ABOARD THE BEATITUDE

By

Brian W. Aldiss

"It is axiomatic that we who are genetically improved will seek out the Unknown. We will make it Known or we will

destroy it. On occasions, we must also destroy the newly Known. This is the Military Morality."

Commander Philosopher Hijenk Skaramonter in Beatitudes for Conquest

THE great brute projectile accelerated along its invisible pathway. The universe through which it sped was itself in rapid movement. Starlight flashed along the flank of the ship. It moved at such a velocity it could scarcely be detected by the civilizations past which it blasted its course until those civilizations were disintegrated and destroyed by the ship's weaponry.

It built on the destruction. It was now over two thousand miles long, traveling way above the crawl of light, about to enter eotemporality.

Looking down the main corridor running the length of the structure you could see dull red lurking at the far end of it. The Doppler effect was by now inbuilt. Aboard the Beatitude, the bows were traveling faster than the stern...

´Much of the ship is now satisfactorily restored. The hardened hydrogen resembles glass. The renovated living quarters of the ship shine with brilliance. The fretting makes it look like an Oriental palace.

´In the great space on C Deck, four thousand troops parade every day. Their discipline is excellent in every way. Their marching order round the great extent of the Marchway is flawless. These men retain their fighting fitness. They are ready for any eventuality.

It paused here, then continued.

´The automatic cleaners maintain the ship in sparkling order. The great side ports of the ship, stretching from Captain's Deck to D Deck, remain brilliant, constantly re-polished on the exterior against scratches from microdust. It is a continual joy to see the orange blossom falling outside, falling through space, orange and white, with green leaves intertwined.

´All hand-weapons have been well-maintained. Target practice takes place on the range every seventh day, with live ammunition. The silencing systems work perfectly. Our armory systems are held in operational readiness.

´Also, the engines are working again at one hundred-plus percent. We computers control everything. The atmosphere is breathed over and over again. It could not be better. We enjoy our tasks.

´Messing arrangements remain sound, with menus ever changing, as they had been over the first two hundred years of our journey. Men and women enjoy their food; their redesigned anatomies see to that. Athletics in the free-fall area ensure that they have good appetites. No one ever complains. All looked splendidly well. Those dying are later revived.

´We are now proceeding at FTL 2.144. Many suffer hallucinations at this velocity. The Beatitude is constantly catching up with the retreating enemy galaxy. The weapons destined to overwhelm that enemy are kept primed and ready. If we pass within a thousand light-years of a sun, we routinely destroy it, whether or not it has planets. The sun's elements are then utilized for fuel. This arrangement has proved highly satisfactory.

´In ten watches we shall be moving past system X377 at a proximate distance of 210 light-years. Particular caution needed. Computer SJC1

Ship's Captain Hungaman stood rigid, according to Military Morality, while he waited for his four upper echelon personnel to assemble before him. Crew Commander Mabel-Mo Hole was first, followed closely by Chief Technician Ida Precious. The thin figure of Provost-Marshal of Reps and Revs Dido Shappi entered alone. A minute later, Army Commander General Barakuta entered, to stand rigidly to attention before the ship's captain.

"Be easy, people," said Hungaman. As a rep served all parties a formal drink, he said, "We will discuss the latest summary of the month's progress from Space Journey Control One. You have all scanned the communication?"

The four nodded in agreement. Chief Technician Precious, clad tightly from neck to feet in dark green plastic, spoke. "You observe the power node now produces our maximum power yet, Captain? We progress toward the enemy at 2.144. More acceleration is needed."

Hungaman asked, "Latest estimate of when we come within destruction range of enemy galaxy?"

"Fifteen c's approximately. Possibly fourteen point six niner." She handed Hungaman a slip of paper. "Here is the relevant computation."

They stood silent, contemplating the prospect of fifteen more centuries of pursuit. Everything spoken was recorded by SJC2. The constant atmosphere control was like a whispered conversation overheard.

Provost-Marshal Shappi spoke. His resemblance to a rat was increased by his small bristling mustache. "Reps and revs numbers reduced again since last mensis, due to power node replacement."

"Figures?"

"Replicants, 799. Revenants, 625."

The figures were instantly rewired at SJC1 for counter-checking.

Hungaman eyed Crew Commander Hole. She responded instantly. "Sixteen deaths, para-osteoporosi-pneu. Fifteen undergoing revenant operations. One destroyed, as unfit for further retread treatment."

A nod from Hungaman, who turned his paranoid-type gaze on the member of the quartet who had yet to speak, General Barakuta. Barakuta's stiff figure stood like a memorial to himself.

"Morale continuing to decline," the general reported. "We require urgently more challenges for the men. We have no mountains or even hills on the Beatitude. I strongly suggest the ship again be enlarged to contain at least five fair-sized hills, in order that army operations be conducted with renewed energy."

Precious spoke. "Such a project would require an intake of 106 mettons new material aboard ship."

Barakuta answered. "There is this black hole 8875, only three thousand LY away. Dismantle that, bring constituent elements on board. No problem."

"I'll think about it," said Hungaman. "We have to meet the challenges of the centuries ahead."

"You are not pleased by my suggestion?" Barakuta again. "Military Morality must always come first. Thank you." They raised ceremonial flasks. All drank in one gulp. The audience was ended.

Barakuta went away and consulted his private comp, unaligned with the ship's computers. He drew up some psycho-parameters on Ship's Captain Hungaman's state of mind. The parameters showed ego levels still in decline over several menses. Indications were that Hungaman would not initiate required intake of black hole material for construction of Barakuta's proposed five hills.

Something else would need to be done to energize the armies.

Once the audience was concluded, Hungaman took a walk to his private quarters to shower himself. As the walkway carried him down his private corridor, lights overhead preceded him like faithful hounds, to die behind him like extinguished civilizations. He clutched a slip of paper without even glancing at it. That had to wait until he was blush-dried and garbed in a clean robe.

In his relaxation room, Barnell, Hungaman's revenant servant, was busy doing the cleaning. Here was someone with whom he could be friendly and informal. He greeted the man with what warmth he could muster.

Barnell's skin was gray and mottled. In his pale face, his mouth hung loosely; yet his eyes burned as if lit by an internal fire. He was one of the twice-dead.

He said, "I see from your bunk you have slept well. That's good, my captain. Last night, I believe I had a dream. Revs are supposed not to dream, but I believe I dreamed that I was not dreaming. It is curious and unscientific. I like a thing to be scientific."

"We live scientific lives here, Barnell." Hungaman was not attending to the conversation. He was glancing at his standalone, on the screen of which floated the symbols miqoesiy. That was a puzzle he had yet to solve together with many others.

With a sigh, he turned his attention back to the rev.

"Scientific? Yes, of course, my captain. But in this dream I was very uncomfortable because I dreamed I was not dreaming. There was nothing. Only me, hanging on a hook. How can you dream of nothing? it's funny, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's very funny," agreed Hungaman. Barnell told him the same story once a mensis. Memories of revs were notoriously short.

He patted Barnell's shoulder, feeling compassion for him, before returning down the private corridor to the great public compartment still referred to as "the bridge."

Hungaman turned his back to the nearest scanner and reread the words on the slip of paper Ida Precious had given him. His eye contact summoned whispered words: "The SJC1 is in malfunction mode. Why does its report say it is seeing orange blossom drifting in space? Why is no one else remarking on it? Urgent investigation needed."

He stared down at the slip. It trembled in his hand, a silver fish trying to escape back into its native ocean.

"Swim away!" He released his grasp on the fish. It swam across to the port, swam through it, swam away into space. Hungaman hurried to the port; it filled the curved wall. He looked out at the glorious orange blossom, falling slowly past, falling down forever, trying to figure out what was strange about it.

But those letters, miqoesiy they might be numbers... q might be 9, y  might be 7. Suppose e was =... Forget it. He was going mad.

He spread wide his arms to press the palms of his hands against the parency. It was warm to the touch. He glared out at the untouchable.

Among the orange blossom were little blue birds, flitting back and forth. He heard their chirruping, or thought he did. One of the birds flew out and through the impermeable parency. It fluttered about in the distant reaches of the control room. Its cry suggested it was saying "Attend!" over and over.

"Attend! Attend! Attend!"

They were traveling in the direction of an undiscovered solar system, coded as X377. It was only 210 LYs distant. A main sequence sun was orbited by five planets, of which spectroscopic evidence indicated highpop life on two of its planets. Hungaman set obliteration time for when the next watch's game of Bullball was being played. Protesters had been active previously, demonstrating against the obliteration of suns and planets in the Beatitude's path. Despite the arrests then made, there remained a possibility that more trouble might break out: but not when Bull-ball championships were playing.

This watch, Fugitives were playing the champions of F League, Flying Flagellants. Before 27 and the start of play, Hungaman took his place in the Upper Echelon tier. He nodded remotely to other Uppers, otherwise keeping himself to himself. The dizziness was afflicting him again. General Barakuta was sitting only a few seats away, accompanied by an all-bronze woman, whether rep or real Hungaman could not tell at this distance.

The horn blew, the game started, although the general continued to pay more attention to his lady than to the field.

In F League, each side consisted of forty players. Numbers increased as leagues climbed toward J. Gravdims under the field enabled players to make astonishing leaps. They played with two large heavy balls. What made the game really exciting what gave Bullball its popular name of Scoring 'n' Goring was the presence of four wild bulls, which charged randomly round the field of play, attacking any player who got in their way. The great terrifying pitiable bulls, long of horn, destined never to evolve beyond their bovine fury.

Because of this element of danger, by which dying players were regularly dragged off the field, the participants comprised, in the main, revs and reps. Occasionally, however, livers took part. One such current hero of Bullball was fair-haired Surtees Slick, a brute of a man who had never as yet lost a life, who played half-naked for the Fly Flajs, spurning the customary body armor.

With a massive leap into the air, Slick had one of the balls now the blue high-scorer and was away down the field in gigantic hops. His mane of yellow hair fluttered behind his mighty shoulders. The crowd roared his name.

"Surtees... Surtees..."

Two Fugs were about to batter him in midair when Slick took a dip and legged it across the green plastic. A gigantic black bull known as Bronco charged at him. Without hesitation, Slick flung the heavy ball straight at the bull. The ball struck the animal full on the skull. Crunch of impact echoed through the great arena (amplified admittedly by the mitters fixed between the brute's horns).

Scooping up the ball, which rebounded, Slick was away, leaping across the bull's back toward the distant enemy goal. He swiped away two Fug revs who flung themselves at him and plunged on. The goalkeeper was ahead, rushing out like a spider from its lair. Goalkeepers alone were allowed to be armed on the field. He drew his dazer and fired at the yellow-haired hero. But Slick knew the trick. That was what the crowd was shouting: "Slick knows the trick!" He dodged the stun and lobbed the great ball overarm. The ball flew shrieking toward the goal.

It vanished. The two teams, the Fugitives and the Flagellants, also vanished. The bulls vanished. The entire field became instantly empty.

The echo of the great roar died away.

"Surtees... Surtees... Sur..."

Then silence. Deep dead durable silence.

Nothing.

Only the eternal whispered conversation of air vents overhead.

Hungaman stood up in his astonishment. He could not comprehend what had happened. Looking about him, he found the vast company of onlookers motionless. By some uncanny feat of time, all were frozen; without movement they remained, not dead, not alive.

Only Hungaman was there, conscious, and isolated by his consciousness. His jaw hung open. Saliva dripped down his chin.

He was frightened. He felt the blood leave his face, felt tremors seize his entire frame.

Something had broken down. Was it reality or was it purely a glitch, a seizure of his perception?

Gathering his wits, he attempted to address the crew through his bodicom. The air was dead.

He made his way unsteadily from the Upper Echelon. He had reached the ground floor when he heard a voice calling hugely, "Hungaman! Hungaman!"

"Yes, I'm here."

He ran through the tunnel to the fringes of the playing field.

The air was filled with a strange whirring. A gigantic bird of prey was descending on him, its claws outstretched. Its apose-matic wings were spread wide, as wide as the field itself. Looking up in shock, Hungaman saw how fanciful the wings were, fretted at the edges, iridescent, bright as a butterfly's wings and as gentle.

His emotions seemed themselves almost iridescent, as they faded from fear to joy. He lifted his arms to welcome the creature. It floated down slowly, shrinking as it came.

"A decently iridescent descent!" babbled Hungaman, he thought.

He felt his life changing, even as the bird changed, even as he perceived it was nothing but an old tattered man in a brightly colored cloak. This tattered man looked flustered, as he well might have done. He brushed his lank hair from his eyes to reveal a little solemn brown face like a nut, in which were two deeply implanted blue eyes. The eyes seemed to have a glint of humor about them.

"No, I said that," he said, with a hint of chuckle. "Not you."

He put his hands on his hips and surveyed Hungaman, just as Hungaman surveyed him. The man was a perfect imitation of humanin all but conviction.

"Other life-forms, gone forever," he said. "Don't you feel bad about that? Guilty? You and this criminal ship? Isn't something lost forever and little gained?"

Hungaman found his voice.

"Are you responsible for the clearing of the Bullball game?"

"Are you responsible for the destruction of an ancient culture, established on two planets for close on a million years?"

He did not say the word "years," but that was how Hungaman understood it. All he could manage by way of return was a kind of gurgle. "Two planets?"

"The Slipsoid system? They were 210 LYs distant from this ship offering no threat to your passage. Our two planets were connected by quantaspace. It forms a bridge. You destructive people know nothing of quantaspace. You are tied to the material world. It is by quantaspace that I have arrived here." He threw off his cloak. It faded and was gone like an old leaf.

Hungaman tried to sneer. "Across 210 LYs?"

"We would have said ten meters."

Again, it was not the word "meters" he said, but that was how Hungaman understood it.

"The cultures of our two Slipsoid planets were like the two hemispheres of your brain, I perceive, thinking in harmony but differently. Much like yours, as I suppose, but on a magnificently grander scale...

"Believe me, the human brain is, universally speaking, as obsolete as silicon-based semiconductors..."

"So... you... came... here..."

"Hungaman, there is nothing but thinking makes it so. The solid universe in which you believe you live is generated by your perceptions. That is why you are so troubled. You see through the deception, yet you refuse to see through the deception."

Hungaman was recovering from his astonishment. Although disconcerted at the sudden appearance of this pretense of humanity, he was reassured by a low rumbling throughout the ship: particles from the destroyed worlds were being loaded on board, into the cavernous holds.

"I am not troubled. I am in command here. I ordered the extinction of your Slipsoid system, and we have extinguished it, have we not? Leave me alone."

"But you are troubled. What about the orange blossom and the little blue bird? Are they a part of your reality?"

"I don't know what you mean. What orange blossom?"

"There is some hope for you. Spiritually, I mean. Because you are troubled."

"I'm not troubled." He squared his shoulders to show he meant what he said.

'You have just destroyed a myriad lives and yet you are not troubled?" Inhuman contempt sounded. "Not a little bit?"

Hungaman clicked his fingers and began to walk back the way he had come. "Let's discuss these matters, shall we? I am always Prepared to listen."

The little man followed meekly into the tunnel. At a certain point, Hungaman moved fast and pressed a button in the tiled wall. Metal bars came flashing down. The little man found himself trapped in a cage. It was the way Barakuta's police dealt with troublemakers on the Bullball ground.

"Excellent," said Hungaman, turning to face the intruder. "Now, I want no more conjuring tricks from you. Tell me your name first of all."

Meekly, the little man said, "You can call me Manifold."

Manifold was standing behind a leather-bound armchair in a black gown. Hungaman was on the other side of a desk, the top of which held nothing but an inset screen. He found he was sitting down on a hard chair. A ginger-and-white cat jumped onto his lap. How the scene had changed so suddenly was beyond his comprehension.

"But but how"

The little man ignored Hungaman's stutter.

"Are you happy aboard your ship?" Manifold asked.

Hungaman answered up frankly and easily, to his own surprise: it was as if he was glad to find that metal bars were of no account. "I am not entirely happy with the personnel. Let me give you an example. You realize, of course, that we have been making this journey for some centuries. It would be impossible, of course, without aided longevity. Nevertheless, it has been a long while. The enemy galaxy is retreating through the expanding universe. The ship is deteriorating rapidly. At our velocities, it is subject to strain. It has constantly to be rebuilt. Fortunately, we have invented XHX, hardened hydrogen, with which to refurbish our interiors. The hull is wearing thin. I think that accounts for the blue bird which got in."

As he spoke, he was absentmindedly stroking the cat. The cat lay still but did not purr.

"I was consulting with Provost-Marshal Shappi about which revs and reps to use in this Bullball match, which I take it you interrupted, when a rating entered my office unannounced. I ordered him to wait in the passage. 'Ah,' he said, 'the passage of time.' It was impertinent to answer back like that. It would not have happened a decade ago."

The little man leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs and clasping his hands together. Smiling, he said, "You're an uneasy man, I can see. Not a happy man. The cat does not purr for you. This voyage is just a misery to you."

"Listen to me," said Hungaman, leaning forward, unconsciously copying the older man's attitude. "You may be the figment of a great civilization, now happily defunct, but what you have to say about me means nothing."

He went on to inform his antagonist that even now tractor beams were hauling stuff into one of the insulated holds, raw hot stuff at a few thousand degrees, mesons, protons, corpuscles, wave particles a great trail of material smaller than dust, all of which the Beatitude would use for fuel or building material. And those whirling particles were all that was left of Manifold's million-year-old civilization.

"So much for your million-year-old civilization. Time it was scrapped."

"You're proud of this?" shrieked Manifold.

"In our wake, we have destroyed a hundred so-called civilizations. They died, those civilizations, to power our passage, to drive us ever onward. We shall not be defeated. No, I don't regret a damned thing. We are what humanity is made of." Oratory had hold of him. "This very ship, this worldlet, is what was that term in use in the old Christian Era?yes, it's a cathedral to the human spirit. We are still young, but we are going to succeed, and the less opposition to us there is, the better."

His violent gesture disturbed the cat, which sprang from his lap and disappeared. Its image remained suspended in midair, growing fainter until it was gone.

"Mankind is as big as the universe. Sure, I'm not too happy with the way things are aboard this ship, but I don't give a tinker's cuss for anything outside our hull."

He gave an illustrative glance through the port as he spoke. Strangely, the Bullball game was continuing. A gored body was being elevated from the trampled field, trailing blood. The crowd loved it.

'As for your Slipsoid powers what do I care for them? I can nave you disintegrated any minute I feel like it. That's the plain truth. Do you have the power to read my mind?"

'You don't have that kind of mind. You're an alien life-form. It's a blank piece of paper to me."

"If you could read it, you would see how I feel about you. Now. What are you going to do?"

For response, the little man began to disintegrate, shedding his pretense of humanity. As soon as the transformation began, Hungaman pressed a stud under the flange of the desk. It would summon General Barakuta with firepower.

Manifold almost instantaneously ceased to exist. In his place a mouth, a tunnel, formed, from which poured well, maybe it was a tunnel mouth for this strange concept, quantaspace from which poured, poured Hungaman could not grasp it ... poured what?solid music?... wave particles?... pellets of zero substance?... Whatever the invasive phenomenon was, it was filling up the compartment, burying Hungaman, terrified and struggling, and bursting on, on, into the rest of the giant vessel, choking its arteries, rushing like poison through a vein. Alarms were sounding, fire doors closing, conflagration crews running. And people screaming screaming in sheer disgusted horror at this terrible irresistible unknown overcoming them. Nothing stopped it, nothing impeded it.

Within a hundred heartbeats, the entire speeding Beatitude worldlet was filled completely with the consuming dust. Blackness. Brownness. Repletion. Nonexistence.

Hungaman sat at his desk in his comfortable office. From his windows such was his status, his office had two windows he looked out on the neat artificial lawns of academia, surrounded by tall everlasting trees. He had become accustomed to the feeling of being alive.

He was talking to his brainfinger, a medium-sized rep covered in a fuzzy golden fur, through which two large doggy eyes peered sympathetically at his patient.

Hungaman was totally relaxed as he talked. He had his feet up on the desk, his hands behind his neck, fingers locked together: the picture of a man at his ease, perfect if old-fashioned. He knew all about reps.

"My researches were getting nowhere. Maybe I was on the verge of an NB you know, a nervous breakdown. Who cares?

That's maybe why I imagined I saw the orange blossom falling by the ports. On reflection, they were not oranges but planets."

"You are now saying it was not blossom but the actual fruits, the oranges?" asked the brainfinger.

"They were what I say they were. The oranges were bursting exploding. They weren't oranges so much as worlds, whole planets, dropping down into oblivion, maybe meeting themselves coming up." He laughed. "The universe as orchard. I was excited because I knew that for once I had seen through reality. I remembered what that old Greek man, Socrates, had said, that once we were cured of reality we could ourselves become real. It's a way of saying that life is a lie."

"You know it is absurd to say that, darling. Only a madman would claim that there is something unreal about reality. Nobody would believe such sophistry."

"Yes, but remember the majority is always wrong!"

"Who said that?"

"Tom Lehrer? Adolf Hitler? Mark Twain? Einstein McBeil? Socrates?"

"You've got Socrates on the brain, Hungaman, darling. Forget Socrates! We live in a well-organized military society, where such slogans as 'The majority is always wrong' are branded subversive. If I reported you, all this" he gestured about him, "would disappear."

"But I have always felt I understood reality-perception better than other people. As you know, I studied it for almost a century, got a degree in it. Even the most solid objects, chairs, walls, rooms, lives they are merely outward forms. It is a disconcerting concept, but behind it lies truth and beauty.

"That is what faster-than-light means, incidentally. It has nothing to do with that other old Greek philosopher, Einstein: it's to do with people seeing through appearances. We nowadays interpret speeding simply as an invariant of stationary, with acceleration as a moderator. You just need a captain with vision.

"I was getting nowhere until I realized that an oil painting of my father, for instance, was not really an oil painting of my rather but just a piece of stretched canvas with a veneer of variously colored oils. Father himself again, problematic. I was born unilaterally."

The brainfinger asked, "Is that why you have become, at least in your imagination, the father of the crew of the Beatitude!"

Hungaman removed his feet from the desk and sat up rigidly. "The crew have disappeared. You imagine I'm happy about that? No, it's a pain, a real pain."

The brainfinger began to look extra fuzzy.

"Your hypothesis does not allow for pain being real. Or else you are talking nonsense. For the captain of a great weapon-vessel such as the Beatitude you are emotionally unstable."

Hungaman leaned forward and pointed a finger, with indications of shrewdness, and a conceivable pun, at the brainfinger.

"Are you ordering me to return to Earth, to call off our entire mission, to let the enemy galaxy get away? Are you trying to relieve me of my command?"

The brainfinger said, comfortingly, "You realize that at the extra-normal velocities at which you are traveling, you have basically quit the quote real world unquote, and hallucinations are the natural result. We brainfingers have a label for it: TPD, tachyon perception displacement. Ordinary human senses are not equipped for such transcendental speeds, is all..."

Hungaman thought before speaking. "There's always this problem with experience. It does not entirely coincide with consciousness. Of course you are right about extra-normal velocities and hallucination... Would you say wordplay is a mark of madness or near-madness?"

"Why ask me that?"

"I have to speak to my clonther shortly. I need to check something with him. His name's Twohunga. I'm fond of him, but since he has been in Heliopause HQ, his diction has become strange. It makes me nervous."

The brainfinger emitted something like a sigh. He felt that Hungaman had changed the subject for hidden motives.

He spoke gently, almost on tiptoe. "I shall leave you alone to conquer your insecurity. Bad consciences are always troublesome. Get back on the bridge. Good evening. I will see you again tomorrow. Have a nice night." It rose and walked toward the door, narrowly missed, readjusted, and disappeared.

"Bad conscience! What an idiot!" Hungaman said to himself. "I'm afraid of something, that's the trouble. And I can't figure out what I'm afraid of." He laughed. He twiddled his thumbs at great speed.

The Beatitude had attained a velocity at which it broke free from spatial dimensions. It was now traveling through a realm of latent temporalities. Computer SJC1 alone could scan spatial derivatives, as the ship-projectile it governed headed after the enemy galaxy. The Beatitude had to contend with racing tachyons and other particles of frantic mobility. The tachyons were distinct from light. Light did not enter the region of latent temporalities. Here were only eotemporal processes, the beginnings and endings of which could not be distinguished one from another.

The SJC1 maintained ship velocities, irrespective of the eotemporal world outside, or the sufferings of the biotemporal world within.

Later, after a snort, Hungaman went to the top of the academy building and peered through the telescope. There in the cloudless sky, hanging to the northwest, was the hated enigmatic word if indeed it was a word hiseobiw... Hiseobiw, smudgily written in space fires. Perhaps it was a formula of some kind. Read upside down, it spelt miqoesiy. This dirty mark in space had puzzled and infuriated military intelligentsia for centuries. Hungaman was still working on the problem, on and off.

This was what the enemy galaxy had created, why it had become the enemy. How had it managed this bizarre stellar inscription? And why? Was miqoesiy aimed at the Solar system? What did it spell? What could it mean? Was it intended to help or to deter? Was it a message from some dyslexic galactic god? Or was it, as a joker had suggested, a commercial for a pair of socks?

No one had yet determined the nature of this affront to cosmology. It was for this reason that, long ago, the Beatitude had

been launched to chastise the enemy galaxy and, if possible, decipher the meaning of hiseobiw or miqoesiy.

A clenched human fist was raised from the roof of the academic building to the damned thing. Then its owner went inside again.

Hungaman spoke into his voxputer. "Beauty of mental illness. Entanglements of words and appearances, a maze through which we try to swim. I believe I'm getting through to the meaning of this enigmatic sign...

"Yep, that does frighten me. Like being on a foreign planet. A journey into the astounded Self, where truth lies and lies are truth. Thank god the hull of our space vessel is not impermeable. It represents the ego, the eggnog. These bluebirds are messengers, bringing in hope from the world outside. TPD must remember that!"

Hungaman, as he had told the brainfinger to little effect, had a clonther, a clone-brother by the name of Twohunga. Twohunga had done well, ascending the military ranks, until as Steel-Major Twohungahe was appointed to the WWW, the World Weaponry Watch on Charon, coplanet of Pluto.

So Hungaman put through a call to the Heliopause HQ.

"Steel-Major here... haven't heard from you for thirty-two years, Hungaman. Yes, mmm, thirty-two. Maybe only thirty-one. How's your promotion?"

"The same. You still living with that Plutottie?"

"I disposed of her." The face in the globe was dark and stormy, the plastic mitter banded across its forehead. "I have a repa womanroid for my satisfactions now. What you might call satisfactions. Where are you, precisely? Still on the Beatitude, I guess? Not that that's precise in any way..." He spoke jerkily and remotely, as if his voice had been prerecorded by a machine afflicted by hiccups.

"I'm none too sure. Or if I am sure, I am dead. Maybe I am a rev," said Hungaman, without giving his answer a great deal of thought. "It seems I am having an episode. It's to do with the extreme velocity, a velocillusion... We're traversing the eotem-poral, you know." He clutched his head as he spoke, while a part of him said tauntingly to himself, You're hamming it up...

"Brainfinger. Speak to a brainfinger, Hungaman," Twohunga advised.

"I did. They are no help."

"They never are. Never."

"It may have been part of my episode. Listen, Twohunga, Heli-pause HQ still maintains contact with the Beatitude. Can you tell me if the ship is still on course, or has it been subjugated by life-forms from the Slipsoid system which have invaded the ship?"

"System? What system? The Slipsoid system?"

"Yes. X377. We disintegrated it for fuel as we passed."

"So you did. Mm, so you did. So you did, indeed. Yes, you surely disintegrated it."

"Will you stop talking like that!"

Twohunga stood up, to walk back and forth, three paces one way, swivel on heel, three paces the other way, swivel on heel, in imitation of a man with an important announcement in mind.

He said, "I know you keep ship's time on the Beatitude, as if the ship has a time amid eotemporality, but here in Sol system we are coming up for Year One Million, think of it, with all the attendant celebrations. Yep, Year One Million, count them. Got to celebrate. We're planning to nuclearize Neptune, nuclearize it, to let a little light into the circumference of the system. Things have changed. One Million... Yes, things have changed. They certainly have. They certainly are..."

"I asked you if we on shipboard have been subjugated by the aliens."

"Well, that's where you are wrong, you see. The wrong question. Entirely up the spout. Technology has improved out of all recognition since your launch date. All recognition... Look at this."

The globe exploded into a family of lines, some running straight, some slightly crooked, just like a human family. As they went, they spawned mathematical symbols, not all of them familiar to Hungaman. They originated at one point in the bowl and ricocheted to another.

Twohunga said, voice-over, "We used to call them 'black holes,' remember? That was before we domesticated them. Black holes, huh! They are densers now. Densers, okay? We can propel them through hyperspace. They go like spit on a hot stove. Pro-pelled. They serve as weaponry, these densers, okay? Within about the next decade, the next decade, we shall be able to hurl them at the enemy galaxy and destroy it. Destroy the whole thing..." He gave something that passed for a chuckle. "Then we shall see about their confounded hiseobiw, or whatever it is."

Hungaman was horrified. He saw at once that this technological advance, with densers used as weapons, rendered the extended voyage of the Beatitude obsolete. Long before the ship could reach the enemy galaxy always supposing that command of the ship was regained from the Slipsoid invader the densers would have destroyed their target.

"This is very bad news," he said, almost to himself. "Very bad news indeed."

"Bad news? Bad news? Not for humanity," said Twohunga sharply. "Oh, no! We shall do away with this curse in the sky for good and all."

"It's all very well for you to say that, safe at Heliopause HQ. What about those of us on the Beatitude if any of us are there anymore... ?"

Twohunga began to pace again, this time taking four paces to the left, swivel on heel, four paces to the right, swivel on heel.

He explained, not without a certain malice, that it was not technology alone which had advanced. Ethics had also taken a step forward. Quite a large step, he said. He emitted a yelp of laughter. A considerably large step. He paused, looking over his shoulder at his clonther far away. It was now considered, he stated, not at all correct to destroy an entire cultured planet without any questions asked.

In fact, to be honest, and frankness undoubtedly was the best policy, destroying any planet on which there was sentient life was now ruled to be a criminal act. Such as destroying the ancient Slipsoid dual-planet culture, for instance...

As Captain of the Beatitude, therefore, Hungaman was a wanted criminal and, if he were caught, would be up for trial before the TDC, the Trans planetary Destruction Crimes tribunal.

"What nonsense is this you are telling" Hungaman began.

"Nonsense you may call it, but that's the law. No nonsense, no! Oh, no. Cold fact! Culture destruction, criminal act. It's you, Hungaman, you!"

In a chill voice, Hungaman asked, "And what of Military Morality?"

"What of Military, what of Military Morality?' he asks. Military Morality! It's a thing of the past, the long long past! Pah! A criminal creed, criminal... We're living in a new In fact, I should not be talking to a known genocidal maniac at all, no, not a word, in case it makes me an accessory after the fact."

He broke the connection.

Hungaman fell to the floor and chewed the leg of his chair.

It was tough but not unpalatable.

"It's bound to be good for him," said a voice.

"They were an omnivorous species," said a second voice in agreement though not speaking in speech exactly.

Seeing was difficult. Although it was light, the light was of an uncomfortable wavelength. Hungaman seemed to be lying down, with his torso propped up, enabling him to eat.

Whatever it was he was eating, it gave him strength. Now he could see, although what he could see was hard to make out. By what he took to be his bedside two rubbery cylinders were standing, or perhaps floating. He was in a room with no corners or windows. The illumination came from a globular object which drifted about the room, although the light it projected remained steady.

"Where am I?" he asked.

The two cylinders wobbled and parts of them changed color. "There you are, you see. Typical question, 'Where am I?' Always the emphasis on the Self. I, I, I. Very typical of a human species. Probably to be blamed on the way in which they reproduce. It's a bisexual species, you know."

"Yes, I know. Fatherhood, motherhood ... I shall never understand it. Reproduction by fission is so much more efficient the key to immortality indeed."

They exchanged warm colors.

"Quite. And the intense pleasure, the joy, of fission itself..."

"Look, you two, would you mind telling me where I am. I have other questions I can ask, but that one first." He felt the nutrients flowing through his body, altering his constitution.

"You're on the Beatitude, of course."

Despite his anxiety, he found he was enjoying their color changes. The colors were so various. After a while he discovered he was listening to the colors. It must, he thought, be something he ate.

Over the days that followed, Hungaman came slowly to understand his situation. The aliens answered his questions readily enough, although he realized there was one question in his mind he was unable to ask or even locate.

They escorted him about the ship. He was becoming more cylindrical, although he had yet to learn to float. The ship was empty with one exception: a Bullball game was in progress. He stood amazed to see the players still running, the big black bulls still charging among them. To his astonishment, he saw Surtees Slick again, running like fury with the heavy blue ball, his yellow hair flowing.

The view was less clear than it had been. Hungaman fastened his attention on the bulls. With their head-down shortsighted stupidity, they rushed at individual players as if, flustered by their erratic movements, the bulls believed a death, a stillness, would resolve some vast mystery of life they could never formulate.

Astonished, Hungaman turned to his companions.

"It's for you," they said, coloring in a smile. "Don't worry, it's not real, just a simulation. That sort of thing is over and done with now, as obsolete as a silicon-based semiconductor."

"To be honest, I'm not sure yet if you are real and not simulations. You are Slipsoids, aren't you? I imagined we had destroyed you. Or did I only imagine I imagined we had destroyed you?"

But no. After their mitochondria had filled the ship, they assured him, they were able to reestablish themselves, since their material was contained aboard the Beatitude. They had cannibalized the living human protoplasm, sparing only Hungaman, the captain.

It was then a comparatively simple matter to redesign quanta-space and rebuild their sun and the two linked planets. They had long ago mastered all that technology had to offer. And so here they were, and all was right with the world, they said, in flickering tones of purple and a kind of mauve.

"But we are preserving you on the ship," they said.

He asked a new variant of his old question. "And where exactly are we and the Beatitude now?"

"Velocity killed. Out of the eotemporal."

They told him, in their colors, that the great ship was in orbit about the twin planets of Slipsoid, "forming a new satellite."

He was silent for a long while, digesting this information, glad but sorry, sorry but glad. Finally, he said and now he was rapidly learning to talk in color"I have suffered much. My brain has been under great pressure. But I have also learned much. I thank you for your help, and for preserving me. Since I cannot return to Earth, I hope to be of service to you."

Their dazzling bursts of color told Hungaman they were gazing affectionately at him. They said there was one question they longed to ask him, regarding a matter which had worried them for many centuries.

"What's the question? You know I will help if I can."

There was some hesitation before they colored their question.

"What is the meaning of this hiseobiw we see in our night sky?"

"Oh, yes, that! Let me explain," said Hungaman.

He explained that the so-called letters of hiseobiw, or preferably miqoesiy, were not letters but symbols of an arcane mathematics. It was an equation, more clearly written for the space fires had drifted as

They colored, "Meaning?"

"We'll have to work it out between us," Hungaman colored back. "But I'm pretty sure it contains a formula that will clear brains of phylogenetically archaic functions. Thereby, it will, when applied, change all life in the universe."

"Then maybe we should leave it alone."

"No," he said. "We must solve it. That's human nature."