they all seemed, to a varying extent, to be believers:
The Stain was “not exactly
proof,” began Pjerl dreamily. Not exactly proof that there were other
world-sized hollows beside Korm. “But it sure makes it easier to answer back”
when skeptics tried to deny that there could be any large-scale crevice in the
solid substance of the universe. For look, just raise your arm and point (as
she then did) to that silver gash in the sky and ask: what else was it likely
to be?
“Twenty degrees up,” affirmed
Midax: it had to be great because at that elevation nothing that wasn’t great could possibly be seen by
the naked eye. The haze of air extending between the observer and the upward
curving surface of the world must block from sight any lesser thing.
“Drastic,” agreed Davlr,
accepting that its visibility at cosmic distance was proof that it must be
something tremendous: a genuine jaggedness of cosmic proportions, possibly a
rent in the universe. “Though as Pjerl says, this isn’t something you can
prove. The Stain could be just a
drastic surface feature. A Stain and
no more.”
“No way exists,” droned Inellan
in agreement, “in which to ascertain whether the phenomenon possesses
topographical depth.”
And
what now? wondered
Midax all of a sudden, now that he was here on this perfect afternoon, amid
pleasant argument for argument’s sake, in the very position he had looked
forward to occupying, with Pjerl listening to him as she listened to everyone, right
there where she glittered on the sward –
One thing was abruptly certain:
His great success, in placing
himself in this circle, meant absolutely nothing.
This useless social dance was no
substitute for being with her alone.
And yet being with her alone
would have been no good either.
Nothing was any good.
For he still had no idea how to
match her infinite-value effect.
Here plodded the woe once more, the
stupid gibbering cry of incomprehensible longing.
The whole business was
impossible.
Davlr's yell broke into his thoughts: “Hey, ladies
and gentlemen, the comestibles have arrived!”
Approaching from a direction at
right angles to the lake, a solitary figure could be seen stumping along,
carrying an enormous load.
All the company turned to look at
the creature.
Its head was hardly more than a
hemisphere atop a cylindrical torso. Its face was likewise crude, as though its
features had been hastily chipped in rudimentary bas-relief. It was altogether
a cursory mock-up of a human being. Definitely an extreme simploid: one of the outermost primitives, the farmers and
providers whose gifts to peckish travellers were always welcome. The tube-like
arms carried a hamper towards the picnickers, who scrambled to their feet and
surged forward to meet it.
While they were tearing the
hamper open Midax stood aside from them and returned the grave salute which the
simploid had given after setting its load down on the grass.
Then when the rudimentary being
had departed, Midax seized the opportunity which had at last provided a vent
for his frustration.
He let anger rip out of him. He
shouted at his companions, who were already pitching into the food and drink, “Why didn’t you ask him to sit and eat with
us?”
They looked up at him, puzzled.
“Sit down, Midax,” suggested
Waretik.
“Is that what you call an answer?” Let them be
puzzled, let them be shocked, let it all burst forth; it was something to fling,
something he could hurl at them. “Is it because he’s just a farmer? Do you
despise those beings just because they live by instinct? You had better not –
our entire economy runs on instinct!”
Davlr called out, “Steady, Midax!
You know the being was not expecting to be invited.”
“Irrelevant. Our honour is at stake.”
Awkward silence reigned.
What a relief it was to have said
his piece; to have sprayed angry words around this washout of a picnic. Thus
satisfied by the unease he was causing, Midax walked with slow deliberation to
the hamper, took his portion, withdrew to an isolated spot on the grass and
began to munch. Leave it to them to decide how to react now.
After a minute, conversation
among the others resumed, in lowered tones. Then, as might have been predicted,
Waretik Thanth was the one to make the move, to cross the grassy gap, approach
Midax and drop down beside him.
“You,” began Waretik quietly,
“were born within actual stone’s-throw of the Time-Tree, were you not?
“That’s correct,” exhaled Midax,
his anger now burning low, guttering into tired blankness. Deflated, he looked
up at the older man. “Yes, I was born within sight-of-root, as the saying goes.
You couldn’t ask for more stemmage than mine. Funny, isn’t it?” Exhausted irony
alone remained. “The most socially prestigious birthplace you could ask for was
mine; the most complex spot in the known universe. The well-spring of
sophisticated folk.” He produced a kind of shuddering cough and added with
bitterest irony, “Er – did you deduce this from my behaviour just now?”
“I could have, yes, if I had not
known it already.”
“You sound as though you mean
that seriously.”
“Why should I not?”
“I’ll spell it out for you,” said
Midax. “Sophistication is not quite
the term you would ideally choose to describe the way in which during these
past few days I have lurched from one blabber-mouthed blunder to another.”
He scowled at the ground.
Waretik, however, gazed serenely
off into the distance. “Only a sophisticated person,” he assured, “can suffer
the Great Complication.”
“So!” uttered Midax with a sickly
smile. “The secret is out.”
Come
on, thought
Waretik, it’s been out for days, but
aloud he merely said, “Out – but not too far.”
With a trace of a chuckle, Midax
said: “I perhaps don’t mind if it goes no further than you.” He darted an
inquiring glance at the other.
“Truth is one,” said Waretik,
“but not all big truths are close allies.
Otherwise, that bunch – ” (he waved at the others) “would score as high as I do
in the course tests.”
“Waretik, I say this for you: you
get full marks for tact,” said Midax, wry-mouthed. “Let’s hope that the others’
intelligence is of a different stripe than yours.” He turned his head as he
gazed around the grass-strewn immensity, the hills and the blue glint of Veed
Lake. “Anyhow, I suppose that the business of damage limitation is up to me. I
assure you, I shan’t make any more scenes.”
No
further point in desperate manoeuvres. Live without all these impossible
calculations. Live, please, without striving to say ‘hello’ to Pjerl quietly
enough to leave open the possibility of telling myself that she didn’t hear me
and thus to avoid the risk of feeling snubbed if the hello is ignored yet at
the very same time to say it loud enough to be heard… An end to all that stuff.
AN END.
He raised his voice almost
cheerfully:
“Anyhow, the problem cannot last
longer than two more days.”
Waretik smiled back. “That kind
of coolness will come in handy.” It was a compliment, a kindness. Standing up,
the older man added: “I see some of us are going to watch the skating. You
coming along?”
“I might wander down there
later,” nodded Midax.
After a minute he sauntered back
to the group by the hamper. He settled and began chatting amongst them as
though nothing whatsoever had happened since before he had stalked away. Amazingly,
they co-operated, in tolerant forgetfulness, despite all the irritation he must
have caused. Yet he was merely shallowly amazed. His mood had swung again. He
was now on a positive-thinking spree. His instincts sought alliance with bright,
sunny facts. They drew strength from fresh breezes and the daylight, and he allowed
them to melt his mind into a pool of simple gladness. If his companions
believed, or pretended to believe, that his recent oddities did not matter at
all, why not go along with them? He was only a crazy Splasher in any case. An
armistice between all egos had, it appeared, been tacitly agreed at this ford
in their lives, two days before the critical crossing.
…Pjerl’s voice was ringing out,
“Let’s make it official?”
“Hear that, everybody?” cried
Stid Orpen.
“Hear what?” murmured Midax.
Stid explained, “We’re plotting
that we’re all going to meet here again, after we come back. A reunion after Life. Perhaps even after Sparseworld!”
Davlr Braze wanted to know, “How
soon after? We need to fix a date! We’ve got to be practical about this, or it
won’t happen.”
Soaking in almost inert
contentment, Midax listened to the others’ conversation as it flowed around
this quaint idea that they could meet up “after”… Plans were lazily projected. No
one scoffed. Nobody said, “Come on, this is not going to happen.” It was the
intention of all to pretend that it could and would happen. Evidently, such
pretence was necessary for them.
Necessary for them; but not for
him. A man who is finished can find it easier than most to be brave. He, lucky
man, had stumbled upon a moral jackpot. A treasure-trove of courage that only
he could use, for it worked by comparison:
Compared
to what Pjerl has done to me, how can the Luminarium scare me now?
Some people can only do the right
things for the wrong reasons, and the Great Complication must be his wrong reason.
Now he could take the courage it
had given him and use it – bestowing no further attention on the daft
phenomenon itself… use it for other things.
So
here goes. Laugh inside!
The GC had cut every other
mystery down to size, and so had made it easier for him than for anyone else,
to face the thought of what was about to happen in two days’ time.
>>>next chapter>>>