The dark side of the sun - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,24

and derived their picture of the universe from the minds of their customers. The First Sirian Bank was in a class of his own, as always. A few races – The Pod, for one – were alien even to Spooners and Tarquins.

But all the races had one thing in common. They were all less than five million years old, and all had originated within a sphere of stars less than 200 light years across, centred on Wolf 429. The Creapii discovered that first, and so were the first to investigate the one planet that orbited the Wolf.

They found a Joker tower, a monomolecular spire frosted with frozen methane, standing dark and alone under the airless sky. They found the thing later known simply as the Centre of the Universe.

The Creapii ranged far. They found more towers, other Joker artefacts like the Ring Stars, Band and the Internal Planets of Protostar V. As an incidental, they found Earth and sold a working matrix motor for homesteading rights on Mercury. The Creapii were beginning to feel in the grip of a galactic mystery, and had long before decided that they needed extra insights.

Seventy standard years later a joint Man-Phnobe team deciphered Joker Curiform C, the only one of the five Joker scripts translatable. There were hints of a great civilization, although the word was only an approximation, and there was probably the first poem in the universe.

Geological evidence suggested that the towers were all between eight and five million years old. They were ranged more or less equally across the light years, accepting all energies, radiating none.

The Creapii knew that they had recognizably evolved from the mildly intelligent salamanders about four million years before, to judge from the desiccated aluminium-polysilicate remains on their planet around 70 Ophiuchis A. They knew of no race older.

They were long-lived. They had travelled up the Tentacle – Creapii mythology saw the galaxy as a giant Creap, with a glittering carcase of stars – to the sparse stars at the rim. They had sailed down the Tentacle to the cathedral of stars at the hub. The stars were barren. There were one or two freak accidents. But generally, life was still merely some slightly more complex chemical changes. Only in the bubble of stars behind them did worlds teem.

Impetuous races would have reached a definite conclusion hastily, maybe in two or three hundred years. The Creap minds, of which each individual had three, did not jump so readily to conclusions …

‘And what conclusion did they reach?’ asked Dom.

‘The Creapii are powerful, and slow, and thorough. They have as yet reached no conclusion. They are seeking the meaning of life. Why sshould they hurry?’

‘Chel! Isn’t the theory that the Jokers seeded our stars before they – uh – moved away? Come on, you know it is.’

The phnobe nodded slowly. ‘That is certainly the hypothesis that the Joker Institute appears to work on.’

Dom bit his lip, and opened his mouth to speak. Hrsh-Hgn raised a hand.

‘You are about to assk why. Boy, remember that of fifty-two races in the life-stars you, an Earthman—’

‘A Widdershine!’

‘True, a Widdershine of Earth stock – can only vaguely understand the mental workings of perhaps three or four races. Why should we hope to understand the Jokers?’

‘But the Institute did understand Joker Curiform C. It was one of their languages.’

‘Yes, but a written language is merely a machine to convey information, and once we had the key it was remarkably easy to translate.’

‘How was it broken?’

‘They used a poet, and a mad computer.’

Hrsh-Hgn picked up the cube of pink silica that had been his present to Dom, thumbed the reference face and set it to project. The words of the Joker Testament hung in the air, glowing.

You who stand before us

We have held the stars in the hollow

Of our hands, and the stars

Burn. Pray be careful now

As to how you handle them.

We have gone to wait on our new world

There is but one

It lies at the dark side of the sun.

‘Pretty derivative stuff,’ said Isaac. ‘That last couplet is really a singlet.’

‘I must admit it is better in phnobic,’ said Hrsh-Hgn. ‘As for the rest, well, you musst know most of it. On a purely practical level, hotheads have searched every sizeable body in the bubble and many out of it.’

‘Now we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty,’ said Isaac. ‘You’d have had to include suns, of course, and the deeps themselves. Although it sounds more likely that the Jokers originated on-planet somewhere.’

‘The popular belief is