Polystom (Gollancz Sf S.) Read online

  Stom flew on.

  He regretted, now, having finished off his whisky so quickly. He was sober again and a drink would have been very pleasant. He tried to concentrate on his book but kept nodding off. He dozed, half awake, half asleep.

  Hours later the moon had grown until it filled most of the sky. Stom could make out features in its enormous face; lakes, canals, mountain ranges like trails of crushed nuts; broad patches of algal green, very sharply coloured in the eternal light of interplanetary spaces. There were narrower strips of cultivation, darker green. The desert areas, grey-silver, scattered a paler albedo across the great landscape. Three seas were evident, each of them, Stom knew from experience, no more than a few feet deep, though many tens of miles wide. His uncle Cleonicles lived on the shores of one of them, the Lake of Dreams, the Lacus Somniorum, as it was rather fancifully called. A sludgy pond stretched miles wide, too shallow and treacly with algae even to swim in. But Cleonicles’ house was pleasant enough; not as large as so famous or senior a man deserved, Stom thought, and too much filled with machines and artefacts, but pleasant nonetheless. Four-legged birds, stork-boars, polopped their quiet way through the shallow waters, dotting the green sea out to the horizon; trees grew to spectacular height and slenderness in the lesser lunar gravity; vegetable worms crawled sullenly across the lawn. Some of Polystom’s happiest days had been spent sitting in a comfortable chair on his uncle’s lawn, overlooking the stagnant Lake of Dreams, chatting earnestly away whilst his uncle nodded and hummed. Cleonicles was a peaceful man, in this respect resembling his dead brother, Stom’s father. He was not as silent a person as Stom’s father had been, but neither was he the sort of person to monopolise the conversation. Stom had visited the moon many times since his father’s death. He regarded it as something of a sanctuary.

  Polystom’s father had been dead four years, his co-father almost as long.

  Polystom had married after his father’s death, but the marriage had not prospered. The looked-for solace had not materialised. Stom had spent months in mourning for it. He lived alone now, often lonely and with a distant sense of something amiss in his life. To speak of the woe that is in marriage!

  And so he came again to the moon. Picking out the horned shape of the Lacus Somniorum, away on the right-hand border of the moon, Polystom swung his plane’s trajectory away from its dead-centre targeting. The gravity of the satellite was strong enough now to render the larger props redundant, and Stom spent several minutes changing them for the regular blades. Then he pulled into a shallower and still shallower approach as the moon swelled to encompass almost half the sky. Finally, as he had done many times before, he saw the curve of the Lunar Mount to his left, and set a course for a notch in the horizon that had opened up before him. The air grew warmer, and Stom turned off his flying suit, unbuttoned his jacket. His scarf sank slowly as it rediscovered weight, until it was draped in his lap. Soon enough the Lake of Dreams unfurled beneath him, glisteningly green and dotted with stork-boars. He passed over his uncle’s house, circled round, and dropped easily down to land on the back lawn. The plane rolled, slowed, shuddered to a halt.

  He had taken off his helmet and goggles and was clambering out of the cockpit before the engine had even started slowing; servants scurried towards him, and behind them he could make out the genial shape of his uncle waving his stick in greeting.

  Cleonicles, Polystom’s uncle, was at this time perhaps the most famous scientist in all the System. For long years he had worked on the celebrated Computational Device, the enormous valve-and-crystal machine that could undertake all manner of mathematical operations on a fantastic scale and with fantastic speed. He had been one of the party of three (this was many years ago, in his youth) responsible for initiating the project, his own, and later other patrons’ money boosting construction of ground-based and later free-floating devices, vast scaffolds of electrical connection. The newsbooks called it the Greatest Work of Man, or sometimes the Summation of Human Knowledge.

  Polystom, who knew his uncle as a genial old man with threads of white in his grey beard, had come late to knowledge of his uncle’s celebrity. Fame, he realised belatedly, was something different from breeding, although of course his uncle was amongst the best bred in the System. This was something else, the young Polystom had realised with a jolt. His uncle, his pleasant-faced old uncle, was revered not just for what he was, but for what he had done. Understanding this marked, in an understated way, a revolution in the young fellow’s thinking. He had been thirteen years old, and visiting Cleonicles on the moon in the company of his father. To stave off boredom on the flight, being too young to take the controls himself, he had read one of his father’s discarded newsbooks, the News Volume for November. It was mostly given over to ecstatic reporting of the latest incarnation of the Computational Device, one larger than all the previous ones put together. The name Cleonicles appeared on every page, and towards the back of the book there was a lengthy word-portrait of him.

  Latterly, Professor Cleonicles has withdrawn himself from the grander designs of the Computational Device committee; he lives now in ‘splendid isolation’, if we may be permitted to borrow a metaphorical phrase from the Political Military, on the moon of Enting, ‘to be near my close family’ he has announced. He devotes himself now to that arcane branch of scientific knowledge, star-research. ‘I find the very notion of these superb, barren mountains of fire hanging in nothingness – literally nothingness! – to be poetic and engaging to the highest degree,’ the Professor has said.

  All through that visit, taking wine-lees tea on the lawn of his uncle’s house, looking over the Lacus Somniorum, Polystom had been too excited to sit still. Had his co-father been there he would have been rebuked for fidgeting, but his father was too placid to care, and his uncle smiled his understanding smile.

  ‘They called the Computational Device the great achievement of humanity!’ young Polystom had said. ‘And you invented it!’

  ‘Hardly, my boy,’ said Cleonicles. ‘There were three of us in the initial team, and many more helped turn our rough-ready theories into the practice of the CDs themselves.’

  ‘They’re building the biggest Computational Device of all!’ Polystom had gushed. ‘It said so in the newsbook!’

  ‘They’ve built it,’ said Cleonicles, pouring his brother some more tea. ‘Now they’re just fine-tuning it. There are experiments, for which the machine was designed. Actually, they’ve run into a spot of trouble.’

  Polystom’s father, the elder Polystom, sighed and smiled as he lifted the cup to his mouth, as if to imply that trouble and error were inevitabilities in this System of theirs.

  ‘Why did you leave that project, uncle?’ Polystom asked earnestly. ‘How could you leave something so exciting?’

  One of the things that Stom loved about his uncle was that he never shirked or side-stepped a question. He always answered directly. ‘Partly because the nuts-and-cogs of Computational Devicery aren’t as exciting as they sound to young ears like yours. Partly because I had disagreements with the others on my team.’

  ‘Distressing,’ murmured Polystom senior, sipping his tea.

  ‘Very,’ said Cleonicles, with a sharp nod that made his beard waggle. ‘But partly, my young bear-cub, I left because I found something more exciting.’

  ‘Stars?’ said young Polystom, unable (though he knew it was poor manners) to keep disdain out of his voice. At thirteen Polystom had never seen stars, and accordingly his imagination had no purchase on the idea of them.

  ‘Certainly stars,’ said his uncle, with pronounced though not unfriendly emphasis. ‘After tea I can show you some photo-lithos that I’ve recently taken out near the upper-limit of the System.’

  But Polystom was unconvinced. When tea was finished he trudged into the house after his uncle and duly gazed at some filmy pictures of what seemed to him very little indeed: black squares, each one an image, nine to a sheet; some pure black, like press-sheets at a printing house; most
black but scattered with a dozen, or two dozen, white dots and smudges. What was so exciting about that? It looked spotty and miniature to Stom. Even his uncle’s enthusiasm for enormous globes of fire, burning in nothingness failed to rouse his imagination. The whole business was just too fanciful.

  So, now, seven years later, Polystom the adult, Polystom the seventh Steward of Enting, climbed out of his biplane and jogged over the lawn towards his uncle. Things had changed, of course. Old Cleonicles had been wearied and a little broken by the death of his brother, and his brother’s partner. The war on the Mudworld had erupted into extraordinary violence. For long stretches of fighting as many as a hundred people, including two or three people from important Families, were dying every day. Cleonicles wrote dignified but furious letters to the newsbooks about the conflict, a war he viewed as a ghastly error of judgment by the Political Military. He had the grace not to force his views on his nephew, a discretion that greatly pleased the more warlike boy. But when a scientist of the stature of Cleonicles spoke, many people listened. Blockade would be easier, less destructive and infinitely more humane than the senseless war being waged now. I urge all families of note to petition the Political Military, with a view to calling a panel to review strategy. Lives are being lost every day!

  ‘Helloë, uncle!’ Polystom called.

  ‘My dear boy,’ returned Cleonicles, a little breathlessly. ‘My dear boy!’

  They embraced. ‘A good crossing?’ the old man asked, ushering Stom to a chair.

  ‘Uneventful. Passed a balloon-boat; splendid thing. I saw a skywhal, too, in what looked like a close swing about this moon of yours.’

  ‘I think I saw him myself, dear boy,’ said Cleonicles, gesturing with his left hand at a five-foot-long telescopic tube erected on the patio. ‘Very young one. Sometimes,’ he added, as if unable to resist the urge to lecture, ‘sometimes the things beach themselves on moons, you know, and I wondered if that was why he came in so close. But it’s always mature fellows who beach themselves, and this one was clearly immature. Lost his way a little, I expect.’

  A servant appeared, bringing a tray. On it was an exquisite blue glass samovar filled with coffee. Next to this was a bottle of black wine.

  ‘Still star-gazing, uncle, eh?’ said Polystom, throwing one leg over the arm of his chair, and tossing his flying helmet and gloves onto the grass beside him, in a rather self-conscious attempt to play-act carelessness. Maps and charts were spread on the table in front of the old man.

  ‘Yes, dear boy,’ said Cleonicles.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about your passion for these stars,’ Stom said brightly, putting just a hint of impertinent emphasis on the final word. ‘Don’t you think that they don’t make sense? According to some of the books I’ve been reading, there are theories that they don’t exist at all. I’ll tell you: I was talking to my Head Grass-Gardner, you know, about seeding a new lawn. And in amongst other things he told me that he doesn’t believe in them, and he’s an excellent fellow. At Grass-Gardening, anyhow.’

  ‘If you can’t see them they don’t exist, eh?’ chuckled Cleonicles. ‘A veritably Grass-Gardneresque philosophy, that. If you can’t run the seeds through your fingers, or feel the pressure of roller on lawn, then it’s just a dream, eh? No, coffee for me, man. Wine for my nephew,’ this last, in more severe tones, addressed to the servant who was about to pour a glass of wine for Cleonicles.

  ‘But stars – you say that these things burn? In vacuum?’

  ‘I am impressed,’ said Cleonicles, smiling. ‘You’re keeping up with at least some of the latest science writing, if you know that word.’

  ‘I’ll admit,’ said Polystom, grinning, ‘that I dropped the word in for effect. But burning means eating air – don’t it? How does a thing burn in a vacuum? It really makes no sense.’

  ‘There’s certainly vacuum at the limits of our system, you know,’ said Cleonicles. ‘That, at least, has been scientifically proven. Now, I agree with you, there are conflicting stories as to what the “stars’’ are – how far away they are, whether they are real phenomena or somehow fragmentary reflections of something else, whether they embody genuine fire or some pseudo-electrical phenomena. But you must concede me vacuum, at least.’

  ‘What I read,’ said Polystom, ‘is that when scientists make up vacuum in a chamber in some laboratory, the effort is enormous; and that vacuum they make is the delicatest bloom of all the delicate blooms – the least thing destroys it. Now how can such a fragile and fundamentally unnatural thing as this vacuum surround our system? Wouldn’t mere contact with the ether collapse it?’

  ‘This is a surprisingly good point, my boy,’ said Cleonicles, sipping his coffee. ‘I say surprisingly only because you’ve always devoted your energies to poetry and suchlike, so I’m surprised by the acuteness of your observation. But evidently you have the makings of a scientific mind too. It’s a good point, and difficult to answer. Well, all we have are theories. Clearly you’re right about the inherent instability of “vacuum’’ – all of nature detests a vacuum, you know. If we imagine a space the size of our system filled only with vacuum, you see, then it’s clear – the maths confirms this – that any objects at all within this space would be vaporised and dissipated throughout the space, to produce – well, to produce what we see around us, the natural order of things, a more-or-less level pressure gradient, uniform ether. It is inconceivable that matter in gaseous, liquid or even solid state could survive the savage differences of pressure that “vacuum’’ physics implies.’

  ‘And yet you say,’ drawled Polystom, drinking his wine in great gulps, ‘that outside the sphere of our system . . .’

  ‘I know, I know. You sound like one of my scientific colleagues, dismissing my research! Well,’ said Cleonicles. ‘Well. One theory is that some form of force-field surrounds our System, to preserve the integrity of the vacuum beyond it. This is hypothetical, and goes beyond Science (if by science – I say, by Science, you mean experimental data and observation), but it has certain strengths, as a theory. And if “stars’’ are, as I think they are, bodies in the vacuum, burning and emitting light, then some similar force-field must exist to preserve their unity.’

  But after his initial enthusiasm, Polystom was growing bored of discussing metaphysics with his uncle. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you scientists will figure it out.’ He stopped.

  Now Cleonicles was silent, smiling slightly. Another thing that Polystom loved about his uncle was his sensitivity. His enormous tact. It was more than good breeding; it was a positive virtue in the old man. Cleonicles knew that Stom would not fly all the way from Enting to the moon merely to talk about physics. Something else must be bothering the young man. But the way to approach this was not to badger Stom, not to rain questions upon him, but rather to allow him the time to tell his own story, to unburden his heart.

  ‘Do you know what?’ said Polystom after a while, looking past his uncle at the mud-green stretches of the lake, and blushing slightly. ‘I’ll tell you: trouble sleeping. It’s the oddest thing. Trouble sleeping.’

  There was a pause. ‘Go on, my boy,’ prompted Cleonicles.

  ‘That’s all there is to it, really. That’s all. Just that. I can drift off to sleep, in front of the fire, with a bottle at my elbow, very pleasant I’m sure. But I always wake up a couple of hours later, and then I can hardly ever get back to sleep after waking again.’

  Cleonicles nodded; waited.

  ‘Makes me muggy in the head. Tired all the time.’ Polystom’s blushing had taken on a deeper hue, now; but still he couldn’t meet his uncle’s eyes.

  ‘Is there any particular reason for waking up?’ Cleonicles suggested, gently.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Cleonicles spread his old hands on the table before him, the skin of them thin and sagged, marked with brown ecchymotic spots like a negative photo litho of one of his own star-maps. ‘There might be various things.’

  ‘
Do you mean,’ said Polystom after a pause, still not looking at his uncle, ‘things like . . . nightmares?’

  ‘For instance,’ his uncle agreed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Stom. He breathed in, but the breath caught in his throat and started throbbing out again in gasps. Alarmed, he realised that he was crying. Tears were leaking down his face.

  ‘My dear boy,’ said Cleonicles, with infinite compassion. ‘My dear boy.’

  He reached his hand over the table, and Polystom dropped his own hand on top of it. Just that human contact. The tears still came, languidly, wetting his cheeks and his lips. Polystom sobbed. Soon enough, the crying softened, and died away. Away in the lake behind him, the four-legged stork-boars took their gloopy steps through the shallow waters. Only that noise, and the rustle of the breeze.

  ‘You miss her, I think,’ said Cleonicles.

  Polystom wiped his face on a napkin, and dropped it to the lawn with a snort. ‘I’m ashamed of myself uncle.’

  ‘Oh we shouldn’t be ashamed of our feelings,’ said Cleonicles. ‘Not when we are amongst our loved ones. It’s not as if we’re entertaining guests!’

  ‘Still, uncle, I hate to cry.’

  ‘You miss her,’ Cleonicles repeated, more matter-of-factly. ‘There’s nothing shameful in that fact, nothing hate-able. Of course you miss her.’

  ‘To think,’ said Polystom, almost laughing at himself now. ‘That she is still keeping me awake after all this time.’ ‘She’ was his former wife, the only wife he had ever had. She had been called Beeswing, although her name had been Dianeira.

  [second leaf]

  They had married less than a year after the death of Polystom’s two fathers. Too sudden a wedding, some people said. Stom’s father had died of one of the illnesses that claim old men, and Stom’s co-father had followed him into the ground within a month, despite seeming stronger and healthier than his partner. Polystom had grieved, but not alone. Naturally, at moments such as this, the family gathered round him. Two of his aunts, one of them his father’s sister, and a dozen cousins ranging in age from eighty to twelve, came to the estate and stayed with him. Cleonicles himself, Polystom’s favourite uncle, came down from the moon for a weekend; although he had important science to perform (he claimed) and didn’t stay. All in all, Stom was glad of the company.