Watson, Ian - Novel 06 (18 page)

 
          
Wu
claps her hands sharply, like a slap in my face.

 
          
“We’re
forgetting Ritchie!”

 
          
“We
are?
You
are, Wu.”

 
          
Her
look pierces me. “This language is affecting your thoughts, Dove. It’s an
invention of the Askatharli stuff—its thought channel. Beware.”

 
          
“My
God, it’s
Pilgrim
! ”

 
          
The
scene below Ritchie’s feet is as grainy and vague as an ancient sepia
photograph; however, it’s a slowly changing threedimensional one. There’s the
control deck, but now a spaghetti tangle of tubes and cables infests it. The
bodies of our friends, cocooned, their heads hermetically bottled, sprout from
these strange vines. A few insectoids drift among them, mandibles twitching,
like ants tending enormous aphids. The view shifts momentarily: the viewport
shutters are all open. Outside is that accursed asteroid with its crystalline
fixtures jutting from the ragged clinker;
Pilgrim
is tethered fast to it. Other chips of tiny worlds glint here and there. The
sun is small and distant. The view drifts quickly back to the prisoners. Two of
the insectoids are actually
supporting
a body. It’s Gus. Gus Trimble. He’s ' mouthing words inside his bottle-helmet,
in a trance. I think he is. But there’s no sound. Are they experimenting on
him?

 
          
“This
is a dream of reality,” says the Tharliparan to us. “Ritchie Blue imagines your
ship, within the greater imagination that sustains reality. His aska has fled
to its last secure home, as the baby to the breast. Now he haunts it. As we
feared, your friends aren’t dead but subjects of the Group-ones.”

 
          
“They’re
milking them of knowledge, draining them,” I cry.

 
          
“They’re
playing Gus like a tape recorder.” It’s so vile. “Can’t we
do
anything?”

           
“If they come too close to us, we
can send dream demons against them. But they have learnt stealth.”

 
          
“You
sent dream things as far as our own world!”

 
          
“You
could receive them and sustain them. The Group-ones don’t receive them; they
are blank. The only possible channel would be through yourselves. But you don’t
know any of this yet; you aren’t a hero. You must reach the boundary, and
become one. Then you may try to free your friends, if the Group-ones do not
find some way to bind you too through the channel of their prisoners. We must
unbind Ritchie Blue from this dream, lest he unwittingly provides such a
channel.”

 
          
Vilo
brings Ritchie smartly to attention, then unslings her mirror shield. Samti
masks himself and holds his shield poised— one mirror reflecting the other,
Ritchie’s image trapped in each of them. Light vibrates between the two
shields. For a moment Ritchie’s body is a glowing angel form. Beneath him, the
vision of
Pilgrim
dissolves into a
reflection of Ritchie himself, inverted in the floor. He wakes. He sags and
stumbles, and catches himself. He blinks and stares around, as Vilo and Samti
drop their shields; and his reflection vanishes from beneath him, into luminous
vacancy.

 
          
“What—?”

 
          
“Welcome
home, my hero of the hemisphere,” says Wu sarcastically. (Do I detect a note of
genuine relief?) “The pot of jam was sticky, Ritchie. You got stuck.”

 
          
“I’ve
just been ... I was—” He stares round frantically as though everyone is his
enemy. Abruptly he shakes his head. “I . . . can’t remember
anything.
Where is this place?”

 
          
“You’ve
had an out of the body experience,” explains Zoe sweetly. “You visited
Pilgrim
.”

 
          
“Shock
amnesia,” says Ren6. “It might all come back to him.” “As dreams come back?”
asks Wu. “Generally they don’t. They fade away. Right away.”

           
“Tonight,” says the Tharliparan,
“when you sleep you will begin to enter the shared dreams of us all in full
consciousness. On your visit here you have bathed in the light of Askatharli.
Now you are ready.”

           
“If you remember your dreams, why
can’t Ritchie remember?” “The memory has stayed in Askatharli, in the general
imagination.”

           
Yet Askatharli is part of us now.
Our Tharliparan sounds slightly puzzled. Does he imply that the golden hairs
have somehow
drained off
Ritchie’s
memory?

 
          
“Soon
you can leave for the shore and your destination over the sea, Darshanor. Sleep
well tonight, humans. Climb the sleep tree. Welcome ...”

 
          
“
.. to Heaven,” Zoe adds.

 
 
 
          
On
a great
maidan,
a parade ground before a palace, a contest is in progress—a
contest at once mystical and aesthetic, according to Vilo. Getkan
dream-sculptors are incarnating angels as habitations. They rear bio-buildings
by an act of thought: habitable structures which are quasi-living
beings—angels spun out of Askatharli, to be dissolved back into it again later.

 
          
Here,
then, rises a twin-legged silver tower with eyes that stare lidlessly down on
us and a mouth that sings, like wind warbling over a bottle neck. In its belly
Getkans feast. In its heart they hang out arrays of tiny tinkling mirrors,
machines of light.

 
          
Over
there, a scarlet behemoth rolls upon living wheels, spewing entities forth
from its navel, which is its sex organ. Iridescent moths emerge from it, with
eyes upon their wings. Thin music pierces the air as the feelers of these moths
vibrate. Flitting around, they settle on the backs of people who rise into the
air, transfigured into moth-bodies. These fly up and up towards the dream sun
till their wings melt; then the bodies fall back as softly as if the air is
water. The crowd cheers. So do we.

 
          
Another
living building grows up in the shape of an alien barrel being. Its arms reach
out and out over the spectators, fingers branching into tinier fingers which
rebranch and branch again till the air is full of the dividing gossamer which
they are ... Presently it all melts away.

 
          
“Where’s
Wu?” asks Ren6 abruptly, tearing his gaze from the spectacle.

 
          
She
isn’t here. The rest of us all are. Though Zoe seems rather lackadaisical, a
bit vague. And Ritchie acts as if he is stunned by it all.

 
          
“Be
patient,” says Samti. “She must still be awake, in the ordinary world. But
you’re linked. She will come. As will Zoe Denby and Ritchie Blue.”

 
          
“Zoe’s
here! She’s standing right beside you. So’s Ritchie. Can’t you see?”

 
          
Samti
drinks in Zoe and Ritchie. “No, they are only reflections as yet—sustained by
the imagination of you who know them well, and cherish their presence. Their
askas are still with their bodies. They behave quite normally, fitting your
concept of them, but they cannot take the initiative. Wu should also be here in
reflection, but perhaps one of you resents her presence? Consequently her image
is resisted.”

 
          
As
he stops speaking, Zoe shivers and blinks. She stares around her, suddenly much
more alert.

 
          
“Well,”
she whistles. “Well. So this is Heaven. One comer of an alien Heaven. Hot
damn!” She laughs. “Wrong phrase, I guess! It’s the mind space of an alien
Heaven—and Heaven’s what you make of it. This city’s
crowded
, Samti! It looks vast.” It does indeed. The
maidan
is only one comer of a huge
exotic city stretching in all directions: ideal Menfaa, with sapphire canals,
broad thoroughfares, palaces and amphitheatres, picnics, quarrels, festivals,
commerce, play . . . which is itself only one of many parallel Heavens. “How
are there so many people?”

 
          
“All
the dead are dreaming, Zoe Denby, as well as the askas of the living.”

 
          
At
this moment Wu pops into existence before our eyes. We bring her up to date.
Only Ritchie is still a dullard, tagging along with us.

 
          
Archways
range around the crowded
maidan.
Other dream- scapes are visible through them. Through this one is a paradise
garden, a perfect lotus land where giant drugged flowers bloom beside a
leaf-green ocean. Getkan youngsters caper there. Some die young, at any rate!
Or perhaps they are souls who prefer the form of children. Through the next one
is that dreadful siege city, the place of flagellation and reclothing in
Askatharli-pelt. It’s too appalling a dream, even if the pain is all redeemed.
If where we are is Heaven, that is a kind of purgatorial drama— though not
aimed at purging sin.

 
          
At
last Ritchie comes ‘on line’, while we’re spying into it. Now he’s with us,
fully aware. He flees from the sight of the siege city, and Wu runs after him
to reassure him. We’re all happy to follow him away from that particular
threshold.

 
          
“Why
walk?” asks Vilo. “Let’s ride in style. What do you ride on in your home
world?”

 
          
“Horses,”
smiles Ren6. “But—”

 
          
“Just
fix your mind on whatever a horse is. Visualize it. Command it to exist. It
will only be an imaginary horse—a reflection, just as Zoe Denby and Ritchie
Blue were before they came through—but it’ll carry you. It’ll behave just like
a—”

 
          
“Like
a horse.”

 
          
“Samti
and I will ride rhaniqs, till we know a bit more about horses.”

 
          
We
concentrate. And we do conjure horses. Here they are waiting for us, champing
at the bit, saddled, bridled and caparisoned. Fine steeds. Zoe claps her hands
in glee. Passers-by applaud them as an amusing curiosity.

 
          
There
are only four horses as yet. Ritchie is clutching at Wu’s arm agitatedly;
they’re whispering together.

 
          
Wu
shakes her head, nodding in the direction of Samti and Vilo. The rest of us all
mount, and wait.

 
          
Zoe’s
still laughing. “I’ve never ridden a horse before. It’s so
easy”

 
          
“Me
neither,” chuckles Peter. “I suppose if you can imagine a horse, you can
imagine riding it into the bargain. Just don’t let’s invent falling off, or
saddle sores!”

 
          
“One
moment,” says Wu casually in English, as though she’s having difficulty imagining
a horse. “Behave quite normally, and listen. We’re all in danger. Ritchie
wasn’t running away. He remembers what happened during his out of the body
experience. He learnt something. We must get away on our own and discuss it.”

 
          
“You’d
better believe it,” says Ritchie quickly. “This is big. And it’s real scarey.
Exploring Heaven can wait—till you know what’s running the show.”

 
          
Wu
starts making excuses to the two Getkans.

 
          
“We
can walk, if you prefer to,” offers Vilo.

 
          
Excuses
drag on. Eventually Samti says something rapidly to Vilo—irritated at us, I
shouldn’t wonder—and the two Getkans kick their rhaniqs in the ribs, and ride
away out of the
maidan.

 
          
“We’ve
disappointed them,” frowns Zoe. “This had better be good.”

 
          
“Zoe,
there’s nothing good about it.”

 
          
“We
must find somewhere private,” says Wu. “These horses attract too much
attention.”

 
          
“Hell,
we do too,” nods Ritchie.

 
          
So
we abandon our steeds reluctantly, and set out on foot. Ritchie won’t say
anything yet. He seems almost paranoid about being overheard—not that any of
the Getkans could understand our English. When I look back, the horses are
still being ‘maintained’ by a group of Getkans who seem to have decided to
race them against rhaniqs.

 
          
We
walk down another avenue out of the
maidan
.
Presently we find a water garden opening off it. It’s a place of leaping
fountains and a maze of channels, afloat with orange flowers. There are only a
few Getkans taking their ease in the garden. We enter a covered walkway of waxy
purple vines, and we’re alone for a while. Alone in Heaven.

 
          
Zoe
plants her hands on her hips. “Well?”