Terry Pratchett - The Dark Side of the Sun

Ten minutes later the Drunk With Infinity was a bright star over Laoth's terminator. Ways had chosen a good ship. Dom set up the co-ordinates he had been given on the matrix computer and sighed.

The jump was short, lasting barely half an hour subjective time. It ended in the middle of a fleet.

Ways said: 'Open up the communicator circuits.'

He saw the main cabin of the Drunk, with the hostages standing mutely in the middle of the floor. Most were, at least. Joan I was being supported, and Isaac was sprawled on the floor.

Ways walked into the field of view. 'I've run into a little pocket of resistance,' he said. 'Don't let that worry you.'

'What's the fleet for?' said Dom.

'Company. Who knows if we may have to fight, survey, or merely land on a dead world?'

Dom laughed hysterically in the tiny cabin, and stopped only when he saw Ig cowering away on the control panel and gazing at him in wide-eyed terror.

'You're fools, ' he told the communicator. 'You think I will lead you to a planet?'

The scene of the Drunk flickered out, and another face looked at him. It was thin, topped off by a mop of black hair, and had unmistakably been born on Earth.

'I am sorry about this,' it said. 'My name is Franz Asman, of the Joker Institute. This is our fleet. Ways is our tool.'

'Earthman, eh?' said Dom. 'That means you don't really think the threat of reprisals is enough to stop me running away. An Earthman would let his grandmother fry if he saw any personal profit in it.'

'Sadhim preserve us from interworld animosity,' said Asman wearily. 'As a matter of fact, you know, I've been studying you for some time. There's a staff of two hundred at the Institute who have been studying you for some time, too. We know exactly what you will do in any given situation, and in this one you won't run.'

'Studying me?' Behind Asman's head he could see vague figures, in front of a long panel covered with intricate patterns of coloured lines.

'This is our job. Do you know what an astrologer was?'

'Sure,' said Dom. 'I was born under O'Brien the Hunter.'

'We are the new astrologers. We evaluate—'

—by the mathemagic of probability, sifting through the population of the galaxy to find those whose probability profile matched the theoretical one for the discoverer of Jokers World. That particular profile had been in existence for some time. For no known reason questions relating to Jokers World usually became nonsense when rendered into p-math, but it was possible, just possible, to make up an equation from the outlines round the logical holes.

Then it meant sifting again. That had not been difficult. There were only three potential discoverers this year. One was a phnobic monk, the other a three-month-old girl on Third Eye. Both had been killed easily.

But Dom was a different matter. The Institute was at a loss to understand why. His father had also been a high-probability Discoverer, and there had been no difficulty there. Yet something prevented Dom from being conveniently removed. He was too lucky.

Something wanted him to discover Jokers World.

'Yes,' said Dom. 'It's the Jokers.'

'So we think,' said Asman. 'Do you know why we can't let you?'

'I think I can follow your reasoning,' said Dom. 'You fear the Jokers. That's because you don't know them. You think that contact with even the remnants of their culture will destroy us. I expect you have some idea that men are better off without gods.'

'You laugh at us. Oh, we can't deny that the Joker artifacts have done something to stimulate interracial co-operation.'

Dom heard himself shout: 'They caused it! The Creapii invented the matrix engine just so that they could find other lifeforms to help them answer the Joker riddles!'

'That is so. But Dom, listen. Before Sadhim, before star travel even, you know that most men believed in some kind of omnipresent god? Not the Sadhimist Small Gods, answerable to natural forces, but a real Director of the Universe? But if it had turned out that He really did exist chaos would have been let loose on the planet. He would have ceased to become a matter of comforting Belief but a matter of fact - you don't believe in the sun, either. And men would have perished of a cosmic inferiority complex. You can't live and know of such greatness.

'We need the idea of Jokers because they are a unifying force among the races, but we can't afford to find their world. Supposing it is dead - is that the end of even the greatest race? If they still live, will they enslave us or ignore us? Or worse, befriend us?'

'We can only let you go now to the dark side of the sun. But you must understand that we can't let you return.'

'I know what the Jokers World is,' said Dom slowly. 'I've known for some time, I think, without realizing it. And I think I'm coming to realize where it is. There is only one Sun in the universe - our universe - and the Jokers gave it to us. Will you lock your fleet on to this ship?'

Asman nodded.

'Then follow me.'

Interspace glowed around him. Dom switched off the set and tried to ignore the orange-gold glow that filled the ship and in which it floated.

To no one he said: 'Why now? And why me?'

Ig shrugged, and turned his pointed, rat-like nose towards him. He spoke. The words arrived in Dom's head without the need for a cumbersome physical route.

'The trouble was that we never found a way to become empathic. Telepathy - that's merely a higher form of speech. But to know how another being, another creature feels - that is impossible.'

'You were lonely,' said Dom. 'All those empty years ...'

'Isaac would say: close, but no cigar. We searched even the alternate universes, it is true, right along to the dark impossible ones that are the stuff of nightmares. There was life. The Bank and Chatogaster are small fry. In some universes the very suns live. There is a galaxy that sings. In one universe, over there—' a paw pointed and one claw disappeared momentarily into another continuum— 'there is nothing but thought, which pervades all. Not only thought, but understanding. But it is alien to us. How blithely you use the word alien: you have no idea how alien a thing may be.

'We discovered - as the Creapii are discovering - that the ultimate barrier is one's viewpoint. Dimly they realize that even their most objective statements about the universe cannot be freed from the Creapii taint because they ultimately derive from Creapii minds and emotions. That's why they are the great ambassadors of inter-racial harmony, and why they try so hard to be everything but Creapii.'

'So you invented us,' said Dom. 'At least that theory is true? You wanted to get, uh, different points of view?'

'Close again. All we had to do was make it easier for intelligent life to evolve. That at least is not difficult; it's well within the range of your sciences. Though it was damn difficult to hit the right combination for cold-helium life. By the way, I have a small bomb surgically implanted in me. The Earthmen did it. Very subtle. I wouldn't worry; I have inactivated it.'

Ig paused and scratched an ear.

'We left artifacts to tantalize,' he said. 'I'm afraid we cheated. Be sure that before we left we were very thorough in cleaning up the galaxy. On some worlds we had to build an entirely new crust, down to the fossils. We had to replace metals in the grounds as ores, replenish oilfields, relay coal measures - we wanted to make sure you had a start in life. We gave you reconditioned worlds, but we left you the Towers and the Chain Stars and so on. All cultural fakes, I'm afraid. Made to awe rather than inform. But we had to leave the clue. That was artistically correct.

'The dark side of the sun,' said Dom. 'It was two clues. If you hadn't wanted us to translate it, we never would have done. That was clue one. After all, we couldn't even have translated Phnobic without the phnobes there to help us out. And the sun - you turned your back on intelligence, and became dull-minded animals.'