Project Pope

Thirty-four

When he had been there before, the equation world had been quavery, as if he were seeing it through the shimmer of brilliant sunlight off a smooth and glittering lake, but now there was no shimmer and there was solid ground, or at least a solid surface, underneath his feet. The equation diagrams stood out in orderly array, spread out across the plane, smooth surface upon which he stood. There was a horizon, far off, rising much higher than any horizon he had even seen before, with the pea-green carpet of the planetary surface (if it was, in fact, a planet) merging almost imperceptibly with the pale lavender of the shallow bowl of sky.

— Whisperer! said Tennyson.

But there was no Whisperer. Only himself. Although, he told himself, that was not entirely true. Whisperer was there, but not as a separate entity. What stood there upon this alien ground was not him alone, but he and Whisperer, melded into one.

He stood without moving, wondering how he knew this, how he could be so sure of it. And knew, even as he wondered, that it was not he who knew it, not the Tennyson, but the Whisperer who was part of him. Yet, despite this knowing, he was not aware of Whisperer and he wondered if this might not be true, quite in reverse, for Whisperer, who might be aware of himself alone and not at all of Tennyson. There was no answer to his wonderment, no clue from Whisperer that this was the case.

The funny thing about it all, he told himself, was that he seemed actually to be there in this equation world — not merely seeing it, but there in person. He could feel the solidity of the surface underneath his feet and he was breathing — breathing as easily as he would on an Earth-type planet. Frantically, he ran through his brain the odds against finding an environment in a place such as this that would be compatible to an unprotected human — suitable air to breathe, an acceptable atmospheric density and pressure, a gravity factor that was bearable, ambient temperature that would be kind to a human body. He shuddered at the odds that his quick calculation gave him. The odds, furthermore, he knew, might be much higher than he had calculated, for not only were the life factors bearable; they were comfortable.

The equation diagrams were in as many, if not more, colors than they had been when he had seen them in the cube, and later in his dreams. Both the cube and dreams, the dreams more so than the cube, had made them somewhat fuzzy, but here the colors were sharper and more brilliant and not fuzzy in the least. There seemed to him to be many more of them than he had seen in either cube or dream, and the equations and the diagrams were more varied and outrageous. Looking more closely at one group of them, he saw that no two of them were alike, in color, equation or diagram. Each of them stood out as an individual.

Since arriving he had stood rooted in one spot, made numb by being there, but standing in a place where one doubting part of him, perhaps the Tennyson, had never for a moment thought that he could come. But now he moved, one slow step and then another, testing out whether he could move, not certain that he should. But the equations were not moving and someone had to move. That is, someone had to move if anything was to be done, any contact made. It would not be right, he thought, to come here, to stand and stare in disbelief, not moving, and then to go away. To do this would have made the venture no better than the cube or dream.

Slowly, he moved across the surface until he was quite close to one of the equations. He could see that it was about eight feet tall, the top of it somewhat above his head, and twice as long. From where he was standing, since it was broadside to him, he could not estimate its breadth, but by looking at another one standing nearby, he calculated the width to be nine feet or so. They might run in different sizes, he realized, but all of those he saw seemed to be uniform, one with another.

The equation that he had walked up to was a deep-purple background with the equations and diagrams predominantly in orange, although there were touches here and there of red and green and yellow. He tried to puzzle out the equation (a very lengthy and complicated one) that it carried on its surface, but the signs and symbols were unlike any one had ever seen.

The cube from which he had calculated the width was a bright and startling pink, with the equations green, and just beyond, it was another that was ash gray specked with copper spots, the equations in a lemon yellow and the diagrams in lavender. It was a fancy one, the fanciest of all those in sight.

There had been no reaction from the cubes when he had walked up to them, and there continued to be none. They all sat there, unchanging.

Now, for the first time, he realized that there wasn't any sound. This was a silent place. In all his life, he realized, he had at all times been accustomed to some level of sound. Even at a time of quiet, there always had been some marginal noise — a board creaking in a house, a soft breeze stirring leaves, tiny insects singing. But here there was nothing, absolutely nothing, no noise of any kind.

He shuffled closer to the equation cube and noted with some interest that his walking made no sound. Hesitantly, he reached out a hand and touched the cube with an index finger, ready to snatch it away at an instant's notice. The cube was soft to the touch, not hard and rigid as he had expected it might be, and neither warm nor cold. It made no indication of reaction to his touch, so he laid his hand upon it. With his palm flat against its surface, it seemed even softer than it had before. He pressed lightly upon it and felt the quiver underneath his palm, as if he had placed his hand upon a plate of jelly.

On the surface of the cube something moved and, startled, he stepped away. The equations, he saw, were changing and shifting about, and the diagrams were changing, too. The changing and the shifting at first was slow, deliberate, but quickly they became faster. They ran in a fascinating fluid motion, dissolving and running and combining into something else and then the something else was gone and there was something new. It is talking to me, he told himself, trying to communicate, attempting to bridge the gap that lies between the two of us. He watched hypnotically, and every now and then it seemed that he might be arriving at some understanding, but then the equations and the diagrams would change and he'd lose what had seemed, for a moment, to be some feeble inkling of the meaning that was being written on the blackboard surface of the cube.

Out of the corner of one eye, he glimpsed a movement and quickly stepped away, but there was no place to go, no place he could run. The other cubes were closing in on him. Already a tight ring of them had formed, blocking all possible escape. On the surfaces of all of them the equations and the diagrams were changing and shifting. It was an unnerving sight; while there still was no sound, he had the impression that all of them were shouting at him.

More were arriving all the time and some of them soared off the ground to perch upon those that had surrounded him and others came and settled down upon the second tier, as if they were concrete blocks and some invisible mason was using them to erect a wall around him. They were towering over him, and all the time they were moving in and he was half dizzy with the riotous running of their colors as the equations raced and scintillated to effect the changes. He had the fleeting impression that they no longer were trying to communicate, but under some impelling circumstance had come together to solve some weighty and complicated problem, with the equations building to immense complexity and the diagrams becoming twisted into inconceivable dimensions.

Then they toppled in upon him, the wall of them that had been built around him caving in and crashing down upon him. He screamed in terror, but as they came down upon him, the terror went away and he was left with a sense of wonder that was so deep it seemed to engulf all the universe. He was not crushed. Nothing at all happened to him except that he now stood in the center of the pile of cubes that had collapsed upon him. He stood unharmed in the midst of a sea of multicolored jelly and he feared, for a moment, that he'd either drown or suffocate, for in this close-packed jelly mass, there could be no air and his nostrils and his mouth and throat would fill with jelly and it would get into his lungs — This did not happen. He felt no discomfort. For a moment he struggled to swim through the mass of jelly, seeking to rise to the surface where there would be air to breathe. Then he ceased his efforts, for somehow he knew he had no need of air and that he would not drown. The equation of cubes were sustaining him, and within the midst of them, no harm could come to him. They did not tell him this, but he knew it. He had the impression that he had absorbed the message by a strange osmosis.

All the time the equation kept running around him and some of them twined themselves around him and some of them went through him and others of them went inside of him and stayed there and, in that moment, he seemed to understand that he had become an equation among all the rest of them. He felt the equations flowing through him and all around him and some of the diagrams joined together and constructed an intricate house for him and he crouched inside it, not knowing what he was, but for the moment quite content with being what he was.