Algis Budrys - Michaelmas

It was a faint ripple of pure tones, followed by a mechanical friction as something shifted, clicked, and sang in one high note before quieting. Perhaps they didn’t know how acute his ear for music was. Cikoumas had taken longer in there than he might have needed for a phone call.

Limberg said : “Mr Michaelmas—these unknown forces… you are in some way representative of them?”

“Yes,” Michaelmas said, stepping forward. His knees were stiff, his feet arched. “I am they.” His mouth stretched flat and the white ridges of his teeth showed. The sharp breath whistled through them as he exhaled the word. “Yes.” He walked towards Cikoumas. “And I think it’s time you told your masters that I am at their gates.” As if I were deaf and they were blind. He stopped one step short of Cikoumas, his face upturned to look directly at the man. There’s something in there. In his eyes. And in that room.

Cikoumas smiled coldly. That came more naturally to him than the attempts to act indecision or fear. “The opportunity is yours, Mr Michaelmas,” he said, bowing from the waist a little and turning to open the door. “Please follow me. I must be present to operate the equipment at the interview.”

“Kristiades,” Limberg said softly from his chair, “be wary of him.”

There was no one beyond the door when Michaelmas followed Cikoumas through it.

It was a white and metal room of moderate size, its exterior wall panelled from floor to ceiling with semi-globular plastic bays, some translucent and others transparent, so that the mountains were repeated in fish-eye views among apparent circles of milky light. Overhead was the latest in laboratory lighting technique : a pearl-coloured fog that left no shadows and no prominences. The walls were in matte white; closed panels covered storage. The composition underfoot was very slightly yielding.

To one side there was a free-standing white cylindrical cabinet, two and a half metres tall, nearly a metre wide. The faintest seams ran vertically and horizontally across its softly reflective surface. It jutted solidly up from the floor, as though it might be a continuation of something below.

Ahead of Michaelmas were storage cubes, work surfaces, instrumentation panels, sterile racks of teasing needles, forceps and scalpels, microtomes, a bank of micromanipulative devices — all shrouded beneath transparent flexible dust hoods or safe behind glassy panels.

Michaelmas looked around further. At his other hand was the partition wall to Limberg’s office. From chest height onwards, it was divided into small white open compartments like dovecotes. Below that was a bare workshelf and a tall, pale-blue-upholstered laboratory stool to sit on. Cikoumas motioned towards it. “Please.”

Michaelmas raised his eyebrows. “Are we waiting here to meet someone?”

Cikoumas produced his short laugh. “It cannot come in here. It doesn’t know where we are. Even if it did, it couldn’t exist unprotected here.” He gestured to the chair again. “Please.” He reached into one of the pigeonholes and produced a pair of headphones at the end of a spiral cord. “I do not like the risk of having this voice overheard,” he said. “Listen.” He cupped one earpiece in each hand and moved towards Michaelmas. “You want to know?” he said, twisting his mouth. “Here is knowledge. See what you make of it.”

Michaelmas grunted. “And what would you like to know?”

Cikoumas shrugged. “Enough to decide whether we must surrender to these forces of yours or can safely dispose of you, of course.”

Michaelmas chuckled once. “Fair enough,” he said, and sat down. His eyes glittered hard as he watched Cikoumas’s hands approach his skull. “Lower away.”

Cikoumas rested the headphones lightly over his ears. Then he reached up and pulled out another set for himself. He stood close by, his hands holding each other, bending his body forward a little as if to hear better.

The voice was faint, though strong enough, probably, at its origins, but filtered, attenuated, distant, hollow, cold, dank: “Michaelmasss…” it said. “Is that you? Cikoumas tells me that is you. Isss that what you are—Michaelmasss?”

Michaelmas grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “How do I answer it?” he asked Cikoumas, who momentarily lifted one earpiece.

“Speak,” Cikoumas said, shifting eagerly around him. “You are heard.”

“This is Michaelmas.”

“An entity… you consider yourself an intelligent entity.”

“Yes.”

“Distinguishable in some manner from Limberg and Cikoumasss…”

“Yes.”

“What does A equal ?”

“Pi R squared.”

“What is the highest colour of rainbows?”

“Red.”

“Would you eat one of your limbs if you were starving?”

“Yes.”

“Would you eat Cikoumas or Limberg if you were starving?”

Cikoumas was grinning faintly at him.

“First,” Michaelmas said coldly.

“An entity… to speak to an intelligent entity… in these circumstances of remoteness and displacement… you have no idea how it feels… to have established contact with three entities, now, under these peculiar circumstances… to take converse with information-processors totally foreign… never of one’s accustomed bone and blood…”

“I — ah — have some idea.”

“You argue?”

“I propose.”

“Marriage?”

“No. Another form of dialectical antagonism.”

“We are enemiesss… ? You will not join with Limberg and Cikoumas…?”

“Why should I ? What will you give?”

“I will make you rich and famous among your own… kind… Contact with my skills can be translated into rewards which are somehow gratifying to you… individuals… Cikoumas and Limberg can show you how it’sss done…”

“No.”

“Repeat. Clarify. Synonimize.”

“Negative. Irrevocable refusal. Contradiction. Absolute opposition. I will not be one of your limbs.” He grinned at Cikoumas.

“Ah-hah! Ah-hah! Ah-hah! Then is your curiosity in the name of what you think science…?”

“Justice.”

“Ah-hah! Ah-hah! Complex motivations…! Ah-hah! The academician Zusykses sssaid to me this would be so; he said the concept is not of existences less than ours, but apart from oursss in origin only, reflecting perfectly that quality which we define as the high faculties; I am excited by your replies… I shall tell my friend, Zusykses, when we reunite with each other this afternoon; his essential worth is validated!”

“I might be lying.”

“We know nothing of lies… No, no, no… in the universe, there is this and there is that. This is not that. To say this is that is to hold up to ridicule the universe. And that is an absurd proposition.”

“What is it, then, that isn’t the truth but isn’t a lie?”

Cikoumas looked at him with sudden . intensity. But Michaelmas was nearly blind with concentration.

“Shrewd… you are a shrewd questioner… you speak of probability… yesss… it was my darling Zusykses who proposed the probability models of entities like you; who declared this structure was possible, and ssso must exist somewhere because the universe is infinite, and in infinity all things must occur. And yet this is only a philosophical concept, I said in rebuttal. But let me demonstrate, said my preceptor, Zusykses, in ardour to me; here, subordinate academician Fermierla, take here this probability coherence device constructed in accordance with my postulates… while away this noon and ssseek such creaturesss as I say must be, for you shall surely find their substance somewhere flung within Creation’s broadly scattered arms; take them up, meld of their varied strains that semblance which can speak and touch in simulacrum of a trueborn soul; regard then visage, form and even claim of self. Return to me, convinced — we tremble at the brink of learning all that life Is. Clasp to yourself my thought made manifest, which is my self; know it, accept it, make it one with us; I shall not sssend you from me any more…”