Barrington Bayley - Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus - The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

But the vital leap, from a calculus of theatre to a calculus of identities, had not come, and Naylor was left wondering if he should be chiding himself for his lapse into dubious rationalist tenets.

Dammit, he thought wryly, if an enlightened master had no luck, how the devil can I?

Gloomily he wrote a footnote: ‘It may be that the question of identity is too basic to be subject to experiment, or to be susceptible to instrumentation.’

His thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the alarm bell. The control panel flashed, signalling that the habitat was slowing down in response to danger ahead. In seconds it had reduced speed until it was cruising at only a few tens of powers of the velocity of light.

At the same time an announcement gong sounded, informing them that they had arrived within beacon range of someone else’s habitat – presumably Corngold’s.

Naylor crossed to the panel to switch off the alarm. As he did so Watson-Smythe appeared from the bedroom. He had put on a gleaming white suit which set off his good looks to perfection.

‘What a racket!’ he exclaimed genially. ‘Everything going off at once!’

Naylor was examining the dials. ‘We are approaching a matterless lake.’

‘Are we, by God?’

‘And your friend Corngold is evidently living on the shores of it. Can you think of any reason why he would do that?’

Watson-Smythe chuckled, with a hint of rancour. ‘Just the place where the swine would choose to set himself up. Discourages visitors, you see.’

‘You can say that again. Do I take it we are likely to be unwelcome? What you would call a recluse, is he?’

The younger man tugged at his lower lip. ‘Look here, old chap, if you feel uneasy about this you can just drop me off at Corngold’s and shoot off again. I don’t want to impose on you or anything.’

But by now Naylor was intrigued. ‘Oh, that’s all right. I don’t mind hanging about for a bit.’

Watson-Smythe peered out of the window. They were close to a large spiral galaxy which blazed across the field of vision and swung majestically past their line of sight.

‘We’ll get a better view on this,’ Naylor said. He pressed a small lever and at the front end of the living-room a six-foot screen unfolded, conveniently placed in relation to the control panel. He traversed the view to get an all-round picture of their surroundings. The spiral galaxy had already receded to become the average smudged point of light; in all directions the aspect was the usual one of darkness relieved by faintly luminous sleet – except, that was, for directly ahead. There, the screen of galaxies was thin. Behind that screen stretched an utter blackness: it was a specimen of that awesome phenomenon, the matterless lake.

For the distribution of matter in the universe was not, quite, uniform. It thinned and condensed a bit here and there. The non-uniformity of matter mainly manifested, however, in great holes, gaps – lakes, as they were called – where no matter was to be found at all. Although of no great size where the distances that went to make up infinity were concerned, in mundane terms the dimensions of these lakes were enormous, amounting to several trillion times the span of an Olbers’ sphere (the criterion of cosmic size in pre-Harkham times, and still used as a rough measure of magnitude).

Any Harkham traveller knew that it was fatal to penetrate any further than the outermost fringes of such a lake. Should anyone be so foolhardy as to pass out of sight of its shore (and in times past many had been) he would find it just about impossible to get out again; for the simple fact was that when not conditioned by the presence of matter, space lacked many of the properties normally associated with it. Even such elementary characteristics as direction, distance and dimension were lent to space, physicists now knew, by the signposts of matter. The depths of the lakes were out of range of these signposts, and thus it would do the velocitator rider no good merely to fix a direction and travel it in the belief that he must sooner or later strike the lake’s limit; he would be unlikely ever to do so. He was lost in an inconceivable nowhere, in space that was structureless and uninformed.

As the habitat neared the shore the lake spread and expanded before them, like a solid black wall sealing off the universe. ‘Will Corngold be in the open, do you think, or in a galaxy somewhere?’ Naylor asked.

‘I’d guess he’s snuggled away in some spiral; harder to find that way, eh?’ Watson-Smythe pointed to a cluster of galaxies ahead and to their right. ‘There’s a likely-looking bunch over there. Right on the edge of the lake, too. What do the indicators say?’

‘Looks hopeful.’ Naylor turned the habitat towards the cluster, speeding up a little. The galaxies brightened until their internal structures became visible. The beacon signal came through more strongly; soon they were close enough to get a definite fix.

Watson-Smythe’s guess had been right. They eventually found Corngold’s habitat floating just inside the outermost spiral turn of the largest member of the cluster. The habitat looked like two or three Eskimo igloos squashed together, humped and rounded. Behind it the local galaxy glittered in countless colours like a giant Christmas tree.

Watson-Smythe clapped his hands in delight. ‘Got him!’

Naylor nudged close to the structure at walking pace. The legally standardised coupling rings clinked together as he matched up the outer doors.

‘Jolly good. Time to pay a visit,’ his passenger said.

‘Shouldn’t we raise him on the communicator first?’

‘Rather not.’ Watson-Smythe made for the door, then paused, turning to him. ‘If you’d prefer to wait until… Well, just as you please.’

He first opened the inner door, then both outer doors which were conjoined now and moved as one, and then the inner door of the other habitat. Naylor wondered why he didn’t even bother to knock. Personally he would never have had the gall just to walk into someone else’s living-room.

With tentative steps he followed Watson-Smythe through the short tunnel. Bright light shone through from the other habitat. He heard a man’s voice, raised in a berating, bullying tone.

The door swung wide open.

The inside of Corngold’s dwelling reminded Naylor of an egg-shaped cave, painted bright yellow. Walls and ceiling consisted of the same ovoid curve, and lacked windows. The yellow was streaked and spattered with oil colours and unidentifiable dirt; the lower parts of the walls were piled with canvases, paintings, boxes, shelves and assorted junk. The furniture was sparse: a bare board table, a mattress, three rickety straight-backed chairs and a mouldy couch. An artist’s easel stood in the middle of the room. Against the opposite wall was the source of Corngold’s provender and probably everything else he used: a matter-bank, shiny in its moulded plastic casing.

Corngold was a fat man, a little below medium height. He was wearing baggy flannel trousers and a green silk chemise which was square-cut about the neck and shoulders and was decorated with orange tassels. He had remarkably vivid green eyes; his hair had been cropped short, but now had grown so that it bristled like a crown of thorns.

He reminded Naylor of early Hollywood versions of Nero or Caligula. He did not, it seemed, live alone. He was in the act of brow-beating a girl, aged perhaps thirty, who for her dowdiness was as prominent as Corngold was for his brilliant green shirt. Corngold had her arm twisted behind her back, forcing her partly over. Her face wore the blank sullenness that comes from long bullying; it was totally submissive, wholly drab, the left eye slightly puffy and discoloured from a recent bruise. She did not even react to the entry of visitors.