Galaxies Read online

  “What truth?”

  “The truth of resolution. It lies wholly within yourself. Only you may change this.”

  “How can you say that? How can you tell me that the truth lies within myself? Who are you?” she says and does not know what she is addressing, fearful that she may be talking to herself. “I don’t know what qualifies you to say something like this, how you can put on me the responsibility—”

  “The truth is the responsibility,” the dead says. “And your responsibility is the truth.”

  And then it says no more. Whether it actually goes away or merely becomes silent when it is finished speaking is something she does not know; she cannot gauge the temper of the dead any more than she can judge the veracity of their address. The murmurs of others surround, the voice blends into all of the voices of the hold and she is shrouded once again in the music and the darkness.

  She wanders toward the console again, an action that may take her ten minutes or ten years or (such is the characteristic of time which I am trying to get across here) both and looks at it for a while, her fingers trembling. Beside the prosthesis of John in the storage tank lay all of the others, each with its separate abilities and gifts, and she decides to summon them, to try to obtain advice in that way, but the will to call them forth is, for the time, beyond her, and she must gird herself to this for long, struggling instants, because if these cyborgs, too, fail to help her, if they desert her as did John, then she truly does not know if she will be able to contend further with the situation.

  Yet. Her desire to survive is still there. Indeed, it must have never left her. It chews away like a rat, busily snipping little raw chunks of personality and she is in its thrall; she is, in fact, astonished by the realization of how desperately she wants to live, somehow to get out of this. It may have been seventy thousand years reaching this point of urgency, but now that it is here it cannot be wasted, she thinks, if they have led to this. She sheds the personality she has inhabited. It falls from her like a cloak and she is once again and fully herself.

  Lena places her hands upon the console and summons, simultaneously, three cyborgs.

  XXXI

  Here the novel obviously veers toward religious allegory, an abused area but one which is obviously inevitable within the difficult context and in terms, too, of the author’s personality. Not for nothing has he spent all of those difficult and perilous hours during the period of the High Holy Days, even though it cannot be said that his religious experience is rich in conclusion. Still, for all his ambivalence, complaint and seizures of doubt, the author does not regret his religious affiliation; within his rather secular frame a small and battered chassid in cantorial regalia is trying to get out. He will not get out, of course; where would he go? There is not a Reform temple in the area which would suit and Orthodoxy is too time consuming, but he will not stay in place either, this chassid, and from the tension between Ids desires and his practice, the author can wring the usual amounts of irony. Nothing at all is easy once you begin to take the thematic subtext seriously, something which applies to science fiction as well as religion. It would be best concentrating on the ritual without excessive attention to its significance. Slogging Through the Slime Planet might have been a better investment after all. Ethical Culture certainly involves less than Reform.

  But religious disquisition to one side, the allegory will obviously be tempting in that chapter involving the three cyborgs which Lena summons to confer further on her problem. The parallels are indeed clear, and the selection of three rather than a single cyborg at a time approaches the level of conscious intention. The resemblance of these summoned to the three comforters of Job could hardly be ignored and would indeed be worked through the material cunningly.

  Job. He is that Old Testament figure of faith and submission, or then again he may only be a symbol of cosmic abandonment; God’s Fool. For his pains he was subjected by Satan (God having approved the deal with eager curiosity; would Job bend or would he not?) to a series of trials in order to determine whether Job’s faith truly came from love of God or merely upon the wealth that God had lavished upon him. Satan in succession lays Job’s fields, cattle and children low, leading his wife to suggest that Job curse God and die.

  Do not be restless; this is all important. The parable of Job brought the concept of justice into the Old Testament as even Adam’s trials did not. Job refuses his wife’s demand—although severely tried—and his wife abandons him in disgust. In her place come three wise men from a neighboring province who join him upon the ground to tell sad stories of the death of kings. These are the three comforters, figures of satire, since they fall outside the pain and terror of Satan’s vengeance and approach the unspeakable in a burlesque of intellectualism which is, in fact, comic. They give Job the most reasonable, persuasive reasons for his condition and offer reasonable encouragements as to why he should no longer silently bear his grief. They do not prevail, at least not quite, but probably only because the text, like so much of the Old Testament, has been shaped toward the purpose of the didactic. They certainly do not take Job’s positions with grace.

  In the story of the comforters is the conscious origin of the section in which Lena and the three new prostheses discuss her condition and that of Skipstone. Summoned one by , one, activated, they are briefed by Lena as she briefed John, and they listen as patiently as that device did, making no interjection. They are not, as I have pointed out, geared toward interruption; their whole supportive presence is for that reason a fraud perpetuated by the Bureau. They are not there to help but merely to grant relief; however this is the way that the Bureau has always done things on these interstellar sweeps, and who is to say that if it had changed its procedures anything would have been different? Almost assuredly there would have been no difference at all.

  None of them is quite as bright as John. This is understandable; John was Lena’s supervisor directly on merit. They are, however, bright enough by far to absorb her explanation as well as to understand its seriousness. When she warns them not to go to the portholes, they agree. When she tells them not to look at the galaxy, they do not protest. When she says that the sight of space in this fall will drive even a prosthesis insane, they nod. When she points at the crushed heap of John, they murmur to one another. They construe her remarks correctly, and they do not protest when she says that they must attend to her. And when she is done, they stand in their line of rigid and curious mortification and seem able to say nothing.

  “I’ve now told you everything,” she says.

  Indeed she has told them everything. They nod solemnly.

  “I have nothing to add. That is what has happened here and I can tell you no more.”

  They seem to shrug. She has nothing to add and can say no more. Of course. Who would have thought otherwise? If she had something else to say, she would have said it Wouldn’t she? All of that seems reasonable.

  Her long, thick pause, which in time dilation effect may be no more than a few seconds but then again may be several years (perhaps I am forcing this point, but it must be emphasized again and again that normal considerations of chronology just do not apply here), extends and then she says, “I was waiting now to hear from you.”

  They seem to look at one another. Perhaps an illusion of light. Then they look back at her.

  “Well,” she says, “well? You’re all highly trained and qualified, not as qualified as John, perhaps, but surely amongst the three of you, you ought to be able to come up with something. I’m waiting. How do I get out of this?”

  Still they say nothing. From the helpful, even eager aspect which can be seen glinting in the facade they present, it is obvious that they are not hostile, that they present no menace. They simply do not know what to do. Perhaps they make a few more shrugging gestures, if metal blocks can be said to shrug.

  “Come on,” Lena says.

  They look as if they would be quite pleased to go on. But they say nothing.

  “Well, look
here, then,” she says. “You can’t just stay there. You must talk to me; I insist on it. You must have some good ideas.”

  “Well,” one says and pauses, “well, then. The only means of escape would be to go directly into the tachyonic drive. To shift to faster-than-light speed without acceleration.”

  “That is true,” another says. “Moving into faster-than-light speed without acceleration, that is. No tardyons, no gathering of force, but a clear shift.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” Lena says. “The black hole contains all speeds below the speed of light, we can assume, since it is inhibiting light itself. But we don’t know up to what limit it controls. It may contain even infinite speed.”

  “Nothing is infinite,” one says. They really cannot be distinguished from one another. It would be nice to do those authorial things, neatly individuate the devices, even hint at a wisp of conflict between them, make them come alive through traits of character and argument, but how can this be done? You simply cannot make machines live, although the Bureau, in its reverence for its devices, has tried; and you cannot make machines different from one another except in technological specifications. No, there is nothing to be done; the situation must be accepted as it is. When one speaks, the others are quiet; when the three speak, they all sound the same. There is no difference. “Everything is finite,” this one concludes.

  “We don’t know,” she says; “nobody knows. That’s why I’ve called on you.”

  Yet again they nod, slowly, bleakly. In truth their programs have not yet absorbed what she is talking about. They have only the dimmest grasp of the situation, but then again they have not had seventy thousand years to ponder the point. Even if they had had that amount of time, they function within a very slight range.

  “Tardyons and tachyons, you see,” Lena says. “Tardyons represent particles that move at less than the speed of light, tachyons those that move faster. Tardyons obviously won’t work at all, not in terms of escape velocity here. I don’t even know what state the craft is in at this point. I can’t evaluate. I can’t get a reading on any of this, although you can be sure that I’ve tried. Nothing about this is easy, you see.”

  “Tachyons,” a cyborg says. “Yes, you are making that point clear. I can now understand what you are saying. It is difficult to grasp but it seems to make a certain sense.” It confers with the others; they exchange information in little mumbles. If they were hooked up to the same computer bank, exchange would be immediate, but they are not, this being one of the Bureau’s small economies. They cannot pool their information directly but must act in the halting fashion of humans.

  “Unless you can think of something different,” Lena says after they finish their discussion and have turned expectant blank cylinders to her once again. “Otherwise I’m going to be in here infinitely, and I just don’t think that I can take much more of this really. Not with the dead.”

  “The dead? What about the dead?”

  “You don’t hear them?” Lena says. “You don’t hear what’s going on all the time?”

  “I’m really afraid not,” the cyborg assures her. It turns to the others. “Do you sense anything?” They make negative gestures. “What dead?” the cyborg says.

  “Those in the hold.”

  “They would mean nothing. They are the dead and have no existence. Now I truly do not know what you are talking about.”

  “Here,” she says, “here they have existence.”

  “I am afraid that you are wrong. The specifications are quite clear and you are misconceiving something.”

  “Perhaps I’m completely insane,” Lena says quickly enough, “I’ve certainly had the opportunity to give that a lot of thought. That could very well be. It’s a possibility anyway. Anyone could have been made crazy by this.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I’ve been in this field for seventy thousand years, and it’s taken me almost all of this time simply to understand what’s happening to us.”

  “Well,” the same cyborg says, “ah, well.” It seems to have assumed the role of speaker while the others stand by, rolling lightly in the motion of the ship which continues evenly as in a series of pulses which Lena can feel as pain to the depth of her senses but does not block thought “Have you ever considered that it might be your destiny to spend infinity in this black hole.”

  “No.”

  “Maybe it is ordained in some fashion. Then again it may be inevitable. There might have been some cosmic disaster about which we know nothing but which has brought , this on. In that case it would be impossible to get out Anyway, the situation seems pretty hopeless as far as I’m concerned. Why don’t you just relent? There seems to be a kind of immortality to it anyway, subjective immortality, of course, but what’s the difference? It isn’t everyone who could live seventy thousand years in any circumstances. Maybe you should just accept this fate.”

  “No,” she says again. “No, I cannot. There is no cosmic accident It is only Skipstone intercepting the field.”

  “Are you sure? Are you really sure of that? Perhaps you are in some way determining the condition, the force, the very fate of the universe.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No,” she says, “I don’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why does everything have to be concerned with the fate of the universe?” It is a cry not only from Lena, but also from the heart of the science-fiction writer. “Why can’t something just mean what it simply means? Why can’t it be my own problem to suffer and to solve; why does it have to get tied in with the universe? Isn’t my condition enough?”

  “It was you who said that this might all be a gigantic accident,” the cyborg points out, “Now didn’t you say that? All existence might be an accidental by-product of the force of the implosion.”

  “I didn’t know what I was saying,” she says a little sulkily. “I’m not always responsible for everything that I say; everything doesn’t have to mean—”

  “Of course it does. Everything is related, you know that. Every act everywhere affects everything else, and perhaps your suffering here gives the universe purpose. Did you ever think of that?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps the implosion would not exist unless you were here to observe it. How can one tell about something like this? There are no easy answers. It is all very difficult and metaphysical.”

  “Metaphysical,” the others say together, contrapuntally. “It is all metaphysical.”

  “At least you ought to consider it,” the leader/spokesman says. “I wouldn’t ignore anything that I’m saying here. Who can tell about something like this?”

  “And then, too,” the second cyborg/comforter says with just a slight lisp. (Possibly this is an individuating characteristic; in the absence of genuine inventive powers, one can always toss in a limp, a lisp, a cigarette, a stutter, a hint of bigotry. Look for these as the sign of an author or comic in trouble.) “If you say that the dead down there are alive—of course we can’t hear a thing and you’re probably quite mad, you know—but assuming that you’re right and that they do have some kind of objective, external existence, well, then. What about that, I want to ask? Wouldn’t that change the situation?”

  “What situation?”

  “Everything,” the cyborg says rather grandly. “Nothing. The totality of it. You can’t expect me to be specific about a matter like this; the conception is too grand to necessitate explanations. It just would be very important.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Lena says tensely. “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me. I’ve come to you for answers and instead you’re asking questions that are nonsense. Be practical. I’m trying to be; you could at least be the same.”

  Speaking at such length after seventy thousand years of subjective silence has made her weak. Cautiously she clears her throat, rasps, hawks, then spits. She runs a hand across her forehead, and it comes away glistening with sweat; she finds it
amusing in a distant way that even here, in these circumstances, the ancient biological factors will nonetheless assert themselves. There is something important here. Even in a black hole one becomes weak, one sweats,, one’s throat tends to burn. An organism can become exposed to any kind of exotic parasites or bacteria but will always feel sick in a conventionally symptomatic fashion. His skin will not turn green nor will he be able to fly. The keyboard of human response is large but finite, and only certain harmonies can be played upon it no matter the impetus. Always, pain is referred back to the system; the system does not alter with the pain.

  Abruptly she is filled with a revulsion so great that it becomes a palpable network which she feels glowing dimly within her. I should not have called upon them, she thinks, as if in the midst of illuminated wire, enfolding her, binding her inward, but then if I had not called upon them, what then? Would I have done it myself? What they are saying may be right. Possibly they have spoken nothing but the truth: that all of the universe swirls around this single pivot. If that is what has happened, then what am I to do? I do not know if I can manage a decision like this alone. I was not trained to make decisions; that was never the function for which the Bureau prepared us.

  “I don’t know about the deads,” she says. “Maybe you’re right about that; maybe I didn’t hear them.”

  “Oh? Is that so?”

  “I seem to have been in communication with one of them, but it may be an illusion. This could be. It is possible. I can accept and understand that I might be imagining them. But not entirely. And not the rest of it.”

  “But what if not?” the second says with a little urgency. “What if you do hear them? If somehow the black galaxy has brought them back to life, then an immediate vault into the tachyonic would destroy them for good.”

  I don’t know. I can’t tell about anything like that. Why can’t you leave me alone?”