Terry Pratchett - The Dark Side of the Sun

VIP免费

2024-12-12 0 0 348.31KB 67 页 5.9玖币

THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN

'I do not recall having encountered the earlier science fiction writings of Terry Pratchett, but if The Dark Side of the

Sun is a fair sample, then I must admit the loss is all mine. This tale . . . is a continual delight, with its unexpected

conceits and original inventions. And if Mr Pratchett's tongue is frequently in his cheek, his parody of the science

fiction idiom is always deft, knowledgeable and good humoured'

The Oxford Times

Terry Pratchett is, on average, a sort of youngish middle-aged. He lives in Somerset with his wife and daughter,

and long ago chose journalism as a career because it was indoor work with no heavy lifting.

Beyond that he positively refuses to be drawn. People never read these biographies anyway, do they? They want to

get on with the book, not wade through masses of prose designed to suggest that the author is really a very

interesting person so look, okay, he wrote these other books, all right, they were The Carpet People (for kids), The

Dark Side of the Sun, Strata, The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites and Mort. The last four were

also about the Discworld, and actually quite a lot of people liked them.

He grows carnivorous plants as a hobby; they are a lot less interesting than people believe.

* * *

For those people who really need to know, Terry Pratchett was born in Buckinghamshire in 1948. He's managed to

avoid all the really interesting jobs authors take in order to look good in this sort of biography. In his search for a

quiet life he got a job as a Press officer with the Central Electricity Generating Board just after Three Mile Island,

which shows his unerring sense of timing. He now writes full time. It's true about the carnivorous plants, though.

THE DARK SIDE

OF THE SUN

Terry Pratchett

'Only predict.' Charles Sub-Lunar, from The Lights In The Sky Are Photofloods

In the false dawn a warm wind blew out of the east, shaking the dry reed cases.

The marsh mist broke into ribbons and curled away. Small night creatures burrowed hastily into the slime. In the

distance, hidden by the baroque mist curls, a night bird screeched in the floating reed beds.

In one of the big lakes near the open sea three delicate white windshells hoisted their papery sails and tacked

slowly towards the incoming surf.

Dom waited just beyond the breakers, two metres below the dancing surface, a thin stream of bubbles rising

from his gill pack. He heard the shells long before he saw them. They sounded like skates on distant ice.

He grinned to himself. There would only be one chance. Some of those pretty trailing tendrils were lethal. There

might never be another chance, ever. He tensed.

And knifed upwards.

The shell bucked violently as he grabbed the blunt prow, and he swung his legs hard over to avoid hitting the

dangling green fronds. The world dissolved into a salt-tasting, cold white bubble of foam. Small silver fish slipped

desperately past him, and then he was lying across the upper hull.

The shell had gone berserk, flailing with the bony mast in great slow sweeps. Dom watched it, getting his breath

back, and then half-leapt, half-scrambled to the big white bulge near the base of the mast.

A shadow passed over him, and he rolled to one side as the mast nicked a furrow in the hull. As it passed he

followed it, grabbed at the nerve knot, and pulled himself forward.

His fingers sought for the right spot. He found it.

The shell stopped its frenzied rush through the wavetops, hitting the water again with a slap that jarred Dom's

teeth. The sail wavered uncertainly.

Dom continued stroking until the creature was soothed and then stood up.

It didn't count unless you stood up. The best dagon fishers could ride a shell with their toes. How he had envied

them - and how carefully he had watched from the family barge on feast days, when the fishermen came in two or

three hundred abreast on their half-tame shells with See-Why setting, a bright purple star, into the sea. Some of the

younger men danced on their shells, spinning and leaping and juggling torches and all the time keeping the shell

under perfect control.

Kneeling in front of the nerve knot he guided the big semi-vegetable back through the twisting waterways of the

marsh, through acres of sea lilies and past floating reed islands. On several of them blue flamingoes hissed at him

and stalked imperiously away.

Occasionally he glanced up and northwards, searching for tell-tale specks in the air. Korodore would find him

eventually, but Dom was pretty certain that he wouldn't pick him up straight away. He'd probably keep him under

benevolent observation for a few hours because, after all, Korodore had been young once. Even Korodore. Whereas

Grandmother gave the impression that she had been born aged eighty.

Besides, Korodore would bear in mind that tomorrow Dom would be Chairman and legally his boss. Dom

doubted if that would influence him one jot. Old Korodore relished duty if it came sternly . . .

He smiled proudly as the shell cut smoothly through the quiet water. At least the fishermen would not be able to

call him a blackhand, even if he wasn't quite a fully-fledged greenhand. That last initiation of the dagon fishermen

could only be got out in the deeps, on a moonlit night, when the dagons rose out of the deep with their razor-sharp

shells agape.

The shell bumped against the reed bed and Dom leapt lightly ashore, leaving it drifting in the little lagoon.

Joker's Tower, which had been dominating the western sky, loomed up before him. He hurried forward.

See-Why had risen and bathed the slim pyramid in pink light. The mist had left the reed beds round the base but

the apex, five miles above the sea, was lost in perpetual cloud. Dom pushed his way through the dry reeds until he

was within half a metre of the smooth, milk-white wall.

He reached out gingerly.

Hrsh-Hgn had once, realizing vaguely that interminable lectures on planetary economics might not be palatable

fare for a boy, smiled and switched off the faxboard. He had fetched his copy of Sub-Lunar's Galactic Chronicles

and told Dom about the Jokers.

'Name the races classed as Human under the Humanity Act,' he began.

'Phnobes, men, drosks and the First Sirian Bank,' Dom rattled off. 'Also Class Five robots by Sub-Clause One

may apply for Human Status.'

'Yess. And the other racess?'

Dom ticked them off on his fingers. 'Creapii are Super-Human. Class Four robots are sub-human, sundogs are

unclassified.'

'Yess?'

'The other races I'm not sure about,' admitted Dom. 'The Jovians and the rest. You never taught me anything

about them.'

'It iss not necessary. They are so alien, you undersstand. We share no common ground. Things humanity

considers universal among self-aware races - a sense of identity, for example - are merely products of a temperate

bipedal evolution. But all the fifty-two races so far discovered arose in the last five million standard years.'

'You told me about that yesterday,' said Dom, 'Sub-Lunar's Theory of Galactic Sapience.'

Then the phnobe had told him about the jokers. The creapii had found the first joker tower and, all else having

failed to open it, had dropped a live nigrocavernal matrix on it. The tower was later found to be intact. Three

neighbouring stellar systems had been wrecked, however.

The phnobes never discovered a joker tower: they had always known of one. The tower of Phnobis, rising from

the sea into the perpetual cloud cover, was the cause and basis of the planet-wide Frss-Gnhs religion - literally,

Pillar of the Universe.

Earth-human colonists had found seven, one of them floating in the asteroid belt of the Old Sol system. That

was when the Joker Institute was set up.

The young races of men, creapii, phnobe and drosk found themselves watching one another in awe across a

galaxy littered with the memories of a race that had died before human time began. And out of that awe arose the

legends of Jokers' World, the glittering goal that was to taunt adventurers and fools and treasure hunters across the

light years . . .

Dom touched the tower. There was the faintest tingle, a sudden stab of pain. He leapt back, frantically rubbing

life back into his frozen fingers. The coldness of the towers was always greatest at noon, when they drank in heat,

yet grew icy.

Dom set off round the tower, feeling the cold reaching out towards him. Looking up he thought he saw the air

within a foot of the smooth walls darken, as if light was just a gas and was being sucked in by the spire. It wasn't

logical, but the idea had a certain artistic appeal.

Towards noon a security flyer glittered briefly on the western horizon, heading south. Dom stepped sideways

into a clump of reeds . . . And wondered what he was doing in the marsh. Freedom, that was it. The last day of real

freedom. His last chance to see Widdershins without a security guard standing on either side of him and a score of

more subtle protections all round. He had planned it, down to squashing Korodore's ubiquitous robot insects that

spied on him - always for his own protection - in his bedroom.

And now he'd have to go home and face Grandmother. He was beginning to feel just a little foolish. He

wondered what he had expected from the tower: some feeling of cosmic awe, probably, a sense of the deeps of

Time. Certainly not this sinister, insidious sensation of being watched. It was just like being at home.

He turned back.

There was a hiss of superheated air as something passed his face and struck the tower. Where it hit the frozen

wall the heat blossomed into a flower of ice crystals.

Dom dived instinctively, rolled over and over and was up and running. A second blast passed him and a dry

seed head in front of him exploded into a shower of sparks.

He stifled the urge to look round. Korodore had schooled him unmercifully in assassination drill. Knowing who

was the assassin was small reward for being assassinated. Korodore said, 'The price of curiosity is a terminal

experience.'

At the edge of the lagoon Dom gathered himself and dived. As he hit the water the third blast seared across his

chest.

Great bells rang, far out to sea or maybe in his head. The cool greenness was soothing, and the bubbles . . .

Dom awoke. With an inculcated instinct he kept his eyes closed and tentatively explored his environment.

He was lying on the mixture of sand, ooze, dry reed stems and snail shells that passed for soil on most of

Widdershins. He was in shade, and the thunder of surf was very near. And the soil rocked, gently, to the beat of the

waves. The air smelled and tasted of salt, mingled with marsh ooze, reed pollen and . . . something else. It was dank

and musty, and very familiar.

Something was sitting a few inches away. Dom opened one eye a fraction and saw a small creature watching

him intently. Its dumpy body was covered in pink hair which sprouted from a scaly hide. A snout was a bad

compromise between a beak and a prehensile nose. It had three pairs of legs, no two exactly alike. It was almost a

Widdershins legend.

Behind Dom someone lit a fire. He tried to sit up and it felt as though a red-hot bar had been laid across his

chest.

'O juvindo may psutivi,' said a gentle voice.

A face out of a nightmare appeared above him. The skin was grey and hung in folds under eyes four times the

proper size in which small irises stared out like beads in milk. Great flat ears were turned towards Dom. The musty

smell was overpowering. The face was set off by a pair of large sungoggles.

The phnobe was trying to speak Janglic. Dom summoned his resources and answered him in jaw-breaking

phnobic.

'A sscholar,' said the phnobe, dryly. 'My name is Fff-Shs. And you are Chairman Sabalos.'

'Not till tomorrow,' moaned Dom. He winced as the pain came again.

'Ah. Yess. Do not on any account make ssudden movementss. I have treated the burn. It iss superficial.'

The phnobe stood up and walked out of Dom's vision. The small creature still watched him intently.

Dom turned his head slowly. He was lying in a small clearing in the centre of one of the floating islands that

thronged the marsh rhines. It was moving slowly and, remarkably, against the wind. From somewhere below the

reed mat came the occasional deep pulse of an antique deuterium motor.

A coarse woven net was slung across the clearing, hiding it effectively from airborne eyes. With the motor and

the ancillary mechanisms that must be hidden under the thick reed mat the little island would not hold its secret

long against even unsophisticated search equipment. But there were several hundred thousand islands in the marsh.

Who could search them all?

A conclusion began to form in Dom's mind.

The phnobe passed in front of him and he saw he was holding a double-bladed tshuri knife lightly, tossing it

thoughtfully from hand to hand. Dom was mother-naked, except where dry salt rimed his black skin.

The phnobe was embarrassed by his presence. Occasionally he stopped juggling with the knife and stared at him

intently.

They both heard the distant swish-swish of a flyer. The phnobe dived sideways, flipped back a section of reed

and killed the island's speed, then on the rebound flung himself down by Dom with the knife pressed against his

throat.

'Not to utter a sound,' he said.

They lay still until the flyer had faded into the distance.

The phnobe was a pilac smuggler. The dagon fishermen under licence from the Board of Widdershins rode out

by the hundred when the big bivalves rose up from the deep, to snatch the pearls of nacreous pilac by the light of

the moon. They used lifelines, leather body armour and elaborate back-up procedures - like the factory float which

included a hospital where a missing hand was merely a minor mishap and even death not always fatal.

There were other fishers. They traded safety for an odd conception of excitement and accepted as the price of an

illegal fortune the complete lack of any opportunity to spend it. By nature they worked alone and were highly-

skilled. What they snatched from the sea was theirs alone, including death. Occasionally the Board launched a

campaign against them and made half-hearted attempts to stop the pilac being smuggled offworld. Captured

smugglers were not killed now - that would certainly be against the One Commandment - but it occurred to Dom

that to those of their nature the alternative punishment was far worse than the death they courted nightly. So the

smuggler would kill him.

The phnobe stood up, still holding the knife by the heavier, forward-facing blade.

'Why am I here?' asked Dom, meekly, 'The last I remember . . .'

'You were floating among the lilies sso peacefully, with a stripper burn across your chest. The ssecurity has

been out ssince dawn. It seemed they were searching, for a criminal maybe, so I am jusst a little curiouss and pick

you up.'

'Thank you,' said Dom, easing himself into a sitting position.

The smuggler shrugged, a strangely expressive gesture in a high-shouldered bony body.

'How far are we from the Tower?'

'I found you forty kilometres from the Sky Pillar. We have travelled maybe two kilometres ssince.'

'Forty! But someone shot at me at the Tower.'

'Maybe you swim well for a drowned man.'

Dom lifted himself gradually to his feet, his eyes on the twisting knife.

'Do you gather much pilac?'

'Eighteen kilos in the last twenty-eight years,' said the phnobe, watching the sky absently. Despite himself, Dom

did a quick calculation.

'You must be very skilful.'

'Many times I die. On other time lines. Maybe this universe is my chance in a million and the other thousands of

selves are dead. What is skill then?'

The knife continued its brief flights from hand to hand. Overhead the sun shone like a gong. Dom felt dizzy and

was briefly sick but managed to stay upright, waiting for his chance.

The phnobe blinked.

'I seek an omen,' he said.

'What for?'

'To see, you understand, if I am to kill you.'

A flock of blue flamingoes flapped slowly overhead. Dom gasped for air and readied himself.

The knife was thrown faster than he could follow it. It flashed once, high in the air. A flamingo dipped out of

the flock as if coming into land, and crashed heavily among the reeds. The tension in the air snapped like a finely-

drawn wire.

Ignoring Dom, the smuggler loped across to it, drew his knife from its breast and began to pluck it. He paused

after a minute and glanced up sharply, pointing with the knife.

'A word of advice. Do not ever again even think of a heroic leap at any person holding a tshuri knife. You have

about you the air of one with many lives to wasste. Maybe therefore you rissk your life easily. But foolish gestures

towards a knife end sadly.'

Dom let the tension flow out of him, aware that a fraught moment had passed and gone.

'Besides,' the smuggler went on, 'doesn't gratitude count for anything? Soon we will eat. Then we will talk,

maybe.'

'There's a lot I want to know,' said Dom. 'Who shot at . . .'

'Tssh! Questions that can't be answered, why ask them? But do not rule out bater.'

'Bater?'

The phnobe looked up.

'You haven't heard of probability math? You, and tomorrow you become Chairman of the Board of

Widdershinss and heir to riches untold? Then first we will talk, and then we will eat.'

See-Why hung in the mists that had crept out of the marsh. The island sailed dripping through the clammy curtain,

leaving a mist-wake that writhed fantastically over the suddenly sinister marsh.

Fff-Shs came out of the woven hut at one end of the island and pointed into the whiteness.

'The radar says your flyer iss hardly more than a hundred metres thataway. Sso I leave you here.'

They shook hands solemnly. Dom turned and walked down to the water's edge, then turned again as the phnobe

hurried after him. He held the little rat-creature, which had spent most of the journey asleep round his neck.

'Tomorrow, maybe, there will be great ceremoniess?'

Dom sighed. 'Yes, I'm afraid there will.'

'And giftss, maybe? That iss the procedure?'

'Yes. But Grandmother says that most will be from those who seek favours. Anyway, they'll be returned.'

'I sseek no favours, nor will you return thiss small gift,' said the phnobe, holding out the struggling creature.

'Take him. You know what he iss?'

'A swamp ig,' nodded Dom. 'He's one of the bearers on our planetary crest, along with the blue flamingo. But the

zoo says there's only about three hundred on the planet, I can't. . .'

'This little one has dogged my footsteps these last four months. He'll come with you. I feel he will desert me

soon anyway.'

The ig jumped from the phnobe's arm and settled around Dom's neck, where it replaced its tail in its mouth and

began to snore. Dom smiled, and the smuggler answered with a brief mucus grimace.

'I call him my luck,' said the phnobe. 'It's an indulgence, maybe.' He glanced up at Widdershins's one bloated

moon, rising in the south.

'Tonight will be a good night for hunting,' he said, and in two strides had disappeared into the thickening mists.

Dom opened his mouth to speak, then stood silent for a moment.

He turned and dived into the warm evening sea.

The heavy hull of a security flyer rocked in the swell beside his own craft. A figure appeared on the flat deck as he

hauled himself aboard. Dom found himself looking first at the crosswires of a molecule Stripper and then at the

embarrassed face of a young security man.

'Chel! I'm sorry, sir, I didn't realize. . .'

'You've found me. Good for you,' said Dom coldly. 'Now I'm going home.'

'I've got orders, er, to take you back,' said the guard. Dom ignored him and stepped aboard his own craft. The

guard swallowed, glanced at the stripper and then at Dom, and hurried into the control bubble. By the time he had

reached the radio, Dom's flyer was a hundred metres away, bouncing lightly from wavetop to wavetop before

gliding up and over the sea.

Extract from 2001 and All That: an Anecdotal History of Space-Travelling Man, by Charles Sub-Lunar (Fghs-Hrs

& Calligna, Terra Novae)

'Mention should be made of Widdershins and of the Sabalos family, since the two are practically synonymous.

Widdershins, a mild world consisting largely of water and very little else, is one of the two planets of CY Aquirii.

Its climate is pleasant though damp, its food a monotonous variation on the theme of fish, its people intelligent,

hardy and - due to the high-ultraviolet content of the sunlight - universally black and bald.

'The planet was settled in the Year of the Questing Monkey (A.S. 675) by a small party of earth-humans and a

smaller colony of phnobes and there, perhaps, pan-Human relations are better than on any other world.

'John Sabalos - the first of his dynasty - built himself a house by the Wiggly River, looking over the sea towards

Great Creaking Marsh. His only skill was luck. He discovered in the giant floating bivalves that dwelt in the deep

waters a metre-wide pearl made up largely of crude pilac, which turned out to be one of the growing number of

death-immunity drugs. But pilac was found to be without many of the unfortunate draw-backs of many of the other

twenty-six. It became the foundation of the family fortunes. John I extended his house, planted an orchard of cherry

trees, became the first Chairman when Widdershins adopted Rule by Board of Directors, and died aged 301.

'His son, John, is considered a wastrel. One example of his wastefulness suffices: he bought a shipload of rare

fruits from Third Eye. Most were rotten on arrival. One mould was a strange green slime. By an unlikely

combination of circumstances it was found to have curious regenerative properties. Within a year, just when dagon

fishing was becoming almost impossible because of the high injury rate among the fishermen, it became a mark of

manhood to have at least one limb with the peculiar greenish tint of the cell-duplicating googoo.

'John II bought the Cheops pyramid from the Tsion subcommittee of the Board of Earth and had it lifted in one

piece to an area of waste ground north of his home domes. When he made an offer for Luna, to replace

Widdershins' smaller but still serviceable moon, his young daughter Joan I packed him off to a mansion on the

other side of the planet and took over as Managing Director. In her the Sabalos fortunes, hitherto dependent on a

smiling fate, found a champion. They doubled within a year. A strict Sadhimist, she executed many reforms

including the passage of the Humanity Laws.

'Her son - she found time for a brief contract with a cousin - was John III, who became a brilliant probability

mathematician in those early, exciting days of the art. It has been suggested that this was a peaceful escape from his

mother and his wife Vian, a well-connected Earth noblewoman to whom he had been contracted in order to

strengthen ties with Earth. He disappeared in strange circumstances just prior to the birth of his second child, the

Dom Sabalos of legend. It is understood that he met with some kind of accident in the planet-wide marshes.

'A body of myth surrounds the young Dom. Many stories relating to him are obviously apocryphal. For

example, it is said that on the very date of his investiture as Chairman of the Planetary Board, he. . .'

The stars were out as Dom reached the jetty which stretched from the home domes far out into the artificial harbour

where the feral windshells were kept.

Lamps were burning. Some of the early-duty fishermen were already preparing the shells for the night's fishing;

one old woman was deep-frying King cockles on a charcoal stove, and a tinny radio lying on the boards was

playing, quite unheeded, an old Earth tune with the refrain, 'Your Feet's too Big'.

Dom tied up at the jetty alongside the great silent bulk of a hospital float, and scrambled up the ladder.

As he walked towards the domes he was aware of the silence. It spread out from him like a wake, from man to

man. Heads rose in the lamplight and froze, watching him intently. Even the old woman lifted the pan from the

stove and glanced up. There was something acute about the look in her eyes.

Dom heard one sound as he slowly climbed the steps towards the main Sabalos dome. Someone started to say:

'Not like his father, then, whatever they—' and was nudged into silence.

A Class Three robot stood by the door, armed with an antiquated sonic. It whirred into life as he approached and

assumed a defiant stance.

'Halt - who goes there? Enemy or Friend of Earth?' it croaked, its somewhat corroded voicebox slurring the

edges of the traditional Sadhimist challenge.

'FOE, of course,' said Dom, resisting the urge to give the wrong answer. He had done it once to see what would

happen. The blast had left him temporarily deaf and the resonance had demolished a warehouse. Grandmother, who

seldom smiled, had laughed quite a lot and then tanned his hide to make sure the lesson was doubly learned.

'Pass, FOE,' said the guard. As he passed, the communicator on its chest glowed into life.

'Okay,' said Korodore, 'Dom, one day you will tell me how you got out without tripping an alarm.'

'It took some studying.'

'Step closer to the scanner. I see. That scar is new.'

'Someone shot at me out in the marsh. I'm all right.'

Korodore's reply came slowly, under admirable control.

'Who?'

'Chel, how should I know? Anyway, it was hours ago. I . . .uh. . .'

'You will come inside, and in ten minutes you will come to my office and you will tell me the events of today in

detail so minute you will be amazed. Do you understand?'

Dom looked up defiantly, and bit his lip.

'Yes, sir,' he said.

'Okay. And just maybe I will not get sent to scrape barnacles off a raft with my teeth and you will not get

confined to dome for a month.' Korodore's voice softened marginally. 'What's that thing round your neck? It looks

familiar.'

'It's a swamp ig.'

'Rare, aren't they?'

Dom glanced up at the planetary coat of arms over the door, where a blue flamingo and a bad representation of a

swamp ig supported a Sadhimist logo on an azure field. Under it, incised deeply into the stone - far more deeply in

fact than was necessary - was the One Commandment.

'I used to know a smuggler who had one of those,' Korodore went on. 'There are one or two odd legends about

them. I expect you know, of course. I guess it's okay to bring it in.'

The communicator darkened. The robot stood aside.

Dom skirted the main living quarters. There was an uproar coming from the kitchens where preparations were

being made for tomorrow's banquet. He slipped in quietly, snatched a plate of kelp entrees from the table nearest

the door, and ducked back into the corridor. A phnobic curse-word followed him, but that was all, and he wandered

on down to the corridor until it petered out in a maze of storerooms and pantries.

A small courtyard had been roofed over with smoked plastic that made if gloomy even under a See-Why noon,

and the plastic itself was set with thin pipes that sprayed a constant fine mist.

In the middle of the yard a rath had been built of reeds. An attempt to grow fungi had been made on the patch of

ground surrounding it. Dom pulled aside the drenched door-curtain and stooped inside.

Hrsh-Hgn was sitting in a shallow bath of tepid water, reading a cube by the light of a fish-oil lamp. He waved

one double-jointed hand at Dom and swivelled one eye towards him.

'Glad you're here. Lissten to thiss: "A rock outcrop twenty kilometres south of Rampa, Third Eye, appearss to

reveal fossil strata relating not to the passt but to the future, which . . ." '

The phnobe stopped reading and carefully placed the cube on the floor. He looked first at Dom's expression,

then at the scar, and finally at the ig which was still twined round his neck.

'You're acting,' said Dom. 'You are doing it very well, but you are acting. You're certainly acting better than

Korodore and the men on the jetty.

'We are naturally glad to see you ssafely back.'

'You all look as though I've returned from the dead.'

The phnobe blinked.

'Hrsh, tomorrow I shall be Chairman of the Board. It doesn't mean much—'

'It iss a very honourable position.'

'—It doesn't mean much because all the power, the real power, belongs to Grandmother. But I think the

Chairman is entitled to know one or two things. Like, for example, why haven't you ever told me about probability

math? And what happened to—how did my father die? I've heard fishermen say it was out there on Old Creaky.'

In the silence that followed the ig awoke and began scratching itself violently.

'Come on,' said Dom, 'you're my tutor.'

'I will tell you after the ceremony tomorrow, it iss late now. Then all will be explained.'

Dom stood up, 'Will I ever trust you again, though? Chel, Hrsh, it's important. And you're still acting.'

'Oh, yess? And what emotion am I trying to conceal?'

Dom stared at him. 'Uh . . . terror, I think. And—uh— pity. Yes. Pity. And you're terrified.'

The curtain swung to behind him. Hrsh-Hgn waited until his footsteps had died away, and reached out to the

communicator. Korodore answered.

'Well?'

'He hass been to ssee me. I almosst told him! My lord, he wass reading me! How can we let thiss thing happen?'

'We don't. We will try and prevent it, of course. With all our power. But it will happen, or seventy years of

probability math go down the hole.'

Hrsh-Hgn said, 'Someone hass been telling him about probability math, and he assked me about his father. If he

assks again, I warn you, for pity's ssake I will tell him.'

'Will you?'

The phnobe looked down and fell silent.

Out to sea the dagon rose by the score, in response to their ancient instincts. The catch was unusually large,

which the fishermen decided was an omen, if only they could decide which way fate's finger pointed. They found,

too - when the last ripple had died away towards dawn - a small reed island, empty, half swamped, drifting

aimlessly over the deeps.

Korodore strolled silently along the empty corridor, which was lit faintly by the first glow of dawn.

He was thick-set and, as a sly gesture, heredity had given him a round cheerful face so that he looked like an

amiable pork-butcher. But there were advantages to that, and no butcher - certainly not of pork - walked by instinct

from shadow to shadow.

A door opened soundlessly and he turned along a short side corridor and into a large round room.

A peat fire was collapsing soundlessly into a pile of white ash in the central hearth. The rest of the room was

sparsely furnished: a narrow bed, a table and chair made of sections of dagon shell, a wardrobe and a Sadhimist

logo on sheet copper on one curving wall comprised its main geographical points.

There were one or two signs of Directorship, a large rolled map of the equatorial regions, an open filing cabinet,

and a Galactic Standard clock on top of it.

But it was the trappings of probability math that clashed heavily with the strict simplicity of the room.

Korodore's eye followed a trail of Reformed Tarot cards across the room to where the bulk of the pack, crystal

faces now bland, lay against the wall where it had been thrown. A vaguely disturbing visual array on a portable

computer glowed on another wall. Charcoal glowed faintly in a tiny brazier on the shell table, and the air was acrid

with the fumes of - Korodore sniffed - the curious Sinistral incense. So Joan had taken refuge in being a cool-head .

. .

Joan I looked up from the table, where a large black book lay open.

'Couldn't you sleep either?' she said.

Korodore rubbed his nose diffidently.

'As you know, madam, security officers never sleep.'

'Yes . . . I know.' She shook her head, 'It was a figure of speech, is all. There's some coffee by the fire.'

He poured her a cup, and slowly began to pick up the cards. She eyed him carefully as he moved soundlessly

across the room.

'I've been looking at the equations again,' she said, 'There's no change. My son's calculation was correct. Of

course, I knew. They've been checked enough times. Even Sub-Lunar looked at them. Dom will be killed today, at

noon. They won't let him live.'

She waited. 'Well?' she said.

'You mean, how do I feel as the security officer in charge? You mean, what are my reactions to the knowledge

that whatever precautions I may take my charge will still be murdered? I have none, madam. I will still work as

though I was in ignorance. Besides,' he added, dropping the pack on the table, 'I cannot believe it. Not quite. You

could say my reaction is hope.'

'It'll happen.'

'I can't pretend to understand probability math. But if the universe is so ordered, so - immutable - that the future

can be told from a handful of numbers, then why need we go on living?'

Joan stood up, crossed to the wardrobe, and took out of it a waist-length white wig.

'It's obvious you do not understand p-math, then,' she said. 'We go on because to live is still better than to die.

That has always been the choice of Humanity, even when we thought the future was a cauldron of possibilities.'

She combed out the wig. 'We cannot be certain how he will die,' she continued, 'You or I, perhaps, may be the

ones the Institute chooses to—'

Korodore spun round. 'I have checked us all by deep-reach, RGD—'

'Oh, Korodore! I'm sorry. But you have such a touching faith in cause-and-effect! Don't you know that in an

infinite Totality all universes will happen? There is a universe somewhere where at this moment you will turn into

a—'

'Such things are said, madam,' he muttered.

'You disapprove of me,' she said, and pouted.

He raised his eyes to the gold century disc on her forehead and smiled thinly.

'Now, you are too old, madam, to try wiles of that kind. But I do disapprove. This meddling is not a good thing.

It stinks of magic, witchcraft.'

'I haven't studied the pre-Sadhimist religions in any great depth, Korodore.'

'All right, madam. What happens if Dom doesn't die?'

'It's unthinkable. This is the datum universe - he'll die. In a sense, the whole universe depends on the fact. If he

didn't die, perhaps he'd discover the jokers world and that could be terrible.'

'And if he doesn't?'

Joan adjusted the wig and opened the window looking out over the sea. The fishing fleet was coming in with the

tide, lit by the hanging pinpoint of Widdershins' blue sun. On the horizon the light glinted sharply off the Tower in

the marshes.

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

THEDARKSIDEOFTHESUN'IdonotrecallhavingencounteredtheearliersciencefictionwritingsofTerryPratchett,butifTheDarkSideoftheSunisafairsample,thenImustadmitthelossisallmine.Thistale...isacontinualdelight,withitsunexpectedconceitsandoriginalinventions.AndifMrPratchett'stongueisfrequentlyinhischeek,hisparod...

展开>> 收起<<

Terry Pratchett - The Dark Side of the Sun.pdf

共67页,预览14页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Terry Pratchett - The Dark Side of the Sun

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: