The Golden Space (31 page)

He saw patches of light above; the birds were leaving. They lifted, a few at a time, and flew away, soaring to the north.

“Terry should be more careful,” Merripen said. He could see Karim’s craft again; he decided to keep his dome closed.

“They won’t survive out here,” Andrew replied.

“They seem to be doing well enough.”

“They’re gentle things. Other creatures will prey on them.”

“They’ll adapt.” Ahead, under the grass, Merripen sighted jagged pieces of asphalt. They floated over the shards, following the old road.

They stopped at noon. Karim got out and stamped his feet. “What now?” Merripen said as Karim came up to him.

“I need to stretch.” They stood on a crag overlooking a river. “I think we’d better go south, detour. There are some mysterious settlements straight ahead.”

“What do you know about them?”

Karim frowned. “I’ve never seen them myself. I had a friend who did. He came back to Pine Point with stories about unchanged primitives. He decided to go back for another look, and that was the last I ever saw of him. It’s unlikely anyone there could help you anyway.”

Merripen walked to the edge of the crag and gazed at the muddy waters below. “There’s a small town south of here I know,” Karim went on, “because I’ve talked to the people there over the holo. I tried to contact them before we left, but I got static, so they might be making repairs. You know how easy it is to procrastinate on maintenance, we don’t check as often as we should.” He stretched his arms. “Those people might know something, and we have to go that way anyway.”

Merripen nodded. Andrew wandered toward them, waving one arm. “Someone’s out there,” he called. “Look.”

Merripen saw only grass, trees, and small hills. “There it is,” Karim murmured. Merripen saw a flash of silver behind some maples. “I suggest that we get into our vehicles and press on.”

“We could be followed.”

“We can worry about that if it happens.” Karim lifted his head. Merripen heard the chime. He looked down. All of their Bonds were lighted; someone was calling.

“Let me speak,” Karim said, spinning around and striding toward his hovercraft. He climbed inside and pressed the front panel, peering at the screen.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice said. Merripen leaned over Karim’s shoulder and caught a glimpse of a face framed by short blond hair before Karim waved him away. “I didn’t expect to see anyone out here. Where are you going?”

Merripen stood up and stared at the distant craft. It was still moving slowly toward them through the trees on this side of the river. “South,” Karim said.

“Really? How nice. Have a good trip.” Merripen peeked inside again. The face had disappeared from the screen. Karim was scowling.

“We’d better go,” Karim murmured.

“Want some company?”

“If you like.”

Merripen turned toward Andrew. “You ride in our craft. I think I’ll travel with Karim for a bit.” Andrew nodded and went to the other vehicle while Merripen climbed in next to Karim.

They moved south, passing the other craft on the way. The woman smiled and waved at them; her dome was down. Karim lifted a hand.

“I guess she’s just another traveler,” Merripen said.

“She’s alone.”

“She must be brave. Or very young.”

“I don’t like her manner.”

Karim was silent after that. Merripen stared through the dome at the river for a while, watching the sunlight dance on the water as its gleam followed them. At last Merripen said, “I should have liked to see your lab.”

“I don’t have anything your Citadel doesn’t have.”

“I meant your own work. What have you been doing? Seda said you’d been in space for a while.”

“That was a long time ago.” Karim paused. “We think we’ve changed things here, but it’s nothing to what happened there. Those born on Luna already had bodies adapted to that world, and the same was true of those living in orbit. Their skeletal bodies seemed normal enough to them; the environment had already altered them, so what difference did more changes make? They no longer lived on Earth, and they could build their own ecologies, so why worry about changes in themselves? They were already living in the most unnatural of environments, and they were free to be whatever they liked. So they believed. They did not realize what limits they had placed on themselves until much later. Each group became a prisoner of its own artificial world, and it was too difficult to adapt to another. There they are.” He gestured at the sky. “I think they built their own tombs.”

Merripen shook his head. “That didn’t have to happen.”

“Of course it didn’t have to happen. They had the universe before them, but instead they turned inward rather than looking out. Only the people on the moon saw what was happening in time. They exult in their humanness and, strange as those bodies might seem to you, those skinny, pale, elongated forms, they are at least human. I’m surprised you didn’t live in space. Your ideas certainly have been tested there.”

Karim’s talk had only made Merripen doubt the purpose of his journey. He leaned back in his seat. “What sort of work have you been doing since you returned?”

“Not very much.” He turned toward Merripen. “Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had my doubts, but I don’t object to the idea of change. I simply believe that it’s very important to understand your goal, your purpose.”

“You can’t always know that ahead of time.”

Karim looked away. It was obvious that he did not want to discuss his work; perhaps he felt that it was too trivial. Merripen watched the river, then said, “What brought you to Pine Point?”

Karim folded his arms. “Originally, it was the solitude. Of course, there hasn’t been any solitude there for a while. People joined me by ones and twos. Soon, I was rarely alone. Not that I minded—being alone can become disturbing, especially in such an isolated spot. But the presence of others doesn’t always mitigate one’s loneliness.”

“I know,” Merripen responded, thinking of the Citadel.

“The sameness of it was reassuring, though, after what I’d seen off-Earth. We developed our own rituals and customs. I would have been happy simply to live in the forest itself, unencumbered.” He was silent for a moment. “That would have been impossible, I suppose. We do need our support systems.”

Merripen nodded, thinking of the hovercraft that shielded them from the world outside.

“I went home once. I mean my real home, the place where I was born and raised. I could only get a shuttle to the coast, and then I had to make my way home by glider, because the jungle was impassable by then. My home had been just outside Kampala. I searched. For a while, I thought I had made a mistake, had forgotten where it was. But I hadn’t. It was gone, as though it had never been. Don’t ever go home, Merripen.” He leaned forward and studied the board, then pressed a panel. Merripen heard a metallic whine. “We’re being followed, tracked.”

“By whom?”

“By that woman, I suspect.”

Merripen looked around, but saw only Andrew’s craft. “But why?”

“I told you I didn’t like her manner. She wasn’t cautious enough. I think she’s a Rescuer.”

Merripen tensed. “What do you think she’ll do?”

“She may do nothing. She may get bored and go away, or she may contact us again.”

Merripen leaned back. Rescuers were probably the only truly fearless people left, because they did not fear losing their lives. There was no defense against such a person. The Rescuers looked beyond this life, to the afterlife they believed would be theirs. He thought of the distant craft and shuddered. He wondered how many Rescuers there were now; perhaps not many. Their ways were not conducive to long life. He tried not to be afraid. There was one Rescuer, if that was what she was, and three of them. Even so, she had the advantage. Her life was one of her weapons.

Karim said, “It must have been hard for you to leave the Citadel.”

“It was. I had to bring Andrew. I couldn’t have traveled alone.”

“Few people can. I wouldn’t have relished traveling alone myself, even though I wanted to leave. I
had
to leave.” Merripen again wanted to ask him why, but something in the other’s tone discouraged him from doing so.

At dusk, they stopped on the top of a hill. Below them, a dirt road wound through underbrush and came to a dead end at the bottom of the slope. Karim got out and stretched. Andrew was pacing. He stopped, shading his eyes with one hand. As Merripen approached him, Andrew said, “She’s out there.”

“Can you see her?” Merripen peered at the long shadows.

“No. But she’s there.”

Karim walked over to them. “I have a suggestion. I think we should
keep going and sleep on the way. I don’t care for the idea of traveling at night, but—” He
waved a hand at the land below. “We’d reach Harsville sometime tomorrow, and we can set the crafts
to follow old roads and clearings, so we shouldn’t run into obstructions. We’ll be safer once we
reach other people.”

“And what happens,” Andrew asked, “if we should get stuck somewhere? At least here we have a view of everything below.”

Karim smiled. “You won’t be able to see much by night. We’d be safer on the move. Up here we’re exposed. We’d have to sleep in the vehicles anyway. We might as well keep moving.”

Andrew stared sullenly at the ground, then lifted his head. “Very well.” He frowned at Karim’s back as the other man returned to his craft.

Merripen rejoined Andrew. Their hovercraft floated down the hill after Karim’s. Merripen adjusted his seat, lowering the back. Andrew was already stretched out on his side. Merripen closed his eyes.

He stood on the wall and lifted his face to the warm sun. He turned and gazed at the houses below. The research center and the nursery had disappeared; instead, a stone castle stood in the center of the town. He saw young people walking toward the castle and recognized his children. They had come back to him at last. He flew, soaring over the people below. Their faces were turned up to him. He was falling.

He jerked, and raised his head. The sky was black and starless. He sat up slowly. Andrew mumbled something sleepily and turned over on his back.

Merripen reached out cautiously and touched a panel. The craft was silent; the woman was no longer tracking them. He stretched out again, trying not to think of her.

Shadows danced across his eyelids; he saw a red glow. He opened his eyes. The sky in the east was scarlet.

Andrew was already awake; he was in the back, hovering over the dispenser. He handed Merripen a cup of tea, a muffin, and jam. Merripen ate his breakfast silently and handed his cup and plate back to Andrew, who dropped them into the cleaner and then crept toward the toilet, closing the door of the booth behind him.

The road ran past a forest. Merripen stared out at the abandoned apple trees, barren of fruit. He tried to imagine being without the craft out here, without their dispenser. He would not have known how to survive. Karim, at least, knew how to hunt and could find edible plants. The thought of eating dead animals and dirty leaves made him feel sick. He glanced at the materializer as he raised the back of his seat. Once people had thought it would be possible to travel using a variation of such a device; this long, dangerous journey would have been unnecessary. He could have stepped into a booth and, in an instant, stepped out at his destination. A safe way to travel; everyone had wanted it. But the man who would have stepped out would not have been him, only his duplicate; the safe way to travel would have killed everyone who used it. Would he have known? Probably not. He would simply have vanished, and another Merripen would have led his life.

“I wonder how close we are,” Andrew murmured as he climbed back into his seat. “I hope Karim knows what he’s doing.”

“He’s more experienced than we are.”

“So he says.”

The sky was growing cloudy; Merripen wondered if it would rain. Karim’s hovercraft floated into an opening in the trees, and they followed. The darkness seemed reassuring. The sun gleamed on the dome of Karim’s craft as it floated back into the open, came to a stop, and settled to the ground. Merripen took over his own craft and pulled up to Karim’s side.

In the distance, near the horizon, another hovercraft stood on an old bridge leading over a small river. A blond woman stood beside it.

Karim got out of his craft; Merripen and Andrew hurried to him. “She must have guessed where we were going.” Karim sighed. “There’s only one thing to do. We can’t show her that we’re afraid. We could just go over the water and avoid the bridge, but she would only follow us anyway. If she says anything, act friendly and sympathetic.” He turned toward them. “You realize, of course, that we can say nothing to her about our work, or what we’re trying to find out.”

Merripen nodded.

“It’s unlikely she’ll do anything, unless we provoke her.”

“What if she follows us to that town?”

Karim frowned. “They’ll keep her out.”

“There must be something else we can do,” Andrew said angrily.

“What would you suggest?” Karim narrowed his eyes. “Ride up and shoot her? I haven’t become a murderer yet.”