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Chapter Five

"There are no abnormal emanations from the target zone," said the artificial intelligence controlling Hansen's intrusion capsule.


In its current mode, the capsule's radiation on all spectra was as close to zero as Consensus technology could arrange. That meant Hansen had no radar, no lasers—no emission rangefinding of any sort. He was dependent on the target to reveal itself when the intrusion capsule got close enough.


If North had managed to blank out a planet as thoroughly as Consensus scientists had shielded this capsule, the two were going to intersect with what would seem to be a hell of a jolt from Hansen's side.


"On a dark stormy night . . . ," Hansen sang.


Hansen had a pleasant voice, but he couldn't carry a tune even on a good day.


". . . as the train rattled on. . . ."


A good day was one on which Hansen wasn't scared and strapped into a seat with only the dim blue numerals of the console to illuminate his surroundings. In low-observable mode, the AI shut down all non-essentials so that there was as little energy as possible to be trapped within the hull as heat.


It was out of his hands. There was nothing to expect from the next few moments except death, and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. He'd been shot at before, but it wasn't like that. Then he'd had a gun in his hand or at least the chance of getting to a gun. . . .


". . . one young man with a babe in his arms," Hansen sang tunelessly, "who sat there with a bowed down head."


His palms were sweaty, his skin prickled, and he figured he knew now what it was like to be under artillery fire where life or death were at the whim of entities in the invisible distance.


"The calculated time of arrival is five seconds—" said the artificial intelligence.


There was no lack of data for the calculations—  


"Four—"


—because the Consensus handlers had watched three fleets vanish at the intersection point.  


"Three—"


The voices in the mist might think an intrusion capsule—  


"Two—"


—could slip through where a fleet couldn't, but Hansen didn't believe that.  


"One—"


If it wasn't impact and instantaneous death waiting, what—  


"N—" said the artificial intelligence, the first grunt of "Now!" before it cut off and the console display went dead black.


Hansen listened to the sound of blood coursing through the veins of his ears.


The next line of the song went, 'The innocent one began crying just then . . .' Hansen would've kept singing to show the bastards somewhere that being trapped in limbo until his air supply failed didn't terrify him; but his mouth was too dry to form the words.


The hull of the capsule quivered. One of the hull plates shifted like a shingle that had rotted away from the staple holding it to the wall.


Light bathed Hansen through a crack that widened as the plate fell off completely. The capsule's three-layer coating of absorptive materials had already sloughed like the carcase of a beached jellyfish.


The console displays were still dead.


Hansen should've been dead also. The amount of heat or other radiation it would take to make the capsule disintegrate would carbonize a human being before he knew what was happening.


Not that Hansen did know what was happening.


Three more hull plates fell away, clanging against one another and, more mutedly, on the ground beneath.


Hansen still couldn't see much, just blue sky with some impressive cumulus clouds in the distance. He hit the quick-release plate in the center of his restraints and rose with a neutral look on his face.


Hansen was more than 200 meters in the air, on top of a huge building. He was looking out over the neat patterns of farmland, and—


The floor of the intrusion capsule gave way and dropped Hansen thirty centimeters to the ground. That shouldn't've been unexpected, the way the upper hull was crumbling, but everydamnthing was a surprise just now. The read-outs and touch-sensitive panels on the console all had a frosted look as though they were withering under extreme heat.


Particularly surprising was the fact that he was alive.


The capsule had—landed?—on a promenade around the building's roof. Behind Hansen was the quarter-sphere sheltering the audience section of a 3,000-seat odeum.


Two men and a woman came from a door in the back of the much smaller quarter-sphere intended to cover the performers. Apart from miniature figures in the fields below, these were the first living beings Hansen had seen since a trio of androids strapped him into the intrusion capsule.


"Can we help you, sir?" called the older man in the center of the group.


Hansen stepped out of the collapsing ruin of his capsule. The fallen hull plates had a porous look, and the monomolecular carbon frame members were beginning to sag under their own weight. He'd envisioned a lot of possibilities for what would happen on this mission, but not this one.


Not anything as survivable as this one, if it came to that.


He bent his mouth into a pleasant smile to match that of his questioner and said, "Ah, my name's Hansen. Ah, this is going to sound silly, but is this Northworld?"


Hansen wore what looked like standard exploration-unit coveralls until you checked at the level of the weave and found the battery of hidden weapons and sensors. Besides the coveralls, he had a satchel holding three separate changes of clothes, each one a direct copy—in appearance—of an outfit that one of the later colonists was known to have carried to Northworld.


His options didn't include sandals and loose, flowing robes cinched at the waist with a belt of soft fabric—which was what the three locals greeting him wore.


"Well, that isn't our name for it, Mr. Hansen," said the other man—still older than Hansen by a decade, if appearance was anything to judge by. "We call it Diamond, but since we believe we're in a spacetime bubble of our own, we may well be a minority in our opinion."


"We're so glad to see you," said the young woman who touched Hansen's arm in a gesture of welcome and perhaps reassurance—for one or both of them. "We'd been afraid that it was, you know . . . something to do with the Passages."


Her fingertips felt warm even through the cloth. She had long brown hair and was very attractive, primarily because of her lively expression.


This place might well be a bubble of phased spacetime; certainly it wasn't Northworld, a barren wilderness until its settlement three standard months before. The crops below had been in the ground longer than that, and Hansen couldn't even guess how long it must have taken to construct the city-sized building on which he now stood.


"You were expecting me, then?" Hansen asked, keeping his tone mild. The promenade was paved with a rubbery layer that responded comfortably beneath his boots.


"Well, not you precisely," said the old man.


"My name is Dana, by the way," interjected the younger man. "And these are Gorley—" the other man "—and Lea."


"And as Lea said," Gorley went on, "we're delighted you're here—"


"Both for yourself," added Lea, "and because you're not. . . ." Her face quirked in embarrassment, and her hand squeezed Hansen's biceps.


"But particularly for yourself, Mr. Hansen," the older man went on. "We never received a visitor before."


"As to whether we knew you were coming," said Dana, "and please—you mustn't take this as an insult—but. . . ."


"You are disruptive, you see," explained the woman. "Here in Diamond, because of the, ah. . . ."


"Well," said the older man, "your weapons, Mr. Hansen."


He pointed with the paired index and middle fingers of his left hand toward the remains of the intrusion capsule—now a silhouette in ash as if a quantity of cardboard had been burned on the promenade. "I'm afraid that the vehicle in which you arrived was itself a weapon."


All three of the local citizens looked apologetic. "And you see," the younger man finished, "weapons don't exist in Diamond."


"Anything can be—" Hansen snapped before he got control of his tongue. Even if what he'd been about to say were true—and it certainly was true where he came from that anything could be used as a weapon if the will to do so existed—that wasn't an attitude he wanted to stress to his present hosts.


"But with the weapons gone," Lea said, "we hope that you'll be able to stay. Would you like to see the village?"


"Or perhaps you're hungry/he's hungry?" the men said in near unison.


"I—" said Hansen. He looked at his hosts and decided to be perfectly honest—because he didn't have enough information to lie; and anyway, because he preferred the truth.


"I'm not hungry," he said. "But I'd like to get out there—" he gestured toward the surrounding fields "—just to prove this isn't some kind of stage set."


Lea giggled and hugged herself closer to Hansen. Both men smiled also. "Of course, of course," Dana murmured.


"And I'm wondering a little where everyone else is . . . ?" Hansen added.


Contact with Lea wasn't as pleasant as it should've been, because Hansen noticed his coveralls gave too easily at the pressure of her soft body. The equipment woven into Hansen's garments seemed to have vanished. His intrusion capsule was now fluff which drifted over the edge of the building on the light breeze.


"We didn't want you to worry," said Dana.


"We thought you might be startled by a crowd," said Gorley.


"But everyone wants to meet you," said Lea, "not just here but everywhere in Diamond."


As she spoke, an aircar curved neatly around the odeum from a landing site on the opposite edge of the roof. Simultaneously, loosely organized groups of people began approaching from either direction along the promenade.


All the newcomers, including the vehicle's driver, dressed in a similar fashion, but there was wide variety in the color and textures of their garments. The crowds contained many children, some of them infants being carried or led carefully by the hand by their parents.


"Hello, Mr. Hansen," called a little boy, waving a small bouquet.


The aircar touched on the walkway near Hansen and rotated slightly to face its nose outward toward the edge of the roof before it settled finally. The vehicle hummed instead of howling; Hansen couldn't see fan ducts.


These might be gentle people, but they weren't stupid—and they weren't without technology. The whole city-building—very likely the whole of Diamond, planet or universe or whatever it was, was listening to what Hansen said and reacting to it immediately.


"We thought you might prefer to ride," said Lea, nodding toward the car.


"Though we can take the elevators if you'd like," said Dana.


"Or walk," said Gorley. "We'd be more than happy to walk with you."


The old man looked fit enough to manage the walk despite his age, but Hansen wasn't sure he wanted to try the long staircases, even going down.


The crowds had halted a comfortable, non-threatening ten meters from Hansen and his companions. More people were still coming around the curves of the promenade.


"No, the car'll be fine," Hansen said, letting Lea guide him into the open vehicle.


"Goodby, Mr. Hansen!" called the little boy, waving enthusiastically.


"We'll have a proper gathering in the common area later," Gorley said.


"If that's all right with you, Mr. Hansen, of course," Dana interjected.


"Yeah, I . . . ," said Hansen. He didn't know enough to ask questions.


"But everyone's so excited," Lea said. "We all wanted to see you in person as soon as we could."


The car lifted to clear the turbulence around the building's edge, then dropped in a curve toward the fields. The irrigation ditches between rows of grain were dry at the moment, but a large reservoir reflected the cloud-piled sky in the near distance, ready to flood the ditches if needed.


"How long has Diamond been settled?" Hansen asked.


The driver throttled back, slowing the car as he steered for a dike between fields. The vehicle was admirably quiet, but it seemed to have surplus power even with five of its six seats filled by adults.


"Our records go back ten thousand years," said Dana.


"What?" Hansen snarled. "That's three times as long as there've been human spacecraft!"


"We didn't mean to distress you, Mr. Hansen," Lea said softly.


"You understand, of course," said Gorley with an apologetic look, "that time within our bubble—if our scientists are correct—doesn't necessarily travel at the same rate as that of the outside universe . . . of which our ancestors may have been a part."


"Though," Dana said, "we don't have any record of existence anywhere but here, in Diamond."


"I'm sorry," Hansen said.


It bothered him that these people kept apologizing to him when hell, either he was at fault or nobody was. He got out of the car and walked toward the rows of grain.


Diamond wasn't an elaborate stage set. Hansen's boots sank into the turned earth. The air was fresh with the scents of growth, and a cloud of small insects rose from the shade beneath the leaves as he reached into the grain.


The crop was still green, the grainheads unformed. Hansen stroked the fine-haired leaves.


His outfitters had given him a ruby ring in a massive gold setting for the middle finger of his right hand. The stone was now as dull as a chip of cement, and Hansen was quite sure that the one-shot laser which the ruby focused no longer functioned.


He turned back to his hosts. They had waited beside the car in attitudes of hopeful attentiveness.


"Do you have criminals on Diamond?" he asked abruptly.


"Oh, no, Mr. Hansen," Lea replied.


Hansen smiled lopsidedly. "Then I'm damned if I know what good I could ever be to you," he said as he took his seat in the car again. "But I guess I'm here anyway."


"Oh, Mr. Hansen," Gorley said, "you can't imagine how wonderful it is to us to have a visitor! We weren't sure that it was possible to enter or leave Diamond."


"May we return to the village, then?" Dana asked. "Or perhaps you'd like to see the animals?"


"The village is fine with me," Hansen said. There was a mild low-frequency vibration through the frame of the aircar for a moment as the driver raised his power. "You know, I'd sort of figured you were vegetarians."


"Ah, well, we are," explained Gorley diffidently. "But we use milk and wool, you see."


The car climbed as swiftly as it had dropped minutes before; he'd been right about the vehicle having plenty of power. "You've been trying to get out of your bubble, then?" he asked.


"Oh, goodness, no!" said Dana in amazement. He blushed in embarrassment. "I am sorry. We just—we're happy here."


"It's the knowledge that we miss," explained Gorley. "It's all very well to speculate about our existence, but proof that there is an outside universe is quite marvelous."


Lea bent close and kissed Hansen's cheek. "We do hope you'll be comfortable in Diamond."


Instead of returning to the section of promenade where Hansen's capsule had appeared, the aircar circled the building and dropped onto a purpose-built docking area where hundreds of similar vehicles were already parked. "The community is gathering in the common area," Gorley said. "That seemed simplest."


"But if it makes you uncomfortable to be on display, even briefly," Dana said, "of course your peaceful enjoyment is far more important to us."


"To all of us," Lea agreed and nestled closer to her guest.


There was a bank of at least twenty elevators, each of them sized to hold half a dozen people. Cages and shafts alike were of a material whose crystalline transparency had been slightly dulled by dust and use. Again, Diamond hadn't been somehow raised as an elaborate hoax to fool Hansen.


The aircar's driver waved and got into a separate cage. Hansen didn't see the controls—or, for that matter, the elevator's drive and suspension apparatus—but he and his three guides dropped to a level forty meters beneath the roofline and got off when the door rotated open.


The whole area was open except for the eight massive pillars which housed the elevators as well as supporting the building's upper stories. Plants grew around the outer edges and a lightshaft in the center.


The ten-meter ceiling kept the space from looking packed, but it was full of people who waved and cheered when Hansen got off the elevator. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen a crowd that big with a happy ambiance to it.


"We have a little dais built for you, if you don't mind," Dana said, bending close to speak directly into Hansen's ear.


Lea gripped his hand with friendly firmness as she led him to up a short flight of steps to a chair on a plastic platform. "If you could say a few words, that would be wonderful," the young woman said as she motioned Hansen to the seat.


Even so they weren't all going to be able to see, Hansen thought; and then he noticed that the crowd of gaily-clad citizens was moving in a clockwise rotation, bringing forward those from the other side of the huge room and taking away those who'd already gotten a close look at their visitor. There was no apparent pushing or concern.


"Ah—" he said.


The room stilled save for the whisper of sandals on the tile flooring.


He certainly wasn't going to sit. He felt like an idiot. Lea started down the steps. Hansen grimaced, wishing he'd grabbed her earlier so that he at least wouldn't be alone here in his—'ignorance' was an insufficient word for how he felt.


"Ah," he repeated, "ah, I don't know how I came to be here, but I hope that—"


The sunlight through the open sides of the common area dimmed as though shutters had been drawn all around the building. People screamed.


Hansen glanced around him. The threat was everything but palpable, and he was exposed on top of the dais.


He was in his element.


Short-boled palms and bromeliads fringed the exterior of the common area. While the sky beyond darkened in pulses like the throbbing surf, the broadleafed plants were sucked into shadowy, fanged silhouettes. The sun brightened again, and the normal foliage returned.


Shadow humans appeared in the common area when the plants grew serpent doubles also.


Amid the crowd's weeping and wordless cries, Hansen heard from hundreds of throats a Passage/another Passage . . . and over and over again, May it be swift/May it end/end/end. . . . 


For a moment, the great covered park was what it had been when Hansen first saw it: bright, clean, and filled with thousands of healthy people, though their faces were now streaked with tears and terror. Then it changed again, and Hansen saw an armored vehicle that must have weighed hundreds of tonnes.


The tank glided toward Hansen in a false silence while the shadow figures and vegetation shuddered with the noise that such a monster must have made in any medium denser than vacuum. It sprouted missile batteries, guns, and swatches of wire mesh which could have been either antennas or a form of defense.


The tank proceeded at a walking pace which nothing in the park or its own shadow world slowed or affected.


The folk of Diamond keened and clutched one another, keeping their faces down and their eyes closed.


There was no place to run. Hansen picked up the chair—extruded plastic, light if not quite flimsy . . . and probably just as effective as any other man-portable weapon against a monster like the tank which bore down on him now.


Lenses and vision blocks winked with gray highlights that didn't come from the sun of Diamond. None of the tank's guns were aimed at Hansen, but attachment lugs on the bowslope would gore him back until he and they sailed off the edge of the building. Even on the dais, he had to look up to see the top of the turret and the multiple weapons' cupolas.


Hansen swung his piece of furniture at a vision block on the upper left of the bowslope.


The plastic chair whistled at and through the knobbly armor without touching anything material save the air. Hansen overbalanced and almost fell of the front of the dais. Daylight had returned, and with it the rich, soft colors of Diamond.


"Oh, Mr. Hansen . . . ," someone murmured behind him. Hansen turned. Lea had started up the steps to the dais again and paused, staring at the chair in the visitor's hands.


Anything's a weapon if you want it to be one.  


Hansen put the chair down carefully, feeling embarrassed . . . though there wasn't any need to, god knew. What he'd done made as much sense as anything could in a crazy situation like that.


"Oh, Mr. Hansen," Leas repeated. "I'm so sorry."


She stepped closer to him and reached out her hand. Hansen glanced over his shoulder; the whole crowd was watching him, but there was an evident sadness in everyone's eyes.


What he'd done made sense where Hansen came from; but this was Diamond.


He felt—cold wasn't the word, but a sensation as deep as if freezing water were drawing all the warmth out of his body. There was a thin film between Hansen and everything around him. He felt the pressure of Lea's hand but not its warmth.


"We're so sorry," she said through a corridor of mirrors. "It isn't a fault in you, Mr. Hansen, but weapons don't exist here in Diamond."


She raised onto her toes to kiss him. He couldn't feel her lips. Everything was becoming gray. He remembered the capsule in which he'd arrived, ash that divided into dust motes as a breeze swept it gently from the promenade.


"Goodby, Mr. Hansen. . . ." called a distant, childish voice.


"And you are a weapon . . . ," whispered words that were only a shadow in Hansen's mind as he felt the structure of Diamond interpenetrate him completely and leave only nothingness.


 


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