The First Protector

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Instead of looking at it in Ma'el's chart they were seeing a similar picture of the land surface through the large square of transparent material under their feet. When first they had begun rising into the heavens, Declan had tried to grip the edges of the smooth, deeply cushioned stool on which he sat lest he fall out of it and tumble to the distant ground, but by some act of the magic that Ma'el insisted was merely Taelon technology, the seat grew five soft, strong arms that encircled his waist and thighs and gave close support to the curve of his back to hold him steady. He watched the caravan he had met earlier shrink to a thin, dusty worm and then begin to slide to the edge of the transparent substance and out of his sight. In front of Ma'el's position there was another and much larger area of clarity that faced forward. The old man's hands were resting lightly on its surface while he moved them about in a succession of strange, arcane gestures.

"… We are now making the transition from high altitude to orbital flight," Ma'el was saying, "and will overfly the path we traveled from Hibernia to our recent location. I am sorry if a few of the words I use are strange, but soon their meaning and the actions and events to which they apply will become clear to you. Are either of you feeling mental distress?"

Sinead, who was staring at the unfolding surface in open-mouthed wonder, shook her head. Declan made a croaking sound the exact meaning of which was unclear even to himself. To hide the apprehension that must have been showing on his face, he turned his head to look inside the djinn which Ma'el called his short-range shuttle craft.

Like the one in the floor at his feet and that facing the old man, there were large, clear openings in the djinn's shell which made it possible to see outside in all directions except one which was shielded automatically no matter what their change of heading, Ma'el had explained, to keep their eyes and skin from being damaged by the sun. Curving beams supported the interior of the hull which seemed to be much larger on the inside than out. It was divided into three globular rooms whose outlines and dimensions were difficult to judge because their walls were also transparent. Grouped around their walls, ceilings, and floors were strange devices of unknown purpose that resembled glass and metal flowers, and larger objects that had the look of furniture. Trying to focus his eyes on some of them gave Declan an aching head so he returned his attention to the distant and more familiar ground that was hurrying past his feet.

He saw the fan of tiny rivers that was the delta of the Nile before the eastern Mediterranean opened out to reveal both the north coast of Africa and southern Italy. By bending forward and craning his head from side to side-the padded arms encircling his waist would allow him to do that provided he moved slowly-he was able to see the great sweep of land and ocean from the Pillars of Hercules up to Finisterre in Iberia. Objects and land outlines on the ground were growing smaller, which meant that the djinn was climbing higher, and he could see scattered over the Ocean of Atlantis the fat, white worms that Ma'el called low-pressure systems. In a clear area where, again in the words of the old man, high pressure dominated, he could make out the islands of Britain and Hibernia and, hazy with distance through a clear area of sky beyond it, another stretch of coastline that ran north to south as far as the eye could see. He became aware that the sky above them was shading from pale blue to black and the horizon was no longer a straight line but seemed to be curving into a bow shape. He was about to mention these inexplicable occurrences when Sinead spoke first.

"There is land, there, west of Hibernia!" she said pointing, her voice high with excitement. "Is that the fabled Westland, Tir Na n'Og, the land of the forever young? Ma'el, if that is where you come from, you are far from home."

"That land holds many people…" said the old man quietly. He made a series of complicated, fluid gestures with both hands and suddenly the land below them was shrinking rapidly, the curve of the horizon increased until it met itself and suddenly they were looking down at a great brown and blue globe flecked with white clouds and, tiny with distance, the lands and seas that they knew as well as many that they did not. "… But I do not come from there."

Sinead gripped Declan's hand tightly as they stared at the bright, tiny globe that had been the vast and, until now, limitless world that they thought had contained all things that were and ever would be. For a moment he wondered if he was dreaming, if Ma'el had put a marvellous enchantment on Sinead and himself, but he hoped not because he did not want this wondrous thing that was happening to him to be a dream.

"Then where do you come from?" asked Sinead.

Ma'el waved a hand, their world slipped to the side and they were looking into an area of sky filled with stars, some bright and seemingly close, others so distant that they were a glowing haze too fine for the individual points of light to be resolved.

"Before I answer," said the old man, "you must first be given instruction so that you will understand the answer I give. Clear your minds and attend closely to my words…"

Speaking slowly and clearly, he told them that the first and most important fact that they should learn was that all objects attracted each other, and the larger the object the greater the attraction. This was what the Taelons called, as well as the future learned of Earth would call, the force of gravity. It was the attraction that held them and all living things to the surface of their world. Any object high above the surface would fall toward it unless it had motion at right angles to the direction of fall. If the sideways motion was precisely calculated, the object would continue to fall toward an object that was constantly moving aside so that the falling object would never reach the larger body but would continue to fall endlessly around it, just as now their vessel was falling around the world below them. This was called being in orbit, just as at a greater distance their moon was circling in a stable orbit around their world, and their world and the other planets were circling the sun. All of the stars that they could see were distant suns many of which had worlds circling them on which lived thinking beings like, but more often totally unlike, themselves…

He pointed toward one of the glowing star clouds and went on, "The place whence I came, the parent sun and world of the Taelon, lies there. I am far indeed from home."

They looked at each other in astonishment but not disbelief, then back to the old man with an expression that reflected sympathy as well as wonder. Declan was too surprised to think of anything to say that would fit the situation but Sinead was not.

"You have been with us a long time," she said softly. "We are sorry. You must sorely miss your family and friends."

Ma'el inclined his head and looked at them for a long moment, then said, "A few of them. But the sympathy from you is unexpected and deeply appreciated. You have been exposed to sights and knowledge that could well have sent your minds into gibbering madness. Instead, my more than servants, you are thinking of me."

He paused while his hands gestured briefly and on the clear surface of the canopy before him appeared the gray outlines of circles, squares, and long curving shapes so strange that they had no names for them.

"At first I thought of introducing this knowledge to you one item at a time. Instead I was unkind, perhaps even harsh, and confronted you with all of it at once. This was because, having come to know both of you well, I decided that facing you with many shocks at once would keep your minds from being affected too seriously by any one of them. It seems that I was right and later, while your minds and bodies are at rest, you will be able to assimilate this material without mental dysfunction. But one more shock, although later you will look back on it as just another learning experience, awaits you."

He rose from his seat, stood aside and nodded toward the symbols that had appeared on the forward canopy. Looking at Sinead he said calmly, "Your hands, like my own, are small and precise in their movements, so you will be first. The markings you see have been placed there as a visual reminder of their shapes, positions, and control functions. Later, when you become more experienced, they can be removed so as not to interfere with forward visibility. You will be given verbal guidance at every stage. Take the control position, now, and prepare to fly my ship…"

Declan had no way of judging the passage of time except for the dawn to dusk alteration in daylight and the changing positions of the sun, moon, or stars. But out here there was only night and the heavenly bodies gyrated wildly in random directions as Sinead sought, with an early lack of success, to make the djinn go where she wanted it to go. And so it was that for what seemed to be a very long time Declan sat gripping the sides of his chair while it gripped him just as tightly. Then it was slowly borne in on him that the movements of the Earth and stars had become smoother and more precise and that Sinead's features, although still beaded with moisture, were showing pleasure and excitement through their concentration. Beyond the canopy, one of the smaller orbiting djinns, looking like an alien, square-winged butterfly with what Ma'el called its power receptors extended, was coming to a halt close by.

"Enough," said Ma'el. "Your ability to think and move in the three dimensions of normal space is excellent. Later you will be shown how to navigate through the interdimensional folds of space, and to travel great distances in an instant. But for now you must return to your place and rest both your body and overworked mind."

She nodded gratefully and moved back to the chair beside him, but the old man remained standing.

"Now, Declan," he said, "it is your turn…"

Keeping the vessel on the heading indicated by Ma'el, he thought as the perspiration trickled down his face and soaked his body, was like trying to balance with a single pole on an ice-covered pond. The slightest misjudgment sent the vessel sliding and spinning in every direction but the one he wanted it to follow. While sitting in a comfortable chair he was working harder than he had ever done in his life while the muscles of his arms ached with the effort of not forming his hands into the wrong gesture or moving them in the wrong direction or at the incorrect speed. He knew that his great, awkward, weapon-wielding hands had not the same delicacy and precision of movement as those of Sinead, but he felt that slowly he was learning how to make the Earth and sky hold steady and to guide the vessel in the direction it was supposed to go. But suddenly he had to place his sweating hands on his lap and stare through the unobscured side of the canopy and do nothing.

Ma'el made a worried, interrogatory sound.

Carefully so as not to change the control settings, Declan indicated the scene outside where the surface below was in a night lit only by a half moon that made the whole world look like a tenuous ghost of itself. The darkness of the past few hours had so sharpened his eyesight that stars, large and bright and others so faint that he had never been able to see them from the surface, crowded the sky so thickly that it seemed that he could reach out and touch them. He felt no hurt but suddenly his eyes stung with tears.

'That,'' he said, clearing his throat, "is the most tremendous and beautiful sight I have seen or ever will see. It makes me almost forget to breathe."

Ma'el inclined his head and regarded him for a long moment, then he pointed with an arm outstretched and said gently, "Position the vessel along this line of travel, then you will engage the main thrusters as you have been shown and fly us to your moon for low-level flight, approach, and landing practice."

Once the course was set there was nothing for Declan to do and Ma'el suggested that Sinead and he might like to rest. Before he could voice exactly the same sentiments, she said that they were too excited to think of sleeping amid all this splendor. So they watched the moon grow slowly larger and change from the silvery orb they had known to a dead and grossly pock-marked world that looked as if it had been visited by some gargantuan plague but still, withal, retaining its own terrible beauty.

They watched and listened to Ma'el as he talked about his plans for them, and filled their minds with answers to questions they knew not how to ask, which were even more exciting and wondrous than the scene outside. He told them that he was the only member of his race to visit Earth. He had been sent there by the Synod, which was the ruling group of the Taelon people, to investigate Earth for as long as he deemed it necessary and to report on his findings-"

"… The completion of my report has become an urgent necessity for several reasons," he went on. 'Time is not a problem for me, but it is for you and the short-lived race to which you belong. That was why I have decided to disobey the Synod's specific instructions and reveal this and lesser secrets to you…

"That is also why," he continued, "I shall take you to Cathay, and to many other lands, by a faster and more direct means than hazardous sailing ships and camel caravans that are prey to robbers. Such methods of travel, while attracting less attention to myself, would waste years of traveling time as well as placing your already short lives in jeopardy.

"You have been given this knowledge because you two, more than any other members of your race previously employed by me, are capable of performing a unique service for myself and ultimately for my people."

"But who are we," said Sinead, "that we should be singled out for this revelation? A young woman damaged in mind and body as a child, but now recovering…" she squeezed Declan's hand, "… and a hulking great warrior with so many muscles that the sharpness of his mind is often hidden by them. I ask again, why us?"

"I am trying to tell you," said Ma'el gently, "but you must have the patience to wait until you receive the whole answer. Voluntarily separated as I am from the Commonality and the immaterial mental force that holds the thinking of all our people together, my own ability to foretell my future has been diminishing to a frightening extent The timesight is a vital necessity to the continuance and completion of my work here, but I am fast losing it That is why I have ignored another Taelon prime directive and given timesight to your people so that, through yourself among others, I would be able to see into this world's future. Initially you were a disappointment to me, not through any fault of your own but because of the mind-damaging incident in your past which, I thought wrongly, had rendered you physically and emotionally sterile and, as a result without a genetic extension into the future. I was considering letting both of you go. That would have been the greatest mistake of my life because you, Sinead, have acquired a timesight that is unique in its power, accuracy, and temporal range…"

"But why?" Sinead broke in. She squeezed Declan's hand again and went on, "I know that I had a change of feeling and that now I will have descendants who will form the organic pathway that gives me timesight into the far future. But why am I so good at it?"

The old man looked slowly from Sinead to Declan and back again before replying.

"What I tell you now is partly speculative rather than entirely factual," he said, "because, regrettably, we Taelons do not have the intense levels of physical attraction and emotional involvement that are possessed by your shortlived species. It is possible that, even though you disliked each other intensely in the beginning, when continued close proximity and shared dangers forced you into recognizing each other's better qualities and depths of character, the emotional potential that built up between you was so intense that when the change of feeling came and you joined, the stimulation of your future time sense was unique in its strength. On Taelon such an intensity of emotional bonding is unknown, and on your own world it must be rare. That is the best answer I can give you."

Sinead looked uncomfortable and said, "Ma'el, are you telling us that we are the greatest lovers there have ever been?"

Declan gave a small laugh to hide his embarrassment. "I would think that all lovers feel like this about each other," he said, then added thoughtfully, "but in this case it is probably true."

Before Sinead could reply, Ma'el raised a hand to point and said, "Your moon is less than two of its diameters distant and you have work to do. Declan, position the vessel for a landing in that large crater with the low, central peak."

"Someday," Sinead said in a quiet voice, "somebody is going to name it Tycho." At last the lessons were over for the day in a place where there was neither day nor night, Ma'el had urged them to rest and placed them in a small room whose walls had been made opaque except for the one that looked out on the beautiful blue and white Earth that was hanging low above the crater's rim and dimming the background stars only slightly. Sinead was trying to do the impossible, which was to move her body closer than it already was to his.

"Earlier," she said softly, "you told Ma'el that the most beautiful and wonderful thing you had ever seen was the Earth and the stars in space. You also said that we were the world's greatest lovers, probably. Probably?"

Declan raised a hand to caress the back of her neck at the hairline, then moved his fingers slowly and lightly down the length of her spine, hearing her soft, ragged intake of breath.

"The Earth and stars don't wrap themselves as tightly around me as you do," he said, "and as for being the world's greatest lovers, we need more practice…"