Michaelmas

Twelve

Limberg put his head back and looked at him warily, his lips pursing. Then his mouth twitched into a flat little grimace. He turned and dropped into one of the two very comfortable-looking stuffed chairs. Against the raspberry-coloured velour, he seemed very white in his crisp smock and his old skin and hair. He brought his knees together and sat with his hands lying atop them. He cocked his head and said nothing. His eyes darted sideward towards Cikoumas, who was just at the point of drawing himself up rigid and thrusting his hands into his pockets. Cikoumas said : “Mister—ah—Michaelmas—”

“Larry. Please; this isn’t a formal interview.”

“This is no sort of interview at all,” Cikoumas said, his composure beginning to return. “You are not welcome here; you are not—”

Michaelmas raised an eyebrow and looked towards Limberg. “I am not? Let me understand this, now… Medlimb Associates is refusing me hospitality before it even knows the subject I propose, and is throwing me out the door summarily?” He moved his hand down to touch the comm unit hanging at his side.

Limberg sighed softly. “No, that would be an incorrect impression.” He shook his head slightly. “Dr. Cikoumas fully understands the value of good media relations.” He glanced at Cikoumas. “Calm yourself, Kristiades, I suggest to you,” he went on in the same judicious voice. “But, Mr Michaelmas, I do not find your behaviour unexceptionable. Surely there is such a thing as calling for an appointment?”

Michaelmas looked around him at the office with its rubbed shelves of books, its tapestries and gauzy curtains, its Bokhara carpet and a broad window gazing imperviously out upon the slopes and crags of a colder, harsher place. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked. “It seems so serene here.” How much longer can it take to run? he was asking himself, and at the same time he was looking at Cikoumas and judging the shape of that mouth, the dexterity of those hands which quivered with ambition. “It’s only a few questions, Kiki,” he said. “That’s what they call you, isn’t it—Kiki?”

Cikoumas suddenly cawed a harsh, brief laugh. “No, Mr Michaelmas, they don’t call me Kiki,” he said knowingly. “Is that what you’re here to ask?”

“Would he have found some way to beg a lift on a military aircraft,” Limberg commented, “if that was the gravity of his errand ?”

It didn’t seem Cikoumas had thought that through. He frowned at Michaelmas now in a different way, and held himself more tensely.

Michaelmas traced a meaningless pattern on the rug with his shoe-tip. He flicked a little dust from his trouser leg, extending his wristwatch clear of his cuff. “A great many people owe me favours,” he said. “It’s only fair to collect, once in a while.”

There was a chime in the air. “Dr. Limberg,” a secretarial voice said. “You have an urgent telephone call.” Michaelmas looked around with a pleasant, distracted smile.

“I cannot take it now, Liselotte,” Limberg said. “Ask them to call later.”

“It may be from Africa,” Michaelmas said.

Cikoumas blinked. “I’ll see if they’ll speak to me. I’ll take it in my office.” He slipped at once through the connecting door at the opposite side of Limberg’s desk. Michaelmas traded glances with Limberg, who was motionless. “Liselotte,” Limberg said, “is it from Africa?”

“Yes, Herr Doktor. Colonel Norwood. I am giving the call to Dr. Cikoumas now.”

“Thank you.” Limberg looked closely at Michaelmas. “What has happened ?” he asked carefully.

Michaelmas stood up and strolled across the room towards the window. He lifted the curtain sideward and looked out. “He’ll be giving Cikoumas the results of the engineering analysis on the false telemetry sender,” he said idly. He scratched his head over his left ear. He swept the curtain off to the side, and turned with the full afternoon light behind him. He leaned his shoulders against the cool plate glass.

Limberg was twisted around in his chair, leaning to look back at him. “I had heard you were an excellent investigative reporter,” he said.

“I’d like to think I fill my role in life as successfully as you have yours.”

Limberg frowned faintly. A silence came over both of them. Limberg turned away for a moment, avoiding the light upon his eyes. Then he opened his mouth to speak, beginning to turn back, and Michaelmas said: “We should wait for Cikoumas. It will save repeating.”

Limberg nodded slowly, faced forward again, and nodded to himself again. Michaelmas stayed comfortably where he was, facing the connecting door. The glass behind him was thrumming slightly, but no one across the room could see he was trembling, and the trembling had to do only with his body. Machinery hummed somewhere like an elevator rising, and then stopped.

Cikoumas came back after a few moments. He peered at Michaelmas up the length of the room. Behind him there was a glimpse of white angular objects, a gleam of burnished metals, cool, even lighting, a pastel blue composition tile floor. Then he closed the door. “There you are.” He progressed to a show of indignation. “I have something confidential to discuss with Dr. Limberg.”

“Yes,” Michaelmas said. “About the telemetry sender.” Cikoumas made his face blank.

Limberg turned now. “Ah.” He raised a hand sideward. “Hush one moment, Kristiades. Mr Michaelmas, can you tell us something about the sender?”

Michaelmas smiled at Cikoumas. “Norwood has told you UNAC’s analytical computer programmes say the sender isn’t Russian. It’s a clever fake.” He smiled at Limberg. “He says it’s probably from Viola Hanrassy’s organization.”

Cikoumas and Limberg found themselves trying to exchange swift glances. Limberg finally said: “Mr Michaelmas, why would they think it’s from Hanrassy?”

“When it isn’t? Are you asking how has UNAC fooled Norwood?”

Cikoumas twitched a corner of his mouth. “To do that, as you may not realize, they would have to reprogramme their laboratory equipment. Events have been too quick for them to do that.”

“Ah. Well, then, are you asking why has Norwood become a liar, when he left here so sincere?”

Limberg shook his head patiently. “He is too fine a man for that.” His eyes glittered briefly. “Please, Mr Michaelmas. Explain for me.” He waved silence towards Cikoumas again. “I am old. And busy.”

“Yes.” Not as busy as some. “Well, now, as to why the sender appears a fake, when we all know it should appear genuine…” He rubbed his knuckles gently in his palm. “Sincere. If it could talk; if there was a way you could ask it Did He who made the lamb make Thee, it would in perfect honesty say Da. And how does it do that, I wonder. Or how did they convince it? Which is it? What’s that noise beyond Cikoumas’s door? Then if you see the impossible occurring, Doctors, I would say perhaps there might be forces on this Earth which you had no way of taking into account.” He addressed himself directly to Limberg. “It’s not your fault, you see?”

Limberg nodded. The flesh around his mouth folded like paper.

Cikoumas dropped his jaw. “How much do you know?”

Michaelmas smiled and spread his palms. “I know there’s a sincere Walter Norwood, where once over the Mediterranean there was nothing. Nothing,” he said. “He’ll be all right; nice job in the space programme, somewhere. Administrative. Off flight status; too many ifs. Grow older. Cycle out, in time. Maybe get a job doing science commentary for some network.” Michaelmas straightened his shoulders and stood away from the window. “It’s all come apart, and you can’t repeat it, you can’t patch it up. Your pawns are taken. The Outer Planets expedition will go, on schedule, and others will follow it.” And this new sound, now.

It was a faint ripple of pure tones, followed by a mechanical friction as something shifted, clicked, and sang in one high note before quieting. Perhaps they didn’t know how acute his ear for music was. Cikoumas had taken longer in there than he might have needed for a phone call.

Limberg said : “Mr Michaelmas—these unknown forces… you are in some way representative of them?”

“Yes,” Michaelmas said, stepping forward. His knees were stiff, his feet arched. “I am they.” His mouth stretched flat and the white ridges of his teeth showed. The sharp breath whistled through them as he exhaled the word. “Yes.” He walked towards Cikoumas. “And I think it’s time you told your masters that I am at their gates.” As if I were deaf and they were blind. He stopped one step short of Cikoumas, his face upturned to look directly at the man. There’s something in there. In his eyes. And in that room.

Cikoumas smiled coldly. That came more naturally to him than the attempts to act indecision or fear. “The opportunity is yours, Mr Michaelmas,” he said, bowing from the waist a little and turning to open the door. “Please follow me. I must be present to operate the equipment at the interview.”

“Kristiades,” Limberg said softly from his chair, “be wary of him.”

There was no one beyond the door when Michaelmas followed Cikoumas through it.

It was a white and metal room of moderate size, its exterior wall panelled from floor to ceiling with semi-globular plastic bays, some translucent and others transparent, so that the mountains were repeated in fish-eye views among apparent circles of milky light. Overhead was the latest in laboratory lighting technique : a pearl-coloured fog that left no shadows and no prominences. The walls were in matte white; closed panels covered storage. The composition underfoot was very slightly yielding.

To one side there was a free-standing white cylindrical cabinet, two and a half metres tall, nearly a metre wide. The faintest seams ran vertically and horizontally across its softly reflective surface. It jutted solidly up from the floor, as though it might be a continuation of something below.

Ahead of Michaelmas were storage cubes, work surfaces, instrumentation panels, sterile racks of teasing needles, forceps and scalpels, microtomes, a bank of micromanipulative devices — all shrouded beneath transparent flexible dust hoods or safe behind glassy panels.

Michaelmas looked around further. At his other hand was the partition wall to Limberg’s office. From chest height onwards, it was divided into small white open compartments like dovecotes. Below that was a bare workshelf and a tall, pale-blue-upholstered laboratory stool to sit on. Cikoumas motioned towards it. “Please.”

Michaelmas raised his eyebrows. “Are we waiting here to meet someone?”

Cikoumas produced his short laugh. “It cannot come in here. It doesn’t know where we are. Even if it did, it couldn’t exist unprotected here.” He gestured to the chair again. “Please.” He reached into one of the pigeonholes and produced a pair of headphones at the end of a spiral cord. “I do not like the risk of having this voice overheard,” he said. “Listen.” He cupped one earpiece in each hand and moved towards Michaelmas. “You want to know?” he said, twisting his mouth. “Here is knowledge. See what you make of it.”

Michaelmas grunted. “And what would you like to know?”

Cikoumas shrugged. “Enough to decide whether we must surrender to these forces of yours or can safely dispose of you, of course.”

Michaelmas chuckled once. “Fair enough,” he said, and sat down. His eyes glittered hard as he watched Cikoumas’s hands approach his skull. “Lower away.”

Cikoumas rested the headphones lightly over his ears. Then he reached up and pulled out another set for himself. He stood close by, his hands holding each other, bending his body forward a little as if to hear better.

The voice was faint, though strong enough, probably, at its origins, but filtered, attenuated, distant, hollow, cold, dank: “Michaelmasss…” it said. “Is that you? Cikoumas tells me that is you. Isss that what you are—Michaelmasss?”

Michaelmas grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “How do I answer it?” he asked Cikoumas, who momentarily lifted one earpiece.

“Speak,” Cikoumas said, shifting eagerly around him. “You are heard.”

“This is Michaelmas.”

“An entity… you consider yourself an intelligent entity.”

“Yes.”

“Distinguishable in some manner from Limberg and Cikoumasss…”

“Yes.”

“What does A equal ?”

“Pi R squared.”

“What is the highest colour of rainbows?”

“Red.”

“Would you eat one of your limbs if you were starving?”

“Yes.”

“Would you eat Cikoumas or Limberg if you were starving?”

Cikoumas was grinning faintly at him.

“First,” Michaelmas said coldly.

“An entity… to speak to an intelligent entity… in these circumstances of remoteness and displacement… you have no idea how it feels… to have established contact with three entities, now, under these peculiar circumstances… to take converse with information-processors totally foreign… never of one’s accustomed bone and blood…”

“I — ah — have some idea.”

“You argue?”

“I propose.”

“Marriage?”

“No. Another form of dialectical antagonism.”

“We are enemiesss… ? You will not join with Limberg and Cikoumas…?”

“Why should I ? What will you give?”

“I will make you rich and famous among your own… kind… Contact with my skills can be translated into rewards which are somehow gratifying to you… individuals… Cikoumas and Limberg can show you how it’sss done…”

“No.”

“Repeat. Clarify. Synonimize.”

“Negative. Irrevocable refusal. Contradiction. Absolute opposition. I will not be one of your limbs.” He grinned at Cikoumas.

“Ah-hah! Ah-hah! Ah-hah! Then is your curiosity in the name of what you think science…?”

“Justice.”

“Ah-hah! Ah-hah! Complex motivations…! Ah-hah! The academician Zusykses sssaid to me this would be so; he said the concept is not of existences less than ours, but apart from oursss in origin only, reflecting perfectly that quality which we define as the high faculties; I am excited by your replies… I shall tell my friend, Zusykses, when we reunite with each other this afternoon; his essential worth is validated!”

“I might be lying.”

“We know nothing of lies… No, no, no… in the universe, there is this and there is that. This is not that. To say this is that is to hold up to ridicule the universe. And that is an absurd proposition.”

“What is it, then, that isn’t the truth but isn’t a lie?”

Cikoumas looked at him with sudden . intensity. But Michaelmas was nearly blind with concentration.

“Shrewd… you are a shrewd questioner… you speak of probability… yesss… it was my darling Zusykses who proposed the probability models of entities like you; who declared this structure was possible, and ssso must exist somewhere because the universe is infinite, and in infinity all things must occur. And yet this is only a philosophical concept, I said in rebuttal. But let me demonstrate, said my preceptor, Zusykses, in ardour to me; here, subordinate academician Fermierla, take here this probability coherence device constructed in accordance with my postulates… while away this noon and ssseek such creaturesss as I say must be, for you shall surely find their substance somewhere flung within Creation’s broadly scattered arms; take them up, meld of their varied strains that semblance which can speak and touch in simulacrum of a trueborn soul; regard then visage, form and even claim of self. Return to me, convinced — we tremble at the brink of learning all that life Is. Clasp to yourself my thought made manifest, which is my self; know it, accept it, make it one with us; I shall not sssend you from me any more…”

Michaelmas looked at Cikoumas, frowning. He lifted off the headphones but held them near his ears. Fermierla’s voice continued faintly.

“It thinks we are chance occurrences,” Cikoumas said dryly. “It says this Zusykses, whatever it is, deduced that humanity must exist, since its occurrence is possible within the natural laws of the infinite universe. The probability of actually locating it to prove him right is, of course, infinitely small. So they think they are communicating with a demonstration model. Something they created with this probability coherer of theirs. It isn’t likely to them that this is the human world. It’s likelier that accidental concentrations of matter, anywhere in the universe, are moving and combining in such a manner that, by pure chance, they perfectly match infinitesimal portions of Zusykses’s concept. Zusykses and Fermierla think the coherer detects and tunes an infinitely large number of these infinitely small concentrations together into an intelligible appearance. They think we might actually be anything—a sort of Brownian movement in the fabric of the universe—but that entirely at random in an infinity of chances, these selected particles invariably act to present the appearance of intelligent creatures in a coherent physical system.”

“Just one?” Michaelmas asked sharply.

Cikoumas’s head twitched on its long, thin neck. “Eh?”

“You’re talking as if ours is the only probability Fermierla can reach with the coherer. But why should that be? He has his choice of an infinity of accidentally replicated pseudohuman environments, complete with all our rocks and trees and Boy Scout knives. It’s all infinite, isn’t it? Everything has to happen, and nearly everything has to happen, and everything twice removed, and thrice, and so forth?”

Cikoumas licked his lips. “Oh. Yes. I suppose so. It seems a difficult concept I must be quite anthropomorphic. And yet I suppose at this moment an infinite number of near-Fermierlas are saying an infinitely varied number of things to an infinity of us. A charming concept. Do you know they also have absolutely no interest in where we actually are in relation to each other? Of course, they don’t think we actually exist. And incidentally, where they are, this Fermierla creature has been waiting for afternoon since before Dr. Limberg was my age. So there are massive displacements; the gravitic, temporal and electronic resistances involved must be enormous.”

“The what?”

“The resistances.” Cikoumas gestured impatiently. “The universe is relativistic - You’ve heard of that, surely ? — and although, as a life scientist, I am not concerned with all the little details of non-Newtonian physics, I read as much as I have time for—”

“Good enough, Doctor,” Michaelmas said. “There’s no point attempting to match your breadth of knowledge and my capacity just now.” He put the headphones back over his ears. The skin on his forearms chafed against his shut-sleeves in ten thousand places. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cikoumas moving casually and reaching up to another pigeonhole.

“… fascinating possibilities… to actually collaborate in experiments with you… entities. Zusykses will be beside himself! How fares the astronaut; is it still viable? How does it act? Does it display some sign it is aware it has been tuned from one probability to another… to reality, pardon.”

“He’s well enough,” Michaelmas replied.

“It was a waste,” Cikoumas said distractedly. He was manipulating some new control up there, both hands hidden to the wrists while he turned his head to look over Michaelmas’s shoulder. But he was trying to watch Michaelmas at the same time.

“Ah, that’sss a shame! You had such hopes for it a little while ago, Cikoumas! Perhaps then we should be obtaining the second Michaelmas from not that same probability… What’s your opinion, gentlemen?”

Michaelmas was on his feet, facing Cikoumas, the flex-cord stretching nearly to its limit as he turned. Something had begun to whine and sing behind him. Cikoumas stared into his eyes, in the act of pulling one hand away from the wall, the custom-chequered walnut grip of a pistol showing at the bulge of reddish white palm and bony thumb. Michaelmas tore off the headphones and threw them at him. The strap for Domino’s terminal, hung over his left shoulder, dropped across his forearm, twisted, and caught firmly there below his elbow. Spinning, the angular black box whipped forward and cracked into Cikoumas’s thin head. He averted his face sharply and went flailing down backwards, striking loudly against the floor and the angle of the wall. He lay for ever motionless, flung wide.

Michaelmas moved like lightning to the wall. He jumped up to see what Cikoumas had been working. There were incomprehensible knobs and switches in there. He jumped again and snatched the pistol from its cubby. Working at it with both hands, he found the thumb-off for the energizer and the location of the trigger switch. He crouched and faced the white column. Its seams were widening. He stretched out his arms, pointing the pistol. His face convulsed. He turned instead and scrambled to his knees atop the stool, thrust the barrel up above eye level into the control cubby, and fired repeatedly. Clouds of acrid odour poured back into the room. Flame rioted among the sooty shadows, sputtered, and died down. He turned back, half toppling, and kicked the stool aside. The portals were no wider; not much more visible, really, than they had been. The singing had gone with the first shot. Now there was something beginning to bang in there; erratic and disoriented at first, but settling down to a hard rhythmic hammering, like a fist.

Limberg was standing in the doorway, looking. “Send it,” Michaelmas said hoarsely, wide-eyed, gesturing, “send it back.”

Limberg nodded listlessly and walked slowly to the controls. He looked at them, shook his head, and fumbled in his pockets for a key ring. “I shall have to use the master switches,” he said. He went to the opposite wall and unlocked a panel. Michaelmas moved to the centre of the floor, holding the pistol and panting. Limberg looked back at him and twitched his mouth. He opened the wall and ran a finger hesitantly along a row of blank circles. He shrugged, finally, and touched two. They and most of the others sprang into green life. One group went red-to-orange-to-yellow, flickering.

“Hurry,” Michaelmas said, taking a deep breath.

“I’m not expert at this,” Limberg said. He found an alternate subsection by running a forefinger along until he appeared reasonably confident. He pushed hard with all the fingers of his hand, and the cylindrical white cabinet began to sing again. Michaelmas’s hands jerked. But the seams were closing; soon they could hardly be seen. The whining came, and then diminished into nothing. The beating and kicking sounds stopped. Michaelmas wiped the back of his hand across his upper lip. “He had me in contact with it long enough, didn’t he?” he said. “It was faster than it must have been with Norwood.”

“Yes,” Limberg said. “Norwood had to be individualized for Fermierla with many, many bits from television documentary recordings. There were many approximations not close enough. Many rejects. In your case, it was possible to present you as a physical model of what was wanted.” He began to close the panel. “Is there anything else?”

“Leave it open, Doctor.” Michaelmas frowned and cleared his throat. “Leave it open,” he tried again, and was better satisfied. He went back to where his headphones still hung from the wall, and started to lift them. He looked at the pistol in his hand, safetied it, and tossed it into the nearest cubby. He slipped the headphones over his ears. There was almost nothing to hear: “… sss… err… mass…” and it was very faint. He put one fist around the cord and pulled the jack out, removed the headphones, and laid them gently on the workshelf. He turned to Limberg: “Shut it down. Everything on your end; all the stuff Cikoumas has wired in over the years.”

Limberg looked at him, overwhelmed. But he saw something in Michaelmas’s face and nodded. He ran his hands over the controls and all of them went steady red. He bowed his head.

“I’m in. I’m here,” Domino said. “I’ve got their household systems. Where’s the rest?”

“Wait,” Michaelmas said. Limberg had left the panel and gone over to where Cikoumas lay. He sat down on the floor beside him and with his fingers began combing the lank hair forward over the wound. He looked up at Michaelmas. “He was attempting to protect humanity,” he said. “He couldn’t let the astronauts reach Jupiter.”

Michaelmas looked back at him. “Why not?”

“That’s where the creatures must be. It is the largest, heaviest body in the Solar System, with unimaginable pressures and great electrical potentials. It is a source of radio signals, as everyone knows. Kristiades discussed it with me increasingly after he saw all your broadcasts with the astronauts. ”Such men will find the race of Zusykses,“ he said. ”It will be a disaster for us.“ And he was right. We are safe from their full attentions only as long as they think we are not real. We must remain hidden among all the accidental systems.”

“Yes,” Michaelmas said. “Of course.”

“He was a brilliant genius!” Limberg declared. “Far worthier than I!”

“He sold out his fathers and his brothers and his sons for a striped suit.”

“What will I tell his family?”

“What did you tell them when you said you’d send the grocer’s boy to Paris ?”

Limberg’s upper body rocked back and forth. His eyes closed. “What shall I do with his body?”

“What was he going to do with mine?” Michaelmas began to say. Looking at Limberg, he said instead: “Your systems are being monitored now, and you mustn’t touch them. But a little later today, I’ll call you, and you can begin to reactivate them step by step under my direction.”

“Right,” Domino said.

Michaelmas watched Limberg carefully. He said: “When you’ve re-established contact with Fermierla, you can shift out this Cikoumas and shift in —”

Limberg’s creased cheeks began to run with silent tears.

“For his family,” Michaelmas said. He turned to go. “For their sake, find one who’s a little easier to get along with, this time.”

Limberg stared. “I would not in any case have it want to be here with me. I will send it home to him.” He said: “I felt when first you began here with us that you were a messenger of death.”

“Domino,” Michaelmas said, “get me a cab.” He pushed through the door and out into the hall, then along that and past the auditorium, where convalescent ladies and gentlemen were just chattily emerging and discussing the psychically energizing lecture of the therapy professor, and then out through the double doors, and waited outside.