ETERNITY WEEPS.

by Jim Mortimore.

Prologue.

16 Alpha Leonis One, six billion years ago

16 Alpha Leonis One is not exactly what you might call honeymoon potential. It's a bit like Venus. Not the Venus of Burroughs or Bradbury. The real Venus. The Venus where they used to remember things by eating each other's brains. The Venus where the sky consists princ.i.p.ally of carbon dioxide and the seas are boiling sulphuric acid, and what little solid ground you might find is really nothing more than the peaks of a chain of highly active volcanoes girdling the planet's equator.

Ah ha, I hear you thinking. Life here sounds like a rough ride. Well maybe you're right. Any species capable of evolving intelligence and basic technology in such a volatile environment is one I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley at midnight. Then again, if I did meet a member of this particular species in a dark alley at midnight the chances are it would be as dead as you or I would be if caught unprotected on its world. That would be a shame because, despite looking like three-metre-wide, crystal-armoured sea anemones, the Cthalctose are really rather a civilized species.

It's true. Their culture is fairly well developed - philosophically about the level of the ancient Greeks. The Cthalctose have reasoning minds, a knowledge of principles such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, even astronomy (they do it by feeling tidal movement in the sulphuric acid seas).

But like the ancient Greeks they are playing with the ideas as intellectual amus.e.m.e.nts. Their level of practical technology doesn't even encompa.s.s something as sophisticated as a steam engine. It's a shame really. If they'd had the steam engine they might have made it in evolutionary terms. Well, made it without all the d.a.m.nable fuss and bother I've just been through, that is.

The Cthalctose live in buildings shaped like coral reefs. They 'bury' their dead by leaving them on the projecting atolls to decompose in the acidic atmosphere. The dead bodies thus form a steady rain of food for the young, which are born attached to the sides of the reefs.

On this particular day, some six billion years ago, the Astronomer Royal lazed in the deepest trench of the deepest ocean and watched the sky.

Well, he didn't think of it as the sky as such, not having eyes. But he knew it was there. He could feel it move tides of sulphuric acid around his three-hundred-metre-long tentacles. A land-based species; one possessing eyes, might have thought the sky an empty mess of murky clouds. Not the Astronomer Royal. To him the sky was as full as the oceans with movement and life. Ma.s.ses which moved in intricate patterns, with rhythms which added and subtracted to shape the seas around him; a vast design, of which small parts might be reiterated once or twice in an average lifespan.

He could feel the movement of the sun and the moon though he would never know their light or warmth. They were quite close and moved relatively quickly. Further away were the two large gas giants which acted as shepherd moons to a ring of stellar dust about six times their combined ma.s.s. He could feel the distant tug of a third, even larger gas giant beyond that, and then the delicate ripples of the Oort cloud right at the very edge of the Solar System.

The Astronomer Royal was very good at observing the sky. He had spent the last three hundred years planning a performance of his observations to the rest of his species. Performance art wasn't a new thing to the Cthalctose, but when you spend half your life fixed to a large reef and the rest dodging predators there were really only a limited number of things about which you could perform. The Astronomer Royal was going to change all that. He wanted to put on the best show in the history of Art. No more romances or mythic battles for him. His performance would encompa.s.s the sky itself. Three centuries of it to be precise. Each of his hundreds of tentacles would move in precise patterns which would duplicate the patterns of the ma.s.ses in the sky. He'd have to speed the performance up a bit of course: performed in real time it was likely to become boring, and some of the older citizens might even die before it was finished. But even so it would be a thing of beauty and intellect. A thing never before seen on his world.

The Astronomer Royal was nothing if not an Artist.

If he hadn't been the Earth would have been a very different place.

Breathing sulphuric acid and straining from it the edible remains of the recently dead, the Astronomer Royal waited and watched as the, sky moved around him. He was waiting for a particular ma.s.s - one he had been watching for nearly a hundred years. He concentrated on the tides produced by this Other. The Astronomer Royal observed the tides for many hours as he fed and breathed and allowed himself to be cleaned by the corrosive action of the sea.

He watched the Other and he thought hard about it. The Other was new to the Solar System. It hadn't always been there. It had appeared nearly a century ago at the very edge of the Oort cloud and had stayed there for a long time. Then, about fifty years ago, the tides produced by the Other had begun to increase in strength. Either it was increasing in ma.s.s or it was moving closer.

Perhaps it could be the focal point of his performance.

He wondered which of the two theories was correct. Was it getting heavier, or moving closer? That night's observations brought the beginning of an answer. In fact, both theories were correct.. The Other was perceptibly heavier since the last observation. And its place in the pattern of the sky had changed.

It was moving closer.

The Astronomer Royal spent three months observing the new change, wondering how he would incorporate it into his performance of the sky.

When he finally worked out its significance he almost died of fright.

If he had died life on Earth would have been very different. If there had ever been any human life, that is.

Chapter 1.

We were in Dogubayazit looking for the Ark of Ages when the Flood came.

Why? It was just one of those days, that's all.

Marriage is weird. You spend half your life wondering about it and the other half wondering what the h.e.l.l it was you were wondering about. The order of the day is confusion, insecurity, dependency. Trapped somewhere in the middle of this emotional slushpile is the thing that drove you to it in the first place: that corky of Devil called Love.

Marriage to Jason Kane is all the above, squared and cubed. Sometimes it's worse. On really bad days it's almost good. These days sneak up on you. They lull you into a false sense of security. On days like these you know what he thinks about you. You know what he feels about you and wants from you. You even have a reasonably good idea what you want from him.

Then he eyes up some bit of totty in the Eiffel Tower gift shop and it all turns to doggie poo and you don't know why, and you spend all night trying to make it up but he's too guilty to get it up, and you he awake till morning and tell him you've had enough emotional bulls.h.i.t for one honeymoon and you're off to Turkey to find Noah's Ark or drown trying, and would he seriously consider staying the h.e.l.l out of your life for the conceivable future and as much longer as he can manage?

It's as much as you can do not to chuck the ring at him as you go.

No, not that one, stupid. The wedding ring. And he had to pay the hotel bill too. Ha ha.

Turkey was exactly the opposite of what I expected. As a historian, archaeologist and sometime adventurer I really ought to know better by now. I expected beautiful mountain views, clear skies, adventure, possibly a handsome stranger or two to ease my husband-shattered ego.

What I got was a nasty little border war, a nasty little rash, a mountain of sheeps.h.i.t, and an apparently endless supply of warm Pepsis.

And that was before I even unpacked my trowel.

My ride landed at three o'clock local time. There hadn't been any commercial flights because of the war (the last having been shot down by a malfunctioning Scud) so, I hired a crusty Norwegian pilot named Sven (no last name given) to fly me to where the action was in a mothballed Russian Army chopper which was at least ninety years older than G.o.d (and a couple of years younger than Sven, at that).

The flight cost me eighteen hundred for Sven, another nine for the chopper, six hundred for fuel and six hundred and fifty for repairs to the tail rotor bearings before I'd let the b.u.g.g.e.r take off. I charged the lot to Jason's card.

Not that he'd ever notice - the Doctor had left us with a mountain of plastic - but it made me feel better.

Oh yes, there was the fifty I bunged Sven to keep his hands off me and on the joystick where they belonged during the flight.

An even forty grand to get me from Jason Kane to just five kilometres south of the most famous mountain in the world. It seemed a lot of money and it was. Then again everyone has their little problems. The Captain of the t.i.tanic had his iceberg. Noah had Ararat.

Now I had Ararat too.

I was rubbing my hands as I stepped down from the chopper. Only half of it was due to the cold. The other half was due to relief at having survived the flight. The third half was glee: I was alone. No tourists. No French totty. No Jason. Just Ararat. Seventeen thousand feet, two peaks, snow, rock, one large boat. All to myself.

I should be so lucky. Me and a Chartreuse Microbus full of Jesus freaks, a shipping engineer who should by rights have been trying to salvage the aforementioned t.i.tanic, an astronaut with a dose of religion so bad I've been taking preventative medication, and half the Iraqi army.

I'll tell you all about them in a bit.

Sven grinned a mouthful of crusty teeth at me and said something that sounded like, 'It vos immense pleasure by Gott to heff you in my aircraft, yes, Miss Professor? Ve do lunch sometime ya, by Gott?

I smiled in confusion, waved, shouldered my rucksack, turned towards the village.

The chopper had set down in a field of pumice and sheeps.h.i.t. My original snakeskin Liz Lewitt pumps were knackered before I'd got three yards.

Ditto my shoulders where the rucksack straps had rubbed through my Soochi blouse. And my lungs were raw from fuel fumes and threats screamed at Sven when he'd tried it on in the chopper.

See what easy living will do for you?

The chopper lifted, hung for a moment at head height spraying me with dirt and powdered sheeps.h.i.t as Sven waved from the c.o.c.kpit, coughed black smoke from the engine cowling, banked and roared away. After a few seconds it lifted enough to clear the adobe wall at the south edge of the field.

I sat down on a lump of pumice to take stock.

After a few moments the sheep ambled back to investigate . I say investigate. They b.u.mped me a bit and blinked occasionally. One of them snuffled. Model of evolution, this lot.

Spurning modesty I changed into my only spare shirt, pulled on a pair of hiking boots and tied my stinking blouse and Liz Lewitt originals by their sleeves and laces respectively around the neck of the nearest sheep. Let the locals make what they will of that, I thought with savage amus.e.m.e.nt as I began to walk towards the village.

Lock up your sons and your fossils. Professor Bernice Summerfield was here - and you better believe it.

Well, the sheep believed it anyway.

From the air Dogubayazit had seemed no more than a ridge or two away.

Like h.e.l.l it was. Sven had the hands of a child molester and the unerring navigation skills of a malfunctioning Scud. I walked for two kilometres before I found the road. I walked along it for a kilometre or so. I fretted. I sweated. I swore a death oath to pilots in general and Norwegian ones named Sven in particular. I shouted abuse at the sheep and Jason. I stamped my feet. I nearly twisted my ankle twice. Half an hour later I left the road. After this the going got better. '

My temper didn't.

By the time I had walked another kilometre I was hot, dusty, thirsty and obsessively muttering, 'A bus, a bus, my kingdom for a bus', in progressively louder and angrier tones.

Just when I was absolutely sure I would die from heat prostration having never again heard the sweet sound of an internal combustion engine, there came from .behind me an alarming set of noises. Chugging. Rattling. The clash of grinding metal. The machine-gun rattle of almost continuous backfires. I looked back along the road. Something was coming.

The something in question was knackered to b.u.g.g.e.ry, lathered with dust, and covered with about a million wobbling wing mirrors bolted haphazardly to every outside surface. It was, nonetheless, unmistakably a jeep. It screeched to a stop beside me and a youngish guy took off a motorcycle helmet emblazoned with a really bad airbrushed portrait of Paul Weller from the Jam and peered at me. The lad had short, curly hair, old eyes and huge teeth in an even bigger grin. He pointed at me. 'Pretty view,' he said in broken English.

I glanced at the dusty grey hills sloping away from the road and shrugged with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. 'If you say so.'

He nodded happily.

I sighed. Time was when I could have blended inconspicuously with half a hundred alien species on worlds as distant as the Galactic Rim. Right now I might as well have been walking along the road with a sign round my neck saying: Tourist. Easy money. Please rip me off.

His grin widened. 'You go Ararat? You go Dogubayazit? I take. Five million Turkish lira only.' He added, optimistically in my opinion, 'I give very good bargain, yes?'

I shrugged. 'Five million huh? You see a suitcase anywhere?'

The lad frowned. 'Beg pardon?'

I shook my head. 'Never mind. Will you take dollars?' The grin was back in an instant; the lad almost quivered with joy. 'Yes. I take dollars. One hundred only. You get good bargain.'

'So you say.' I handed over half the money and climbed into the jeep. It rocked and the gears clashed horribly as the lad accelerated back along the road the way I had just come. I sat down suddenly on something sharp.

Grabbing the offending article I saw it was one of my Liz Lewitt originals.

The other, and my shirt, rested on the back seat.

I glared in outrage at the lad driving the jeep. 'You've been following me all this way? You watched me walk three kilometres in the wrong direction and you didn't offer me a lift?' Another thought struck me. 'You watched me change my clothes?'

He grinned. 'Pretty view.'

To this day I have no idea how I stopped myself killing him.

The lad's name was Dilaver. He drove on in silence broken only by the clashing of gears and the muttering of distant guns.

Dogubayazit was (I use the past tense deliberately: check your World Atlas of Nuclear Explosions for more info) a village built on the ruins of a village.

The original had been largely destroyed twenty years before by the same border war which was currently raging - it seemed only the technology had changed, and that not much. The soldiers had bigger guns and they fired different slugs - but they'd still kill you. In many ways I was grateful that I had a guide through the troubles. Even if the silly boy did have the bad taste to like the Jam.

Present-day Dogubayazit was probably little different in all important respects from the original. A muddy main street bordered by two-storey concrete prefabs. Thin streets winding between wasted buildings, While the village was fairly clean everything was coloured by the ever-present dust so that the general impression was of a jumble of kids' building blocks which had been extruded from the ground. Colour was provided by stunted trees and scrawny gra.s.s growing in small gardens, together with clothes and sheets hanging from windows and flapping on washing! lines. Noise came from transistor radios playing German industrial house music in three different languages, a scatter of dogs yapping incessantly at teasing children and the distant mutter of helicopters and gunfire carried on a fitful breeze. Nervous tension was provided by the villagers, who either sat or stood in their doorways and stared at us as we drove through the village. I say stared at us. Actually they were staring at me.

Dilaver noticed this in about ten seconds flat and grinned. 'Pretty view' my sainted aunt.

Leaving the dogs to argue over some old sc.r.a.ps, the children cl.u.s.tered around the jeep. Clashing gears horribly the lad slowed down and waved at them. They pointed at me. Dilaver beamed.

I poked him in the shoulder. 'I'm not a b.l.o.o.d.y trophy you know.'

He immediately looked concerned. 'Pardon?'

I shook my head.

One of the scrawniest kids climbed into the jeep. I could tell she was a girl only by the fact she was wearing a dress. I picked her up and made as if to throw her out.

Dilaver said, 'My sister.' He pointed at me. 'Lady go Ararat. I take. She pay good.' He waved a fist full of dollars at the kids. Immediately about half a dozen more scrambled aboard.

'Hey son, I should warn you I puke in crowds.'

'Beg pardon?'

By this time the kids were chattering excitedly and leaping up and down on the seats and poking interestedly at my rucksack and running their fingers through my hair and hugging me. The lad gave one ten-year-old who was jumping on my shirt a backhander and he toppled from the jeep on to the road. I looked around in concern but he was up and running after us in a moment, yelling indignantly.

Dilaver flipped the kid the bird.

I poked the lad again. 'Is there somewhere to stay here?'

'Beg pardon?'

I removed a scrawny kid from my lap, pulled another off my rucksack, disentangled my hair from a third and gave my hair slide up as a casualty of war. 'Hotel. Motel. Bed and breakfast. Flophouse. Dive.'