The End of the Matter Read online

  THE END

  OF THE

  MATTER

  Alan Dean Foster

  A Del Rey® Book

  BALLANTINE BOOKS * NEW YORK

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  About the Author

  Books by Alan Dean Foster

  Other books by Ballantine Books

  Copyright

  For Tim Kirk,

  with thranx . . .

  Prologue

  Take a God-sized bottle of hundred-proof night, spill it across a couple of dozen light-years, and you have the phenomenon humanxkind called the Velvet Dam. A dark nebula so dense that no near star was powerful enough to excite it to glow, the Dam drew an impenetrable curtain across a vast portion of the stage of space. No sun shone through it to the inhabited region known as the Humanx Commonwealth. No broadcasts, transmissions, or birthday greetings could be sent from beyond the vast ebony wall.

  It lay far above the burgeoning ellipsoid of the Commonwealth, and ran roughly parallel to the galactic equator. Yet since that which is unseeable is ever the most attractive, humanx exploratory efforts had already begun to probe persistently at its flanks.

  One mission was the same as any other to the drone. Whether it sought out new information behind the as-yet-unexplored Dam or above the surface of Earth’s own moon made no difference to its tireless mind. Not that the drone was ignorant, however. The enormous distances traveled by such long-range sensor vehicles rendered constant monitoring impossible. So in addition to the plethora of precision recorders and scientific instrumentation provided for sampling the far reaches of space, the independent robotic drones were equipped with sophisticated electronic brains. Of necessity, they also possessed a certain amount of decision-making ability.

  Its own incredibly complex collage of minute circuitry was what changed the drone’s preprogrammed course. In its limited mechanical fashion, the drone had determined that the new subject was of sufficient importance to dictate a shift in plans. So it broke from its assigned path, fired its tiny KK drive, and relayed its decision to the drone mother monitor station.

  Though small, the tiny drive could push the unmanned vehicle at a speed no humanx-occupied craft could attain. As it raced toward the source of the extraordinary disturbance, it continued to relay its readings back to the monitoring station. Before very long (drone time) it had approached a spot where visual recording was possible. Without judging, without evaluating, the drone worked hard to send a flood of information back to the station hanging just at the corner of the Velvet Dam.

  What the drone recorded and relayed was consumption on a cosmic scale. It hunted through its memory for records of similar phenomena, but came up empty. This was shattering, since in its ultraminiaturized files the drone retained some mention of every variety of astronomical occurrence ever witnessed and noted by humanxkind.

  The drone-mind worked furiously. Preliminary surveillance was complete—should it depart now and return to its original task or continue to study this momentous event? This was a critical decision. The drone was aware of its own value, yet it seemed unarguable that any additional bit of information it could obtain here would be more valuable to its makers than everything else it might accomplish elsewhere. So the crucial circuits were engaged, locked with religious fervor. The drone moved nearer, closer, ever studying and transmitting new knowledge until, without so much as an electronic whimper, it too was devoured.

  The drone protested electronically its own destruction, but its message was not heard or seen. That wasn’t the drone’s fault. There was, at the moment of ingestion, simply nothing to see. But other instruments were better equipped to tell of those last seconds, and they told the drone station all that was necessary.

  Several months passed.

  In the station’s center a circuit closed. Powerful machinery was engaged. All the information gathered by a dozen far-ranging drones was concentrated into a tight beam for deep-space transmission. With a violent belch of energy, the station spat the knowledge to an occasionally manned station on a far-distant humanx colony world. That station shunted the transmission on to another world, and then on to another, and finally on to Earth, one of the Commonwealth’s two capitals. Commonwealth Science Headquarters was located there, on the outskirts of a city on a high mountain plain whose inhabitants had once practiced human sacrifice.

  Patiently computers decoded, unraveled, and otherwise made the transmission comprehensible. One small portion of that information was marked for special notice. In due course it reached the eyes of a competent but bored human being. As she examined the information, her eyes grew wide and her boredom vanished. Then she alerted others—human and thranx—and initial puzzlement became panic, then metamorphosed into stunned resignation. The information was reprocessed, rechecked, reexamined. The science staff of the station became re-resigned to the situation.

  A meeting quickly convened on the other side of the world. The four people present—two human, two thranx—were very important—important enough to have passed beyond arrogance to humility.

  One of the thranx was the current President of the Commonwealth, the other head of all Commonwealth-sponsored scientific research. One of the humans was the Last Resort of the United Church. The other would not normally be considered as important as the other three beings assembled in that room, but circumstances had temporarily made him so. He was the technical supervisor in charge of processing drone information at the Mexico City complex.

  When the discussion finally had run out of new things that needed saying, the aged President trieint Drusindromid folded truhands over his thorax and sighed through his spicules. His chiton shone violet with many years, and his antennae drooped so low they hung before his glowing compound eyes. He turned multicolored ommatidia on the waiting human technician. “The information is accurate. There are no mistakes. This you are sure of?”

  Both the human technician and the thranx science chief nodded, the human adding: “We are running another drone to the area, sir. It will move on a projected intercept path. Since by the time the drone reaches the region the sun which was being absorbed will have been completely destroyed, we will have to depend on nonvisual instrumentation to detect the wanderer. But I don’t really think all this is necessary, sir. The first drone’s report is unchallengeable.”

  “I know the speed of which those drones are capable,” the President murmured. “Yet this object is so massive that it surely will have sucked an entire star into itself by the time the new drone arrives?”

  “Yes, Honored One,” the thranx science chief admitted dolefully. “The radiation that first led our drone to it was from the last of the sun’s plasma being drawn off from the surface. That portion of space was full of a ginhought amount of particulate radiation, especially gamma rays. It—” The science chief respectfully halted, seeing that the President was absorbed with less technical worries.

  The old thranx shook his head slowly, a gesture the insectoids had picked up near the beginning of the Amalgamation, the joining of human- and thranxkind several hundred years ago. “This course,” he said, gesturing with a foothand toward the three-dimensional star projection floating above the center of the table, “how long?”

  Brushing back white-bro
wn hair, the human technician replied mechanically, “Unless for some unimaginable reason it alters its path, sir, the massive collapsar will emerge from the Velvet Dam in seventy-two point one standard Commonwealth years. Fifteen point six years thereafter, it will impact tangent to the projected critical distance from the sun around which the twin Commonwealth worlds of Carmague-Collangatta orbit. We estimate”—he paused to swallow—“that the sun of the twin worlds will have completely vanished down the hole within a week.”

  “So fast,” the President whispered, “so fast.”

  “Twenty-seven point three years later,” the technician continued remorselessly, “the same catastrophe will befall the star around which the world Twosky Bright circles.” He paused a moment, then went on. “No other Commonwealth suns or worlds lie within crisis range of the collapsar’s projected path through our galaxy. It will continue on through the galactic axis. Several thousand years from now, it will leave the Milky Way, traveling in the general direction of RNGC 185.”

  “How can the collapsar move so fast?” the President asked.

  The technician glanced at his superior; it was the science chief who replied. “We still do not fully understand all the mechanics of collapsars, Honored One. Such radical distortions of the stellar matrix retain many secrets. It is enough to know that it is moving at the indicated speed, on the predicted path.”

  The President nodded and touched a switch, throwing a vast semicircular map onto the ceiling. He studied the map, ignoring the view of sweltering jungle and marshland visible through the window below the ceiling screen. “What of the three worlds, then?”

  Rising, the Last Resort moved to stand next to the science counselor. A tall human, he towered over the President—but only physically. One of the three endangered worlds was inhabited almost solely by thranx, yet they were as much a part of his flock, as devout and inspiring, as was his own family. His robes, in the aquamarine of the Church, were simple and comfortable. Only a single gold insignia on sleeve and collar indicated that he was the ranking member of the Commonwealth’s major spiritual organization.

  “Carmague and Collangatta are the fourth and twelfth most populous worlds in the Commonwealth, sir,” he declared. “Twosky Bright is the twenty-third, but ranks fifteenth in real economic production. Together, the three endangered planets have a population of over three and a half billion. From both a humanxistic and an economic standpoint, their destruction would be a stunning blow.”

  Great compound eyes stared expectantly up at him. The President hoped wisdom was shining from each of them, instead of the anxiety and helplessness he felt. “What can be done for them?”

  The supreme spiritual leader of the Commonwealth turned eyes downward but found no inspiration in the tiled floor. “The Church’s logisticians tell me . . . very little, sir. Even given the nearly ninety years left to us, actual evacuation is not practical. It would take the resources of the entire navy plus every Church peace-forcer to shift even a fraction of the populations safely and successfully to other worlds. As soon as such a movement was initiated, the reason behind it would be impossible to keep secret. There would be panic of the worst sort. Naturally, we cannot consider such action. And with the Commonwealth so weakened, there are those who would take advantage of our absent defense.”

  “I know,” murmured President Drusindromid. “What is the maximum number that can be saved without weakening our forces to the point of inviting scavengers?”

  “The figures are not exact . . .” the Last Resort began apologetically.

  Abruptly, the President’s voice cut instead of soothed: “I dislike inaccuracy where humanx lives are concerned, Anthony.”

  “Yes, sir. If we are lucky, I am told, we may hope to rescue as many as five percent.”

  There was silence in the tower chamber. Then the President mumbled to himself in High Thranx. Aware that no one had heard, he raised his voice. “Set the necessary events in motion. If it were but one percent, I would still consider the effort worthwhile.”

  “The problem of panic remains, sir,” the Last Resort pointed out.

  “We will think of a suitable excuse,” the President assured him. “But this must be done. Five percent is nearly two hundred million. Saving two hundred million lives is worth the risk of panic. And we may be lucky and save even more.”

  “Science does not allow much leeway for luck,” the Commonwealth science chief muttered, but only to himself. The President was eyeing them each in turn.

  “If there is nothing else, gentlesirs?” Silence in the room. “We have much to do, then, and I have another meeting in half an hour. This one is at an end.”

  At that signal, the Last Resort, the science chief, and the technician started from the chamber. The President saw them out, using foothands in addition to all four trulegs to support himself. As always, everything rested finally on those aged antennae, the technician thought as he was about to bid the President good-bye. But a truhand reached out and stopped him.

  “A moment, young man.” The technician was nearly seventy. The President was, however, a good deal older. “There is, of course, no way of stopping, turning, or destroying a collapsar?”

  Remembering to whom he was talking, the physicist kept any sign of condescension from his voice. “Hardly, sir. Anything we could throw at it, whether a million SCCAM projectiles or another star, would simply be sucked in. The more we tried to destroy it, the larger it would become, though we wouldn’t notice its growth, since it would still be only a point in space. Furthermore, we already know from measurements sent back by the first drone that this wanderer consists of much more than a single collapsed star. Much more. Perhaps several hundred suns.” He shrugged. “Some of my colleagues believe that because of the wanderer’s speed and theoretical mass, it may be an object only guessed at by recent mathematics: a collaxar. A collapsed galaxy, sir, instead of a single star.”

  “Oh” was all the President said immediately. Upper mandibles scraped at the lower pair as he considered this information. “There is a political analogy, young man,” he finally ventured. “Something like an idea whose time has come. The more insults and arguments you throw at it, the more powerful it becomes, until one is overwhelmed by it.”

  “Yes, sir,” the technician agreed. “I wish all we were dealing with here was an idea, sir.”

  “Don’t underestimate the destructive power of an idea, hatchling,” the President admonished him. He glanced at a wrist chronometer banding a truhand. “Twenty-four minutes till my next appointment. Good day, gentlesir.”

  “Good day, Mr. President,” the technician said; then he left the chamber.

  Each of the beings who had joined briefly for the momentous meeting returned to his own task. Each had much to do that did not relate to the subject of the meeting, and glad of it. Being busy was a blessing. It was not healthy to dwell on the unavoidable premature death of over three billion of one’s fellow creatures.

  Chapter One

  “Your offer,” the withered woman screamed, “is worthy of a kick in the groin!” She lowered her voice only slightly. “However, I am an old, weak woman. You are younger, larger, stronger, healthier, and wealthier.” One hand curled defiantly around the hilt of a crooked blade jutting out from a hole in the dirty brown rag of a skirt. Her other hand held the object under discussion. “So what am I to do?” she finished expectantly.

  “Please don’t get so excited,” the young man standing across from her pleaded, making quieting motions at her with his hands as he looked nervously from side to side.

  No one in the shifting mob of sidewalk vendors and buyers was paying any attention to the argument. But, being an outworlder, the young man was sensitive to the old lady’s accusations. After all, he and his bride were scheduled to be on Moth for only three days before moving on to New Paris with the rest of the tour. The last thing he wanted was to be thrown in jail, on his honeymoon, for fighting with one of the locals.

  “Really,” he expl
ained desperately to her, adjusting his rain-soaked mustard-and-puce weather slicker, “thirty credits is all I can afford. Have some sympathy for me. My wife is back in our hotel. She’s not feeling very well. The daily rain and constant cloud cover is depressing her, I think. I want something to cheer her up. But we have a long way to travel yet. Thirty credits is all I can afford for a trinket.”

  The old woman proudly drew herself up to her full height. Her eyes were now level with the young man’s chest. She held the object of contention firmly in one hand as she shook it accusingly at him. The slim, graceful bracelet of some silvery metal was inlaid with fragments of polished wood and stone.

  “This wristlet was worked and set by Cojones Cutler himself, infant! Do you have any idea, any idea, what that signifies?”

  “I’m sorry,” the youth tried to explain, sniffing, “but I’ve been trying to explain all along that I am only a visitor here.”

  Clearly the woman restrained herself only by some great inner effort. “Very well,” she said tightly, “never mind the honored name of Cojones Cutler.” She indicated the oval bulges set in the bracelet. “Look at these whirlwood cabochons—forget the topazes for now.” As she turned the bracelet, the naturally hardened, polished sap facing the wood broke the dim daylight into points of azure-and-green fire.

  “Hardly a tree in a million has the genetic deficiency necessary to produce such colors, boy. Hardly one in a million, and those grow only in the far north of Moth, where the nomads hunt the Demichin devilope. Why, it takes—”

  “Oh, all right.” The young man sighed, exasperated. “Anything to get this over with. Thirty-five credits, then.” He couldn’t have been more than twenty-two or twenty-three. His face was soft and earnest. “We’ll just have to stay at a lower-class hotel on New Paris, that’s all.”

  The old woman stared up at him and shook her head in disbelief. “You talk of hotels, and me with three starving children and a husband long dead. You can stand there and talk of hotels, brazen child, while offering me thirty-five credits for the finest bracelet I’ve been lucky to get on consignment in twenty years. Twenty years!” Her voice rose to a hoarse shout again. “Make me a decent offer or go room with the devil, I say!” she screeched, loudly enough to turn a few heads in the crowd. “But don’t stand there innocently and insult a poor old woman!”