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

‘As for Abrak, reserve your judgement on my action. I have given him what he desired – though to tell the truth he would have preferred the fate of your female, Alanie.’

‘Alanie,’ Eliot repeated. ‘How can we be sure she’s dead? It may be keeping her alive. I don’t know why you murdered Abrak, Balbain, but if you want me to help you, then help me to get Alanie back. Then I’ll do anything you ask me.’

‘Defy Dominus? ’ Balbain looked at him pityingly. ‘Pointless, hopeless, perverted dreams…’

Suddenly he rushed past Eliot and through the door. Eliot heard his feet clattering on the downward ramp.

The Earthman sat down and buried his face in his hands.

A minute or two later he felt impelled to turn on the external view screen to get another look at Dominus . A bizarre sight met his eyes. Balbain, about halfway between Dominus and the ship, had prostrated himself before the great beast and was making small gestures whose meanings were known only to himself. Eliot switched off the screen. A few minutes later, not having heard Balbain return, he looked again. There was no sign of the alien.

He was not sure how long he then sat there, trying to decide what best next to do, before a noise made him look up. The interstellar expedition’s only other surviving member was entering the chamber.

Zeed was the least humanoid of all the team. He walked on limbs that could be said to constitute a pair of legs, except that they could also reconstitute themselves into tentacles, or a bunch of sticks, or a number of other devices to accommodate him to locomotion over a variety of different surfaces. Above these limbs a short dumpy body of indeterminate shape was hidden by a thick cloak which also hid his arms. Above this, a head of sorts: speckled golden eyes that did not at first look like eyes, other organs buried within fluted, bony grooves arranged in a symmetrical pattern.

The voice in which he spoke to Eliot, however, could have passed as human, although no mouth appeared to move.

‘Explanations are superfluous,’ he said, moving into the chamber and looking down on Eliot. ‘I have consulted the ship’s log.’

Eliot nodded. The log, of course, automatically recorded everything that took place within the ship.

‘It appears that Balbain could not constrain himself and has forfeited his life,’ Zeed continued. ‘It is not surprising. However, it determines our end, also, since only Abrak and Balbain knew how to pilot the ship.’

This was news to Eliot, but in his present state the prospect of death caused him little alarm.

‘Did you know Balbain’s secret reason for this mission?’ he asked.

‘Of course. But it was no secret. Your people, being ignorant of alien races, made a presumption concerning its nature.’ Gliding smoothly on his versatile legs, Zeed moved to the view screen and made a full circle scan of their surroundings. Then he turned back to Eliot. ‘Perhaps it is a disappointment to you.’

‘Why did Balbain want any of us along at all?’ Eliot said wearily. ‘Just to make use of us?’

‘In a way. But we were all making use of one another. The universe is vast and quite mysterious, Eliot. It is an unfathomable darkness in which creatures arise having no common ground with each other. Hence, if they meet they may not be able to comprehend one another. Here in this ship we act as antennae for one another. We are not so alien to one another that we cannot communicate, yet sufficiently unalike so that each may understand some phenomena we encounter that the others cannot.’

‘So that’s what we are,’ Eliot said resentfully. ‘A star-travelling menagerie.’

‘An ark, in which each has a separate quest. Yours is the obsession with acquiring knowledge. We do not share it, but the data you are collecting is your reward for the services you may, at some time, have been able to render one of us. You were enjoying yourselves too much for us to disillusion you concerning ourselves.’

‘But how can you not share it?’ Eliot exclaimed. ‘Scientific inquiry is fundamental to intelligence, surely? How else can one ever understand the universe?’

‘But others do not want to understand it, Eliot. That is only your own relationship to it; your chief ethological feature, whether you recognise it or not. You would still have joined this expedition, for instance, if it had meant giving up sex for the rest of your life.’

‘And yet you have a scientific culture and travel in spaceships.’

‘A matter of mere practicality. Pure, abstract science exists only for homo sapiens – I have not encountered it elsewhere. Other races carry out investigations only for the material benefits they bring. As an extreme example, think of Dominus: he, and probably countless of the animals here, possess vastly more of the knowledge you admire than do either of us, yet they have no interest in it and continue to live in a wild condition.’

Eliot’s thoughts were returning to Alanie and the disinterest all the aliens had shown in her horrifying death. He remembered Balbain’s enigmatic remark. ‘Abrak,’ he said bleakly, ‘what was he seeking?’

‘His species craves abnormal death . The cause of it is thuswise: life, however long, must end. Life, then, is conditioned by death. Hence death is larger than life. Abrak’s people are conscious that everything, ultimately, is abnegated by death, and they look for fulfilment only in the manner of their dying. An individual of his species seeks to die in some unusual or noteworthy manner. Suicides receive praise, provided the method is extraordinary. Murderers, likewise, are folk heroes, if their killings show imagination. Ultimately, the whole species strives to be exterminated in some style so extraordinary as to make its existence seem meaningful. Five seemed to offer that promise – not in its present state, it is true, but after suitable evolutionary development, perhaps due to an invasion by Abrak’s people.’

‘And you ,’ Eliot demanded. ‘What do you seek?’

‘We,’ answered Zeed with an icy lack of hesitation, ‘seek NULLITY. Not merely to die, like Abrak’s species, but to wipe out the past, never to have been .’

Eliot shook his head, aghast. ‘How can any living creature have an ambition like that?’

‘You must understand that on your planet conditions have been remarkably gentle and favourable for the arising of life. Such is not the general rule. Elsewhere there is hardship and struggle, often of a severity you could not imagine. The universe rarely smiles on the formation of life. On my planet…’ Zeed seemed to hesitate, ‘we regard it as an act of compassion to kill our offspring at birth. The unlucky ones are spared to answer nature’s call to perpetuate the species. If you knew my planet, you would not think that life could evolve there at all. We believe that ever since the first nervous system developed, the subconscious feeling has been present that it has all been a mistake. To you, of course, this looks weird and perverted.’

‘Yes… it does indeed,’ Eliot said slowly. ‘In any case, isn’t it impossible? I presume you are travelling the galaxy in search of some race that has time travel, so that you can wipe out your own past. But look at it this way: even if you succeeded in that, there would still have to be a “different past” – the old past, a ghost past – in which you still existed.’

‘Once again you display your mental agility,’ Zeed said. ‘Your reasoning is sound: it may be that our craving can be satisfied only if the universe in its entirety is nullified.’

Springing to his feet, Eliot went to the viewscreen and peered out on to turbulent, lightning-struck Five. He thought of Alanie and himself slaving in the laboratory, and felt tricked and insignificant. Zeed seemed to think of their work as no more than the collecting instinct of a jackdaw or an octopus.