The Infinity Link (70 page)

"I thought you looked more like a rabbit," he blurted suddenly, a grin cracking his face.

"Well," said the bedu, glancing down self-consciously. "I did my best."

"So—well. How—
where
have you been?"

Larry bent and plucked up another weed. "Oh, you know. Around. I've been all right. Did you miss me?" it asked, chewing carefully on the stem.

"I—yes—" Hathorne stammered, feeling his face redden. He recalled with an abrupt flash another moment of intense embarrassment—when, as a seventh grader, he had been called upon by a teacher and had not known the answer . . . had not even known the question, because he had had to go to the bathroom and had been concentrating so hard on not peeing his pants that he hadn't been listening. And with the embarrassment, his concentration had failed, and the wetness had spread in a humiliating stain over the front of his trousers.

That
was a memory he had not looked at in a while.

"It's all right," the bedu said quietly. "The years haven't been as hard on me as they have on you."

"No. I guess not," Hathorne said, shrugging the memory away. He blinked. "Tell me—have I returned to—well, to my youth?" He stroked his hands wonderingly.

"Oh, just in some ways," said the bedu. It walked past him, with that little limp (which Hathorne did not remember), and paused, looking out beyond the lower end of the sward, where, it seemed, the entire world was visible below. "Just enough for you to remember," it added softly.

Hathorne, gazing with him out into the vast emptiness above the brown-and-green mottled flatness of the plain itself, felt his stomach tightening, his pulse fluttering. He realized now why this mountain scene was so familiar. It had taken Larry the bedu to remind him—because this was, indeed, the imaginary place to which he and Larry had fled whenever the world outside had grown too dreary or too lonely. Every feature of these mountains had been drawn in his mind's vision, every beauty etched in memory. How many thoughts of wonder had passed in his mind as he'd sat in this place with his friend, Larry the bedu?

How odd it was to be here again, recalling feelings and events that had slept in his subconscious for decades. He wiped a sudden teary fullness from his eyes. He looked up at the mountains brooding over his shoulder and wondered again if eyes were looking down upon him from there, and if they were, what they saw.

"Come," said the bedu, walking past him the other way. "There are things I must show you."

He stared in bewilderment as the bedu limped away through the grass. Then he stirred himself and hurried to follow.

The spaceships trailed after the asteroid like wasps. Mozy studied them worriedly. The Talenki seemed unconcerned, but she could not share their sanguine approach. Her people of Earth were, after all, masterful killers. While the Talenki had escaped unscathed once, she wasn't sure how they would deal with a highly organized and motivated attack.

The movement of the spaceships was, of course, just one focus of her awareness. Inside, in the misty, shifty realm of the link, two humans were being entertained as few had been entertained before. She did not precisely know the Talenki's intentions, but there was an aura of quiet determination in the mind-net, and she guessed that whatever the two men were experiencing they would not soon forget.

Silently, like a wisp of smoke, she insinuated herself into the fluid reality that was being weaved around them.

In a place high in the mountains, she sat beside a man/child named Hathorne, and looked out upon the vastness of the world through the eyes of a small, imaginary creature called a bedu.

* * *

The bedu led Hathorne to the uppermost end of the meadow. They sat side by side, gazing outward. There was something different about the air here. It was rarified and shimmering, almost magical. It seemed to him that he might see into any corner of the world, just by wishing.

"What did you want to show me?" he asked softly, thinking suddenly how odd it was that he had only responded and followed, and not once taken the lead. But then—it was the bedu who knew this land, who knew what was to be illumined here. Still, a dim remembrance of his mission was beginning to crystallize in his thoughts.

"You will see," said the bedu.

"But—"

"Give yourself to it," Larry urged.

Sighing, Hathorne rested his chin on his forearms and knees, and gazed out from this aerie, out into . . .

 . . .he felt a wave of giddiness as he stared, eyes going out of focus.

The sound wrapped itself around him, evoking a world without sight. Had his gaze been focused, he might have been stunned by the sight of whales drifting in the emptiness between sky and plain. As it was, he simply tilted his head and thought,
Yes, of course, whales
. Humpbacks, he thought, recognizing the whistles and moans of courting time. And was that the throbbing rumble of a blue?

He was twelve the first time he'd heard a blue whale; and he'd thought it one of the most incredible sounds he could imagine. In its true frequencies, the blue whale's voice was far below the hearing range of humans; speeded up, it was a rumble like the sound of an undersea avalanche; speeded up more, it finally became audible as a beautifully lyrical and expressive call. It was said that, given undisturbed conditions, a blue whale's voice could carry, through the deep convergence channels, halfway around the globe. Was that what this whale was doing, calling across the emptiness and wondering if anywhere in its world there was another of its kind to answer?

The sound, or the memory, or both, sent shivers up Hathorne's spine. He listened quietly as the haunting sounds rose and fell, until at last they faded away.

When he opened his eyes, he was startled to see a changed world. The sky was ruddy and streaked with the last light of a crimson sunset, and there was a strange vapor seeping across the land. He glanced at the bedu inquiringly.

"Watch," Larry said. "Listen."

In a matter of moments, the emptiness of the world was filled with clouds. The plain and sky were swallowed, and then the mountainside, and then even Larry beside him. The fog was yellowish and unearthly, and he found himself shivering. A howling wind rose, blowing the mist in a continuous stream past his face. The air temperature was dropping—turning frigid. He braced himself, but found that he could well enough stand the chill; it was the scream of the wind and a sudden sleet that was not water that made him shiver.

"What is this?" he whispered. There was no answer, and he felt a lurch of fear, wondering if he'd been left alone here. "Larry?"

At last the bedu answered, "It is home."

Of course. Home. How stupid of me, Hathorne thought. There was a bite to the air, quite apart from the temperature, and it occurred to him that he was no longer breathing oxygen. The bedu's earlier words came back to him:
Give yourself to it
. Yes. Howling wind, a constant companion. He did not feel lost, or threatened, so this must be the way it was here, if this was home.

A shape was moving in the mist, something dark, low, scuttling. A momentary start gave way to an opening of shared physical sensations. The creature was wading through a soothing bath of slush, pulling itself out again, claws gripping firmly in the methane ices. Strains of eerie music passed through his mind, a song from somewhere else, from outside this world, from Heaven.

What place is this? he wondered wordlessly.

(A world of your sun,) the bedu murmured, its reply touching him within his mind, all vocalization now impossible in this wind. An image flickered in his thoughts of a faintly banded yellowish brown planet, encircled by an a vast, round, grooved disk.

(Saturn?) he muttered in astonishment.

(Titan,) said the bedu. (A moon of the other world.)

And the song? The echoes touching this creature were a fine, gentle, probing touch, a comfort in a time of loneliness. And where was it coming from? He might have been skeptical before, but he could believe it now; he was young again, and willing to trust, to accept the feelings and thoughts of another so unlike himself that he could scarcely understand its existence . . . and to allow expression to feelings that had not touched him in years.

And willing to believe that Larry the bedu would not deceive him.

* * *

When Jonders felt the touch of life in the dark outer reaches of the solar system, his first thought was that he wished that he had someone to share the astonishment with. Hathorne, Mozy—anyone. Could these frozen, crystalline forms possibly be aware of his presence? So utterly different in form were they, and so unlike his was their perception of time that they might have begun their present train of thought as the bombs were exploding in Earth's wars of the last century. And yet . . .

There was something in them that he could touch and feel. And hear: yes, hear. The minute vibrations of crystal surfaces touching, sliding, shivering. Almost as though in song.

If Hathorne saw this, Jonders wondered, would he recognize it for what it was?

* * *

The Sun muttered and trembled, a vast gaseous envelope in which he floated, listening to rumor and laughter and questions. Voices echoing in the belly of the Sun. Shapes moving in cool outer layers.

What astonished Hathorne more than anything else was that it should take someone from the world of another sun to show him and let him see such wonders.

It reminded him of a vast harp strumming, this music of the Sun.

* * *

There was a sense of time stretching, or of events compressing, as the visions flickered before him. How many worlds did he glimpse? He quickly lost count; but there were ice worlds and forest worlds and worlds of fire and worlds of stone. Everywhere there were beings whose thoughts, if only for a moment, touched his. Were any of these visions drawn from the Talenki world he had come to see? He couldn't tell.

He'd lost track not just of the worlds but of the viewpoints he'd shared. Several times, he recognized the distant touch of Jonders's mind, wherever the man was, and through him glimpsed interpretations of memories, not in words but through a silent gestalt of knowledge and feeling, sight and sound, touch and intuition.

It was like standing in a kaleidoscope as it turned, with each fragmentary image a flash of illumination on some tiny corner of the Talenki soul, or of his.

* * *

At last, full circle, it was the sounds of the sea that brought him back to the present. The Talenki were here now; he could sense them all around him, their song melding and intertwining with the rhythms of the cosmos in a link that somehow made the other worlds a part of their own—and which could be, he supposed, a part of
his
world, if his people so willed it.

The seashore was shrouded in mist, but he walked heedlessly, unafraid of falling. Somewhere along the way, the mountains had vanished, and so, too, had his friend the only living bedu. He was saddened, but only a little; he had seen what Larry had come to make him see.

It was further along the shore that he came upon Jonders, and with him, a curious-looking creature, rather like a fawn. They were both looking out to sea, listening to a foghorn reverberating across the water, and much more softly, the sound of the whales.

"This is N'rrril," Jonders said, by way of introduction. "And Mozy. She's here, too."

Hathorne bowed his head in greeting. "Where
is
Mozy?"

"With N'rrril. Carried in his thoughts," Jonders answered.

"Oh," Hathorne said in disappointment. "I had hoped to see her."

A voice touched him, inside his mind. (Why do you need to see me, when we can speak as simply as this?)

He inclined his head. (Mozy?)

(Yes.)

Hathorne blinked and finally smiled. (I was wondering if we'd meet before this was over. I guess—we've met before, in a way, but this is—different.)

He felt gentle laughter in his mind, and noticed that Jonders, too, was smiling; and then there was a patter of laughter around him, like raindrops, and he realized that the Talenki—not just N'rrril, who was visible, but many others—were joining in the pleasure of the recognition.

He sat on a rock and gazed out to sea for a time, before turning again to N'rrril. Bright golden eyes with pupils of flame blinked back at him. "Are all these connections real?" he asked at last. "All these people, these links across space?"

It was Mozy who answered. (As real as you and I. You have seen only a few, of many.)

(You chose, well, an odd way to show me.)

The laughter echoed again. (Could we—) (—have shown you—) (—in any other—) (—way?)

(No,) he admitted. (Probably not.) Leonard Hathorne the chairman of the Oversight Committee would have found it hard to believe things that Lennie Hathorne the boy could take for granted. Still—(Do you make a habit of digging into people's subconscious memories? I admit that it might have been warranted in this case, but—)

(Now, don't revert so quickly,) Mozy said lightly.

(I'm not, but—)

(The answer is no. They did not dig. They only allowed you to allow yourself to bring back the memories. We were all a little surprised at what emerged. N'rrril?)

The Talenki bobbed its head. (We had feared that you might not be receptive at all, that you would care nothing for the music we brought—)

(Is that why you came, then?)

The Talenki tilted its head, golden, flaming eyes peering deep into his. (There is a phrase,) it said at last. (
The music of the spheres
. That is what we seek, what we carry.)

Other Talenki voices added, (All of knowledge—) (—all of understanding—) (—all of feeling—) (—is to us—) (—a kind of music—) (—of the spheres.)

Hathorne nodded, rubbing his chin. He looked at Jonders, who seemed to be observing all of this with some satisfaction. (I see,) he said. (But you see
my
dilemma, don't you?) He thought momentarily of several billion people, depending on only a handful for their protection. And that handful—not all trusting each other—awaiting his opinion.