“I’ll check with them, of course,” I said. “But they’ve been getting along without my immediate help while I’ve been talking to you. They ought to be able to get along without me for a bit longer. How long would I be gone?”
“In terms of time here, not more than a couple of your weeks. Probably considerably less. It may be a single simple test will give us an answer, once you’ve reached your destination. It’s possible we might have to test further, but probably not more than a day or two.”
“I see,” I said. “The more ability I show, the more you’ll go on testing?”
“Essentially. But Marc,” said Obsidian, “if you’ve got hopes of our tests finding you to have very great ability in that area, I wish you’d temper those hopes. Believe me—”
“I believe,” I said. “I’m also willing to go. We’re agreed?”
“Yes,” he said, slowly.
“Good. The thing you have to understand about me, friend Obsidian,” I said, “is that I’ll do whatever I decide is best. I’m not going to leave the other people here in a bind because I didn’t bother to check. I’ll check first. But I said I want to go, and I’m going.”
“Forgive me,” he said.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” I said. “It’s just that this isn’t a matter of group discussion. This is me, saying what I choose to do.”
“All right,” he said. “But it’s not quite what I’m used to. You understand that? We have—”
“I know,” I said. “You people’ve got a pattern of responsibility. So’ve I. And I won’t violate my pattern any more than you’d violate yours. But I tell you, Obsidian, I want to go where your people will test me. The fact it’s across space doesn’t matter; because I’d go cross-universe as quickly as I’d go around this jeep to get that done.”
I had gotten a little warm on the subject; and I was braced to have him react with equal emotion. Instead he only looked at me, a long, questioning look. Then he nodded.
“This means more to you than we’d thought,” he said.
I stared back at him. Something other than the golden light was moving me now; a surge of feeling that was more like a tide, a running tide carrying me irresistibly forward.
“You don’t understand me at all,” I said, “do you?”
“No.” He shook his head.
“All right,” I told him. “See if it has meaning for you this way. I don’t know who my remote ancestors were; but what moves me as far as the time storm goes, must go as far back as they do. There’s something in me that’s certain about one thing; that anything can kill me, but until I’m killed I’m what lives. And as long as I live, I’ll fight. Come and get me out to face my special enemy, whoever that is; and while I can still move, I’ll stay after it. When I’m finally done for, I’ll still be happy; because I wasn’t deprived of my chance to do something. All I want is that chance—nothing else matters; and here you come asking me if the fact I have to cross some space to be tested might make me decide against going!”
I had really moved off the high end of the emotional scale this time, but I saw now that at last I had gotten through to him. I do not think even then that he understood what I was talking about, but he had registered the charge of the emotion that had ridden on top of my words.
“How much time do you need before you’ll be ready to go?” he said.
“Two—three hours, say.”
“Good. One more thing. We’d like, since we’re moving you this distance, to take advantage of the opportunity to do some testing of the avatar, as well. Do you think he’d be willing to come? He’s had experience in cross-space travel, I understand.”
“He has,” I said. “I’ll ask him. I think he’ll want to come.”
“Then I’ll be back in three of your hours.”
He vanished.
I turned back into the summer palace and went to find Porniarsk. It had not occurred to me until now to wonder what had been occupying him since we had arrived at our destination here in the future; and it struck me suddenly, now, that he had been busy in the lab all that time. But at what, I wondered? When I arrived, I found him working with the vision tank; and I asked him that question.
“I’ve been doing some charting,” he said, waving a stubby tentacle at the tank. “I thought perhaps if I could establish specifically what the inconsistencies were that we noted, I might be able to evolve a picture of what’s happening with the time storm at this future moment.”
“What did you find out?”
“I discovered that, except for certain areas where the force lines of the storm still seem to be breeding, the universe in general has been brought pretty much into the same sort of temporary, dynamic balance that we achieved around this planet back in our earlier time.”
“What about the breeding areas?” I asked.
“That’s interesting. Very interesting,” he said. “The force lines seem to be both breeding and healing—both increasing and decreasing in these areas. By the way, the areas I’m talking about are all out in the midsections of the galaxies. There’s none of them down in the very center of a galaxy—in what might be called the dead core area.”
“Dead core?”
“I thought you knew?” He glanced at me. “The center of most galaxies, like this one, is an area of very old stars, immersed in a dust cloud.”
“Where’s the closest activity to this solar system?”
“The blue-white supergiant star,” said Porniarsk, “that you call Rigel seems to be one of the near loci. But the main activity close to us is centered on the star you call S Doradus in the lesser Magellani Cloud, outside this galaxy, about a hundred and forty thousand light-years from us here.”
“S Doradus is a big, hot star, too, isn’t it?” I said.
“Like Rigel, one of the brightest.”
“Sounds like a large, bright star is necessary. Can you tell why?”
“No,” said Porniarsk. “All I know is that the lines of time storm activity in the area in question seem to center on S Doradus. And, then, there’s the matter that S Doradus has stopped radiating.”
“Stopped what?”
“It’s no longer radiating. It’s gone dark,” Porniarsk said. “I mean by that, that if you were in the immediate neighborhood of that star, it would no longer appear to be radiating. From our distance here, of course, it still seems to be shining; since we’re getting light that left it thousands of years ago.”
My head began to spin. The distances, the star sizes, and the rest of the information involved was on such a scale that my imagination struggled to get a grip on it.
“I’ve got a message for you,” I said, to shift the topic of conversation.
I told him about Obsidian taking me to be tested, and his question as to whether Porniarsk would be willing to go also.
“Of course,” said Porniarsk. “I’d be very interested to see how they do such testing.”
34
Three hours turned out to be less time than I thought in which to get hold of Ellen and the other leaders, explain what Porniarsk and I were going to be doing, and pack a suitcase. When Obsidian reappeared outside the summer palace at the landing area, he found about forty people—all who could possibly get up there to see Porniarsk and myself off. But it was not at the others he stared, or even at Porniarsk and me, but at the suitcase at my feet.
“Can I ask... he began.
“My bag,” I said. I guessed what was puzzling him. “Personal necessaries. Remember, I wear clothes, shave every morning, and things like that.”
“Oh,” he said. I had discovered by the end of our first day of acquaintance that the humans of his time had no body hair to speak of. “Of course.”
Following this conversation, there was a great deal of kissing and handshaking all around. In fact, our community nowadays was more like one large family than anything else. I almost spoiled the occasion by laughing out loud at the spectacle of Porniarsk solemnly promising people that he would be careful and take good care of himself. It was rather like a battleship assuring everyone that it would keep a wary eye out for sharks and take care not to get bitten.