The Wanderer

“Worlds with no wall between mind and mind, and worlds that are more prison-celled than ours. Worlds where thought is real and every beast’s a god. A fluid universe — its planets bubbles — and worlds that branch in time like mighty vines.

“Worlds in which space is crossed with spiderwebs instead of flecked with stars — cosmos of vines or roads. A cosmos with solids but no gravity, worlds of dimensions more and less than ours, worlds different in every basic law — chromatic scale of cosmoses, spectra of creation.

“Or if we find no worlds in hyperspace, then build them there! — create the monster particle that births a cosmos, bursting from this cosmos as from a chrysalis, no matter if this cosmos be destroyed.

“So much for our larger aims. Our smaller ones: a screen for all we do. Privacy for our planet and our thoughts. Weapons as we may need them. Free research, as secret as we want it. No inspection! The right to take our planet where we will, even if there’s no orbit waiting us which we have paid the rent on. To live between the stars if we so choose, out in the chilly, sunless wilderness, burning the prairie grass of hydrogen — or in the oceanic spatial deeps that lie between the island galaxies. The right always to travel hyperspace, now reserved for government and police. The right to take a chance, the right to suffer. The right to be unwise, the right to die.

“These aims are hateful to the government, which values every frightened mouse and falling sparrow as equal to a tiger burning bright. The government wants a police station winking blue by every sun, a cop pounding a beat around each planet, squad cars roaming the interstellar dark — fuzz everywhere, blurring the diamond-pristine, lucent stars.

“Millennia ago the government began to nibble at our freedoms — we Wild Ones, we Recalcitrants, we Untamed. We banded on one planet of our own, won some prestige and powers, kept up our screens, lived our own lives, seemed to be gaining ground — only to find we’d made ourselves a single easy target for the police.

“A century ago we all were put on trial. Soon it was clear the case would go against us: no privacy, no secret research, no hyperspatial traveling, no chance to solve the universe’s problems on our own.

“Surrender then — or die? We cut and ran.

“Since then it’s been a never-ending chase. The Hounds of Heaven always on our track: planet pursued by planets untiring. No spot in all the cosmos safe for us. No outback far enough in all the galaxies, except the hyperspatial storm we have not mastered — reality’s hurricane.

“Think of the sea as being hyperspace, its surface as the universe we know, its ships as planets, we, a submarine.

“We surface near some solitary sun not yet built up with artificial orbs. Then they appear, and we must dive again. Sometimes we stay too long, must fight a battle before we vanish in the void’s cruel dark. We’ve blown up three suns just for diversions! Those novas are in distant galaxies. We may have killed a planet; can’t be sure.

“Sometimes our cold pursuers make a truce and plead with us a while, and make us offers before they aim their killing bombs and rays — hoping we’ll see the arc light of their reason that glares always above the cosmic prison yard.

“Twice we risked all to find another cosmos — cut loose in hyperspace and sailed off blind. But by some twist of hyperspatial gusts we were brought back to this same universe — enchanted thorn-forest around a castle, or tunnel ending by some trick of space inside the same jailyard that it was dug from.

“We are the Vanderdecken Planet of the Cosmos, making our knight’s tour ’round the universe — but always comes the untiring pursuit along the crooked curves of hyperspace.

“We try to keep our standards, but we slacken. We didn’t need to hurt your planet, Paul! — or so I think, I really can’t be sure — I’m but a servant on the Wanderer. But though I can’t be sure, I’ll say this now: I hope before we harm one creature more, we plunge forever into the dark storm. They say the third time you drown — May that be so!”

Her voice changed and she cried out sharply: “Oh, Paul, we’re charging around with all these beautiful dreams and yet all we can do is hurt people. Should you wonder that we’re falling in love with death?”

Tigerishka broke off. After a bit, her voice neutral yet tight, as if she had drawn into herself, she said: “There, I’ve told the monkey everything now. The monkey may feel superior to the cat, if he wishes.”

Very quietly, Paul drew and let out a deep breath. His heart was thudding. At another time he might question Tigerishka’s story and his understanding of it, but now it simply stood there as she had told it, as if the stars beneath him were an emblazoning of it — a diamond script spelling only what she had said.