Watson, Ian - Novel 06 (19 page)

           
“I
started remembering
the moment I got here. I couldn’t remember any
of it back in the ordinary world! The memory got . . . intercepted. It got
drained out of me. But it’s still here ... on the Askatharli level. I don’t
think the Veil Being realizes this.”

 
          
“The
what
?” We stare at him. Wu, rather
smugly so.

 
          
“Listen,
you guys, I’m going to try something. If we can create things out of our
minds—I mean, if we can all imagine horses, and horses pop into existence—”

 
          
“Systems
of cognita,” says Zoe. “Sufficiently complex to be ridden, and neigh, and foam
at the mouth.”

 
          
“Yeah,
whatever. Maybe I can show you what happened to me. Maybe I can make a model of
it, like a movie.”

 
          
“You
can do it,” nods Zoe. “This whole Heaven is imagined. We’re in
imagination-space. Go ahead.”

 
          
“I
just want something like a holovision movie. Yes, that’s how to think of it.
And I’m the transmitter.” His brow furrows. The area ahead, beneath the purple
vines, shimmers. A box of air becomes . . . something else. A metal floor—no, a
deck.
It’s the control deck in
miniature—a section of it. There are the instrument boards and chairs. Beyond
the viewports is the amorphous swirl of High Space. It’s a three-dimensional
cutaway. Two mannikins are perching on adhesive seats, playing magnetic
chequers. Ritchie—and Gus Trimble.

 
          
Suddenly,
as though Ritchie has lost control of the projection, the control deck is full
of bodies in cocoons with their heads in glassy bubbles, their skulls wired up.
Tubes and cables tangle about, linking them all.

 
          
“But
that’s what we saw! ” cries Zoe.

 
          
“Wait.”

           
Gus hops a black chequer over two of
Ritchie’s white ones. Rapidly the two scenes alternate: the bodies, the game of
chequers. They fuse into one. Each interpenetrates the other in a kind of
double exposure. We hear voices.

 
          
“What’s
going on?” squeaks the Ritchie-doll. “Damn this High Space. I’m hallucinating.
I’m seeing bodies all around us. Gus, you‘re
one
of them! You’re sitting here playing chequers with me—but your
head’s wired up in a bottle too. I’m seeing double.” An insectoid drifts out
among the bodies, then a second one. The Ritchie-doll flaps his arms
frantically. “What the hell are those? Am I going nuts?”

 
          
“Please
be calm,” says the Gus-doll expressionlessly. “We are . . . over-riding Gus
Trimble’s memory.”

 
          
“What
are you? Something from God’s World? Like the avatars?” Ritchie’s hands flail
at the approaching insectoid, but it merely passes through them. It passes
right through his body. “I’ve been in some hairy corners, Gus, but this is
getting tome!”

 
          
“Please.
We did not expect this contact. You are one of the humans who escaped when our
insectoid helpers took control of your ship. Gus Trimble recognizes you.”

 
          
“These
filthy insects took
Pilgrim
! Yes, of
course! I remember now. We got away to Getka. I put on one of those
helmet-masks. I must still have it on my head! ”

 
          
“So
you are using one of their instruments of vision? Which is how you are intruding
into this memory space. Did the Getkans make you put it on?”

 
          
“No,
I did it for a damn fool joke. They don’t know.”

 
          
“We
may be safe, then. We must use this contact, Ritchie.” “How come I’m playing
chequers here? This is all way back in time. Haven’t you insects taken over
yet? Am I seeing into the future? No, I can’t be—not if I’m on Getka!”

           
“You are in memory-space, Ritchie.
This is where your friends are quarantined. We were forced to act rapidly, to
capture and ‘suspend’ them—cut them off from input. You were already linked to
your destination, and too close to it—you vulnerable soul-beings. We are
exploring certain key areas of their psyches, within memory-space—areas
relating to the individual and the group, and to your knowledge of your ‘souls’
which link you with what lies beyond reality, and make you vulnerable. We are
attempting contact, and illumination, cautiously in their memory- space. Trust
us! Much hangs on this. Evidently you are now experiencing both memory-space,
here where we meet, and the actual present scene—though we cannot detect you
there. We only detect you in the memory-space of Gus Trimble. Were you a good
friend of his?”

 
          
“We
got on. He’s an ordinary guy, like me. Hey, if you aren’t the enemy, who is?
Don’t tell me it’s the Getkans. They’re friendly folk. They’re just, well,
explorers of some higher sort of existence. At least they say so.”

 
          
“They
are victims, Ritchie. Unwitting victims of an energy life-form which is outside
of ordinary reality, yet which enters and manipulates ordinary reality through
them. Let us borrow a term from the memory-space of your shipmate Salman, whom
we are scanning: the ‘veil’. There is a Veil Being. It is a quasi-life form
which balances on the interface—exists on the standing wave— between reality
and the creative force that is beyond reality. It is part of the ‘energy
circuit’ between what you term ‘God’, and the created universe—in our terms,
between the descent of Being into the world and its reprocessing back through
death, which is the psychic counterpart of the continual fluxing in and out of
existence of the entire material cosmos. This part of the ‘energy- psyche
circuit’ that we call the Veil Being has achieved an independent, yet
parasitical rebel existerfce. In Salman’s terms this is a ... Satan.”

 
          
The
Ritchie-doll licks his lips. “You mean to tell me that God’s World is really .
. . Satan’s World?”

 
          
“Emotively
this is true, though the phrase itself is mainly noise as regards its
information content. The Veil Being can only sustain and continue its existence
by being made up of all the ‘souls’ that it draws into itself and holds in
itself. Its existence is a gestalt of these, and as such its component
parts—which are individual souls—cannot envision it. They, and the living Getkans
they are ‘glued’ to, are granted paranormal powers and quasiimmortality, but
they are really controlled and hoodwinked by the corporate Veil Being so that
they cannot understand how it is against the proper order of things—against the
reprocessing of lives back into Being, through death. It is a blockage, a
tumour, in the flux between Being and existence, between what you term ‘God’,
and the world. Since reality is the dream of ‘God’—since the universe is
imagined into existence from beyond—this blockage must bring about a
degradation and ultimate collapse of reality.

 
          
“The
physical threat would sum up as the eventual disappearance of areas of space
and matter themselves, if the Veil Being carried on its predations for very
long—which might nudge askew the finely balanced physical constants which
permit the existence of this universe as one where life can arise. For the Veil
Being is not a stable system, but one which is balanced on the standing wave.
The more souls it sucks into itself to keep it poised upon that wave, the more
it needs. The degradation of reality is still recuperable; it only manifests
itself so far as a regression of the civilization of the Getkans and other
victims— a halting and disappearance of history, the ongoing social process.”

 
          
“So
Satan would undo God’s work? Drag it into a kind of black hole? Surely Satan—I
mean the Veil Being—would dissolve in the process?”

 
          
“Exactly.
Which is why it must extend itself to other worlds through High Space—for its
own survival! But if it continues to spread—to tens, then hundreds of
worlds—eventually it surely must unbalance. By that time the regression of
reality will have gone too far. If it implodes then,- the breakdown of reality
will spread outwards through the whole physical universe.”

 
          
“So
either Satan carries on eating dead souls, by then, or reality goes bust? Wow,
Salman may be up on this, but I’m not. How did you insects get involved?”

 
          
“The
insects are simply our allies—our helping hands. We are machine intelligences.
As such we are ‘soulless’. We can only probe and perhaps defeat the Veil Being
by using soul-beings who are vulnerable to its seductions. Hence the necessary
capture of your friends, for their own sake and for the sake of existence.” “So
the insects manufactured you? Don’t they have souls, either? They must be
immune too.”

 
          
“Originally
we were a world data network and control system created by a race called the
Harxine. They built us to maintain, oversee and balance the life-systems and
ecology of their world.

 
          
They
were lizard-like. Homeostasis is more of a problem for lizards than for
mammals, who are warm-blooded; hence, perhaps, the urge to build us. Now the
Harxine are extinct.” “You couldn’t have looked after them too well!”

           
“Our sun flared nova. We could do
nothing about this. We lost all the atmosphere and the seas. Only we survived.
We reconstructed ourselves over the next several millenia, and in so doing we
changed. We became the Harxine Paracomputers— more than computers. We turned
our attention to the general enigma of life and death. We reached out to other
inhabited star systems in our quest—though, unlike the Veil Being which can
propagate its influence through High Space, we are limited to Low Space, and
thus constrained by the speed of light. The threat of the Veil Being first
became apparent some two thousand of your years ago, with the withdrawal of
several star cultures we were observing into an inaccessible and hostile
psychic zone, together with a halt and regression in their civilizations. From
a world on the brink of this calamity we learnt of what you call the ‘God’s
World broadcasts’—projections of archetypal imagery that penetrates the roots
of a culture’s beliefs. But what to do? An expedition of silicon-based
soul-beings in league with us backfired upon its home world, which was drawn
in to the Veil Being’s ‘event horizon’. We have been picketing this solar
system for many years, sending tiny expendable spy drones down to Getka,
waiting for a new chance—for new ‘mind tools’ to be lured here. We must
apologize to you, but we had to act swiftly without consultation with you.”

 
          
“You
could have tried warning other worlds! ”

 
          
“So
many worlds, so much space—we are limited by the speed of light, as we told
you. All worlds already in touch with us were warned.”

 
          
“I
guess it was kind of unfortunate we six got away, from your point of view?”

 
          
“Most
unfortunate, for yourselves and for your planet. Nevertheless, we seem to have
a link with you escapees now, in mind- space—if only the Veil Being does not
veil this from you. A valuable, yet dangerous link.”

 
          
“Can’t
you bail us out? Can’t you land and rescue us?”

 
          
“Any
such landing would be a suicide mission. Once any

 
          
Getkan
who is linked to the Veil Being sees our agents they can summon up . . . forces
and energies in form of quasi-beings to fight for them. If we
did
bring you back here safely, we might
ourselves be lost because you would be creatures of the Veil Being.”

 
          
“But
if the six of us down there do become what they call ‘heroes’, won’t we be
hyped up to attack you through this link with Gus and the others?”

 
          
“Precisely.
This puts your friends, sadly, in danger of their lives. We may be forced to .
. . neutralise them. Alternatively, we must expend some of our allies on a
suicide strike to neutralise
you
,
unless you can learn to break the bonds of the Veil Being. If we can find you.”

 
          
“You
mean,
kill
the six of us?”

 
          
“If
our allies can achieve it. To our great sorrow. At least it will save your
world.”