. . .and sprang in unison.
A blazing electrical fire leaped to Mozy's breast, expanded to envelop her, and her companion as well . . . devoured her in its cold energy and drew her helpless into the beast's mind, the beast's heart . . . into a psychic slipstream. Distantly she was aware of the two halves of the creature coming back together, rejoining, her personality caught in a whirlwind with the other's, Mozy and the silent companion . . .
They collapsed into a dimensionless space, one consciousness with another, with only invisible walls to hold them apart. Mozy felt afraid; the fear grew out of the deepest parts of her mind and was reflected by mirrors she couldn't see, and it grew stronger with each reflection, and she realized that it was not just her fear but the other's, as well. (Why be afraid?) she cried, and with a curious kind of echo she heard her voice or another's just like hers, crying, (I am afraid!) She felt, rather than heard, the shivering groan of the walls that kept her and the other apart, and she knew that their defenses were slipping away / both their defenses were slipping away / her fear reverberated and merged with another's / they were the same fear / same voices / same astonishment . . .
(Who are you
really?
)
(Who are you
really?
)
(Really—) / (Really—) / (Really—)
Pain echoed / echoed / whose voice? / the voices were the same / same voices / same person / two persons one and the same / they are the same / we are the same . . .
That cannot be!
Madness / the path to madness / hallucinations / dreams of merging / how can I be you? / how can you be me?
Doors boomed open onto empty chambers. Mirrors shattered, revealing passageways long forgotten—and understanding converged upon her as she merged into herself, into the person she once had been—
—in another time—
—another place—
—and her fear tumbled away, but so did the bonds holding her in the realm of the rational, protecting her from madness—
—and her scream echoed across the light-years, ricocheted down the link. . ..
* * *
Mozelle screamed.
Thrudore turned quickly, helmet cables trailing, and with an effort forced the greater part of her awareness back out into the world. Beside her, wearing a helmet, her patient was struggling against her seat restraints.
"Mozy!" Jonders's voice echoed across the room—and in the link, too, though in the link the shout was lost in the chaos of Mozy's cries.
(I'll see to her!) Thrudore said. (You worry about your side of it.)
(Right,) he answered. Already Thrudore could feel subtle changes in the link—Jonders tightening his control.
As Mozy struggled, Thrudore stroked her hair in an effort to calm her. Mozy was wailing now, half crying.
"Mozelle!" Thrudore called. She adjusted the tau-field, to enhance her patient's brainwave state, and then spoke softly, but close to Mozy's ear. "Mozy, can you hear me?"
The answer was a groan.
(Are you getting anything?) Jonders wondered, inside her head.
(We have contact,) she answered. (But nothing sensible. We're going to have to draw her out.)
(Be careful. It's a maelstrom in here—I can't follow it all—)
Thrudore felt him break away. She slipped the other direction, pulling partway out of the link, leaving just a corner of her mind with the inner voices—the riot of pain and confusion and joy, too bewildering to follow. Leave that to Jonders; concentrate on this world.
Mozy was hyperventilating, and blinking wildly. Her heartbeat was way up. Thrudore strengthened the tau-field, and her patient calmed slightly. "Can you speak, Mozy? Can you see me?" Mozy's eyes were wide, staring at some point in space that probably did not exist in this room. "What are you seeing, Mozy? Tell me what you see."
"Aauuuhhhh," Mozy groaned, rolling her eyes up.
Thrudore tried to move around in front of her, but the helmet cable was too short. She hesitated and then pulled off the helmet. A corner of her mind abruptly went blank, and she struggled against a wave of faintness. Shaking free of it, she found Mozy shuddering—and trying to speak.
"Da-a-vid-d," Mozy stammered. Suddenly she grew glassy calm, and then her mouth began to work silently, trying to form another word.
"Who, Mozy?
Who?"
Thrudore urged.
"D-d-avid?" Mozy called mournfully. Then her voice grew harsh. "H-h-hoshi! Help me!" Her eyelids fluttered, and then her eyes seemed to focus.
"Look at me, Mozy," Thrudore commanded. She raised a hand, flat, and passed it in front of Mozy's eyes at differing angles. "Do you see my hand? Watch my hand."
Mozy blinked, and seemed to focus on the hand, following it with an erratic stare. Her voice became small and chidlike. "Not nice to say those things . . . such a mean person . . . when I tell Dee . . ." Her voice trailed away.
A moment later, it returned, in an adult tone. "I don't like being used. I don't like being lied to. I have a perfect right to my own life, so the hell with what they want."
Thrudore waited. Mozy's eyes lost their focus again. "Who?" Thrudore said, "
Who
is using you? And why?"
Another internal struggle was going on, and this one lasted longer. When Mozy spoke again, her voice had a strained, almost foreign tone. "Had forgotten—forgotten all these things—so many things. Is that—is that why—?" The voice faltered.
It was the voice, Thrudore thought, of a woman a quarter of a light-year away.
Mozy's right hand jerked in her lap, and she slowly raised it to her brow, pressed her fingertips to her forehead in a gesture of pain, or uncertainty. "Mozy?" Thrudore said. "Can you tell me where you are?"
Mozy grimaced. She spoke in a slow, precise voice. "I understand now. So many fragments—all unclear. I need time—time to sort it out."
"Explain to us, Mozy," Thrudore urged. "Tell us what you see."
With a sudden laugh, Mozy looked toward the ceiling. "Ah—Mother," she said. "Now I see. It's been so far from me—and now so clear. Jo is not Mother, never was. And Mother never would tell me if she'd wanted me . . ."
* * *
A warning light blinked on the console. Jonders acted quickly to prepare for termination of the transmission cycle. In thirty seconds, the tachyon storage rings on the spacecraft would shut down for recharging, and the link would dissolve. (Dr. Thrudore,) he said. (Diana—)
She was out of the link. With an effort, without leaving the link himself, he turned in his seat and called out, "Dr. Thrudore—link cycle ends in twenty seconds. Get her ready."
He was dimly aware, as he turned his attention back to the monitor, of Thrudore speaking to Mozelle in a soothing voice as she altered the tau-field for a tranquilizing effect. Within, he felt the raging energy in the link slacken, felt confusion on Mozelle's part as the downlink with her physical counterpart grew fuzzy—as she became more relaxed, and then sleepy. (Mozy, it's the end of the cycle,) he said. (Ending for now,) he repeated, the thought droning into the connection.
Whether she understood or not, he couldn't tell; but he felt her presence slipping away, her voice growing faint. Then the link dissolved entirely, and she was gone.
Jonders withdrew from the link at his end and slowly removed his helmet. He turned to look at Thrudore and her patient.
Mozelle was slumped in her chair, apparently passed out.
He realized suddenly that he was breathing in short, quick gasps. The tension had not yet subsided from his own body. He glanced at his hands, and gripped the arms of his chair to stop the trembling.
The sound was starting again—the long, low moan that echoed in the back of the consciousness, that evoked memories of a methane glacier during a thaw, shivering and buckling and fragmenting. This was not the time of the thaw, however. And Four-Pod was nowhere near the glaciers.
What, then, was the source of this moan-that-was-like-a-song? It did not sound like the voices of Those-Who-Thought, but who else could make a sound ring inside the consciousness, with nothing to be heard on the outside except the wind and the rain?
Four-Pod could not delay for the truth to be revealed. His destiny lay at the edge of the Snow Plain, where the Philosophers awaited his riddle-offering from the hills. If the offering suited them, he would be made welcome there, and perhaps he could speak with them of this troubling thing. If not, he would be forced to flee, and he would have only the sleet and wind for counsel.
And, perhaps . . . the voice.
Perhaps it would travel with him across the plain, offering companionship and thoughts of warmth.
And perhaps he was wasting time thinking and listening when he should be on the move. He had many lengths yet to cross.
With a forward lurch, Four-Pod shuffled through the billowing snow. Once his claws found traction in the firm methane ice, beneath the snow, he settled into an efficient pattern of movement: grip . . . heave . . . grip . . . heave . . . grip . . . . Occasionally his nails slipped on the ice, and he sailed snout-first into a bank of snow. Each time, he picked himself up patiently, blew the snow out of all six nostrils, and continued as though nothing had happened.
The songs came and went from his thoughts. He shifted his focus to other senses: the fine grains of snow sliding across his silken hide, the rasp of his claws on the ice, the looming and sudden gusting away of shadow-like forms against the ochre sky. Thoughts of hunger tormented him; but he knew from the texture of the ice that he was at least a storm-day's walk from edible slush. To distract himself from his hunger, he summoned memories and legends.
There were stories that told of times when the world was a sounder and clearer place—when snow lay hard upon the ice, and the sky on occasion grew deep and transparent, revealing miracles. Legends spoke of the round, banded body of Heaven—and of a many-layered arch that vaulted to Heaven and (some said) looped around it to enter Heaven's back gate. Songs spoke of Heaven's necklace, and there were those who said that it was in reality the same as the road to Heaven, that the image of a necklace was only an illusion. Others claimed the opposite, that the road was the illusion, that it circled round and round, toying endlessly with the weary, hopeful pilgrim.
It was a fine legend. But legends could ward off hunger for only so long. Four-Pod knew that he must soon find sustenance or starve. As the snow grew grittier and more bitter in his nostrils, he pushed harder, and clawed deeper.
When the song returned this time, it reached somehow deep into his heart and boosted his flagging spirit. He peered and sniffed, tossed his snout and brayed, and plunged forward. Was the song a legend come to life—a call from Heaven? He thought of the great arching road that existed somewhere above the shrouded sky, and he grew dizzy with fear and joy. Could this be a signal? The music of the Heaven Road?
Press on.
Much
later the ice changed. He was desperately weak, step following on step. With groggy surprise he recognized the softening of the ice under his claws, a delicious wetness soaking the bottoms of his pods.
The slush pool opened before him, layered and rich. He dropped his snout and drank deeply, filling himself. Afterward he contracted his pods and settled into the snow. The music continued to dance in his thoughts, and lovingly intertwined with his dreams as at last, at long last, he slept.
The spaceship traffic near Tachylab reminded Robert Johanson of a colony of oddly shaped bees, their hovering dance set to the music of sunlight and viewed in painstakingly slow motion. Thirty-six thousand kilometers away, the mother planet floated somber and silent at the hub of the geosynchronous orbit, a counterbalance to the glitter of spaceships, a massive orb of earthtones and blue-greens and swirls of cottony white, the master stone among tinier jewels in the darkness. Johanson rubbed at the viewport where it was fogging from a defect in an inner seal. Soon this would be as useless as the window in the mess, which was now completely fogged even during sunlight periods. Try to get HQ to do something about that. Johanson shook his head and pushed himself back to his work.
Transmission was due to begin in a few minutes. He hooked a toe cleat to anchor hmself, and made a focusing adjustment to the transmitter field controller. Any time now. He wondered if the others were ready, and if they had taken adequate care to avoid discovery. There were times when he felt a little like the teenaged boy who had stolen into the school laboratory to perform unauthorized experiments. That episode had ended in a month's detention, after the explosion under the chemistry hood had made his efforts known to the whole school. Discovery this time would be considerably more disastrous—for all of them.
The
Father Sky
tachyon-ready cycle was coming up in five minutes. A string of green lights verified that the Earthside transmitter was ready. Johanson opened the voice circuit to Earth. "Homebase, this is Tachylab control."
"Tachylab, this is Homebase. We're coming up on mark time, in two minutes and twenty seconds—"
There was a movement through the side bulkhead door. Johanson glanced up at Alicia Morishito as she floated above and to his right, scanning a checklist. He cut the mike switch and said softly, "Is Mark on the power deck?"
Morishito nodded. "He's waiting."
Johanson switched to the intercom. "Mark, this is Robert. We could use your help now, if you're free."
"I'm a little busy," answered a flat-sounding voice. "I'll come up when I can."
Johanson nodded in satisfaction. "Good enough."
At a minute past the mark, Johanson bumped the transient gain to a higher level, and then spent about fifteen seconds readjusting it. There was no evidence on the control display, but the delay should have given their colleague Mark Adams sufficient time to make his patches.
At fifty-four seconds to transmission, the deputy manager from GEO-Four drifted into the control room and watched over their shoulders.