And the World Changes - A M Kirk (books to read fiction txt) 📗

moment he saw them – creatures out of a sci-fi movie flapping away in the distance, long-billed and bat-winged and altogether terrifying: pterodactyls! Mark almost retreated back the way he had come.
Then some bushes stirred in the middle distance and an odd-looking creature, half-pig, half alligator it seemed, emerged and turned an almond eye in Mark’s direction. A reptile tongue flapped lazily from a mouth that widened into what looked like an amiable grin. It reminded Mark of a big, daft, friendly dog.
But he did not want to hazard patting a dog with row over row of wickedly sharp teeth so he exercised the better part of valour, and curiosity, and withdrew. The Soros zoo. He could easily imagine the sensation this would cause back on earth. The Age of the Dinosaurs come to life! He wondered if a t-rex or two were roaming in the distances. Not much could surprise him now.
He came, at last, with reluctant steps, back to the bridge, the command centre of the mighty ship. Here the immensely powerful machines that controlled all the ship’s complex systems could be found and accessed. There were no banks of buttons and controls and flashing lights as there might be in a human version of an interstellar craft, because the Soros were telepathic. And Mark realized that the “computer system” was partly organic in construction – it was alive, and it communicated mind to mind.
But before he could give himself over to exploring this wonder, Mark felt the urgings of a duty he knew he had been postponing. He must do what was right. He could not allow the Soros, who had given their lives to save a planet no longer theirs, to lie dead in their ship without proper disposal and proper ceremony.
He summoned the robots.

**********

Logan was drunk. He visited the motel bar and ordered beer and whisky. The whisky made him feel sick right away and he could not drink it. Not being accustomed to alcohol, three bottles of European lager made him dizzy, but he felt good. From time to time he held a paper towel to his nose to check if there was any more blood but it seemed to have stopped. He sat alone in a stamped red leather chair and drank and reflected.
The Chairman was gone. Of that he was sure.
Unbidden a memory flashed upon his mind. His father and mother standing beside a car. The car is red and shiny and the young Logan, at four years old, loves to touch its polished, smooth, perfect surface. But he is sad now, he is crying, heart-broken. His parents are leaving.
“Hush now, Simon,” says his father, stooping to pick him up in his arms. “Don’t be a baby, now. You’re going to be fine with Aunty Mags. She’s looked after you before.”
He feels close to his father’s smooth-skinned face; he smells the shaving foam and he loves that smell. He wants to throw his arms round his father’s neck.
His father says: “We’re only going away for two nights, Si, you know that. We’d never leave you, honey, for any longer than that. We love you, Simon! And Aunty Mags loves you. We’ll be back on Sunday…”
Logan took a mouthful of beer. His unblinking stare appears focused on the table in front of him but other guests have noticed something odd about him. The barman, cleaning his glasses, keeps an eye on the strange man in the corner who has apparently been bashed in the nose.
“Sunday, pet. Back on Sunday. ‘Bye! Bye!”
Aunty Mags clutches his hand.
“Daddy – don’t go,” whispers the four-year old boy.
Sunday comes and police are at Aunty Mags door. Car crash. Thursday, Logan remembers, was the day of the interment. Aunty Mags dresses him in an itchy suit and hateful black tie and his parents are lowered into a place and then a container is placed into a hole in a wall. Soon there are no more memories of Aunty Mags. There is a Home, and other boys, strange unnerving boys, in Glasgow, in a dull street where it always seems to be raining and years of numb unhappiness wrap around and cover up, cover up.
Back in the safety of his room Logan opened the minibar and snatched up a whisky miniature. It was a Soros Malt. He did not care. Nothing mattered any more. He forced himself to drink the whisky.
The nose-bleed began again, in earnest.

**********

You have no idea how powerful you can be…
Tended by robots, with all care taken, Mark supervised the Soros bodies being laid in the air-lock. Something ought to be said, he felt.
I have no words, he said, and continued with long, thoughtful pauses between the sentences: Some of you would have killed me if you could have. One of you saved me. Your actions killed my father. All of you made me into something, turned me into something more than human. God knows what. God knows what you’ve done to me. But somehow we’ve saved the world. I have no words. No words for you would be enough. The last of your race.
He closed the inner door.
Goodbye.
He opened the outer door.
The escaping pressure ensured the bodies left the airlock. The momentum would carry them away from the ship. They would continue moving through interstellar space forever. No bacteria could ever decay them. The tomb of space admits no corruption.
Mark closed the outer door and returned to the command deck.
You have no idea how powerful you can be…
He located the equivalent of an interface: a semi-circle of what appeared to be a metallo-plastic surface stretching three metres around in the center of the command deck. Opposite, and some fifteen metres from the semi-circular console was an enormous viewscreen, arcing 180 degrees so he could see ahead, to the left and to the right. It was blank dark at the moment, obviously not powered up. There were no buttons or obvious controls, but there were a series of indentations and each of these was furrowed into three grooves. The Soros had three fingered hands, mused Mark and gingerly placed his fingers into the grooves.
The surface gave way. It was like liquid plasticine and seemed to enfold part of his hands. But Mark did not feel unsafe or in any way threatened by what happened. A sensation of pleasant warmth slowly spread through his limbs and filled his mind. He was linked to the nerve-centre of the ship, the supreme intelligence that controlled all the myriad systems and operations and functions.
The system seemed to be waiting for him to make a move.
Or to ask a question.
How powerful am I?
Again his power surged through him and a thousand images presented themselves to his mind’s eye. The system showed him what he could do. The rush of images and the penetrating insights proved too much. Mark fell forward over the console, struck his head off the soft surface and collapsed backwards on the floor.

**********

He awoke. He was looking at the ceiling of the command deck and he was instantly aware of everything that had happened – he remembered everything the system had shown him. He began to laugh.
He levered himself off the floor and held out his hands. He examined them as if seeing them for the first time. His power could be channeled through his hands. Humans had been dimly aware of their potential for thousands of years, and unconsciously demonstrated it in their use of hand gestures. Shaking hands to prove good intent, touching to give comfort, stabbing fingers and bunching fists to show purpose and aggression, even rubbing an aching limb to bring relief – all signs and means of channeling the power that lies within.
He cupped his hands in front of him and imagined… Atoms spun faster, heat resulted, little balls of light formed, rotating and spinning within a sphere controlled by his cupped hands. He released the ball of hot light and it flew around the room, but under Mark’s direction and finally split apart into a mini-firework display of beams and sparkles.
A conjuring trick. But that same ball of light could have been sent hurtling and smashing through matter with devastating force. The Soros had made him a weapon indeed. He could harness the forces that bound the universe – the nuclear forces, the electro-magnetic and the gravitic.
There was virtually nothing he could not do by manipulating these elemental forces: but he understood some things with the utmost clarity. Once a thing was destroyed it could not be restored. You can’t uncook a steak and turn it back into a cow. You can’t unkill a living thing once it’s dead.
His background, his upbringing and his mother had given him his sense of values and his ideas of right and wrong; and this Soros “computer” system had reinforced that strong vein of common sense he already possessed. Mark realized that this “evolution” had ramifications and consequences that could not be sorted out in a day or a month or a year. If he was going to be a superman he would have to think this through for a long while.
What would Carrie say? he wondered, and smiled that smile she loved so much.
He put his hands in the grooves again. The viewscreen lit up. Mark could sense the myriads of data accumulated and stored in vast memory banks. The ship had brilliantly detailed star charts and navigation programmes. It navigated by the detection and manipulation of gravitons as well as light particles and, protected by an electro-magnetic force-field, it could travel at virtually light speed without colliding with space rocks and meteors and all the debris that floated between planets and stars.
Mark wanted the ship to turn towards earth… and the ship turned towards earth, turned as smoothly as if had been floating in oil. The system had sensed or he had somehow transmitted his desire and the mighty ship had obeyed. A dark shape the size of an old penny appeared to cross the viewscreen as the massive ship tilted and turned: Mark knew that was the frozen planet Pluto. Beyond it, very small, and blending in with the millions of other stars, was the good old sun, a mere speck of light. The system helped him to instinctively identify it. He wanted to zoom in so he could see Earth, so the viewscreen re-aligned slightly and the magnification increased a thousandfold and there was Earth, sharply focused, blue and white and calling him back. It must have looked this way to the Soros, Mark reflected. They too must have seen their home planet with a fluttering feeling in their hearts. The viewscreen returned to normal magnification.
The pod in which Mark had been imprisoned still drifted off the bow. Mark brought it back aboard and stowed it in its proper place.
Right, he thought, let’s just see what this baby can do! The ship shot forward and Pluto vanished behind. The light from the stars changed colour and Mark knew that somehow