The Golden Space (36 page)

“I don’t know.”

“I think we should keep going. We have Eline’s craft now, we could send it ahead as a scout.”

“But we don’t know where to look,” Merripen said.

“We can still go west. We have plenty of time to look.” Andrew chuckled in the dark. “You knew this wouldn’t be easy. Did you expect someone to draw you a map?”

“I think you’re just trying to prove you’re not a coward.”

“I think you’re afraid to test your ideas. You can console yourself with stories about your project’s destiny. You just went on this trip so you could tell yourself you tried.”

“Why is it so important to you to keep on going?”

“Maybe I have my own questions. And maybe I’m doing it for Terry. Maybe I’d like to bring her something besides old memories.”

“I see. It’s your quest.”

“Maybe it is.”

The screen in front of them chimed; a light flashed. Merripen started, then waited, expecting to hear the Citadel’s signal; Leif might have found something out. The screen chimed again. Someone else was calling. He reached out and pressed the panel.

Eline’s face appeared on the small screen. Her eyes were cold. Karim’s image peered out from one corner; he, too, had answered the call.

Merripen did not wait for a greeting. “What do you want?” he said harshly, suddenly afraid that she would come after them.

“To say goodbye,” she answered. “To explain.”

“You killed Domingo.”

She twisted her mouth into a half-smile. “Of course I didn’t kill him. He was stunned. He’s in suspension here in his temple. That makes you feel better, doesn’t it? From my point of view, he might be happier if he were dead—his soul would be at peace—but you obviously don’t agree, and he might not have been ready for the higher state. Think of it. He has a great privilege. He might awaken someday to see what his people have become.”

“Why did you do it?” Karim’s voice asked.

“It came to me the second night we were here. I suddenly knew what my purpose was, whom I had to rescue. These people are as we once were. If I stayed with them, I could help guide them to the truth. But I couldn’t leave Domingo in control. He would have gone on doing things in his own way, and I would have had little influence. The only way left was to usurp him. I found one of his wands and kept it with me, under my shirt. My chance came sooner than I had expected; I had to act before he figured out what I might do. Now I can begin to change things—a little at first, more as time goes on. Gradually, they will begin to glimpse the truth, and their souls will be saved.” She paused. “It came to me in a vision. I know now I did the right thing.”

Merripen leaned back. Visions, glimpses of eternal truth— Domingo would have said that they were only remnants of their once divided minds, their former longing for authority. Once, the voices had spoken to them; they had lost them as they became conscious of themselves. Prayer was only a way of calling to such voices, which would never again answer them so clearly; Eline’s conviction that there was a life after death was another remnant of the past. He sighed. She was closer to Domingo’s people than she realized.

“I wanted you to know,” she went on. “Domingo didn’t try to stop me. He must not have known what would happen. His reason was failing.”

“He knew,” Merripen said. “He was waiting for it.” He could see that she was skeptical. He thought of telling her what Domingo had told him, but he doubted it would sway her. “They’re changing, they’re developing on their own now. They won’t forget Domingo so easily, and now that they know one god can fall, they may begin to think of toppling the new one themselves.”

“They’ll follow me.” She laughed softly. “They might be our future. Think of that. Everything we’ve done just brings us back to the beginning again.”

“No,” Merripen said. “You’re wrong.” Karim’s image winked out. Eline said her farewell and her face disappeared. The trees above him stirred and a strong wind gusted through the dark town below, scattering pale streamers of cloth.

V

They sent out Eline’s hovercraft at dawn. It floated south over the meadow below Harsville and on toward the low hills beyond before bearing west.

They waited until it was out of sight, then began to track it. Andrew rode with Merripen. He jerked his head toward Karim’s craft, which was following close behind. “Something’s wrong with Karim. Did you notice?”

“I’ve been noticing for a while,” Merripen replied.

“He looked sick this morning. I watched him take a turn around Harsville while you were eating breakfast. He looked dizzy; he staggered a bit. He’s hiding something.”

“I know.”

“We’d better keep our immune systems working. It might be contagious.”

The empty craft was traveling farther from them; Merripen turned on the screen and gazed through the vehicle’s eyes. It passed an empty wooden shack, still standing in a field.

The spirit of the journey seemed to return to him; the calming lassitude, the anticipation of reaching his goal. He lost his impatience. The journey itself could be pleasurable, viewing the landscape, breaking up the trip with stops along the way. Then he thought of Domingo, and Harsville, and the hunters of Pine Point. The illusion vanished. He was traveling through a dead world; it was their graveyard. Were there others like Domingo? He was sure that there were. His impatience returned. He had waited too long.

“Do you miss Terry?” he said to Andrew.

“No. I always return to her, but I don’t miss her. Haven’t you noticed that you don’t really miss anyone unless it’s someone you think you might never see again?”

“No, I haven’t noticed that. I can miss plenty of people I think I’ll see in a few hours if they’re close to me.”

“But you don’t miss them. You feel their absence, you remember them, but you don’t miss them. The pain isn’t there.”

By noon, patches of blue were appearing in the sky; the sun nestled between two clouds. Merripen had dozed, and then eaten; his muscles were stiff. They were traveling through a river valley, floating near one bank. On each side, the trees were thick; the land would soon be nothing but forest. He looked at the trees, at the dark shadows under their boughs. It wasn’t his world. They had somehow been carried through space without realizing it and were now somewhere else, not on Earth. He looked up at their familiar star and shook off the fantasy.

If he traveled long enough, he might see the world. He could come to an ocean, cross it in a small airship, alight on an island, drift on after a rest. Once, he could have asked a satellite to transmit pictures of the land, the settlements and towns, before setting out, but the satellites were silent now. It did not matter; they would have shown him buildings, even people, but not Domingo’s dream.

Ahead, the river curved, then widened. Gnarled and twisted trees clung to the edge of one bank, their snaky limbs almost touching the water. He looked at the screen. The empty hovercraft was crossing a field. Still tracking it, they moved away from the riverbank and toward the thinning trees. There had once been a road here; now it was overgrown with grass and green shoots which would one day be more trees. They followed the grassy road.

A bright flash of light flickered on the screen; Merripen squinted and leaned forward. The light moved, becoming the metal of another craft which was now approaching the empty one. “Someone’s out there. Look.”

Andrew leaned over and looked at the screen. The panel hummed; someone was trying to call the empty craft.

“Should we answer?” Merripen asked.

“I don’t see why not. We’re still far enough away to run for it.” Andrew smiled sourly. “We could always lead them toward Eline.”

Merripen hesitated. The strange hovercraft was still approaching. At last he opened a channel.

A round-faced, red-haired woman stared out of the screen at him.
“Bonjour,”
she said.
“Salaam, do-briy d’en, kon- nichi wa,
hello.”

“Hello will do,” Merripen replied.

“Hello, then. Isn’t there anyone in that thing?”

“No, it’s our scout.”

“Clever. My name’s Jorah. May I ask you why you’re traveling?”

“We’re trying to find some friends.”

“Trying to find? Don’t you know where they are?”

“If we knew, we wouldn’t be wandering around here looking for them.” He felt irritated by her manner, even though he realized that she was probably just as suspicious of him as he was of her. “We didn’t know there was anyone out here. We have no intention of disturbing you.”

“You won’t disturb us,” she answered. “We won’t let you. Just a warning. I’m not out here alone. Tell your empty craft to stop a kilometer from here.”

“We weren’t planning to stop.”

“You have nothing to fear as long as you’re not Rescuers. You don’t look the type. They’re usually sneaky or blatant. We’re ready to protect ourselves.”

“You made that clear.”

“If you want to stop, you may. I’ll give you lunch. If you don’t, then I’ll stop wasting my time.”

Merripen glanced at Andrew, who nodded a little. “All right,” Merripen answered. “We’ll accept your offer.”

The empty craft sat outside a large, faceted dome. Through the dome’s clear sides, Merripen saw a pit and several tents. Jorah stood at the dome’s entrance; two men were with her. He waited inside the craft; Karim pulled up to his side. Jorah and the two men did not move; he noticed that they all carried wands. Karim got out of his craft. Merripen, surprised, motioned to him. Karim tapped on his door; Merripen opened it.

“It’s all right,” Karim said. “I’ve seen one of the men before. He stayed in Pine Point some time ago.”

Merripen and Andrew got out and followed Karim to the dome’s entrance. Merripen walked slowly, his body tensed for flight; he was still wary of strangers. Karim spoke to the smaller of the two men and introduced his companions; then Jorah led them inside.

Here the air was not as humid. They walked near the edge of the pit. The pillared, stony façade of an old building jutted out from one side of the pit; tables piled with shards, trays, and papers stood in front of the building. “We’re archeologists,” Jorah said. “We just started digging here.” She led them to a tent; the two men left them and scampered down into the pit. Merripen and his friends sat outside the tent while Jorah went inside, coming out in a few moments with a tray of tea and bowls of rice and vegetables.

She sat down while they ate. “Where are you from?”

“I’m from a town in the north,” Karim said. “My friends are from a Citadel near it.”

Merripen peered over his cup and met Jorah’s amber eyes. “I suppose we’ll be excavating it one of these days,” she said. “Your Citadel, I mean.”

“You’ll have to wait a long time.”

“Not so long. Not so long as you think.”

They finished their food in silence. Jorah watched them solemnly. “What are you excavating?” Merripen said at last.

“A small pre-Transition town.” She waved a hand. “We’re working on the town hall, trying to dig out the records. We have to do most of the work ourselves. On my first dig, we got some kobolds from a Citadel, but they didn’t work out. They were too careless—it was too hard to train them to take care of the artifacts they found. We were so busy trying to make them do it right that we finally had to do it ourselves.” She paused. “There’s so much to do, and not enough people to do it. We were so confident when we started. I thought: We have all this time, we can recover the past—all of it. We can find every important site, build up nearly a complete record of the human past, record it all, analyze it.” She shook her head. “I was naive.”

“Were you?” Merripen said.

“People were very destructive during the Transition. It was as if everyone wanted to forget the dead past—dead in every sense of the word. Cities were torn up and rebuilt, some favorite sites were restored at the cost of others nearby, towns and farmhouses were cleared to make room for gardens and campsites and parks. Even before that, a lot of old sites had been destroyed by carelessness or greed, and then the materializers added to the problem, because many people duplicated artifacts from different times—I’ve found necklaces of Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt all over the world.” She shrugged. “Few people thought it mattered. The discontinuity between our world and the past was too great. The past was gone, and we had an endless future. Certainly we had nothing in common with those short-lived people.”

“You should have an easier time of it now,” Andrew said.

“Not really. Now nature is the enemy. As we dig here, other sites are crumbling away, or being flooded or buried. We’re just trying to save what we can.”

“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” Andrew said. “The past, I mean. It doesn’t have the same meaning; it’s something that happened to another species, in a way.”

“Perhaps. But I think if we could understand what happened then, we’d know more about ourselves, too. Maybe we’d understand what’s happening to us now. I want to know as much as I can about which societies died out, and why, and which ones could change and why. I don’t know—maybe I’m bringing too much of myself to this, maybe I’m not seeing what’s there. I look at these scraps and make up stories about them.” She sighed. “Enough. What about you? Who are you looking for?”