Finally the Chinese government insisted on an
international expedition. America had the technological edge for producing the
starship itself; China’s friends of the Iranian Islamic Peoples Republic
offered heavy financial backing —in return, it was understood, an Iranian
scientist should accompany the expedition, a Moslem scientist; while China’s Common Market friends, who had
spurred the scientific leap forward of the Eighties before the freeze of the
Nineties, would contribute too. Russia suddenly endorsed an international
scheme, to minimize the Chinese presence on it. . .
“The
green line’s bobbing up and down.”
“Still
riding the shockwaves ...”
Snakes
and ladders: our journey takes us across a snakes and ladders board. Now that
we’ve met a snake, we might slide all the way down again. And the snake is
ourselves . . . We could oscillate here forever. Or we might suddenly arrive.
“Something
reached out,” whispers Salman, “just as it reached out to Earth. It reached out
to disarm us.”
Jacobik
slumps across his console, weeping. Weeping bitterly. I didn’t know that he had tear ducts in his eyes.
“It’s
stabilising at a higher level! It’s holding. Oh, we had to unload all our fear
and hatred. We had to jettison them overboard, explode them.” Heinz beams at
Captain K.
Who
shrugs. “We’re all drugged by irreality, as Natalya says. We hallucinate, we
disarm the ship—while the physical constants play dice outside.” He moves to
Jacobik’s side to lay a fatherly hand on the Czech’s shoulder while our
ex-warrior sobs childishly, impotently, all his stings drawn. “Do you know,
Comrade, where I come from they have a saying that magpies in a crowd have more
strength than tigers in single file? We aren’t tigers any more. Let us flock
together, then! ”
“Magpies
are thieves,” sniffs Wu. “What are we really but a flock of thieves—borrowers
of alien tools we never made? Nowadays one does not pray, of course. Not yet!
One psychs the machine, as the jargon
goes. The next step will be prayer, though. And on Earth too, as it is in
Heaven? As Mencius truly said, ‘Heaven does not speak! ’ ”
Our
Captain gently reprimands her. “One can only pick one’s way through that irreal
flux out there by an act of thought and imagination, not just with brute
machinery.”
“Alas,
the mysticism at the heart of the Russian soul.” Wu stands there with hand
raised, a Chinese Cassandra—of revolutionary Reason. She’s too late; the world
has already altered. The universe is other than we thought. So she preaches,
Cassandra-like, to deaf ears ... Or is she, rather, that figure poised behind
the Emperor’s throne, whose duty it was always to whisper in his ear, ‘Remember
you are only human’? She would certainly omit the qualifier! To be human is
enough. And now it’s too late for that: the superhuman is upon us from the star
82 Eridani...
Yet,
blinkered martinet though she is—political appointee, too: historiographer
royal!—there’s something about her, which Ritchie responds to more deeply than
I. But which I do sense. She wears a mask, a very perfect mask, yet it isn’t
her real face. Even amidst the forced rapports of High Space I cannot see what that is. It’s as though she has
hypnotised herself, to forget herself—a typically Chinese political manoeuvre,
perhaps ... Is that ‘real’ face of hers identical with the political mask by
now? Not quite. There’s a faint, yet growing, hint of irony or even sarcasm in
her preachings, aimed not merely at us benighted devils but at those preachings
themselves, as though she is giving us a covert warning about them, deliberately
presenting herself as the epitome of
international expedition. America had the technological edge for producing the
starship itself; China’s friends of the Iranian Islamic Peoples Republic
offered heavy financial backing —in return, it was understood, an Iranian
scientist should accompany the expedition, a Moslem scientist; while China’s Common Market friends, who had
spurred the scientific leap forward of the Eighties before the freeze of the
Nineties, would contribute too. Russia suddenly endorsed an international
scheme, to minimize the Chinese presence on it. . .
“The
green line’s bobbing up and down.”
“Still
riding the shockwaves ...”
Snakes
and ladders: our journey takes us across a snakes and ladders board. Now that
we’ve met a snake, we might slide all the way down again. And the snake is
ourselves . . . We could oscillate here forever. Or we might suddenly arrive.
“Something
reached out,” whispers Salman, “just as it reached out to Earth. It reached out
to disarm us.”
Jacobik
slumps across his console, weeping. Weeping bitterly. I didn’t know that he had tear ducts in his eyes.
“It’s
stabilising at a higher level! It’s holding. Oh, we had to unload all our fear
and hatred. We had to jettison them overboard, explode them.” Heinz beams at
Captain K.
Who
shrugs. “We’re all drugged by irreality, as Natalya says. We hallucinate, we
disarm the ship—while the physical constants play dice outside.” He moves to
Jacobik’s side to lay a fatherly hand on the Czech’s shoulder while our
ex-warrior sobs childishly, impotently, all his stings drawn. “Do you know,
Comrade, where I come from they have a saying that magpies in a crowd have more
strength than tigers in single file? We aren’t tigers any more. Let us flock
together, then! ”
“Magpies
are thieves,” sniffs Wu. “What are we really but a flock of thieves—borrowers
of alien tools we never made? Nowadays one does not pray, of course. Not yet!
One psychs the machine, as the jargon
goes. The next step will be prayer, though. And on Earth too, as it is in
Heaven? As Mencius truly said, ‘Heaven does not speak! ’ ”
Our
Captain gently reprimands her. “One can only pick one’s way through that irreal
flux out there by an act of thought and imagination, not just with brute
machinery.”
“Alas,
the mysticism at the heart of the Russian soul.” Wu stands there with hand
raised, a Chinese Cassandra—of revolutionary Reason. She’s too late; the world
has already altered. The universe is other than we thought. So she preaches,
Cassandra-like, to deaf ears ... Or is she, rather, that figure poised behind
the Emperor’s throne, whose duty it was always to whisper in his ear, ‘Remember
you are only human’? She would certainly omit the qualifier! To be human is
enough. And now it’s too late for that: the superhuman is upon us from the star
82 Eridani...
Yet,
blinkered martinet though she is—political appointee, too: historiographer
royal!—there’s something about her, which Ritchie responds to more deeply than
I. But which I do sense. She wears a mask, a very perfect mask, yet it isn’t
her real face. Even amidst the forced rapports of High Space I cannot see what that is. It’s as though she has
hypnotised herself, to forget herself—a typically Chinese political manoeuvre,
perhaps ... Is that ‘real’ face of hers identical with the political mask by
now? Not quite. There’s a faint, yet growing, hint of irony or even sarcasm in
her preachings, aimed not merely at us benighted devils but at those preachings
themselves, as though she is giving us a covert warning about them, deliberately
presenting herself as the epitome of
Similar Books
