Glory Lane

  “Something’s wrong.” Brittle was concentrating hard on something unseen.

  “Is he coming through?” Seeth started backing away from Izmir. “Maybe we’d better get out of here.”

  “There is nowhere to get out to,” said Odenaw quietly. “If anything is going to happen, we would have to be ten billion light years away from this spot to ensure our safety. That is beyond even our capabilities.”

  “What’s he doing?” Kerwin wondered.

  “We are not sure.” Since Brittle hadn’t moved, Kerwin didn’t see any point in trying to retreat, either. “We have no idea what is happening.”

  “Well I do.” Everyone, including the Halet, stared at Miranda. She stared back as though they were all deaf, dumb and blind. “I mean, what’s the matter with every­body? Can’t you see he’s scared? He doesn’t have any place to hide, either. Like, with all this moving around, he’s got to be unhappy.”

  “Are you certain of this?” Odenaw asked her.

  “Certain schmertain. It’s just, you know, a feeling.”

  “What is it going to do?” Brittle was fascinated that a creature not much more advanced than an amoeba ap­peared to be serving as a conduit for something as complex and incomprehensible as Izmir.

  “Well, like, I don’t really know.” She smiled hesi­tantly. “I just have, like, this funny feeling he’s going to sneeze or something.”

  Something happened. Kerwin underwent an instant of complete disorientation that was more total than the Halet’s transfer from the Sikan vessel. When it had passed, every­thing was as it had been.

  Except that Miranda was wearing Izmir again.

  A cloak, a dress, call it what you would, it was brilliant beyond description. A flowing rush of color and energy that was almost too intense to look upon directly. Kerwin had to squint, and even the drifting Halets were shading their eyes.

  It didn’t trouble Miranda in the least. “Hey, like, this could catch on. I mean, this is totally rad! Except there’s only one of him.”

  “Not precisely,” murmured Odenaw. “There is enough of Izmir to make rather more than one.”

  “Some threads!” Seeth was squinting through his fin­gers at her. “Would that light up the Club or what, man?”

  “What’s happened?” Kerwin asked aloud.

  “He’s changed his shape again, dimbulb,” his younger brother told him.

  “No jerkwit. I mean before that. When everything went whacko for a second.”

  “He moved.” Odenaw had drifted closer. “I wouldn’t label it a sneeze. There was nothing biological about the reaction.”

  “More like a burp,” said Rizz. “A momentary intru­sion, since rectified, of a bit more of Izmir’s self into our dimension, with the result that the sun in whose neighbor­hood we chose to take up temporary residence has gone nova. Fortunately, it was a star without inhabitable worlds circling it.”

  “It would have been most disconcerting,” Brittle pointed out unnecessarily, “had this occurred when he was located on your planet.”

  “Disconcerting, yeah,” Kerwin whispered.

  “I hope this is not the beginning of an unstable cycle. There would be cataclysms beyond counting. Unpleasant­ness. That this has not begun already may in fact be due to your mollifying presence, particularly that of the female to whom Izmir seems drawn.”

  “If that was a sneeze, Jack, I don’t wanna be in the area when he catches a bad cold.”

  “There is little we can do,” Brittle announced sorrowfully. “Our powers are extensive, but we still are subject to limitations. As one of your own philosphers said, we can move worlds around like cookie crumbs. But this is bigger, much bigger. We are out of our depth here.”

  Kerwin looked thoughtful. “You know, when Arthwit here introduced himself properly, we thought he and his Prufillians were super-powerful. Then we started wonder­ing if maybe it wasn’t the Oomemians. Next the Isotat showed up, and then the Sikan. Now you guys talk about moving worlds around like cookie crumbs, commuting between galaxies and studying eleven dimensions.

  “I was just wondering what’s next up on the scale? I mean, the Prufillians were watching the Oomemians and the Oomemians were watching everybody in their neigh­borhood and the Isotat were watching everybody and the Sikan came over to check out them. Who’s watching you? Are their others above the Halet, or are you the ones on the top rung of the ladder of intelligence?”

  “We don’t know,” said Brittle, spreading his hands. “We suspect, but we can’t prove anything. If there’s anything or anybody else out there watching us and keep­ing a jaundiced eye on what we do, it’s superior enough to move around incognito. But we do suspect there’s some­thing more.”

  “You mean, like a deity?”

  “Hey, I know a wild deity.” Seeth reached for his instrument.

  “Not ditty, deity.” Kerwin shook his head sadly. “The fate of whole races, whole galaxies is at stake here and you make jokes?”

  “About the best thing to do, actually,” Odenaw de­clared, “according to the evidence we’ve been able to put together.” Symbols began to appear in the pearlescent atmosphere.

  “You have your E = MC2. The Prufillians and Oomemians have their pure catastrophe theory. The Isotat and Sikan know dimensional causation. We’ve gone a bit beyond all that. Our most brilliant and innovative minds working together down through the eons have succeeded in produc­ing this.”

  Kerwin stared at the ranked, indecipherable symbols that glowed in front of him. “What’s it mean?”

  Brittle sounded proud. “That is conclusive mathemati­cal proof that whatever exists on the next level of intelli­gence above us possesses a terrific sense of humor. You might call it the amusement equation. Or ontology for airheads. The proof is in the laughter. See, this part here...,” he started to single out a portion of the equation, but Kerwin cut him off.

  “Never mind. I’m sorry I asked. Next you’ll be telling me that situation comedy is the highest expression of civilized art.”

  “Depends on the situation,” said Rizz, deadly earnest, “and the comedy.”

  “All I want to know is when we can go home, and if there’ll be one to get home to.”

  “Everything depends on whether or not we can do anything with Izmir and what he represents by extension,” Brittle told him. He was watching the Astarach as he swirled around Miranda. “He’s not likely to be content to serve as a garment forever. The next cosmic burp could be more extensive and much more deadly.” He raised his voice as he spoke to Miranda. “Can you feel anything, female?”

  “Uncertainty,” Miranda replied immediately. “Confu­sion, puzzlement, disorientation.”

  Odenaw was nodding. “Understandable. Doubtless it has no idea what it is nor how it comes to be in this dimension. Something must be done quickly, before these feelings again manifest themselves physically.”

  Rizz drifted toward Miranda, taking care not to drift too close, Kerwin noted. “It appears content in your presence. Perhaps you could convince it to pull itself back into the seventh dimension? It may simply be that no one has tried because no one knew what to try. Possibly, if you moved with it, we could reseal the damage to the fabric of spacetime.”

  “Me? Go with Izmir?” She hesitated, eyed Rizz warily. “I’ll bet there’s no shopping in the seventh dimension, is there?”

  “No one really knows,” said Odenaw evasively.

  “Sorry. I mean, like, Izmir’s cute and all that, but he’s not what I’d call a lively date. He doesn’t say anything, just sort of gives off vague vibrations. I don’t think I’d like, you know, like it in the seventh dimension. Sometimes I’m not real comfortable in this one, but I’m not ready for any radical changes, either.”

  “You might be saving the entire known universe,” said Rizz.

  “Hey, that’s not my job. I mean, the seventh dimension might be nice to visit and all that but I don’t think I’d want to live there.” As she spoke, the radiant cloak tha
t was Izmir glowed brighter than ever.

  “It’s crazy,” Kerwin muttered as he stared, “but there is some kind of connection there.”

  “Why’s that crazy?” Seeth wanted to know”. “You’re attracted to her, I’m attracted to her, why not everything else?”

  “Besides,” she was saying, “my date book for the next six months is, like, filled. I couldn’t run out on all those boys. My daddy always taught me when you give your word on something, you keep it no matter what. That’s just Texan.”

  “Miranda,” Kerwin told her, “your family might not exist in a little while. Texas might not exist. The whole universe might be scrunched down and sucked into Izmir.”

  “Oh poo! Izmir wouldn’t do anything like that. He doesn’t want to hurt anybody. He’s just confused, poor thing.” She added as an afterthought, “And Texas will always exist.”

  “Do you think maybe you could talk to him? About returning to his own dimension? Tell him this is a crummy one anyway, real sloppy, full of black holes and quasars and all sorts of unpleasant stuff.”

  “Yeah,” said Seeth. “Tell him if he wants to come back and rock some time, maybe we could figure some­thing out, but right now he’s kind of taking up everybody else’s space.”

  Miranda looked dubious. “I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.” She looked down at herself. “You sure I couldn’t keep just a little bit for one blouse?”

  “NO!” said Kerwin, Seeth, Arthwit Rail and the three Halet simultaneously.

  “Honestly, you men! You’re always so serious.”

  There was silence. The distant storm clouds began to close in around the drifting figures, dwarfing the humans. The vast, omniscient shapes pressed close. Kerwin would’ve been intimidated if he hadn’t been so tired. The proximity to so much pure intellect was like a physical presence, a weight pressing heavily on him. Seeth didn’t seem as troubled, perhaps because there wasn’t as much to weigh upon.

  Suddenly Miranda’s skin began to glow as a blinding radiance flowed through her. Kerwin thought he shouted her name, but he wasn’t sure. It all happened so quickly, much faster than anyone imagined possible.

  Izmir broke away from her serene self, tossing off iso­lated, indifferent bursts of energy, each of which was powerful enough to boost a starship through slipspace. The Halet thoughtfully put up defensive screens to keep their guests from being incinerated. Miranda was not affected. The light continued to flow from the now-spherical Izmir. It flooded the immense interior of the Halet habitat, forcing the storm cloud shapes to back off. A deep hum filled Kerwin’s skull, coming not through his ears but directly inside his head. Far away, Miranda said, “Oh dear, I think he’s getting ready to sneeze again, you know?” Like.

  Total disorientation, burst of heat and light. It faded as rapidly as it occurred.

  Then they were drifting soundlessly once more. The clouds retreated into the distance, soft musical sounds filling the empty air between them.

  “Well,” Brittle announced into the silence, “that was really something!”

  “Truly,” Odenaw agreed. “We moved just in time.” Kerwin turned a slow somersault. Miranda no longer wore the glowing cloak. No hovering pyramid or twisted trapezoid clung to her, no waterfall of color or cold flame. Izmir was gone. The Halet confirmed it. Miranda was trying to stifle a sniffle. “He did it for us, you know. For all of us. Not just for me. That was the last feeling I got from him. It was hard for him, too, but he found a way to do it—go back to where he came from. You know why he poked through in the first place? Be­cause he was lonely. He just wanted some company be­cause he didn’t know what to do with all of himself. I mean, like, if you were twelve percent of all the matter in the universe and you were stuck over in some foreign dimension, wouldn’t you wonder what it was like where you came from?”

  “Heavy,” Seeth murmured, nodding agreement.

  “He finally decided, when I talked to him about it, that maybe he’s not on, like, the same wavelength as this dimension anymore. Like people preferring Nikes to Con­verse, you know?”

  “What is she talking about?” Brittle asked.

  “Footgear,” Kerwin told him.

  It was the Halets’ turn to look confused.

  Miranda went on. “I tried to convince him that if he stuck around and kept sneezing or burping or whatever it was he was doing that he was going to do a lot of damage and hurt a lot of innocent thinking beings. So he managed to squeeze himself back through the crack and seal it up behind him.”

  “You did well,” Rizz told her solemnly. “The whole universe owes you an unpayable debt.”

  She shrugged. “Hey, like, no big deal, you know?”

  “Where are we?” Kerwin asked. “It felt like we moved again.”

  “We skipped across a considerable distance just as Izmir returned to his proper dimension, because we feared possi­ble side effects,” Brittle told him. “We’re in a section of space your people call—actually I don’t believe they have a name for it. We left behind a few new quasars that are going to puzzle your astronomers no end when they locate them. They won’t display a normal red shift. You can tell them they’re the result of Izmir’s homeward journey. There’s also a unique supermass whose driving mechanism they won’t be able to explain. That’s what you get when you seal spacetime.”

  “Yeah, right, we’ll tell ‘em all about it,” said Seeth impatiently. “Does this mean we go home?”

  “Poor Izmir,” Miranda was saying. “He was so alone. But I think he understood.”

  “He must have,” said Odenaw, “or he wouldn’t have gone. Maybe he can project his consciousness through without intruding mass. Sort of make some mental visits.”

  “Oh no,” she told the Halet. “He can’t do that because he doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Everyone stared at her. “I mean, like, the consequences must be obvious to everybody. When he snapped back into the seventh dimension he, like, folded into himself. All that mass just overloaded. There was, you know, a big explosion. A big bang, I think they call it. Anyway, the seventh dimension isn’t empty anymore. It’s all full of Izmir.” She looked thoughtful. “You think, like, maybe this dimension was empty at one time, except for some­thing like Izmir that got bored with being all alone and decided to fold in on itself and blew up to form everything else?”

  “No telling,” said Rizz quietly. “I don’t believe any­one’s ever seriously proposed a theory that the universe was born out of suicidal loneliness.”

  “Why not, Jack?” said Seeth. “Why shouldn’t mass need a psychiatrist like everybody else? I mean, existence is nuts anyway.”

  “Much to ponder,” said Brittle. “For now there re­mains the much smaller question of how best to get you home. We cannot do it ourselves. Even our screened presence would register a little too strongly on your peo­ple’s detection devices. However, we can return you to the vessel you last traveled.”

  “Ganun won’t understand, but he’ll go along,” said Rail. He smiled at his human friends, all three eyes blink­ing simultaneously. “I’m sure he’ll be able to slip you home quietly.”

  “What about the Isotat and the Sikan?” Kerwin wondered.

  “Both will continue to search the region we left in haste. Finding nothing but undisciplined, raw energy, the Isotat will return to their travels. Their chance of securing an ultimate weapon gone, the Sikan will start on the long journey back to their home galaxy. There is no reason to pursue conflict when the cause has absented itself. Only you humans do that.”

  14

  Ganun and the rest of his people were too shocked by the sudden appearance of their missing guests in their midst to object to the fantastic tale they had to tell. There was a lot of whispering and sideways glances before the crew returned to their duties.

  As a guest himself, Yirunta was able to spend more time with his distant cousins than any member of the regular crew. The Neanderthal leaned back in the lounge in the common room and regarded them
thoughtfully.

  “So the universe exists as the result of suicidal lone­liness?”

  “Maybe,” Kerwin replied. “That’s a theory of Miran­da’s. It may all be just a big joke.”

  Seeth burst into the common room. He was cradling his petal instrument. Several off-duty crew members crowded close behind him. Kerwin glimpsed other alien shapes in their huge, hairy hands.

  “Hey, give Mom a hug for me, big brother, and Dad too, if he’ll take it. I’m not going home.”

  Kerwin gaped at him. “What are you talking about?”

  The off-duty crew members pushed into the room. “I’ve been rappin’ with some of the guys, see? They’re all amateurs like myself. We’ve been jamming and talking and they like my stuff. Say it’s just primitive enough to catch on big back on House. Bimuri here says he thinks he can line us up some good gigs in a city called Asaria.”

  The tallest of the new arrivals nodded. “Big money for sure.”

  “You can’t do that!” Kerwin yelped. “What are your friends going to say?”

  “Hey, I’m independent, man. If I drop out of sight and show up again in ten years, the most anybody’s gonna say to me is ‘Hi, Seeth, what’s happenin’, man?’ I’ll just tell ‘em me and my band’s been touring, which’ll be the truth. The boys assure me there are ways to work a little Earthside visit now and then without upsetting the cops.” He was grinning hugely. “Told you I was due for a real break. I’m not gonna blow it.”

  “A star is born,” Kerwin muttered. “Swell. Go on, if you want to. Me, I’ve got a test to make up.”

  “Hey, no sweat. Just tell the profs what you’ve been doing.”

  “Sure.”

  “Goodness knows you must have stories to tell,” said Yirunta. “All this talk of Sikan and Isotat and crossing intergalactic gulfs and these mysterious Halet is a bit much to believe. Yet the danger is past. Our instruments find no trace of the field Izmir put out. Even Ganun has accepted the gist of your tale, if not the details.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Rail. “As for myself, I am resigning my post as espial and going into interior decorat­ing. I’ve had enough.”