Читать книгу The Plurality of Worlds - Brian Stableford - Страница 11

CHAPTER EIGHT

The descent into the heart of the world was completed without further incident. Thomas had hoped to find something more spectacular at the bottom of the shaft than corridors crowded with the same kinds of creatures he had seen on the moon, but that was all there was. The tunnels seemed a little more crowded, significantly more odorous and much slimier, but the differences were of degree, not of kind.

Unity, Thomas thought, obviously implied a degree of uniformity. This world’s shell was a great deal gaudier and more elaborately-carved than the moon’s rough-hewn surface, but the same swarms filled its interior. There was no egg-laying arena here, though; instead, the five visitors from Earth were conducted to the end of a blind corridor, whose end-wall seemed featureless at first, but did not remain so for long.

While the humans stood before it, lined up alongside one another with their insectile and mechanical companions standing discreetly behind them, the “wall” began to flow.

Thomas took a reflexive step back, but the liquid flow was far too fast for him. The “wall” surged forward like a flood, deluging him and his companions. It enveloped his limbs and his head, moving into his nostrils and between his parted lips with even greater alacrity than the opportunistic ethereal.

Thomas felt certain that he would be drowned, but he was not. Although his lungs were flooded with warm fluid, he did not lose consciousness—indeed, his senses seemed to become sharper. His ears were full of fluid too, and he could feel it pressing tremulously on his eardrums, the palpation sounding a strangely plaintive musical note, lower than he had ever heard from any panpipe.

“Do not be afraid,” said a strange voice, singing rather than speaking in English. “We mean you no harm. We merely want to know you, as intimately as we can.”

Thomas could not reply; his vocal cords were impotent, and he did not suppose that the fleshcore could hear his subvocalizations as Lumen could, given that its intimacy did not seem to extend to the interior of the brain.

The intimate examination did not last long; the liquid flesh retreated as quickly as it had arrived.

The wall seemed solid again, but it was still pliable; it rapidly took on the image of a face: a human face.

At first, Thomas thought that the face was merely generic, but then Drake whispered: “It’s a portrait of you, Tom.”

“They clearly have no eye for handsomeness,” de Vere muttered—but he shut up with a gulp when the wall opened its eyes. The image was some ten feet tall, from the top of its forehead to the tip of its bearded chin: a giant, whose stare seemed very intimidating. The lips parted slightly, but they did not speak. There was, it seemed, no throat or lungs within the mass of flesh behind the face—and if there was a brain of sorts behind the stare, it was no human brain. The expression on the face was not overtly hostile, but Thomas hoped that it was not an expression he would ever have cause to wear.

Thomas glanced sideways at his companions, glad to see that even Field had suffered the experience without falling down; then he turned to look at the English-speaking machine. “It will understand me if I address it like this, I suppose?” he asked.

“Of course,” said the machine. “Earth’s observers have been reporting to it for centuries. I shall reply on its behalf—there should be no delay.”

“Let me do this,” Lumen said, silently.

“No,” Thomas said. “I will do it.” he was not entirely certain that he could successfully fight the invader for control of his own lips, but the ethereal did not try to insist, It merely said: “Be careful, Thomas!”

Thomas looked at the giant face again, resisting its intimidatory effect. “Since you have introduced yourself in your way,” he said, “I shall introduce us in ours. My name is Thomas Digges, in the service of Queen Jane of England. My companions are Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, and John Field, representing the Church of England. We do not speak for our entire species, let alone for all of vertebrate-kind, but we are willing to answer any questions you might care put to us, in a spirit of amity.”

The machine had been right; there was no delay in obtaining an answer. “The fleshcore understands everything that you have said,” the inorganic entity pronounced, flatly, “and thanks you for your generosity. It would like each of you to state, in turn, if you will, what your hopes for the future are.”

Thomas was momentarily confused, wondering whether his interrogator was referring to his future as an individual man, or the political future of England, or the future of the entire human race. While he hesitated, John Field—who must have given some forethought to the question of what he would say if he ever found himself face-to-face with the Devil—said: “To do God’s will, and spread His word.”

“Aye,” said Drake, assuming his customary pose of negligent bravado. “That—and to beat the Spaniards, so that England might rule the waves and take possession of the Americas.”

“To be merry in good company,” de Vere supplied, after a brief silence “with the aid of wine, women and the theatre—and to do God’s will, of course.”

“To discover glory,” Raleigh said, after a similar pause, “with all that implies, in the eyes of England and God alike.”

Thomas was still confused, wondering how much of a deficit in what his friends had said that needed to be made good immediately, and where to start. He felt the pressure of everyone’s expectation—including Lumen’s—and yet he continued to hesitate. Finally, before his passenger could offer to intervene, and feeling that he had at least to begin speaking even if he had not yet finished thinking, he said: “First of all,” he said, “to bring my ship and my crew safely home, so that I might report to Master John Dee and the Queen of England what we have discovered beyond the upper limit of the Earth’s atmosphere. Secondly, that we may profit from what we have learned, in terms of human understanding of the shape and plan of Creation, and our place within it. Thirdly, to maintain the communication we began with our new friend Aristocles, whose death I regret bitterly—and to extend that communication further, with the great community that extends between the stars. Fourthly, that the knowledge of what we have found might enable human beings to see and comprehend that their differences from one another are much slighter than they have ever contrived to believe, and that there is much greater virtue in collaboration than in conflict.” He stopped then, lest he say too much.

“Trust a mathematician to display his skill in counting,” de Vere murmured, before Raleigh silenced him with an elbow in the ribs.

“Well said, Tom,” Drake whispered. “There’s not a diplomat in the court who could have done better.”

One of their moth-like attendants clicked its wing-cases, but Thomas could not tell whether there was any meaning in the sound, or what that meaning might be.

“The core would like to know, Thomas Digges,” the machine said, with a slight intonation that was equally enigmatic, “what your response is to what the rogue machine told you.”

Thus far, Thomas had assumed that the violent interruption to his progress to this encounter had been exactly what it seemed: an intervention by a dissident element within the True Civilization. Now, he wondered whether it might all have been a sham: a ploy mounted by his interrogators. He had assumed, too, that Walter Raleigh’s spider-bite had either been an accident of happenstance or an assassination attempt. Now he wondered whether it might have been staged for subtler reasons. He reminded himself that the True Civilization’s philosophers, like the ethereals, had probably been studying humankind, albeit from a distance, for a very long time—centuries, at least. Was it possible, he wondered, that the supposedly aberrant pattern of life on Earth had not arisen as a freak of the Divine Will, but as some kind of experiment on the part of the True Civilization’s practitioners of some kind of New Learning?

“My response,” he said, slowly, “is that if the other machine was right about there being some fundamental difference of philosophy between exoskeletal and endoskeletal forms of life, it cannot be greater than the fundamental difference of philosophy between lobsters and moths, or between ants and slugs. Even if it were, it would be better to regard it as an opportunity for expanding the versatility of the unity at the heart of the True Civilization than to think of it as a potential generator of enmity and strife.”

Drake did not whisper any further encouragement, and Thomas could sense a certain perplexity in his friend’s stance. No one else had heard what the murderous machine had said, and he had not yet had an opportunity to tell them. He did not yet know what he ought to tell them, even if he could be confident that his words were not being overheard.

When he glanced sideways, Thomas saw that Field was having great difficulty suppressing his preacher’s instinct—but Field was no fool, and knew that there were occasions when even the most fervent messenger of God might do better to hold his tongue.

“Thank you, Thomas,” the machine said. “Master Dee will doubtless be proud of you.” Thomas took careful note of the fact that the entity had said “will” rather than “would”, and the consequent implication that the fleshcore really did intend to send them safely home.

“May I ask a question?” Thomas asked.

“You may,” the machine said.

“Is the representative of the Great Fleshcores, and of the True Civilization, willing to guarantee that the precious rarity of the human race, and its vertebrate kin, will be protected against any predator or parasite that seeks to destroy it, to the full extent of their ability?”

There was no delay in making the reply. “This representative of the Great Fleshcores and the True Civilization is willing to guarantee that your world will be protected against external predators to the extent of its need—with the condition that no species therefrom will become a predator upon any other world or species.”

Thomas took due note of the fact that he was not asked, or expected, to guarantee that.

The giant eyes closed again, and the wall’s face began to fade away.

Thomas was about to cry “Wait!” when his discreet passenger said: “Don’t! You’ve said more than enough—and the fleshcore is satisfied, for now.”

“Have we passed our trial by ordeal, Master Digges?” Raleigh whispered, before Thomas could reply to his silent companion.

Thomas had to suppose that his friend was right, and that this had indeed been a trial by ordeal from the moment the Queen Jane had passed from the air into the ether. It still was.

“For now,” he whispered, echoing the ethereal’s words, with all their ominous import. Pray to God that this is more than a dream induced by that strange smoke-creature, Thomas thought. We might wish to have found a kinder and more palatable truth—but, please God, let it be the truth that we have found, not some stupid nightmare. He was not certain that his prayer would be granted, although he told himself that he was incapable of inventing such a nightmare, and that there was surely no playwright in Queen Jane’s court who could have imagined a drama as this sort. If the ethereal could be trusted, dreaming was a rare gift—or curse—and it should not be exercised too generously.

“My companions may take you back to the moon now,” the machine told Thomas. “Returning the ethership to Earth will, however, be your own responsibility.”

“We can do that,” Thomas assured him. “Will we be visited by their kind—or any other—in the near future?”

“Probably not,” the machine said, “but you may be sure that they will be watching you. They will find a way to communicate with you, if they need to do so.”

As they turned to go, Thomas looked full into John Field’s face, and saw a new terror in it, which suggested that Aristocles’ kin would be wise not to show themselves too readily on the surface of the Earth at the present time, if they did not want to cause dire alarm.