Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic Read online

  3. CMLs possess compatible sense structures with Homo sapiens. The sense structures of DMEs may overlap with those of Homo sapiens but the significance of sense impressions cannot be defined in terms of Homo sapiens.

  Using these criteria it is usually possible to designate a life-form as either CML or DME. But no one pretends that such distinctions are definitive though it has been found that CMLs frequently share many properties with Homo sapiens such as a vocalized language.

  The belief is sometimes encountered that the Gentle Order of St. Francis Dionysos is mainly concerned with the protection of intelligent life. This is not true. Life is its main concern. Within the division CML and DME, little is made of intelligence: thus the acorn which is sending out shoots is accorded as much importance as the dying politician, and the mollusk rates beside the queen bee.

  Of course, intelligent species are rated highly, whether CML or DME, especially where their intelligence is related to civilization and ethical concepts. The reason I emphasize this is because I would not want you to think that the brains that guide the Gentle Order are either trivial or dogmatic. If they err, it is by policy always on the side of caution and generosity.

  This is exciting territory for one such as me since in terms of intelligence, I rate. I possess bio-crystalline life .. . and that alone would place me among the most bizarre of the DMEs. Consider: I have linguistic abilities which implies an extended civilization and an inability to procreate which implies extinction.

  So, there we were suddenly, through an air-lock which also served as a decontamination chamber, and standing in a plain white room. Along one wall were cubicles and a rack holding dark-red survival suits and masks. On the wall opposite were double doors on which was written, “CAUTION. You are now entering the DME section. Please wear the protective clothing provided. A DME Contact specialist will come to you shortly.” Quickly the confreres began to change. There was excitement and chatter and anticipation for few of them had ever visited a DME section before.

  After a few minutes a warning bell rang softly and the door opened and an old woman entered. Her skin was black as ebony. She had dyed, carrot-red hair and wore thick-lensed spectacles behind which her eyes twinkled, no doubt in amusement at the impression she created. She wore simple white overalls and was barefoot and walked with the aid of a stick. One arm was shriveled and the hand was deformed almost into a claw.

  “Welcome to the DME section,” she boomed in a deep and vibrant voice. She seemed about to burst into laughter. “You can relax. I’m human. My name is Consoeur Mohorovich, but you can call me Mohawk, almost everyone does. I’m one of the senior Distant Metabolism Contact Nurses. It’s my pleasure to take you through the DME section. Now, if you’re comfortable in the survival suits we’ll get going. Have any of you done DME work before?” Everyone looked about and then shook their heads. “None eh? Well what about contact work with CMs?” Everyone except the cook and the bursar nodded. “Well, there is a world of difference between the two. Beyond these doors,” she gestured with her thumb dramatically, “be monsters.” Several members of our party looked apprehensive. “But don’t be getting worried. You’ve got Mohawk with you.” She winked. There was no response. Seeing that her humor was not getting through to the assembled men and women, Mohawk took stock of them soberly and the next time she spoke her voice had a different kind of authority.

  “The first thing to realize is that you are entering another world. Some things are not pretty until you get used to them. Put your minds in neutral and don’t judge. At present we do not have many inhabitants and those that are here are just settling in. Later, when young Jon W has got himself sorted out, and we have become a family, we will cruise out to the Oriente System where I am told there are many weird and wonderful life-forms waiting for transport. Right, let’s go and meet some of my friends. And listen, if any of you start to feel sick or want to get out, just tell me. Don’t be embarrassed or anything. I spent my first few months as a DM nurse heaving up. This way.” She led us to the door which had a palm lock. It opened obediently for her and we trooped through.

  We entered a haze of blue. The walls, the floors, Consoeur Mohorovich, the members of our party all blazed with blue fire. For a few moments I felt my own circuits become drowsy as when my power pack is running low and I need to be recharged. But then I rallied. The voice of Mohawk was clear and calm. “You are entering a region directly under the control of BC Central—that is Bio-crystalline Central. This blue aura is the awareness field. You will find it comfortable shortly and you will be able to see clearly. We’re going up on a view platform. Follow me.”

  We followed and the blue gradually faded though a definite luminescence remained during all the time we were in the DME section.

  The platform was a circular dish with a sliding door and a clear domed roof. Inside were racks of technical equipment as well as tables and couches. “These are our main way of getting about in the DME section. We can keep track of events from in here as well as wash, sleep and make love if we’re lucky. Come aboard.” The humans stepped in and the vehicle adjusted for the changes in weight. “You too, Wulf.” I drifted through with inches to spare.

  The sliding door closed with a hiss and the vehicle lifted smoothly. It flew out through a port and the walls dropped away sheer.

  We entered an immense amphitheater. The walk seemed to retreat from us on all sides. The hazy blue mist was all about and made it impossible to judge distances. Threading through it were glimmering force lines of red and green and yellow. We wove an intricate pattern through this charged atmosphere. I recognized the technology. I had read about it though I had never seen it. The companions aboard the platform called out in amazement.

  “What you are seeing is one of the secrets of the Nightingale. It k one of the technical advances that have made the Nightingale possible. The whole of the amphitheater can be divided into sections. The lines of color that you can see are the different force fields which are in operation. There is no up or down. The entire center of the Nightingale contains the world within a world. We are inside a force field at present although you can’t see it. You are being treated at this moment as though you are a gathering of DMEs. Watch.” She opened the windows of the craft. “Now breathe deeply. It is like a warm day in spring eh? An environment has been created to make you feel at ease in terms of air, humidity and temperature. These can be varied easily. Observe.” Consoeur Mohorovich touched the controls briefly and immediately we felt the temperature begin to drop. She made further alterations and it rose and the humidity changed also. “All right, everyone?” she called. “I’m not going to demonstrate everything. You can take my word from now on.” She touched the control for a third time and the temperature and humidity shifted again becoming what they had been at first. Tancredi cleared his throat.

  “Impressive,” he said. “Now let me see if I’ve got the right. You use force fields to contain different environments. Is that correct?” Consoeur Mohorovich nodded. “And is that all? Or has the manipulation of force fields improved so vastly? I was always taught that force fields can bleed, that they have spacial instability over a wide area. The gravity cells we all use only function because they are so confined and hence irregularities quickly cancel themselves out. Is this different?”

  Consoeur Mohorovich shook her mane of red hair and smiled at him knowingly. “Well, Magister, congratulations. You can go to the top of the class. As you say, force fields are too unstable for the very precise work we do. The great advance has been to introduce a dimensional shift between the particle walls. Thus, the line which joins two adjacent force fields is a kind of laminate, it exists outside of our time and space and nothing can pass through. The isolation is absolute.”

  “Who controls the dimensional shift?”

  “BC Central.”

  “And is there no risk.”

  “Ah. Be wise, man. There is always risk. But it is reduced to a minimum. No hospital ship has ever been guided by m
inds as complex and thorough as these. This,” she spread her arms, “is not just a spaceship. It is a living being and as such has the ability to mend itself should things go wrong.”

  Magister Tancredi did not reply but looked thoughtful.

  “Now, would you like to meet one of our lodgers?” asked Consoeur Mohorovich. Without waiting for a reply she touched the controls and immediately the platform began to lower. “As I said, we do not have many guests, but there is a Trimaton aboard and such are not often seen these days and you may like to meet it.” This news caused a buzz of conversation.

  The homeworld of the trimaton was one of the first to be discovered in the early days of human space flight and hence the trimaton had come to have a place of special importance to the Gentle Order. As a race, the Trimaton were great botanical engineers and the cities which dotted their world were mile-high towers of tangled trees, climbing grasses and pulse plants which could pump water. Before the War of Knowledge the Trimaton had traveled widely in the galaxy using their expertise to control jungle or shape deserts or invigorate leached soil. The wars had seen them abandoned. But the Trimaton were survivors by nature. They could secrete a mucus from their oil ducts that covered and protected them. Exposed to the air, the surface of the oil hardened to a consistency of stiff rubber and became an extra skin within which the Trimaton could hibernate for ten years or a hundred years or longer. In effect they could return to the eggs from which they had hatched. When the War of Ignorance came, many of them did just this. They hibernated on whatever world they happened to be stranded and their favorite sites for hibernation were in swamps or in the depths of a cave on a mountain. It was in places such as these that they were usually found as the slow work of re-establishing the space ways continued.

  “The lad you are about to meet had a hard awakening so he may not be too communicative. He was in hibernation for three hundred years. He was partly crushed by a falling tree early on in his hibernation. He lost a lot of weight and we have had to operate on him. We’ll only stay a few minutes.”

  The platform came to rest beside the shimmering face of a force field. “Adjust your masks, please,” said Mohawk, “and watch closely. Here is how we enter an environment. You are going to find this a bit strange. I suggest you be seated and don’t close your eyes. Keep looking at me.” She touched some of the controls and immediately a section of the force field flared blue. “You are safe. You, Wulf, should settle. I’ve never taken an autoscribe through and you may suffer a temporary lapse of power.” I did as I was bid but hovered an inch or so above the ground worried lest I might damage the clean white floor of the platform.

  Outside, the brilliant section of blue wall began to expand, like a bubble or a blister. It began to flow around us. I watched it come, like a slowly breaking wave, and, as it closed over me, I died. All my circuits stilled and I clunked down to the ground.

  I had no dreams, for it is not in my nature to dream. But the humans had dreams. They each passed through a moment of unreality which is also a moment of potentiality, the hole in the zero as it has been called. They all reacted in their different and characteristic ways. Tancredi, for example, briefly saw himself as a woman giving birth. The bursar reported that for a few moments he became a spider at the center of a dew-spangled web. The cook was a stone at the bottom of a dark lake. All the realities told something of the natures of the dreamers. Mohawk did me the service of restoring my main circuits and I did the rest for myself.

  “Is it always like that, passing through the dimensional shift?” asked Tancredi.

  “Always the same and always different. You get to look forward to it after a while, like dreaming,” she replied. “Now, look outside.”

  Outside were trees with large feathery branches which were pressed up against the walls of the transport platform. We were well inside the force field and in the Trimaton’s territory.

  The door slid open and Mohawk stepped outside. “What about your mask?” asked the bursar.

  “I’ve adjusted,” she answered. “This Trimaton is in my special care. I call it Peter after my first husband. Come out and meet him. Keep your masks on, he smells pretty dreadful.”

  Outside we pushed through the tree ferns. The ground was soft and marshy. We came to a wooden ladder which led up to an observation platform. We climbed.

  We looked into solid jungle. We could have been on any of a hundred planets. Mohawk put her fingers to her lips and whistled a low wailing whistle. Immediately the whistle was repeated as though by many flutes and we detected movement in the jungle. A sinuous yellow and orange shape moved in the branches above us. It might have been a snake or a tentacle. We could not tell. Then another moved and a tree shook and it seemed that every tree and bush had its own inhabitant.

  “I thought there was only one . . .” began Tancredi, but then fell silent for the entire beast revealed itself. It reared up from the jungle floor. It was like a giant sunflower and the yellow and orange shapes we had seen in the trees proved to be tentacles. The yellow body pulsed like a huge muscular heart. It beat and throbbed and the surface was never still. Dotted along the upper parts of the tentacles we could see ducts which opened and closed like fishes’ mouths and through which were squeezed trickles of oil. The Trimaton rubbed this oil over its body using other small tentacles. It caressed and preened itself sensuously. But most remarkable were the eyes. They rose like thousands of black poppies from the center of the Trimaton’s yellow body and they moved individually and collectively, like flowers in a breeze. They surveyed us. Then the Trimaton changed color. Almost all the yellow deepened to orange.

  Several of the ducts blew out violently spitting oil toward us and then they compressed and whistled, sounding a harsh melody.

  “He wants to know who you are. He’s frightened of you.”

  “Can you explain to him?”

  “I can give him a general idea. He is very bright. He has already met Jon Wilberfoss so he can guess the rest.” Mohawk began to whistle and pointed to each member of the party and even to me. Then she turned to us. “I’ve introduced you all, but I’m going over to it. It is very alarmed by you. I didn’t expect this. It’s enduring stress. I trust you saw the color change. That is not a good sign. Go back to the platform and get inside. The platform will automatically take you to the exit point from the DME sector. It has been nice meeting you. But my work here must come first. You understand.”

  A tentacle snaked down from the tree above us and curled around her shoulders. There was trilling of notes from the giant beast that faced us. “Hurry,” said Mohawk as she anchored herself and the next time she whistled she was lifted off the platform and carried over to the large pulsating body. She waved before she was lowered among the eyes which parted to receive her and then covered her. We saw her begin to massage one of the oil ducts and then the Trimaton lowered out of sight behind the bushes. We heard a soft whistling which might almost have been a lullaby. This was followed by a raw breathing of notes as though a church organ were sighing to itself.

  We did as Mohawk asked and returned to the platform. I closed myself down and when Tancredi reset my circuits some five minutes later we had passed out of the Trimaton’s zone and were already high and skimming across the flickering blue haze. No one was talking. Everyone felt they had witnessed the first throes in the death of a great alien. Hearing its music they had encountered something of alien magnificence and strangeness.

  Thus ended somewhat sadly and dramatically our visit to the DME section of the Nightingale. I think all the confreres were impressed by Consoeur Mobovich, but as Tancredi said to the bursar, “That is one job I could not do—DME Contact Nurse. I’m too squeamish and too sentimental. I lack that hard compassion.”

  The bursar nodded. “Yes, as you say, those nurses are tough- But I must say, if I was a DME and I was sick, I’d feel content with Consoeur Mohovich climbing all over me.” The other members of our party looked at her in surprise for this was an uncharacteristically
direct remark for the bursar. At the same time they nodded in recognition of Consoeur Mohovich’s obvious strength and capacity.

  We completed our tour with a visit to the main control deck and there we found Jon Wilberfoss waiting for us. The control deck resembled Jon Wdberfoss’s house in the Pacifico Monastery. Much of his furniture had been brought up and there was a pleasing feeling of age and stability. I noticed a picture of Medoc and his children propped up near his desk.

  If we had been expecting a high-tech layout then we would have been disappointed. Everything was homely and comfortable as old clothes. The technology was there of course, flowing in the walls, and Wilberfoss could communicate instantaneously with any part of the Nightingale if he wished—but it was hidden. Only one room suggested the symbiotic nature of the Nightingale's relation with its Captain. In this room there was a single chair which reclined back. Above this chair was a helmet which was not unlike a small version of myself. This helmet, indeed the whole chair, linked Wilberfoss directly to the bio-crystalline brains. Here he could lie and absorb the entire complex running of the ship from the flushing of toilets to the realignment of force fields in the DME sector. Here he could observe, override and control.

  “Looks like a dentist’s chair,” observed the bursar when she saw it.

  Wilberfoss, when we met him, was different. He was as vigorous as ever but he seemed older and he gave the appearance of always saying less than he thought. Conversation was not easy, though there was nothing rude or unfriendly.

  A meal was served in a well-appointed staff canteen which was just down from his quarters. Tables had been pulled together for our party. While the members ate, regular staff workers aboard the Nightingale came and went. For them this was a normal working day. Wine was served and the atmosphere gradually thawed.

  Wilberfoss was called away briefly and Tancredi commented on the change in him. “I suppose what we experienced down there in the DME sector when we passed through the force field was a minute instance of what he must have endured when he linked up with the biocrystalline brains. That experience made me feel strange to myself. He must feel very detached.”