The Darkside Of The Sun

job. Do you know what an astrologer was?’
    ‘Sure,’ said Dom. ‘I was born under O’Brien the Hunter.’
    ‘We are the new astrologers. We evaluate—’
    —by the mathemagic of probability, sifting through the population of the galaxy to find those whose probability profile matched the theoretical one for the discoverer of Jokers World. That particular profile had been in existence for some time. For no known reason questions relating to Jokers World usually became nonsense when rendered into p-math, but it was possible, just possible, to make up an equation from the outlines round the logical holes.
    Then it meant sifting again. That had not been difficult. There were only three potential discoverers this year. One was a phnobic monk, the other a three-month-old girl on Third Eye. Both had been killed easily.
    But Dom was a different matter. The Institute was at a loss to understand why. His father had also been a high-probability Discoverer, and there had been no difficulty there. Yet something prevented Dom from being conveniently removed. He was too lucky.
    Something wanted him to discover Jokers World.
    ‘Yes,’ said Dom. ‘It’s the Jokers.’
    ‘So we think,’ said Asman. ‘Do you know why we can’t let you?’
    ‘I think I can follow your reasoning,’ said Dom. ‘You fear the Jokers. That’s because you don’t know them. You think that contact with even the remnants of their culture will destroy us. I expect you have some idea that men are better off without gods.’
    ‘You laugh at us. Oh, we can’t deny that the Joker artefacts have done something to stimulate interracial co-operation.’
    Dom heard himself shout: ‘They caused it! The Creapii invented the matrix engine just so that they could find other lifeforms to help them answer the Joker riddles!’
    ‘That is so. But Dom, listen. Before Sadhim, before star travel even, you know that most men believed in some kind of omnipresent god? Not the Sadhimist Small Gods, answerable to natural forces, but a real Director of the Universe? But if it had turned out that He really did exist chaos would have been let loose on the planet. He would have ceased to become a matter of comforting Belief but a matter of fact – you don’t believe in the sun, either. And men would have perished of a cosmic inferiority complex. You can’t live and know of such greatness.
    ‘We need the idea of Jokers because they are a unifying force among the races, but we can’t afford to find their world. Supposing it is dead – is that the end of even the greatest race? If they still live, will they enslave us or ignore us? Or worse, befriend us?
    ‘We can only let you go now to the dark side of the sun. But you must understand that we can’t let you return.’
    ‘I know what the Jokers World is,’ said Dom slowly. ‘I’ve known for some time, I think, without realizing it. And I think I’m coming to realize where it is. There is only one Sun in the universe – our universe – and the Jokers gave it to us. Will you lock your fleet onto this ship?’
    Asman nodded.
    ‘Then follow me.’
    Interspace glowed around him. Dom switched off the set and tried to ignore the orange-gold glow that filled the ship and in which it floated.
    To no one he said: ‘Why now? And why me?’
    Ig shrugged, and turned his pointed, rat-like nose towards him. He spoke. The words arrived in Dom’s head without the need for a cumbersome physical route.
    ‘The trouble was that we never found a way to become empathic. Telepathy – that’s merely a higher form of speech. But to know how another being, another creature feels – that is impossible.’
    ‘You were lonely,’ said Dom. ‘All those empty years …’
    ‘Isaac would say: close, but no cigar. We searched even the alternate universes, it is true, right along to the dark impossible ones that are the stuff of nightmares. There was life. The Bank and Chatogaster are small fry. In some universes the very suns live. There is a galaxy that sings. In one universe, over there’ – a paw pointed and one claw disappeared momentarily into another continuum – ‘there is nothing but thought, which pervades all. Not only thought, but understanding. But it is alien to us. How blithely you use the word alien: you have no idea how alien a thing may be.
    ‘We discovered – as the Creapii are discovering – that the ultimate barrier is one’s viewpoint. Dimly they realize that even their most objective statements