The star blazed, roiled, fumed. Equilibrium teetered as the balance of forces groaned toward the brink of catastrophe. Temperature and density shifted, slid as the last and hottest fusions took place. Jets and streamers of ionized gases exploded away from the star's surface like ribbons and banners fluttering in a cosmic breeze. The star was drifting inevitably toward death . . . faster than it knew.
There were invaders in the star's midst.
Threads of warpspace had slipped invisibly down through the convective layers, slipped toward the core, toward the center of mass. Threads of warpspace had spun their tapestry of death—clenching and strangling, pouring heat and fuel into the flames.
A thousand values fluctuated, changed with inexorable speed. The collapse was moments away, and it would rend the very fabric of space.
And Ruskin's hands were on the controls, guiding and channeling the explosion . . .
* * *
The landing sent a bump through the craft, and the vision evaporated. Ruskin realized with a start that Stanley Broder had said something to him. He was nodding in agreement, though he had no idea what Broder had said.
But where were Jeaves and Gorminski? This wasn't the deltacraft. . . .
His thoughts receded into a gray haze.
Through the haze, a red star burned bright: a complex image rotating, zooming, fast forwarding, filling a simulation-space with a vast matrix of data. The image had brought him out of the darkness, like a bolt of lightning, illuminating a memory.
What memory?
His workplace. Associative Frontiers Institute.
The image faded as his head cleared. He was on the ground now, riding in an autocab through the streets of a city. He squinted out the window, shivered, glanced at the time. What the devil? Hours had passed since they'd taken off from the lodge. What had happened during the flight? He couldn't remember a thing. He must have blacked out. And yet Broder was riding calmly beside him, as though nothing were wrong. Apparently he had been carrying on a conversation. At some point, they must have landed, transferred to this car, entered the city (what city?); and Jeaves and Gorminski had gone their own ways. He had no memory of any of that.
Broder turned to peer at him. "You okay, Willard?"
"Sure. Why?" Outside, government offices spun by in fading twilight.
"You looked a little funny there for a minute."
Ruskin stared out the window. It all looked vaguely familiar. "I'm fine," he said. "Tired, I guess."
Broder nodded. "We've been talking at you too much, I expect. Well, you'd better make it an early night. You'll want to be in shape for work tomorrow."
Ruskin nodded, wondering what exactly he did for work. "Thanks. I will." He closed his eyes to slits, as though lost in thought. Some landmark might trigger a recognition of this city. Architecture heavily populated by spires and obelisks: Minora Cayla? As blocks of buildings passed by, he drifted in and out of a reverie, only half-aware of Broder's presence beside him in the car. He imagined a man trudging across a plain, peering at occasional clusters of trees on silent knolls, wondering what land he was in and where all the people had gone. The sun was setting over the plain; only emptiness and loneliness awaited him in the night.
"Here, Willard—I'll help you with your bag."
Ruskin blinked. The car had stopped in front of a brownstone apartment building. He peered at the structure and nodded. His apartment building? "Don't bother," he said. "I can manage."
"Are you sure?" Broder's eyes bored into his.
Ruskin felt a little shiver. "Yes. Thanks for the lift."
Broder shook his hand. "Well—okay, then. Look, Willard, you take care. I'm going off-planet on business in a couple of days, so I don't know when I'll see you again. But it's been a pleasure. You will take it slow for a while?"
Ruskin nodded, pulled his bag out of the luggage compartment, waited while the hatch hissed closed. "Yes. Thanks for everything." He hesitated, but couldn't think of anything else to say. Broder nodded, and with a wave, drove off.
Taking a deep breath, Ruskin walked up to the front door of the brownstone. He felt a tingle of vague associations. He knew that the outer door was not automatic, even before he touched it; and yet he did not remember the building itself exactly. It seemed in some musty corner of his mind that he had been here before. But did he live here? Broder could have been testing him, he supposed, leaving him at the wrong address; but his intuition hinted otherwise.
He was baffled by Broder's motivation for lying to him at the lodge, or for dropping him off so casually here. But whatever else had happened during the flight, he must have been convincing in his portrayal of a sane man. He sighed. The act might not be over yet.
The address on the front-door plate, 92 Alpha Boulevard, matched the address on the identification chit that he had found in his wallet. He pressed his palm to the scanner beside the inner door, and the lock clicked open. He opened it with a tug and walked through.
The hallway was empty and silent. Beige walls, green-flecked carpeting. Which way? Drawing his wallet from his breast pocket, he examined the I.D. again. Apartment 404. He looked up, realized that he had already walked halfway to the stairs, past a lift. His legs seemed to know where he was going. He felt a familiar tug in his muscles as he began climbing.
The fourth-floor hallway was carpeted in russet. Yes. He passed two doors on the left before reaching 404. After a long hesitation, he pressed his palm to the lock-plate.
The door clicked and slowly swung inward.
The room was pitch dark. No light came on in response to his entering, even after he'd closed the door behind him. For a moment, he simply stood in total darkness, not breathing. He dropped his bag, and the thump it made hitting the carpet was just enough to make him release his breath.
"Hello, Willard."
He drew a sharp breath, then let it out in a gasp. He blinked in the darkness. "Max!" he cried, almost laughing out loud, as conscious recognition followed the reflex.
A sound of chuckling made him smile. "I am pleased that you have returned safely," the voice said.
Ruskin nodded in the darkness. Max . . . Tokandro Ali'Maksam. His friend's name spelled itself across his mind like gleaming diamonds in space.
"The light will not hurt my eyes," Ali'Maksam said.
Ruskin frowned. "I'll leave it off," he said softly. "You should be comfortable when you visit me." His eyes were already beginning to adapt to the darkness, which was not total. The windows were tightly shuttered; but somewhere in the room, green diodes were emitting traces of light. Probably the music console. In the faint glow, he could almost make out the lithe form of his friend, crouched in lotus position in the corner of the living room.
"As you wish. Then I thank you."
"Have you been waiting long?"
For a moment, Max didn't answer. Ruskin pondered the silence and realized that the recognition of his friend was only partial; he recognized Max as one might notice a favorite old book by its cover, without quite being able to recall its contents. Max was his friend; he was a tele'eLogoth, a serpent-man and scholar of Logos-Kwatrn. He was a nocturnal creature who, unprotected, could not tolerate much light. And at this moment, Ruskin could remember little else about him.
Hell of a thing. He felt almost certain that Max was his best friend.
"I have been productive while I waited," Max said, not quite answering his question. The Logothian enunciated his syllables cleanly and evenly.
"Good. Sorry I was away . . . so long. I—"
"Willard, do not apologize for time spent in renewal and reflection."
Reflection. Is that what I was doing? A smile crossed Ruskin's face, as a memory of a long-ago conversation flickered through his mind. "You always were better at justifying time off than I was."
"And you, better at underestimating pursuits that did not satisfy your work-ethic values," Max answered, his voice barely inflected with Logothian humor.
Ruskin chuckled along with him. Their voices filled the darkness with a comfortable warmth, like an invisible, crackling fire. Max's ghostly, slender form swayed with his laughter, like a treetop barely visible in the night. Ruskin could turn on a red light to see Max better, but it hardly seemed worth the trouble. He stepped cautiously to the center of the room, then settled onto the carpet in a cross-legged sitting position, facing the dim visage of his friend at a distance of a couple of meters. "How long," he said slowly, "was I gone, anyway?"
"Have you lost track?" Max asked.
Ruskin shrugged. "Time flies when you're—" His voice faltered. "I'm feeling a bit . . . unsettled, Max. It was a strange trip."
"Ah."
As they faced one another in silence, Ruskin wondered why he didn't just blurt out the whole bewildering story. And then he realized: because someone had tried to kill him, that was why. And everyone else had lied to him. How could he possibly know whom to trust? He thought that Max was his friend. But. His eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness, as they had in the forest last night. (Was it really only last night? It seemed ages ago.) The thin rays of emerald diode light seemed to grow stronger, and the outlines of the room gradually became more distinct. To the left of Max was a curious mechanical shape; he gazed at it for half a minute before realizing that it was a universal exercise machine. He wondered if he used it often.
"You were gone six days," Max murmured. "It was the most time you could take from your work."
Ah. Was there urgency in his work, then? Ruskin frowned into space, grateful for the darkness that hid his emotions. Or did it? Ali'Maksam was an empathic—
"Willard."
He blinked. "Yes?" Of course: the darkness hid nothing from Max. What was he thinking?
"You need time alone, don't you?"
"Well, I—"
"I quite understand. But before I leave, may I ask you one thing, for my own peace of mind?"
Ruskin drew a painful breath. "Of course." There was no question: he needed time alone to think, to dredge through the murky depths of his memories. And yet, Max was his one link. He hated to see the serpent-man go.
Max's gaze seemed almost to glow in the darkness. "I just wanted to ask—"
"Yes?"
Max's breath hissed out in a sigh. "Did they keep their assurances to you?"
"Did they—?" His jaw seemed to lock with tension and uncertainty. "Did who keep what—?"
Max's eyes blinked slowly. "As I feared," he whispered, his voice a dry leaf rustling.
"You feared—what?" Ruskin asked. "Max?"
The slim Logothian profile shifted in the near-darkness. "I am sorry. I should not have alarmed you. I must reflect on certain matters before I can speak with integrity or knowledge."
"What do you mean?"
The eyes blinked again. "Willard, I must ask you: Do you trust me?"
"Why, I—" His voice caught. "Yes. Of course I do."
"Then I will speak with you again, when I am full-bodied. When I know more. I dare not say the wrong thing now and alarm you unnecessarily. In the meantime—"
"Max, tell me what's going on!"
"As soon as I am able, Willard." The Logothian sounded anxious. "We must meet soon, in person. But until then, please take great care!" The serpentine shape bowed toward him and then dissolved in the darkness.
Ruskin's mouth opened. He blinked in the gloom, trying in vain to locate his friend's visage. Gone. He'd been talking to nothing but a virtual image. Max had never been here at all.
Virtual image . . .
Of course. How could he have forgotten? Max's ability to project virtual images of himself had been a subject of much banter in the early years of their friendship.
If he could forget that, then what hadn't he forgotten?
"Room," he said softly, shielding his eyes. "Bring up the lights. Very slowly, please."
* * *
Exploring his dwelling, he felt like an adult returning to an old childhood haunt. The apartment was full of discoveries and puzzles—bits of his past that brought back fragments of memory or, more often, frustration at his inability to put the fragments together. The place was small and tidy, walls adorned with holomurals and permanent photo-images that tended toward the astronomical and the abstract. There were no human faces or figures in any of the photographs. The living room was carpeted with a wine-red deep pile; the sofa was upholstered in a rough-textured charcoal-gray, and two chairs in a smooth, cream-colored fabric. The consoles and shelves were all wood with natural finish. The room seemed altogether comfortable, but not ostentatious. It appeared that he earned a respectable income.
He switched on the music console and told it to replay the last piece played. He recognized it at once, a brash and flowing synthesis of Josephson-mode orchestrations. He hummed the counterpoint as he inspected the books and storage slivers on the shelves. The books were mostly poetry and novels; the slivers were labeled with cryptic titles and numbers. Perhaps they had something to do with his work. He paused and closed his eyes. The music, or something else, was making it hard for him to concentrate. He turned away from the shelves and went into the kitchen and set the cook to work preparing dinner from a well-stocked cabinet of flash-preserved meals. He selected a cheese-and-fish dish, slid it into the cook, and went on with his exploration.
The bedroom had a varigrav bed, medium size. He poked through the closets and clothing leaves, recognizing little—except for one burgundy pullover that caught his eye so suddenly, it left him breathless. He drew it out. It looked unworn, and when he held it up to himself before the mirror, he realized that it was too small for him. Puzzled, he returned it to the leaves, then took a second look in the mirror, this time focusing on himself. There was no sign at all now of his head injury, and Jeaves had given his newly grown hair a perfect trim. He ran his fingers through it, feeling its fine, clean texture. He shook his head and walked back out through the kitchen. The aroma of cooking fish dizzied him, not with hunger so much as memories, or fragments of memories. A park by a river; a picnic supper on a summer evening, with a woman . . .
What woman? Reach back . . .
The memory disappeared.
Reluctantly, he returned to the living room. Perhaps it was time to do what he'd been avoiding. He eyed the thinktank consoles. It appeared he possessed considerable cogitative power in his home. For work? Perhaps; but it could be personal storage, as well: diaries, scrapbooks, photo albums. Sliding tentatively into the console seat, he switched on the cogitative system and called up "personal files." Or tried to.
The console informed him that those files were locked.
"Unlock them," he said.
The console answered, "Please bend forward for brain pattern identification."
Puzzled, he obeyed. What files did he have that were so sensitive?
The console said, "Incorrect identification. Please state your name.
"Willard Ruskin! You ought to know!"
"Your brain patterns do not match. Please desist from attempting to view those files. If you attempt again, the police will be notified."
What the hell? In frustration, he rose from the console. He began pacing the room. Your brain patterns do not match. Was this his home or wasn't it? His gaze came to rest on the exerciser. He sighed and climbed into it, closing the restraints around his feet and arms and gripping the hand grips. He started working out slowly, moving his legs in gentle presses, then gradually stretching out his back and arm muscles. Although he could not actually remember using this machine, his muscles seemed to. They took up the movements automatically, limbering first, then pushing harder until he was puffing from the exertion. He began sweating; fatigue came and went, and though he was breathing rapidly, he felt as though he could continue indefinitely.
Finally bringing the machine to a stop, he gave himself a few moments to catch his breath, then nudged the release control and climbed out. His mind was alive with déjà vu: feelings he couldn't place.
It was time for dinner, for more déjà vu. A dinner by a river, with a woman . . . He inhaled the cooking smells, hoping to recapture the memory, and failing. He sighed. Carrying his dinner into the living room, he sat staring at the thinktank unit. The door scanners had passed him; but the scanners on the console were undoubtedly more sophisticated, more sensitive.
The question had to be asked all over again: Was he Willard Ruskin?
As he ate his dinner, the console seemed to gaze back at him with a tireless, baleful eye.
Bright had been dreaming.
It did not know what dreaming was, exactly—in fact found the notion peculiar. Yet surely that was what it had been doing. Imagining. How could something live within a star? Except the star?
Bright had been dreaming.
It had dreamed that others had come to it, passed through it like things of the great darkness, things with perhaps thought but not soul. It had all happened so quickly, Bright could hardly judge, except that for a flicker of an instant, far less than the time for a flare to be cast into the dark, Bright had felt the presence of something other than itself.
In itself.
Something other than star.
There were others, to be sure. There was Near, and there was Small; but though they sang a little and comforted Bright against the dark, they did not think, as Bright thought. There were still others in the beyond, but they were
far
and tiny
and not so bright
as Bright
Several times now it had happened, the awareness of something strange. There was a tightness and a heat that was not right. Bright was old, and not without wisdom. Bright had known lives and Bright had known deaths. Of others, many others. Bright's own death was perhaps closer than wish, nearer than hope. But still Bright sang, still it listened to the music from the others, from the stars.
Bright lived and knew. Knew what was real.
Knew what was not.
This thing, this feeling that it had touched others out of the night, touched them in the instant that they had fled, was a conjuring of the imagination.
Bright had been dreaming.