The Triple Goddess (132 page)

Humiliating though it was, Central elected to resort to primitive means. Squads scoured the region for every available sailing ship, rowing boat, and dinghy, for use as Dunkirk-style landing craft, many of them leaking and encrusted with barnacles and barely seaworthy. One vessel was removed from where it was mounted on blocks in a maritime museum, and hastily patched up.

Manned by naval crews stiff in gleaming whites, this unlikely flotilla was dispatched to attach limpet mines to its crustacean cousin so that it might be cracked open; or, failing that, to wrap steel hawsers around its supports, in order that the two aircraft carriers anchored a mile away, acting as tugs, could tow it into harbour for the contents to be winkled out and the whole dismantled.

But before they could reach their destination, the hulls of these wooden and fibreglass vessels ran up against an invisible barrier, and many were stove in, leaving the crews floundering in the water getting entangled in the grappling lines, and fighting over the lifebelts. There was nothing to be done except pile aboard whatever nearest boat was most likely to stay afloat, and paddle away.

During the hiatus in hostilities, even as Central’s chemists under Peggy Knouse 0072C were completing their preparations to surround the spaceship with a deadly heavy gas, in the hope that there might be some open air intake or ventilation valves, the Alliance Executive Committee members on Lightyear—with the exception of the Blenders themselves, who remained sceptical about the possibility of rapprochement—continued to hope that a refusal to meet weapon with weapon…not that Water-Sky had any, but the Earthlings did not know that…might result in Central offering a truce. This would give the out-of-towners an opportunity to apologize for not applying for permission to enter Earth’s airspace and land, as common courtesy as well as international law would under normal circumstances dictate, and to reaffirm their good intentions and explain the situation in more detail.

Were this to happen even the Blenders might have cause for optimism, owing to the favourable first impression that they were likely to make upon some of those who beheld them—for their looks were by Human standards transcendentally, ethereally, beautiful—when they were seen either on a screen or in person, from outside the transparent membrane that would be necessary to protect the Blenders in their controlled environment within Water-Sky, if and when it might be possible for panels of its outer shell to be slid aside.

On Lightyear no standards of physical appearance and dress were considered superior to or more desirable than others, or required deliberation or decision-making, or consideration of elective artificial alteration. Everything about the Blenders was a natural emanation of their dispositions. Blenders did not strive for any particular image, out of vanity, because their miens of themselves went through a constantly changing spectrum of colouring and tone and shade, from restful dark through rainbow hues to opalescent brightness, as manifestations of the unconscious expressions of delight that they took in the manifold pleasures of their lives.

Blenders were graceful and unselfconscious in the light and flowing fashionless robes that they wore, which did not distinguish any individual from another; nor were they designed to any specification; according to whether on or at any day or time of day they were tall and noble, small and delicate, light- or dark-skinned, fine- or plain-featured, smooth- or coarse-complexioned; or even by Human standards “ugly”, for which condition—having no perception or conception of such subjective definition of appearance or manner—the Blender language contained no word.

Lightyear’s natives were kind and gentle, and filled with qualities that did not have to be practised because they were, like Portia’s definition of mercy, not strained but ingrained within them. Neither good and evil, nor right and wrong existed amongst them, because there were no opposites between which distinctions could be drawn. They could be grave, gay, sportive, scientific, mathematical, practical, artistic, literary, musical…no one was consistent in the type of person that he or she was; rather, no one was a type of anything, because each was a combination of everything.

Although they had different specialities and areas of expertise, Blenders’ intelligences and intellects were equal and polymathic, with no individual having greater mental capacity or ability than another. They were not guided by priorities, but proceeded in accordance with what came to them, in the words of the poet Keats, as naturally as leaves to a tree. They were passive rather than operative by nature, inspired by the music of the spheres rather than the rule of law.

Being a sociable race, interested in other people, the Blenders were not limited in their ability to understand the nature of the peoples of other civilizations and nationalities, nor were they deluded as to the reasons why others behaved differently from them. However, they made no judgements upon the diverse philosophies and politics and beliefs and practices and priorities of others, and were tolerant of all of them.

Although they had no enemies and were as mortal as any Human being, Blenders had no instinct of self-preservation. Dying was of no consequence to them: their ends when they came were not attended by sadness, and there was no mourning by each person’s family and friends; only a celebration of what had gone before and the honour and benefit that it had contributed to Lightyear’s culture and history.

It was not cowardice that prevented the Blenders from emerging from Water-Sky; nor was it owing to an inability to communicate in person with the Humans; nor was it primarily because the planet’s atmosphere was to them an alien density, in which their brain processes would slow and become confused, and their speech falter, and their limbs fail, and their colours fade—though that is what would begin to happen if they remained in it too long.

The reason that Lightyear’s Blenders would be unable to quit their spaceship for any length of time concerned the lack on Earth of a Fourth Dimension…at least a fourth dimension that was present in sufficient strength of concentration to enable them to survive.

The essence of each Blender comprised equal proportions of four dimensions—this was why they were called Blenders. On Lightyear the four dimensions worked together in harmony to create a unique state of being: the four dimensions within which the Blenders existed were the same as comprised the four elements of which their bodies were composed and lived in, and constituted the principles that they lived their lives in accordance with; which meant that it was impossible for them to live in any different or lesser environment or condition.

The other three dimensions that co-existed with the fourth were not the same as the simple tertiary spatial range that the majority of Humans associated with the housings of their bodies and minds, and the world that surrounded them: those of height, depth, and width. On Lightyear the First Dimension was that in which volition or will took shape preparatory to being realized and enacted; the Second Dimension was the medium and conduit of communication and intuition; in the Third Dimension were manifested the consequences of one’s actions; and the Fourth Dimension was that in which the mind occupied a Oneness with the Creative Force that had originated and maintained in equilibrium all of the four dimensions together.

On Earth, the Fourth Dimension was like the obscurest of incomprehensible languages, or an undiscoverable cavern in a cliff or mountain, or a fathomless deep. It was the medium of faith and hope and prayer. It was the channel occupied by halfway beings and entities whom most Humans, lacking empathy in the absence of the willingness to practise it, were unable to detect, unless it were subliminally; or did not wish to share their space with, or admit that such things could exist: ghosts and spirits and super-naturals—the Blenders were none of these—and the parts or portions of those mortal beings who strove to live on and within more than one plane of existence, subordinating themselves to them, such as saints and mystics.

Animals and birds often exhibited a fourth-dimensional trait, as a dog or cat can detect good or evil in a person, or sense an earthquake before it happens, or see a ghost.

As if they were listening to poor reception on a radio, some Human people were able to receive intermittent signals from the fourth dimension, and even transmit messages in return, or retrieve time-recorded items from the past. But these were only fragments of a much greater whole, which represented the vestigial susceptibility of the human brain to stimuli from a genesitic world that, for the most part, Mankind denied or preferred not to enter or admit the existence of, because it was believed to be one that led to death and negation of all that had gone before, instead of being concerned with the enrichment and fulfilment of a material life that had a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Because on Earth the fourth dimension was generally shunned in favour of what was on offer in the other three, and rarely entered, when Man did so it was only briefly, as a tourist visits a foreign country and views its shrines and palaces, and is glad to get home when the experience is over and describe it and comment upon it in retrospect.

It was of course fully possible to live in three of the four dimensions without feeling the lack of the fourth; but the complexity and depth of sensation that the fourth dimension afforded, once it had been experienced at full strength, would always be missed like a semi-conquered addiction. It was like hearing a piece of recorded music in monophonic, single-channel, sound after experiencing stereo-, quadraphonic, or surround-sound. Though each dimension was fully compatible with the other three, the unkiltering three-quarter weight of imperfection and imbalance and disproportion that “Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!”, to employ King Lear’s cry (“Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once |That make ingrateful man!”), was a burden—maybe—that the majority of shallow Mankind was willing to bear because to keep the ball inflated and aloft was too much effort.

The Captain of Water-Sky was again instructed by the Executive Committee to “go live”, by sending Central an electronic dossier explicating the moral and physical process by which the meteorites had evolved and formed, and been directed and set in motion. A prefatory statement outlined Mankind’s role in instigating the crisis, though without the recriminatory tone of the filmic line written by Arthur Stanley Jefferson, a.k.a. Stan Laurel, and spoken by Oliver Hardy: “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.”

Simultaneously…ignoring Central’s ideological affirmation that, since all men and women were not created analphabetically equal, only those in power Needed to Know… a DVD entitled “The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth” was sent directly, un-D-Noticed and uncensored, to the covert and illegal and underground, but still in existence, BBC World Service; National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered”; CNN; Al Jazeera; and all other networks except for Central’s Fox News—in all countries and languages, for global rediffusion.

Even the hams and airwave pirates who were still at large, and able to get news instead of propaganda by means of shortwave radio, smoke signal, tom-tom, bull-roarer, heliograph, and other bush telegraph methods, did not go unenlightened.

The bald facts were summarized in layman’s language with the minimum of alarmism, in an attempt to avoid the sort of hysterical reaction that greeted Orson Welles’ “The War of the Worlds” radio hoax, which had been taken to be a genuine announcement that an antennaed invasion force from Mars had landed in New Jersey.

Also, a detailed brochure on the meteorites was e-mailed and faxed to former employees of NASA, university science professors, scientific research institutes, astronomy observatories, physicists, and chemists; and to discredited religious leaders, ditto doctors of philosophy, ditto historians, ditto psychologists, to allow them to make their own independent evaluations even though they would be constrained to keep them to themselves.

The few remaining Luddites would in the morning receive first-class mailings, delivered by loyal but mystified long-retired and redundant Royal Mail, and United States Postal Service employees, and their counterparts around the world, who had found stamped addressed manila envelopes in the post bags that they had been allowed to keep for miscellaneous use along with their superannuated vehicles and bicycles.

In separate online media distribution packages were included photographs of Water-Sky, and the Captain and crew wearing their own garments, for they had no uniforms, and big smiles. A humorous note described the agony that the group had gone through, trying to decide what to clothe themselves in for the group picture.

An article on Blender family life gave an overview of how they raised their children on their star—no directions were given to Lightyear nor any clues as to its whereabouts; what they ate and drank, and read; their pets; how much holiday they took; how hay fever could be cured by drinking a tisane of banyan tree bark boiled in water with a soluble aspirin and a teaspoon of sugar; and the process by which the Blenders had succeeded in developing a candy bar that tasted ten times better than chocolate.

Only the last item was not genuine; but as a white lie the Alliance’s Executive Committee authorized its release because—as the Central-proscribed poet T. S. Eliot observed—it was aware that “Human kind |Cannot bear very much reality.”

Chapter Thirteen

“The end of the world is nigh!”

The secret was out, the truth known to all. Although Central’s spokesman, a white-haired hermaphrodite named Root Snail 6231C, refused to confirm the fact, it was now common knowledge that what had been talked about ever since Man started talking in words of more than one guttural syllable, was indeed coming to pass. The Big Guy was saying, “Enough is Enough,” in the same Old Testament voice that He had used to inform Noah that there was a one hundred per cent chance of rain for the following day, and the next, and the next; and that no one would be able to try and put Humpty Dumpty Earth together again because, following the Great Fall, there would be nobody around to quote the job.