Watson, Ian - Novel 06 (4 page)

 
          
“
If it was a capacity of ours, it evolved out of necessity! By now it’s been
severely repressed. But it’s still a capacity of
theirs.
And latently of ours. Very powerful psychic structures must
be involved, and to have evolved in the first place they must have survival value,
right? They must correspond to something in the real universe. You can’t deny
that. Now this channel is being used. We aren’t fully understanding the message
because we don’t know what it
should be.
So the shapes appear to us and we translate them into images of Christ and
Mohammed—whatever our cultural context is.” He paused. “It may even be that we
need
to have this triggered in us.”

 
          
Time
for me to speak up. “We’ve reached a psychic threshold,” I agreed. “The ‘Other’
has practically vanished from our lives. But now direct communication with the
Beyond, in Peter Muir’s terms, can resume. How do we adapt ourselves to it?”

 
          
“With
a new theocracy, perhaps?” asked Wu, sarcastically. “How is it that they know
us so well? Our weakest points.”

 
          
Peter
frowned. “I think the answer is that they don’t. It is
we
who do not know ourselves. Thus the message is at once
comprehensive—millennially so—and incoherent. Don’t you see how dominated the
world is today by abstract images and symbols? Art, music, have reached a nadir
where the symbols only state that they are symbols. They don’t refer to
anything else.

 
          
“Take
the dove as a symbol of peace.” He smiled at me. (And perhaps his love for me
began there.) “Merely because it’s white. Which,” he smiled apologetically to
Zoe, “is another piece of partisan symbolism. Are doves peaceful? If you put
two strange doves in a run together, the weaker one will be pecked to death.
Sorry, but it’s true. Just suppose that there are symbols which really
have
got intrinsic meaning: symbols that
correspond to forces in the real universe in which we have evolved in common
with other alien life forms? Suppose that this symbol language can be a means
of communicating about the really important things which seems
more
natural to some alien beings! So we
can contact them on that level. But we have to relearn the language. Rediscover
it.”

 
          
Wu
stared ahead. “Symbolism only functions within an economy of thought, and if we
aren’t careful this is the Wall Street Crash of
our
economy of thought!”

 
          
“These
messages enter a totemic void,” went on Peter. “We’ve lost touch with the
ancient common symbol language, but it’s still ingrained in man’s psyche. Amy
Dove may be right. Why not ingrained in alien psyches too? We do share a common
universe.”

 
          
“Yes,
and history has become our captor,” I said. “We’re trapped in it. The discourse
of the world is all abstract data— data abstracts. Here is a way out into
something else. It can be a rejuvenation, a recreation of the world.”

 
          
“A
new time,” smiled Zoe. “Really, this is more important than if an alien
starship itself had landed here. It isn’t merely contact with an alien
otherness. Amy Dove’s right: this is the renewal of the ‘Other’ in ourselves.”

 
          
So
we three were in agreement; with Wu as Devil’s advocate. Kamasarin’s role I did
not yet understand.

 
          
“Equally,” muses Jacobik
the warrior,
“we may be chess pieces in some cosmic game—held in abeyance till now, and now
suddenly queened.” His finger trigger-itches, and he scratches his neck in a
displacement gesture. Which riles Madame Wu. “That is the illogic of outside
manipulation too. Humanity isn’t a pawn. History isn’t a joke of the Gods.
There are no Gods.”

 
          
“But
we fly to God’s World,” Zoe reminds her.

 
          
“Oh,
such certainty! As though God sits on a throne there in full view surrounded by
his angels. The broadcasts are simply .. . phenomena, to be called to account.”

 
          
“It’s
that sort of attitude which slows our journey. It’s like hanging a lump of lead
round a swimmer’s feet.”

 
          
“Far
better lead than alchemists’ gold. A more useful metal.” A heaviness is coming
over me: a dragging down. Zoe’s image has become physical reality in this
malleable domain. Terror floods me: fear of drowning from this weight around my
feet! Gus Trimble is gasping for breath. He tries to rise, and can’t.
Floundering, he makes swimming motions in the air. Lady Li is affected too:
quivering, like some out-of-favour Chinese concubine wrapped up in a carpet,
about to be dropped down a well. Kendrick whitens.

 
          
“Let
us not forget ourselves,” commands our Captain. “If we don’t
attend
, we shall travel in secular
space, not High Space, and the flight will take centuries.”

 
          
“Yes,
the sin of forgetfulness
is
deadly.”
Wu admires the pictures on the mess room wall one by one—a Chinese
petrochemical complex ablaze with light, the
Golden Gate
Bridge
, the
Eiffel
Tower
. The works of man.

 
          
“Dammit,”
cries Ritchie, “a spaceship that you have to think positively about, or it
won’t work! I guess I always thought positively about cars, planes, whatever.
They
do
work better then. That’s
plain efficiency, respect for your tools . . .” He trails off. Of course it is
much more than that. His interruption is prompted, I do fancy, by tact—tact
aimed at allowing our Chinese harridan a graceful withdrawal from something
which she plainly doesn’t understand; which she
can't
understand, even if superficially she knows it to be the
case. Does Ritchie admire her? Is he drawn to
her
by the emotional vectors of High Space? Good God. As what? Stern
elder sister? Or schoolmarm?

 
          
We’re
all naked to each other. Currents link us, twist us. Ritchie blushes furiously,
stares accusingly at me, then looks away.

 
          
“Yet
this ship works in an entirely different mode of space,” resumes Captain K. “In
a different mode of reality. It isn’t simply a question of its working ‘better’
than any starship we could have invented.” His gaze falls on Heinz. “There’s a
logic behind this craft. It’s simply not the logic we’re used to, is it? Let us
think about this; it may help.” There’s an ecclesiastic, patriarchal tone to
his voice now. He summons Heinz to recite a litany to which we must all
respond. He requires him to lead us in our orisons.

 
          
Heinz
rubs and tugs at his black beard. A hirsute fellow is our astrophysicist from
Frankfurt. The backs of his hands crawl with hair like a Dr Jekyll in
mid-transformation. Short, and squarely- built is Heinz—a Nibelung, not of
underground mines but of the blackness of space and the burning coals of
distant suns, which are his eyes.

 
          
“Refresh
our memories, if you please, Herr Anders. The principle of complementarity. We
must constantly remember.”

 
          
“So
there exist various ways of speaking about experience,
ja
? Each may have validity. Each may be necessary. Yet they may be
mutually exclusive. Well then, the choice we make determines the reality.
Whether, for instance, light is a wave or a series of particles. Now it is one,
now it is the other. Thought
constructs
this.
Time is a construct of thought too. In High Space this is all more
nakedly obvious, is it not? Space isn’t a
thing.
As Kant said, it is one of the forms through which we organise our perception
of things. So we can travel through High Space by organising things
differently. Our space drive is a thought construct of other beings, depending
upon our psyches for its
modus operandi.
We create the kind of space it uses: the space of, well, almost . . .
imagination. Our intention to reach 82 Eridani counts hugely. We must accept
this or the drive will not work. Yet we mustn’t lose touch with the ordinary
physical reality either. Consequently the ballast, if you’ll permit the word.
The rats.”

 
          
“Some
of us sure haven’t lost touch,” grins Ritchie impishly, glancing our way,
avenging himself (though unvenomously) for my intrusion on his feelings about
Wu.

 
          
“With
the help of the alien drive our senses construct the reality as if we are in a
higher plane of the universe, one of unbound thought, not of solid things. Our
voyage occurs simultaneously, I believe, but our sense of duration, our
construction
of time determines the
apparent rate of progress. Which is why we have to think in terms of a
probability of arriving rather than actual distance travelled as such. Without
duration we couldn’t think a thought from one moment to the next. Possibly, for
beings sufficiently advanced such a journey might take no time at all... I’ve
been thinking up some equations along these lines.”

 
          
Dear,
bushy Heinz: he gives us a critique of pure space-time instead of a pep-talk.
Yet actually this is what at least half of us need. For rats can’t travel
intuitively, but only step by step. Their fears and reservations make us plod
along. They need his scientific authority so that they can relax, and glide . .
.

 
          
Or
is Heinz a Rumpelstiltskin? About to stamp his foot on the deck in irritation
at those who are only boringly interested in how fast the straw of ordinary
space can be spun into the gold of High Space, and not at all in the alchemy
itself or in what High Space might actually be. Easy to visualize him stamping
his way through the deck and vanishing out into High Space with a howl, on a
private trajectory of his own! Yet no; he is a more accommodating, more
self-possessed Rumpelstiltskin than that.

 
          
He
clears his throat. “We are complementary to each other too, like wave and
particle.” His head bobs up and down, tugged by the beard. “Some of us have
this frame of mind. We accept the new configuration, which is actually a very
old one. Whereas you other people resist it fiercely. But if you weren’t here
this wouldn’t be a scientific expedition at all. It would indeed be, as Peter
puts it, a shaman flight. I suspect we might be lost in realms of magic that we
couldn’t control. We should be quite outside the normal consensus universe
instead of merely travelling through High Space—and we wouldn’t know how to
control that magic zone, not yet. Here is our complementarity answer. You are
the stabilisers. You prevent the voyage from disintegrating into a dream
journey. We don’t know how to navigate the space-scape of the archetypes, not
yet. Any sufficiently advanced science must seem like magic, because it
actually recaptures the magical! ”

 
          
A
pretty speech. Captain K looks grateful. It heals a dawning rift.

 
          
“Let
us all think about this,” repeats our Captain. “Let us meditate about it.”

 
          
“Let
us pray,” mocks Madame Wu. However, she concedes. If it works, use it. . .

 
          
“Come
to God’s World, come to success,” murmurs Salman, ironically yet respectfully.
His faith in Islam remains unshaken in spite of the plagiarism of the Moslem
call to prayer by the avatars. Indeed, it seems strengthened by it, though not
in any narrow partisan way.

 
          
At
Captain K’s request we all link hands, to let the concentration flow through
us all, believers and unbelievers alike. And we all sense, as we concentrate,
that we are closing faster on our destination. The probability is rising. For a
little while there’s such a wonderful feeling of community. Only Jacobik sits
aloof amidst us, his paws limp in Sachiko’s and Natalya’s palms, sniffing the
air suspiciously.

 
          
While
we are all relaxed, he tenses suddenly, and pulls himself free.

 
          
Does
he anticipate the danger before it strikes?

 
          
For
this is when the klaxon hoots, destroying our peace.

 
          
Bee-bu-bu!
. . .
Bee-bu-bu!
The dactyl signal for mass proximity.

 
          
Bu-bu-bee!
The anapaest code: for damage
to the ship!

 
          
“We’re
under attack!” Jacobik shouts happily. And grins.