Pulses, page 54
Don thought he recognized the man from the early days of the road block. He had argued with this guy over getting through the blockade to pull his shift at the landing site.
“I need to see General Hershing. It's important.”
“Well get in line, boy. You'll come right after my sister on the 'who gonna get to see the general' list.”
“I'm in the Air Force.”
The plump sergeant looked him up and down. “Nice uniform. Didn't know the Air Force was wearing their belts on their arms these days.”
“I've been shot. Now I don't have a lot of time. I've got something important to pass to the general.”
The sergeant was right up in Don's face now. “Well, don't get excited, boy. We'll fill out all the necessary paperwork.” His eyes grew large in mock sympathy as he held his hand out to the guard with the .45. The man slapped the weapon into the sergeant's palm. “Unauthorized possession of an automatic weapon.” He turned the gun in his hands while he made little disapproving noises. “Out of uniform during mobilization.” Then he turned toward the Mexican standing by the side of the road. “And how about vehicular theft and kidnapping. Then we'll send that up through channels to the general and see if we can get you an appointment right away. How's that sound?”
Don broke and ran, but the little sergeant moved with the speed of a mongoose despite his plumpness. Don flipped to the ground, his collar pulled back tight against his throat. The sergeant pinned his neck with a hot hand, just before he started screaming.
When Don rolled over, the sergeant was slapping at his arm.
“Spiders! Spiders! Oh shit. Get 'em off, get 'em off.”
He was so intent on watching the little sergeant hop around he didn't see the guard's boot aimed at the back of his cranium.
***
Luke rose from the top of the shaft into a space that seemed to go on forever. Bright stars, like those he had seen in the last dream, floated in a slow flight across the dark interior of the ship. The orange river of molten rock that had accompanied him upwards continued to flow by him as he stepped off into the interior of the ship. When he looked back the rock flow had vanished along with whatever realm it had occupied. He was alone in the ship. Directly before him, a massive buttress soared out into the darkness. At the end, a central sphere of light hung in the sky suspended by seven buttresses, each extending outward from the ship’s inner perimeter into this strange interior universe.
His eye followed the curve of a distant buttress. It swept outward through the past and curved back through the future until it joined the others at the central light. It was an impossible structure in normal space. But Alex had said the collapsed structures at its center touched all space and time. From the outside, Luke had seen only that part of the ship which existed in his own reference frame. In here, he saw infinitely more. And he understood it somehow. Alex and the dreams had changed him in ways he had yet to notice. He commanded a clarity he had never imagined. He again followed the sweeping arcs of the buttresses. They joined in a rational manner after all, the only configuration that could hold the wildly spinning mass points at their nexus.
Luke slung the M16 over his shoulder and walked out along the buttress. At the juncture, he looked down into the gravity well formed by the unimaginable densities orbiting below him. There, atoms of hydrogen spiraled into the dual event-horizons, compressing until their masses flashed to energy.
As he watched, the illumination began to fluctuate. Forms moved about just below the surface. Luke frowned. That wasn't possible. Nothing could escape an event horizon into the outside universe. But Alex had also said we didn't fully understand black holes. And he had stated that the structures at the center of that sphere were far beyond the black hole stage. They were collapsed structures that pulled time and space into themselves until they broke through into all places and all time. He thought about the spinning structure below him. Was it a gateway to some distant galactic station, perhaps even some different plane of existence? As he watched, a lone figure rose up toward the silvery surface and evaporated.
It took Luke a moment to discover the dark shape hanging over him. Its form writhed and twisted as the creature moved about. There were moments when he thought a form like a human rib cage rotated through the protean shape. But it was only a shadow of the creature - a fourth dimensional shadow. The creature lived on higher planes.
Then he saw and heard and felt the language of the shadow creature over him. It spoke in thoughts and visions, and Luke lived its ideas. And a truth emerged that seemed to explain everything.
The creature's message pushed the limits of Luke's comprehension. It had come to recover him, it said. His dream was over now, his isolated universe once again connected to reality.
Luke struggled with the concepts. The creature continued.
Luke represented the embodiment of a higher level mind that had begun the experiment so far back in the past. Things had gone wrong almost from the beginning.
It had happened during a living dream. One where the mind became part of the lower-dimensional forms created by the dream. But the mass point creating the new universe had been unstable, had imploded the instant the dream had begun. Pinched off from the Dreamer, the isolated mind had become its own new world. And its dimensions did not intersect the Dreamer's plane. No bridges led out of this universe. It was a world alone, of limits and boundaries. The mind was left behind helpless, detached, handicapped by a shortcoming as severe as death; it retained no memory of the Dreamer. But that was the experiment. To retain the memory would ruin the dream, would leave an escape when events became overwhelming. That was why no previous fourth dimensional universe had ever developed life forms able to sustain intelligence. The mind had always abandoned the dreams before progress had been made in creating new worlds.
But the entrapped mind had dreamed new laws to drive mass toward ever greater complexity until one day it awoke as Luke Dawson. And now it had found its way to a newly formed exit portal. Luke recalled Dan’s third dream being like that. Surly this was what he was meant to find. The being stood ready to take him back to the real dimensional plane - where he had started the experiment. This aberrant universe was about to wink out like a soap bubble grown dry from age.
The being descended toward the bridge to its world. But something was wrong. It floated there in the back of his mind somewhere. That hidden answer. That uncertainty.
“Luke, it's all right. You can go with him.”
The voice was strangely familiar.
“I'm here, Luke.”
His mother stood to the side some fifteen feet away. The silvery light lit her face with its cold radiance.
“What it says is true. Your dream is finally over.”
“Mom?” He remembered the face from years back. She was younger than him now. “How did you get here?”
“It was the day it tried to break through to you. You had already left for school. It couldn't stabilize the projection. Every time it lost sync it knocked whatever it touched out of normal space. Then it brushed against me as it withdrew. My head and right shoulder were recovered along with the projection. My brain was intact. Before the cells died, it recovered my mind.”
“You've been there? The place that thing came from?”
“Oh, yes. And Dan is there.”
Luke stood silent, dumbfounded.
“I've lived countless lives since then, Luke. We can live out any dream we choose.” She started toward the gateway. “Come with me before it's too late. The gateway cannot remain open much longer. This dream is starting to die. Leave with us now or you'll be left behind. Then we can never recover you. You will be separated from us forever.”
Luke started toward the gateway, the uncertainty still there in his mind. Something was still very wrong. His mother stopped and called him again.
“Quickly, Luke. The gateway is pulling loose.”
Luke started forward again. There was no other alternative. If the mother-thing were right, he would be stranded in a universe that was beginning to disintegrate. The word 'doom' loomed large in his mind. And if the mother-thing were lying? Well, his world was about to end anyway.
His mother dropped down into the open gateway. The shadow-image followed. Luke prepared to join them.
But a small voice called to him, reedy and thin, and filled with panic. It was the voice Dan had used as they flew up the dream canyon. Luke stopped, remembering. So, there had been a purpose to that mismatched sound of Dan’s voice in the first dream. It was so he would know it was her voice now.
“Don't go,” it said. “I'm still here with you.”
Luke froze. He called out into the distance between their worlds. “Dan?”
“Don't go. We're here together. Alex tricked us.”
“Who are you with, Dan?”
“You.”
***
“Who did the sutures?”
“Nobody. He was like that when he came in.”
The corpsman pumped the rubber bulb then released the pressure and watched the pointer drop back across the dial.
“Well, somebody did. I can see fine gray threads holding the edges of the wound together. Not a bad job either.”
Don awoke to a tightness around his arm. Then it released. Slowly. Somehow familiar.
“Blood pressure's back up. Just in the last few minutes.”
He opened his eyes and tried to get up.
“Whoa, there, son.”
Hands pressed into his chest. He pushed them away and sat up holding his head.
“Is General Hershing here?”
There was a snort of laughter. A medic stood in front of him. And a lieutenant he remembered from the night the ship had landed.
“I need to see the theater commander,” Don said.
“What about?” the lieutenant asked.
“That ship out there. I have a very important piece of information about it, but if I don't pass it on soon it'll be too late.”
“What is it? If it's important, I'll get it to the General myself. You're in no condition to go anywhere.” the lieutenant said. “How's your head?”
Don pushed his way off the table and stood up. “I'm fine. I've just been shot in the arm, that's all.” He held his left arm out. “It's okay now. So's my head. I've got to go.”
“What's this business about spiders jumping off you? We got an Army sergeant that's babbling about spiders inside him. He says they came off you.”
“Don't know,” Don lied. If they knew the truth, he wouldn't get within a mile of the general.
“And your ear?” the medic asked. “There's a piece missing.”
“I was hit there, too, I guess. I don't remember.” He started toward the door. “I've got to go now.”
The lieutenant turned to the medic. The medic raised his hands in a shrug.
“He was the one there when the thing landed,” Lieutenant Whittiker said as if he had to convince someone of something. “Sarge, get me the keys to the jeep.”
***
Luke was no longer sure of anything. What was real? What was not? What was the difference?
“I don't understand.”
“Remember when Doctor Bourne talked about having brains remoted from the bodies they controlled?”
“The night Reverend Pealle came to dinner? Yes.”
“Well, that's something like what Alex has done to us. It was during the dreams, Luke. Alex switched us out of the real world during the dreams. He left the spheres in place, and connected us to mindless clones of ourselves. The input that he originally sent us he replaced with inputs provided by the clones’ sensors. We get sensory impulses generated in our clones as they move around in the real world. And our reactions are being shunted from our own bodies back to the clones. The clones move just as we would have moved. See just what we would have seen. Everything. Just as if the clones were us. What you think is your own body right now, Luke, is really a clone. You and I - our real selves - are both stored out here together.”
“Then you're okay?”
“No. Yes. That is, down there in the tunnel only the clone that transmitted to me through the sphere was destroyed. Once that clone stopped transmitting impulses, the sphere quit working. I knew where I was then. Where we are. I know it's hard to understand, but you're here with me, Luke. That's not you out there. But I couldn't contact you directly from here. Not in the three-space or four-space world. I almost missed you when you started through to the gate. Don't go any further, Luke. Turn around and go back.”
“Why? What's wrong?”
“I don't know exactly, but something is very wrong. We've done this before I think.”
“How do you know? I don't understand.”
“Well, your mother's death for one.”
“Yes. I just met her here. She said the being from the gateway killed her by accident.”
“That’s not true, Luke. I killed her.”
Chapter 58
Rebecca woke to the sound of clattering feet on the steel deck of Argot. She was on her feet instantly pulling on jeans and a cotton blouse. Her life preserver hung just over the bed. She started to reach for it but thought she had better find out what the commotion was actually about before she showed up on deck ready to abandon ship.
There was a heavy knock on her door. She recognized Dave Cohen's voice.
“Reba. Whales!”
Why all the excitement about whales? They often saw whales. Then she remembered where they were.
The morning light caught the warehouses and cranes of the San Diego wharf area as she opened the door. Dave leaned over the rail several feet in front of her door.
“Whales don’t normally come into a harbor.”
Rebecca hurried to the rail. Below, a large whale surfaced. With a gasp, the double blowholes of the Mysticeti suborder spewed mist into the sunlight. Rainbows came and went as the vapor moved across the water on the light breeze. Then the slender peduncle and the sharply serrated trailing edges of the flukes cleared the water.
“Humpbacks.”
Then another, and yet another surfaced and blew. The air grew dank with their breath.
“How many?” she asked.
“At least a dozen. They began circling about a half hour ago. Word just now spread to the rest of the ship.”
Scientists crowded the side rails now. A crew lowered the boarding ladder with its wooden landing platform. As the platform stopped just above the water, a big whale rolled to the surface not six feet away.
“You can hear them vocalizing even up here,” Rebecca said. “Never heard that before. Why do you suppose they're in here? To get away from something,” she nodded toward the ocean lying beyond the breakwater, “out there?”
“Disorientation most probably,” Dave said. “The pelagic environment has changed extensively over the past week. Maybe they're starving. Most of the planktonic organisms are gone, and the krill are too changed in protein makeup to be of any use to them. It's feed on schools of small fish or starve.”
“They don't look starved,” she said.
“There goes Hunter. He's our cetacean man.”
Hunter clamored down the ship's ladder and strolled out onto the platform. Immediately a large whale rolled to the surface and stopped with its fluke and eye out of the water. The man could have leaned out and touched the animal if he had wanted to.
The air filled with squeaks and groans as the whale vocalized. Rebecca could see the surface ripples set up by the deeper sonic waves leaving the whale's sonar area. Wavelets danced and foamed around the animal's head.
Hunter turned to the people standing at the rail and held his hands out from his hips in puzzlement. The actions were inexplicable.
Then as Hunter started to turn back toward the whale, it raised its long fin and nudged him into the water. Hunter came to the surface spewing water and cursing.
“Cold,” was all Rebecca could make out as Hunter rose out of the water on the whale's head. He hung on spread-eagled for a moment then began to slip backwards into the water again. Another crewman threw him a life ring and pulled him back up onto the platform.
The whales circled in tight formation for a minute, then, slapping the water with their flukes, turned toward the entrance to the harbor and dived.
Hunter was back on deck several minutes later surveying the harbor with a pair of binoculars. Rebecca edged her way down the rail toward him.
“What was that all about?”
Hunter dropped the binoculars. Beads of water sparkled in his forelock.
“Rebecca, I'm darned if I know.”
“Any guesses?”
He checked over his shoulder to see if anyone else was listening.
“Yeah. I got a guess.”
Rebecca didn't say anything for a moment. Something had happened down there. She didn't know what, but she could tell he didn't want to talk about it. “So what's your guess?”
“About what?”
“About what that was all about down there, Hunter. Those whales communicated something to you didn't they?”
“Yeah, they did.” He straightened up with a defiant look about him. “I think they were hunting someone.”
“What makes you think that?”
He looked down the length of railing, away from Reba, his jaw set tight.
“I just think they were.”
“Why?”
“Why do I think that?”
“No.” She knew he would never answer that question. “Why were they hunting someone?”
Hunter shrugged. “They wanted to tell him something. Something I couldn't understand. Something I don't think anyone could understand. They thought I could reach him since I was terrestrial.”
***
Dan’s statement made no sense to Luke. “You couldn't have killed my mother, Dan. You were in school with me.”
“Not then. Now. I killed her just a few minutes ago.”
“She was just here, Dan. Something’s not right. Maybe this is the fourth dream.”
“No. It's not. It's not a dream. I just went out looking for you. Along your timeline. I tried to pick up your trail back in Evanston. Luke, that dark form we saw as children was me. I didn't realize it until I had already done the damage. Your mother tried to run when she saw me starting to form. The sudden movement destabilized the area around me. I brushed by her and ....” Dan took another approach. “Then I tried to find you at school, but I was too upset to concentrate. You never saw me as far as I know. I saw myself, though. The last try was later that night. I had to tell you what was happening. But again, I couldn't control the forces.”
