The Centauri Device

FOURTEEN The Third Speed

Down there in the bunker, the Centauri Device had killed him as surely as a Chambers bolt: his reflexes were gone. He spun round desperately, reaching for his gun but knowing he'd never have the time to use it

No blow fell.

Instead, a long pale hand danced momentarily like a mirage an inch from his face. He stepped back instinctively, blinked. In that fleeting instant of blindness, something was altered; and when he opened his eyes again, the hand belonged to someone he knew, all the menace had drained from the toiling figures on the flood-plain, and even dim Centauri had brightened around him.

Across the palm of that quick hand there lay a single green carnation, long-stemmed and full of grace, beads of moisture clustered in its every fresh, intricate fold.

'We assumed you were dead,' was all he could think of to say.

'I may have been,' said Himation the anarchist. 'Who knows?' And he laughed. The storm collar of his long black cloak was turned up, his wide-brimmed hat was pulled well down: all that could be seen of his face was a glitter of eyes. There was distant amusement in them, and some new thing besides, as if since Pater's death he had pursued in austere and derisive splendor a destiny quite different from any laid down for him. His hands, though, were still full of deft mischief and dishonesty, and discovered a small frog behind Truck's ear.

'Do you always travel with that, Captain? There, you laughed: I saw it distinctly.' He looked down at the Centauri Device, sneered, and clasped Truck's free hand between both of his own. 'I'm glad to see you.'

'It doesn't affect you,' said Truck. He wished he could see into the gap between collar and hat. 'What do you see me carrying, Himation?'

'Why should I tell you?' He winked. 'Other things have "affected" me since we last met — '

For a moment, it seemed as if he might add something to that; but when he spoke again, it was to say:

'Come on, we have to get you out of here before' — shading his eyes against an imaginary sun and peering at the line of advancing men, who had come close enough for their hoarse metallic cries to be heard flapping over the intervening silt-flats like mechanical birds — 'this lot catches hold of you.' The line was thinner now, broken in places; a short, stumpy female figure trotted tirelessly at the head of it, strung with bandoleers of vomit-gas grenades and brandishing a pistol in each hand.

Himation grabbed Truck's arm. 'Run, Captain!'

'Where to?'

But Truck already knew. They breasted a rise, Himation in the lead, his cloak billowing out behind him. A vast estuary spread itself before them, gray and calm, its far banks lost in a haze of rain. On it, some fifty yards from the shore, there floated a great golden ship. She was fully a quarter of a mile long; her raked and curved fins shone tike sails in some exotic Byzantine wind; enamel work writhed deliciously over her lean hull, words in a lost language of rose stems.

' "The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies",' whispered John Truck.

'Look' — black shrouded arm, long white finger, an extravagant swirl of cloak — 'they've sent a boat out for us!'

Himation flung up his arms. Playing cards showered from the mirthless air of Centauri, colored ribbons burst like fireworks from his fingertips; when he bowed right and left, small animals could be seen scuttling round the crown of his hat, while unruly red hair escaped its brim. Awed by his own genius, he shouted with laughter — in a kind of possessive joy, a laugh that went on and on.

When General Gaw struggled over the rise, she found only the echo of that laughter to comfort her, as Atalanta in Calydon, the last raider, shook off the water of the bay like a gilded hound and raced up into the sky on a blaze of white light.

'Where are we going?'

Centauri displayed its scars like Ruth Berenici in a Carter's Snort dawn. Atalanta in Calydon hung a thousand miles above that wan face, a cobalt blue light washing her exquisite alien metalwork, dead men bobbing round her hull in thankless, eccentric orbits. Himation drew himself up and turned from a long contemplation of the wretched embers of the battle. What he saw out there was anybody's guess, but it made him tense and withdrawn.

'A hundred thousand men died out there,' he said, ignoring Truck's question. He fidgeted with a pack of cards. 'I hate this place.' He sighed with a kind of fierce, impatient compassion. 'Why do they do it?' Then, in a low voice:

'You're going to Earth, Captain, I've only got one thing to do before — ' He hesitated, then shrugged. 'I'll drop you off there first'

'But — '

Truck guttered into silence. He'd expected more: if not a conjuring trick — a spiriting away — then at least some lessening of his responsibility. The anarchist's appearance had lifted his spirits; now they fell again, and he felt betrayed. He shrugged helplessly. 'You aren't even coming with me? What can I do with it on my own?'

The Device was wrapped in the remains of his old Opener cloak in case it affected Himation's crew; it was heavy, and lately, it had become slightly warm to the touch; a faint resonance, a distant thready pulse of vibration, crawled beneath its skin. Did it arm automatically on the identification of Centauran genes? He was alone with it again, and without hope.

'We should dump it, Himation. Right over the edge, where nobody'll ever find it again.'

'It must end on Earth, where everything ends up. Otherwise there'll be more of this — ' He nodded at the orbital graveyard outside, the corpses floating like wet cardboard on dark water.

'I can think of a time when you'd have laughed at a few killings. It was you who licked the knife at Carter's Snort, not me. You might at least come to Earth to help me, if Earth is so bloody important.Tell me why you won't.'

Alarm bells filled the ship.

Himation whirled to the screens, snapping his fingers at the quarterdeck crew. 'Captain, I — later.' He glanced over his shoulder at Truck for a moment, shrugged eloquently. He conferred with his fire-control room.

'We have a strong trace in the one-fifty mile band, Himation. She's lifted from Centauri. Do we fight?'

'We leave.'

Atalanta in Calydon throbbed and moaned with the power buildup. Waxy blue light drowned the bridge. On the screens, the image of the graveyard quivered and broke up, those wretched hulks taking on for a precious instant the gaudy colors of the orchid, the forms of imaginary beasts. With this transfiguration, panic jumped out of a dark hole and shook him like a dog with a dead rat.

'Tell me why!' he shouted across the bridge. 'You owe me that!'

Heads turned toward him. Atalanta toppled over the thin edge of space and into the dyne-fields.

Himation relaxed. He crossed the bridge and said, 'All right, Captain. It's hard — I don't belong here any more — you can't imagine — ' He shook his head, made a dismissive gesture with one hand. 'All this — ' Finally, it tumbled out:

'Captain, I've been outside the Galaxy since we last met!'

'Listen, Captain, (he continued): you know how it was at the end of Pater's last fight -

Atalanta was lost under the Arab guns, running nice a fawn. I heard Pater cry 'Dyne out!' I could see him flaring along in my wake, trying to draw their fire. But my bridge was exploding with mad light, and long reaction guns had breached our hull. He came in time and again, sowing torpedoes, spouting fire 'Dyne out!' — but his forward batteries were shot away, The Green Carnation was ripped open down her length like a golden pike. He stormed past one last time, then I saw him flicker — 'Dyne out!' — and fade. Twice, three times, he wrestled with the dyne-fields. He was superb: no other man could have forced that wreck into the Impossible Medium. Rolling like a bitch, still shooting, she vanished.

'I tried to follow. Atalanta clawed with dreadful energy at the fabric of space, desperate to push herself clear. Her bridge trembled with ionization — metal ran with a fire that consumed nothing! I knew we were wedged like those pathetic hulks we had seen earlier in the battle, mere specters caught on the edge between two hypothetical eternities. Then I had her through — flip! — like a grape pip flicked across a darkened sickroom. I sweated. Captain, I swear I prayed with my relief. But when I noticed my bridge circuitry, I knew I was no longer in control: it had melted to slag! My crew were helpless -

Atalanta had taken over.

'None of our own equipment was operating; instead, the alien machinery shivered with an intense white light. The hull seemed to melt and withdraw — we swam in senselessness — all solid forms vanished in amazing twists and contortions: and when we looked at one another, aghast, we were no longer men! Space had somehow entered the ship, and was crawling through us in slow, luminous waves. We were steeped in it: we were birds of paradise, we wore the masks of gilded deep-sea fishes in some tideless ocean, we were glass effigies with infinitely thin, attenuated limbs -

I knew we would die, if we were not already dead (and trapped forever in some unimaginable posture of unreality). But even as the thought formed, space coughed us up -

And out into darkness!

Nothing moved beyond the hull. I rushed to the screens — they were dark; we restored our circuitry, but they remained dark. We pushed out sensors and probes — they recorded a terrifying distant trace; we regained power, we spun her like a compass needle to face it -

There before us lay the Galaxy, fault as an afterimage crawling across a dead man's eye!

We've seen it, Captain, from the outside. Aboard Atalanta, we've seen them all: Andromeda, M32, NGC205 for our first, hesitant, skeptical journey — and later to others so unbelievably far out that they have no names. There is a third level of Space, Captain; a Third Speed. I've spoken with its denizens, and learned the glory of the moth in the lamp-bowl — can you understand why I hate this rubbish heap, with its putty brains and feet of lead? I've been beyond!

Since that day, Atalanta in Calydon has flown herself: we simply navigate. We brought her in triumph back to Howell after that first wild flight — only to find Pater still and cold in his peacock room, yourself gone, no one knew where. That fastidious prince! His life was the purest fabrication of Art, the most gilded of lies — but I loved him. We outfitted the Driftwood of Decadence as his bier; we filled her with prints and porcelain and fans of the utmost sophistry; all Howell gathered to watch her final firework leap into the unknown. She went off on a sigh, on a whisper, like a dream of unaccustomed beauty.

She's traveling still, Captain, at the Third Speed; Pater may have reached the edge of the Universe itself by now. He deserved nothing less.

After that, all I could do was come in search of you -

I found a trace of you on Stomach, a memory in the eyes of an androgyne whore. But the trail was cold. I spent a week stalking the city of Intestinal Revelation, dressed in a stolen Opener cloak. From there, I tracked you to Avernus. Avernus! — the worst place in the universe! But I ceased to fear for you when I heard that some lunatic Opener novice with a gun had wiped out Chalice Veronica and his whole Paraphythium operation in a single night. And I was up there in the parking orbit — not alone — to watch you blow your hatches on not one body but two.

You would seem to have become something of a nemesis -

'One of them was Fix,' said Truck. He felt bitterly angry: for Pater, for himself, for what they had so nearly achieved on that last ride into death, with The Green Carnation, her heart burst, falling to bits around them; and for what he had in exchange — dead friends, and the Device like a yoke across his back.

'They've killed Fix and Tiny now. I haven't anybody left.' Himation had rescued something from the night, but Truck's boots were full of lead. He felt like crying, but, 'I still owe them for that,' he said, with as much defiance as he could muster. 'And if I did for ben Barka, I'm glad. I meant to.'

'But you didn't, Captain. That parking orbit was somewhat crowded, I'm afraid: and everyone in it there to watch you: Nasser, Solomon, Atalanta — oh, we made a fine procession later, following you to Centauri. Ben Barka was plucked out of the murder trajectory by his own flagship. He was in the fight that destroyed Nasser and the Ella Speed; he was in the bunkers. Like the General, he is a survivor.'

Truck was aching in every bone, whether from weariness or misery or his untreated overdose he neither knew nor cared. He sat down on the deck. He put the Device down beside him, stretched out his legs, and examined his hands. What could he do? — all along, his gestures of defiance had been crude and fruitless. He stared desperately up at the anarchist.

'They'll hound me 'til I'm dead, Himation.'

No reply.

'What do you imagine I can achieve on Earth? I don't even know what this thing does.'

Himation shifted uncomfortably, looking at the hull above Truck's head. 'None of this means much to me since I went out there. Space is a habit.' His eyes clouded, probing out past the hull. 'Pater saw something in yon, some strength that neither he nor I possessed. He wanted you to take the Device and do with it as you chose. He thought that that action in itself, whatever the purpose of the thing, might be enough. You understand? Your importance has always lain in your skepticism.

'And he intended you to take it to Earth. That's the only reason I came back at all. I hate this place after what I've seen outside.'

'What have you seen?' said Truck angrily. 'Tell me that' But he wouldn't explain, and for a while each man was absorbed in himself — Truck rubbing his hands nervously, full of self-pity, while the anarchist gazed at the flying streamers of illusion on Atalanta's screens, at his crew — at anything but Truck's face.

Finally, Truck said: 'You don't know that Pater was right. You don't even know what he meant. Neither of us do. I'm not even sure he did.'

Himation shrugged. 'No,' he admitted.

Truck shivered. He couldn't control his hands: independent, they moved gently over the Device, taking its thready, secret pulse. 'Himation, I want to go with you,' he whispered almost in audibly. He jumped to his feet. 'Please. You owe me that. You're using me, Pater was using me, just like the rest of them -!'

But Himation had turned away, and pretended not to hear; whether out of consideration or embarrassment, Truck couldn't decide.

Midnight on the German Strip. All real life had fled this place with the Rat Bomb wars. Hard frost and a lunar desperation lay on the land from Lubeck south to Plauen. Coburg and Marburg, Dresden and Magdeburg — white ruins under a cold sky; Hanover and Hamburg, names on acres of rust and concrete, old weapon pads, interconnecting pits and craters. Somewhere through it ran an old, lost frontier.

Beneath a bright acidic moon, John Truck stood with Himation the anarchist on the lower slopes of the Brocken. In the shadow of the mountain — confirmation of an old despair — lay Atalanta in Calydon. The north-east wind, full of ice particles and the smell of the cold gray Baltic brine, whipped Himation's cloak out like a flag.

'This is as close as I can get you to Gottingen.' The wind boomed over the bare rock above, stole his voice, and howled off with it to the frozen nightmare of Thuringen.

'What the hell am I supposed to do there?'

'There are people, at least. You couldn't have expected me to put her down at Albion.'

Truck blew on his cupped hands. 'No.' He set his back to the wind — he would let it blow him along: when had he ever done anything else? — and hunched his shoulders, looking along the valley. 'I'd better go before I freeze to death.' Nothing moved down there in the wind. Boulders or buildings, everything was covered with verglas and frozen snow.

'Look,' said Himation, holding out his hand, 'I'm sorry if this seems hard — '

Truck laughed bitterly. 'It's hard,' he said. 'And it's no good me saying that I don't blame you, because I do. But' — he grinned — 'I'd do the same myself.' He touched the anarchist's hand briefly and walked quickly away, before he was tempted to say anything more. He'd gone about ten paces when Himation called 'Wait!'

He went back.

Himation had taken off his cloak and hat. He was thin and hollow-chested, younger than Truck had imagined, perhaps nineteen or twenty. His great shock of red hair and dead white face made an astonishing contact with his bright blue eyes. Shivering and jogging from one foot to the other, he bundled the clothes up and held them out.

'It's bloody bitter out here — and I shan't need them any more.'

He looked suddenly diffident and boyish.

Truck took them from him. 'You don't look much like your father,' he said.

Himation smiled uncertainly. 'My father? Oh, Pater.' He laughed, 'Did he tell you he was my father?'

Truck shrugged.

'It doesn't matter.' He held up the bundle. 'Will these do tricks for me?'

'Who knows?'

Himation smiled shyly. He reached out and plucked a green carnation from behind Truck's ear. 'I'd better have this back. Goodbye, Captain.'

He made off toward his ship: stooped, lean, full of energy, as if he'd been newly released from some prison. A flurry of snow whirled round him, like the prop to an illusion.

'Tell them to look for me in Andromeda,' he called.

He raised his hand. A flower fell from it and was snatched away by the wind.

Truck slung the cloak around him, buttoned its collar, and pulled down his hat. He retrieved the Centauri Device from a small puddle it had melted for itself in the snow, and went into the darkness of the valley, alone. Behind him, he heard Atalanta in Calydon lift into the air.

' "The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies." '

He didn't dare look back.

Perhaps four hours later, exhausted and covered with snow, he blundered into an IWG early warning post somewhere in the derelict suburbs of Gottingen. 'I've come to give myself up,' he said, and peered bemusedly into the twilight of the operations room, the skin of his face smarting in the sudden warmth.

Thin, unnatural faces squinted back at him through a haze of tobacco smoke, underlit by the backwash of green light from plotboard and ultrasonic map: red-eyed, eerie and frightened, like underground animals blinking up from burrows -

After a month in one of those places, waiting for the war-to start an operator begins to see things up on the empty slopes of the Vogelsburg, where nothing has stirred for over three centuries; he imagines massive troop movements among the drowned storm-cellars of Braunshweig and Salgitzer; he discovers an intruder in every silent fall of powdered mortar in a vacant city. He wears five keys chained to his neck — used in a proper sequence, they will kill the world.

After two months, he can hardly remember in which order to avoid using them -

Halfway through the graveyard shift, tired and sick among a litter of disposable plastic cups, all they saw was a faceless, threatening figure in a dark cloak, snow swirling behind it; and under its left arm an indistinct, shifty object that somehow chafed at their irritated eyes. All they heard it declare, in a muffled, deadly voice, was: 'I've come — '

A Chambers gun spluttered in the gloom.

Shadows hurled themselves over the walls, jerky and panic-stricken.

'You bastards!' screamed John Truck, and clutched at himself in astonishment. He snatched his own gun from his boot and dived behind a radar module.

It was a short exchange. At twenty-five or less, photophobic and with the ulcers of a sour responsibility eating at their insides, they were already old men. He killed them all, lay for a minute behind the console, whimpering. When he came out, he saw that some of them were clutching their keys, while others simply stared relieved at the low ceiling, blood on their rolled-up shirtsleeves — each one thankful, perhaps, that it was only his own death and not the world's.

Truck moaned. He was seeing in half-tones. 'You should have given me a chance,' he murmured, supporting himself against the door-jamb.

Outside, the wind was gusting up to Force Eight. There was a small VTOL pad behind the building. Halfway to it, he collapsed; lay there surprised under the sickening slow sweep of the ultrasound antennae and examined his wound. The bolt had eaten its way into his ribs, low down on the right side. The fire had gone out, but something was leaking from a fist-sized hole.

'Oh God,' he prayed. 'Oh, Christ'

He leaned on one elbow in the frozen slush and retched with fear. He couldn't feel anything down there, no pain, nothing. He wiped his mouth, looked up. A single aircraft was on the pad. He hauled himself laboriously toward it, hissing and gasping every time his right side touched the ground, out of horror that he'd get something in the wound.

He hadn't once let go of the thing under his armpit was warm enough now to give him comfort in the wild night.