Текст книги "Dark Ararat"

Автор книги: Brian Stableford

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TWENTY-SEVEN

Dusk lived up to its promise; as soon as the sun had disappeared from view and the sky’s color had darkened to indigo the activity in and beside the river increased markedly. The boat was sliding smoothly through water so calm that every ripple seemed to be narcotized. Now was the time that the surface-feeders drifted up from the muddy bed of the watercourse, and it was easy enough for Matthew to see why.

Now that the sun was no longer tinting the surface gold and silver he observed that there was a definite film upon it: an organic slick fed by detritus dislodged from the surrounding vegetation. The film was somewhat reminiscent of an oil slick, save for the fact that it was swarming with tiny creatures. Those which Matthew could make out were mostly wormlike, but there were others like tiny jellyfish and transparent brittle stars. He did not doubt that there must be many more too small for their shapes to be discernible by the naked eye.

It was on this seething mass that the larger creatures came to feed: massive eel-like monsters as thick as his arm and half again as long; ciliated wheels as big as the palm of his hand that spun with remarkable rapidity; tangled masses of avid tentacles; aquatic lizard-analogues like miniature crocodiles. Occasionally he saw ripples that suggested the presence of something even more massive, but he never caught more than a glimpse of an oval hump or a diaphanous fluke. The show was entrancing—so much so that Matthew could hardly spare more than an occasional glance for the vegetation clustered on the banks, which was now too distant to allow him to make out the multitudinous prying eyes. Occasionally there would be a flurry of movement and a dull clatter that testified to the swift movement of some creature at least half as big as a man, but the shadows were now so dense and so complex that he had no chance of divining its shape or even its position with any accuracy.

Matthew was tempted to put his hand over the side in order to scoop up a few of the organisms he could see, in order that he might see them more clearly, but Lynn Gwyer had taken care to warn him that the danger of being stung was too great. She had not told him exactly what kinds of organisms might do him harm, probably because no one had taken a sufficiently thorough census, but he leapt easily enough to the conclusion that the creatures that looked like bundles of tentacles detached from the back of a “killer anemone” were prime suspects. If they were, he thought, that might be a good reason to suppose that the tentacles carried by the giant flatworms were used for offense as well as defense. It might also be grounds for suspecting that the flatworms thus armed had begun their evolutionary careers as arbitrary chimeras, although their genomes had subsequently been rationalized by natural selection to the point at which the cells making up the stinger-bundles were genetically indistinguishable from those making up the remainder of the body.

The idea suddenly occurred to Matthew that it mightbe the other way around. Habit had made him think of chimerization as a process of fusion: the bringing together of disparate elements into a new whole—but it was a potentiality that might work both ways. Perhaps the complex creature resembled the ancestor of the simpler ones, and the tentacular bundles were “organs” that had been enabled to make a bid for functional independence by the peculiar and as-yet-enigmatic reproductive mechanisms employed by Tyrian life.

Alas, the twilight did not last for long. Tyre was an orderly world where the transition between light and darkness was relatively smooth. As the face of the river faded into gloom Matthew lifted his head to look up into the sky.

This was the first wholly clear night he had experienced since shuttling down, and the sight of the stars was breathtaking.

He had looked at the stars from the surface of the moon, as everyone in transit through its sublunar habitats took the trouble to do at least once, and he had been suitably impressed by the extreme contrast between the airless lunar sky and the dense, moisture-laden, light-polluted skies of Earth. But the lunar sky had to be viewed through a lens of glass or clear plastic, and no matter how cunningly the windows in question were contrived they were always reminiscent of screens, and of the kinds of optical illusion that granted depth to virtual environments. Even the Earthbound could look at naked skies in VE, and marvel at the awesome density of visible stars, but everyone knew that VEs were fake and everyone knew how to detect the fakery if they wanted to revoke the suspension of their disbelief. For that reason, there always seemed to be something slightly suspicious about the view from a lunar window: the impression that it might be mere artifice was hard to shake off. Here, there was no such problem.

Here, Matthew was blanketed by an atmosphere of approximately the same thickness as Earth’s, equally confused by water vapor and other natural contaminants, but the light-pollution was insignificant. These stars stood out more clearly and more profusely than any other stars he had ever looked at directly, and the sensation was so dizzying that he could almost have believed that he could reach out and draw his fingers through them, as if they were silver sand on an infinite shore.

He knew that if he only looked closely enough, in the right directions, he would be able to make out at least some of the constellations that the ancient astronomers of Earth had defined, no more than slightly tattered by three-dimensional displacement, but that was exactly what he did not want to do. He wanted to appreciate the novelty and the strangeness of the sky. He wanted to make himself as acutely aware as he could be of the fact that this was an alien atmosphere he was breathing, and that this was an alien river whose patient course he was following.

He was fifty-eight light-years from Earth, and this was a different starscape. He wanted to soak up the sensation of that difference. He wanted to savor the miracle that had brought him here, and set him down, able to draw sweet air into his lungs and drink the water of another world, and marvel at the mysteries of an alien ecology.

We canlive here, he thought. Blackstone is right and Tang Dinh Quan is wrong. We can stand beneath the vault of this new firmament, and walk and weep and build and dig, as if this were a land promised to us by the unwritten covenant of destiny. We belong here, as we belong everywhere. We are not strangers in the universe, and Earth is not our ghetto. We are free, and we are welcome. Mortal we may be, barbarian too, but we are not bound to any mere patch of mud or cultivated plot. We are here, and we are here to stay. All that remains to be settled is a mere matter of timing, a matter of the eagerness of the embrace by which we take this world to our bosom and commit ourselves to its nurture. Blackstone is right and Shen Chin Che was right, and every one of the self-selected Chosen was right to seize the opportunity of Hope. We can do this. That is what this river journey will prove to us: that we can do what we must and be what we are, without fear and without shame.

Then the lights were lit behind him, and Ike Mohammed called out to him, suggesting that he return to the cabin for a while.

He hesitated, but no one came to join him. Ike remained in the doorway, waiting.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Ike said, quietly, when Matthew finally moved unhurriedly to join him. “The first impression may not last, though. Make the most of it, just in case.”

Matthew had been about to pass him by and go into the lighted cabin, but the warning made him hesitate.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“The exhilaration doesn’t last,” Ike told him. “The wonder fades. After a while, the only sensation that lingers is the sensation of strangeness, of dislocation. Dusk is when everything that’s being lying low comes out to play, including all the fears you thought you’d left behind in childhood. Dusk is when the ghosts begin to walk, when unease begins to become profound. Try to imagine what Tang feels when he watches the stars come out. Maryanne too. God, Dulcie, me…. Bernal. Even Bernal.”

Matthew had stopped on the threshold, and he made no attempt to resume his passage when the speech reached its conclusion.

“What are you trying to tell me, Ike?”

“I’m warning you that there’s an emotional cycle that most of us have gone through. It’s not unlike the effect of a psychotropic drug. The initial entrancement is usually correlated with excitement and exultation, feelings of godlike power and triumph. When that begins to fade, the strangeness becomes disturbing and distressing, giving rise in more extreme cases to paranoia and restless anxiety. The mind becomes prone to hallucination. Some trips turn bad. Even those that don’t leave a hangover … a letdown. If your head’s as hard as Rand Blackstone’s you’ll come through it. Lynn has, I think. I can at least pretend. Sometimes, the pretense wears thin. I’ve seen that in the others too. Dulcie and God Kriefmann seem to cope well enough, just as I cope well enough… but there are moods. I told your friend Solari, but I’m not sure he took me seriously.”

“Told him what?”

“That Bernal died in the dark. It was the dead of night when we found his body, but he’d been stabbed at dusk, or not long after. In the shadow of a wall: an overgrownwall. He wasn’t as strong as he thought or expected, Matthew. You might be, but don’t blame yourself if you’re not. Rand says that it’s just a matter of time, just a matter of getting used to all the subliminals, like the weight and the background noise—that even Tang will feel at home here if he’s prepared to grit his teeth and wait—but we don’t know that. We simply don’t know. Whoever killed Bernal wasn’t quite in his—or her—right mind. We all understand that, even if we’re convinced that we’d have done better. So will you, in time. For now, I’m just trying to prepare you for the letdown.”

“I’m okay,” Matthew assured him. “In fact, I’m better than okay.”

“I know. You’ll probably still be okay, and maybe better than okay, when we get down on to the plain. But you might not be. I’m just trying to give you fair warning. Check it out with the others, if you like. Either Lynn’s fine or she puts on the best act, but she’s been through it.”

“And Dulcie?”

“She’s troubled. Coping, but troubled. As for the people at the other Base—well, nobody knows for sure, but I’d bet half a world to a rundown back garden that if they dotake a vote about making representations to Milyukov, the majority will favor a return to orbit. A temporary retreat, of course, and for all kinds of good reasons. But … well, if it’s a show of hands I’d expect a sixty-forty split. If it’s a secret ballot, it’ll probably be nearer eighty-twenty. Milyukov expects it to go the other way, but he doesn’t understand. He can’t. If the vote is stalled, put off for a further year, we might all be further along the cycle, with our worst hangovers cured. On the other hand, we might not. Maybe this is as good as it gets.”

“I can’t believe that,” Matthew said.

“I know. But you will. Maybe sooner, maybe later. Maybe you’ll come out the other side, but the way you were feeling just now can’t and won’t last.” His voice was very even, scrupulously controlled. Matthew could tell that Ike was in deadly earnest, and that he had picked his moment with minute care.

“Right,” Matthew said, keeping his own tone light. “Thanks. I’ll look out for the letdown effect, and I’ll try not to kill anyone if it comes upon me suddenly—or get killed myself.”

Once he was inside the cabin he took the first opportunity to corner Lynn Gwyer. “Did you know that Ike was going to feed me that line?”

She nodded.

“And you agree with him?”

“I agree that there’s a problem,” she said. “A psychological cycle. I think it’s an adaptation process. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the world wasn’t giving off conflicting signals all the time, sometimes seeming just like home but better and sometimes seeming very strange, sometimes within the scope of the same visual sweep. Either way, we tend to lurch from feelings of intimate connection to feelings of awkward disconnection, and it’s disconcerting. As long as you don’t give way to it, though, you’ll come through.”

“But Tang’s given way?”

“I wouldn’t say that. He’s in control. He’s just a little more sensitive than some. So’s Maryanne.”

“And Bernal?”

“Maybe he was more sensitive than he wanted to be. Maybe he fought it a bit too hard. I don’t know. Ike thinks so, but Bernal and I had … drifted apart. I don’t know.”

Matthew thought about that for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. If Ike was right, he would find out soon enough, and he was damned if he was going to let the power of suggestion take him over in the meantime. “An idea occurred to me,” he said, emphasizing the change of subject with a summary gesture. “A possible reason why everything here retains photosynthetic pigment, even when following habits and ways of life that aren’t conducive to photosynthesis. Maybe natural selection favors the retention of such options because chimerization works in two directions. It allows organisms with different genetic complements to get together and pool their abilities, but it also allows organisms to dissociate different genetic subsets—speciation by binary fission, if you like, although ‘speciation’ might not be an appropriate term. Photosynthesis might be a useful fallback in situations like that.”

Lynn seemed slightly relieved that the subject had been changed, and was more than ready to mull over the suggestion.

“It’s too crude,” she said. “The exemplary model doesn’t have to be as definite as that. You could argue, more generally, that the predominance here of chimerization weakens the individual integrity of organisms, so that different parts of the same body can—and routinely do—make different arrangements for their own sustenance. Genetic engineers back on Earth were beginning to put together chimeras that were more like closely related colonies than individuals—but even natural selection produced entities like that occasionally: slime-molds, Portugese men-of war. You’d expect colonial quasi-organisms to be more common here on Tyre. Patchwork nutritional systems wouldn’t be particularly odd in that sort of context. Even on Earth, evolutionary theorists on the fringes of respectability have tried to make use of genomic aggregation, ranging from virus-incorporation all the way to parasitic proto-brains. Here, accounts like that would be bound to seem more plausible.”

“That’s true,” Matthew admitted. “I wish people like Lityansky had paid more attention to the rangeof the available genomic data. I suspect that too much effort has been invested in fundamental analysis of the wonders of the hybrid genome, and not enough in the study of how the genomes operate within actual organisms.”

“It’s only been three years, Matthew,” Lynn pointed out, defensively. “Three understaffed, underequipped, underorganized years, conducted in the shadow of Milyokov’s stupid revolution and his determination to retain his hold on Hopeno matter what it costs the rest of us.”

“I realize that,” Matthew said. “It needed ten thousand years of social progress on Earth before our forebears cracked the basics of organic chemistry, let alone the mysterious working of DNA. The crew should have done muchmore work before they started shuttling our people down. They jumped the gun. It’s no use saying now that we can’t run before we can walk—we haveto. Do you think Ike might have fed me all that stuff about psychological cycles, creeping dread and the fact that whoever killed Bernal must have been experiencing a moment of lunacy because he was the one who wielded the fatal blade?”

“He told you because it’s true,” she said, flatly. “He felt that you were due a warning. He didn’t kill Bernal. I’m certain of that.”

“Nor did you. Which leaves Dulcie.”

“I can’t believe that either. Which brings us back to square one. Or the aliens.”

“Or the aliens,” Matthew admitted. “Standing in the bow of the boat for hours on end searching the undergrowth for inquisitive eyes makes the aliens seem far more plausible, doesn’t it? It’s easy enough to imagine them crouching in the bushes, spears in hand, watching the crazy multicolored people go by.” Although his own smartsuit had been programmed to display a discreet black, Matthew had taken due note of the fact that he was the odd one out. Lynn was wearing yellow, Dulcie brown, Ike dark red. Set against the backcloth of the green boat they must indeed have seemed a colorful band of brothers.

“Yes it is,” Lynn agreed. “Let’s just hope they haven’t taken advantage of the division of our numbers to launch an attack on the bubbles. Rand would be sodisappointed that he no longer has the wherewithal to shoot them—but I suppose he’d improvise. We only brought one of the flamethrowers with us. Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?”

“If the aliens were to attack the boat,” Matthew pointed out, “ I’d have to try to shoot them down.”

“Yes,” she said. “But every shot you fired really would hurt you worse than it hurt them. Rand doesn’t have that kind of sensitivity.”

“We shouldn’t even be joking about it,” Matthew observed, soberly. “The very casualness of the conversation illustrates the ease with which we still fall prey to the myth of the savage. We ought to remember that the alien cultures of Earth were mostly far too peaceful for their own good. That’s why it was so easy for our ancestors to wipe them out, and then make up stories to prove that they deserved it.”

“Something tells me,” Lynn said, sardonically, “that if they do attack us, you’re not going to be all that effective as a line of defense. Maybe you ought to give me the gun. I’m a better markswoman than Rand seems to think.”

“If you want it,” Matthew said, “You’re more than welcome to it. Let’s eat.”

Dinner consisted of spun protein steaks, manna fries, and synthetic courgettes. The taint of processed alien vegetation was evident in every bite, but Matthew was getting used to it by now.

“It could be worse,” he said, heroically.

“It will be if we get stranded without the converter and have to eat the boat food while we’re waiting to be rescued,” Ike told him. “It’s concentrated nutritional goodness, guaranteed nontoxic, but it’s distinctly pungent.”

When the remains of the meal had been cleared away Matthew made as if to fold up the table but Dulcie Gherardesca told him to leave it. She went to her personal luggage and took out a cloth-wrapped bundle. Matthew was surprised to see, when she unwrapped it, that it contained the natural-glass spearheads and arrowheads that Vince Solari had found near the crime scene.

“What are you doing with those?” he asked.

She looked up at him quizzically, as if she’d expected him to understand. “ Verstehen,” she said. “I want to handle them while I think, to use them as an imaginative aid.”

“That’s not quite what I meant,” Matthew said, apologetically. “I was wondering how you pried them out of Vince’s possession. Aren’t they evidence?”

“I suppose they are,” she said, “But it wasn’t difficult to persuade him that my need was greater than his. He kept the one that really matters.” She meant the murder weapon. “Care to join me?”

“Okay,” he said. “I didn’t get a chance to fondle them before, and I guess we’re less than forty-eight hours from the big waterfall. Real hours, that is—not the metric crap the crew have invented.”

He sat down, and picked up one of the carefully shaped spearheads. He ran his finger lightly along the sharpened edge, marveling at its keenness. The sensation seemed to encapsulate both the unearthliness of the vegetation that could produce such a peculiar material and the delicacy of the hand that could work it into a useful shape.

He tried to pretend, as Dulcie was undoubtedly doing and Bernal undoubtedly would have done, that the hand in question had not been Bernal Delgado’s at all but an alien hand, perhaps hairy and perhaps glabrous, perhaps with more or fewer than five fingers, perhaps knobbly with knucklebones or perhaps quasi-tentacular.

He closed his eyes and hoped for inspiration.

Remarkably, inspiration arrived, far too quickly to be the kind of inspiration he had actually sought. Matthew had no more idea than he had had before of what the new world might look like through the intelligent eyes of its legitimate inheritors, but he wasconvinced that he now knew exactly why Bernal Delgado had made these imitation alien artifacts—and, incidentally, the identity of his murderer.