Barrington Bayley - The Zen Gun

A voice sounding in his ear sent Koutroubis’s nervous apprehension leaping up the scale. It was his spider monkey pilot.

“They’re coming in, sir;”

“Let’s watch the thing land.” Koutroubis suggested to Rubadaya as he came to his feet. “Ought to be quite a sight.”

Outside, they could see a small ball high in the sky. It was the Methorian landing craft. Having detached itself from the main ship outside the atmosphere, it was inflating as it descended, allowing its occupant to decompress and assume full size.

By the time it came to sink close to the meadow the ball was a rippling sphere about a hundred feet in diameter. Gently it settled, its underbelly swelling on the moss, putting out tendrils which gripped the turf and steadied it.

“Wish me luck,” Koutroubis said glumly.

His staff of primates and elephants hurried towards him with the atmosuit and gas generator trolley he would need inside the sphere. He allowed them to garb him and lead him forward to the orifice that plopped open in the bulging skin. It was like entering a pale orange mouth, which closed behind him. Then the throat opened, and he moved forward into a reddish medium he knew to be composed of hydrogen, methane, ammonia and countless complex volatiles.

Visually, it was confusing. The gases of the globe’s interior swayed and swirled, mainly, it seemed, because of the constantly windmilling motion of the Methorian, which occupied about a third of the available space. It was hard to make out the creature clearly; more than anything else it reminded Koutroubis of a gigantic multihued jellyfish suspended in the murky air, the central mass surrounded by wavy translucent veils tipped with filaments. Gas-giant life was, he had been told, of such delicacy that a human being could not come into physical contact with it without doing it some damage.

The trolley had obediently followed him into the sphere and now began serving its function of expelling code gases that soughed out and mingled with the atmosphere. He had been assured these would give the Methorian the needed psychological experience of a communicating presence that at the same time carried a sufficiently individual tang to give it the tag of being alien and human.

The job of language translation had fortunately been handled by the Methorians. A low but melodiously clear voice spoke to him, emanating from nowhere in particular.

“ I am the delegate that was sent .”

“I welcome you to Diadem, centre of our Empire,” Koutroubis responded.

“Normally such visits are not needed. Our races live in different environments, supplying neither common interest nor points of conflict. We do, however, inhabit the same spacetime. A rupture has appeared in the meshwork that composes this spacetime. Through this rupture our instruments discern the Simplex; the veil of the world is torn, exposing the lacework.”

Koutroubis swallowed. He knew full well the accusation that was coming. The Methorian was probably using metaphors appropriate to his own lifeform. A human would have said “face” and “bones” rather than “veil” and “lacework.”

“What can it mean?” the creature continued. “Through the tear come incomprehensibles that cause havoc on three of our worlds. We ask ourselves what our scientists or engineers have done to create this catastrophe. We find nothing. We ask the other races with which we share the galaxy. From Diadem comes a positive answer. I must now ask you to confirm that answer in person.”

Had it been given a proper opportunity, the Imperial Council might well have preferred to dissemble about the matter. Unluckily a reply had been transmitted direct, in between Council meetings, by a group of tax-item scientists working in the civil service. It was too late to back out now.

“Yes,” Koutroubis said wearily, “we think—only think , mind—that one of our research facilities might have been responsible. It was working on feetol technique—the same that your ships use.”

“What is to be done? The rent grows bigger. Sentient beings in all galaxies might soon have cause to criticise your behaviour. I am instructed to ask what remedial action is proposed.”

“We’re working on it,” Koutroubis said doggedly.

“May I receive relevant technical information? We too will seek a way to avert catastrophe, the case being possibly dire.”

“Yes, I think I can arrange that.”

I hope I can arrange it, Koutroubis corrected himself. Even the civil service was now in disarray. The Council had lost much of its power of action.

By the Simplex, he wasn’t even sure if the emergency science team had been assembled in the end!

But it wouldn’t do to try to explain such confusion to the Methorian.

For the hundredth time Tengu finished checking the circuitry of the intermat kiosk and put his logic probe back in his pocket, his face displaying a now-familiar feeling of aggravation mixed with anxiety. There was nothing wrong either with the switching or with the feetol interface that enwrapped the cubicle and on which the system depended. Of course, he didn’t really know how the intermat worked, and there was one new introduction into the ship’s workings as a whole—the replacement flux unit. It delivered a flux curve that was perfectly normal—but could the old ruined one have added some necessary kink, perhaps? If so he would never find out what it was.

But he didn’t dare tell Ragshok that, Ragshok’s rages could be terrible.

After closing the panel, and as a matter of routine procedure, he tapped out the flagship code from the list beside the touch buttons, and fatalistically pressed GO.

For a blinding instant white light filled the kiosk. He blinked, then realised he was no longer in the same kiosk. The location plate had changed from Claire de Lune to Standard Bearer .

Tengu’s heart went into his mouth. For what reason he could not fathom, it had worked! He was on board the flagship!

Cautiously he pushed open the door. He was acquainted with the luxurious interior of the Claire de Lune, and he had heard of the extravagance of Diadem.

But the sight that met his eyes was far beyond anything he would have anticipated in a ship of war.

Archier took the slight, florid figure who crept from the kiosk and peered down into the salon for a crewman who had sneaked to the ball while on shift. What made him noticeable was that he wore no costume, only a ragged shirt that flapped over stained breeks and was cinched at the waist by a tool belt. No doubt he felt out of place and he deserved a reprimand, but Archier let it go.

He had permitted the victory ball to go ahead despite the seriousness of what lay ahead. The theme of the ball was Nemesis. Like most others, he wore a costume of electrically stiffened fabric that in its unexcited state was gauzy, limp and colourless, but which in answer to the currents flowing from a little generator mat could be pulled and shaped, could be given any variety of hues, translucencies and textures. The human figures that pranced the floor of the salon were an average of twelve foot in height, representing ancient gods of war, glowing warships and weapons of total destruction, giant masks of dread, aggressive abstract shapes. Animals were similarly bedecked, but in a manner adapted to their forms; long shapes worn by the four-footed darted about the ballroom, sometimes fronted with slavering jaws and sometimes playfully crashing into one another.

To the watcher on the mezzanine where the intermat kiosks were placed the pulsing streamers of light that bedecked the salon would also seemed to be joined by a dreadful cacaphony; about a dozen kinds of music were punishing the air at once. The costumed dancers, however, carried sound filters; they could tune into the airs of their taste.