Rhapsody in Black (12 page)

Since the stalks which supported the teardrop cells did not seem to me to be nourishing enough to support a reasonable standard of living, it occurred to me that the worms might also make use of the light so obligingly provided by the thermosynths.

Accordingly, I fished out my flashlight for the second time and shone its wan glow upon one of the coiled-up worms.

Which promptly became two worms. The plasmid divided
in situ
, without uncoiling. One of the two shuffled sideways and where there had been only one ring, there were now two. The stalk had been thinned extensively during the process—corroded away as though by strong acid. The reproduction took less than a minute. I switched off the flashlight promptly, not wishing to precipitate a population explosion. The rate at which the plasmid had absorbed the light energy, sucked up the stalk material and used it to good purpose was nothing short of phenomenal. In a cave like this, of course, conditions would have been more or less stable for millions of years. The energy supply at the conductive face would be very slow and very constant. The differences in temperature with which the thermosynth mobilised its heat energy were probably minute—hence the strong reaction to my body heat, which must be very close to the temperature of the rock. The light generated under natural conditions here must have been stable in intensity for all those millions of years. The whole system was perfectly attuned, and overreacted when new stimuli were applied. Had the people of Rhapsody cut their way in here with beamers, and then leaped into the space with bright lights blazing, the delicate balance of the system would have gone completely wild, and the entire ecocomplex might have been destroyed in a matter of days. But Rhapsody's miners worked with pickaxes and without light. So the complex was still here, and would probably have sufficient resilience to take the new conditions into account and go on for ever.

But the question of its value was not yet settled.

The worms were the unique types. They were a product of split adaptation, and that
they
had evolved to balance the system rather than a more conventional secondary consumer had to be a million-to-one chance. The key to it all was in the limiting factors. The thermosynth was limited by space, not by consumption on the part of the dendrites. The dendritic cells were not limited at all except by the supply of light energy. The same factor limited the capacity of the worms to metabolise the stalks. Thus the efficiency and continuity of the system were not determined by mortality, but by the constancy of the conditions applying a restraint to natality. There were no sources of mortality external to the populations themselves.

If, therefore, the only limiting factor constraining the worms was light, and they could eat stalks
ad infinitum
given that light, take them out into the sunlight and they would eat up mountains of the stalk-stuff.

But what
was
the stalk-stuff? The living cells were at the termini of the branches, and were connected to their substratum only via a narrow canal through the centre of the dead stalk. I judged that there would be no sense in their being up there rather than embedded in the thermosynth unless they absorbed atmospheric gases, and could not afford to be overgrown by the slowly-thickening carpet. That made sense too. Luminosity usually involves oxidation. If the thermosynth was taking oxygen out of the air to make its light, something must be putting it back. So the dendrites might well take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, in typical plant fashion. That implied the stalks contained carbon. They also contained something which was brought up from the rock via the canals. Metal. To be specific, copper.

Which implied...

All of a sudden—and belatedly, it seemed—inspiration struck home, and it all fell into place. I knew why the worms were so valuable. It wasn't mountains that they could eat, but cities.

‘Obviously,' I commented drily.

I'd accidentally spoken out loud, believing that I was alone in the grotto. But Bayon had apparently been sitting in the entrance watching me for some time.

‘Well,' he said. ‘What is it?'

‘There are three types of organism here,' I told him. I searched for simple terms which he might be able to understand. I couldn't hope to give him the entire picture, let alone explain my logic, but I could give him a fair idea of what was what. ‘The first eats heat and gives off light. The second is like a plant. It uses the light as energy. It has stalks which are made from carbon taken out of the air and copper taken out of the rock. The third is odd. It might have started out in life trying to be another plant, but found it couldn't make it. Nor could it make it as pure animal, so it had to be both.

‘It uses the light to provide energy for chewing its way through the stalks of the plant. It takes the carbon for its own structural purposes, and excretes the copper, which just gets absorbed into the thermosynthetic carpet—the luminous stuff, that is. There's a complicated circulation of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air which keeps the whole thing balanced.'

‘So what?' said Bayon. An understandable reaction.

‘Well, the half-and-half creature will take all the light it can get in order to chew up the stalks. If we were to flood the cave with light, the thing would go through its total supply in a couple of days, despite the fact that there's a lot of it compared to the present number of worms. The rate of conversion is very, very fast.'

‘And?' he prompted. I don't think he was following me—if he was, he certainly wasn't appreciating the sheer elegance of the system. Rhapsody as a whole was greatly lacking in aesthetic appreciation.

‘The stalks are made of carbon and copper. I don't know of any way this can be done except by forming complex molecules called cupro-carbon-chains. They're extremely rare in nature on any world, but the clever old human race discovered how to synthesise the molecules long before they were identified in living tissue. Depending on the precise configuration of the molecule, cupro-carbon-chains can be very hard or quite malleable. In some families of chain, the application of heat can change the structure. This means that cupro-carbon-chains are immensely useful as building material. Cupro-carbon houses are virtually indestructible. They can be moulded hot, and then when the material cools it undergoes a reaction which makes it hard. The reaction is irreversible, and reheating has no effect. Once a cuprocarbon building is up, it stays up forever.

‘Until these little worms see the light of day. You can't really envision the scale of the destruction which these little things can cause, because Rhapsody doesn't use cupro-carbon-chains any more than it uses all the other sophisticated—and expensive—methods which grew up during the last few centuries. But this stuff could destroy a civilisation, Bayon. Whole worlds of buildings. Greedily and speedily. It couldn't be stopped.'

‘So that's why it's so valuable?' said Bayon.

‘That,' I agreed, ‘is it.'

‘Then let's go back and talk to Krist and Mavra.'

‘What for?'

‘I want to know what's happening back at the capital.'

‘What are you going to do about this?' I asked him.

‘Stay with it.'

‘We could grab some and go,' I pointed out.

He shook his head. ‘I've got all of it and I'm keeping all of it. What little I could carry away would be worthless if the council decided to give some to Charlot
and
Sampson.'

He had a point there. We didn't actually know we had cornered the supply—any number of people might have taken some out. But Krist had brought Mavra and company down here to have a look, which
might
signify that there was none to look at back home in the capital.

I followed him back out into the mine, carrying one of the infected dendrites in my hand. Once outside, though, I remembered what the lantern light could do to it, and I threw it back.

Then, with Bayon feeding me some of the questions, I began the interrogation.

‘How many people know about this?' I addressed the question to Mavra, since he seemed most likely to answer.

‘Too many,' he replied, a little gloomily.

‘Do Charlot and Sampson know what it is?'

‘Do you?' he countered, checking to make sure that I wasn't trying to bluff him.

‘It eats cities,' I said. ‘And I know how, too.'

He shook his head slightly, but it wasn't a denial. He was just lamenting the state of the game. ‘I don't think they know yet,' he said. ‘Although I don't know what Gimli might have told Sampson. But it's only a matter of time. We can't keep the secret. Word not only leaked offplanet, but even out of the Splinters. Charlot has to find out soon.'

‘Gimli tried to set up a deal with Sampson for his own benefit, is that right?'

‘Not only Gimli. Several men made some kind of attempt to make a private fortune. Gimli was the most important. But too many people knew. They all got in one another's way. There might have been murder if the miners hadn't been armed in order to control the situation. Now it's a matter for the council.'

‘Who armed the miners?'

‘Krist and others. They wouldn't have acted without the knowledge of the Hierarch.'

‘What is the council going to do?'

He shrugged again. ‘I shudder to think. Unless you release us, they might go ahead without us. Without the Hierarch, they could decide almost anything. And there's likely to be more trouble when you do release us. We're no good to you as hostages—you'd lose nothing by letting us go.'

‘That's what they all say,' I commented. ‘Bayon?'

‘I'm not letting them go,' he said definitely.

‘They'll kill you for sure if you kill Krist,' I reminded him. ‘And they probably don't care much either way about Mavra and the others. I don't think they really give you much extra bargaining power'

‘They stay,' he repeated. ‘Ask Krist what he wanted to do with the grotto, if not to make his own fortune'

I repeated the question, but Krist wouldn't reply. Either he had decided that I had been contaminated by theoretical non-existence, or he was just stubborn.

‘Well,' I said, ‘it can only really be one of two things. Either he wants to promote the discovery for the mutual benefit of all the lucky people on Rhapsody, Ecstasy, Serenity, Vitality, Modesty, Felicity, Fidelity, Harmony and Sanctity, or he wants to close up the grotto and bury the whole problem. Since he's the Church Hierarch, I suspect it's the latter. Politically unpopular but doctrinally safe.' All the time, I was looking at Krist, hoping for a reaction.

But it was Angelina who reacted. She laughed.

‘Not at all,
Mister
Grainger. You misjudged our beloved spiritual leader. He didn't bring us down here to give us a lecture on the spirit of our noble people, and how it must be preserved at all cost by banishing this evil power from our lives. He was trying to persuade us to quite a different point of view. He wishes to adopt this gift from the Almighty and use it for the purpose which the Almighty probably had in mind. He thinks the discovery of the grotto is a commission from heaven to go and exact just retribution for all the sins that galactic civilisation has committed since we left them to tread our path of exclusive holiness.'

‘If you talk like that all the time, it's no wonder they threw you out,' I said absently, while I contemplated the import of what she had told me. Krist was some fanatic if he thought his mission in life was to bring a new and terrible plague into the galaxy. This was a dangerous man.

‘And you want Akim Krist back at the head of the council when they decide!' I said to Mavra. ‘Do you go for this lunacy as well?'

‘Quite the reverse,' he said dully. ‘My fear was that if the council finds out that you're holding the Hierarch at gunpoint, they might decide that all outworlders
are
vermin, to be stamped out. It'll help his cause, not hinder it.'

‘
I'm
not holding him at gunpoint,' I protested. ‘I'm only here to help out. It wasn't my idea.'

‘Don't you see?' said Angelina. ‘The
council
is only going to see
you
. Bayon and the others don't exist. Even Rion Mavra hasn't consented to see them yet, let alone the Hierarch and this other fool. You may not be in control of the situation here but
you're going to get the blame
. Can't you see that?'

I could see it all right, but it was far too late.

‘Bayon,' I said intensely, ‘you've got to let them go.'

I turned to face him, and found that the gun he held was pointed at me as well.

‘No,' he said.

What now, little man? said the wind.

I wished that I knew.

I wasn't a prisoner, exactly, but Bayon had made it pretty clear that he was calling the tune, and I'd better not forget it.

We moved away down the corridor, past the entrance where Harl and Tob stood guard, so that we could discuss things like rational human beings.

‘Bayon,' I said, ‘we've got to destroy the grotto.'

He looked at me as if I were crazy.

‘Take some of it back to your village, but destroy whatever we leave behind,' I followed up. ‘Then you still have the possibility of a deal.'

‘As long as I have all of it,' he said, ‘what does it matter where it is?'

‘You're setting me up, Bayon. The Churchmen are going to blame me, just as Angelina says. They're not going to be disposed to make a reasonable deal with anybody while there's an outworlder holding the grotto with the Hierarch as his hostage. Take some, destroy the rest and let them go. Mavra's not against us. He's with Charlot. He'll set up a deal for us. That's what you need, if you're going to get out. As things are, they might send the miners in with the guns, or even deal with Sampson on condition he brings the guns in.'

‘They won't send any guns in while we have Akim Krist.'

‘But what do you think you're trying to do?' I complained. ‘What chain of events are you hoping for? I don't see your thinking at all.'

‘I want whatever I can get. I want off this world. I don't care who takes me. But that's not all—not any more. I've got more than just the grotto. I've got Akim Krist as well. Which means that the
Church
, as well as the offworlders, is going to deal with
me
. Before I say goodbye for good, I'm going to force them to recognise my existence. Krist and Gimli and all the rest. They're going to remember Bayon Alpart. They're going to remember that he exists; and that he's alive and well.

‘It's not a matter of revenge, Grainger, believe me. It's a matter of principle. I want them all to admit they were in the wrong. I want them to see me—and what they did to me—whether they want to or not. And you needn't worry about your taking all the blame. I'm claiming that for myself. Everybody is going to
know
who stole their treasure. And to make sure that they remember, I'm taking the price of the grotto as well. All of it. The Church men won't get a penny. Nothing.'

‘They won't let you get away with that!' I protested. ‘Hell, there are only sixteen of you.'

‘We have Akim Krist'

‘You have a very inflated idea of Akim Krist's worth'

‘You don't understand,' he said. ‘Akim Krist is the Hierarch of Rhapsody. The leader of the Church.'

‘Only on this world. And even here, he isn't an absolute monarch. He's just not that important. Remember, it's Gimli we have to negotiate with now. The man who wanted to sell out the world, just as you do. You'll never get away with it. You'll get us all killed.'

‘I'm dead already, remember.'

‘Well, I'm not, and I don't want to be. If this plan of yours doesn't work—and it won't—I'm right out on a limb. It's all very well for you to take the blame—but if it goes wrong, that's so much extra blame for
me
to take.'

‘That's right! You just keep thinking about that, and do your level best to make sure things come out the way
I
want them to.

‘This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to send the two miners back to the capital. You can give them a message to take to Gimli. I want him down here, alone, first thing in the morning. My men will let him in provided he's alone, and we'll let him out again afterwards. But don't mention my men. Make things easy for him to begin with. Just let them tell him that he can get in and out provided that he doesn't bring any guns with him. Right?'

I did as he asked. What else could I do? But I was very unhappy about the state of affairs. Mere hours ago, I thought that the principle of Let Well Alone was a convenience, because it meant I could dabble in revolution without breaking the Law. But it also meant, of course, that the locals could shoot me down with a similar degree of safety. There was no justice.

I settled down on the bare rock, to sleep. Bayon and his three followers were sleeping in shifts. Mavra, Capra and Angelina had also decided to sleep, but Akim Krist was still wide awake, with his eyes gleaming in the lamplight as he radiated his anger.

I found that I didn't want to sleep. It had, after all, been mid- afternoon when I last awoke.

Never mind, said the wind. If Bayon does scoop the jackpot he might give you twenty thousand for your help. Then you can say goodbye to Charlot and join the gang for good.

‘Bayon's worse than Charlot.'

Poor Grainger! Everybody pushes him around. But on the other hand, who would you rather have win the deal, Bayon or Akim Krist?

‘Neither of them, damn it. Nor do I particularly want Charlot or Sampson putting it to all the uses their horrible imaginations might conceive. The grotto ought to be destroyed.'

That's very noble of you. I thought you were in this solely for the profit. I didn't realise you wanted to save the galaxy from the terrible scourge.

‘To tell you the truth,' I said, ‘if it was a choice between making twenty thousand to buy my life back and saving the galaxy, I'd probably take the twenty thousand. But I wouldn't like doing it'

How very kind. I'm sure the galaxy would thank you for your regret.

‘Well, it's a redundant question anyhow. From here and now, I'd like to see the thing destroyed. My chances of getting twenty thousand out of this are comfortably outweighed by my chances of getting killed. I'll settle for nothing and a chance to go home. If I could get that power-gun off Bayon I could burn up every damned worm in the grotto in a matter of minutes. That's all it takes. We could kill the whole farce stone dead. Then I could quietly lift the
Swan
—with Bayon's sixteen as passengers—and we could all live happily ever after.'

Everything back to square one. What a way to exploit opportunity. Here's something unique in human experience, and all you want is to kill it and live happily ever after. Suppose the human who figured out how to use fire had thought like that?

‘If I thought that humans had any common sense I'd say that the first fifty who thought of it did just that. But most of us have about as much sense as Akim Krist or Bayon. They're never satisfied with what they can get. They want the moon as well.'

At least they want to do
something
. It may not be the right thing, by your thinking, but it's positive. And what's wrong with Charlot's answer—New Alexandria gets the bug, which is a lot safer for all concerned than someone like Krist, or even Sampson, getting it. And the Splinters—Rhapsody at least—get the help they need to restore themselves to the human scale of existence.

‘They chose to live here. They still choose to do so. They don't want that kind of help and nobody should try to force it down their throats. And as for New Alexandria being any better than Star Cross or anyone else—that's just not true. The only difference would be that they'd sell it to
everybody
, instead of there being a monopoly.'

Isn't that better?

‘I don't think so. And even if it is, it's better still to destroy all of it.'

And you think that your personal judgement should decide which way things go.

‘If I had that beamer it damned well would.'

Then, since you haven't, it obviously follows logically that Bayon's way is the way that things should be done.

‘Oh, be quiet! You're only arguing for the sake of it. You don't like it any more than I do. Your precious host's in mortal danger, remember. You ought to be worried.'

I am, he assured me, I really am.

He shut up and I eventually dozed off into a light and fitful sleep.

I couldn't have been asleep for very long, because there was still nothing happening when I awoke. Tob and Harl had changed places with Bayon and Ezra—the latter were now sleeping—but that was all. The atmosphere was steeped in silence and stillness. It felt like the early hours of the morning.

I contemplated trying to snatch the beamer, but Bayon had wrapped himself all around it before going to sleep, and there was no chance of disentangling it, quite apart from the fact that Tob was in the way. Instead, I decided to sound out Tob on the subject of demands and possibilities. I wasn't sure what kind of influence he might have with Bayon, but he seemed the likeliest ally I might find.

‘What do you think Bayon intends to do?' I asked him, in a low whisper.

‘I don't know,' he replied.

‘Do you think he does?'

Tob shrugged. ‘He's sleeping now. Won't be too strung out in the morning. We'll find out then.'

‘Do you really think there's something to be gained by holding Krist for ransom?'

‘There's none of us with any reason to love Krist,' he pointed out. ‘In some ways, he's the linchpin of the whole system. He talks loudest and he's careful who talks back to him. He don't encourage much in the way of argument. There's a good many of us would like to deal out some punishment to Krist. Normally it wouldn't be a good idea, but with everything happening at once, I don't know that we might not get away with it.'

‘Getting away with it is fine,' I said. ‘But if you were willing to settle for less you'd have a damn sight better chance.'

‘If we made a habit of running away,' he said, ‘we'd all be at the bottom of the hotshafts by now. We want to get out of here. But it is our world, just the same as it's Krist's and my daughter's.'

‘Daughter?'

‘We didn't appear out of nowhere. We all got families.'

‘Do you want to take your families with you when you go?'

‘They don't want to come. They can't want to come, without being forced into our way of seeing things.'

‘Surely they don't join in with this crazy farce of not seeing you or recognising that you exist?'

He shrugged fatalistically. ‘Most do. It's their way of life. Some of them can bring themselves to remember, now and again. We can always get help if we need it badly. But once in a while and all the time are two different things.'

‘But they couldn't want to stay here,' I protested. ‘Not if they could go to a better world.'

He looked at me steadily, with an expression of patient longsuffering. ‘Do you think we'd want to go if we could stay here?' he asked.

I don't know why it surprised me. This was, after all,
his
world—the only word he'd ever known. He'd never seen sunlight and he wasn't particularly keen to make its acquaintance. He probably wouldn't like it. It would cause him a great deal of physical discomfort, at first. And there was the change in sensory balance. Going native works both ways. I don't suppose he liked the thought of coming out of the warren any better than I would have liked staying there for good. It was purely and simply that life there was being made impossible for him. The symbolic non-existence worked both ways as well. By denying that the outcasts existed, the Churchmen actually robbed them of a great deal of that existence.

And all that could be put down to Krist. He was not solely responsible, nor could he really be said to be at fault—he was trapped in the system just as the outcasts were. The fact that he was content with it didn't make him any the less trapped. But he was the Hierarch. He had to carry the can for anything rotten within his state. He had to bear the brunt of any grudges.

And Bayon's outcasts certainly had a big grudge.

It was no wonder that they wanted more out of Krist than for him to turn his back while they sneaked away to an alien existence. I could have been very sympathetic, if I hadn't been so dangerously involved.

‘It's a dangerous game,' I said.

‘So it is,' agreed Tob laconically.

‘And you don't really know what you're trying to win, do you?'

‘Maybe not'

‘You can't stay here—no matter what you do.'

‘I know that.'

‘Isn't it better, then, just to make a clean break and leave the whole foul mess behind, to look after itself?'

‘I got a daughter is part of that foul mess,' he reminded me.

‘Have you? Is she really your daughter, now?'

‘They can't make
that
any different.'

‘But it is different, isn't it?' I didn't wait for him to answer. ‘You can't possibly do her any good by making a stand here and putting on a big show. If anything, it will do her harm. There might be recriminations, whether you exist officially or not. You'd be doing her all the favours you could simply by slipping out quietly. Leave her to her life. You can only hurt her by forcing the Church—and her—to admit that you exist. There's nothing to be gained.'

He was silent for a few moments, and I judged that I must be gaining ground. The fact that a man has never run away in his life isn't sufficient reason for his making a stand at every crisis. There has to be something else to give him a reason for fighting.

‘Bayon's the boss,' he said.

‘You don't owe him anything. You follow because he leads. You don't have to go with him, if he goes the wrong way. You aren't attached to him.'

‘I don't reckon this is a good time to start betraying him,' he said.

‘It has to be done, if needs must.'

‘Not now.'

I didn't try to press him any harder. I'd said what I could. There was no need to hammer it home. Tob was as capable of thinking it out as I was. I thought that I could trust him to make a rational decision. I hoped that rational decision would be the same as mine. If it was the same as Bayon's, the future might be very bleak indeed.