He climbed quickly out of the tank and hurried to the manual control console. "By whom?"
"I identify our captor as the worldship Calcutta," Kelkontar told him, "the flagship of the fleet of the Arlan Siblings Ltd. Npb."
Keaflyn giggled in puzzlement. The Arlan Siblings? What was this all about?
"Let's have a look," he said.
The situation screens lighted to reveal the half-milelong bulk of the Calcutta hanging alongside, so close as to blank out almost half the sky. The view glowed with the purple wastelight of grapples beams. The Kelkontar was being gripped tightly.
"The Calcutta wishes to communicate, Mark," the ship advised.
"No point in arguing with a ship that size," he chuckled. "Put it on."
The Calcutta's voice had the syrupy mellowness of a professional announcer. "Good watch, Mr. Keaflyn. The Senior Sibling invites you to come aboard, sir."
Keaflyn took that moment to realize that he had awakened, once more, with a dully aching body. But his mood was more perverse than despondent; his giggle sounded ill-tempered to him.
"Convey to the Senior Sibling my compliments and the fact that I'm busy," he replied.
After a pause the Calcutta responded, "The Senior Sibling thanks you, sir, and suggests I inform you that we are proceeding along your warp vector, that is, in the direction of Lumon's Star. We will continue along that course while you are a visitor aboard, sir."
Keaflyn signaled Kelkontar to cut transmission and said, "Is that true, Kelly?
"We are on course, Mark."
"That Sibling is being politely highhanded," he chuckled. "If they don't mean to take no for an answer, I suppose they can use force."
"The Calcutta's beams could pry me apart, according to information in my banks, Mark," the ship verified.
"Okay, put me on again." Then, addressing the Calcutta, he said, "Inform the Senior Sibling I'll be honored to come aboard in twenty minutes."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," replied the worldship. Mark cleansed, dressed, and ate breakfast while puzzling over this peculiar incident. The Arlan Siblings—brother and sister—were almost legendary figures. Through a number of lifetimes they had maintained a partnership begun in the earliest days of interstellar exploration and colonization, and in the process they had accumulated vast wealth—just how vast, only they really knew.
No one had the power to demand an accounting. The Siblings' power was easily the equal of that of any systemic or planetary government. They were, in fact, a code unto themselves.
Keaflyn had read in popular accounts of them, for example, that when a Junior Sibling reached the age of four in a new body—the age marking the end of the generally-accepted period of an ego-field's babyhood right-of-silence—and the ego identified itself, there had never yet been an instance of the parents succeeding in keeping normal guardianship during the Sibling's childhood and adolescence. One way or another, the Senior Sibling always obtained control of the child, and, of course, always the child approved.
They never used lifetime names past the age of four. They were Bartok and Berina Arlan, regardless of current parentage.
"Kelly, which one is Senior Sibling now?" Keaflyn asked as he ate.
"Extrapolating from dependable but 148–year-old data," replied the ship, "Berina Arlan should be Senior at this time."
"Extrapolating?" Keaflyn echoed.
"Yes. The Siblings hold their lives rather precisely to sixty-two-year-cycles, the seniority shifting every thirtyone years. Thus, if neither ever died prematurely, it is possible to extrapolate which is currently senior if it is known which was senior at a precise time in the past." Keaflyn nodded, remembering something else he had read. "That's right. They try to keep their ages about thirty years apart."
"That's correct," the ship said.
"The real question is, what's their interest in me?"
"I don't know, Mark."
"Well, time to go find out."
He cycled through the locks and was met in the spacious, glitteringly appointed reception dock of the Calcutta by a human guide, a middle-aged man dressed in the distinguished though ancient style of a naval officer.
"Please follow me, Mr. Keaflyn," the man requested with a slight bow.
Keaflyn did so, taking in the expensive luxury of the ship's interior.
He had not been aboard a worldship—one of the giant craft used in the early colonization days to transport tens of thousands of colonists at a time to newly-found planets—for nine lifetimes. Then he had been one of the packed-in passengers bound for Deneb Nine.
The Calcutta had obviously been rebuilt from the hull inward, to offer the fullest possible comfort and satisfaction for a handful of people, rather than to provide minimal survival needs for thousands. It was now a "world" ship in a different sense than originally intended—a paradisiacal microcosm of high self-sufficiency, offering its favored inhabitants a rich and varied existence, Keaflyn judged from the glimpses he had of the several decklevels that zipped past as he and his guide dropped along a chute tube.
Finally they hovered, and Keaflyn was moved sideways a few feet to drop a fraction of an inch to a gravitized deck. His guide pointed. "You will find the Senior Sibling swimming, Mr. Keaflyn," he said.
Keaflyn nodded and strolled off through the shrubbery in the indicated direction. Sol-type radiation beamed warmly down from a light source in the unblemished blue above him, and a pleasant breeze murmured through the elms and maples. He could hear the splash of flowing water several seconds before he could see the pool.
He stopped at its edge and gazed out over the swirling surface of pink and blue. A woman, presumably Berina Arlan, was side-stroking with smooth vigor out in the middle, her face away from him. He knelt and studied the surface more closely.
The pool, he realized, was filled with two immiscible stages of parawater, lightly dyed pink and blue, which swirled together in tight marble patterns. He dangled a hand into the water and found the pink was relaxingly warm and the blue tinglingly cool. His grin broadened to a smile at the pleasantness of the sensation. Then he laughed at the notion of people going to such ostentatious lengths as this just to obtain a highly specialized type of pleasure for their bodies.
The woman turned in the water, saw him, and swam over. After a moment in which she examined him with expressionless eyes, she said, "Mark Keaflyn, I'm Berina, Senior Sibling of Arlan Siblings. Please call me Berina." Keaflyn nodded agreeably. "Call me Mark."
"Care for a swim, Mark?"
"I wouldn't mind," he shrugged, "although I'm more interested right now in learning why I was honored by your forceful invitation."
"Then we'll talk first," she said, climbing lithely out of the pool. She was, he saw, a slim, and beautiful woman with a taut, healthy body that looked far more youthful than she could possibly be as the Senior Sibling.
A towel materialized from somewhere, and she sat down beside him at the edge of the water, dangling her feet in the pool while she dried her nude form.
"We almost missed finding you," she said easily. "Our information was that you would go to Lumon's Star from Terra. Evidently you doglegged toward Bensor first." He said, "Yes, a spur-of-the-moment decision that I changed shortly thereafter. You had trouble finding me, then?"
"A bit. Fortunately, the Calcutta's warp detectors have quite a range." She was studying him closely. "Did you dogleg to throw off suspected pursuers?" she asked baldly.
"No. The possibility of pursuit didn't occur to me. You're talking about Sect Dualers, aren't you?"
She nodded.
"Are they your source of information? About me, I mean?"
Again she nodded. "One of our sources. We also have access to Emergency reports."
"Why are you interested?"
"The same reason the Dualists are, essentially."
"You a member?"
She smiled. "Not really. Just think of me as a concerned citizen of the galaxy."
"Be glad to. Concerned about what?"
"As I just told you, the same as the Dualists."
"And one or more Dualists tried to kill me," Keaflyn chuckled.
"I'm not sure Smath had the right solution," Berina replied thoughtfully.
Keaflyn blinked. She wasn't sure killing him was the right solution! He was suddenly very aware that the same hidden servo that had provided Berina's towel could also provide his instant death if this Senior Sibling became sure. This innocent-looking setting of grass, trees, and pool could well be the last scene he would look upon through his present eyes.
And death was no longer a trivial matter to him.
"Look," he exclaimed with annoyance, "it's time the Dualists and you got something straight. I don't know or really give a damn at this point if Negs exist, or if they're a threat to us. I do know Smath jumped to a faulty conclusion if he thought I was possessed by one."
She looked at him. "How do you know?"
"Because twice since he installed this giggle-machine in my head, I've woken up with symptoms like the ones I had that first morning. His sure-fire method of demonexorcise, didn't work; therefore, no demon."
"Oh." She nodded slowly. "You have the symptoms now, don't you, Mark?"
"As a matter of fact, I do. I woke with them about an hour ago—even though that pleasure-impress is as solid as ever."
She said slowly, "That would be very convincing, except for one thing. Smath's method wasn't sure-fire. That's one of the weaknesses of the Dualists. Their data is less accurate and complete than they think.
"Tell me, Mark. Despite being in physical pain, and despite Smath's tampering, what have you been doing?" He thought about the question for a moment, then said glumly, "Trying to go about my work as usual. I haven't allowed these difficulties to stop me from functioning."
"Right. So why assume a Neg is less capable than we are of continuing in the face of adversity? All Smath did was make your invader's job more unpleasant and perhaps cut down on its efficiency by creating a distraction. The only thing Smath was completely right about was his diagnosis."
"Then you're as sure as he was that I'm. . . Neg-ridden?"
She nodded. "Then why aren't you sure Smath's solution was correct?"
Berina lifted her shapely shoulders. "Because I don't know what action the Negs are trying to force. And unlike Smath, I'm not willing to jump to conclusions . . . especially to conclusions that would lead to violations of the human code."
"Seizing my ship and handing me your so-called invitation might be considered a code breach in more fastidious circles," he said with a touch of sarcasm.
She laughed. "I'll try to live with my conscience despite that grievous sin. Now, Mark, I'd like to know a bit about this project of yours, the investigation of stabilities. What's your basic procedure?"
This question struck him as beside the point, and he felt impatient. "We have yet to discover an absolute in nature," he said, determined to keep his answer brief.
"Thus we can't really assume that the stabilities are totally stable, although they appear to be. The stabilities involved must be of an extremely low order . . . trace instabilities, so to speak. I'm going to look for those traces, in an effort to limit and rationalize our concept of stabilities."
"What are you going to do your looking with?"
"A variety of special methods for dealing with trace phenomena. I've spent a couple of lifetimes seeking out those methods and accumulating the needed equipment."
"I see." Berina paused, then asked, "What do you think of the hypothesis that the stabilities are the products of a Senior Creation?"
He shrugged. "Could be. However they came about, they're senior to our present physical universe. Numerous people, for instance, have backtrack impressions of the Resistant Globe recorded dozens of universal cycles ago. For material objects to endure like that . . . well, it's conceivable that they're the result of a creative process that differs in quality from that which forms and destroys our succession of universes."
"Has it occurred to you," Berina demanded, "that the stabilities may serve a vital function?"
"I'm not given to speculating at length about questions that I have insufficient data to answer," he replied tartly.
"I try to get the data first."
"Bully for you," she applauded wryly. "More than one precedent for that approach comes to mind. For instance, a sure way to gather data on whether a gun is loaded is to pull the trigger. Not safe, but sure."
"You're suggesting that my research might unstabilize the stabilities," he remarked.
"I am. Why else would you be singled out for possession by a Neg, except to push you in that direction? At any rate, I consider that one of the possibilities." Keaflyn did not respond immediately. The Senior Sibling had forced some changes in his thinking, and he took a moment to mull them over.
Berina and Bartok Arlan had not attained their power and position by luck. They were widely reputed to be extremely able beings—a pair of hard-heads with a firm grasp of reality. The Senior Sibling was an unlikely person to take Negs seriously on insufficient evidence. Thus, he might be wise to take the notion of his possession less lightly. It could be true.
And if so, what other reason than his work could the Negs have for interest in him? According to the Dualist writings he had scanned the day before, possession by a Neg was not a frequent occurrence, not something that might happen to anybody. Since direct impingement across universal boundaries would be difficult, the target would necessarily be a key individual, the Dualists stated. Keaflyn's research project, and nothing else he could imagine, might make him a key.
So, Berina could be right about that, too.
He said, "You asked about a vital purpose the stabilities might serve, and I presume you would prefer to answer your own question."
"You know the hypothesis," Berina replied. "The stabilities may function as anchors of existence; a better word for them might be bindings. The physical universe has its periods of collapse, but the collapse can't approach totality—the nullification of all physical being—because the stabilities don't collapse. They remain as a skeleton for a new universe to grow upon."
"So, anything bad for the stabilities would be good for the Negs," grunted Keaflyn.
"If the Negs' goal is nonbeing, as the Dualists believe," said Berina, "a weakening of the stabilities would weaken the very fabric of nature they want to destroy. If they could do away with the material products of the Senior Creation, then the presumably dependent Junior Creation—the universe—would experience total collapse.
"And don't sell Dualist ideas short, Mark," she admonished. "You're working with trace phenomena, you say, to gather your data. Essentially, that's what the Dualists have done. Their theories are based on trace events on the backtrack . . . trace in the sense of being highly infrequent and often of debatable interpretation."
"Such as?"
"Such as earlier employment of pleasure-impresses, and the reason why the impresses were used."
Keaflyn nodded, recalling that Tinker had mentioned being involved as a bystander in such a backtrack incident. "Reasons why are not easy to be sure of in a lot of backtrack incidents," he countered.
"They are if you are yourself the instigator of the incident," she replied. After a hesitation, she added, "I've installed a few pleasure-impresses myself, through the centuries, and considered my actions fully justified at the time."
He stared at her.
She added, "Perhaps I should have made information from my own backtrack available to the Dualists. That could have prevented Smath from duplicating my earlier inadequate responses to Neg infiltration. But . . . no, that wouldn't have helped, really. Not even a determined man like Smath could do an adequate job . . . "
Her voice trailed off and Keaflyn growled, "An 'adequate' treatment would have traumatized me so completely that I would immediately cease having enough mind to be the key to anything?"
She nodded.
Keaflyn grunted and stood up. "It hadn't occurred to me to regard Smath as a Mr. Nice Guy, compared to present company—"
"Oh, relax, Mark!" Berina snapped, displaying as much irritation as he felt. "I'm talking about mistakes, not present intentions! Why, I don't intend to kill you, much less wreck what's left of your mind!"
He laughed, surprised at his sense of relief. She didn't intend to kill him!
"What I really want to do is make you understand what a critical position you're in," she told him urgently.
"I want you to realize you're in the front line of the most crucial war ever to hit the cosmos. You've already been wounded by misdirected fire from your own side, but you mustn't let that wound distract you from your job in the fight. You've got to take this war seriously, Mark, and give it your best!"
"Aren't you overplaying it a bit?" he asked mildly. "If this is merely the continuation of a struggle that's gone on since the dawn of the cosmos—"
"But it isn't! There has never been a trillennium like the present. Humanity—and by humanity I mean any creature with a sufficiently strong ego-field as to be capable of scanning its backtrack—"
"Of course," he put in.
"Humanity has never advanced before as far as it has today," she continued. "At long last we've learned to improve ourselves and each other as ego-fields, instead of brutalizing and degrading ourselves—"
"My own recent experience notwithstanding," he nodded.
"—and that makes all the difference. We're going much farther this time than ever before toward understanding and conquering the universe. We're beating hell out of the Negs!
"That must make them frantic, Mark. We've given them no choice but to hit back at us with everything they've got, regardless of the cost to themselves. Their only hope is to halt our progress now, before we become unstoppable. It's your misfortune to have gotten into this conflict, which you didn't even believe existed, just when it has grown extremely hot."
"All right," he said, "let's say you're right about all that. The point remains that, so far as I can tell, I'm playing host to a demon of sorts who can give me aches, and make me feel cross or low, and that's all. My Neg hasn't been guiding my actions or murmuring suggestions into my mental ear. If that's the worst they can do, why fret?"
"They can do more, given the chance, when the right moment comes," she told him. "Being a physicist, Mark, you must remember what a cloud chamber is?"
"Sure. The Wilson cloud chamber. A container of suddenly cooled air in which moisture condenses along the ionized tracks of charged sub-atomic particles. It dates from the first half of the Twentieth Century. It enables physicists to see sub-atomic particles, so to speak. What's that got to do with anything?"
"Precisely what kind of sub-atomic particles does the cloud chamber reveal, Mark?"
"Protons, electrons, positrons—any charged particle, as I recall. I still don't see what this has to do with—"
"Where do these charged particles come from?"
"Well, from various sources. The cloud chamber was probably used first to study cosmic rays—"
"Then the particles come from outside the chamber?" Berina prompted.
"Why, yes, certainly. Almost always. The media in a cloud chamber might occasionally produce a spontaneous fission, but generally an event is set off by a particle from outside. Of course, that particle might strike a particle within the chamber and produce a burst of secondary tracks."
"Good. Now, let's suppose the intruding particle were an entire atom of contramatter. What would happen then?"
Mark laughed. "I'm not sure, since it's never been done, to my knowledge. I know of no one who has put together a contra-atom, much less kept it together long enough to get it into a cloud chamber. But I'd like to see it done. The results should be spectacular."
"All right," Berina said grimly. "Consider our universe a vast cloud chamber, Mark. And consider your Neg invader an atom of contramatter. Not merely a charged particle, but a wholly alien intruder with the capability of initiating destructive chains of events that no native particle could set off. Do you see the analogy?"
Slowly he nodded. "I see it to a degree, although your analogy seems a bit stretched. An ego-field, Neg or normal, is not material, and that limits its capabilities right off."
"On the contrary, because of that its capabilities are unlimited," Berina retorted. "A man-sized chunk of contramatter could at most wipe out one planet, and that would be the end of it. But thought can control matter, can conquer it, and theoretically can even create and destroy it. Do you begin to see the implications?"
"I suppose so," Mark shrugged, feeling both amused and irritated by Berina's lecturing. "But I have no idea what I'm supposed to do about it."
"Fight," she responded. "Don't let that Neg get control over you. Keep the upper hand at all times."
"Does that mean I give up sleeping?" he snorted.
"Every time I wake up my Neg is aching me."
Berina frowned. "I'm not sure sleep has anything to do with it. In any event, you can't fight by staying constantly awake. That would weaken your power to resist. I can't really tell you how to wage your battle. You'll have to learn from experience. Now, would you care for a swim?" That offer, Keaflyn guessed, meant Berina was through talking. "I wouldn't mind," he said.
"Then come on in." She dived from her sitting position and began stroking away toward the far side of the pool. Keaflyn stripped and dived after her.
He hit the water with the mildly pleasant shock he had expected, but what followed was a sensation totally new and delightful. The swirling warm-and-cool parawaters swept in unpredictable courses along his body, a rapid alternation of snuggle-and-tingle that made him yell with pure joy. The pleasure-impress Smath had installed was submerged in and indistinguishable from the ecstasy that flooded his senses.
He wriggled, twisted, dived to the bottom, came up, rapidly ran the gamut of swimming strokes, dived again to examine the stirring paddles that kept the parawaters from separating into layers, and finally swam on out to Berina with a racing crawlstroke.
"You rich kids sure know how to live!" he gurgled and gasped.
"When you're rich enough, luxuries become necessities," she returned with a smile. "How's the ache?"
He had to search his physical sensations for a moment before finding the answer. "Damned if it isn't still there!" he laughed. "My poor, stubborn Neg! Do you suppose the Neg authorities pick pleasure-loving masochist Negs for such assignments?"
"Could be, though if they have been forced to parallel our history, they should all be sane pain-lovers by now."
"Well, I'm going to show him no mercy! I'm going to swim and swim and swim!"
"And sink!" laughed Berina, leaping forward with unexpected speed and shoving him under.
He came up sputtering and made a dive for her. She twisted aside and he missed, but a couple of lunges brought him within grabbing distance of a flailing ankle. He dragged her to the bottom before releasing her. Shooting to the surface, he watched for her head to reappear. Instead, he felt wriggling fingers dig into his ribs. He whirled and clutched her, trying to return the poke in the ribs, which wasn't easy because she shifted in his grasp with the smooth rapidity of an eel. It was all he could do to hang on, but hang on he did, and the struggle suddenly became sexual.
Berina broke away laughing, and for an instant Keaflyn thought she didn't want that kind of play. Then she halted a few feet away, grinning at him and obviously awaiting pursuit.
He chased her up the length of the pool, almost catching a foot once or twice. Then he was in churning water and had the feeling he was trying to swim uphill. The water, now hot-and-cold rather than warm-and-cool, bit him excitingly.
He reached the crest of the tumultuous swell and slid down the far side to find himself and Berina thrown together in a swirling tangle of arms and legs. They were in a cup-shaped depression in the center of an upwelling current where the parawaters, having been separated and recooled and reheated, were returned to the pool. There were no words for his sensations. The uprushing current buoyed them, like heavy corks bobbing on top of a fountain, making swimming unnecessary. And the touch of the desirable body of Berina stormed his senses as powerfully as did the tingling liquid, only in a different manner. They found each other quickly and clung together endlessly, for seconds, or hours, or days, or ages. Then suddenly the hot-cold was too much. They were satiated. They released each other and attacked the upcurved wall of water around them. They went up and over, carried by the current into the relative calm of the rest of the pool. Lazily they swam ashore.
"Wow!" Keaflyn breathed, catching the towel Berina tossed him. "Do you have many more toys like that?"
"Not many," she replied, drying herself. "The pool's our best one. How's the ache?"
He paused in his toweling for a moment, then reported, "It's gone!"
"I thought it would be, after that," she said.
"Poor Neg!" he laughed. Then: "Hey, that's one way to fight it!"
She nodded, slipping into a brief one-piece costume.
"About the most effective way. Mark, you have a choice of remaining aboard if you like. Unfortunately, Sibling business makes it impossible for me to put the Calcutta at your disposal to travel to Lumon's Star or to Locus or the other stabilities you plan to investigate. My brother and I have to be elsewhere, and of course we need the ship with us. Will you stay or leave?"
He thought about it as he dressed. "You're quite a temptation, Berina," he said at last, "and so is your pool. But I may have only this lifetime in which to finish my work. I can't stay."
"Okay. Let's go eat," she said. And Keaflyn knew she would not urge him to change his mind. As they turned away from the pool he saw a teenaged couple approaching, the boy tall, dark-skinned and frowning heavily, the girl blonde, picture-pretty and serene. Berina said, "Mark, this is my brother Bart and his friend Jenvive."
The boy extended his hand. "Ah, the newly-afflicted Mr. Keaflyn," he said, his tone confident but with a touch of tension. "Welcome aboard, Mark. Will you be with us a while?"
"Thank you, Bartok," Keaflyn replied, shaking his head. "No, your sister says the Calcutta can go my way only so far, and I have my work to do."
The Junior Sibling nodded gravely. "Okay, but if the going gets too rough, come on back any time. You'll always be welcome."
"Thanks."
"Now, if you'll pardon us, I'm anxious to hit the water," said Bartok.
"Sure," said Keaflyn, and the boy and girl hurried by, shedding clothing as they went.
Grinning thoughtfully as he followed Berina toward the chute tube, Keaflyn finally said, "Forgive my rich kid and toy cracks, Berina. I was slow to catch on to something."
"Oh? What's that?"
"That I'm not the only person in the universe possessed by a Neg."
She nodded. "There are the two of us and you. Bart and I accept it as normal now, after putting up with it for seven lifetimes. Our position makes us constant key figures. When did you start catching on?"
"Not really until I saw Bartok's painful frown," he said. "Just the three of us, you say? What about top government officials? Aren't they in key positions?"
"No. Bart and I have seen to that. We've played politics endlessly, and sometimes not very cleanly, to prevent the development of an interstellar government. With control restricted to systemic or even planetary levels and thus splintered into thousands of autonomous units, no one unit and no one individual is important enough to merit Neg attention. If we had a unified government . . . " She shuddered slightly before continuing, "Well, there were interstellar governments along the backtrack, you know, and some of them began with strength, honesty, and a reasonable degree of sanity. Without exception, they led to the most degraded, shambled societies life has ever experienced."
"Then the Negs would have to be beaten into helplessness before we can have unity," Keaflyn remarked thoughtfully.
"Total defeat of the Negs would mean total triumph for us," she agreed. "Our conquest of the universe would be total, and every atom of matter would be held and guided by a quantum of life-force. And the unity of all life would be automatic and complete, not a mere matter of having one government."
He laughed. "I'm not at all sure I'd like that."
"Nor I," she agreed. "The Negs may be nature's way of telling us, 'Don't go too far."'