‘It doesn’t matter,’ Obsoc’s voice said. ‘Not in the least. Something has happened in the last few minutes.’
He paused. ‘There’s a blanket broadcast coming out of Brilliancy. It must be from Meirjain. It gives the emergence co-ordinates. They’re common property now.’
‘But that doesn’t make sense!’ exclaimed Romrey, striding over. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It means,’ said Obsoc, ‘that something on Meirjain wants people to go there.’
4
Madrigo, on Boaz’s last visit to Theta, had been pleased by the extent of his seeming recovery. It had almost been a trial to disabuse him.
In his memory, emblazoned there like poignant signs of an existence that might have been, Boaz saw the immense colonnades stretching to the horizon, the benign sherbet-like atmosphere fading into the crocus-coloured sky. He smelled the delightful yet calming fragrances of the place. By his side walked Madrigo, that rock of assurance.
‘I can see from your manner that you have proved the supremacy of mind, Boaz,’ he said. ‘You have conquered your ill fate.’
‘I have not conquered it,’ said Boaz.
And it was true. Boaz’s rock-steady personality, like the modsuit he now always wore – like, on the somatic level, his strong and craggy body – was armour. Character armour, permitting him to function in the real world, but protecting a core of absolute horror.
It was Madrigo himself who had helped create this armour. Without colonnader knowledge of the mind the task would have been impossible. By the same token, it was Madrigo who was now fooled by it.
‘I chose ill when I selected my names,’ Boaz said. ‘They augur a destiny I would avoid…’
He spoke on, outlining his great fear. Madrigo nodded, and looked serious.
And then Boaz put his question. It would, for a fact, have been hard to find a more audacious question. It was the first time he had ever seen his mentor appear startled.
He waited.
‘What you plan is quite impossible,’ said Madrigo when he was sure he had understood Boaz’s intention. ‘Nothing can ever be changed. If it were otherwise, your names would be lies.’
Then Boaz knew that no human being, not even his wise and kindly mentor, would or could help him, and the utter loneliness of his mission overwhelmed him.
Boaz pushed the memory away, inasmuch as it could be pushed, into the burning coffers of his mind. He had checked the fuel rods to see that they were delivering their energy evenly. Now he carried out a similar but less practical ritual – inspecting those parts of the ship with which he was in somatic integration.
Apart from the space taken up by the engines, the hold, living quarters and astrogation, there were four decks devoted to keeping Boaz alive. The ship was constructed on the principle of ‘holistic integration,’ which meant that no system in it was left entirely unaffected by what happened in any other system. Boaz, in other words, was entirely a part of the ship. When the engines exerted themselves, he could feel it in his guts. When the ship changed state or direction, he experienced a momentary feeling of vertigo.
The somatic system, as the bonemakers called it, was all-enveloping. It extended through the walls of his living quarters and into the working parts of the ship. Its main bulk, however, lay in the four decks crammed with dull-coloured casings. When he moved among them, Boaz had the feeling of moving within his own body – for this, in a sense more real than flesh and blood, was his body. Even his consciousness was maintained here.
Normal adp was silent; but this was not. Boaz did not fully comprehend the reason why, but it whirred and clicked in a constant mutter of mechanical conversation – although he knew it had no moving parts.
On each casing was a check screen. Moving from casing to casing, Boaz stared in fascination at the symbols that flickered ceaselessly on the glowing green plates. The bonemakers had taught him the meanings of some of those symbols, though in actuality there was no need for him to look at them at all. The somatic system was entirely self-supervising.
The reason for the existence of the screens, as for his daily inspection of them, was that they constituted a reminder of where his health lay. Otherwise there was a danger (the bonemakers believed) that he might forget, and wander out of the ship’s range despite the warning bleeps that would be transmitted to him were he to do so.
Last of all he went to the transmitters on the fourth level. It was an extraordinary sensation to stand there. The beams were at maximum penetration (though very nearly parallel and coherent, their strength weakened with distance due to loss of intelligibility on passing through a material medium. Each inch of emanating beam was like a computer system in its own right). Boaz had the feeling that a strong, invigorating light shone through his body, filling him with health and power.
The temptation was to spend long periods of time there, but it was a temptation he resisted every day. Quickly and efficiently he carried out his checks (to which there was a more practical point than with the processors, the transmitters being more liable to deterioration) and withdrew.
He went back to his cabin.
‘Nearly there now,’ the ship whispered to him.
‘Show me.’
Boaz settled in his armchair. Dispensing with artificial displays, the ship fed his mind with an image of the Brilliancy Cluster through which he was now moving. A crimson circle pinpointed the star which it was expected would be host to the wandering planet.
Flecks of bright purple were a swarm of other ships migrating purposefully toward the same location. Some were far ahead of others – as soon as it was realized the broadcast from Brilliancy had to be genuine, they had started taking off from Sarsuce like fleas leaving a drowning dog. In the rush nobody had paused to dwell on who had sent the broadcast, or why.
‘After the gold,’ Boaz muttered to himself. ‘All after the gold.’ It was an old saying from a time when gold had been a valuable metal and men had stampeded for any chance of laying their hands on it.
He was going to be among the stragglers getting there. There were operators in the vicinity with very fast ships, and he had delayed some hours before taking off.
But Meirjain was a big planet, and he had the advantage that he did not want as much as they did. Boaz, in his gloomy way, was feeling fairly optimistic.
The ship woke him from his troubled sleep. A minor note of urgency pervaded the summons, and Boaz came instantly to a sitting position in the armchair that served him in place of a bed.
‘Look,’ said the ship.
Again a picture in his mind – or rather, a montage of pictures. A planet, its surface mottled purple, blue and mauve, fretted with a filigree of other colours – gold, silver, scarlet. It was warmed by a yellow sun with a hint of blue; a sun, he recognized, that offered the full spectrum of colors accessible to the human eye.
In diagrammatized form he saw what the naked eye would not see: scores of ships in orbit. Their outlines flickered in his vision. Many of them he could remember seeing on Wildhart ship ground.
‘Why haven’t they gone down?’ he asked.
‘They can’t,’ his ship told him.
‘Why not?’
‘I have called The Sedulous Seeker for you.’
The Sedulous Seeker, Radalce Obsoc’s yacht, was as fast as anything flying and would have been among the first vessels to arrive. Obsoc’s image rose before Boaz’s mind’s eye, a sumptuous lounge providing a background. Mace lolled on a couch, her eyes closed.