Jason crept through the dappled shade, sandals silent on the mossy forest floor, an arrow nocked and ready for flight. Tree-trunks soared to the forest canopy above, festooned with liana and creeper, orchid and fungus. Sunlight streamed in shafts through the green haze. The scent of earth and rotting wood filled his nostrils, and the screech of bird and monkey assaulted his ears.
He dropped to one knee and examined a drop of fresh blood on a leaf. It seemed his arrow had found a mark after all, and the pig had gone into hiding--probably at the bottom of the pit.
He crept to the edge and peered down into the depths, where agricultural terraces, long overgrown, were stacked in step-
fashion to take full advantage of the never-changing afternoon sun. The fishpond at the top was still functioning and the water was unclouded; through its transparent bottom he could see level after level of shimmering forest where rice and vegetables, coffee, fruits and livestock had once been raised.
There was nothing for it but to go after the beast. Jason
descended, climbing down a fallen tree-trunk by a waterfall, negotiating an ivy-covered spiral stairway, trotting down a grassy ramp. Just how the pigs always found their way to the bottom he did not know, but the lure of rotting fruit could not be resisted. This one had been drawn by the prospect of gloom and thick undergrowth in which to lick its wounds.
At the bottom, where the tree-roots spread out in the thin soil, Jason could sense a slight increase in his weight. Branches interlaced overhead, blocking out most of the sunlight, but here and there saplings stood in golden shafts--like actors in the spotlight, Chiron had said. The monkeys had followed him, and they hung from the branches, shrieking and signing among themselves:
Boy hunts! Beware!
Jason signed back at them:
Boy hunts pig. Where pig?
But they ignored him and fled. They had learned the language long ago, in the now-ruined laboratories, but if they had once used it to communicate with human beings, they would no longer do so. Jason had picked up the language easily, watching them as a child, but they never signed directly to him, perhaps because he had killed so many of them.
He watched the monkeys cascade upward among the roots and vines, leaving him alone in the gloom; then he turned and crept warily through the undergrowth, bow and arrow at the ready.
Suddenly the fugitive pig was before him, eyes blazing red in reflected light. It leaped to the attack, tossing its shaggy head, its tiny hooves beating a tattoo on the mossy floor. An arrow sped past razor-sharp tusks to bury itself in the creature's brain and it dove headlong into the ground, where it lay kicking and squealing until it finally fell silent. The monkeys returned, screeching and drawing forefingers across their white throats. Jason responded with another single-finger gesture Chiron had taught him.
He managed to haul the carcass up to the top level and drag it home along the forest path, his bow across his shoulder. The heat was intense, as always, and no breeze stirred the canopy above. It began to rain. Jason heard it spattering on the leaves long before he felt the first drops on his skin, but soon it was pouring, and the ground steamed about him. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the shower was over. The ground drank in the moisture and passed it on to the trees, and the trees would pass it on again to the still air above the forest canopy. It would collect as condensation on the space-cold ceiling, to be released once more in another shower.
Jason paused to rest in the clearing before the elevator tower, a featureless black cylinder that rose from the undergrowth and vanished into the foliage overhead. He stood before the sealed doorway etched into its smooth surface as he had so many times before, then stepped forward and ran his fingers over the barely discernible scratches where he had dulled so many knife-blades trying to pry the door open over the years. Chiron was right, of course: only the Guardian could open it.
He turned to the tallest nearby tree and began to climb. He ascended parallel to the tower, through level after level of shrieking wildlife, until he was in the highest branches, swaying far above the ground. The forest canopy lay below, a green carpet arcing up and away in both directions and vanishing behind the curve of the torus. Birds wheeled in the still air beneath the greenhouse roof, which was so close to Jason he could almost touch it. He crept out on a limb and swung to the platform that circled the tower just below ceiling level. Then he climbed a ladder until his head was touching the cold glass.
Chiron had scolded him for doing this. The configuration of the ceiling’s mirrors and transparent panels was designed to reflect sunlight into the torus while blocking radiation from space, and Jason was exposing himself to serious danger by climbing into the roof-structure, but only here could he see the rest of the island and the stars beyond.
The tower pierced the curve of the ceiling and shrank in perspective toward the space-island’s spin-axis, where it joined similar towers rising from other locations in the torus like the spokes of a great wheel. This was the last of half a dozen such wheels, revolving together on a shaft. Jason could see enough of their interiors to know that most contained plantations and farms; crops and fruit-trees were planted in neat rows, animals grazed in paddocks, and some fields were fallow and overgrown. One torus was dead, a window-panel broken by some meteor-strike long ago, the interior brown and sere from exposure to cold and vacuum. One other torus had gone wild like Jason's home, for he could see the monkeys climbing among the rafters. He wondered if workers ever saw his own brown face against the glass and thought him a monkey too.
Beyond the series of agricultural toruses was the main body of the island, a great sphere surrounded by mirrors and dishes and solar panels. Of the sphere's interior Jason could see little, but sometimes, through the blue haze and white cloud, he could make out roads and houses and all the normal things of normal island life such as Chiron had described to him--including people. These people could not guess of Jason's existence in this sealed, abandoned, overgrown torus; if they had known of his existence, Chiron insisted, they would have sought his life. It was to preserve his life, in fact, that the goddess Hera had exiled him here.
But it was not the island, mysterious and dangerous as it was, which had drawn Jason to his lofty perch, but the ship he was pleased to find still drifting offside. The immense sail strained in the sunlight and the tiny gondola was lost against it, indicated only by its shadow on the torn, tarnished surface. The five intersecting rings of various colours that all such ships displayed on their sails were faded nearly to invisibility. Even as Jason watched, the ship's launch separated from the island and sped toward the ship, propelled by a puff of crystallizing gas. On board would be most of the crew and their cargo--trade goods bound for other islands that were no more than points of light among the stars if they were visible at all.
Profit made, wages spent, cargo purchased, they would join their ship, the Guardian on board would angle the sail to pick up more light from the sun, and slowly the great vessel would shrink into the darkness. She would make the rounds of all the Wandering Rocks and the islands among them, accelerating, decelerating, falling into parallel orbit with one island after another, but never ceasing to move. Crews lived and died, captains retired, whole fleets changed hands as island companies went bankrupt, but the great ships went sailing on forever. Or so Chiron had told him.
Jason was destined to be the captain of such a ship, the ruler of such an island, a hero to generations yet unborn, according to Chiron. At first Jason had believed, but so many of Chiron's tales were obvious fabrications that he had come at last to doubt them all. He feared he would live and die a solitary prisoner in this place.
Sighing, he climbed down again and chased the rats away from his kill. Before taking up his burden again, he stopped to drink at a clear pool, where water collected in a hollow before pouring into a grating on the forest floor. As he knelt there, he could see his reflected image, and he rubbed his chin. His black hair was very long, but there was still no hint of a beard.
Suddenly, a bright mist appeared in the pool, obscuring his image, and he leaped to his feet, his hand feeling for his knife. A cloud of multi-coloured lights swarmed in the air like gnats, just above the water’s still surface. As he watched, a ghostly form took shape. He saw a figure suspended in the air--a shapely body with long legs and full breasts, draped in translucent cloth. Long brown hair fluttered in a non-existent breeze about white shoulders. Long lashes blinked slowly over almond-shaped eyes and a smile revealed white, even teeth.
"Guardian," he whispered, and dropped to his knees in reverence. It was Hera, just as she had appeared to him as a child.
She did not answer, but her smile widened. In a graceful gesture, she pointed to something at his feet.
"The pig, Goddess? I know there are few left, but Chiron needs meat."
She shook her head and long tresses undulated over fair, naked shoulders.
"My foot?"
Her hand turned palm up. Jason puzzled for a moment.
"My sandal, Goddess? Is it my sandal you want?" His heart was racing. "Is it time for me to leave?" His question was rewarded with a dazzling smile.
Jason obediently removed his right sandal, reached out and placed it in her insubstantial hand. It fell through her transparent flesh into the pool, floated for a moment, drifting toward the edge of the grating, and then was washed away into the gurgling darkness below.
Hera clapped her hands silently in a childlike gesture of amusement, and she began to fade.
"Wait!" Jason shouted. "Don't go."
There was a clunk and a hiss behind him, and Jason whirled to see the door of the tower sliding sideways, revealing a tiny chamber. A cool breeze stirred the leaves at his feet and ruffled his hair. He stared for a moment with open mouth and turned. His heart was full as he raced home along the forest path, his kill forgotten.
"Chiron!" he called.
He burst from the forest into the little clearing, laboriously torn from the jungle's grasp, and saw Chiron lying in a heap in the garden. The pain of understanding thrust through his heart. He rushed to the old man's side and lifted him into a sitting position. Chiron turned his head slowly with a whir and stared at him, one eye dead and glazed, the other dilating with a click.
"What is it, Jason?" his synthetic voice vibrated within the metal half of his chest.
"I've seen her. The goddess Hera."
"Ah, good," said Chiron, his ravaged and rusted face without expression. "And what did she say to you?"
"Nothing, Chiron. She said nothing. But the elevator door is open."
"That's good. You'll have to see to my arm. It's acting up again." He lifted it with the unsteady whir and click of rusted cables, and Jason saw how badly it was shaking.
"Chiron, you were unconscious, lying in the garden. What's wrong?" He knew what was wrong; the old cyborg was dying and Hera knew it. Most of his life, Jason thought he'd been forgotten by her, but she had only been waiting for Chiron to die, for however strong and mature Jason might be, he would not leave the torus as long as his mentor still needed his help.
Jason half-carried, half-dragged the crazy old man into their hut and laid him down on his cot. He could hear the murmur in the hum of his heart. Blinking tears from his eyes, Jason re-wired the old man's arm, keeping busy, denying the inevitable.
"We'll be leaving the torus soon," Jason said. "We'll need supplies. I've killed a pig. I’ll get it later." The circuitry inside the arm was a hopeless tangle of jury-rigged repairs. He could not fix it. He let it drop to his lap and lowered his head, letting the tears flow.
"Leave the torus?" Chiron coughed. "Not till the goddess appears."
"She has, Chiron. I just told you."
"Oh yes. How silly of me. You must leave soon, Jason."
"Not till I have this arm fixed, and you're well rested. I can't leave you here alone, you know."
"Listen to me." Strength and some long-lost authority returned to Chiron's voice for a moment. "I've already lived much longer than any whole human being could survive, Jason. I've seen more wonders than any man alive. I'm not afraid to die. But you have much to do. The goddess herself told me to bring you here, to raise you alone and teach you everything I know..."
"But, Chiron..."
"I've seen such wonders, Jason! Worlds of ice. Worlds of cloud. Worlds where men live on the outside. Even your father, the late King, thought me a madman, but he only thought me mad and harmless where others called me a demon, the spawn of man and robot. But I am a man, Jason, beneath this shell. I am a man and I speak the truth and I am not mad." His head swung toward Jason with a whir and his good eye shuttered open. "You will someday see that I have never lied to you."
Jason did not argue. Indeed, he half believed. In his mind's eye, he saw men clinging to the outer surface of great worlds like lizards on a tree-trunk, without, somehow, being flung into space. But how the air could be retained without a ceiling, he could not guess. And other things--water hard as steel, vast worlds of cloud with no landscape at all, horizons that curved down and disappeared instead of curving up and around and back again--were beyond his imagining.
He gazed at Chiron, the human part frail and shrunken, supported by his worn and rusted other half--a mad old man and a scrapheap in bed together. How could Jason know the truth? Chiron's wisdom and madness were woven together like the reeds of a mat. His jaw moved and Jason bent to hear his whispered words.
"There is no more response to the nerve-impulses," he was saying. "The machinery will no longer obey the brain. Too many years. Too many repairs." He seemed to sag within his metal shell. There was a final click somewhere in his beaten, rusted body. Various servomechanisms in his limbs still hummed, but his heart was dead.
Suddenly, the goddess Hera flickered into view beside him. She spoke in the calm and mellifluous voice he had not heard for many years: "Jason," she said, "wake up."
"Chiron!" Jason awoke with a start, reaching out for his dying mentor.
He had suddenly been plunged into total darkness, and the silence was such that the only sound he heard was the panic pounding of his heart. The loss of the constant light and noise of the torus was disorienting, and he felt he was falling. He reached out to grasp something to prevent his fall and found himself bound and immobile. It seemed as if all the primal fears that man is heir to were crowding in on him—-darkness, and death, and falling--and he whimpered in terror.
"Don't be afraid, Jason. It was only another dream. You're safe now."
The voice was female, and so soft and crooning--so like that of Hera--that the very sound was enough to still his panic. It was the voice of a Guardian, unmistakably, and with it came the realization of where and what he was. Now that his pulse had ceased to pound so insistently in his ears, he could hear the fluids gurgling in the bulkhead behind him, the sigh of air in the ducts like the breath of something living, the creak and thrum of kilometre-long guywires tugging at the gondola.
"Thank you, Athena," he said.
"Was it Chiron's death again?"
"Yes. And even more real than before."
"The dreams will fade in time, Jason. Lack of weight often causes uneasiness at first."
"But why Chiron? Why not have nightmares about Pelias? He nearly had me executed. Or Iolcos itself. I was so frightened by the open sky that I nearly took the elevator back to the torus."
"I do not understand human dreams, Jason. I know nothing but ships and trade-routes and the legends passed down from the ancient Belters. Do you wish to sleep again, or will you join Orpheus and Pollux on the bridge?"
"I can't sleep any more, Athena. I'll join them."
Jason slipped out of his hammock and drifted the length of the hollow cylinder that was the Argo's gondola. Hanging asleep amid the cargo-netting like so much spider's prey were great Hercules of the high-gravity isle of Tiryns, sleeping with his powerful arms about the young Castor, and long-haired Atalanta, her hammock moored a respectable distance from those of the males aboard.
Pollux and Orpheus were on the bridge, a complex pattern of curves and figures flickering in the air before them. They glanced up at Jason as he entered; Pollux waved his hand through the figures, and they vanished. Orpheus tapped a few keys on his lyre and set it aside. Captain he may have been, but Jason was not an initiate into the Orphic Mysteries, nor a member of the Astrogation Guild, and could not be allowed to see their mysterious figures, though Jason knew much more than they realized. With the dimming of the interior illumination, the stars became visible, surrounding them as numerous as the leaves of the forest. Among them, brighter than the rest, was the sun, the source of all power.
Jason turned to glance at the great silver sail that always went before them, but of course there was nothing to see but the mirror-image of the star-field behind, identical but for tarnished patches like clouds and a few rents in the fabric where other stars appeared for a moment, sliding across space, and vanished again. As the Argo moved, it seemed to unroll the cosmos like a scroll--a magic ship, sun-driven, goddess-protected, sailing forever without touching port.
"Have you found it?" Jason asked.
Orpheus shook his handsome, ringlet-adorned head. A few grey hairs appeared in his neatly trimmed beard. "You set me a task indeed, Captain. The name Chiron has stood for wisdom practically forever, especially in a tutor or a mentor, which may be why Hera chose him for the task of raising you. But you say he called himself Cyborg of Chiron, which certainly seems to imply that Chiron is a place--"
"Between Jupiter and Saturn."
"--unless he meant Cyborg, Son of Chiron, which makes no sense, because Cyborgs, everyone knows, are the monstrous offspring of woman and robot..."
"Nevertheless, Orpheus, there is a tiny world called Chiron, and it is located between Jupiter and Saturn. Athena?"
"I have been in touch with Apollo at Delphi City, and with Hermes and Iris, aboard their respective ships. They are the most widely travelled and knowledgeable of the Guardians. They have heard, vaguely, of a place called Chiron, but have found no first-hand reports."
"What about Jupiter? Perhaps Jupiter could tell us more."
Athena adopted the tone of a patient teacher with a naive and simple student. "I'm afraid not, Jason. No one has heard from Jupiter in a very long time."
"I see." Jason was always showing his ignorance in this way. For the hundredth time, he wondered why Hera had chosen him for this role. Chiron had taught him many things, but none of them seemed to be of any use. Indeed, his fellow Argonauts considered him a great source of amusing fairy tales. However, Hera's wishes could not be denied, and to have refused the captaincy would have branded him a false Jason--certain death by Pelias' decree.
"Never mind," said Pollux. "We have something interesting to show you. Athena?"
The stars vanished. Jason still found it hard to remember that the view from the bridge was not real, but an image generated by Athena to allow her crew to see the stars without exposing them to the radiation of space. In an instant the image was replaced by another view, somewhat magnified.
"Can you see it?" Orpheus asked.
"Can I see what?"
"An island. Just there. In Aquarius."
Jason found it at last--bright, just perceptibly moving against the background of the constellation. "What island is it?"
"Unknown. And unexplored. Athena says there is plant-life. That's all we know."
"We should be readying the launch," Athena said. "Perhaps you should awaken the rest of your crew, Jason."
"Of course." He made his way back down the cylinder, shaking the others awake--Castor first, for he was a member of the Pilot's Guild and had the secret of steering the launch into dock. He pried himself from Hercules' grasp and kicked off to join his brother. The big man promptly went back to sleep again. Atalanta stretched in unconscious sensuality and climbed out of her bag. There was a brief flash of weightless breast before she could straighten her attire.
"A sight worthy of an ode," said Orpheus in his smoothest voice and most disarming smile. She ignored him.
"Why are we awakened?" she demanded of Jason. Her hair, drifting behind her in free-fall, gave her a formidable appearance, like a cat with its fur erect.
"An island," said Jason. "Athena says..."
Atalanta turned with grace and with a kick of her long legs, shot up the cylinder onto the bridge. Orpheus was forced to duck as she shot past. "Whose island?" she demanded of Castor and Pollux. "The Mysians? The Bebryces?"
"Or perhaps the Lemnian women," added Orpheus, picking up his lyre. He tapped its keys, and the instrument sang in its clear, if unemotional, voice:
"Countless young girls ran up from every side and danced round him in their joy, till he had passed through the city gates. Then the girls drove down to the beach in smooth-running wagons laden with gifts. And they did not find it difficult to make the Argonauts come home with them for entertainment. Cypris, the goddess of desire, had done her sweet work in their hearts."
Atalanta snorted in derision. "Athena, do we know where we are?"
"We are well outside charted space, Atalanta. We are leaving the zone we call the Wandering Rocks and entering the Black Sea. This area has not been visited for generations, and so the name of this island and that of any people who may live there is unknown. In any event, it supports plant-life, and so there must be water, which we must have before we set off in search of the Golden Ram."
"If we had engineers like the ancient Belters spoke of," said Orpheus, "we wouldn't need to put in for water. It would come out of the recycling system pure and clean."
"Yes, we know," said Pollux. "They were robot-trained in their youth and knew life-support systems inside-out. They probably built ours inside-out. That's why it turns clean water into piss."
"Why don't we piss in it," Castor suggested. "We might get beer."
Orpheus ignored their jibes and opened the hatch to the launch. "Someone should wake up Hercules," he suggested. "He can carry more water than the rest of us put together."
Pollux went off to do just that, and Jason followed Castor into the launch. As they entered, the interior lighting blazed, and the small vessel began to hum. Jason's place as captain was beside that of the pilot, and as always, he watched Castor carefully as the latter set the instrument panel aglow. None of the Argonauts could guess how much Jason knew about piloting a launch--that had been Chiron's profession at one time. But a captain was supposed to be above such things, as a doctor was above such things as surgery, and he kept his counsel.
There were couches only for the two of them, and the other Argonauts had to cling to the cargo-netting among the waterbags and food-bales. There was a hiss and the launch separated from the Argo. It fell slowly past the sail and plummeted into the stars. Athena was still with them, of course, for distance meant nothing to the Guardians, but Jason still felt a touch of the loneliness of space that Chiron had spoken of. As if in response to his mood, Orpheus' lyre began to sing under the bard's touch:
"For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales."
"Who wrote that?" Atalanta wanted to know.
"Alfred, Tenny's Son. A very ancient poet. Said to be from Earth, if you can believe..."
Athena interrupted. "Jason, there is something terribly wrong with this island. It may be a place of great danger. Castor, I suggest you approach very carefully."
"I will, Goddess."
All eyes were on the island as they approached. It was the double cylinder type, a common design for larger islands, as the two cylinders spinning in opposite directions cancelled each other's gyroscopic effect and the mirrors and panels could be kept pointing toward the sun with little energy loss. But it was not pointing toward the sun, and the cylinders were not spinning in opposite directions at the same speed. They were not, in fact, spinning at all.
As they drifted past one of the cylinders, they peered through transparent panels into the interior. But instead of the usual green landscape, blue sky, and fleecy clouds, they saw desolation--stark sunlight casting black shadows across bare rock and frozen waters. In a moment, they saw the gaping hole in the glass.
It was a Belter horror-tale come true--a wandering rock, erupting through the glass, burning through the atmosphere across the cylinder, and striking the opposite valley with explosive force; the landscape devastated, people crushed in their houses or thrown to the ground as great winds swept over them, draining all the air into vacuum.
First there would have come a tingling in the ears, then the howling winds, then the slow asphyxiation. Did some of the inhabitants try to repair the damage, braced against the hurricane winds? In some of the tales there were robots, ready to sacrifice themselves for their masters. How long ago had the disaster taken place?
And what of the other cylinder? Was it damaged as well? It could hardly have escaped the disaster unharmed, for the two cylinders were built to spin together as a system and would have slowed and stopped simultaneously.
Slowly, they drifted past the other cylinder. The transparent panels were intact, and there was vegetation within, for the interior glowed like Jason's torus in the sun, green and sparkling, but how could the inhabitants have survived the loss of gravity as the cylinder rotation stopped? With the solar panels no longer pointed toward the sun, all power would have drained away. There would have been no day and night, no seasons, and soon enough no god or goddess in residence, for as everyone knew, the Guardians drew their power from the sun. All order would have gone out of life.
The launch drifted close to one of the panels and the Argonauts peered through the glass. Below them stretched a mountainous landscape of leaves. In some places they were green and sunlit, in others shrivelled and brown, and in some spots, there were bare branches--gaps in the canopy through which they could look down into green depths like pools of water.
Castor expertly guided the launch into dock, and they waited while Athena took control of the airlock. Jason was first to cycle through; the hatch irised open before him and he found himself in the treetops. One by one the others joined him in a harbour amphitheatre filled with foliage. Shafts of sunlight penetrated the greenish gloom, coming from the observation galleries above and below. The bulkhead beside them was plastered with a kind of mulch, where mosses and fungus and seedlings sprouted. Birds wheeled in the open spaces, their cries echoing, and Jason thought he heard the screech of monkeys deep in the interior. He felt at home again.
"Athena?" he said.
Her voice came from the launch. "There is no power anywhere in the island that I can detect, though there may be storage batteries at the far end-cap. Once a year the island faces the sun and the batteries may charge for a time, but at the moment I can find no systems functioning. The entire cylinder seems to be filled with a three-dimensional, zero-gravity forest, some three kilometres in diameter and twenty in length. Where the trees could be rooted, I cannot say, but rooted they must be, and there you will find water. I cannot accompany you, for my senses will not be able to detect you in the depth of the forest."
"I've spent my life in the treetops, Athena," said Jason. "And this whole world is treetops." For the first time he began to feel like a leader.
"This way," he said, and the Argonauts fell in behind him without question as he pulled himself along a massive tree-limb.
They followed it into an open hatch and down a dark corridor, to emerge at the other end into dappled forest sunlight. Obviously, they had entered a vast open space, for the distant whisper of leaves rustling in the wind came from all directions, but they could see no more than a few fathoms into the foliage.
"It would be easy to lose ourselves," Orpheus warned. "There's no up or down, and it's hard to tell where the light is coming from. We could wander in circles."
Jason shook his head. "If we work our way along this limb, always in the direction of greater thickness, it has to lead us to the roots eventually."
Hercules, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, spoke up. "I'm not built for this kind of travel. I'm too bulky to push my way through all this foliage. I volunteer to stay behind and guard the launch."
"Guard it from what?" Castor laughed.
But Jason agreed. He and Orpheus, Atalanta and the twins shouldered empty water-skins and pushed off into the green haze.