A Wreath of Stars

Chapter Nine

As before, emerging from below ground into the pure pastel light of a new day had the effect of easing the pressure on Snook’s mind, enabling him to put a distance between himself and the Avernians.

He filled his lungs with sun-seeded air and felt his body recover from the curious loss of muscle tone, post-coital in its essence, which had followed his encounter with the alien being. The world, his world, looked hearteningly secure and unchangeable, and it was almost possible to dismiss the notion that—within a matter of hours—another world would begin emerging into the light.

It was wrong, he told himself, to think of Avernus and its people breaking through into the light—because, for them. Earth’s yellow sun would not exist. On Avernus there would continue to be the same low cloud-roof, so thick that day brought only a general lessening of the overhead darkness. It was a watery, misty world—a blind world—with its steep-roofed dwellings of russet stone clinging like molluscs to the chain of equatorial islands…

The Turner-like vision appeared in Snook’s consciousness with such clarity that he knew, on the instant, it had come to him from Felleth. It was an afterimage, a residue of the strange mind-to-mind communion which had briefly spanned two universes, two realities. He paused, wondering how much knowledge of Avernus had been implanted within him during the moment of supreme intimacy, and how much information he had yielded in return.

“All right, Gil?” Ambrose said, eyeing Snook with proprietory concern.

“I’m fine.” The desire to escape being used like a laboratory animal prompted Snook to remain quiet about his new discovery.

“You were looking slightly…ah…pensive.”

“I was wondering about the Avernian universe. You’ve proved there’s an antineutrino sun inside our own sun—does that mean it’s the same with the other stars in the galaxy?”

“There isn’t enough evidence available to support even an educated guess. There’s a thing called the Principle of Mediocrity which states that the local conditions in our Solar System must be regarded as being universal, and that—because there’s an antineutrino sun congruent with Sol—the other stars in the galaxy are likely to have them as well. It’s only a principle, though, and I’ve no idea what the average density of matter in the Avernian universe might be. For all we know, there might be only a handful of their suns scattered around our galaxy.”

“Barely enough to make a wreath.”

“A wreath?” Ambrose looked puzzled.

“The Avernians are going to die, aren’t they?”

Ambrose lowered his voice in warning. “Don’t get personally involved, Gil—it’s asking for trouble.”

The irony of hearing his own life-long creed from the lips of a stranger—and in circumstances which had so fully demonstrated its value—appealed to Snook. He gave a dry laugh, pretended not to notice Ambrose’s worried stare, and walked towards the gate. As he had expected, two jeeps were parked in the lee of the gatehouse, but there had been a change of crews and .the group passed without any reaction. They were almost out of sight, around a corner of the building, when an empty bottle shattered on the ground behind them, sending transparent fragments scuttling through the dust like glassy insects. A soldier in one of the jeeps gave a derisive hyena call.

“Don’t worry—I’m making a note of all these incidents,” Ambrose said. “A few of these gorillas are going to feel sorry for themselves.”

They went out through the gates, Murphy doing the obligatory talking with the security guards, and turned left up the slight incline which led to Snook’s bungalow. The wooden dwellings and stores of the small mining community were deceptively quiet, but there were too many men standing at the street corners. Some of them called greetings to Snook and Murphy as the group went by, but their very cheerfulness was an indication of the tension which was gathering in the air.

Snook moved in beside Murphy and said, “I’m surprised so many people are still here.”

“They haven’t much choice,” Murphy replied. “The Leopards are patrolling all the exit roads.”

At the bungalow Snook went ahead, key in hand, but the front door was opened before he could reach it and Prudence came out, looking cool, stylish and inhumanly perfect. She was wearing an abbreviated blouse held together by a single knot in the material, and murmured past Snook—in a flurry of silk-slung breasts, blonde hair and expensive perfume—to meet Ambrose. Snook watched jealously as they kissed, keeping his face impassive, and decided not to pass any comment.

“Touching reunion,” he heard himself saying, intellectual strategies thrown to the winds. “We must have been away all of two hours.” The only discernible effect of his words was that Prudence seemed to press herself more closely to Ambrose’s tall frame.

“I’ve been lonely,” she whispered to Ambrose, “and I’m hungry. Let’s have breakfast at the hotel.”

Ambrose looked uncomfortable. “I was planning to stay here, Prue. There’s so much work to be done.”

“Can’t you do it at the hotel?”

“Not unless Gil goes as well. He’s the star of the show now.”

“Really?” Prudence looked disbelievingly at Snook. “Well, perhaps…”

“I wouldn’t dream of going into Kisumu looking like this,” he said, touching the black bristles of his crew-cut. Murphy, Quig and Culver exchanged smiles.

“We can eat later,” Ambrose said hastily, drawing Prudence into the house. “In fact, a celebration is called for—we made scientific history a little while ago. Just wait till you hear this…” Still talking enthusiastically he led Prudence into the living room.

Snook went into the kitchen, switched on the coffee machine and splashed his face with cold water at the sink. The homely domesticity of the place made the hopeless grey world of Avernus retreat a little further from his thoughts. He carried a cup of black coffee into the room where the others were discussing the success of the experiment. Culver and Quig were draped across armchairs, in extravagant postures of relaxation, talking about methods of analysing the few Avernian-originated sounds they had recorded. Murphy was standing at a window, chewing thoughtfully and looking out towards the mine.

“We’ve got coffee or gin,” Snook announced. “Help yourselves.”

“Nothing for me,” Ambrose said. “There’s so much to do here that I don’t know where to start, but let’s try running over Gil’s tape.” He took off his wrist recorder, adjusted its controls and set the tiny machine inside its amplifier unit.

“Now, Gil, listen carefully and see if this triggers off any other memories. We’re dealing with a new form of communication here and we don’t know yet how to make the best use of it. I still think pulse code modulation is the best avenue of approach for general communication with the Avernians, but with your help we may be able to learn their language in days instead of weeks or months.” He set the machine going and Snook’s recorded voice filled the room.

“Deep peace of the running wave.”

Prudence, who was sitting on the arm of Ambrose’s chair, burst out laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but this is ridiculous. It’s just too much.”

Ambrose silenced the machine and looked up at her in startled reproach. “Please, Prue—this is important.”

She shook her head and dabbed her eyes. “I know, and I’m sorry, but all you seem to have proved is that the Avernians are Celts. And it’s so silly.”

“What do you mean?”

“ “Deep peace of the running wave”—it’s the first line of a traditional Celtic blessing.”

“Are you certain?”

“Positive. My room-mate at college had it pinned to her wardrobe door. “Deep peace of the running wave to you; Deep peace of the flowing air to you; Deep peace of…” I used to know the whole thing by heart.” Prudence gave Snook a confident, challenging smile.

“I never heard it before,” he said.

“I can’t understand this.” Ambrose narrowed his eyes at Snook. “Though I suppose it’s possible you did hear those words somewhere, long ago, and that they were lying in your subconscious.”

“So what? I told you Felleth and I didn’t have a conversation. I got ideas from him—and that’s the way the first one came over to me.”

“It’s odd, the coincidence of wording, but there must be an explanation.”

“I’ll give you one,” Prudence said. “Mister Snook found himself with no job, and—being a resourceful sort of a person—he created another one.”

Ambrose shook his head. “That isn’t fair, Prue.”

“Perhaps not, but you’re a scientist, Boyce. What real evidence have you got that this wonderful telepathic experience was genuine?”

“There’s enough internal evidence in Gil’s story to satisfy me.”

“I don’t give a damn whether anybody believes me or not,” Snook cut in, “but I repeat that I didn’t have an ordinary conversation with Felleth. Some of it came through in words, otherwise I wouldn’t have a name for him, but a lot of it was in ideas and feelings and pictures. Avernus is mostly water. There’s water right round it, and there’s a steady wind, and the Avernians seem to like the idea of waves going continuously round the planet. It seems to signify contentment, or peace, or something like that for them.”

Ambrose made a note on a pad. “You didn’t mention that before. Not in so much detail, anyway.”

“That’s the way it works. I might talk for a month and still be remembering extra bits at the end of that time. A while ago I just remembered what their houses look like—not the house we saw a part of, but a general impression of all their houses.”

“Go on, Gil.”

“They’re made of brown stone, and they have long slanted roofs…”

“They sound remarkably like ordinary houses to me,” Prudence said, smiling again, the slight inward slope of her teeth contriving to make her appear more scornful and aristocratic than ever.

“Why don’t you go and…” Snook broke off as his mind was flooded with a vivid image of a chain of low islands, each virtually covered with one complex multi-use building rising to a single roof peak in the centre. The images of the island-dwellings were reflected in calm grey seas, creating a series of diamond-shapes, elongated horizontally. One in particular was distinguished by a curious double-span arch, too large to be entirely functional, which perhaps united two natural summits. For a moment the vision was so clear that he could see the darker rectangles of windows, the doors whose sills were lapped by a tideless ocean, the small boats nodding gently at anchor…

“This is getting us nowhere.” A note of impatience was appearing in Ambrose’s voice.

“My feelings precisely.” Prudence rose to her feet and directed an imperious stare at Murphy. “I suppose there’s an eating place in the village?”

Murphy looked doubtful. “The only place open at this time would be Cullinan House, but I don’t think you should go there.”

“I’m quite capable of making that sort of decision for myself.”

Murphy shrugged and turned away as Snook joined in. “George is right—you shouldn’t go there alone.”

“Thank you for the show of concern, but I’m also capable of looking after myself.” Prudence spun on her heel and left the room. A moment later they heard the front door slamming.

Snook turned to Ambrose. “Boyce, I think you should stop her.”

“What’s it got to do with me?” Ambrose demanded irritably. “I didn’t ask her to attach herself to this group.”

“No, but you…” Snook decided that a reference to the couple having shared the one bed would reveal too much about his own feelings. “You didn’t turn her away.”

“Gil, in case you haven’t noticed it, Prudence Devonald is an extremely tough, emancipated young woman, and I quite believe her when she says she can look after herself in any company. For Christ’s sake /’ Exasperation pushed Ambrose’s voice into the higher ranges. “We’ve some of the most important scientific work of the century in front of us and all we can do is argue about chaperoning a piece of skirt who wasn’t even supposed to be here. Do you think we could at least go through this tape a couple of times? Huh?”

“I’ve got quite a good shot of the Avernian roof structure here,” Quig said placatingly.

Ambrose took the photograph and examined it with determined interest. “Thank you—this will be extremely useful. Now, let’s play the tape again and make notes of any questions that occur to us.” He activated the tiny machine and sat with one ear turned to it in an exaggerated show of concentration.

Snook prowled around the room, drinking coffee and trying to focus his attention on the strange-sounding tones of his own voice issuing from the recorder. Finally, after about ten minutes, he set his cup down.

“I’m hungry,” he said. “I’m going to eat.”

Ambrose blinked at him in surprise. “We can have a meal later, Gil.”

“I’m hungry now.”

Murphy turned away from the window. “I haven’t much to do here -1 think I’ll join you.”

“Bon appetit,” Ambrose said sarcastically, returning his attention to his notes.

Snook nodded and went outside. He and Murphy walked slowly down the hill, ostensibly enjoying the moderate warmth of the air and the flaming colours of the bougainvillaeas, neither man talking very much. They turned into the main street, with its dwindling series of product and agency signs. The quietness and lack of people created a Sunday morning atmosphere. They walked to the corner of the sidestreet in which Cullinan House was situated. As Snook had almost expected, there was a jeep parked outside the building. He exchanged glances with Murphy and, trying not to shed their air of casualness, they began to walk faster. They reached the dusty shade of the entrance and found a young Asian, who was wearing a barman’s white apron, sitting on a beer keg and smoking a cheroot.

“Where’s the girl?” Snook said.

“In there.” The youth spoke nervously, indicating a doorway on the left. “But you better not go in.”

Snook pushed the door open and there was an instant of heightened perception in which his eyes took in every detail of the scene inside. The square room had a bar along the innermost wall and the rest of the floor area was taken up by small circular tables and cane chairs. Two soldiers were leaning on the counter holding beer glasses, their Uzi submachine guns beside them on bar stools. One of the tables had been laid for breakfast and Prudence was standing at it, her arms pinned behind her by a third soldier, a corporal. Lieutenant Curt Freeborn was standing close to the girl, and he froze for a moment—in the act of opening the central knot which held her blouse together—as Snook walked into the room with Murphy close behind him.

“Prudence!” Snook’s voice was gently reproachful. “You’ve started without us.”

He kept walking towards the table, aware that the soldiers at the bar were picking up their weapons, but relying on the mildness of his manner to prevent them from taking any hasty action. Freeborn glanced at the door and windows, and his face relaxed into a smile as he realised Snook and Murphy were alone. He returned his attention to Prudence and, with deliberate slowness, finished undoing the silken knot. The material slid aside to reveal her breasts, cupped in chocolate-coloured lace. Prudence’s face was pale, immobile.

“Your friend and I have met before,” Freeborn said to Prudence. “He likes the funny remarks.” His voice was abstracted, like that of a dentist who is making conversation to soothe a patient. He put his hands to Prudence’s shoulders and began stripping the blouse downwards, his eyes intent, cool and professional.

Snook examined the breakfast table and saw that nothing on it even remotely resembled a weapon—even the knives and forks were plastic. He moved closer to the table, wishing Prudence could have been spared the degradation she was undergoing.

“Lieutenant,” he said unemotionally, “I won’t allow you to do this.”

“The remarks get funnier.” Freeborn took a brassiere strap between forefinger and thumb and drew it down over the curve of Prudence’s shoulder. The corporal holding her smiled in anticipation.

Murphy took a step forward. “Your uncle won’t see anything funny in this.”

Freeborn’s gaze flicked sideways at him. “I’ll deal with you later, trash.”

During the moment of distraction Snook leapt forward, driving himself high into the air, looped his left arm around Freeborn’s neck, and when he hit the floor again he had the Lieutenant doubled over in a secure headlock. The soldiers at the bar started forward, both priming their guns. Snook reached sideways with his right hand, took a fork from the table and rammed its blunt tines into the side of Freeborn’s startled, upturned eye. He pushed it far enough into the eye socket to cause pain without inflicting severe injury. Freeborn gave a powerful upward surge, trying to lift him off the floor.

“Don’t struggle, Lieutenant,” Snook warned, “or I’ll take your eye out like a scoop of ice cream.”

Freeborn gave a cry of mingled pain and outrage as Snook reinforced his words with extra pressure on the fork. The corporal pushed Prudence to one side and the soldiers began kicking tables out of their way as they advanced.

“And tell your gooks to lay down their guns and back off,” Snook commanded.

One of the soldiers, his eyes bulging whitely, raised his gun and carefully sighted at Snook’s head. Snook twisted the fork a little and felt the warmth of blood on his fingers,

“Stay back, you fools!” Freeborn’s voice was hysterical with panic. “Do as he says!”

The two soldiers set the stubby weapons on the floor and backed away, the corporal joining them. Freeborn’s hands fluttered imploringly against the backs of Snook’s legs, like huge anxious moths.

“Lie down behind the bar,” Snook said to the retreating men.

Murphy picked up one of the discarded guns. “Gil, there’s a liquor storeroom behind the bar.”

“That’s even better. We’ll need the keys to the jeep, as well.” Snook turned to Prudence who was re-tying her blouse with trembling hands. “If you’d like to go outside, we’ll be with you in a minute.”

She nodded without speaking and ran towards the exit. Still maintaining the fierce grip of his arm on Freeborn’s neck, and keeping the fork in place, Snook led the lieutenant to the storeroom. Murphy had just finished bundling the three soldiers into the cramped space. He was carrying the machine gun with an unconscious ease which suggested he had experience with similar weapons. Freeborn was forced to shamble like an ape as Snook brought him behind the bar and backed him into the store with his men.

“We’d better have this, Gil.” Murphy opened the flap of Freeborn’s holster and took the automatic pistol from it. Freeborn was swearing under his breath in a kind of rhythmic chant as Snook gave him a final shove and slammed the heavy door. Murphy turned the key, flipped it into a far corner of the room, ran out from behind the counter and gathered up the two remaining submachine guns.

“Do we want those?” Snook said doubtfully.

“We need them.”

Snook clambered over the bar and joined Murphy. “Won’t it change things if we steal Army weapons? I mean, up to now all we’ve done is defend Prudence from gang rape.”

“It wouldn’t matter if we’d been defending the Virgin Mary.” Murphy smiled briefly over his shoulder as he led the way out to the jeep, past the watchful barman. “I thought you knew this country, Gil. The only thing which will keep us safe—for a little while, anyway—is that Junior Freebom daren’t go to his uncle and report that he and three Leopards were tackled and disarmed in a public place by one unarmed white man. The loss of the weapons makes the humiliation complete, because it’s the most shameful thing a Leopard can do.”

Murphy threw the guns into the jeep’s rear seat and climbed in after them. Snook squirmed into the driving seat, beside Prudence, and got the vehicle into motion.

“Another thing is that the colonel is a black racialist. He’s even been known to criticise the President for occasionally preferring a white girl—so young Curt will be treading on eggs for a while.”

Snook swung the jeep into the main street. “You mean he won’t take any action over this?”

“Grow up! All I mean is that the action won’t be official.” Murphy looked around him with the air of a general considering tactics. “We should leave the jeep here, so there’ll be no reason for any of the military to go near your house. I’ll put the guns under the back seat.”

“Right.” Snook brought the vehicle to a halt and they got out, ignoring the curious stares of the few passers-by.

Prudence, who had not spoken once during the whole encounter, was still pale, though she seemed to have recovered her composure. Snook tried to think of something to say to her, but was unable to find a sufficiently neutral form of words. As they were crossing the main street a sports car sliced past them, being driven too fast, and Snook instinctively caught Prudence’s arm. He expected her to snatch it away, but to his surprise she sagged against him until he was supporting most of her weight. They crossed the road in that manner and he steered her into the entrance of an empty store, where she leaned against the wall and began to sob. The sound was painful to Snook.

“Come on,” he said awkwardly, “I thought you were supposed to be a tough character.”

“It was horrible.” She tilted her head back against the postered wood, rolling it from side to side, and he saw the clear lacquer of tears on her cheeks. “That lieutenant…he was only a boy…but he left me with nothing …”

Snook gazed helplessly at Murphy. “I think we all need a drink.”

“I was being dissected,” she whimpered. “Pinned out and dissected.”

“I’ve got coffee or gin,” Snook said in a matter-of-fact voice. “In your case I would recommend the gin. What do you say, George?”

“The gin is very good,” Murphy responded in similar tones. “Gil should know—he practically lives on it.”

Prudence opened her eyes and looked at both men as though seeing them for the first time. “I thought you were going to be killed. You could have been killed.”

“Nonsense!” Murphy’s brown face was incredulous. “What nobody back there realised was that plastic forks are only a part of Gil’s armament.”

“Really?”

Murphy lowered his voice. “He carries a stainless steel fork as well—in a special shoulder holster.”

Snook nodded. “It used to be the jawbone of an ass, but I couldn’t stand the smell.”

Prudence began to chuckle, Murphy joined in, Snook gave a shaky laugh, and within seconds they were reeling in the doorway like a trio of drunks, weeping with cathartic laughter as the tension left their bodies. On the way up the hill to the bungalow, still intoxicated with relief and the heady joy that comes with the finding of friends, they made dozens of jokes which had only to contain certain key words like ‘fork’ or ‘jawbone’ to be regarded as wildly hilarious. There were fleeting moments during the walk when Snook felt a sense of dismay over the unnaturalness of their behaviour, but he was determined to remain high for as long as possible.

“I’ve got to say something before we go in,” Prudence said when they reached the bungalow’s front steps. “If I don’t thank you now it’ll get more and more difficult for me. I’m not the easiest of people to…”

“Forget it,” Snook said. “Let’s have that drink.”

Prudence shook her head. “Please. I haven’t laughed so much in years—and I know why you made me laugh—but it wouldn’t have been at all funny if Boyce hadn’t sent you after me.”

Murphy opened his mouth to speak, but Snook silenced him with a barely perceptible shake of his head.

“We’d better go inside,” he said. “Boyce will be glad to see you.”

At noon a reduced party—consisting of Snook, Ambrose, Prudence and Quig—drove to the Commodore Hotel in Kisumu for a meal. Ambrose also needed to make some telephone calls there, because it had been discovered that the line to Snook’s house had developed a fault. Prudence was sitting beside him in the front seat, occasionally leaning her head on his shoulder. Bright-hued shrubs and trees, many with great trusses of flowers, streamed past the car’s windows like a continuous light show. Snook, who was in the rear seat with Quig, allowed the varicoloured display to hypnotise him into a mood of sleepy carelessness in which he was not required to think too deeply about his situation. Barandi had become a dangerous place for him and yet, instead of cutting the bonds and slipping away, he was allowing himself to become even more deeply enmeshed.

“I don’t like the way things are working out here,” Ambrose said, echoing Snook’s thoughts. “Even without what you’ve told me, I can feel a definite hostility in the air. If we hadn’t been so lucky in other respects I’d be tempted to pull up stakes and go to one of the other countries where the Avernians have been sighted.”

“Is it really worth hanging on here?” Snook said, sitting upright as his interest kindled. “Why not move on?”

“It’s mainly a question of geometry. Avernus is like a wheel rolling within a wheel at this time, and the point of contact is constantly moving around its equator. It means that the Avernians who were sighted in Brazil are a different lot to the Avernians who appear here—and we’ve had this fantastic stroke of luck in getting you together with Felleth. That’s the big attraction in Barandi. That’s what has given me the lead on all the others.”

Quig stirred out of his own reveries. “How much more do you want to find out from him, Boyce?”

“Hah!” Ambrose hunched over the steering wheel and shook his head in despair. “At the moment all I’m doing is unlearning.”

“I don’t get you.”

“Well, I haven’t discussed this because we’ve had so many immediate practical problems to deal with, but the descriptions of Avernus that Gil has given me—even the pictures we got of the Avernian roof structure—have upset a lot of our ideas about the nature of matter. According to our physics the Avernian universe should be very weakly bound compared to the one we know. If I’d been asked to describe it a week ago, I’d have said it could exist only because antineutrinos have different masses, depending on their energy, and that all objects in that universe would consist of heavy particles surrounded by clouds of lighter particles.” Ambrose began to speak faster as he got into his subject.

“This indicates that their compounds wouldn’t be formed by electronic forces like .electro-valency or covalency. The weakness of the interactions would mean that all bodies in that universe—even the Avernian people themselves—would be a lot more…ah…statistical than we are.”

“Hey!” Quig began to sound excited. “You mean one Avernian should be able to walk right through another Avernian? Or through a wall?”

Ambrose nodded. “That was the old picture, but we’ve learned that it’s all wrong. Gil talked about stone buildings and islands and oceans…the rest of us saw those Earth-like roof beams…so it appears that an Avernian’s world is just as real and hard and solid to him as ours is to us. There’s one hell of a lot we have to learn, and Felleth seems to be the best source of information. Felleth teamed up with Gil, that is. That’s why I hate the idea of quitting this place.”

Snook, who had been listening to the conversation with growing bafflement, suddenly felt that the relationship between Ambrose’s world of nuclear theory and his own world of turbines and gearboxes was just as tenuous as that between Earth and Avernus. He had often been surprised at the sorts of things people needed to know in order to function in their jobs, but Ambrose’s field of expertise—in which people were treated as mobile clouds of atoms—was cold and inimical to him. Memories began to stir in his mind, half-recollections of something gleaned during his last encounter with Felleth.

He tapped Boyce on the shoulder. “Remember I told you Felleth said, “Particle, anti-particle—our relationship almost precisely defined”?”

“Yes?”

“I think something else has just come out of it.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Well, I don’t understand this, but I’ve got a kind of a picture of the phrase “particle, anti-particle” representing one edge of a cube, only the cube isn’t an ordinary cube. It seems to go off in a lot more directions…or maybe each edge of it is a cube in its own right. Does that make any kind of sense?”

“It sounds as though you’re wrestling with the concept of multi-dimensional space, Gil.”

“What’s the point of it?”

“I think,” Ambrose said gloomily, “Felleth knows that the relationship between our universe and his is only one of a whole spectrum of such relationships. There may be universe upon universe—and we haven’t got the right sort of mathematics to let us even begin thinking about them. Hell, I’ve got to stay in Barandi as long as I can.”

Snook’s thoughts reverted to the human aspects of the situation. “Okay, but if we’re going back to the mine in the morning, I think you should call the Press Association office and round up Gene Helig and force him to go with us. He’s the nearest thing we’ve got to a guarantee of safe conduct.”