The Blood Red Game

EIGHT

At last, after more than a weary day, they stood above the Hole, and as rock unformed itself and became gas, Renark said hollowly:

'They are in there. This is where we'll find them, but I do not know what they are.'

Though their tiredness made them inactive, Renark felt that he had never been more conscious, more receptive to what he saw. But his reception was passive. He could only look at the shifting, shining, dark and myriad-coloured Hole as it throbbed with power and energy.

They stared down at it, filled with knowledge and emotion.

After several hours silence, Asquiol spoke.

'What now?' he said.

'This is the gateway of which we learned on Thron and Ekiversh,' said Renark. 'I can do nothing now but descend into it in the hope of achieving our aim.' Now the human race seemed remote, a fantasy, unreal - and yet important. More important than it had ever been before.

He moved towards the very brink of the Hole and lowered himself into its pulsing embrace.

Asquiol paused for a moment behind him and then followed. They ceased to climb down, for they were now floating, going neither up nor down, nor in any definite direction, but yet floating - somewhere. The conservator had ceased to work - unless it still worked and, in some way, these laws applied more rigorously to it than any it had previously conserved.

Again they were on solid ground, on a small island in an ocean. They stepped forward and knew they were in the heart of a blazing sun; stepped back and were in the middle of a bleak mountain range. From the tops of the mountains an entity looked down and welcomed them.

They moved towards it and were suddenly in an artificial chamber which seemed, at first, to have dead, black walls. Then they realised they were looking out into a void - emptiness.

To their left a being appeared.

It seemed to be constantly fading and reappearing. like a badly-tuned laser set, Renark thought, desperately looking for something to cling to. He felt cut off entirely from anything he knew.

The being began to speak. It was not Terran he spoke. He conversed in a combination of sonic and thoughtwaves which struck responses in Renark's mind and body. He realised that these entities may have once been like himself, but had lost the power of direct speech when they gained the power to dwell on all levels of the multiverse.

He found he could communicate with the entity by modulating his own speech and thinking as far as possible in pictures.

'You wish (complicated geometric patterns) help…?'

'Yes (picture of universe contracting)…'

'You from (picture of a pregnant woman which changed quickly to a womb - an embryo, not quite human, appeared in it)…?'

Renark deliberated the meaning of this, but did not take long to realise what the entity was trying to say. Already he had half realised the significance.

Logic, based on the evidence he had seen and heard in the rest of the Shifter, was leading Renark towards an inescapable conclusion.

'Yes,' he said.

'You must wait.'

'For what?'

'Picture of a vast universe, multi-planed, turning about a central point. Until (picture of the Shifter moving through time, space and other dimensions towards the Hub).'

Renark realised what the picture meant. It could only mean one thing. He had only been shown it briefly, yet he understood clearly.

He had been shown the centre of the universe, the original place through which all the universal radii passed, from which all things had come. There were no alternate universes at the centre. When the Shifter passed through the centre - what…?

But what if the Shaarn succeeded in stopping the system's progress before it reached the Hub? He had to dismiss the idea. If the Shifter stopped too soon there would be no need for further speculation. No need for anything.

'What will happen there (misty picture of the multi-verse)?' he asked.

'Truth. You must wait here until (Hub with Shifter) then go (the binary star - the Shifter's star)…'

He had to wait in Limbo until the Shifter reached the Hub and then they must journey towards - no, into - the sun!

He transmitted a horrified picture of himself and Asquiol burning.

The being said: 'No,' and disappeared again.

When it reappeared, Renark said: 'Why?'

'You are expected.' The being faded, then vanished.

Since time did not exist here they couldn't tell how long they had waited. There were none of the usual bodily indications that time was passing.

Quite simply, they were in Limbo.

Every so often the being, or one like it, would reappear. Sometimes he would impart information regarding the Shifter's slow progress, sometimes he would just be there. Once a number of his kind appeared but vanished immediately.

Then, finally, the dweller appeared and a picture of the Shifter entering the area of the Multiversal Centre manifested itself in Renark's mind.

With relief and a bounding sense of anticipation, he prepared to experience - Truth.

Soon, whether he lived or died, remained sane or went insane, he would know. He and Asquiol would be the first of their race to know.

And this, they both realised, was all that mattered.

Then they went outwards.

They went towards the flaring, agonisingly brilliant suns.

They felt they had no physical form as they had known it, and yet could sense the stuff of their bodies clinging about them.

They poured their massless bodies into the fiery heat, the heart of the star, and eventually came to the Place of the Originators - not their natural habitat, but a compromise between Renark's and theirs.

They saw, without using their eyes, the Originators.

They could hear the Originators communicating, but there was no sound. All was colour, light and formlessness. Yet everything had a quality of bright existence, true reality.

'You are here,' said the Originators musingly, as one. 'We have been awaiting you and grown somewhat impatient. Your rate of development was not what we had hoped.'

On behalf of his race, in the knowledge of what the Originators meant, Renark said: 'I am sorry.'

'You were always a race to progress only when danger threatened.'

'Do we still exist?' Renark asked.

'Yes.'

'For how long?' Asquiol spoke for the first time.

The Originators did not answer his question directly. Instead, they said:

'You wish us to make changes. We expected this. That is why we speeded up the metamorphosis of your universe. You understand that although your universe is contracting, it will still exist as individual galaxies, suns and planets, matter of most kinds in different formations?'

'But the human race - what of that?'

'We should have let it die. Intelligent organic life cannot undergo the strains of the change. If you had not come to us, we should have let it die - regretfully. But our judgment was correct. We let you know of the coming catastrophe and you used all your resources of will and judgment to come here as we hoped you would.'

There was a pause, and then the Originators continued:

'Like all other races in the multiverse, yours is capable of existing on all levels. Not just one. But, because of these links you have with the rest of the levels, you would have perished, being not fully natural to just one level. None of the intelligent forms could survive such a catastrophe. We were responsible for placing them all in their present environment. Each plane of the multiverse serves as a separate seeding bed for a multitude of races, one of which may survive and succeed us. Your plane serves, in your terms, as a womb. You are our children - our hope. But if you fail to overcome the special limitations we set upon you, you, like us, shall die. But you shall die… still-born.'

'Then what is to become of us?'

'We made the changes in your universe in order to accelerate your rate of development, so that representatives of your race would find a way to us. To the greatest extent you have succeeded, but you must return rapidly and inform your race of their need to develop more rapidly, more dynamically. We shall afford you the means, this time, of evacuating your universe. But we are growing old, and you, of all the intelligent races in the multiverse, are needed to take our place. You cannot do that until you are ready. Either you succeed in achieving your birthright, or, like us, perish in chaos and agony.

'You have proved to us that we were justified in selecting you, but you can overcome the boundaries we set around you. But hurry, we beg you - hurry…'

'What will happen if we succeed?'

'You will experience a stage of metamorphosis. Soon you will no longer need a universe of the kind you know now. Things are coming to an end. You have the choice of life - more than life or death!'

Renark accepted this. It was all he could do.

'And us - what is our function now?'

'To perform what you set out to do.'

There was a long, long pause.

Womb-warmth filled the two men and tune stopped for them as the Originators exuded sympathy and understanding. But glowing like hard reality beneath this, Renark sensed - his own oblivion? His own death? Something lay there in the future. Something ominous was in store for him.

'You are right, Renark,' said the Originators.

'I can't be right or wrong. I have no idea what my fate is.'

'But you sense, perhaps, our foreknowledge of your termination as a physical entity - perhaps your end as a conscious entity. It is hard to tell. Your spirit is a great one, Renark - a mighty spirit that is too great for the flesh that chains it. It must be allowed to spread, to permeate the multiverse!'

'So be it,' Renark said slowly.

Asquiol could neither understand nor believe what the Originators were saying. His form - golden, flashing red - bounced and flared before Renark as he said:

'Are you to die, Renark?'

'No! No!'

Renark's voice roared like a tower of flame. He addressed his friend. 'When I am gone you must lead our race. You must direct them towards their destiny - or perish with them. Do you understand?'

'I accept what you say, but without understanding. This experience is driving us to madness!'

The cool tones of the Originators swept inwards like flowing ice to catch their attention and silence them.

'Not yet, not yet. You must both retain something of your old forms and your old convictions. Your part is not played out yet. Now that you understand the nature of the multi-verse, it will not be difficult to supply you with material means for escaping your shrinking universe. We will give you knowledge of a machine to produce a warp effect and enable your people to travel to another, safer universe where they will undergo further tests. Our plans have not fully worked themselves out yet. There are others of your race involved - and you must meet and react and harden one another before you can fulfill the destiny we offer you. You, Asquiol, will be entrusted with this part of the mission.'

'Renark is the strongest,' Asquiol said quietly.

'Therefore Renark's spirit must be sacrificed as a gift to the rest of you. This is necessary.'

'How shall we accomplish this exodus to a new universe?' Renark asked hollowly.

'We will help. We shall instil in your fellow creatures a trust in the word of you both. It will necessarily be a temporary thing. Once you have left your universe, our workings must be of a subtler sort, and only the efforts of certain individuals will save you.'

'We shall be on our own?' Asquiol questioned.

'Virtually, yes.'

'What shall we find in this new universe?'

'We do not know, for it is likely that your jump will be a random one into any of the other multiversal planes. We cannot guarantee you a friendly reception. There are forces opposed to our purpose - meaner intellects who strive to prevent the evolution of our being.'

'Our being?' Asquiol's shape flickered and re-formed.

'Yours - ours - everyone's. We, the Originators, call ourselves Intelligent Optimists, since we see a purpose, of sorts, to existence. But there are pessimists in the universe. They prey upon us, seek to destroy us, since they themselves have given up hope of ever breaking the bonds which chain them to the half-real state in which they exist. They have their unknowing supporters among your own segment of the total race.'

'I understand.'

With those two words they became whole men. They saw, at last, the real universe - the myriad-planed universe comprising many, many dimensions so that there was no empty space at all, but a crowded, rich existence through which they had previously moved unknowing.

With an effort of his titanic will, Renark said urgently: 'One thing. What is your purpose? What is our ultimate purpose?'

To exist,' was the simple reply. 'You cannot have, as yet, real knowledge of what that means. Existence is the beginning and the end. Whatever significance you choose to put upon it is irrelevant. If we were to die before you were ready to take our place, then all our creation would die. The multi-verse would die. Chaos would flood over everything and a formless, mindless, fluctuating shroud would mark our passing.'

'We do not want that,' said Asquiol and Renark together.

'Neither do we. That is why you are here. Now - the information you will need.'

Their minds, it seemed, were taken by a gentle hand and sent along a certain course of logic until, at length, they had complete understanding of the principle involved in building dimension-travelling space-ships.

In what was, for them, normal space-time, it would have been virtually impossible to have formulated the principle in all its aspects. But now, dwelling in the whole multiverse, the logic seemed simple. They were confident that they could impart the information to their own race.

'Are you satisfied?' the Originators asked.

'Perfectly,' Renark said. 'We must hurry now, and return to our own universe. The exodus must begin as soon as possible.'

'Farewell, Renark. It is unlikely that when we meet again you will remember us. Farewell, Asquiol. When we meet again let us hope that you have succeeded in this matter.'

'Let us hope so,' Asquiol said gravely.

Then their beings were spreading backwards and streaming through the multiverse towards the ship which still lay on Roth.