Fiction

Oregon Magazine Fiction Page

STARSCOPE

    Dr. Harold Clarion was a wizened little man with a shock of
unruly white hair that topped a similarly unruly brain. At the
moment, he was considering his own death. He chewed on the stem of his pipe while he thought about it, all the while staring out
at the three kilometer long span of the starscope.
    His vantage point was his office in Astra One, a space
station in solar orbit beyond Pluto, which at the moment was
beyond Neptune. In one sense, Astra One was both the tenth
planet and the first artificial one.
    He had lived to see quite a lot in his three hundred years,
but except for the starscope, Astra One was the topper.
Except for the starscope.
    To the Immortals, it was a toy that had to be assembled in a
ridiculously brief span of time. Fewer than a hundred years. If
it hadn't been for him, he knew, they wouldn't have boosted
trillions of dollars in equipment and manpower to Hell and gone
past Pluto at maxgee. They'd just kick free of Earth orbit and
slingshot from planet to planet-coasting all the way.
    Time didn't mean anything to them for obvious reasons, but
manners, now, that was something else entirely. Manners were
everything to an Immortal. And, it was just good manners to give
a last wish to the last dying man.
    The pain hit without its usual warning. He gasped and bent
double in his chair, dropping a book from his hands. When the
attack finally passed, it left his slight frame shaking, his dark
eyes just a little more watery than his three centuries warranted.
His glasses, too, had landed on the floor. He picked them
up, and with unsteady hands slid the wire curves over his ears.
The center of the frame rested precariously on his steep nose.
He took a breath and began to steady himself.
    He thought about death, again, then forced it from his mind.
He reached for the fallen book. As he retrieved it an old
photo slid from between the pages. It was Runs Far Charlie.
Behind the Native American's square, dark, placid face loomed the Kitt Peak observatory.
    Clarion brushed a hand across his face, grimacing beneath
it. Thoughts of the fine old observatory, and of friends like
Charlie from the early days, kept surfacing lately. It was
senility, he supposed. He would be the last human to suffer that
indignity, as well.
    He leaned Charlie against a book and looked again at the space station viewscreen that hung like a picture window on the far wall. The workers hovered and wheeled about the starscope, their vehicle and suit lights flickering and fluttering as they went behind the struts. They made him think of the fireflies that used to swarm outside the screen porch at his boyhood Ohio home. Ohio had had lots of them. He had loved them.
    But, there was no longer an Ohio, was there? The post-war
reconstruction commission had seen to that. Elimination of
stress inducing parochialism they had explained. Ohio had a
number now.
    Well, whatever they called it, he hoped it still had fireflies even if it no longer had children to enjoy them.
    Angrily, he stabbed at a console button. The scope faded from the screen. A few of the workers' torches remained briefly as
after images, slowly dying like fireflies in an Ohio dawn.
    He pulled the top drawer of his old oak desk all the way out
to the stops. In the back lay a small container of white pills.
They were supposed to keep him alive until he decided whether or not he wanted to go back and try the experimental operation.
God, how many of those had he endured already? He pushed the drawer shut and reached instead for his meerschaum, which had dropped from his mouth during the attack.
   It was a beautiful pipe. The bowl was stained a rich golden
brown from twenty-three decades of curing. He had had cancer
once, of course, but that at least was a malady they could cure.
He had heard pipe smoking was considered dashing in some Earth circles, now. It wasn't completely painless to have your lungs
replaced.
    He looked at Charlie as he began to fill the bowl with
cavendish. The Indian, like all his people, had decided not to
retard. The Immortal press had not even discussed the matter.
They had been shocked and amused in a frightened sort of way over the decision. To choose death over eternal life was unthinkable to them.
    "The man who doesn't know how to die," Charlie had said,
"doesn't know how to live."
    Charlie had called him "the man with long eyes." A
wonderfully Indian name for an astronomer. Clarion smiled, then
looked up, irritated, as a soft, polite tapping came from the
door. Slocum's fingertip knock. He ignored it. The sound came
again-reserved, patient, insistent.
    "Yes. What is it?" he said, finally.
    The door slid open. A youthful looking man just a bit over
six feet tall entered the room. Smiling in a mildly paternalistic
way, he looked slowly around the room, as though seeing it for
the first instead of the thousandth time. His placid face
reflected a casual combination of interest and mild disapproval.
With an insouciant grace he walked to one of the bookshelves.
The way he faintly broke stride halfway there was an
unintentional reminder to Clarion that his office was three times
the size of any other on the space station. No Immortal section
head would think of so visibly setting himself above others.
They were more subtle than that. Slocum stopped next to the book case. He pulled one from the shelf.
    "What is the Bhagavad Gita, Dr. Clarion?"
    "Hindu religious writings, Slocum," Clarion sighed, running
his bony hand through his wild clot of hair.
    "Religion," mused Slocum. He said it in the manner of one
responding to the discovery that it is cloudy. An interesting,
if unimportant fact.
    Well, Hell, thought Clarion, why shouldn't he? He's never
going to face Judgement Day.
    "Make your report, Slocum," he said aloud.
    Slocum returned the book to its place. "Yes, sir," he said.
"I think we've solved the vibration problem. Evidently, your
hunch was correct. The scope is so long that it is resonant to
some sort of high order gravitic wave product. Your approach
seems to be working. The readouts are almost perfect."
    "I'm not waiting for perfect, Slocum. Finish it."
    'But-" Slocum began to object, then caught himself. His
face recomposed itself into a mask of agreeability.
    You're a slimy bunch of bastards, thought Clarion. I
wouldn't take fifty billion of you for one Runs Far Charlie.
    "Of course," mewed Slocum. "Will ninety-nine, point seven
be sufficient, Dr. Clarion?" He looked sadly hopeful.
    "Get the damned thing done," growled Clarion.
    Slocum nodded affably. His eyes brushed across Clarion's
face. It was, thought Clarion, as close as they ever came to
looking directly into anyone's eyes. Slocum quietly left the
room. After he had gone, Harold Clarion stared after him for a
time, wondering if he hated the man because he was a detached,
effete dilettante-or if it was because Slocum would never die.

    Slocum found the new man in the lounge. Wilkerson had been
on orbit for three periods already. As station sub-chief it was
Slocum's job to begin the man's orientation. He should have
gotten to the man already, but with the present schedule things
were simply too rushed, and -- he smiled suddenly, faintly. He had been around the old man too long. Clarion's obsession with time was beginning to rub off. Three days or three centuries, what did it matter? Except that one might be an uncouth, mannerless,
impatient, dying mortal, it didn't matter at all. He broadened
the smile and bowed.
    "Dr. Wilkerson? I'm Dr. Slocum. Welcome to Starscope
Station."
    Their right hands rolled over, palm up, in greeting. They
did not touch. As his eyes passed over Wilkerson in that
Immortal manner that never seemed to directly look at another,
Slocum decided that Wilkerson was an odd sort. He was a large
man, but not in any athletic sense. It was more that he looked
like one of those historical photos from the early twentieth
century.
    The beefy shoulders, the lined face with the squint tracks
at the corners of the eyes -- and he was balding! Could he have
waited that long to retard? The sight of the partially hairless
head both sexually intrigued and startled Slocum.
    To allow himself time to regain his composure -- damn Clarion
for affecting his style! -- he glanced quickly at the clipboard in
his hands. Wilkerson's biography was summarized on the top
sheet. The information was mostly standard. Thirty years of
primary and secondary schooling. Undergraduate study at a small but socially prestigious university -- Chronicles College on Mars. It was a school known for producing good poets.
    But, one item was unusual. He had only one doctorate. The
man must be a total cretin! And, it had been taken on Earth, of
all places. Slocum hadn't been aware there was a university left
there. Strangest of all was the man's speciality. Slocum had
never even heard of the field. He glanced up, one eyebrow raised
in shameless curiosity.
    "Dr. Clarion likes to meet everyone, uh, right away, Dr.
Wilkerson," he crooned silkily. "I believe he's still in his
office if you'd care to see him now."

III

    Harold Clarion scanned the resume as Slocum left. He
glanced up and studied Wilkerson openly, in a way that Slocum, or any Immortal, would have considered quite rude. Wilkerson for his part seemed to be attempting to reciprocate. An odd
mannerism for an Immortal. Clarion frowned.
    "Tell me, Wilkerson," he said, tapping the stem of his
meerschaum on the paper. "Just what the hell is a Doctor of
Archeonovia Sociohistory?"
    Wilkerson made an awkward little gesture with his hand, and
reached into his tunic pocket. A pipe came out. Clarion's eyes
widened. Was Wilkerson one of the new dashing sorts? That would explain his appearance. But, the bowl of the pipe, Clarion now saw, was shiny from many years of handling. It took regular use to wear lacquer from a pipe bowl, replacing it with the soft
sheen of body oils.
    "They warned me about your directness, Dr. Clarion," said
Wilkerson. His voice was not deep, yet it was not affected. His
eyes were blue, and had something -- was it humor? -- in them. And, there was a sadness about the man, faint as the memory of a
breeze.
    Wilkerson pulled a pouch from his pocket and begin to fill the pipe. "Archeonovia Sociohistory is a brand new field. I have the
first doctorate." He smiled ruefully. "Perhaps the last.
Anyway, in a nutshell I'm interested in the development of a
cultural grand unified theory. That's why I did my doctoral work
at Oxford. It's the last university on Earth, and so more in
touch with our roots. They still use books there," he added,
glancing appreciatively at Clarion's collection. "I should like
your permission to look over some of yours."
    Clarion puffed on his pipe for a moment, saying nothing.
Finally, he said, "You may use them as you wish, of course. But,
I still don't understand why you're here, Wilkerson. This is as
far as you can get from the bulk of humanity. From a cultural
standpoint, it is more of an anomaly than anything else, and thus
might be misleading to your work."
    "No," said Wilkerson, obviously having trouble with
something. "I'm not looking at the society of this space
station."
    "Then what?"
    A part of Clarion's consciousness watched with astonishment
the emotions playing across Wilkerson's face. It was a startling
show for an Immortal. The silence between them grew rigid as the man wrestled with his problem. It was unthinkable in the current
mode of manners for Clarion to just sit there and openly watch
another's display of feelings, but in truth he was intrigued, and
not a little moved. It had been a long time since he had been
allowed to share something like this. Finally, Wilkerson smiled
apologetically. He took a breath and slowly released it.
    "I've come here because-according to my theory all cultures
that stop expanding begin to decline. I believe a single thread
exists -- call it a life drive -- that is the cohesive force in each
stage of human development. When that's gone, the spirit is
gone. The culture dies."
    Clarion relit his pipe, then observed, "You have a problem,
son. It is odd, I suppose, that in all the solar system you
should happen to come here. Be talking to me. But, I have spent much of my life reading classic thought. And, while I have done
it for reasons other than yours, I have crossed your specialty
more than once. A unified theory of the sort you're looking for
seems possible. Not a grand unified.
    "With the Romans, it was simple sloth. They got fat, psychologically as well as physically. When they started hiring somebody else to do their fighting, it was over for them. The Nazis were driven by feelings of inferiority, stemming from World War One. For the British, I'll take tradition. The inflexibility of tradition. With the Russians, it was a glorious, centuries-long cultural paranoia that caused them to continually replace one sort of dictatorship with another.
    "And the old Americans? What a bunch of gunslingers! Did you know that by the mid-twenty-first century their government was the oldest continuing political structure, unchanged, of all the major nations of the Earth?"
    He paused. His face took on a sour look, as though he had just bitten down on a rotten fruit of some kind.
    "What destroyed their culture was compassion. Not the real stuff, but the political kind. From Lyndon Johnson on, they poured trillions of dollars into social programs that made things worse for the people they were supposed to help. And, with the bucks going there, they let their defense, their military, wither away. When China attacked Taiwan, the Americans didn't have the military to step in. After that, they were a minor power, an unimportant player on the world stage."
    He locked his gaze on Wilkerson's. The other flinched, but wouldn't break away first. Clarion admired him for having some guts. He suddenly softened his voice.
    "I subscribe to your single more significant drive theory, son,
but I believe it's a different one each time. And, the most
glaring example is our present culture. How could you possibly
find an exact continuity between a culture of humans who die and
one peopled with those who don't?"
    Wilkerson nodded his head. "Perhaps you're right. If you are, then I have dedicated my life to a mistake. I've come a long way for nothing."
    Clarion puffed away, watching Wilkerson. "Which brings us
to the point, again, doesn't it?" he said quietly.
    Wilkerson nodded. "But, if I'm not wrong ... if I haven't
wasted my life in a futile effort ..."
    "Then," mused Clarion, "you would have a diagnostic key to
any human culture."
    "Diagnose," said Wilkerson, "and perhaps even cure."
    Clarion blinked. "That's an odd thing to say. The
implication is not subtle, sir. How can your culture, Immortal
culture, be sick in any serious sense? It can't die!"
    Wilkerson shrugged. "I am probably the only man alive who
sees a problem. But, I think it is sick, maybe even dying. And,
I think-immortality is the disease."
    Clarion was stunned. For a moment, he couldn't say anything
at all. Then, suddenly, he chuckled.
    "I'll be damned," he said, then grew thoughtful. "I've
missed the children. It isn't the same without them. But, there
are no more wars. No fist fights, even. Everyone has as much
free education as they want-and if they don't want it now they
can have it when they do. There's plenty to eat, even if it is
synthetic crap. Everyone has a home. I just don't see it.
What's seriously wrong with your culture?"
    Wilkerson raised his hands, then dropped them to his lap.
    "I haven't got a name for it. For my purposes I call it
Infinite Digression. The way I see it, there was a time when Man
was in a hurry to learn. Now it's as if answers are like -- a
special trout in a favorite pool. You may try for him for years,
but somewhere deep inside you hope you never catch him. The
drama would be over. I think it's like that with Immortals.
They love dredging up little answers, but they don't like landing
the big ones. There are only so many of those."
    Clarion chuckled. "Looking for smaller and smaller answers,
yes. But, that's nothing new. It's been the order of the day
for doctoral candidates for -- " He stopped in mid-sentence,
suddenly struck by Wilkerson's terminology. He had said, "they!".
    "What," he said, a puzzled expression screwing up his face,
"is the ultimate driving force you think you've lost?" he asked.
    Wilkerson paused. It was obviously the same thing he was
wrestling with before, Clarion realized.
    "I think the ultimate driving force of human life - of all life, in fact - is death, Dr. Clarion." He paused, then his words rushed forth. It was as if he believed if he hesitated he would never be able to finish. "Since you are the only human in the solar system who is -- immediately mortal, I have come here to find the answer through you."
    Harold Clarion looked down at the scratched surface of his
old desk. It must have cost a half a million to ship the damn
thing out, he thought. He looked up at Wilkerson. This man
believed that the key to the survival of Immortal human civilization was him! What a bloody irony.
    Wilkerson jumped half out of his chair when Clarion exploded
into laughter.

    Harold Clarion had already left his quarters and was making
his way toward the space dock when the lights dimmed and
brightened, signaling the beginning of another period. It was,
in his opinion, a pitiable stand-in for an Ohio dawn.
    Maybe I should just say the hell with it, he thought. Go
back and see if I can find a place with trees to die in.
    He had gone to hydroponics once, just to be near something
living, but it had been a depressing experience. The scientist
in him had understood the efficiency of zero-G gardens with
exposed roots and a constant mist of nutrient-rich spray. But
the humanity in him had rebelled against the unnatural quality of
it all. He had left and never returned.
    The memory of the experience left a renewed bad taste in his
mouth, so he was in a lousy mood when he reached the dock.
Wilkerson was waiting for him at the pod lock, his strange half
bald head glinting orange beneath the vacuum warning sign. There was no vacuum on the far side of the door, of course. The outer
bay portal protected against that. But, these Immortals took no
chances with ejection into airlessness. Even medicine dedicated
to trauma repair couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again after something like that.
    He reached the door and threw the double safety switches
without bothering to check the readout. Wilkerson flinched and
paled. The door slid open with a whisper. Clarion stalked
through, then stopped at the pod hatch. "You said you wanted to see the scope," he said impatiently.
    Wilkerson silently followed Clarion into the pod, settling
back in the forward passenger bucket. Clarion jabbed at the
bulkhead door release before the pod's hatch had fully cycled.
In spite of Immortal precautions, there was a brief whistle of
escaping air before the door seals mated.
    He grasped the controls. They felt good. Like the
handlebars of a Harley Davidson motorcycle he had found in a barn once. It had called to him from beneath a pile of old junk. He had tinkered with it and got it running. His heart had thrilled
to its throaty roar as it hurled his twelve year old body
joyously down one of America's last dirt roads. It had been
threatening, dangerous and marvelous ...
    He suddenly wished there was an atmosphere beyond the pod
screen. He would kick the damned thing out and feel the wind in
his face. He twisted the throttle savagely. At least he could
feel the pod's thrust, meek as it was. The pod moved swiftly
forward, trailing two white, hissless snakes from its rear jets.
He banked the vehicle, enjoying the shifting tensions in his old
muscles. A milquetoast compared to the Harley, but then wasn't
everything?
    Reluctantly, he slowed as they neared the base of the
starscope. Working a toggle, he flicked on the headlights,
throwing three white lakes across the structure. There was no
beautiful beam of light like the Harley had shot through the
night, because there was no atmosphere.
    Wilkerson whistled softly. "It's magnificent," he said.
    The awe and sadness of it always affected Clarion. It was
magnificent. And, it was nearly done.
    "Three kilometers long?" asked Wilkerson.
    "Yes, almost."
    "It doesn't look all that strong."
    Specialization, thought Clarion. That's what's killing the
race. Maybe Wilkerson is right with his Infinite Digression.
"This is your first intimate contact with space, I take it?"
    "Yes it is," said Wilkerson, either ignoring the sarcasm or
unaware of it. "But, I wasn't referring to Earth engineering.
There are gravitic waves, very long ones, in space, aren't
there?"
    Clarion glanced at him in surprise.
    Wilkerson frowned. "I said that wrong, didn't I?"
    "Not at all," replied Clarion. "You're right. Space is
like the depths of the oceans. Most people think the waves are
on the surface alone, but that's far from the whole story.
There's a complex of waves below the surface. All kinds of them, in all sizes, going in every which direction. Space isn't quiet,
either. It's chock full of the same sort of thing. Our problem
was a gravitic product nobody knew existed."
    "That would explain the large plates, the -- well, they look
like baffles. Some sort of resonance cancelling device, I should
imagine."
    Clarion found himself grinning. Against his better
judgement, he was beginning to like this fellow. In a better
mood than he'd felt for some time, he cranked up the pod jets and scooted out toward the far end of the scope. There, they sat for
a time simply looking quietly out to space.
    "They have a new surgical procedure, you know," Wilkerson
said.
    Without looking at him Clarion said, "I heard something
about it. Grow you a new heart, a pancreas, whatever you need,
right?"
    "From a single cell of a specific organ," said Wilkerson.
    "Screw it," said Clarion.
    They fell silent, again.
    "It's odd, you know," Wilkerson said after a while, somehow
not breaking the delicate mood of peace that had fallen over
them. "Now that Man no longer has to overcome the lightspeed
barrier -- now that he can coast to the stars and come home to
the same people he left -- he no longer seems to want to go."

    Three days later, it was done. Harold Clarion sent down the
coordinates for the first series of photographic plates. That
night the pain was bad. He couldn't sleep, and finally got up,
dressed and made his way to his office. He wanted his
meerschaum, and a drink. Wilkerson was there, sitting at his
desk, reading one of the Hindu manuscripts, a Purana. When he
saw Clarion, he made as if to rise, but Clarion waved him back.
He got his pipe, filled it and headed for the bookcase that hid
the bar. One section swung out easily, revealing a heady stache
of bottles, and a sink. He got a wide-mouthed glass from a
cupboard and splashed some scotch in it.
    "You?" he asked over his shoulder.
    "No, thanks," said Wilkerson.
    "Apologies," said Clarion. He had forgotten. The process
that generated immortality had its imperfections. It gave
everyone a long time to develop addictions. Alcoholics had bad
manners, and dealing with the problem one day at a time was a
significant task for a man who would live forever.
    The pain slammed into him as he was about to cap the bottle.
He sagged against the sink, gasping.
    "Dr. Clarion?"
    "-nothing," choked out Clarion. He tossed the full glass
of scotch down his throat. It burned beautifully bellyward. He
refilled the glass and threw another after the first. The pain
backed off. Warmth began to spread through his body. Gradually, his breathing steadied. He was able to fill his glass a third time, close the bar and make his way almost normally to the
couch. Wilkerson's face was lined with concern. Clarion smiled
weakly to reassure the man.
    "It comes and goes," he said. "What's that you're reading?
Religion? An odd topic for an Immortal."
    Wilkerson looked down at the book in his hands.
    "I have seen references to Shiva, before," he said. "But, I
can't recall exactly which Hindu god he was."
    "The Lord of the Dance," replied Clarion. "A manifestation
of Brahma, the creator -- and a member of the Hindu trinity.
Vishnu is the third one. Shiva is the destroyer. In some
artistic representations he's a four armed androgynous-
looking man inside a circle. In others, he's sitting on a
snake."
    "He has something in two of his hands, Dr. Clarion. What do
those objects represent?"
    "One is the drum of time that shuts out the knowledge of
eternity. The other hand is holding a flame. It's supposed to
burn away the veil of time and open our mind to that same eternity."
    Wilkerson nodded slowly. "I remember, now. Sivaism. They
believed in an endless series of universal cycles." He closed
the book gently and set it aside. "What do you believe in, Dr.
Clarion?" he asked, suddenly.
    Harold Clarion's brain slid into that post-tension, pre-
slurred state of almost instinctive creativity common to some
drinkers. At this point, which sometimes lasted for hours of
careful alcoholic manipulation, he often leapfrogged sequential
reasoning like a child. So it happened this time, as he stared
at Wilkerson.
    "But, of course," he said suddenly. "I should have seen it
before. In the old days, many doctors entered their profession
because of their fear of death. You have a similar reason,
haven't you? But, what, exactly?"
    Wilkerson's rueful smile appeared. "They devoted billions
to researching your situation. You know that."
    Clarion nodded.
    Wilkerson went on: "They found it fifty years after you came
out here. A genetic trait. Very rare."
    "One," said Clarion, "make that two, apparently, in twenty
billion."
    "Almost," said Wilkerson. "My deviation was less
destructive in one sense. I am simply nearly immortal."
    "Jesus," said Harold Clarion.
    "Or Shiva," agreed Wilkerson. "Which, as you would put it, brings us back to the earlier question. What do you believe in, Dr. Clarion?"
    Clarion began to grin. His head nodded slowly up and down.
    "That," he said, "is the best question I've heard in three
hundred years."
    "And the answer?"
    "I'll give it to you in 48 hours," said Clarion. "By God, I
think I will be able to do just that."

    Two days later, the crusty old astronomer bounced up and
walked around his desk to shake hands. Wilkerson actually did it, touching the other man. If his facial expression was any guide, it was not repulsive to him, this ancient peace parlay gesture of presenting an empty weapon hand. Clarion admired his courage. Custom being what it was it must have been two hundred years since he had touched another person in a non-sexual way.
    Clarion headed for the bar. "I can't tell you," said the
old astronomer, "how pleased I am to share this moment with you, Dr. Wilkerson. The feelings I have about it are certainly mixed.
But, having you here is important."
    "I'll have some juice with you," said Wilkerson, looking up
from his hands. He smiled. "Where did you aim it?"
    Clarion chuckled, in obvious good humor, though his old face
looked a little more hawkish, today. He had had a rough night.
    "You tell me," he said.
    Wilkerson's mouth pursed. "Andromeda? The Crab? There are some possible Earth type systems inside twenty light years, I
seem to recall. No, somehow you wouldn't do it that way. An
Immortal astronomer would -- he'd be methodical to the point of
distraction. But, not you ... " Suddenly, he looked at Clarion
and smiled.
    "You know, then," said Clarion with satisfaction. "I had a
feeling you'd figure it out."
    Wilkerson watched the old man tap his fingers on the Rig
Veda. "It's a matter of time, isn't it? There are a million
million wonderful questions for you out there. But, in the final
analysis, there's only one for a mortal man. The Big Bang."
    As if recreating it on his desk, Clarion slammed his fist to
the top. "Right, by Damn! They'll get the credit for all the
rest, but I'll be the first to know the Brobdingnagian beastie
that started it all. The plates have been exposed. They're in
the darkroom, now. The answer is on board this lab. And, you're going to be with me when I see it!"

VII

    "I didn't know the Cosmos had a center," said Wilkerson as
they waited for the humming, chirping computer processor to spit
out the prints.
    "It doesn't," said Clarion, swirling the ice around the
inside of his glass. He took a stiff belt, belying his outward
calmness. "Not in the sense, anyway, that a cherry pie has a
center. We've known that since the twentieth century.
Einstein took away our privileged reference points.
Mathematically, things are all flying away from each other in a
way that makes everywhere the center of the universe. Or,
nowhere, if you prefer to look at it that way."
    "Ptolemy would have loved knowing that," said Wilkerson.
    Clarion chuckled. "Absolutely!"
    "Then, how did you decide where to aim the Scope?" asked
Wilkerson after a moment.
    Clarion pursed his lips and blew air through them. "That
was a strange journey -- trying to figure that out. In one
sense, since everywhere is the center, anywhere would be fine.
But, things get in the way. Suns, planets, solar systems,
galaxies, local groups, cosmic dust, dark matter ... "
    "Dark matter," mused Wilkerson. "Have they ever
figured out what that is?"
    Clarion laughed. "Nope. We can probably do it now, with
the Scope. It was a big question when I was a kid. In the
1980's a bright young lady astronomer figured out that it was
there. Used the orbital pace of glactic rim-stars to prove its
existence."
    "The galaxies," Wilkerson said hesitantly, "have to be,
well, heavier than the total weight of everything we can see in
them -- that's how it is, right?"
    "Right. More massive. So, there's dark matter. I decided
then it was 1953 Buick sedans. Pre-space-travel doctor's cars.
All black and heavy as hell."
    The computer terminal beeped. The two men looked
meaningfully at each other. "So, where did you aim it?"
Wilkerson asked quietly.
    Staring at the terminal, Clarion went on. "Well, for a long
time we thought the Cosmos had an even distribution of matter-
on the large scale, of course. But late in the last century we
found open areas, big ones. One map of all the known stars
looked like an illustration of a man. An illustrated man, with
arms, legs, the works. I realized then if you could
figure out how to cancel out the effects of stray light
particles, the photons, what you had in the empty places was a
time hole."
    Wilkerson nodded. "A nice irony, there, I think. The first
thing you aim the greatest telescope in history at is nothing."
    "A hunch," said Clarion, "a long shot, pun intended."
    The machine beeped. Two prints slid out of a slot.
Wilkerson and Clarion stared at them in disbelief.
    "Well, I'll be damned!" whispered Wilkerson.
    "That," Clarion said in muted awe, "may be an option."
    The image was clear. There was no doubt. In one print, a
four armed man was half kneeling, as if between standing and
reclining. In the second, the figure was prone on a coiled
snake. He looked like a person going to sleep.
    "The snake had -- has a name, doesn't it?" said Wilkerson.
    "Sesa," said Clarion. "Or, Ananta, the unending."
    Suddenly, Wilkerson began to tremble. He took hold of the
nearest bulkhead brace. Looking at Clarion, he asked: "Why are
the photos different?"
    Clarion blinked and cleared his throat. "Uh-a telescope
is a kind of time machine. The greater the physical distance
involved, the farther the temporal travel. The naked eye has a
focal length and capacity to gather light that allows a man to
see, oh, relatively nearby galactic clusters. They look like
stars, but they're galaxies. A telescope can gather more light.
See more distant objects."
    Wilkerson choked back an emerging giggle. "Then you have
the technical control to select a ... space time?"
    Clarion nodded slowly. "In a manner of speaking, yes. I do
and I did."
    Wilkerson's breath came in shallow, quick bursts. The
giggle started rattling upwards from his chest. "Which was the
nearer?"
    Clarion's voice cracked. "The half reclining one.."
   "Jesus!" whispered Wilkerson.
    "Well ... " said Clarion, his inflection rising on the first
word and falling on the second. "Shiva."
    "The destroyer incarnation," said Wilkerson. "How long?"
    "Before it-hits?" Clarion shook his head as if to clear
the fog. "I don't know. A thing like this-how could it be
anything but instantaneous?"
    "But it isn't!" Wilkerson's voice was harsh. "It isn't! The whole goddamned Cosmos has ended out there, but it hasn't ended here!" His right index finger was pointing rigidly at the deck beneath them.
    Clarion stared at the deck. "I don't know! Maybe Einstein
was righter than even he knew. Maybe even the gods can't exceed the speed of light."
    Wilkerson finally let the giggle escape. "The End is near,"
he said.
    Instantly, both of them exploded into laughter. Soon, their
faces were streaked with tears, and they were in each other's
arms, pounding each other on the back. It took them some time to notice the loud knocking on the darkroom door.
    "Dr. Clarion! Dr. Wilkerson! Are you all right?"
    They looked at each other and fell into another paroxysm of
laughter. A few moments later, Clarion managed to get his breath and say, "Yes, Slocum. Everything is fine. Just fine. We're
okay."
    The knocking stopped.
    "But, you're not," he added quietly.
    Wide-eyed, Wilkerson asked: "What'll they do?"
    Clarion shook his head. "Damned if I know. It's a hell of
an interesting problem, though."
    "Are you going to just go out there and tell them in so many
words?"
    "Not," said Clarion, "until I have had myself a good stiff
scotch."
    "Make it a double for me!" said Wilkerson, with another
chuckle.
    They left the darkroom, arm in arm. The Immortals who
happened to be along their path stepped back in shock at the
sight of two people touching in public. As they passed Slocum,
Clarion said: "Listen here, Wilkerson, old boy. This new
operation they've got now. How much time do you think I'd pick
up?"
    "The discrete organ cloning?"
    "Yeah, that."
    "Who knows? Two-maybe three hundred years. Could
be twice that."
    "But time enough to see the fun begin?"
    "Hell, yes!" agreed Wilkerson. "Plenty of time for a great
beginning!"