More Things in Heaven Page 16

  “Yes, of course. They are afraid. So they are going to hear Hermanos, and he will give them courage. ”

  "What on earth does he do for them?”

  “He—talks to people. David, why ask me to describe it? In a little while you can hear for yourself!”

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  . * * *

  It was a sort of pilgrimage. The crazy time machine I’d imagined in Athens was still affecting me. We walked among stone-faced people like Aztec idols, some in modem clothing, some with a serape or rebozo tossed about them as a conscious gesture to the past. There was no definite beginning to their irregular procession; simply, when we left the city we saw many people on the road ahead, in small groups or by themselves, and others later came and followed us. I felt as conspicuous as a leper because I was so pale. Carmen’s face, bearing and complexion blended in with the straggling crowd, but I was a white North American and the only Caucasian present as far as I could tell. I had a sense of isolation, of being cut off from some fundamental well of knowledge which these people accepted and would never dream of questioning.

  The road deteriorated when it passed the outlying private homes and became a graveled track winding around the shoulder of a hill. We came on people who had set out earlier and exhausted themselves, sitting by the road gathering the energy to continue. My own feet, unused to walking, began to ache, and I suspected a blister on my right heel.

  “Where are we making for?” I demanded. “A village?"

  “Yes, a village. It’s not far—only eight kilometers from Quito.”

  Five miles. I guessed we’d covered a mile and a half since leaving the city limits. I looked

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  around at the inhospitable landscape—to my eyes, at any rate. That time machine was very effficient. The countryside seemed raw from Nature’s hand; the towers of Quito, visible on glancing back, were as insubstantial as a mirage, and one could believe the wind might blow them away.

  But it was the background that these people had known since childhood. Their ancestors' bones were part of this soil. Their beliefs were founded on these rocks and that oppressive sky.

  Carmen’s, too.

  And this also was humanity’s heritage. The dirt and disorder of the world were closer to us than our new, clean, sterile machines. The confusion of mountains, the tangle of forests, were more familiar than the stark blackness beyond the air, where Starventure had roamed.

  We had deluded ourselves that we could cope up there. We had imagined we could reduce the cosmos to simple, predictable rules. I thought of the race’s'finest minds battling with an insoluble enigma; I thought of Leon, puzzled but tolerant, in a body wished on him by . . . all right, a miracle. A miracle is a happening contrary to natural laws, and all our law forbade this event.

  Call them angels, then—why not?

  The road wound, steep and stony and narrow, and the mass of people passing along it thickened as those ahead wearied and those behind grew more eager. We were almost shoulder to shoulder as we completed the journey

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  and came in sight of the village which was our goal.

  It was nothing special: a square into which the road debouched, with an old church on one side, a blatantly new concrete building opposite which a sign identified as a library, a school also of concrete but considerably older, its walls cracking, and some sort of local government office. Behind these, houses, many thatched with reed or cane but with modern metal-framed windows set in their pale brown walls. And beyond, the fields of com and imported grass for a few cattle to graze, and root crops which I didn’t recognize. Clearly this was one of the lucky villages, touched by progress—the grass in particular was eloquent of UN aid—but it seemed to have made no difference to the people.

  Most of the newcomers, moving as though completing some traditional ritual, settled down in the dusty square, taking advantage of patches of shade or spreading their serapes like awnings. Early arrivals had found places on the two cars parked in the square and the one and only old dirty truck; the rest had to be content with the ground.

  But Carmen, catching my hand again, led me through the crowd and across the square, past the dazzling walls of the new library whose bulk dipped briefly into shadow, toward a house larger than the majority, just behind the church. On its verandah a portly priest sat in an old rocking chair talking with a slender man whose complexion exactly matched Carmen’s, who wore a white shirt and loose white peasant-style trousers belted with a bright red sash.

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  He looked toward us and gave a nod, his face calm and friendly. I recognized that face. It belonged to Hermanos Iglesias. After waiting which had given me a foretaste of eternity, I was going to find out what alien mind was screened behind it.

  XXI

  THE APPALLING thing was that he also recognized me.

  I had no doubt of it, the moment he glanced up from his conversation with the stout priest. The dark eyes—so like Carmen’s—in his sallow face met mine, and it was as though a current flowed. I felt a sudden sense of dislocation. I was afraid I might lose my willpower and become no better than a credulous peasant.

  He didn’t recognize me: David Drummond, Leon’s brother. He recognized me: a person who knows what I am.

  My frantic struggle for self-possession climaxed in a need for speech. I said in a voice so harsh I barely knew it for my own, “Well, monster, what is it you want?” I spoke in English simply because it was my mother tongue, having no idea whether this or the real Hermanos would understand me. Carmen gave a little horrified gasp and took a half-pace away from me, her eyes rounding. The priest, not catching the sense of my words but comprehending the tone of my voice, looked startled and halted the rocking of his chair.

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  “Wrong question,” the alien said, with an absolutely human intonation and a human quirk of his borrowed mouth. “The problem is: what do you want, the people of Earth? I’m having the devil’s job trying to find out. ”

  I had expected bluster, evasion, anything but this bland acceptance of my charge. I was completely taken aback, and while I was still at a loss Hermanos had excused himself to the priest—who half-raised his right hand as though minded to pronounce a blessing but let it fall back to his lap—and stepped down from the verandah to confront me.

  With an expression of intense curiosity he looked me over. “You sound personally offended,” he said. “Are you David Drummond, by any chance?”

  I licked my lips and glanced at Carmen. She was standing apart from us, her gaze riveted on her brother’s face. At last I nodded.

  “Good,” the Hermanos-person said. “We learned about you from your brother Leon, of course. Have you seen him since his return?”

  I almost choked with fury, and he laid his hand on my arm, apparently much concerned. “Is he not well? He should not be suffering in spite of what we did to him—we took great care!”

  Shaking his hand off me, I forced my anger down to a level at which I could talk. “Yes, I’ve seen him! I’ve seen both him and his stolen body!”

  “And because you don’t understand you are afraid, and because you’re ashamed to show

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  fear you are angry. I see.” Hermanos sounded as analytical as a psychiatrist reviewing an unusual complex of symptoms. “Yet you're a science writer, having at least a nodding acquaintance with the whole of modem human knowledge. What a lot you’ve forgotten—what an incredible amount!”

  I couldn’t make sense of that, and right now I wasn’t in a mood to try. I rounded on the priest, calling up all the limited Spanish I could command.

  “You there!” I bawled at him. “What do you make of this—this creature that talks like a man? He’s not a man! He’s a creature possessed of a devil! Why are you sitting on that verandah when out there in the plaza
your flock Eire blaspheming against the holy amgels, using their name for the monsters that appear in the sky?” The priest, stsirtled, looked at Hermanos and back at me. He said, “Sir, is the sun Effecting you? This is a good man of great wisdom. He is not possessed of any devil! And why should I stop my people talking of Eingels? The things in the sky Eire God’s creatures one way or smother!” He gave a fat, toothy smile and went back to rocking his chair sis though that settled the matter beyond argument.

  “Hermanos,” Carmen ventured nervously, “please forgive David. He isn’t himself—he’s upset, he’s had a shock of some kind. ...” Her voice trailed away.

  “Oh, to hell with it," I said in English. “The world’s gone crazy Emd I’m sick of it. Monsters talk through the mouths of men, men turn out

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  to be disguised as monsters, the skies are full of angels, and the hell with it all!"

  I spun on my heel, my eyes stinging and my mind reeling.

  “That’s more like it,” Hermanos said behind me, his voice level. “I'm glad you used the word ‘angels.’ Because that’s exactly what they are.”

  I checked and put my clenched fists to my head. My brain felt as though it might burst my skull.

  “Mr. Drummond, come back here,” said Hermanos. “I want to talk to you. I want to put a hypothesis to you. In fact, I may very well want your help.”

  “Help!” I repeated, and tried to laugh; the sound emerged as a manic cackle.

  “That’s what I said.” His voice was still calm. “Since you’ve come here, you might as well benefit from the visit. What was in your mind— forcing a confession of my identity, perhaps?”

  “No—what would be the use of trying to force you to do anything? You can escape by ways where we can’t follow. I learned that much from the one who’s pretending to be my brother.”

  “Now you’re rationalizing. I think the intention was at the back of your mind. Still, that’s irrelevant. As you can see. I’m not keeping up any pretense. Why should I? Is there any lie I could teD which you would swallow? So further, what’s the point of striding off in a bad temper?”

  “Should I stay and listen to lies that you hope I will fan for?” I countered.

  “ ‘What is truth?’ said jesting PUate, and would

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  not stay for an answer!” Hermanos flung up his hands. “Are you become a race of Pilates, you human beings? Are you so obsessed with your little local treasury of empirical facts that you don’t care any more about greater truths? Is the pinnacle of your ambition to grub in a yard of dirt and never turn your face to the sun?”

  He had paled with the intensity of his emotion. On the last word the muscles of his cheeks knotted and his jaw snapped shut like a bear trap.

  “David!" Carmen said. “Why won't you listen to him? Are you afraid he may make you believe what he says?” There was a hint of scorn in her voice, as though she had hoped better of the David Drummond she knew.

  I yielded and moved toward the verandah. The priest, who had watched our heated exchange anxiously, gave a sigh of relief and waved me courteously to a vacant chair propped against the wall.

  “Thank you,” Hermanos said. He jumped up and balanced on the waist-high wooden rail along the front of the verandah, finding a purchase for his heels so that he could lean his elbows on his knees. "I’m a little surprised that you haven’t already learned most of what I’m going to tell you from your brother. Didn’t he talk to you about his experiences in hyperspace—as you call it?”

  I bit my lip and glanced at Carmen, who was leaning now against one of the verandah’s pillars. Feeling quite ridiculous to be discussing such a subject with someone who had admitted

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  not being human, I said, “He told me only a little. He did say it was like ordinary space only more so. And he said we might have to treat our Einsteinian universe as a special case of the Euclidean one. But I didn’t entirely follow him.”

  Hermanos nodded judiciously. “It was to be expected that mathematicians like your brother would glimpse the truth ahead of other people. But apparently it’s going to take a while to digest. Well! Now I have your attention, Mr. Drummond, I’d like to ask whether you’re familiar with a few notions that underpin my later argument. You’re an educated man, so I think you 11 recognize them all. The Platonic theory of the ideal?”

  I nodded warily.

  “The Jungian theory of archetypes? The legends of the Golden Age, the Isles of the Blessed, the Garden of Eden?”

  “Of course! But I don’t see—”

  “Patience, please.” He held up his hand with an altogether disarming grin on his face. His borrowed face. I had to keep reminding myself of that. “In the course of everyday life—particularly primitive life—does a man run across such things as a perfectly straight line, a perfect right angle, a perfect half of anything?” “Uh—no.” I shifted on my chair. I was sweating unpleasantly, as though my life depended on answering his questions. “But surely that was one of the reasons which influenced the formulation of the theory of ideals, and it seems like a hell of a long way from angels!”

  “Not so far as you might imagine. What was

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  bothering old Plato, so I gather from what I’ve recently learned, was something that nowadays you appear to have given up as a bad job—to wit, why people who have never seen a truly straight line or a perfect half should be capable of formulating the concepts so clearly. Over the past century or two you seem to have become so preoccupied with your mechanical ingenuity you’ve given up inquiring into that.”

  I was on the point of objecting, but I changed my mind. Indeed, I couldn’t think of a single twenty-first-century philosopher who had seriously attacked the problem of ideals. It was thoroughly out of fashion, and I admitted as much.

  “Yes, it is, and that’s a shame. Because if it weren’t, I’ve no doubt someone would have stumbled on the implications of the existence of hyperspace long before even your unmanned experimental ship flew through it. Now bear in mind what I said about legends of Golden Ages and Gardens of Eden and so on, and consider the following proposition.”

  He leaned forward very earnestly.

  “What you refer to as ‘normal space’ is a very special case indeed of ‘hyperspace’—indeed, an artificial distortion of it. Human awareness isn’t native to such a continuum and includes concepts which here can find no real referents. In consequence you see ‘through a glass darkly,’ and in days when the shock was fresher, attempts were made to convey a vague memory of your original reality by means of myths and legends.”

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  I couldn’t decide whether to be more surprised by the suggestion itself, or the erudite fluency with which a self-confessed alien was presenting it. I settled for the former.

  “Not native to such a continuum?” I echoed. “What’s that supposed to mean? To me it’s simply noises!”

  He sighed. “Yes, that’s Inevitable. I’ve been trying to think of some illustrations that might make it clearer. You took a terribly roundabout route back to the simplicity of hyperspace— through all kinds of mathematical detours— precisely because your awareness has been deformed along with your present environment. But imagine, though! Imagine a railroad train running on ideally parallel tracks. It 11 run smoothly and evenly without wasting power— yes? But now imagine one of the rails a fraction out of true, so that it rubs against the wheels like a brake. The train will run slower and energy will go to waste. Transfer that to a four-dimensional spacetime continuum, and picture one of the dimensions as being likewise out of true. Envisage some of the effects.”

  I tried to concentrate. “Red shift?” I said finally.

  “Yes, an excellent example. But it doesn’t only manifest itself over interstellar distances, this distort
ion. The speed of light becomes lower; the chronon—the time-quantum—is unnecessarily large; mental processes, and indeed all energy transfers, are as it were thickened and made coarse.”

  In spite of my reluctance, I was beginning to call to mind arguments in support of Hermanos’

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  fantastic proposition. I remembered what I’d been told about Chandra Dan in his new body; he’d been reacting so fast at first that they needed to process his statements through a computer because no human being could keep up with his reaction times.

  Hermanos gave me a quizzical smile. "1 think my barbs are starting to fester," he murmured. “So your hide isn’t as armor-plated as you imagined, is it? You’re lucky to have such a wide range of information to draw on, though. A lot of people who don’t enjoy your advantages are waiting for me out there in the plaza. Excuse me; they want me to go and talk to them.”

  “What for?” I said.

  “Oh . . . reassurance, I guess. They’re frightened. They aren’t used to the sky being full of angels. Because I don’t seem to be perturbed by it, they—they look to me. Or to us, I should say. You said you’d seen ‘Leon’s body’ in Athens. What else was my colleague doing but talking to people and reassuring them?”

  I licked my lips. “Tell me one thing before you go,” I said. “You keep talking about us being stuck away in a comer of space-time which has been artificially deformed. You’ve been implying that we somehow came ‘from’ your universe ‘to’ ours. But what’s supposed to have brought this about?”

  “I can’t tell you,” Hermanos said flatty. “The referents are so different—even simple concepts like ‘to’ and ‘from’ aren’t really accurate. I can only draw your attention to a very well-known myth that concerns the fall of a group of arrogant angels. There are many races in the higher

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  continuum I’m talking about. Yours used to be one of them.”

  He gave a fleeting smile and swung his legs over the rail of the verandah. ‘‘Stay here and think it over,” he invited. ‘Til be back in a couple of hours.”