Fred Saberhagen - The Veils of Azlaroc

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THE VEILS OF

AZLAROC

Fred Saberhagen

CONTENTS

Day V minus 17

Day V minus 16

Day V minus 15

Day V minus 14

Day V minus 13

AZLAROC

THE SETTLERS, WHO CANNOT

LEAVE:

Sorokin-in a buried holograph lies the portal to riches and

freedom-or to his death.

Ramachandra-the richest, and the loneliest, man on

Azlaroc dares to consider escape- through the heart of a

neutron star!

Timmins-trapped on Azlaroc for hundreds of years, he

knows that this year Veilfall will be early-and he knows

that his own past seeks to punish him for the warning.

THE VISITORS, WHO DARE NOT

STAY:

Hagen-he returns at last to Azlaroc, searching for the love

he left behind him so many veils ago.

Ditmars-a professional adventurer, hired to steal back a

poet's book of poems from the one place the poet cannot

go…

ALL OF THEM TRAPPED IN

THE MYSTERY OF

THE VEILS OF AZLAROC

FRED

SABERHAGEN

ace books

A Division of Charter Communications Inc.

A GROSSET & DUNLAP COMPANY

360 Park Avenue South

New York, New York 10010

THE VEILS OF AZLAROC

A portion of this book appeared in substantially different

form in SCIENCE FICTION DISCOVERIES, ed. Carol

Fred Saberhagen.

reproduced in any form or by any means, except for the

inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without

permission in writing from the publisher.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance

to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

An ACE Book

Cover art by Dean Ellis

First Ace printing: October 1978

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in U.S.A.

Day V minus 17

Cruising toward blacksky, Sorokin had noticed

progressively fewer and fewer signs of other travelers;

now he could see no tracks at all ahead of him upon the

plain. It was an almost lunar surface that he traveled. He

knew that in other regions it had preserved vehicle tracks

and even unchanging human footprints for more than four

hundred standard years. The absence of any predecessors'

traces proved his destination to be monumentally

unpopular. Well, that came as no surprise.

His dun-colored tractor was a functional vehicle. Its

weight was slung low between wide treads, the driver's

seat man-high above the ground in an open cab. Sorokin's

ride was comfortably cushioned in the open-roofed cab,

and almost silent as he drove at an easy hundred

kilometers per standard hour. He had discovered that to

drive much slower outside the city made him feel that the

trip was being prolonged unbearably. And going faster

brought on the sensation that blacksky was going to leap at

him like a beast from beyond the rim of the landscape

ahead.

In that direction a ridge of land now lay straight as a

ruler across his path, bringing the horizon near. The

horizon was generally distant on Azlaroc, whose air was

clear beneath the constriction of its sky, whose surface was

much larger, and therefore curved more gently, than that

of a planet. The vastness of this world, spreading the small

population thin, was one of the reasons-as Sorokin

frequently reminded himself-that he had chosen years ago

to settle here. With the city now only an hour behind him,

he was already out of sight of all the faces and works and

debris of humanity. At the moment, in fact, the vast land

that he was crossing, essentially flat beneath the sunless

surface that was not quite a sky, appeared to be completely

lifeless; although he knew that was not true.

No dust rose into the clear, warm air behind the tractor's

quietly speeding treads. There was no dust to rise. Even

the regular, lightly impressed pattern of the tractor's trail

looked no more artificial than the land it crossed.

Everywhere the natural features of the landscape were

geometrically regular. The land threw up forms that

looked as if they had been spawned inside some

mathematician's dreaming mind-pyramids having three

sides, four, or more; rhomboid solids; footballs and

spheres that, when grown, sometimes broke free to roll

with the motion of the land when next it became unquiet.

Instead of bushes or trees or boulders or eroded ravines,

these regular shapes and others marked the plain. These

outcroppings ranged in size from the almost microscopic

to the gigantic. All were of the land's own substance and

color: on this particular stretch of plain a slightly mottled

yellow-gray.

Now, the foot of the high ridge that had been blocking

Sorokin's view ahead made a gentle thud beneath the

tractor's treads. It was a gentle slope, but it began as

abruptly as a doorway. Its beginning creased the land in an

unbroken straight line that extended for many kilometers

to right and left. Autopilot maintaining a steady speed, the

tractor climbed toward the ridge's crest, an equally straight

line against the background of the sky.

The flat slope went up for a long minute's drive. In the

moment before his vehicle tilted its broad nose down again

Sorokin could feel his hair rise lazily from his uncovered

scalp. The top of his head was passing within a few meters

of the sky of Azlaroc. What made his hair rise was a

phenomenon analogous-but no more than analogous-to

static electricity. He need not fear to have his skull split by

a bolt of lightning. Nor had the ridge elevated him enough

to make possible an actual, probably lethal, contact with

the sky. When land and sky drew close as that, they

invariably produced some warning signals. In twenty years

Sorokin had learned to read the warnings well.

A few kilometers ahead he could now see another ridge

that he was going to have to cross. It was as regular as the

one whose rear slope he was now descending. In the

rectilinear valley between the two parallel elevations

Sorokin was surprised to see the undulating curve of

another vehicle track. The double tread marks moved

roughly parallel to Sorokin's own course across the valley,

first sidling near, then dancing away coyly.

"Couldn't make up your mind if you were going on or

not?" he asked aloud. As if offended or frightened by the

question the marks swayed off again to vanish

inconclusively in dots and dashes on entering a hard

surfaced area. He smiled briefly to himself. No doubt

many of the old track's twists and turns had been caused

by an unequal creeping of the surface land toward some

fast subduction zone nearby. The tracks could have been

there years, decades, even centuries.

Thud again, and now up the front slope of the new ridge

Sorokin was riding his steady tractor. It was a sturdy and

imperturbable device that cared not what destination it

might be bound for. The moment he reached the top of this

ridge he could see, straight ahead and distant, an ebony

meterstick laid across the far edge of the golden sky. His

hands stayed firm on the steering wheel. This was

unnecessary, but a reminder that he could stop and turn

back at any time.

Toward that bar of ebon sky ahead the plain ran flat and

once more trackless. Now, it seemed disturbingly emptier

than before. There was no physical reason why people

could not dwell here within sight of blacksky or even

directly under it. Their artificial lights would work as well

against that night as against any other. Under blacksky or

under cheerfully glowing yellow, clean air of the same

temperature and humidity would fill their lungs and move

across their skins. Even so, to the best of Sorokin's

knowledge no one had ever lived in the vast portion of the

Azlarocean surface under that shade, or even within sight

of it. Perhaps no one ever would.

Imagine the darkest and most ominous thunderstorm of

Earth. Imagine the totality of Sol's eclipse or deepest night

beneath a cloud of poisonous volcanic ash. Multiply the

effect of terror by whatever factor will quickly overload

your nerves. The overload is blacksky, cutting off almost

half of Azlaroc's vast surface.

Sorokin continued to drive toward it. He had known

before he started that there was no light aboard his vehicle.

The approaching dimness began to cover the control panel

before him like a fog. A little further, and he reached out

to switch off the autopilot and bring the tractor to a stop.

He still had light enough to drive, plenty of light here

where there was no traffic. But it was as if his inner mind

had recognized some limit beyond which this journey, this

pilgrimage, was not to be entrusted to machinery. He

climbed down from the tractor as soon as it had ceased to

move and stood testing the overwhelming silence left by

the cessation of its drive. A breath of wind, faintly cool as

if presaging impossible rain, came from the direction of

the Night. Sorokin's body underwent a single violent

shiver; he forced his fingers to let go the metal of the door.

Why should his fingers think that hanging on there could

preserve him?

Without thinking, he began to walk toward the dark

lands that lay invisible beneath blacksky. Behind him his

tractor was left waiting open-doored in the silent

wilderness.

The darkness ahead of him rose with every step. As

Sorbkin paced he kept repeating silently that there was

nothing intrinsically dangerous in blacksky. Nothing under

it worse than the occasional risks to be encountered in the

naturally lighted half of Azlaroc where men lived. What

looked like terrible cloud ahead was only a failure, for

several well-understood reasons, of the radiation that

elsewhere caused the apparent sky of Azlaroc to glow.

However often Sorokin repeated these things to himself,

blacksky still leaped closer to him with every stride.

He had no light with him. He had no light.

He walked into the pall until it reached Zenith,

stretching out of sight to right and left in a fuzzy boundary

of mild collision with the lively glow. He walked on into

the dark on trembling legs, unable to understand why he

was making himself do this. It had to be partly a sheer

fascination with his own fear. There was an exquisite

sensation to be found in clinging to the certainty that he

could go back. Yes, he could turn around and go back any

time.

The faint, diffuse bandwork of his own shadow, cast by

the light of living sky behind, strode on ahead of him into

the dark country. Beyond five meters ahead he could not

even see his own shadow.

Nothing, Walking there, he moved beyond terror to

something else.

He went on in this way for an exhaustingly great

distance, not looking back. In the utter darkness he began

to stumble blindly over some of the small pyramids and

other landforms. They grew here just as in the lighted

territory, indifferent to the lack of radiation.

It came to Sorokin that twenty steps ahead of him now,

maybe ten steps, maybe five, there could be a sphere or an

angled shape as tall as a ten-story building, and he would

not be able to detect it until he touched it. He had to thrust

this thought away from him at once, or stop. He did not

stop. He accidentally kicked an invisible small sphere, and

heard it roll, a heavy slithering. He felt that gravity must

be stronger here, although he knew it was steady, close to

Earth normal, all across the physically habitable part of

Azlaroc.

For many strides now, a long time, he had been afraid to

turn back and see how far he was getting from the light.

This fear was abruptly supplanted by a greater one: that he

was liable to walk too far, that when he did turn the light

would be entirely gone from the sky and he would have no

way to find his way back to it. It was ridiculous to think

that he would be able to drive himself that far, of course.

But when at last he did face round, there seemed to be

hardly more than a sliver of brightness along the base of

the sky to show the direction back.

It was enough to satisfy whatever demon had driven him

to this remote edge. Suddenly Sorokin stood still, almost

relaxed, feeling the full weight of his exhaustion.

Deliberately, he started walking back toward the light. In

time, as brightness gradually reclaimed the sky, the terror

returned. The pressure of the Night increased behind him,

and made him start to run, as if it could pursue.

When is the next veil going to fall?

Chang Timmins was trying to imprint the question

voicelessly upon whatever passed for thinking

mechanisms among the myriad deaf and voiceless lives

that branched and grew around him. He was standing

alone in the midst of a giant cluster of the native growths

that men on Azlaroc called coral. The cluster, or atoll as it

was called, had towering stalks and branches, many of

them thicker than his body. They hid him completely from

the eternal geometry of the Azlarocean plain surrounding.

He waited for an answer to his question.

Neither he nor the plants were markedly telepathic. It

was just that after a century or more of patient effort,

something was likely to begin coming through; Timmins

had been trying to exchange mental impressions with the

so-called coral of Azlaroc for more than twice that long.

He waited-not marking time, no-letting time flow

untrammeled.

And now an answer came: Soon, too soon. The life

/drive/force /explosion must be prepared, and there is a

shortage of space-in-which-all-things-are-done.

That last concept was one Timmins had heard from the

plants before. In his own mind he translated it as "time."

A simple "soon'' would not have surprised Timmins. He

would have taken that to mean veilfall in ten standard days

or so, instead of the seventeen that the best scientific

forecasts now gave. But, "too soon'' ? Did that mean not

enough time available for the plants to ready this year's

quantum-spores for broadcast? A veilfall so sudden and

unexpectedly early would be unheard of. Still, what else

could "too soon" be taken to mean, in the context of coral

lives?

Like leafless, stub-branched, angled, multicolored trees,

they stood around him. An old atoll, this one had been

formed in his past. It grew in his present, and went on far

into what was, in one sense at least, Timmins' future-the

four hundred thirty local years, marked off by as many

veils, that had passed since the beginning of the Year One

in which Timmins had come to Azlaroc.

To Timmins' eyes, the portions of the coral structures

formed before Year One were black and white and

halftone photos, blurring progressively into a determined if

eventually invisible past. The roots and origins of this

particular atoll seemed certain to remain forever beyond

the reach of probing, curious men. These plants were too

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THEVEILSOFAZLAROCByFredSaberhagenCONTENTSDayVminus17DayVminus16DayVminus15DayVminus14DayVminus13AZLAROCTHESETTLERS,WHOCANNOTLEAVE:Sorokin-inaburiedholographliestheportaltorichesandfreedom-ortohisdeath.Ramachandra-therichest,andtheloneliest,manonAzlarocdarestoconsiderescape-throughtheheartofaneutrons...

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Fred Saberhagen - The Veils of Azlaroc

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