A Voyage To Dari Page 14

  But then his eyes came alive, and he leaned forward to take her hands in his, telling her, “As between us two, I regret nothing.”

  “You said I. You also said us.”

  . . . His smile lost bitterness, brightening into a grin. “Didn’t I, just!”

  He sobered and dropped her hands. “Nevertheless, they are they, we are we. I accepted Duke Dzendzel’s game for fun. I am asking you also to go along with it as a picaresque, and I will keep all the money for the sake of your soul.”

  “Why?”

  “Somebody is on his way here to sign a treaty with the Emperor. And the intelligence of the Emperor is this same Duke Dzendzel.”

  “Somebody?”

  He nodded. “Somebody from Nereid.”

  He had named the capital of Sol Galaxy—a small satellite of Neptune. Freya, frowning, bent her head low over the table. “You are suggesting that Croyd may be in danger, then.”

  He said, low, “Yes, but my sense of the peril is deeper. Two galaxies are in some sort of hazard, and my unformulated sense of the threat is named Dzendzel.”

  PAN:

  Freya? Hi? Where are you?

  In the duke’s castle on Moudjinn. Where are you?

  Still on Saturninn. The duke has a castle?

  Pan, it’s really something out of a nineteenth-century gothic romance! Do you have time to listen?

  All clear, Freya. Give me the color.

  He brought me here in the tonneau of a carriage behind four black horse creatures; their legs moved so fast that I couldn’t count them, but there were certainly more than sixteen. We rumble-clattered across a moat drawbridge under a portcullis into a courtyard. Ruffed pages attended us dismounting. Then—get this—courteously he poised his left wrist, and I laid my right hand lightly upon it, and in we went.

  To his bedroom?

  You may not believe this, Pan, but the duke has delicacy . . . and ideals. He took me to his dining room, dinner loosened his tongue, his conversation flowed with the wines; l helped it along, with polite listening, with an occasional delicate prod, and with a . . . what is it you call it?

  With a subliminal aura of projective hypnosis?

  That’s good, that’s very good. And the atmosphere was helping him, too: a small rough-hewn table in a small rough-hewn room with a log fire, the crystal service deployed by a single aging manservant. So then, after terminal brandy, he began to . . .

  Come to the point?

  Yes, but you aren’t going to believe the point.

  What is the point?

  It’s going to take me a little while to come to it. He asked me finally whether he could trust me.

  Why would he think he possibly might, Freya?

  Oh, he had plenty of doubts; he noted that he had won me transiently on a coin toss and that I seemed to be your woman; but he added that I seemed sympathetic and that I understood him.

  I suspect that you have left a good deal of transitional material untold, but never mind. Go on.

  Well, how do you answer a question like that? I asked if he could read my mind. Very courteously he said yes, but I would have to give him leave to enter. So l invited him in.

  To your mind.

  Exactly. And while he was in my mind, I engulfed him with mind love; so he learned nothing, but he did not know this. And afterward he trusted me; he gave me all . . .

  I think maybe now we are coming to the point?

  Pan, he has a dream of feudal-medieval empire for the total metagalaxy! Complete with knights and castles and jousting! And he wants me to be his fostering Lady of the Manor.

  For the whole metagalaxy?

  Right on.

  Freya, for you that's a promotion!

  Pray take note that he offered me . . . marriage.

  Ve-ry good! This involves he should divorce the duchess?

  Too long you’ve known Tannen. Yes.

  To him did you say yes?

  I’m in consultation with me.

  Where would I fit?

  He made that part of it explicit. The feudal standard is double. For him there will be Princess Medzik, and there will be others. But the Lady of the House must be gracious, uncomplaining, and . . . touchable only by the lord, and always by the lord at his will. In short, Pan, you wouldn’t fit.

  Then my answer is no.

  I hoped so. What’s with Princess Medzik, Pan?

  She hasn’t asked me to marry her.

  Then I’m one up. Sorry about that.

  Freya, you didn’t ring me across two billion kilometers for small talk.

  Not primarily. Dzendzel has a real big thing, Pan.

  Tell me.

  I saw it, Pan—in a kind of big well he has in a deep cellar of his castle; we leaned on a rail around it and looked down, and I saw . . . what I can’t describe, like a dream indescribable. I’m afraid I’m not being much help.

  Stop intellect-thinking it at me. Remember it at me.

  Eh . . . Okay. Here, I’m going dreamy-reminiscent; you pick it up.

  Prolonged period of direct mind-to-mind experience. Then, Freya:

  Pan?

  You have shown me what appears to be a loosely organized system of mind fragments interacting with the Rolandic fissure of a brain. What is it?

  Do you have a good grip on the arms of the chair you’re sitting in?

  I am well in from the edge of the bed that I am lying in.

  Who’s with you?

  Stick to the subject. What is it?

  The duke says it is the metagalactic fissure.

  The meta . . . But, Freya, that’s only . . .

  I know. I tell you what he tells me. And . . .

  Go on.

  The duke wants to convert the Djinn Galaxy to a pure feudalistic system—with him on top, of course, under the Emperor, and maybe on top of the Emperor. He knows he has a long way to go. Meanwhile, he says this . . . thing of his, in the metagalactic fissure, is a pure feudalism of mind—with himself as its grand seigneur. When he gets it unified, he says, he can use it to bring about the perfected feudalism of Djinn in his own lifetime. Pan, I’ve given you only the first quarter of the picture, but pause now to digest it.

  I have it. A friend of ours named Croyd would be irritated. What’s the next quarter?

  Your friend named Croyd would be irritated also about you and a certain apostasy.

  I repent me of that apostasy. I will do something about that. Afterward. What’s the second quarter?

  The duke’s plan for the metagalactic fissure lacks one ingredient to bring off the unification. And ironically, that one ingredient, should it reach Djinn, would blast his plans totally.

  Silence. Then: I can think of only one ingredient in the universe that would fit both specifications.

  A friend of ours named Croyd.

  So then he is in trouble, Freya! What will the duke do?

  The metagalactic fissure is going to capture Croyd: it gets the duke his ingredient and prevents his obfuscation, all in one fell swoop. And don’t shout cliché; you got an apter line that’s original?

  Freya, Croyd is uncapturable. As I am uncapturable.

  You were capturable by a coin toss, Pan. As for Croyd, first they sneak in and knock out his special powers.

  Silence. When Pan’s thought resumed, it felt dead. What’s the third quarter?

  Dzendzel utilizes your enslavement to accomplish what he cannot use Croyd for.

  She sensed his faraway pondering. He said then: It follows that he knows I am Croyd’s duplicate. With all Croyd’s powers.

  Exactly.

  But debased . . . and buyable . . . and, in fact, bought.

  Exactly.

  But also he knows that I can terminate the enslavement at will. Without apostasy, by the way, in terms of the bargain. How can he risk using me?

  He is confident that you will find this unique enslavement remarkably power-attractive. You will end by wishing to exchange this enslavement for permanent high vassaldom to the duke.

/>   In order to enrich the duke’s power?

  Exactly. And your own.

  This would bring us to the final quarter, Freya. What is it?

  It is that Dzendzel then captures the universe.

  After prolonged thought, Freya:

  Pan?

  I can get into the metagalactic fissure fairly fast, without the help of Dzendzel. Meanwhile, you’d better make contact with Greta by I-ray intergalactic relay.

  I agree. Who here has the sender?

  Dzendzel has one. Right there in his castle. That well you looked into—it was a receiver; a transmitter must be nearby. Can you get at it?

  Not until tomorrow. But . . . well, yes. And then?

  Do you have the guts to follow me into the fissure, via the Dzendzel I-ray pullman?

  Silence. Then: That’s a long way, down there. Around a billion light-years, down there. I could arrive with my head in an armpit. Or something.

  But do you have the guts?

  Dzendzel does it. Can you arrange to meet me down there?

  Probably not. I don’t even know where you’d arrive, down there. That isn’t the point. You know?

  Silence. Then: Croyd will be down there. In trouble. Maybe dying.

  Exactly.

  So . . . I bat for Greta with Croyd, down there.

  Silence.

  Pan . . . do you mind?

  That’s the irony of the century, totally incomprehensible: if I did mind, I wouldn’t know why I should. Do you have the guts?

  Not to replace Greta. But I’ll go. Cheers, Pan.

  Cheers, Freya. What will you do about the duke?

  Send him Princess Medzik. Out.

  Phase Four - LORD OF THE FISSURE

  Day 4

  Among neurones in a brain, the vassal cells feed information into their lord cells—“information” that is really mere attention-competing, tonally modulated; the lord cell, so nudged in terms of its own biography and current mood, adopts an attitude; and each vassal, eagerly receptive to the lord’s attitude in terms of its own predispositions and specializations, either co-thrusts downward or is passive. So it is at the level of middle nobility, and in several echelons therein. Only one major substitution is needed to make the analogy pat: the lord and its vassals in a brain control, not land areas, but functional spheres.

  When we move upward in the brain to the level of the top lord neurones or neurone nets, ultimately we encounter a “democracy” with a limited aristocratic franchise, exercised among the “dukes”; and each duke comprehends (in a limited way) so much of the sways exercised by all the other dukes that he can in a pinch take over for any other.

  The metascientific issue turns on an unsolved problem. Does this “council” of “dukes” conjointly settle all final questions by consensus? More searchingly, does it sometimes so bitterly divide on final questions that the soul schisms into a dual personality? Or is there a “king” cell (unlikely hypothesis) which settles all final questions, although it is sometimes unhorsed? Or (tertiarily) is there a mind, transcending all the dukes, which settles all final questions and is ultimately entitled by qualitative difference to l'oint du seigneur—and which sometimes goes mad?

  —Dzendzel, Archduke of

  Moudjinn, Memoirs (2503)

  CROYD STOOD ALONE, VAGUELY PUZZLED, on a back street that he somehow knew was near downtown in a well-known alien city; downtown must be to his right, he had urgency to go to a well-known intricate street web there, the web was target, so young he was, early twenties, a boy . . . On a venture, he entered the left-hand alley; menacing low-brown characters male and female loitered all along the alley, they recognized him as Beige the Enemy, surly they closed in on him, two or three knives snapped open, one was at his ribs. Entirely sympathetic although in cold fear of death, he resolved to squeeze out of this situation whatever experience he could; he stood erect, eyes-to-eye-pairs in turn, asserting: “Your problems I comprehend, but there is nothing I can do for you until I know more; what will you gain by killing me?” They held tableau; then a rough man nodded at Croyd and head-jerked; the others did not fall back, but they let Croyd pass on, pressing against him until he was clear of them and had debouched from the alley

  to find himself totally lost; it was not what he had expected, he was in a wholly different quarter of a possibly different city. Pan was with him, Croyd’s twelve-year-old son; Croyd was responsible, Croyd had to decide for both of them; but small Pan, taking Croyd’s arm and pointing back at the single alley mouth, counseled that they must have taken the wrong alley and shifted dimensions, they must go back through and try the other alley, it would surely bring them back on target. And because on target was ultimately urgent, Croyd, resolving to squeeze out of the situation all the experience he could,

  reentered with his son Pan deliciously beside him, and they moved inexplicably into an artificially illuminated cul-de-sac whose blind ending was a neat Dutch kitchen with a single small high crisscross-mullioned window above a window seat. Entering the kitchen, Croyd chatted with the chubby man and wife while Pan explored; and Croyd was content there; but small Pan insisted, “We must leave by the window.” At Pan’s word, Croyd clambered up on the window seat (being careful not to jostle bread loaves) and opened the window inward, and boosted small Pan through, and followed him out on to the street, and turned to look for the twin alley mouths

  and gaped with dismay that they had further complicated the journey: there were neither alleys nor house; they teetered atop a hill street; the street declivitated below them. He and small Pan considered each other gravely; then simultaneously they grinned; in perfect psychic affinity father and son had agreed: All the experience we can: we who are about to die keep our eyes open to watch and be amused by the manner of death’s coming. Croyd seized small Pan by the shoulders, and Pan gripped his waist, and they started downhill; and as they began to slide

  all the downtown city opened up a mile below them: Target! As their tiny car gathered velocity on the rail declivity, Croyd gripped with both arms the waist of Pan on his lap and yelled in his ear, “Close your eyes!” But Pan called back, pointing, “Look down at the marvel!” Croyd looked down, and indeed the remote-below uprushing city marvel was groin-enchanting; yet again he screamed at Pan, “Close your eyes—we may crash!” But Pan gripped Croyd’s waist-encircling forearms and cried, “All the experience we can!” And as the car rocketed to the brink of verticality and plunged over, joyously Croyd bellowed back to his son, “All the experience we can; we keep our four eyes open.”

  Whereafter there was confusion, and there seemed to be a high-velocity spill scramble; driving himself out of confusion, Croyd came into clarity standing erect in a quiet place of great complicated building clusters on many altitude levels but as though on the marge of a colossal roofed shadow, facing

  a gray-eyed ash-blond goddess divinely taller than he, standing serene gazing down upon him as he in his black-white-checkered uniform gazed worshipfully up into her infinite eyes. Less a voice than a mind whisper came the voice from her motionless lips: I love you. Follow. Follow . . . The sense of her voice would lead him uphill, following her, to a trysting place nestling high on the hind hill of silvery hovels; she was all his desire, all his soul, Pan’s mother, all his meaning

  but to his right was the infinite darkling hollow, a vast museum hall new-built but unoccupied and bare of exhibits; and he swiveled, torn between the compulsions of the museum and of the goddess. Her comprehending mind plea was urgent; Croyd, there is no time, Hanoku will be coming . . . He raised high his head; All the experience we can . . .

  And he began to run; into the museum vault, faster and faster, fleet feet skimming floor marble, farther and deeper into the endless emptiness, hasting to know all of it and then return to her. Deep into the depths he ran, velocity beyond thought, all the way to the mile-wide rearward wall; swung right, sped along the wall to the end of it; swung right, rocketed forward to the open side; swiveled right just inside and skimmed
back toward her who waited at the

  stopped short: soldiery! Swiftly pressing on to his head his floppy, checkered officer’s cap, slow-rhythmically he death-marched forward to beard the soldiery led by a tall ruddy-bearded young knight in flashing golden panoply. He resolved to squeeze out of the situation all the experience he could . . .

  But in fact the knight was back-flanked by only two spear carriers, and the eyes above the beard of the knight seemed puzzled and the knight observed, “By now, Croyd, you should be mad, but clearly you are not. I warned him that this would not work with you. I have kept noticing that whenever you have been on the verge of losing reason, the same single thought has braced you: Let me squeeze out of the situation all the experience I can.”

  Grimacing, Croyd spread hands, noticing that his checkered uniform had dissolved, that he was clad just in the old trousers and bare above the waist and below the ankles; and the goddess was gone. “One has dreamed,” he explained; “and all dreaming is conscious; and in a dream, even if one is action-decision-impotent, there are attitudinal decisions that have to be made.”

  The knight ejaculated, “But didn’t I succeed in cutting off all your special powers?”

  “You are the one who was in here?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then how big are you, really?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Here you are somewhat taller than I, you make me think of a young Charlemagne, or a Roland; and in case you do not grasp the Erth references, they are complimentary. But in my brain, you must have been molecule-small. How big are you, really?”

  “As I choose. You did not answer me.”

  “The answer is, you succeeded just fine. But a man without special powers can do a great deal with his own normal mind brain. Is it you, sir, who has been creating these masterful illusions—including the curiously Freudian illusion that my twin brother Pan was my preadolescent son?”

  The knight coughed. “It was not I. It was my lord.”

  “Then I can forget tact and be candid. Every illusion from the instant we landed has been tainted by elements of nonbelievable circumstantiality. This fact says to me—if you will pardon my bluntness—that a powerful but essentially stupid intelligence is trying to blow the minds of Tannen and me. Am I warm?”