The Dark Side of the Sun (3 page)

'Hrsh, tomorrow I shall be Chairman of the Board. It doesn't mean much—'

'It iss a very honourable position.'

'—It doesn't mean much because all the power, the real power, belongs to Grandmother. But I think the Chairman is entitled to know one or two things. Like, for example, why haven't you ever told me about probability math? And what happened to—how did my father die? I've heard fishermen say it was out there on Old Creaky.'

In the silence that followed the ig awoke and began scratching itself violently.

'Come on,' said Dom, 'you're my tutor.'

'I will tell you after the ceremony tomorrow, it iss late now. Then all will be explained.'

Dom stood up, 'Will I ever trust you again, though? Chel, Hrsh, it's important. And you're still acting.'

'Oh, yess? And what emotion am I trying to conceal?'

Dom stared at him. 'Uh... terror, I think. And—uh— pity. Yes. Pity. And you're terrified.'

The curtain swung to behind him. Hrsh-Hgn waited until his footsteps had died away, and reached out to the communicator. Korodore answered.

'Well?'

'He hass been to ssee me. I almosst told him! My lord, he wass reading me! How can we let thiss thing happen?'

'We don't. We will try and prevent it, of course. With all our power. But it will happen, or seventy years of probability math go down the hole.'

Hrsh-Hgn said, 'Someone hass been telling him about probability math, and he assked me about his father. If he assks again, I warn you, for pity's ssake I will tell him.'

'Will you?'

The phnobe looked down and fell silent.

Out to sea the dagon rose by the score, in response to their ancient instincts. The catch was unusually large, which the fishermen decided was an omen, if only they could decide which way fate's finger pointed. They found, too - when the last ripple had died away towards dawn - a small reed island, empty, half swamped, drifting aimlessly over the deeps.

Korodore strolled silently along the empty corridor, which was lit faintly by the first glow of dawn.

He was thick-set and, as a sly gesture, heredity had given him a round cheerful face so that he looked like an amiable pork-butcher. But there were advantages to that, and no butcher - certainly not of pork - walked by instinct from shadow to shadow.

A door opened soundlessly and he turned along a short side corridor and into a large round room.

A peat fire was collapsing soundlessly into a pile of white ash in the central hearth. The rest of the room was sparsely furnished: a narrow bed, a table and chair made of sections of dagon shell, a wardrobe and a Sadhimist logo on sheet copper on one curving wall comprised its main geographical points.

There were one or two signs of Directorship, a large rolled map of the equatorial regions, an open filing cabinet, and a Galactic Standard clock on top of it.

But it was the trappings of probability math that clashed heavily with the strict simplicity of the room. Korodore's eye followed a trail of Reformed Tarot cards across the room to where the bulk of the pack, crystal faces now bland, lay against the wall where it had been thrown. A vaguely disturbing visual array on a portable computer glowed on another wall. Charcoal glowed faintly in a tiny brazier on the shell table, and the air was acrid with the fumes of - Korodore sniffed - the curious Sinistral incense. So Joan had taken refuge in being a cool-head...

Joan I looked up from the table, where a large black book lay open.

'Couldn't you sleep either?' she said.

Korodore rubbed his nose diffidently.

'As you know, madam, security officers never sleep.'

'Yes... I know.' She shook her head, 'It was a figure of speech, is all. There's some coffee by the fire.'

He poured her a cup, and slowly began to pick up the cards. She eyed him carefully as he moved soundlessly across the room.

'I've been looking at the equations again,' she said, 'There's no change. My son's calculation was correct. Of course, I knew. They've been checked enough times. Even Sub-Lunar looked at them. Dom will be killed today, at noon. They won't let him live.'

She waited. 'Well?' she said.

'You mean, how do I feel as the security officer in charge? You mean, what are my reactions to the knowledge that whatever precautions I may take my charge will still be murdered? I have none, madam. I will still work as though I was in ignorance. Besides,' he added, dropping the pack on the table, 'I cannot believe it. Not quite. You could say my reaction is hope.'

'It'll happen.'

'I can't pretend to understand probability math. But if the universe is so ordered, so -
immutable -
that the future can be told from a handful of numbers, then why need we go on living?'

Joan stood up, crossed to the wardrobe, and took out of it a waist-length white wig.

'It's obvious you do not understand p-math, then,' she said. 'We go on because to live is still better than to die. That has always been the choice of Humanity, even when we thought the future was a cauldron of possibilities.'

She combed out the wig. 'We cannot be certain how he will die,' she continued, 'You or I, perhaps, may be the ones the Institute chooses to—'

Korodore spun round. 'I have checked us all by deep-reach, RGD—'

'Oh, Korodore! I'm sorry. But you have such a touching faith in cause-and-effect! Don't you know that in an infinite Totality all universes will happen? There is a universe somewhere where at this moment you will turn into a—'

'Such things are said, madam,' he muttered.

'You disapprove of me,' she said, and pouted.

He raised his eyes to the gold century disc on her forehead and smiled thinly.

'Now, you are too old, madam, to try wiles of that kind. But I do disapprove. This meddling is not a good thing. It stinks of magic, witchcraft.'

'I haven't studied the pre-Sadhimist religions in any great depth, Korodore.'

'All right, madam.
What happens if
Dom doesn't die
?
'

'It's unthinkable. This is the datum universe - he'll die. In a sense, the whole universe depends on the fact. If he didn't die, perhaps he'd discover the jokers world and that could be terrible.'

'And if he doesn't?'

Joan adjusted the wig and opened the window looking out over the sea. The fishing fleet was coming in with the tide, lit by the hanging pinpoint of Widdershins' blue sun. On the horizon the light glinted sharply off the Tower in the marshes.

'It's too hot to sleep,' she said, 'I'll finish this, and then I'll go down to the jetty.'

'Mystic law of the universe?' asked Korodore, as she reopened the book.

'They are the household accounts, sir,' she said sharply, 'A great comfort in times of trial.'

She wondered why she had never dismissed the man as security chief, and the answers queued up in her mind, ranging from his proven efficiency to the mitigating circumstance that he was Earth-born. Perhaps there were many other reasons.

As he turned to go she called him back.

'With regard to your question about Dom,' she said, 'In all humility, p-math is a young art. I doubt if there is anyone adept enough to know. Even the Institute doesn't know everything.'

'Dom might. His tutor says he is showing a disconcerting insight. Oh, I don't question your reasoning. If it is inevitable, perhaps it is better he shouldn't know. You can see he is the type the Institute hunts down.'

'You see, we can't answer all the questions.'

He shrugged. 'Perhaps you are asking the wrong questions.'

PROBABILITY MATH:

'As with the first Theory of Relativity and the Sadhimist One Commandment, so the nine equations of probability math provide an example of a deceptively simple spark initiating a great explosion of social change.

' "Probability math predicts the future." So says the half-educated man. A thousand years ago he would have mouthed "E equals MC squared" and believed he had encompassed the soaring castle of mathematical imagination .
.
.

'Probability math arises from the premise that we dwell in a truly infinite totality, space and time without limit, worlds without end - a creation so vast that what we are pleased to call our cause-and-effect datum Universe is a mere circle of candle-light. In such a totality we can only echo the words of Quixote:
All things are possible...'

'...
vindicated with the predicted discovery of the Internal Planets of Protostar Five. Then humanity could be sure - even from this tiny grain of proof. On either "side" were ranged the alternate Universes, uncounted millions differing perhaps by the orbit of an electron. Further, the difference must be greater - until in the looming shadows on the edge of imagination came the universes that had never known time, stars, space or rationality. What p-math did was quantify the possible time-lines of our datum universe. It did much more than that, however. Perhaps it brought back the essence of science from the days when it was half an art, when Creation was seen as a marvellous, carefully regulated clock - with all parts harmonizing to make the whole...'

'... As Sub-Lunar pointed out in those early years, p-math depended on a certain innate mental agility. Many superb practitioners were also incurably insane, possibly because of that very fact. Leaving aside that very special sub-group to which Sub-Lunar himself belonged - I say no more - the rest were usually highly educated and, in a word, lucky. (Luck being a function of the p-math talent, of course.) Many of them worked for the Joker Institute.

'Such a streak ran through the Sabalos family of Widdershins. For those of you who do not know the world, it is...'

'... just before the birth of his son and his own assassination in the marshes, John III predicted that the boy would die also on the day of his investiture as Chairman of the Planetary Board. The chance of this
not
happening was so remote as to make a billion-to-one long shot appear a fifty-fifty bet. Yes? I'm sorry. Perhaps I s
h
ould explain.

'Suppose p-math had not been discovered. Now, on Earth there was a creature called a horse. Long ago it was realized that if a number of these animals were raced over a set distance one must surely prove faster than the others, and from this there was...'

'... back to the subject in hand. One anomaly in p-math concerned the Jokers, those semi-mythical beings who had left artifacts strewn around half the galaxy. Solid artifacts, indeed, most of them gigantic. According to probability math, the builders of these latter-day tourist attractions had never, ever existed...'

His Furness Dr CrAarg + 458°, in an informal lecture to students at Dis university, A.S. 5,201

Dom woke early, and spent a long time staring at the familiar ceiling paintings of his dome. They had been done by his great-grandfather, in gaudy blues and greens, and depicted a trio of overmuscled fishermen battling an enraged dagon. That was a slander on the dagons, Dom knew: they lacked a nervous system and it was doubtful if they ever thought. They just reacted.

The little swamp ig was sitting in the handbasin. It had managed to turn on one of the taps with its disconcertingly human forepaws, and was enjoying the trickle of water. When it saw he was awake it made a noise like a fingernail being dragged across glass. The smuggler had said it was a sign of happiness.

'Intelligent little thing, aren't you?' said Dom, switching off the warm air field and swinging himself off the bed.

He saw the clothes laid out neatly on the stand, and bit his lip. The swamp ig, a neatly healed scar on his chest and a few painful memories of his interview with Korodore were all that remained of yesterday.

Planetary Chairman. He'd own three per cent of the pilac industry, but on Sadhimist terms, and if you were a Sadhimist and rich you worked heavily to obscure the fact. He'd preside over innumerable committee meetings, and once a year would give the traditional annual report at the traditional Annual General Meeting. And that would be written for him. Hrsh-Hgn had made it clear, many times. A Chairman was as necessary to a Board planet as the zero was in mathematics, but being a zero had big disadvantages
...

Mathematics. There was something about mathematics he should remember. Well, it'd come. He washed and struggled into the thick grey suit, and selected a short wig of golden fibres.

There was a polite knock at the door.

'All right,' said Dom.

The door burst open and Keja ran into the room and hugged him. She was laughing and crying at the same time. For an embarrassing moment he was suffocated by the silks of her dress, and then his sister stood back and looked at him.

'Well, Mr Chairman,' she said. Then she kissed him. He disentangled himself as tactfully as he could.

'I'm not actually Chairman yet,' he began.

'Oh fie! What's a few hours? You don't seem very pleased to see me, Dom,' she added, reproachfully.

'Honestly I am, Ke. Things have just been a bit hectic lately.'

'I heard. Smugglers and so forth. Exciting?'

Dom thought about it. 'No,' he said, 'More, well, strange in a way.'

Keja swept the dome with her eyes. It was cluttered with Dom's things: an old Brendikin analyser, a bench littered with shells, a hologram of the Joker's Tower, and memory cubes on every flat surface.

'How the old place has changed,' she said, wrinkling her nose. She pirouetted in front of the tall mirror. 'Do I look like a married woman, Dom?'

'I don't know. What's Ptarmigan like?' He remembered the contractual ceremony two months before, and a vague impression of a very large fierce old man.

'He's kind,' said Keja. 'And rich, of course. Not so rich as us, but he sort
of flaunts
it more. His children haven't really taken to me yet. You should come on an official visit, Dom - Laoth's so hot and
dry.
That reminds me, I've brought you a present.'