“Father, Bartan,” Toller said, “have you been observing the skies within the last ten or twenty days? Have you noticed anything unusual?”
The older men exchanged cautiously surprised glances. “Are you speaking of the blue planet?” Bartan said.
Toller frowned. “Blue planet? No, I’m talking about a barrier … a wall … a lake of ice… call it what you will… which has appeared at the midpoint. It is at least sixty miles across and growing wider by the hour. Has it not been observed from the ground?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary has been observed, but I’m not even sure that the Glo telescope has been in use since—” Bartan broke off and gave Toller a quizzical stare. “Toller… Toller, you can’t nave an accretion of ice at the midpoint—there simply isn’t the water. The air is too dry.”
“Ice! Or crystal of some kind. I saw it!” The fact that he was being disbelieved did not surprise or unduly disturb Toller, but it caused an uneasy stirring in the lower levels of his consciousness. There was something wrong with the pattern of the conversation. It was not going as it should have gone, but some factor—perhaps a deep-seated unwillingness to face reality—was for the moment paralyzing vital mental processes.
Bartan gave him a patient smile. “Perhaps there has been a major failure in one of the permanent stations, perhaps an explosion which has scattered power crystals over a wide area. They might be drifting and combining and forming large clouds of condensation, and we both know that condensation can give the appearance of being very substantial… like banks of snow or—”
“The Countess Vantara,” Toller interrupted with a numb smile, keeping his voice steady to hide the fear that had been unleashed in him as certain doors swung open. “She made the crossing only nine days ago—had she nothing unusual to report?”
“I don’t know what you mean, son,” Cassyll Maraquine said, speaking the words which Toller had already prepared for him on a parchment of the mind. “Yours is the first and only ship to have returned from Land. Countess Vantara has not been seen since the expedition departed.”
PART II: Strategies of Despair
Chapter 8
Divivvidiv had had a very good dream, one in which he had savored every diamond-sharp second of a day in his childhood. The day chosen had been the eighty-first of the Clear Sky Cycle. His high-brain had taken his memories of the actual day as the basis of the dream, then had discarded those which were less than perfect and replaced them with invented sequences. The content of the fabricated sections had been excellent, as had been the merging of their boundaries with the rest of the dreamscape, and Divivvidiv had awakened with intense feelings of happiness and fulfillment. For once there had been no undertones, no stains of guilt seeping in from the present, and he knew he would return to the dream—perhaps with minor variations—many times in the years to come.
He lay for a moment in the weak artificial gravity field of his bed, enjoying a mental afterglow, then became aware that the Xa was waiting to communicate with him. What is it? he said, raising himself to an upright position.
Nothing of great urgency, Beloved Creator—that is why I waited until you had achieved a natural return to consciousness, the Xa replied at once, using a mind-color similar to yellow for reassurance.
That was very considerate of you. Divivvidiv massaged the muscles of his arms in preparation for a return to activity. I sense you have good news for me. What is it?
The Primitives’ ship is returning, with two males on board, and this time they will not pass beyond my perimeter.
Divivvidiv was immediately on the alert. You are quite positive about this?
Yes, Beloved Creator. One of the males is emotionally linked to one of the females. He believes that she and her companions have damaged their ship in a collision with my body during the hours of darkness, and that they have taken refuge in one of the habitats we found in the datum plane. It is his intention to find and retrieve the female.
How interesting! Divivvidiv said. These beings must have an unusually strong inclination towards single-partner reproduction. First we learn of their mind-blindness, and now this—how many handicaps can a race endure and yet remain viable?
Stated in those terms, Beloved Creator, the question is meaningless.
I expect so. Divivvidiv turned his attention to matters of a more practical nature. Tell me, are the male Primitives becoming aware that you belong to a class of object totally outside their previous experience?
Object? Object?
Being. I should have referred to you as a being, of course. How do they perceive you?
As a natural phenomenon, the Xa said. An accretion of ice or some other crystalline form of matter.
That is good—II reduces their potential for causing damage and at the same time makes them easier for us to capture. Divivvidiv shifted his thinking to the high-brain mode to exclude the Xa from his deliberations. Obtaining specimens of the Primitives for Director Zunnunun’s personal study was in a way a frivolity, something quite extraneous to the great project, and if the Xa were to be damaged in the course of it the penalties would be dire. He, Divivvidiv, would almost certainly be subjected to personality modification as a punishment for allowing himself to be diverted from his duties. After all, the project was the single most important undertaking in the history of his people. The future of the entire race…
Beloved Creator! The Xa’s call was an unexpected intrusion. I have a question for you.
What is it? Divivvidiv demanded, hoping the Xa was not about to make more of the increasingly tiresome enquiries about its own future. The Xa would not have been able to build itself had it not been provided with a powerful artificial intelligence, but its designers—in the remote high floors of the Palace of Numbers—had not anticipated the development of self-awareness.
Tell me, Beloved Creator, the Xa said, what is a Rope?
The shock of the question was so sudden, so forceful, that Divivvidiv experienced a momentary giddiness and a dangerous weakening of mental control. For one perilous instant he almost gave the Xa access to all high-brain networks, and the effort of closing off hundreds of neural highways left him feeling chilled and sick.
Practicing eye-of-the-hurricane rituals to induce a state of calmness, he said, Who told you about Ropes?
There was a slight delay before the Xa responded. Not you, Beloved Creator. Not anybody. The word has lately begun to exist all around me. It must be continually in the minds of millions of intelligent beings, but the concepts behind it are too elusive to be captured. All I know is that the word is associated with fear… a terrible fear of ceasing to exist…
It is nothing for you to be concerned about, Divivvidiv said, using every mental reinforcement technique he knew to give strength to the lie. The word is little more than a sound. Its origins lie in certain aberrations of the human mind—logical lesions, you might say—metaphysics, religion, superstition…