Short Fiction Complete, page 51
“Oh, I’m so thrilled, Baby I. I’m just – well – enthralled – we’ve waited so long for another – now you’re here!” Mary tosses high her ultraviolet-hued curls, and her face follows up and down with the rhythm of her mental talking spree.
I knew that Robert McCurley and Mary Rogers were products of their Human kind, tempered by the telekmass faculties. As such, they have all the gifts of the Co-ordinators – ability to see ultraviolet and infrared, quicker reflexes, deep sense of duty and responsibility toward society and, of course, the ability to use indirect action such as telekinetic, teleportation, and mass sensing faculties.
Robert and Mary Susan have another gift, a faculty that is deep and hidden even from the Ayorian grouping.
Their genetic steel would not show until after many years of growth and tempering, through experiences with wilful conflicts. Right now, and for years to come, they were simply a young fifteen year old boy and a younger thirteen year old girl. Though with unusual abilities, they were immature in many dangerous ways, the most dangerous of all was in thinking that they manipulated their rare forces secretly.
Baby I twisted his plump body around again, and his mind followed, puzzling through the swift, new side-space phenomenon thrust upon him by Mary’s enthusiasm.
Robert estimated its natural mass at about eight pounds weight divided by g. The embryo’s size and neuronic growth indicated that birth would probably occur within weeks.
“What are Ayorians?” What are Humans?”
“You are Human,” Mary explains. “Robert and myself and you – all of us – are Human. Many years ago Humans spread out from a relatively small planet on the fringes of one galaxy, into simply dozens and dozens of worlds.”
She explains about the break-down between Human groups which was healed by me and other Ayorians, describing the Ayorians as “. . . another life form shaped like a figure eight, having no eyes or arms and legs and which, through indirect action faculties alone, are able to manipulate the physical world very well.”
She describes how I had been shipwrecked on the Ayorian planet when an infant, how my peculiar genetic heritage, as a mutant co-ordinator, permited the Ayorians to complete my neuronic growth, allowing me to also use indirect faculties along with direct.
Mary reaches the place where she describes how I and the Ayor had once again rediscovered the scattered mutant co-ordinators, and set them to the task of reuniting Human populations and their goals when Robert interrupts, saying, “You aren’t precise enough. Of the nearly 2.0 x 106 Ayorians now spread throughout the seventeen galaxies, only 1.1 x 104 wish to serve as co-ordinator at any one time. The others must follow their personal twinning problem, or they will not mature and twin to propagate their own kind.
“Three point one times ten to the fourth co-ordinators, counting Human and Ayorian, are pitifully small numbers for directing the better than 3.5 x 1015 life forms within our joint civilization.” Robert emphasizes.
Probably for most young females of thirteen, and for young males, such as Robert, big numbers are overly large, and meaningless. In this case, however, Robert’s and Mary’s unique ability to reach out beyond ordinary boundaries, gives exact meaning to every decimal. By an easy act of will, their thought streams outward “through” or “in” or “beside” space. They choose to call it side-space.
To answer Baby I’s question with exactness, I now sense that they carried him along on a wide mental sweep through their seventeen galaxy cluster. Within hours Baby I knows about 5.0 x 103 non-Ayorian, non-Human planets scattered within their gigantic Ayorian-Human dominated space.
Though Mary and Baby I do not perform arithmetic, they instinctively know that at the ratio of one alien planet for every 6 x 107 planets, all the aliens together produce a ratio which is more significant than the ratio of Ayorian-Human planets to the total number of planets altogether, and both very small ratios.
They teach Baby I that 3.1 x 104 Co-ordinators, both Ayorian and Human, direct the massed lives of 3.5 x 1015 Humans and 2.0 x 106 Ayorians, and now and then, also keep a slightly wary light receptor on 6 x 10x6 alien species varying widely in evolution and technological levels, as well as unusual shapes and philosophies.
Baby I also is unwittingly told an untruth, that no one, not even the very brightest Human Co-ordinator or the most skilled Ayorian, is remotely capable of watching over their tiny group now composed of exactly 3.0 x 10° mutated mutants, such is the generation gap.
Where the Co-ordinators seem to view the “triggers” which enable indirect faculties to be employed, Robert, Mary, and Baby I perceive a different order of phenomenon. To them objective time ceases, and from certain specialized brain cells, an image of reality is constructed which represents the total sphere of reality that can be reached by their particular personalities.
They touch and use an unusual energy flow that until now had been under only partial study in our most advanced laboratories, and not well understood.
Side-space is their playground and no one else’s. I must concede that much to generation gap, which also explains my continuous scrutiny and worry over the unusual trio.
Baby I reached the limit for his physical energy, so without excuse or pardon, he jerks about so that his head is upside down and his feet push hard points into his mother’s abdominal wall.
Baby I decides to rest.
II
Leisurely I jump across this newly formed Enithra-like planet dedicated to council members and located far within the heart of the seventeen galaxies. Without an Enithra-like environment, my body, perhaps even my soul, might shrivel with despair. I am truly in love with my adopted planet and its teleporting, mass-sensing plant and animal life which, like a thick, quick-rising jungle, grows profusely everywhere.
Unlike Enithra, this planet has polar caps, and though they are small, they are sufficient to cause wider temperature variations than on Enithra.
Most transplanted life has adapted well. My senses idly play upon the planet’s many life forms, noting their colour and shape and movements. Puff balls, brilliantly white, surround at one momentary stop. The whitish, and usually rare puffstick growth is also here, and I easily sense its quick activity as it draws oxygen, nitrogen, carbon and water from the air, away from the weaker puff balls.
Beside me, and to my right, is the Imply that unfolds its large stomach sack to seven times its original diameter, letting tiny teleporting insects hop inside from chance vectoring.
Only fifteen miles distant, and behind the hill profusely covered with tangling, quick-growing vines, I sense the eternal struggle of the Swene to kill the tiny Tembe; while the Tembe mammal seeks out the Swene young, hoping to steal the tiny adolescent form for its own food.
Torrential rain sweeps across my body at my next jump. I compensate; as well I also compensate to the cold and wind now blowing in strong gusts.
Water gushes downward and those droplets not already taken by thirsty vegetation fall to ground. There each drop blends with each other to grow until, like a swift mountain stream, the water rushes pell-mell along the most accessible gravity line, forming ever larger streams.
There is a multi-hued and fast seeding flower that I hold to be symbolic of my beloved Eme. The fields surrounding my next stop overflow with the brilliant assemblage. I pause to watch and enjoy the spectacle, the colours changing and blending in rapid moving and mosaic display as they grow and mature to seed through their swift and natural cycle.
Far below the slight waves of a glittering lake, on my next stop, I sense the mouthless fishes and other varied aquatic forms. The Jogger, large and slow moving, usually parallels a school of smaller Dindrics.
Even though each fish of the school dashes ahead with quick jumps, as though taking turns in leadership, the Jogger paces slowly, stately beside the statistical average. And now and then one of the tiny Dindrics appears inside the stronger Jogger’s stomach. Like iridescent, sparkling lights, the small fish appear and disappear, telekinetically scooping algae and other life forms at each stop.
The dreaded Jogger is alone and silent, moving its huge bulk through the water with similar ease of transfer. At each jump it displaces water that fills its past position, just like Enithra earth worms do beneath their soil.
How slow the Dindric school decreases! It seems most symbolic of my current problems as Head of the Galactic Council.
It had happened only yesterday. James McCurley, father of young Robert McCurley, the new and very competent mathalanguage specialist, had shown me the disturbing figures: “Look at these, Spork,” he had said, anxiously pointing to his paper roll containing the latest description of the causes and effects that motivated the joint Ayorian-Human society. “Look at these side effects. The Random Generator is thrown beyond bounds, and there’s no way to identify positive causes.”
Mathalanguage consists of a fusion of mathematics and language, and carries almost a perfect replica or structural image of an on-going cultural complex. It transforms in near perfect isomorphism, the true motives of 3.5 x 10x5 living entities into a highly specialized, very sensitive language that can be used to study, to predict, or to guide a culture along the path which is inherently correct for them.
I had some – but not much – training in the language, so I could follow McCurley’s argument to a point. I followed James’ finger as it passed along one side of the manuscript along the axis of main effects; and I followed it further as the finger passed over symbols that represented side-effects. But when the finger had turned to the Random Generator Function, I was lost.
“What does it mean, Councilman McCurley?” I had asked.
“Every significant concept to be measured has its own value and also produces interacting waves of side effects. Some of those side effects blend with other significant concepts which are measured. Some produce new, measurable concepts. Whichever, there is also a reservoir of unmeasured causes and effects which we call the Random Generator Function.”
The mathalanguage specialist paused, setting up switches and a three-dimensional analog of the principles employed. This device was used primarily by those who, like me, had only a smattering of the needed background. As he talked further, he controlled a small pointed light that bobbed and weaved slowly, creating bars of light that represented changing measures of motivation, galaxy-wide.
“Each measurement cycle produces a cluster of figures that represents millions of things. For example, one figure may represent the budding of a new, hitherto unexplored motivation in the culture, another may represent pure random noise – which is a way of saying we don’t know its cause as yet – while others may represent the death of some formerly strong motivation.”
“I understand –,” I began, “but –.”
“I know. The Random Generator Function. Right?”
I nod.
“It’s the random noise we watch most closely. When used on the noise, the Function measures the true cultural changes.”
I had viewed Human stress, and now it was apparent in both face and voice. “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Is something important dying? Or is something important being born?”
James McCurley frowns, and says, “We don’t know. It has grown fast and promises to become stable in a destructive way. It warrants total investigation.”
“What?” I hesitantly ask, not wanting to override, or appear to override his functions and responsibilities.
Forgetting that I do not know mathalanguage well, he begins through the undecipherables again.
“Hold!” I interrupt, waving my hand upward in Human manner. “I was lost on the second script.” Owl-like, James McCurley blinks, removing thick glasses, and says, “There are people missing from our total culture, more than by chance factors. It has continued over many years, and continues still. Whole planets seem to be missing, including a whole population.”
“What debris is found? What particles remain?” I am concerned and amazed, and think at once of the Beast of Planet Two of our Enithra system.
“None!”
“Teleportation?”
“We don’t know. Telekinetic mathematics cannot handle the event after-the-fact without initial conditions. Had we instruments in place–,” McCurley waved his hand about again, “but then had we instruments in place, we’d have known before the event.”
“Call the full council, at once,” I sternly and precipitately command.
Statistics are gathered and checked and rechecked again. Myriads of source trends are plotted, attempting to find clues to missing worlds. Slowly, through the wheels of the gigantic and complex technology of fused Ayorian-Human insights, the answers seem to reveal themselves, though grudgingly.
Perhaps, the answers imply, the long rumoured and mysterious enemy beyond the fifteenth galaxy again threatens. Once, so said the rumours, it or they had chipped and eroded planets and peoples. But only rumours of a deadly war with a superior race had filtered through to the rest at the time. And such rumours were always, so what credence did they have?
So it is no wonder that I pause on my leisure trip across this Enithra-like planet to watch the Dindric school and the predatory Jogger fish, preying from the periphery. “Can our problem be so simple?” I wonder aloud. “Is there some great Jogger lying outside the fifteenth galaxy that preys upon people, planets, and suns? Like the Beast of Planet Two would were it loose?”
III
Huddled stolidly against a rising bank of granite, the present Galactic Council Building reflected sharp white to the naked eye, although surrounding it and sometimes towering high over both cliffs and constructs are Enithra purples and ultraviolets, waving and growing and seeding, according to kind.
Inside met the council administrators in circle-round, consisting at present of six Humans, both men and women, and a dozen of the Ayor: I, Spork, conforming to Human presence, sit dressed in purple and ultraviolet cloak, thus covering my lithe form and tanned skin. I’d just finished explaining the Jogger fish and Dindric school analogy, likening their galaxies to the Dindric fish, and the mysterious enemy to the Jogger.
“But what kind of beast? How large? How constructed? Like Planet Two, the Beast of your Ayorian system, Spork?” one elderly Human with ubiquitous eyeglasses and flying grey hair asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I’m simply postulating. The Beast of Planet Two is telekinetic, mindless, with powerful and long reaching telekinetic fingers. It is able to strip whole planets of every desirable ingredient, leaving behind only unwanted radioactive debris in orbit where the original planets have been.”
“But can such a beast grow large enough to consume whole stars?” a young lady asks, her mien formal and serious at the same instant.
One of the hovering Ayor, named Etter, speaks, saying, “Even though internal telekmass bracings are postulated for the Beast of Planet Two, there must be some limit on size.”
“What?” I ask, and no one can answer. After a pause, I also ask, “What of the telekinetic net? What power? What size?”
I have lost count of the descent number represented by the also hovering Lingant-Charlie, a direct descendant of Dingon who, along with myself had chained the Beast of Planet Two. The name Lingant-Charlie was fused from Human and Ayorian commitments by its owner, the Lingant representing Ayorian, Charlie, Human. As no further suggestions or comments are preferred, I vibrate the air near my Ayorian friend, saying, “I need the grouping, Lingant-Charlie. How soon?”
Lingant-Charlie excuses self and disappears, returning in moments to announce that the grouping is readied.
Humans pull metal hoods over their heads, while the hovering Ayor attach themselves cup to hemisphere, and the end ones in the chain also fasten themselves to auxiliary instruments. Here, and everywhere across the seventeen galaxies, Galactic Co-ordinators and the devoted Ayor join together, each sharing experiences with the whole, and the whole speaking and thinking as one. Twenty thousand Humans, and eleven thousand Ayorians across the depths of civilized space form together as swiftly as one magnetic flux line bends and reaches another flux line only fractions of a wavelength beside – they form almost instantly, and my thought dominates, though the mental voice speaks as a single entity:
“The danger beyond the fifteenth galaxy seems to have returned, and we’re inclined to believe the phenomenon telekinetic. We don’t know how it is done or what kind of thing causes the disappearance of whole planets and suns. We have no other experience against which to compare.”
“We must conduct a personal investigation.”
“But what is it that lost control in early days? Too many investigated personally, and were lost, weakening society’s controlling mechanisms at a critical time. . . .”
“We must investigate personally,” the strong personality insists.
“Another can go beside Spork.”
“We, Spork, will go!”
Objections are shared, and when no valid, non-emotional reason is ascertained, the group must consent: “Very well, I, Spork, will go,” we say.
Almost like the actual drift of gentle leaves sighing through a cool summer’s breeze, the unusual and galaxy-wide entity falls apart, each individual mind returning to previous business and interests.
I have my way. I turn my attention to preparations for exploring the edge of the fifteenth galaxy and the deep, deep space beyond.
IV
My earlier pleas for greater energy sources have been answered in a way. Both species have developed a plasma generator which taps the internal fires of stars. Dense metal, impervious to a star’s internal disruptions, is teleported inside a sun, there to capture the plasma and return its raging fires inboard for immediate use as a primary energy source.
Anti-barriers, that drill small holes in telekinetic barriers, and, of course, ordinary and archaic explosives that fission and fuse were carried, too.
While all the serious bustle and hurry proceeded, Robert McCurley and Mary Susan Rogers “stood” in their side-space, thinking and they secretly (they thought) observed the activity and scoffing in their premature knowing and immature ways.
