“It scarcely matters whether it is a real Involucra, though I repeat that it is most unlikely to be one,” Poatas exclaimed. “It must be an awoken machine of Optimae sophistication to have survived so long! It has been buried for centiaeons, perhaps deciaeons! Rational, interrogatable entities of that antiquity turn up in the greater galaxy not once in the lifetime of any one of us! We must not hesitate! The Nariscene or the Morthanveld will take it from us if we do. Even if they do not, then the waters will return all too soon and sweep who-knows-what away! Can you not see how important this is?” Poatas looked feverish, his whole body clenched and expression tormented. “We are dabbling about on the fringe of something that will resound throughout all civilised space! We must strike! We must make busy with every possible application, or lose this priceless opportunity! If we act, we live for ever more! Every Optimae will know the name of Sursamen, of the Hyeng-zhar, of this Nameless City, its single Nameless citizen and we here!”
“We keep talking about the Optimae,” Oramen said, hoping to calm Poatas down by seeming sober and practical himself. “Should we not involve them? The Morthanveld would seem the obvious people to ask for help.”
“They will take this for themselves!” Poatas said, anguished. “We will lose it!”
“The Oct have already half taken it,” Droffo said.
“They are here but they do not control,” Poatas said, sounding defensive.
“I think they could control if they wished,” Droffo insisted.
“Well, they do not!” Poatas hissed. “We work with them. They offer us that.”
“They have little choice,” Leratiy told Oramen. “They fear what the Nariscene judgement would be of their actions. Whose judgement would the Morthanveld fear?”
“Their peers among the Optimae, I imagine,” Oramen said.
“Who can do nothing, only register their so-civilised disapproval,” Leratiy said contemptuously. “That is without point.”
“They might at least know what it is we are dealing with,” Oramen suggested.
“We do!” Poatas said, almost wailing.
“We may not have any more time,” Leratiy said. “The Oct have no interest in telling anyone else what’s happening here; however, the news will out soon enough, and then the Nariscene or indeed the Morthanveld may well come calling. Meanwhile,” the senior technician said, glancing at Poatas, who seemed almost to be trying to climb out of his skin, “I agree with my colleague, sir; we must move with all possible speed.”
“We must!” Poatas shouted.
“Calm yourself, Poatas,” Leratiy said. “We can throw no more men at the three other cubes without the extra just getting in the way of those who already know what they’re doing.”
“Three cubes?” Oramen asked.
“Our Nameless one insists that its memories and, perhaps, a few other faculties lie in three specific cubes out of the ten black objects we know about, sir,” Leratiy said. “It has identified them. We are preparing to bring them here, to it.”
“It must be done, and quickly!” Poatas insisted. “While we still have time!”
Oramen looked at the others. “Is this wise?” he asked. There were some concerned looks but nobody seemed prepared to identify such actions as unwise. He looked back at Leratiy. “I was not informed of this.”
“Time, again, sir,” Senior Technician Leratiy said, smiling and sounding both regretful and reasonable. “Of course you will be informed of everything, but this was, in my judgement, a scientific matter which had to be arranged with all possible haste. Also, knowing something of the situation pertaining outside this place – I mean, in effect, between you and Regent tyl Loesp – we did not want to add to your burden of cares before any physical movement of the cubes had actually taken place. You were always, sir – but of course – going to be informed of our intentions once the moves were ready to be made.”
“And when will this happen?” Oramen asked. “When will they be ready?”
Leratiy took out his watch. “The first in about six hours’ time, sir. The second in eighteen to twenty hours, the last one a few hours after that.”
“The Oct press us to do so, sir,” Poatas said, addressing Oramen but glancing sullenly at the senior technician. “They offer to help with the manoeuvring. We might move faster still if we’d only let them.”
“I disagree,” Leratiy said. “We should move the cubes ourselves.”
“If we slip, they will insist,” Poatas said.
Leratiy frowned. “We shall not slip.”
A messenger arrived and passed a note to Droffo, who presented it to Oramen. “Our furthest airborne scouts report an army moving towards us, gentlemen, from Rasselle,” Oramen told them. “They will not be here for another week or more, travelling by road. So, we have that time.”
“Well, army or meltwater, we must have our result before we are inundated,” Poatas said.
“Dubrile,” Oramen said to his guard captain, “would this be a better place to defend than my carriages at the Settlement?” He nodded to indicate the great chamber they stood within.
“Most definitely, sir,” Dubrile replied. He looked at the massed Oct. “However—”
“Then I shall pitch my tent with our allies the Oct,” Oramen said, addressing all. “I stay here.” He smiled at Neguste. “Mr Puibive, see that everything necessary is brought, would you?”
Neguste looked delighted. Probably at being called “Mister”. “Certainly, sir!”
It was a quiet time in the chamber, at the end of another long shift. Most of the lights had been turned off, leaving the whole huge space seeming even greater in extent than it appeared when lit. The Oct were taking turns to return to their ships for whatever reasons occupied them, but still over nine out of ten of them remained in the places they had occupied when Oramen had first seen them, arranged in neat concentric circles of blue bodies and red limbs, all perfectly still, surrounding the scaffolded Sarcophagus.
“You think it will reveal itself and be like you, that it is actually an alive example of your forebears?” Oramen asked Savidius Savide. They were alone on the platform. The others were absent on other duties or sleeping. Oramen had woken in his hurriedly thrown-together tent – fashioned from some of the same material that had shrouded parts of the scaffolding round the Sarcophagus – and come up here to talk with the being that called itself Nameless. He had discovered Savide, just floating there in front of the pale grey patch.
“It is as us. Mere form is irrelevant.”
“Have you asked it whether you truly are its descendants?”
“That is not required.”
Oramen stood up. “I’ll ask it.”
“This cannot be relevant,” Savide said as Oramen went to stand before the Sarcophagus.
“Nameless,” Oramen said, again taking up a position closer than the focal point.
“Oramen,” the voice whispered.
“Are the Oct your descendants?”
“All are our descendants.”
Well, that was a new claim, Oramen thought. “The Oct more than others?” he asked.
“All. Do not ask who is more than who else. As of now, without my memories, my abilities, I cannot even tell. Those who call themselves the Inheritors believe what they believe. I honour them, and that belief. It does them no end of credit. The exactitude of it, that is another matter. I am of the Involucra. If they are as they say, then they are of my kind too, at however great a remove. I cannot pass judgement as I do not know. Only restore me to my proper capacity and I may know. Even then, who can say? I have been in here so long that whole empires, species-types, pan-planetary ecosystems and short-sequence suns have come and gone while I have slept. How should I know who grew in our shadow? You ask me in ignorance. Ask me again in some fit state of knowingness.”
“When you are restored, what will you do?”
“Then I shall be who I am, and see what is to be seen and do what is to be done. I am of the Involucra, and as I unde
rstand things I am the last, and all that we ever thought to do is either fully done or no longer worth doing. I shall have to determine what my correct actions ought to be. I can only be what I always was. I would hope to see what remains of our great work, the Shellworlds, and see what is to be seen in the galaxy and beyond, while acknowledging that the need for the Shellworlds themselves has passed now. I must accept that all has changed and I can be but a curio, a throwback, an exhibit. Perhaps an example, a warning.”
“Why warning?”
“Where are the rest of my people now?”
“Gone. Unless we are injuriously mistaken. Quite gone.”
“So, a warning.”
“But all peoples go,” Oramen said gently, as though explaining something to a child. “No one remains in full play for long, not taking the life of a star or a world as one’s measure. Life persists by always changing its form, and to stay in the pattern of one particular species or people is unnatural, and always deleterious. There is a normal and natural trajectory for peoples, civilisations, and it ends where it starts, back in the ground. Even we, the Sarl, know this, and we are but barbarians by the standards of most.”
“Then I need know more of the manner of our going, and mine. Was our end natural, was it normal, was it – if it was not natural – deserved? I do not yet even know why I am within here. Why so preserved? Was I special, and so glorified? Or excessively ordinary, and so chosen to represent all due to my very averageness? I recall no vice or glory of my own, so cannot think I was specified for great achievement or committed depravity. And yet I am here. I would know why. I hope to discover this shortly.”
“What if you discover you are not what you think you are?”
“Why should I not be?”
“I don’t know. If so much is in doubt . . .”
“Let me show you what I do know,” the quiet voice murmured. “May I?”
“Show me?”
“Step again into the place where we may better communicate, if you would.”
Oramen hesitated. “Very well,” he said. He stepped backwards, found the square daubed on the planking. He glanced back, saw Savidius Savide floating nearby, then faced forward towards the light grey patch on the Sarcophagus surface.
The effect appeared to take less time than it had before. Very soon, it seemed, he experienced that curious dizziness again. Following the momentary feeling of imbalance came the sensation of weightlessness and carelessness, then that of dislocation, wondering where he was or when he was.
Then he knew who he was and where and when.
He felt that he was in that strange sunlit room again, the one where he had seemed to be earlier when he’d had the sensation of all his memories whirling past outside. He seemed to be sitting on a small, crudely fashioned wooden chair while sunlight blazed brightly outside, too bright for him to be able to make out any details of whatever landscape lay beyond the doorway.
A strange lassitude filled him. He felt that he ought to be able to get up from the little chair but at the same time had no desire to do so. It was far more pleasant to simply sit here, doing nothing.
There was somebody else in the room, behind him. He wasn’t concerned about this; the person felt like a benign presence. It was browsing through books on the shelves behind him. Now he looked carefully about the room, or just remembered it better, he realised that it was entirely lined with books. It was like a tiny library, with him in the middle. He wanted to look round and see who his guest actually was, but still somehow could not bring himself to do so. Whoever they were, they were dropping the books to the floor when they were finished with them. This did concern him. That was not very tidy. That was disrespectful. How would they or anybody else find the books again if they just dumped them on the floor?
He tried very hard indeed to turn round, but could not. He threw every part of his being into the effort just to move his head, but it proved impossible. What had seemed like a kind of laziness, a feeling of not being able to be bothered which had been perfectly acceptable only moments earlier because it was something that was coming from within himself, was now revealed as an imposition, something forced upon him from outside. He was not being allowed to move. He was being kept paralysed by whoever this was searching through the books behind him.
This was an image, he realised. The room was his mind, the library his memory, the books specific recollections.
The person behind him was rifling through his memories!
Could this be because . . . ?
He had had a thought, earlier. It had barely registered, scarcely been worth thinking further about because it had seemed both so irrational and so needlessly horrendous and alarming. Was that thought, that word somehow connected to what was happening now?
He had been tricked, trapped. Whoever was searching the room, the library, the shelves, the books, the chapters and sentences and words that made up who he was and what his memories were must have suspected something. He almost didn’t know what it was, certainly didn’t want to know what it was, and felt a terrible compulsion, comical in another context, utterly terrifying here and now, not to think of—
Then he remembered, and the being behind him which was searching his thoughts and memories found it at the same time.
The very act of remembering that one fleeting thought, of exposing that single buried word, confirmed the horror of what this thing might really be.
You’re not, he thought, you’re—
He felt something detonate in his head; a flash of light more brilliant and blinding than that outside the door of the little room, more incandescent than any passing Rollstar, brighter than anything he had ever seen or known.
He was flying backwards, as though he’d thrown himself. A strange creature sailed past – he only glimpsed it; an Oct, of course, with a blue body and red limbs, its filmy surfaces all glittering – then something whacked into the small of his back and he was spinning, somersaulting, falling away into space, falling over and over . . .
He hit something very hard and things broke and hurt and all the light went away again and this time took him with it.
There was no awakening, not in any sudden, now-here-I-am sense. Instead, life – if life it could be called – seemed to seep back into him, slowly, sluggishly, in tiny increments, like silse rain dripping from a tree, all accompanied by pain and a terrible, crushing weight upon him that prevented him from moving.
He was in that book-lined room again, stricken, immobile in that little seat. He had imagined that he was free of it, that he could rise from it, but after a brief, vivid sensation of sudden, unwanted movement, here he was again, paralysed, laid out, spread prone across the ground, helpless. He was a baby once more. He had no control, no movement, could not even support his own head. He knew there were people around him and was aware of movement and yet more pain, but nothing showed its true shape, nothing made sense. He opened his mouth to say something, even if it was just to beg for help, for an end to this grinding, fractured pain, but only a mewl escaped.
He was awake again. He must have fallen asleep. He was still in terrible pain, though it seemed dulled now. He could not move! He tried to sit upright, tried to move a limb, twitch a finger, just open his eyes . . . but nothing.
Sounds came to him as though from under water. He lay on something soft now, not hard. It was no more comfortable. What had he been thinking? Something important.
He swam back up through the watery sounds around him, helplessly aware of the noises he was making: wheezing, whining, gurgling.
What had he thought of?
The waters parted, like a hazy curtain drawn aside. He thought he saw his friend Droffo. He needed to tell him something. He wanted to grasp Droffo’s clothing, drag himself upright, scream into his face, issue a terrible warning!
Then there was Neguste. He had tears on his face. There were many other faces, concerned, businesslike, neutral, dreading, dreadful.
He was awake once again. He was clutch
ing at Droffo’s neck, only it was not really Droffo. Don’t let it! Destroy! Mine the chamber, bring it down! Don’t let . . .
He was asleep in his seat, an old man perhaps, lost in the end of his days, such days shuffled in this slow fading of the light from him. Genteel confusion; he relied on others to tend to him. Somebody was behind him, searching for something. They always stole. Was this what he’d ever wanted? He was not his father’s son, then. He tried to turn round to confront whoever was trying to steal his memories, but could not move. Unless this sensation was a memory too. He felt he might be about to start crying. The voice went on whispering into his ear, into his head. He could not make out what it was it was saying. Old age came with great pain, which seemed unfair. All other senses were dulled but pain was still bright. No, that was not true, the pain was dulled too. Here it was being dulled again.
“What is he trying to say?”
“We don’t know. We can’t make it out.”
Awake again. He blinked, looked up at a ceiling he had seen before. He tried to remember who he was. He decided he must be Droffo, lying here, in the hospital train. No, look; here was Droffo. He must be somebody else, then. He needed to say something to Droffo. Who were all these other people? He wanted them gone. They had to understand! But go. Understand, then go. Things needed to be done. Urgent work. He knew and he had to tell them that he knew. They had to do what he could not. Now!
“Stroy,” he heard himself say through the ruins. “Ring it all down. It . . .” Then his voice faded away and the light went again. This darkness, enveloping. How quickly the Rollstars moved, how little they illuminated. He needed to tell Droffo, needed to get him to understand and through him everybody else . . .
He blinked back. Same room. Medical compartment. Something was different, though. He could hear what sounded like shooting. Was that the smell of smoke, burning?
He looked up. Droffo. But not Droffo. It looked like Mertis tyl Loesp. What was he doing here?
“Help . . .” he heard himself say.