Читать книгу The Plurality of Worlds - Brian Stableford - Страница 8

CHAPTER FIVE

While food was being brought from the ethership Thomas was allowed to go out on to the surface of the moon and climb the slope of a shallow mountain.

“That is the hyperetheric transmitter and receiver,” Lumen told him, as soon as his eye lighted on the massive object, which looked something like a cross between a cannon and a refracting telescope.

When Thomas looked up into the sky his ever-attentive guest was equally prompt to say: “This part of the lunar surface is on the face perpetually turned away from the Earth. Purely from the viewpoint of physics, the transmitter might just as easily have been located deep beneath the surface, but the convenience of practical alignment is a different matter.”

“Never mind that,” Thomas said. “Explain to me what a fleshcore is.”

“A very large organism,” Lumen replied, “compounded out of many individuals, whose alleged harmony—symbiosis is the best word I can synthesize from familiar etymological roots—has been taken to its intimate extreme in bodily fusion. Many inhabited worlds do not have one, as yet. This moon is too small, and is ill-equipped by nature for superficial elaboration and inorganic sophistication, being mostly made of stone without even an iron core like the Earth’s. That is a significant bone of contention here. Some Selenites ambitious to develop their home would be content to make use of matter harvested from the solar system’s halo, imported via ultraetheric canals—but even that sort of development would have a considerable corollary impact on the Earth. Other Selenites contend that it would be a frightful waste of time and effort to transport material from the halo when there is a much richer source of raw materials so close at hand.”

“The Earth,” Thomas said. He did not bother to ask what the difference was between “hyperetheric” and “ultraetheric” methods of transportation. Lumen had made so many other barely-compre­hensible improvisations that he had grown used to feeling that he was speaking some strange hybrid in which the Queen’s English was mingled with a Redskin or Hottentot tongue. He was making every possible effort to understand what he was told, but he was keenly aware of the extent to which his intellect and imagination were simply not up to the task. He was glad just to have grasped the broad outlines of the predicament in which he found himself.

“The Earth,” Lumen confirmed. “The Great Fleshcores will not permit its spoliation—and never will, I trust—but that does not prevent the adherents of the scheme hoping that a change of mind might be contrived. At the very least, it might help to license development of a slower and subtler kind, whose effects on the Earth’s surface would be gradual and subtle, as viewed from here, although they might seem considerably greater from the viewpoint of creatures attempting to survive and thrive on the surface. The more massive the moon becomes, the more massive its tidal effects will be—and if the surface is developed, there will be a large population of sapient machines involved, whose rogues and runaways would inevitably see the Earth as a useful refuge. You cannot imagine what a handful of renegade artificial intelligences might do to the pattern and prospects of human progress, but I can. Here comes the bugtrain with supplies from your ethership—we’d best go in and make our meal.”

“I’d rather bathe first,” Thomas said, glad that he still had some authority to decide what he did and thought.

He went down to the quarters that had been provided for his companions below the surface, and made his way to the chamber in which bathing facilities had been provided. Raleigh was there, alone, and seemed very glad to see him. Rather than avoiding him on account of his “possession,” all of his companions—including Field—had quickly become used to treating him as an oracle, capable of answering any and all questions, albeit enigmatically.

“What form will this impending journey take?” Raleigh wanted to know. “How shall we travel distances that would take light itself thousands of years to traverse, without any evident lapse of time?”

Thomas had already consulted his guest about that matter, and had no need to surrender authority over his tongue. “Mercifully,” he told his friend, as he stepped into the heated pool, having handed his clothes to a centipede in order that they might be carefully cleaned and mended by ingenious insectile seamstresses, “the void theorists and atomists alike seem to be completely wrong about the nature of space and matter. The elasticity of the individual goes far beyond the primitive displays of embryonic development and growth, provided one has the art of folding its form. The three dimensions of vision are not the only properties of space; there are many other dimensions, some of which extend beyond the world of vision into a vast series of parallel spaces, while others are squeezed within it into mere lines. We’ll be dispatched along one of those, emerging at a distant terminus without any sensation of time elapsed. Quite painless, I’m assured.”

“Painless it might be,” Raleigh replied, “but I can’t help feeling a certain nausea at the thought that we’re to be crushed so compactly that we have no manifest existence, then projected though a tunnel that has no manifest breadth, to a world so far away that a ray of light would take ten thousand years to catch us up.” He looked suspiciously at the palm of his hand, where there was a blob of some waxen substance their hosts had provided to facilitate the process of washing.

“Light wouldn’t catch us up as soon as that,” Thomas told him, “but otherwise, you seem to have the gist of it.” He applied foam generated by the waxen substance to his own body with a generous will; the sensation it imparted to his skin was by no means unpleasant, and its odor was not offensive.

“And will this world have sufficient affinity to free me from this sensation of weighing no more than a basket of apples?” Raleigh wanted to know.

“In terms of size, it will apparently be very large,” Thomas told him, summarizing the information that Lumen had given him, “but it will not exert a crushing affinity upon our bodies. It was once no bigger than the Earth, but it has been hollowed out, and all the material removed from the core redeployed upon its surface as an ever-expanding network of structures. Its core, meanwhile—having initially taken the form of a labyrinth like the one presently inside the moon—has been gradually filled by a single vast mass of flesh. These citizens of the universe remake their worlds in their own images, you see, with the molluskan model at the center. You may think of the planets of the True Civilization, if you wish, as snails with enormously convoluted shells, whose inner ramifications provide shelter to all manner of crab and insect societies, while their outer ramifications—which would appear to distant observers as their surfaces—are mostly populated by inorganic devices that mimic the properties of life: motile machines designed for countless different kinds of co-operative labor. The members of the True Civilization think, as it were, exoskeletally, habitually placing flesh at the core and protective armor at the periphery.”

Raleigh shook his head in bewilderment. “Can men really be so unusual in such a vast plurality of worlds?” he mused.

“It’s not just humans,” Thomas told him, rinsing himself off. “The entire vertebrate family is an anomaly. On other worlds, endoskeletal organization is a mere fancy, confined to a handful of wormlike and fishlike species, none of them larger than your thumb. For the descendants of fish to become reptiles, let alone birds and mammals, and to emerge from the sea as effective competitors for insects and their exoskeletal kin, was literally unthinkable until the True Civilization’s explorers found Earth.” He looked up as he finished speaking, thinking that he had glimpsed a movement in on of the shadowed coverts of the inordinately uneven ceiling, whose spiraling streamers of radiance were interrupted by numerous coverts.

“Field mistrusts this talk of evolution,” Raleigh told him, although he must have known that the clergyman had already made his opinions abundantly clear to Thomas, and was presumably trying to clarify matters in his own mind. “He is convinced that these creatures are devils sent to tempt and torment us. He is prepared to believe that the moon is Hell, and that the damned are being carefully hidden from our sight, but he does not believe that this exotic item of interdimensional artillery can shoot us to the stars. He thinks we shall be subjected to a clever illusion, with the intention of obliterating our faith.”

“I doubt that he thinks that you or I have any vestige of faith left, Walter,” Thomas said, wryly, as he let himself relax into the pool, savoring its comforts before steeling himself to get out, dress himself, feed himself and take a trip to the center of what Lumen called the galaxy—implying thereby that the Milky Way was merely one sidereal system among many.

“And he suspects de Vere of poisoning his with papist heresies,” Raleigh agreed. “I don’t much care what Ned thinks, but I trust your judgment. Is it possible, do you think, that your monstrous moth really is made in God’s image, while we are mere sports of mischance?”

“Aristocles and his kind do not think of God’s image in terms of a singular form,” Thomas told him. “They are as firmly opposed to idolatry, in their fashion, as any Puritan. God’s image, in the thinking of the True Civilization, is the image of collaboration between different species—what Lumen calls symbiosis by virtue of his incessant improvisation from Greek and Latin roots. He means more by that than the manner in which insectile species, crablike species and snail-like species play complementary roles in his beloved True Civilization. He can wax lyrical on the subject of the special relationships that exit between Earthly insects and flowers, ants and fungi, fiddler-crabs and sea anemones. In fact, Lumen seems to me to be as dedicated a celebrant of complex inter-relationships between creatures of many different kinds as his adversary Aristocles. All the life on an individual world, Aristocles claims, is not merely a single family in its own right, but an inseparable part of a much vaster family. God’s image, to him, is a kind of unity, represented by all life collectively rather than any particular form. Lumen seems to think along similar lines, although I’m not sure where he and his fellow ethereals fit into the pattern, from the viewpoint of the True Civilization or their own.”

“But we are not included in this unity of crabs, ticks and clams,” Raleigh said, peeved by the omission in spite of this being a club of which he had no wish to be a member. “Simply because of our horrid habit of wearing our hard structures on the inside rather than the outside, we’re not deemed fit company for creatures who wear their hard bits on the outside.” He looked up as he finished speaking, because Field had come into the unpartitioned room, carrying a pile of neatly-folded clothes. Although the clergyman was making every effort to avert his eyes from the bodies of his fellow men, his ears seemed to be fully alert.

“I am sorry,” the Puritan said. “The monsters would only bring your garments to the threshold—because Raleigh is right, I think, though he speaks half in jest. They can bear to look at us while we are clad, because they can consider our clothing a substitute for what you call an exoskeleton, but not while we are naked. They do not consider us part of their....untrue civilization. They are intent on our extermination, Thomas, for we do not fit into their demonic way of thinking. You must see that.”

Thomas climbed out of the bath, not caring that Field was almost as embarrassed by his naked presence as any exoskeletal bigot might have been. He took up a towel that was resting on an artificial stalagmite. Raleigh lingered, having finally committed himself more fully to the use of the alien soap.

“If that really is their intention, John,” Thomas said, calmly, “We cannot prevent them from liberating Earth on behalf of its frustrated lower orders. If we are being taken to the center of the sidereal system to stand trial on behalf of our species and its odd design, we had best make sure that we can mount a convincing defense.” Then he looked up again, abruptly, as he saw the movement in the dark covert for a second time.

“What’s that?” he asked Lumen.

“I don’t know,” the guest replied. “I only have your eyes with which to see.”

There was another movement—this time, there was no doubt. Alas, Thomas had no time to call out a warning to Raleigh, who was blinking suds from his momentarily-blinded eyes. Something black dropped on to Raleigh from above—or, more accurately, leapt upon him from above, faster than objects normally fell within the body of the moon.

It’s a spider! Thomas thought, as the thing landed. For an instant, he felt free to be grateful that it was smaller by far than the giant ants and beetles thronging the corridors, being no bigger than the head on to which it had jumped—but then Raleigh screamed, and Thomas realized that his friend was in deadly danger.

Thomas had no weapon, and there was none in Raleigh’s clothes. Whether Field had one or not was irrelevant, as his first impulse had been to throw himself backwards, away from the danger. Thomas, by contrast, leapt back into the pool and grabbed the thing that had attacked Raleigh with both hands.

It was extremely hairy, and it immediately resisted capture with all eight of its limbs and its jaws as well. Had Thomas’ grip been weak it would surely have twisted in his hands and sunk its fangs into his flesh, but he held it very firmly indeed as he turned sideways and smashed it against the wall with all his might, not caring that the uneven surface bruised and gashed his own knuckles as he hammered the monster against it three times more.

When he dropped the creature, it was dead—but so, it seemed, was Raleigh, who had fallen backwards into the water, his face streaming with blood and his temple already turning blue-black where his attacker had flooded his flesh with poison.

Thomas had no idea what to do—but there were others present now who had. Aristocles and two others of his own kind had come bursting into the room; while Aristocles seized Thomas and drew him to one side, the others pulled Raleigh out of the water, set him on his back, and descended upon him as if they intended to scour the flesh from his bones.

They did not. Exactly what they did instead was obscured from Thomas’ view, but when they withdrew again Raleigh’s face was no longer blood-stained, save for a few clotted drops clinging to his neat beard, and the blue-black stain had likewise been obliterated. His wound was still visible, but it was covered by a glossy transparent gel that was already hardening.

Aristocles was still holding hard to Thomas, and had inspected his hands very carefully while Thomas had been in no condition to take notice. The grazes there had similarly been covered over; there was no pain.

Thomas shuddered. Aristocles released him immediately, as if the monster were fearful that it was his touch that had caused the response—but it was not. It was the narrowness with which Raleigh had escaped death that had affrighted Thomas.

Aristocles touched Thomas’ face, very lightly.

“An arachnid,” Lumen translated, dutifully contriving to manufacture an apologetic tone. “An accident, perhaps....”

Obviously, it was possible for lepidopteran philosophers to say more than they intended, and more than would usually be reckoned wise. Aristocles stopped immediately, but too late.

“Perhaps!” Thomas echoed, speaking aloud although his meaning reached the moth-like creature via his fingertips. “You mean that someone might be trying to murder us?”