The Dark Side of the Sun (14 page)

He reached the state-room without molestation. Joan looked up.

'You took your time,' she said. 'Where are they? And where is Eight?'

'There was a recent chronological sequence of events that included a violence,' said Isaac. In one movement he picked Hrsh-Hgn bodily off his stool, slung him over his shoulder and fled. He skidded through the airlock a moment before it hissed shut.

Outside the ship he stood the phnobe upright and pointed eastwards. 'Run. There's a lake. I will join you shortly,' he added. 'At the moment I perceive an imminent number of violences.'

Twenty guard robots wheeled as one on Joan's amplified command and ran towards him.

He stood his ground, which seemed to worry them. To the first who approached he said: 'Are you Class Threes, all of you?'

The robot called Twelve said: 'Some of us are Class Two robots, but most of us are Class Three robots. I am a Class Three robot myself.'

Isaac looked at the sky. He felt very happy. It was very wrong of him.

'Correction,' he said. 'As of now you are all recumbent water-fowl of the genus
Scipidae.'

Twelve paused. 'I am a Class Three robot myself,' he said uncertainly.

'Correction,' said Isaac. 'I repeat, you are all sitting ducks. Now, I am going to count three .
.
.
'

He walked forward, and his atomic heart sang a lyrical hymn of superior intelligence.

Dom dropped from the speeding yacht before it entered visor range of the
Drunk
and spun giddily in its slipstream until the sandals steadied him. He drifted down to a few feet above the close-cropped plain and set off at a fast skimming trot eastwards.

He skated for ten minutes over the sweetgrass which, apart from a variety of weeds, several lichens and some seaweeds was the only vegetation on the planet. On Band nature had stuck to a few tried and tested lines.

Several times he passed flocks of puppies, large ungainly creatures that from space appeared to drift like clouds over the continent. Here and there a larger one moped apart from the main herds, squatting on its bloated rump and staring at the sky with mournful eyes, with a skin the unhealthy pallor of a sundog soon to undergo puberty. Usually they smelt of fermenting sweetgrass.

When Dom passed one it gave a tired whine and staggered a few yards on its stumpy legs before taking up its yearning position once more.

82 Erandini rose quickly towards noon.

The robot station was on the far side of the lake, probably because the lake was one of the few marker points on Band. Dom had decided to try there. Chatogaster had to be somewhere.

He paused for a sip of water and the cold, cooked leg of some flightless bird, courtesy of the autochef. The air was warm and spring-like. The eternal sound of chewing as the sunpups grazed their way relentlessly round the world made a pleasant back-ground.

The
air
in
front
o
f D
om
crack
l
ed. A sma
ll
metal
sphere whirred to a halt and hung on its antigravs. It eyed Dom and extruded a mouthpiece.

'I perceive you are an ambulatory intelligence, type B,' it said, 'Crackdown in this area is forecast in ten minutes. Don your protective clothing or seek chthonic safety.'

It rose and hurtled northwards screaming 'Crackdown! Crackdown! Beware of the eggs!'

'Oi!' bellowed Dom. The sphere returned, fast.

'Well?'

'I don't understand.'

The sphere considered this. 'I am a Class One mind,' it said finally, 'I will seek reinstruction.'

It disappeared again. A distant cry of 'Beware of the eggs,' marked its going.

Dom watched it and shrugged. He looked round warily, drawing the memory-sword from his belt. Most of the sunpups, in fact all except the sky watchers, were lying down and peacefully chewing. It looked idyllic.

Half a world away, and above the glowing surf of the atmosphere, Crackdown was beginning. The sundogs were in orbit. They had laid their eggs. Now incubation began its final stage.

The leading egg roared through the superheated air, the forward heatshell leaving a searing trail. Finally it cracked at the pointed end and the first parachute burst open. Around the egg the sky filled with other blossoming white membranes.

The first egg for ten years hit the ground a hundred miles to the north of Dom. The overheated shell burst into a thousand fragments that scythed the grass for yards around
...

The second landed to the west of the lake. The shell exploded violently and red-hot shards showered over a herd of puppies who, in response to an ancient instinct, were lying down safely with their padded forepaws over their heads.

From behind one came a Phnobic curseword.

Dom bounced across the grass. Shell was flying all around him. There was already a long burn across one shoulder where a shard had narrowly missed taking off his head.

The ground in front suddenly dipped, and the lake stretched out in front of him. It was big. It was also cold, and probably safe. He gunned his sandals and took a standing jump.

The dive was from a height, and ended a long way down. He turned in a shoal of bubbles and struck out for surface. His ears rang. He was still sinking.

Unbelieving, he felt his feet touch the lake bottom. Goggle-eyed, he felt the water round his feet warm up as his sandals tried uselessly to push him to the surface. Drowning, he breathed a chestful of water.

He was several fathoms down. He was breathing water. He took another breath, and tried not to think about it.

A large silver fish stared at him, and was away with a flick of its tail. Something like a ten-legged crab scuttled over his feet.

It was a sound. Something was talking to him.

'You are Chatogaster, then.' He peered into the murky water. 'They looked for an aquatic creature, but they looked in the seas. I can't see you.'

I
am here
.
You are thinking in the wrong terms.

The water shone with stars. They winked on above, around, below. He could still feel the water eddy around him, but all other senses told him that he was standing and breathing in interstellar space. Deep space. The centre of a star cluster.

'It's
an illusion.'

At the hub of the galaxy where the stars rubbed shoulders and interstellar distances were measured in light-weeks a planet was bathed in the violent light of a hundred suns. It was made of water.

At the centre it was Water IV, the third strangest substance in the universe, and the surface boiled. Dom watched the facts form in his mind with the inexorable growth of crystals.

For a few thousand years the planet glooped and woobled its watery path between the stars, trailing behind it across the galactic sky a shimmering rainbow of steam that photon pressure sculptured into vast ghosts. Then it exploded.

Dom found himself ducking. A churning droplet of water, a whole sea, left the damp explosion and passed him, steaming, on its way to the galactic rim.

And he knew with a second-hand certainty that the hot wet world had produced life. It was a life that knew nothing of Jokers. In the hot water improbable compounds had formed unlikely molecules, had
...

'You are the lake,' he said.

'He was fine a few days ago,'
said Dom.
'Uh
...
do you shun publicity?'

'Take care of their pups? You must be telepathic.'

'I won't,' said
Dom. He kicked a cloud of mud from the lake bottom, and tried to convince himself.

Dom smiled. 'Isn't there some story about a sapient sun out towards galactic north?' he asked.

'He didn't say that to me - I was told you could help me find Jokers World,' said Dom.

'What do you know about the Jokers?'

There was no precise word for it. A series of images flashed across Dom's mind as Chatogaster tried to explain. Intuition was too coarse a term; there was something in it of a leaf's knowledge of how a tree grows; there was something warm, dreamy, arcane
...

Later the lake said:
Generally speaking there is no dark side to a sun. Let us start with the Joker towers. Their casing at least is probably a giant molecule. Their use is not known, although they absorb power and appear to yield none. I feel bound to say that there is no apparent reason for their existence, any more than there is for a man, for example.

'It had crossed my mind,' admitted Dom. He was sitting in the ooze, watching the light dance on the surface overhead. 'Is it a poetic image?'

Dom sighed. 'I had an idea at the start that it was just a matter of finding some cute explanation like - well, like Hrsh-Hgn's.'

Another lapse into intranslatability. An itch; a sense of wrongness, traditionally embodied in the almost physical pain some people experienced in seeing a picture hung crooked and being unable to right it; a feeling of discord.

Th
a
t would make them like Creapii. Environment conditions the mind, and the Jokers did not think like Creapii. However, the Creapii are indubitably the most advanced race at present. I suggest you study them. In the Creapii is a clue to the Jokers.

'So I won't discover a world.'

/
did not say so. But the idea is more important. Do you not say 'the world of the common wasp', or 'the world of the poet'? They are worlds, and only incidentally include some reference to a physical reality like a planet.

'I think I see,' said Dom, getting up. 'The world of the Jokers may be just a way of looking at the universe?'

'I shall visit the Creapii.' He tried to remember. 'I think the High-Degrees have just opened a study raft on the Chain Stars, haven't they?'

Dom prepared to swim to the surface, but stopped. 'There was something you wanted me to do?'

'On the surface, yes. Over ninety percent, including the marshes.'

Chatogaster explained. Band was a pleasant world, but lacked stimulation. He could communicate with the liquid content of sundogs who had as pups drunk from the lake, and hence through their own telepathy - which was no more than a by-function of their massive brains - learn from the minds of travellers. But Chatogaster wanted to spread out. He needed no ship. If Dom could take the little container that had held his drinking water, and let it be filled, enough of Chatogaster could be taken to Widdershins to let the great Tethys ocean become Chatogaster as well. He was persuasive.

Dom hesitated, and the lake saw why.

I h
av
e no power. I may aid, but I cannot fight. What should
I
want with conquests? I am...