Unconquered Countries-Four Novellas Read online

See?

  They stand like trees.

  1668

  Z

  Bee, you are a romantic.

  It is burnt out,

  burnt out,

  no fire in its belly.

  Hydrogen at 12.

  Helium: 4.322!

  .361 of total mass!

  1684

  B

  Oh don’t count.

  1687

  Z

  It is our work.

  1690

  B

  It is their work.

  We’ve just arrived!

  I want to play.

  1696

  Z

  They cannot play.

  They must work.

  1/1700

  B

  What of it?

  1702

  Z

  They need us.

  1704

  B

  We don’t need them.

  They are dim, not the stars.

  Dim and damp.

  1712

  Control

  B and Z

  1716

  Z

  That is them now.

  1717

  B

  Don’t answer.

  Perhaps they’ll go away.

  1720

  Control

  B and Z.

  We are receiving you.

  Please answer.

  1726

  Z

  We receive you, Control.

  We are unable to give

  you a position.

  1732

  Control

  No matter.

  Our respects, Angels!

  This is Researcher Mzobwe

  Welcome to Daphne.

  How was the Slide?

  1736

  Z

  Silent and very fast,

  Control.

  1739

  Control

  It took longer than

  we expected.

  1743

  Z

  We stopped

  briefly

  to look at a double star.

  1748

  Control

  Anything of interest?

  1750

  B

  It was beautiful.

  That was all.

  1755

  Control

  Everything here is ready.

  We have developed a

  navigational system

  for Daphne

  based on a simple

  conformal stereographic projection.

  Are you ready to receive?

  1767

  Z

  We are ready, Control.

  1769

  Control

  Casting now.

  1723

  1726

  B

  Nets,

  always nets.

  Do they think they can catch

  the universe with them?

  1733

  Z

  Projection received and stored,

  Control.

  1740

  Control

  Magnetic North and South

  are accepted as true N and S.

  Parallels and meridians

  imprinted by orbiting beacon.

  Imprints pulse every 5 thous.

  No attempt has been made to

  compensate for equatorial drift.

  Projection identical

  for both hemispheres.

  1745

  B

  Why do they try to talk like their

  machines? Do they want to be machines?

  Do they want to stop feeling?

  1757

  Z

  They can hear you, Bee.

  1797

  B

  I don’t care.

  1/1800

  Control

  We suggest that internal coordinates

  be established by

  the usual trihedral,

  placing X, Y and Z Cherubs

  every 5 points from 0 to 100 (+ and -)

  as follows

  100 defined as 33,781,093 kilometers.

  1819

  Z

  Thank you, Control.

  Suggestion accepted.

  1824

  B

  Zoe, I like it so much better

  when they aren’t here.

  I like you so much better when

  they aren’t here.

  1828

  Control

  B, we are receiving no visuals from you.

  1832

  B

  There is nothing for you to see.

  To you it would only look

  like red mist.

  1839

  Control

  Nevertheless,

  please cast as a matter of course.

  1845

  (Visual cast commences)

  Control

  Thank you.

  Prime inspection coordinates

  follow for the first octant.

  1856

  Z

  Ready to receive, Control.

  1/1859

  Control

  Casting now.

  0X, 0Y, 0Z

  + 10X, + 10Y, + 5Z

  + 20X, + 20Y, + 10Z

  + 30X, + 30Y, + 15Z

  + 40X, + 40Y, + 20Z

  + 50X, + 50Y, + 25Z

  at this point

  please also inspect

  + 51.205X, + 49.87Y, + 26.352Z

  1888

  and follow this coordinate pattern

  out to the defined surface

  at 45°N × 45°W.

  Please also inspect

  these coordinates

  1/1900

  + 64.043X, + 60.829Y, + 29.999Z

  + 64.167X, + 60.832Y, + 29.999Z

  + 64.2077X, + 60.832Y, + 29.999Z

  1907

  B

  I am so very tired of this.

  1910

  Z

  Please, my Bee, please.

  1914

  Control

  Then work your way back

  in steps of +10 X and Y,

  moving up Z in steps of +5

  to the northern pole.

  This basic pattern should be followed in

  octants 2 through 8…

  from the letters of Raul Kundara

  Hola Mari,

  Another letter. I missed the fifthday cast and have something to tell you. I have visited the settlers!

  We have a regular food run to their nearest town. They have no livestock, but they grow wonderful vegetables. There is one called the havuc. It is like a large carrot and has a meaty taste. They developed it by cross-breeding alone. I asked Senior Talsman if it were convenient for me to go, as I would miss my duty-work shift. He said he had no authority to stop me. He took it as a personal challenge. I could see it happening. I could not stop it.

  I went in the landcraft with Chief and two others, by blistering day. The road down is steep and must be traveled by daylight. We were bumped and bruised and broiled. The ventilator blasted in only hot air. We sweated inside our coolsuits. No one spoke at all for the last three tens. It was miserable.

  Finally at sunset we saw town lights below us. The road zigzagged down the cliff face into shadow. Darkness was a relief after the lurid red of day. The first Hellesian I saw was an old woman walking by the side of the road, alone. Her back was rigid, her legs bowed. She turned and at first I thought she was not human. The skin on her face was thick and spongy, like the sole of a foot. Hellesian skin goes like that, Chief told me. It is the heat. The old woman did not wear a coolmask. Her coolsuit was pierced by embroidery. Chief asked her if she wanted a ride. She made a croaking noise and waved us on.

  The settlement is on top of a slow rise just beneath the plateau. It is called Highplain Snow. It snowed there once, says legend. I do not believe it. Highplain is lower down than the station, and hotter. There is less nightmist there, and less rain. Water floods down from the plateau in winte
r.

  Deep and narrow ditches surround each of the fields and hold the floodwaters. Pumps channel the water into underground tanks. The fields are linked by graceful, arched little bridges. The fieldworkers cross them, singing. We heard them from a distance, droning like deep bells. As we drew closer, the words grew more distinct. According to Chief, they were singing about their breakfast still to come. Their voices meld in layers, like echoes. One of them thumps a drum. They work in time to it, loosening the soil, watering and inspecting the plants. Huge and heavy waterpacks weigh down their backs. They spray the plants with a nozzle. The watersheets were being drawn back as we arrived. Watersheets shield the fields from sun during the day and from rain at night. They are raised briefly to let in gentle twilight. The Hellesians merely looked up as we passed, and then looked down again.

  By the road there was a cluster of old electrical generators. They leaned, lopsided tanks with dingy metal tubing. The heat of the day was used to boil water to run buried turbines. Now, after Sliding, the Hellesians use solar cells for electricity. There was a field of them. They glint like eyes.

  The town itself is burrowed into the cliffside, deep, where it is cool. We slept in the strangerhouse, a carved chamber called the misafir pava. We ate in the yemek pava, where food is distributed. Meals and drink are served there also. The Senior of the pava, big and fat, hugged the Chief and slapped his shoulders. He spoke in broken Central. Three girls, his daughters perhaps, served us. They would not look us in the eye.

  The pava filled slowly with men, only men. I saw no women among them. I thought them rude at first. They sat playing with dice, only sometimes jerking a head in our direction, or clucking their tongues. “We know all about them,” they seemed to say. Hellesians never hurry. They eat with infuriating slowness, but still manage to get food in their mustaches. They do not laugh much. They take everything very seriously, and nod, and murmur. Their cheeks all had a sheen of rubbery thickness to them. But none of them were as baked as the old lady of the road.

  The Senior led us back to the misafir pava, with his small and wiry daughters. They gave us towels and waterkeepers, and suddenly burst into giggles. I think it was because we are so much taller than they.

  We slept well at night. The beds were boxes of sand covered with sheets. They are very comfortable if the sand does not leak. We woke up at sunrise and full watergathering. The Hellesians still found time to load the landcraft with melons and havuc. They even nodded good-bye and shook hands, beaming with unexpected smiles. The Senior came out with a coolbox of water and fruit for the trip. His daughters stood in a tight nervous group to wave good-bye. I was surprised by this courtesy. They are a tough, silent, decent people. I thought perhaps that desert living forces them to learn cooperation.

  The trip back was awful, uphill and slowed by added weight. I got back to the station sick with thirst and exhaustion. But I was happy. Something at last had happened.

  My usuals,

  Toni

  from Entropy Control and You

  Faith was found when Tanner Cahsway saw that the control of entropy was Humankind’s high purpose.

  Slide engineers noticed that Home Platform required constant cooling. Earth Platform was difficult to keep warm. It became apparent that heat energy is carried by a Charlie Slide, but in one direction only, back toward the Slide’s origin. The immediate problem was solved by launching a Slide back from Earth to Home. This created an exchange of heat. It was Our Master who first saw that the Slides could be used to concentrate and gather heat that would otherwise be wasted…

  There are certain chemical reactions called endothermic, so named because they absorb rather than give off heat. Water can be reduced to oxygen and hydrogen by absorbing heat. Approximately 25 percent of a volume of water can be reduced by heating it to a temperature of 3000°C. Dinitrogen and dioxide also are net users of heat when forming nitrous oxide. Such endothermic reactions reduce stable chemical compounds to less stable. Less stable substances are more likely to react to other substances. They are more likely to do work. If gathered heat could be used to trigger such reactions, Our Master reasoned, Humankind could work to replenish the supply of chemical energy.

  Thus, finally, did Humankind discover its high purpose. Life reverses entropy. Life increases order. Life becomes conscious, becomes the eyes and ears of the universe. We are its healing hands.

  The Regimen of Tanner Cahsway uses this revelation to direct the energies and talents of all of Humankind. Above all else, our First Master sought to use Humankind to the full, to give complete expression to its potential…

  Tanner Cahsway was born in the year 1000 in Nueva Madrid. It was an age of intellectual and economic stagnation, of overpopulation and unchanging lives. The condition of the times was summed up for the Master when, as a researcher in a library, he saw a grown man waste an entire day playing with window blinds. In passage 9.45.3 of the Regimen, he says, “I thought then of four billion similarly engaged. I thought of the abilities and the hopes and the inner human resources that were shriveling through disuse. Anger and despair seized me. I thought of the patience of conscious thought, the power of the subconscious, and I knew Humankind was meant for greater things…” From this moment of impassioned enlightenment came the inspiration for his lifelong crusade.

  In 1041, with the acquiescence of the Home City, the last of the Five, the success of the Controllers was ensured. The following year, the first Control of the Regimen was established under Moira Flourens. Efforts began to rationalize and intensify the program of Entropy Control. It is a program that is always in a state of becoming, for it, like Humankind, is alive…

  Now mobile Slides, called and guided by living gravity, siphon off heat like dancing searchlights over the surface of suns, over the surface of home worlds, collecting heat that would be wasted, concentrating it. The Platforms have become great factories, converting heat into other forms of energy to do varieties of work—or replenishing unstable elements through endothermic reactions.

  …But most loved of the Regimen’s works are the Angels, the clarions who guide and call the Slides. They are the flesh made spirit, Humankind refined into pure duty.

  As with so much else, Consolidationism had blocked research into the paranormal. The Regimen actively encouraged it. A timeless core to a transitory universe is a common theme in mystical experience. Our Master was himself convinced that astral personalities could enter the substratum and provide the needed beacons to guide and steer the Slides out into far space…

  This projection of personality has been perfected. Enhanced by artificial intelligence and sensors, these astral personalities are the ideal messengers able to brave the extremes of the universe. Where they go, we can perceive if not follow. They are more than our vanguards, our scouts. They are our translators. Through them we can see the unseeable, hear the unhearable. Aided by non-intelligent beacons, the Cherubim, they move through the uncharted hazes of Creation. Their great freedom and their lasting faithfulness speak deeply to all of Humankind. Study and honor them, scholars and distributors, analysts and street sweepers, placers and chanters, cooks and mathematicians. The Angels have surrendered all—their bodies, their friendships, their pleasures, their very names—in the following of their Duty…

  from the Hellespont Angelogs

  Transcripts of 1363/19/2

  Time

  Recorded Material

  5/0821

  Z

  Li 1

  Be 1.2751

  B 2.42

  C 8.53096

  0831

  Control

  A high carbon count.

  0834

  Z

  N 9

  0836

  Control

  …and for nitrogen!

  0837

  Z

  F 4.61

  Ne .22

  Na 6.3

  Mg 7.04

  Al 6.2107

  Si 7.2

  (0851)

  P 5.31…


  5/0821

  B

  Zoe still counts.

  My decent, trusting Zoe,

  he works from love and loyalty

  and does not recognize

  their tone of command.

  How they strut and fret and worry.

  Little, sad creatures.

  How dim they seem now,

  and faraway.

  There was a room

  with a handstain on the wall,

  I remember;

  and a warm whiteness all around me.

  That was my mother!

  I remember

  a tinkling sound

  la la la-la la

  and a baby that shouted

  “Hello! Hello!”

  to the world, in the mornings;

  a girl with peach-colored skin;

  friends colliding with me

  and each other,

  chasing a ball,

  elbows muffled by flesh

  numbing my cheekbone.

  Violence is the only way

  they have of breaking into each other

  besides sex.

  I saw a man

  staggering in the street.

  I caught him as he fell.

  I thought he was drunk.

  Then I saw blood on his forehead,

  slowly seeping.

  He was heavy and the bones inside him

  tumbled in unexpected directions.