The Gates of Eden: A Science Fiction Novel

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 1983, 2011 by Brian Stableford

Published by Wildside Press LLC

www.wildsidebooks.com

DEDICATION

For Barry Bayley

PROLOGUE

As you move along the corridor the hands sprout from the walls, their slow, slimy fingers groping for your arms and your ankles. The cobwebs catch your face, caressing you, and you feel the eyes of the great fat spiders watching you. They don’t move, but somehow that’s no mercy.

There are ghosts nearby, but you’ll never see them. They’re inside the walls, where ghosts prefer to live, coexistent with cold stone. That’s your destiny: to wait out eternity entombed in solid rock, moving through the barriers that set apart the spaces where the others live.

The others?

You’re one of the others right now. An ephemeral creature; a meaningless dream of the nucleic acids, a sport in the grand game of life. Flesh and blood—flesh that is made to feel pain; blood that fills you up so that every least pin prick will burst you and spill you and shrink you and feed the vampire until you shrivel and fade away and run for cover to the bosom of the cold, cold walls.

The vampire is behind you, and you mustn’t forget that. He never drinks wine; how beautiful they sound...but he’s not like that, not really. His eyes aren’t rimmed with red lightning; he has no fangs. He’s a creature of the shadows, his face is too frightful even to be imagined. You never hear him coming; but you always know you’re caught. it’s the feeling of suffocation; the deathly, sickly warmth; the moment when no matter how hard you try, you can’t move; you try to lift your limbs but the heaviness is in them; and the blood...the blood is squeezing inside its sac...squeezing until you burst....

Try to scream!

It’s a dream!

Things are not what they seem.

(You know it’s a dream. You always know...but what’s the difference if you can’t escape? Waking is dreaming too, but you can’t wake from being awake, and if you can’t wake from being asleep, why, then...being asleep is being awake and the dream has you and won’t let you go, and you can be caught and squeezed until you pop like a blister and bleed

and bleed

and...)

It’s a shame.

But you’re to blame.

What’s in a name?

Now it’s the staircase, that goes on and on and round and round. The stairs are wooden, the wood is warped, in the middle they sag. They’re slick (with polish? with grease? with the wax of candles or dead men’s flesh?) and they curve, and with every step you take you nearly slip, but you don’t have to come down hard and you can almost float if you will it well...float and fly, with your arms spreading and one leg out behind you trailing, like a skater on the ice.

But to float is to yield and to yield is to feel the grip of the hands and the heaviness and the cloud of suffocation flowing up from the depths. The staircase grows steeper and the walls draw in, and you know that when you reach the top of the tower there’ll be no place to go, and the night sky won’t help you because the stars are so cold and so damnably far away.

The insects that fly by night are as bad as the spiders and the bats which land on your face and suffocate you with their fur while they suck your blood and give you hydrophobia which Pasteur’s treatment doesn’t cure because there was no double blind...but the staircase just goes on and on and on and there’s no way out.

No way at all.

There isn’t time.

Your number’s prime.

Regret your crime.

You hear him coming now, like the id behind the brazen door, the noise like air caught deep in your throat, rasping and groaning, and you know there’s no escape.

Even here! You howl (silently) as if it were a surprise, though you always knew, or should have known....

Escape in space

won’t win the race

you have to face

it.

You reach out your arms and you try to fly, throwing your head back as if to seek the sun, longing to soar, but all that happens is that waiting hands grip yours, and squeeze until the bones crack, and your shoes sink into the soft wood, which sucks them in, and your feet too, so you’re pulled out tight like a man on a cross, and the shadows flow around you with their sickly warmth and their loving touch, all ready to laugh.

It’s all a dream, you tell yourself, over and over, because you think if you say it often enough you might spring the doors of sleep.

I want to leave!

I need to grieve.

I need you....

But it’s hopeless and you know it. The vampire has you now, and he controls it all. You’re at his mercy, and he has no mercy. He can chew you up and spit you out, and you’re helpless because, in your heart of hearts, you want him to. You’re just a bag of blood, and you need to be squeezed.

For a moment, as he flows around you, you’re not quite so scared. But then you catch a glimpse of the face that’s too frightful to be seen, and the glimpse is enough to let the terror free.

There’s no stemming that tide, once it’s burst its banks.

You can’t scream anymore, because you have nothing left; all you can do is whisper inside yourself.

It’s a dream, a dream, a stupid, filthy dream....

And the vampire opens his red-lipped mouth to show you the darkness inside,

and he says,

of course it’s a dream,

but it’s not your dream,

it’s
MINE

End of Nightmare

So I wake up sweating. I always do. The sheet is sticky with it, and so crumpled and twisted it’s almost knotted around my ankles.

I try to smooth it out.

The first feeling is always profound relief. I’ve awakened. I’m out of it, back in the real world. Nothing in
these
shadows can hurt me.

I switch on the reading light, just to be sure. I check the pale blue walls, the chromatograms, the hand-colored images of Martian landscapes and Cookham on the Thames. Clean and neat. My heart is slowing down; the panic’s over.

Or is it?

I try to remember, and then I
know.
It isn’t just the nightmare. A necessary but not sufficient condition.

It’s been so long, but I haven’t forgotten, and there’s no shadow of a doubt. When it’s real, it’s real. It’s not just worry, it’s
certainty.

My hand is starting to shake, and I take a firm grip on myself. I have to take control. I have to take myself firmly in hand. I can get through it—I
know
I can—if I only go carefully and do everything right. No one must know, but no one
has
to know, if only I’m careful.

The last thing I remember is the stupid party. New Year’s Eve. Happy Birthday, 2444...you couldn’t possibly tell me what happened to the last few hours of 2443?

I thought not.

It wasn’t the drink. I only had one glass. I only remember one glass...but whatever else is wrong with me I’ve no hangover. Blackouts don’t drive me to drink. Whatever Mr. Hyde gets up to, it isn’t swilling alcohol or popping pills. Zeno was there...hell,
everyone
was there, from Schumann down. It can’t have been more than an hour. What can you do in an hour, especially at a party? Even if I did something
really
crazy, who’d care? A party is protective camouflage. You can do anything at a party. Pretty well anything. Big joke, though, if they caught Lee Caretta off guard. Probably go up six points in their estimation...and come down seven when I revert to type.

I thought I’d left it behind me on Earth. I really did. Sule is so goddam far away. Fifty-six million kilometers at the closest pass. You’d think you’d be safe sharing an orbit with a dead world, three HSBs and Stepping Stone. You’re supposed to leave lunacy under the moon.
Nobody must know!
Can’t be sent home now. Not
now
. I got away with it before, I can get away with it now. If in doubt, bluff. I can do it. I
know
I can. What’s an hour of your memory, when you’re among friends?

I put my head back on the pillow, not really trying to get back to sleep. I couldn’t, and anyway, what’s so great about sleep? Sleep is where the nightmares are.

What a way to see the new year in!

End of nightmare?

Well, maybe.

And maybe not.

CHAPTER ONE

I was sitting in front of the TV, flipping the pages of the latest bulletin, when Zeno knocked on the door. He came in without waiting for an invitation.

He looked over my shoulder to see what was on the screen.

“It’s a holiday,” he said. “You’re supposed to be taking a break, no?”

“You have holidays on Calicos?” (It was one of those silly thoughts that just seemed suddenly odd, for no good reason. Somehow, I hadn’t thought of alien beings, however nearly human, having holidays.)

“Of course,” he replied. “Even
this
holiday—the beginning of the new year.”

“But not Christmas?”

“No,” he said. “Not Christmas.” He would have smiled, I’m sure, if he could. Anatomy, ever the comedian, had made sure that from a human point of view, he always looked doleful. He had a range of expressions, of course, that meant a lot to his own kind, but by our criteria they only varied his mien from slightly doleful all the way to extremely doleful. It was appropriate, in its way. His view of the world was not redolent with what you or I would call
joi de vivre.
He was dark green in color, with diamond-shaped scales distributed in a tough tegument, and a few eccentric cartilaginous extrusions here and there, but apart from that he was ordinary enough.

“It’s not work,” I assured him. “I’m just catching up on the latest squabbles between Biochemistry and Taxonomy. We’re bound to be called upon to referee. Genetics always has to arbitrate, in the long run. Good party last night, wasn’t it?”

I had to admire the way I’d slipped it in like that. I had to begin investigations quickly.

“I’m not sure,” he replied cautiously. “It’s difficult to know where goodness resides, from the human point of view.”

Zeno wasn’t his “real” name. It was just the name he’d adopted in order to live among humans. He sometimes said that he’d rather have selected the name of a more recent philosopher, but that “Schopenhauer” was too cumbersome and after studying the implications he’d regretfully declined the opportunity of calling himself “Kant.”

“I think I may have had too much to drink,” I said. “My memories are a little hazy.”

That was playing safe. Always construct an alibi.

“That’s strange,” he said. “I thought that you drank very moderately, and that you retired early to bed.”

I frowned. That didn’t sound too hopeful. Perhaps, for the period of the lost memory, I wasn’t at the party at all. If so, then where the hell was I? And what had I been doing?

“I see Scarlatti thinks he’s got a virus hook-up in some of his mice,” I said, pointing to the page of the Bulletin that was on the screen. “More power to the paranoids, I suppose.”

Zeno accepted the change of subject gracefully. “I don’t think the mice are suffering too terribly,” he said. “Last time I spoke to Scarlatti they were in the best of health. Nevertheless, it’s a serious matter. Cross-systemic infection isn’t to be taken lightly, even as a remote possibility. However....”

He cleared his throat politely, and I remembered that he must have come for a purpose. After all, as he said, it was a holiday. He hadn’t dropped in to discuss nucleic acid ubiquity or the progress of the induction experiments.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Schumann wants to see you.”

“Why couldn’t he use the phone?”

“He did. He called me. He wants to see us both.”

For a moment, I’d been
very
worried. Now I was just worried. At least, if it was something
I’
d done, Schumann didn’t yet know it was me. I swallowed anxiously. What on Earth could I have done in an hour, late on New Year’s Eve, that could have attracted the attention of the director so quickly? But then, we weren’t
on
Earth, were we? We were on Sule, where a man who does strange things and fails to remember them the next morning might be a very dangerous man to have around.

“Okay,” I said. I switched off the display and stood up. Zeno was taller than me by about a head. Whether he was exceptionally tall by the standards of his own people, or whether the Calicoi are a race of giants, I didn’t know. Zeno was the only one I’d ever met—the only one on Sule. There were half a dozen Calicoi in Marsbase, and maybe three times as many on Earth, but his was a unique position. He was the only alien helping us in our studies of alien biology. He was very useful, not just because he was good at his job, but also because he had a whole tradition of scientific inquiry to draw on that was differently directed than our own. Without Zeno as collaborator, I couldn’t have been anywhere near as successful as I was. We were a good team.

“What kind of holidays do you have, on Calicos?” I asked, as we walked along the corridor toward the administration section.

“Are there different kinds?” he asked. “I suppose there are, in a way. They become established by tradition—it is far easier to make a holiday than to cancel it. Like yours, our days of rest are the legacy of the past. Some are religious festivals, some commemorate important historical events.”

One could never cease to marvel at the parallels that could be drawn between the Calicoi and ourselves. It was easy to think of them as human beings in funny costumes—caricatures of ourselves. Their world, it seemed, had so very much in common with our own that they might have been the creation of some satirist, except that the satire lacked any significance. Biochemical destiny, it seemed, had neither a sense of humor nor a didactic purpose.

It wasn’t far to Schumann’s office—Admin was right next to Residential, in the other direction from the lab complexes. Organizers don’t like to have to walk too far to work. His assistant gestured us through with hardly a glance in our direction, but it seemed that she wasn’t really on duty. She’d just been called in for some particular task, and was obviously keen to get away again.

“See,” I murmured to Zeno, “we humans long since ceased to take holidays seriously. That’s why we’re the galaxy’s master race. I bet your lot still take Sundays off.”

He didn’t have time for a reply. We were already in the great man’s presence.

Schumann was going bald, and his beard had long since turned white. It was probably the worry that did it. He didn’t look as if he desperately wanted to be in his office either.

“Something’s come up,” he said.

I gritted my teeth, and waited for the bad news.

“A signal from FTL
Earth Spirit
came in forty minutes ago,” he went on. “They have clearance from Earth to pick up supplies here. They’re requisitioning food, equipment—and you.”

I just couldn’t take it in. Whatever I’d been ready for, it wasn’t news like this.

Zeno must have been taken by surprise, too. At least, he said nothing. We both waited for Schumann to go on.

“If it’s any consolation to you,” he said, “we’ll be sorry to lose you.”

“Hang on,” I said, finding my voice. “Since when did Sule become a refueling station for starships? And when did we become available for the draft? I don’t really want to be a crewman on the
Earth Spirit
or any other stardiver.”

The director shrugged his shoulders. “Sit down,” he said. He was never one to dispense with the formalities—he just took a little time to get around to them, on occasion.

We sat down. So did Schumann.

“
Earth Spirit
checked in with Marsbase the moment she came out of hyperspace,” he said. “She also got on the priority beam to Earth. Jason Harmall—he’s a space agency exec at Marsbase—will be jetting up here to meet her. He’s bringing a woman named Angelina Hesse—does that mean anything to you?”

I glanced at Zeno. “She’s a biologist,” I said. “Physiology—linked to our field. She’s very good.”

“Apparently,” Schumann went on, “she thinks highly of you, too. She named the pair of you as essential personnel. Harmail requested your secondment. A request from Harmall is the closest thing to a royal command I ever face.”

The whole thing had been ticking over in my mind for several minutes by now, and it fell into place at last.

“Jesus Christ!” I said. “They’ve found it! Earth Three!”

“I think,” murmured Zeno, “my friend means Calicos Three.”

Either way, it stacked up the same. We had twelve worlds on the books that boasted so-called Earthlike biology, but only two of them were worlds where human beings—or Calicoi—could walk around in comfort. The rest had no life more complicated than protista, and not enough oxygen to allow a man to breathe. For fifty years we’d been looking for the third world. It looked very much as if I’d hit the jackpot by being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Politically speaking, Earth Three might belong to Jason Harmall (whoever he might be), but biologically, it was going to be mine. And Zeno’s, of course. Not to mention Angelina Hesse...but I was sure there’d be enough to go around.

“I’m not sure that I understand,” said Zeno, in the meantime. “Everyone seems to be acting as though there were some urgency about this matter. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to have the
Earth Spirit
return to Earth orbit in order to be re-equipped?”

“Earth orbit is a long way away,” said Schumann. “Star Station is on the other side of the sun just now.
Earth Spirit
has to get back with the minimum possible delay. You aren’t going on any pleasure trip. There’s trouble.”

“How much?” I said. “And what kind?”

The director shook his head. “No information,” he said. “We’ve just been told what to do. She’ll be docking in thirty-six hours. Can you two get your affairs in order by then? Do you have someone who can take over necessary work in progress?”

I shrugged, having virtually lost interest in work in progress. “You must know something,” I said.

“Not about the kind of problems they’ve run into out there,” he said. “All I know is that the HSB that the
Earth Spirit
homed in on was lit by another ship—the
Ariadne
.”

“I never heard of an FTL ship called the
Ariadne
,” I said.

“That,” he said, “is the point. The
Ariadne
, so the reference tapes assure me, left Earth orbit three hundred and fifty years ago. She went the long way around.”

I’d already had my fill of surprises. My mind could no longer boggle. “Well, well,” I said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “So one of the flying freezers finally thawed out. Plan B worked out after all.”

“I’m sorry,” put in Zeno. “I don’t quite understand.” I looked at Schumann, but he just raised his eyebrows and let me tell it.

“It was long before the golden moment when our two species made the marvelous discovery that they were not alone,” I said. “When we first realized that hyperspace gave us a gateway to the universe but that we couldn’t navigate in it. We lost a number of ships which couldn’t find their way home before hoisting HSB-One. That solved half the problem—but the probes we sent out, jumping at random, kept coming out in the middle of nowhere. We realized for the first time how big space is and how little solar systems are. People got depressed about having the means to dodge the problems of relativity without having any obvious way to make it pay off. Without other HSBs to use as targets, hyperspace was just one big sea of nothing. It dawned on people pretty quickly that the only immediately obvious way to establish a hyperspace route to Alpha Centauri—or even to Pluto—was to transport an HSB on an orthodox ship at sub-light speed. It made the business of opening up the universe a pretty slow and painful one, but it was all we had—and all we have.

“Nowadays, of course, we use robot ships, which we dispatch with clinical regularity from Earth orbit, targeting them at all the G-type stars in the neighborhood. In those days, it wasn’t so obvious that that was the way to play it. We didn’t know then how very few of those stars would have planets with usable habitats—though we might have guessed that the neighborhood wasn’t exactly overpopulated by virtue of the fact that no one else had any HSBs already hoisted. The wise guys of the day decided that if hyperspace was a bust as far as quick access to the universe was concerned, they might as well put some eggs in another basket. The flying freezers were ships carrying a crew, mostly in suspended animation, and passengers—mostly conveniently packaged as fertilized eggs ready to be incubated in artificial wombs. The idea was that they were to travel from star to star, planting beacons but not hanging around. Eventually, it was thought, they’d find a new Earth, and could set about the business of colonization right away.”

“I don’t see how that makes sense,” said Zeno.

“It doesn’t,” said Schumann. “Not now. But it seemed to, then.
Now
we know that there are very, very few habitable worlds; and we also know that anywhere we can live is likely to be inhabited already. Neither of those things was obvious in the early days. We had no standards for comparison. There was a popular myth, bred by a couple of hundred years of speculation, that somewhere out in space we might find a paradise planet—green and lovely and hospitable, just waiting for people to move in. In fact, we thought there might be dozens of them. The idea of colonizing twenty or thirty planets
via
hyperspace seemed out of the question. Too difficult to sustain a warp field around anything much bigger than a touring caravan—too many trips to transport the essentials. Now, of course, if we really did find ourselves knocking at the Gates of Eden, we wouldn’t care if it took a thousand trips—because we’d know it was once in a dozen lifetimes. They were hoping it would be a regular thing; far easier to do the trick in one fell swoop. The colony ships seemed to make sense.”