Down The Bright Way (v2.0)
Robert Reed, 1991
It took me years to discover that science, with all its brilliance, lights only a middle chapter of creation, a chapter with both ends bordering on the infinite, one which can be expanded but never completed.
-- Charles Lindbergh
Book One
Lincoln
KYLE
1
Sometimes, when I am tired and distracted, I forget -- showing my age, perhaps? -- and I consider my colleagues as if for the first time. They are Wanderers, authentic human beings, yet they come with many faces and no two have the same precise color and shape. Each of our species has its own talents and its own distinct intelligence and I have to marvel at them; I couldn't imagine such a multitude if I tried. All of us began as the same upright primate, roaming tropical savannas on a million identical earths, and look at us now. We have so many ways of living, and so many colors of thought ... !
Revelations like these can fill me with such joy.
Yet sometimes, at damnably unpredictable moments, that joy dissolves into a sudden chill. A blackness is within me, for no reason whatsoever, and I start to shiver ... and quietly moan.
-- Jy's private journal
The first sample of any new earth is a small volume of common seawater. Its isotope ratios and dissolved gases are studied, radioactive traces are identified, and a tentative profile of the new earth is compiled. Then if the sample is relatively free of toxins, each scout, according to tradition, wets a finger and places it on the tongue, tasting salts as well as the bitterest planktons.
-- A scout's chronicles
She didn't play fair, Kyle was thinking. Just like a woman, he was thinking. It was two, maybe two-thirty in the morning, and they lay on his bed with the sheets everywhere and every window open and the breeze blowing lazy-warm across them. Her damp body was snuggled up against him, and she was talking. She was using her plaintive little-girl voice, saying, "I know this is a lot to ask. But I was wondering ... after the rally and all? Maybe we could borrow Janice's car, I can borrow it, and we could go out to the new portal. Out where Jy's supposed to stay?" A pause. A purposeful sigh. "And if it's not too much trouble, maybe you can take me to meet Jy? Like you can do sometimes?" You meaning Wanderers. Every Wanderer. "Please, please?" she said, somehow snuggling closer. "I'd love to go. Just to shake her hand. Just once."
Kyle said nothing.
Billie bit her lower lip. "Is that okay? Could we?"
The breeze felt warmer all at once, almost hot. It was as if someone had started the furnace in the middle of August.
Billie was watching his face. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
"Is it too much?" she wondered.
"What ... ?"
"Am I asking too much?"
He tried shaking his head. "No."
"You're sure?"
"No, it's fine," he promised. "Nothing is wrong."
She didn't speak. She just held her breath and pressed an ear against his chest, waiting.
The girl wasn't being unreasonable. How could he consider her unreasonable? A Wanderer could bring guests to meet Jy. Only it didn't happen very often, and Billie hadn't mentioned it until now. Kyle hadn't even considered the possibility, not once. I'll just tell her it's impossible, he thought. She'll understand. I'll make up some excuse. I can fool her. Only he kept thinking of her plaintive voice and her certain disappointment, and all at once he was talking. He heard his own voice and felt a strange detachment. "All right," he was saying. "We'll go and see if we can see her -- "
"Jy!?"
"The Glorious One," he promised.
"You mean it?" Billie sat upright and applauded, kicked her feet and shrieked. "Really?"
He nodded.
"Oh, good good good. Good, good."
He watched her body in the yellowy glare of the street lamps. She was small and small-breasted and firm in an incidental, youthful way. Kyle was always surprised by her youth, and pleased. He started stroking her cool damp belly, wondering why he'd agreed. And what was going to happen a couple of nights from now? Did they just go see Jy as if it was nothing? Did they knock on her door and say, "Oh, hi! We were in the neighborhood. How are you?" God, he thought. Billie didn't play fair. She'd been a joy tonight, doing whatever he wanted and working him into a mood where he couldn't say no. He was so stupid. Sometimes he was the stupidest asshole on this earth ... probably on every earth ... and he blinked, hearing Billie's voice. "Is everything all right?" she was asking. "Kyle?"
"Perfect," he muttered.
"Really?"
"Sure." He shut his eyes and withdrew his hand.
Billie seemed to believe him. She started talking to herself, debating what she should wear and promising herself not to be any trouble, none at all, and wouldn't Janice flip when she heard? Janice was her roommate and best friend in the world. "I'm going to meet Jy!" She began to clap again, fast, like a child. She was going to come face to face with the most important person on a million earths, and she couldn't wait. How could she last another minute? She trembled and confessed to being excited, practically crazy, and was it okay if she told others? "Can I?" There was Janice. And her friends at work. Plus other friends, and maybe her family too, maybe ... !?
"Whoever you want," Kyle told her. He made himself open his eyes, and he took a long deep breath. The air wasn't getting any cooler and he could feel his heart, rubbery and quick.
Billie said, "Thank you," and kissed his kneecap.
"It's sort of late," he remarked.
"Oh, but I don't think I could sleep."
"Maybe you should go home and try." He spoke with certainty, sitting up and kissing her twice before climbing off his bed. He started dressing in yesterday's clothes, Billie watching him. He felt her eyes. He could practically hear her mind working. But she didn't ask about his moods or anything else, thank God, and he sat back down beside her and coaxed her to start dressing. Maybe? Please? "You've got to work all day, don't you?"
She nodded.
"So you've got to go home sometime and get ready," he said, "and you know what happens if you stay here."
"Nobody sleeps," she responded, and she sighed.
He kissed her salty forehead and the small rounded nose and then her perfect mouth, twice on the mouth, and he stood and left the room. The air in the hallway was stale and even warmer. Or did it just feel that way? He stood in one place and picked at the eroded wallpaper. A long train was passing to the south, blaring its horns with every crossing. It was probably a coal train from Wyoming. He imagined a hundred identical hopper cars filled with the flammable earth, and he listened to the horns and the deep bass roar of the locomotives. Then Billie emerged. She was wearing shorts and a dark T-shirt, her book bag on one shoulder, and they went out his apartment door and downstairs and out the front door. He didn't lock anything; it was a quick walk to her place. They went a couple blocks in the moonlight, then behind another old house and up footworn wooden stairs to a hanging porch, and Billie fumbled for her keys. She could never find her keys in the bag, never, and Kyle was irritated by her predictability. "Here ... " She had the ring full of keys and found the right one, then she unlocked her door and turned back to him. She was a small girl with wiry black hair and a pretty round face with that sweet perfect mouth, and after a long moment she told him, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked you. She shook her head, saying, "It was rude. I guess -- "
"No, it's all right," Kyle responded. "Don't worry."
"You just surprised me. That's all."
She faltered for a moment, then confessed, "I'm just ... I don't know. I'm bothered -- "
"What about?"
"Are you angry with me?"
"How could I be angry?"
"I don't know," she admitted. She hugged herself and looked at her feet and sighed. Billie had a way of sighing with her entire body, in one dramatic motion. Nobody could seem as happy as she, or as sad. She asked, "Aren't you angry?"
"No."
"At anything?"
"I'm not."
"Then what is it?"
"I'm very tired." True enough. "Don't you ever get tired?"
She bit her lower lip, saying nothing.
"We aren't exactly the same species, Billie -- "
"I know."
"I did warn you." He kept his voice flat and cool. "Didn't I? You can't read me like you read your friends, and everyone. I'm a different sort of person -- "
" 'A human of a different line,' " she quoted. "I know."
"That's the way it is."
"I do understand," she insisted. Again she sighed, and she gave herself a long hug.
"I'll come see you tomorrow. At work, all right?" Kyle gave her a steady kiss, then said, "Good night, pretty girl."
"Tell everyone how you're going to meet Jy. All right?"
That helped. Her sweet mouth smiled, and she promised him, "They're going to be so jealous."
"Are they?"
"Oh, but they're already jealous." Billie stared up at him, proud to have her own Wanderer. "They are."
Kyle started downstairs with one hand on the wooden railing. He was careful to show nothing. He kept himself detached, his face blank.
"Bye, Kyle!"
"Good-bye."
Then Billie attempted to say the long name. Kyle-blah-blah-blah. And she asked, "Was I close?"
"Pretty close."
"Bye now!"
He said, "Bye," and kept walking. He heard the door shut and lock, and he was off the stairs, feeling tired. He came to his house and fumbled for his keys in the dark, finding them and then remembering nothing was locked. Then he went upstairs and stripped and lay on his back on the old bed, smelling his sweat and her sweat and thinking ... what? He wasn't sure what was in his head. He lay there a long, long time without moving, eyes open and another train rolling past. The blaring horns shook the windows in their frames, and there was the solid click-click of wheels passing over some gap in the rails. Then came a bad set of wheels grinding near the back of the train. Then there was nothing. All he heard were wind sounds, ceaseless and summer-damp, and he grunted once and rolled onto his belly, drifting into a useless sleep.
2
Experience shows this to be a potentially dangerous earth. Its people evolved from hunters -- always a worrisome sign -- and they have a heavily spiced history of fighting among themselves. Some of their larger nation-states maintain stocks of nuclear weapons, although so far they have avoided true nuclear war ... meaning they don't appreciate the depth of their furies. Like so many peoples who are modestly advanced, they confuse the absence of war with an authentic hard-shelled and enduring peace.
-- Final scout report
"I'm part of a mission.
Sunshine poured into the bedroom. Kyle sat up and shook his head and said what he said every morning. It was his routine.
"I'm part of a mission," he proclaimed. "I came from a different earth, and I'm a Wanderer." He sighed and pulled a hand across his face. "I'm following the Bright until I find its Makers, whoever and whatever they might be. And as I follow I pledge to help knit together all flavors of Mankind. To the best of my ability. By purely peaceful means. Always."
It was midmorning, maybe later. Kyle stood and mopped himself with a bedsheet, then he took a quick cool shower and started dressing. Three clean gray shirts were hanging in the closet. There was nothing else. He picked one and put it on, then found yesterday's trousers and his sandals. His money was hidden under the bed. He took a couple of bills and went outside, the day cloudless and the sunshine liquid with the heat trying to scald flesh. A pair of young boys, seven or eight years old, were riding bikes in the street, making airplane sounds and machine gun sounds and then nothing. They braked and stared, one saying, "That's him," with a quiet, conspiring voice. Kyle felt their stares. They began shadowing him, and he did his best to ignore them. Walking in his practiced fashion, he relaxed his arms and let his sandals slap-slap on the pavement, his fresh shirt feeling chilled where sweat bled through the plain gray fabric.
Kyle was tall, and he was homely. He had a large nose mashed against his pinkish face, blonde hair growing thin, and big eyes set too close together. Yet his mouth was tiny, his chin was delicate, and the effect was to make his head look as if it had been built from mismatched parts.
Kyle looked thirty years old, give or take. But he moved like someone who might be thousands of years old. That was his intent. There was something careful and steady and enormously patient about the way he walked, as if he possessed some profound and hard-won appreciation of time. People noticed his motions at a distance. They saw his telltale clothes -- the Wanderer uniform -- and when they came close there was the oddly proportioned face, centered on those big eyes. He had wise and intense Wanderer eyes, and he knew ways to use them.
The boys were pedaling closer.
"He won't hurt," muttered one of them. "Go on."
"You go on."
"You first!"
"No, you!"
Kyle turned suddenly and stared at them, and he smiled. He worked to seem cool and distant. The boys braked at once and stared at him, mouths hanging open. "How are you doing, gentlemen?" Kyle used his best Wanderer voice, smooth and very dry. "Can I do anything for you?"
One boy squeaked, "No, sir," and wheeled his bike around, gravel spraying and his buddy saying, "Hey?" after him. "Where are you going? Hey!" Then he was leaving too. Both of them went down the block and around the corner, pumping hard with their legs.
This neighborhood was mostly older homes, most of them diced into apartments. There were students like Billie, and there were hard-luck families. Kyle continued to the next street -- an arterial with a little gas-and-eat shop on the corner -- and he bought newspapers from the machines out front. Then he went inside and bought doughnuts and orange juice from the stout middle-aged woman behind the counter. This was his usual place for breakfast. The woman called him "sir" with a conspicuous tone, but otherwise she left him alone. Kyle slipped into a hard plastic booth and politely ignored the customers coming and going. He sipped the pulpy warm juice and all at once found himself thinking of Billie. Why the hell did he agree to take her to meet Jy? he asked himself. It was crazy. He was an idiot, a moron. He had pretended for so long that he'd forgotten what was possible and what wasn't ... Jesus, he couldn't believe it!
Taking a healthy bite of a doughnut, he blinked and made himself read the newspapers. There were plenty of headlines about Geneva, as always. The Wanderers were still working to form a federation of nations -- a modest, durable form of world government, in essence -- but there was the endless resistance. North Korea and Albania and certain African hellholes were crying to be left alone, or they wanted special treasures because of their crushing poverty. Meanwhile the major powers, no longer major in the greater scheme of things, bitched about the whole concept. World unity was a daunting business, it seemed.
The diplomats among the Wanderers were patient but quite firm; it was obvious from what Kyle read and saw on television.
This earth was ripe for certain new technologies. That was the sober assessment of every Wanderer. They spoke about cheap fusion and new metals and ceramics and the makings of true long-distance spacecraft. The only stumbling block was the current political complexion. How could they give wonders to people divided into hostile camps, cooking plutonium and obeying no laws but their own?
Wanderers wanted nothing but for this earth to thrive. Spaceships and closed ecologies would open the entire solar system for settlement, and they believed that such a future would be stable and vibrant. It had been for thousands of other human species. All that was needed was a modest change in the social order. There had to be a true world court, plus a practical and minimal unity of the races. The Wanderers weren't here to build a utopia. They confessed to being pragmatists, and they would settle for reason and an appreciation of the Wanderers' great mission.
Kyle nodded to himself.
The mission.
"We feel responsible," claimed one diplomat in Geneva. "We don't want to bring on wars and genocide. That is why we cling to our demands." Kyle read the quote and studied the diplomat's photograph. She resembled a Sasquatch dressed in gray trousers and a huge gray shirt. Long rust-color hair spilled across her face, and her massive breasts strained against the shirt. What showed of her mouth and eyes seemed quite determined. "Satisfy us of your good intentions," she had announced, "and we will give you the means to explore your galaxy. Once you are ready, we will have no other choice."
Kyle thought about the gifts promised.
He shut his eyes and recalled a television show he had seen some months ago. The Wanderers had bought blocks of time on every network, then they had shown off a variety of possible Marses. Mars, it seemed, could be rebuilt and made habitable. Kyle remembered a deep blue river rushing through a High Arctic canyon with strange long-legged sheep bounding up the lofty red cliffs. A second Mars, in contrast, was mostly ocean. Native ices and a transplanted moon of Saturn had been melted by an artificial sun, and its people lived in sprawling cities along the new shoreline. Then there was a third Mars choked with jungle, a hundred orbiting mirrors feeding the greenery, and elegant birds as large as airliners rode thermals born on the wide flanks of Olympica Mons.
The Wanderers knew how each Mars was accomplished.
However, they liked to say that this earth could take the new technologies and invent its own elegant vision. There was always good in the fresh and the unique.
The Wanderers were staggeringly rich with knowledge. Their oldest race, the Founders, were smashing atoms more than a million years ago. They were so smart, it was said, that they had never found an earth with any technical edge. Never. And certainly if they had picked up a trick here, a trick there ... well, they would have learned how to benefit from other people's work and hard experience.
The Wanderers were a mixture of gods and wide-eyed students.
Most of them did nothing but travel about the countryside, talking to whomever interested them. They didn't threaten and couldn't be threatened, and typically they held their vast potentials politely out of sight.
Yet they hadn't kept all their treasures just for themselves.
When they first appeared, eager to prove their good intentions, they had shown scientists how to heal the ozone blanket, neatly and quickly. Then they had outlined half a hundred proven means for disposing of toxic wastes and nuclear poison. From other earths they brought new crops -- wonder crops meant for rain forests and hard deserts and the open sea -- and most famines would soon be finished. Plus the Wanderers helped every military power to update its security systems; accidental wars and stupid intrigues were made virtually impossible.
The Wanderers called these things "sweet gifts."
And in return, with quiet reasoned voices, they had asked for pieces of land for their portals, plus doses of local currency. Their diplomatic corps wrestled with the largest questions in Geneva -- politics, like everything else, being something in which the Wanderers excelled -- and the rest of them traveled, acting like undemanding and tirelessly curious tourists, always polite, always eager to pay their way. The current scuttlebutt was that they would remain a few more months before vanishing back into the Bright ... most of them, at least ... millions journeying to the next earth ... then the next ...
The Bright.
It was a highway, strange and ancient and vast.
Jy and her species, the Founders, had more than a million years of written history, yet they were nothing next to the Bright. It was at least as old as the million-plus earths it lashed together, and it was leading ... well, nobody actually knew where it might lead. Or how it had been built, for that matter. Or by whom.
The Wanderers admitted to being as ignorant as everyone else. They were nearly cheerful when they made the confession.
Of course they had guesses and assumptions, but they were careful to call them such. Several times Kyle had explained the possibilities to Billie, and she had listened without sound, watching him with her tiny hands laced together and set on her lap and nothing else mattering. The Makers had built the Bright, he had said. The Makers were ultraadvanced entities, or gods. Or perhaps the true God, he threw in. And the Bright itself was built for the Makers to use, or for human beings. Or maybe for someone or something else entirely. Who could say? Nobody, Kyle maintained. Looking straight at the girl, he had claimed that nobody knew any answers and nobody could know, and that was that. At least until they found these Makers.
Kyle was chewing on his last doughnut, and he was thinking about the girl again.
A stew of emotions worked inside him, some intoxicating and some just painful. I can still ...
allforjesus2001