The Dark Side of the Sun

5

The universe was divided into two parts, separated by a five centimetre shell of monomolecular steel. On the inner side was the interior of the luxury yacht One Jump Ahead, superbly outfitted for one passenger but badly cramped for three, one of whom was metal and another was smelling of swamp water.

On the other side was the rest of the universe, composed almost entirely of nothing with a trace of hydrogen. There were also the inhabited planets of Human-Creapii space.

There was Terra Novae, metal-rich and dynamically technological. Third Eye, forested from tundra to mangrove swamps, where the wind sang eerily in the trees and the humans were more alien even than phnobes, and talked with their minds and eyes. On Eggplant the vegetarians were ferocious, and had to be. On the drosk's world of Quaducquakucckuaquekekecqac visiting humans picked uneasily at the horribly familiar food and were thankful that drosks were too well mannered to do more than look hungrily at guests. There was Laoth, where the only living things were human beings - yet birds flew and the brooks were full of fish...

On every world hot enough to boil water one of the sub-races of Creapii clustered. In the deceptive emptiness of space swam the sundogs and the race called The Pod. And there was The First Sirian Bank...

'Sixteen,' said Isaac.

'This is a distrustful universe in which we live, certainly,' said Hrsh-Hgn.

Ig, with the ease of one who had lived in zero-g all his life, floated around a bulkhead with another struggling body in his mouth. It looked vaguely like a grasshopper, and had in fact quite a sophisticated copy of an insect brain - but rather better than insect ears.

Dom turned from the viewscreen. 'Old Korodore really had this ship bugged,' he said, 'Look for pinheads, too.'

From orbit Widdershins was grey-blue and big, studded with strips of cloud. The dawn terminator was nudging Tau City. A grey cloud hung over it.

The drive cabin was small and apparently full of elbows. Isaac sat hunched up in the pilot couch. He looked up.

'I have your grandmother on the line, chief. Are you in?'

'Does she sound angry?'

'No, very cool.'

'Chel, that's even worse.' He switched on the intercom.

'I have got very little to say to you, Dom, except to remind you of your duty to the planet. Doesn't it mean anything to you? You may be killed.'

Dom took a deep breath. 'I may be killed anyway. At least there's no false sense of security here.'

'Fool! You are just seizing the chance to jaunt off on an idiot quest. And incidentally, there's a shape-war brewing down here. Half a squad of guards have been slaughtered in the buruku. The one at Tau City is on fire—'

'Samhedi took his men in with stunners. You know guns are against all phnobic law.'

There was a pause. Dom glanced at the screen. The pall over Tau City had grown. As he watched, a point well to the west of the City suddenly flashed into a streak of blinding light. The sunlight had reached the Joker Tower.

'That was ... foolish,' said Joan slowly, 'Nevertheless, officers of the Board are entitled to some respect. I'm declaring a State of Emergency. A ship will pick you up within the hour.'

Dom cut the connection and spun round to Hrsh-Hgn.

'Can you get through to the leader of all the burukus ? The Servant of the Pillar, isn't it?

'You know not what you assk. However—'

In three minutes Dom was looking at a screen holding the image of a small, lightly built phnobe, wearing a silver collar. A female? Phnobes were generally reticent about their sex.

'On behalf of the Board,' he said, 'What may we do to repair this grievous hurt?'

The Servant hissed. 'The soil of the buruku has been disgraced.' Dom nodded. The buruku was covered to a depth of several inches with Phnobic soil, specially transported.

'We could replace it,' he said.

They haggled. Finally Dom concluded the conversation with a suitable expression of regard and said: 'It'll cost us several hundred thousand standards in haulage charges alone.'

'Can you authorize Board expenditure?'

'Board expenditure nothing. It'll come out of the Sabalos personal account.' He sat back, suddenly tired.

'There is another problem,' said Isaac from his seat. 'Like, where are we going? And how are we going to get there?'

'Hrsh?'

The phnobe pinched his nose. 'The First Sirian Bank would make a good starting point. According to legend he was created by the Jokers.'

'Oh. I hadn't heard that. And he's my Godfather.'

'Well, it issn't true. He iss at least three billion yearss old, ass far as he knows.'

Isaac whistled. There was something on the deep radar, drifting purposely towards the ship.

'It's a sundog, touting for business,' said Dom. 'There's our passage to Sirius.'

'Count me out!' shrieked the phnobe, 'I'm not travelling on one of thosse animalss! I thought this sship had an interspace matrix!'

'It had,' said Isaac calmly, 'It probably worked real good in Dom's great-great-grandfather's day but now the settings are all anyhow. Fancy ending up inside a star? Think of the loss to letters.'

'Very well then. But under sstrong protesst.'

Twenty minutes later a shadow eclipsed the stars. The sundog stopped a few hundred metres from the ship, a fat lozenge flashing like a beacon as it turned slowly in the sunlight.

Isaac peered into the scope.

'It has orange, purple and yellow markings, boss, with a black band across the yellow.'

Dom sighed with relief. Not all sundogs were friendly, or bright enough to realize what would follow if they forgot themselves and engulfed a small spaceship.

'That will be the one who calls itself Abramelin-lincoln-stroke-Enobarbous-stroke-50.3-Eno-barbous-McMirmidom,' he said. 'He's okay. He does haulage work for us.'

A thought stole unbidden into his head.

Hullo, spaceman. You wish to travel, maybe ?

'Please take us to the First Sirian Bank.'

Price for journey: seventeen standards.

The ship bucked slightly as the sundog reached out and enveloped it in a pseudofield. The giant semi-animal rotated slowly to face the actinic blue star, inasmuch as a sundog had a face.

'This is undignified,' moaned Hrsh-Hgn, 'Carried by a dog like so much freight.'

To be ready.

'Would you rather grandmother caught us, in her present mood?'

To be steady.

'Frssh!'

'Come on, now, face it like a cosmospolitan.'

Go.

An invisible hand wrenched See-Why out of the sky and hurled it at them. They were falling into the sun. Then they were falling around the sun. They skimmed over a blurred sea of blue-white fire that broke on the reefs of space, its roaring a dim thunder inside the pseudofield, towards a glowing horizon that had no curve.

And the star dopplered behind them. Sundog soared up into the interstellar dark, singing.

Silence filled the cabin.

'Wow,' said Dom.

'Urghss!'

Isaac peered at the matrix panel, and dimmed the ship lights. In the darkness there were only the stars ahead, and they began to flare blue.

'Prepare yourselves to become a relativistic impossibility...' sang Isaac.

Illusion.

Dom knew about the things seen in interspace. The larger ships usually had screening around most of the hull, and perhaps an unscreened lounge for the incurably curious...

A white stag galloped through the cabin wall, which glowed under an orange light. It bore a gold crown between its horns. Dom sensed its fear, smelled the rankness, saw the sweat-matted hair on its flanks - but its hooves merged with the floor, and floor and skin merged and flowed continuously. It reared, and leapt through the autochef.

Dom saw the huntsman on his black horse when he brushed through the wall of the drive cabin like bracken. He wore white, except for a red cloak hung with silver bells, and his face beneath yellow hair that billowed in an intangible wind was pale and set. For a moment he looked at Dom, who saw his eyes gleam momentarily like mirrors and a hand go up protectively. Then horse and rider were gone.

'Chel! He almost seemed real!'

Isaac grinned. 'He almost certainly is, somewhere.'

'Uhuh. They say interspace is where all possibilities intersect. I got the feeling he sensed us.'

'A spirit on the wind, no more.'

Dom stood up unsteadily. The walls still looked as if they had been made of second-hand moonlight.

'Now there's an illusion I've heard about.'

A red globe the size of a fist drifted easily through the shielded windows. He watched fascinated as it passed through the autochef, part of the main cable conduit, and the floating figure of Ig, who stirred uneasily in his sleep. It disappeared in the general direction of the matrix computer.

It was an interspace interpretation of a star, probably BD + 6793°. They were harmless enough, though a red giant or a spitting white dwarf could be unnerving to watch as it passed through your body.

Dom looked round after hearing a scuffle. Hrsh-Hgn was wedged under the autochef, in the foetal position. It was almost an hour before he was persuaded to emerge, blinking with embarrassment.

'We phnobess are not perhapss so ressilient ass you—' he began, 'Intersspace sscares uss. It is a region of uncertainty. Who knowss that we may not ceasse to exist?'

'You appear to be all here, physically and mentally.'

The phnobe nodded sheepishly.

Isaac closed the maintenance panel on the autochef.

'It's a '706 model, a quality job,' he said. 'I can't find a print-out for the menu, anywhere.'

Dom nodded. 'I think great-great-grandfather intended the One Jump as a one-man ship. I should imagine the menu is programmed into it.'

'Quite. He'd be so busy fleeing from his creditors he'd have no time—sorry, chief, I think maybe I stepped out of line a little there.'

'It's okay. He was a bit of a pirate. But according to the family history he was a strict Sadhimist, too. Simplicity was a virtue. I shouldn't expect it to run to anything more appetizing than bread and maybe fish.'

The autochef used simple molecule-breeding techniques to duplicate dishes stored as probability equations in its menu. The one aboard One Jump Ahead gurgled after it was switched on, broke into a low buzz for several minutes, and extruded a table from a base slot. Another, larger slot opened and the meal slid out.

They stared at it for several seconds. Dom reached out and picked up a crystallized fruit, gingerly.

Hrsh-Hgn coughed. 'The intricate bird with the honey glaze I recognize,' he murmured. 'It's a Croupier swan. I think the blobss are cream.'

Dom took the lid off a silver dish.

'Some class of a shellfish baked in—well, it tastes of eggs.'

Isaac picked up a cut-glass goblet and downed the contents in one swallow.

'Old Overcoat,' he said. 'The genuine stuff. Two glasses and you lift off on a pillar of flame.'

They stared at him. He put down the glass.

'Haven't you seen a robot drink before?' he asked.

'We were wondering ...' Dom stopped, embarrassed.

'... where it goesss?'

'We new model class Fives can derive power from the calorific content of organic substances.' He reached for his chest panel. 'If you like I can—'

'We believe you,' said Dom. He looked down at the table again. 'Did I say something about the virtues of simplicity? I think it may be against Sadhimist laws to eat this.'

' "You will not waste",' quoted Hrsh-Hgn. 'There are timess when it iss a pleassure as well ass a duty to follow the One Commandment.

Ten minutes later Dom said: 'Hrsh-Hgn, this damn black jam tastes of fish.'

'It's caviar.'

'Caviar? I'd always wondered. On Widdershins only poor people are allowed to eat it. I suppose they get used to it.'

Twenty minutes later the autochef digested the remains of the meal. Ig drifted towards the matrix room, chewing a fish head. A small, burned-out wreck of a star passed crosswise through the cabin and disappeared. Dom watched it go.

'If the First Sirian Bank is the galaxy's leading Joker expert, why hasn't he found Jokers World?' he asked.

'I assume you don't mean that he should have roved across the universe, Roche limits being what they are. A thing the ssize of the Bank would upset the balance of the average solar system, probably. As to exploration via the available data, he may well have disscovered Jokerss World. Why not? Why, then, sshould he tell uss, mere upstart civilissationss.'

'We'd pay well.'

'We? We? Phnobic We? Human We? Let uss assume the race who findss Jokerss World gains immeasurably. Why should he want that?'

Dom frowned. 'But he runs himself as a Bank. He charges for his services, too.'

'He choosess to. A creature musst do something to relieve the boredom of three billion years. He likes people around.'

'You mean he wouldn't like to see anyone get hold of the World because they might put the Bank in jeopardy?'

'Maybe. It iss all conjecture.'

He started to talk about Jokers World.

Three races walked like men. One of them was Man. Taller than men, but generally lighter, were the phnobes. Much smaller than men but built more on cuboid lines so that they looked like heavy-gravity chimpanzees on a steroid diet, were drosks.

Phnobes came in three sexes. They had a secondary, vestigial brain. They evolved on a world with no readily-available metal. In cerebral matters they were supreme. A world where most of the higher animals were adapted to a tri-sexual system needed a race with brains.

Drosks came in two sexes, eventually. It made sense on a harsh, bitter world. The young males evolved into mature, strong-rninded females after about the first third of their life. Their social system was intricate but was surpassed in complexity by their religion, a fiery edifice involving the double star and three large moons in their system. Drosks were cannibals, it was part of the religion. Drosks found it difficult to conceive of a number greater than seven. Drosks periodically built up a machine-age civilization then, for no well-understood reason, carefully dismantled it and reverted to barbarism.

Compared to all the other fifty-two races known, drosks, phnobes and men were like brothers. To some races, like the Spooners who lived on little icy worlds, they were merely identical. Many others would be incapable of thinking of them as life at all - like say, the Tarquins, who lived in the upper layers of some proto-stars.

A few races had a larger conception of life. The Creapii lived on small, hot worlds, in the deep layers of the larger gas giants and occasionally on the surface of very cool suns, but could discourse on philosophy with men as easily as they could discuss the untranslatable with Tarquins. Then there were the sundogs, who were merely raw life and derived their picture of the universe from the minds of their customers. The First Sirian Bank was in a class of his own, as always. A few races - The Pod, for one - were alien even to Spooners and Tarquins.

But all the races had one thing in common. They were all less than five million years old, and all had originated within a sphere of stars less than two hundred light years across, centred on Wolf 429. The Creapii discovered that first, and so were the first to investigate the one planet that orbited the Wolf.

They found a Joker Tower, a monomolecular spire frosted with frozen methane, standing dark and alone under the airless sky. They found the thing later known simply as the Centre of the Universe.

The Creapii ranged far. They found more Towers, other Joker Artifacts like the Ring Stars, Band and the Internal Planets of Protostar V. As an incidental, they found Earth and sold a working matrix motor for homesteading rights on Mercury. The Creapii were beginning to feel in the grip of a galactic mystery, and had long before decided that they needed extra insights.

Seventy standard years later a joint Man-Phnobe team deciphered Joker Curiform C, the only one of the five Joker scripts translatable. There were hints of a great civilization, although the word was only an approximation, and there was probably the first poem in the universe.

Geological evidence suggested that the towers were all between eight and five million years old. They were ranged more or less equally across the light years, accepting all energies, radiating none.

The Creapii knew that they had recognizably evolved from the mildly-intelligent salamanders about four million years before, to judge from the desiccated aluminium-polysilicate remains on their planet around 70 Ophiuchis A. They knew of no race older.

They were long-lived. They had travelled up the Tentacle - Creapii mythology saw the galaxy as a giant Creap, with a glittering carcase of stars - to the sparse stars at the rim. They had sailed down the Tentacle to the cathedral of stars at the hub. The stars were barren. There were one or two freak accidents. But generally, life was still merely some slightly more complex chemical changes. Only in the bubble of stars behind them did worlds teem.

Impetuous races would have reached a definite conclusion hastily , maybe in two or three hundred years. The Creap minds, of which each individual had three, did not jump so readily to conclusions ...

'And what conclusion did they reach?' asked Dom.

'The Creapii are powerful, and slow, and thorough. They have as yet reached no conclusion. They are seeking the meaning of life. Why sshould they hurry?'

'Chel! Isn't the theory that the Jokers seeded our stars before they - uh - moved away? Come on, you know it is.'

The phnobe nodded slowly. 'That is certainly the hypothesis that the Joker Institute appears to work on.'

Dom bit his lip, and opened his mouth to speak. Hrsh-Hgn raised a hand.

'You are about to assk why. Boy, remember that of fifty-two races in the life-stars you, an Earthman—'

'A Widdershine!'

'True, a Widdershine of Earth stock - can only vaguely understand the mental workings of perhaps three or four races. Why should we hope to understand the Jokers?'

'But the Institute did understand Joker Curiform C. It was one of their languages.'

'Yes, but a written language is merely a machine to convey information, and once we had the key it was remarkably easy to translate.'

'How was it broken?'

'They used a poet, and a mad computer.'

Hrsh-Hgn picked up the cube of pink silica that had been his present to Dom, thumbed the reference face and set it to project. The words of the Joker Testament hung in the air, glowing.

You who stand before us We have held the stars in the hollow of our hands, and the stars Burn. Pray be careful now As to how you handle them. We have gone to wait on our new world There is but one It lies at the dark side of the sun.

'Pretty derivative stuff,' said Isaac. 'That last couplet is really a singlet.'

'I must admit it is better in phnobic,' said Hrsh-Hgn, 'As for the rest, well, you musst know most of it. On a purely practical level, hotheads have searched every sizeable body in the bubble and many out of it.'

'Now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty,' said Isaac. 'You'd have had to include suns, of course, and the deeps themselves. Although it sounds more likely that the Jokers originated on-planet somewhere.'

'The popular belief is that Jokers World is laden with wonders beyond belief,' said Hrsh-Hgn.

'Sitting in here it's hard to get some idea of the deeps, but they must be big enough to hide a world in. The Jokers might have had a world with no sun,' said Dom.

'It's just conceivable,' agreed Hrsh-Hgn, politely.

'It's been thought of, huh?'

'About once every five years,'

'How about it being invisible?' said Isaac. Dom laughed.

'Maybe,' said Hrsh-Hgn, 'You'd heard of Ghost Stars, Dom?'

'Uhuh. So dense that not even gravity escapes from them.'

'Now this is just an idea to kick about, I'm just dropping it on the plate to see if anyone pours mayonnaise on it, but you could outfit an entire solar system with matrix engines and drop it into interspace,' said Isaac. Dom was about to laugh, but looked sidelong at Hrsh-Hgn.

'That's the legend of the Prodigal Sun,' said Hrsh-Hgn, 'A low-temperature Creapii story. Yes, you could do it in about fifty years time, at our present rate of technological expanssion. The catalytic power would not have to be too great. But the practical application of the matrix equation makes it impossible.' He caught Dom's blank expression. 'You see, you do not need a great deal of power to drop even a large mass in and out of interspace.'

Hrsh-Hgn used more technical language to explain that it was the on-board computer that really counted. Since a body in interspace was theoretically everywhere at the same time and would if randomly dropped out almost certainly materialize in the centre of the nearest solar body, the navigational matrix computer was very necessary. It had to be big - 'everywhere' was a large volume to be quantified. The bigger the body, the greater chance of error, so the bigger the computer.

'The sundog carrying us now registered a current drain in microamps to achieve interspace. 'It's little more than a mental discipline. Four fifths of its body iss a hind-brain designed to locate it accurately with regard to the datum universse, with fortunately just enough sspare capacity to allow for the extra mass of a medium-ssized sship.

'To get a medium-range star successfully through interspace you'd have to have a computer about one hundred times its mass.'

'How about one planet?' asked Dom.

'The graphs meet at planets like Phnobis or Widdershins, small and dense. You could just about do it if you hollowed out the world and filled it with computers. But this is a fruitless line of sspeculation. Personally I believe that the Jokers—'

Illusion.

Ig was keening. Dom opened his eyes and blinked. He was soaked in sweat. One arm ached.

At the far end of the cabin Hrsh-Hgn had been thrown like a doll across the gear locker.

'Isaac?'

The robot let go of the handrail that ringed One Jump's cabin.

'Rough, huh?' he asked.

'I feel like someone just hit me with something large, like a planet,' said Dom. 'Or a large asteroid. What's happened?'

'We're between stars. It looks as though the sundog dropped out rather clumsily.'

Dom floated up, trying to quieten his stomach. It appeared to be knotted. His head ached.

Hrsh-Hgn groaned and woke. 'Frghsss—' he swore.

'Sundog?' said Dom to the empty air.

Apologies. Journey interrupted owing to circumstances beyond control. Disturbance in interspace matrix space-frame. We must detour in datum space.

Isaac was glued to the deep radar.

'It's still several million kilometres away - it must be throwing one hell of an interspace shadow. It's taking its time. It's a cone - oh, my, will you look at that!'

They stared into the screen. On maximum magnification it showed a pyramid tumbling deceptively slowly through space, flashing faintly as starlight caught its polished faces. There was no mistaking the outline of a Joker tower.

Dom swam into the pilot seat and asked the sundog to take them in closer. In a few minutes they were a few kilometres away. The tower hung steady against a starfield that spun like a mad planetarium.

'The Institute of Joker Studies pays a million standards bounty for details of new towers,' said Dom, 'I want to catch it.'

'In a pig's eye,' said Isaac. 'That mass at that speed? It's a job for twenty sundogs.'

Right.

'Well, we can plot its course. There's a reduced bounty for that sort of information. We could split it three ways.'

Four ways.

'Okay, four—'

Dom struggled for breath. Something had caught him in a vice, and was squeezing hard.

He sensed the ship. He was acutely aware of the convoluted atomic structure of the hull. The little deuterium pile in the matrix computer sparkled like a witch ball left over from Hogswatchnight. Isaac was a coruscation of currents flowing over coiled alloy wire, suffused with the sickening feel of metallic hydrogen. The sundog brain throbbed dull purple with vague semi-thoughts.

Beyond the ship, beyond the tumbling Tower, he felt the other ship. It was waiting for him. Someone had known that he would pass under this area. He felt metallic hydrogen again - the feel of a robot mind.

He felt inside the sundog's mind. There was a jolt as its field polarized and the Tower receded instantly against the stars. For a moment he felt the rage of the mind in the other ship. Then it was gone, lost in the static as the dog sank gratefully into interspace.

And something withdrew from his mind, gently. He had time for a very brief feeling of loss, of the unfair restriction of a mere five senses ... then the reaction hit him.

He didn't fall, because there was no 'down'. But he hung bewildered, listening to the puzzled protests from the dog. Hrsh-Hgn and Isaac were staring at him. Then the phnobe took him gently in one bony hand and hauled him down to the bunk.

'I saw everything,' muttered Dom, 'Something was looking through me, there was an assassin waiting at that tower, you know...'

'Ssure,' murmured Hrsh-Hgn. 'Ssure.'

'Believe me!'

'Ssure.'

'He had a molecule stripper!' shouted Dom.

'Something made the sundog get the hell out of there,' admitted Isaac. 'Was it you?'

Dom nodded violently, and then added slowly: 'I think so. But—but just before, I saw... Would you believe I saw probabilities? I saw us powdered by that stripper. But that was in another universe. We escaped, in this one. Chel, I can't describe it. We haven't got the right words!'