Sideshow (36 page)

“In what way?” Orimar’s left nostril lifts only a little; Orimar who never pays attention to the sense of any argument, but only to his own place in it, his own allegiances. His place in this one is beside Thob, beside Bland.
“Error,” Jordel hears himself cry, doing his best to make a tocsin of it. “Error will creep in. If the matter of update and correction is left to the discretion of individual minds, we will be wide open to error.”
And from across the room sounds a rasping snort as the cadaverous form of Subble Clore rises from a half-hidden chair, wearing an unpleasantly predatory smile that makes Jordel shudder. Clore has made a life-long study of organisms exposed to negative stimulation, of survival or mortality under stress, of the evolutionary response to agony. Clore is a
scholar of pain. His place at the Galaxity has been challenged from time to time, but it is whispered he has a hold upon the almighty Chancellors. There are tales of unspeakable agreements made in the pursuit of power, but despite all the tittle-tattle he is here, one of the elect of Brannigan.
“You are saying we are untrustworthy.” He lifts his hands, palms up, to the ladies, to Orimar, the gesture a sneer.
Jordel clears his throat. “I’m saying we are all human.”
“But some much less fallible than others,” remarks Mintier Thob. “Which surely includes the faculty of Brannigan Galaxity. You are one of us, Jordel. Have you no pride! Do you so mistrust yourself?”
Jordel considers pride. Orimar is a narcissist. He will use the Core to go on worshiping himself. Thob is enormous in complacency. She will go into the Core because she cannot conceive of a universe without herself in it. Bland believes herself incapable of error. For her, the Core represents a new universe to set right. Clore … Clore’s restless mind plays with life and death. He will enter the Core because it will offer new forms of life, new kinds of death. These are not the reasons they would give, but Jordel knows them well. Still, he answers softly, hoping yet. “Of course I mistrust myself, Lady Professor. I’ve told you that before.”
“Enough, Jordel!” explodes Subble Clore. “If you’re weighed down by self-doubt, keep it to yourself. Leave it alone, for humanity’s sake!”
“It’s for humanity’s sake I don’t,” Jordel replies forcefully. “Time in the matrix is not like time outside, it is more like dream time. Episodes that seem to go on for days may actually last only moments. If you are awake in the Core you may achieve many years’ worth of memories while a single year passes outside.
“These memories will not be anchored by sensory feedback as they would be in the real world. In the outside world, sensory feedback provides the necessary referents to anchor our emotional and intellectual experiences. Our experiences are separated and made discrete by sensory trivia—by movements, smells, the sound of voices, the sight of a face. In the Core, there will be no sensory data at all, and where there is none, minds tend to create it, just as they do during dreaming.
“So, you will create environments and experiences. And by the time a year has passed, your pattern will have deviated considerably from its original. Returning your pattern to its
original configuration would be equivalent to wiping out years, perhaps decades of your life! They will be the most recent, vivid years. To wipe them out will be like dying. You won’t … we won’t be able to bring ourselves to do it!”
Bland smiles, a world-weary smile. “Nonsense, dear boy. I’m an adult, a scholar. I know the need for correction of data from time to time. I can trust myself to take care of it.”
“I don’t trust myself that much. Truly,” Jordel replies.
“Among our peers, I think you’ll find yourself virtually alone in that,” Mintier Thob responds reprovingly. She strides to the window and gestures outward, across the tower tops to the far horizon, including in the gesture all that is Brannigan. “The academic world is ideal for the development of humane qualities, Jordel. I think we here in this room have proven that. We’re more sane than most people. We’re more patient. We’re kinder.”
She smiles her detestable smile, and Jordel, remembering recent bloodletting sessions among these same academicians, tries not to let his reaction show.
“After all,” the Lady Professor goes on, “think what trust Brannigan has reposed in our committee: the very destiny of mankind. And we are not about to leave any part of that destiny to an automatic function designed by some mechanic!” She spits the last words, looking directly at him, leaving no doubt just which mechanic she has in mind.
Jordel is silent. So. He has tried. He has done his best. Now let them do as they will do. He will do what he must to protect himself….
And the recording trailed off in feelings of anger, disgust, and firm resolve.
“Twaddle,” said Sepel794DZ, angrily returning to himself. “All twaddle. Those people weren’t responsible for the destiny of mankind. They were merely discussing mankind’s destiny, not creating it!”
“That’s manness for you, confusing the manipulation of symbols with reality!” snarled a colleague dink. “And if Jordel was right, it tells us what happened to the inhabitants of the Core.”
“But what happened to Jordel himself?” asked another colleague.
Sepel replied: “You felt his intentions as I did. Either he never entered the Core, or he arranged to have himself processed in accordance with specifications. If he found someone
—a technician, a fellow engineer—whom he could trust, that person may have begun the little rhyme we learned from Boarmus.”
“‘… then Jordel of Hemerlane/chased them all back home again,’” quoted a dink thoughtfully. “If that’s true, then Jordel went into the Core all right. If that’s what he meant to do, he’s still in there somewhere.”
During the return to Tolerance Boarmus steeled himself for the stratagem he had decided upon. He and Jacent discussed it on the trip back, whispering into each other’s ears, the boy white-faced but resolute—or perhaps only foolhardy. Boarmus thought that likely. Still, Jacent had been fond of Metty, and Boarmus spared no description of what had happened to Metty and would, no doubt, happen to all of them if the thing or things down in the Core weren’t stopped.
“I guess I don’t understand how this will stop anything,” the boy had whispered, shamefaced.
“We don’t know that anything will. This idea may slow it down, that’s all. Give us some breathing space. If you can think of something better….”
Jacent couldn’t, of course. He wouldn’t even have thought of this.
“Remember”—Boarmus put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed hard to reinforce the point—”you’re merely an average citizen. Someone who’s concerned about the matter.”
“And if it kills us?”
“Then we’re dead,” said Boarmus flatly. “And maybe better off!”
They did not wait for the ghosts to come to them. As soon as it was late enough for traffic in Tolerance to have fallen into its nighttime mode, Jacent followed the bulky man to the secret tube, down into the featureless room, through it and into the winding way to the Core. It was vacant. No one was there.
“Something will show up,” said Boarmus, pressing a lever down. In the ramified structure beneath him, a signal was emitted: Report time. The Provost is present.
“Where will it come from?” whispered Jacent.
“Elsewhere,” muttered Boarmus. “Anywhere, boy. Halfway around the world. Hold your water. Look subdued.”
It wasn’t difficult. He was subdued. He started violently when the voice came from the wall.
“Boarmus,” it said softly. Not the gulper voice. One of the female-sounding ones.
“I have been considering what you said to me last,” said Boarmus, putting his hand on Jacent’s shoulder.
“There is an unauthorized person with you.”
“True. He is here as an example.”
“An example of what?”
“An example of the awe in which the people of Tolerance hold you,” said Boarmus. Under his fingers, Jacent shivered.
Very good
, Boarmus thought.
Let the boy be scared half to death, so long as he doesn’t forget his lines.
“An ordinary person of Tolerance. Not a Provost. Not a member of the Inner Circle.”
“Does he hold me in awe?”
Boarmus shook him. “Do you hold, ah … her … in awe, boy.”
“Oh, yes.” Jacent shivered. “Yes, I do.”
“In reverence?”
Jacent nodded, and had to be prodded into speaking aloud. “Oh, yes.”
“What does he think I am?” The voice managed to sound curious.
“Now,” signaled Boarmus’s fingers, almost gladly. He’d worried about working the conversation around to this point; now he wouldn’t have to.
“Well,” said Jacent from a dry mouth. “Some people think you’re god. But others don’t.”
(Good boy.)
“Why don’t they?” Still curious, not yet angry.
“Well, because,” Jacent said. “God is omniscient. God knows the answers to all questions. If you are god, you’d know the answer to the Great Question. I mean, people say if you’re really god, you’ll answer that question. Then
everybody
will know you’re god. Everybody will know.”
“How do you know I haven’t answered the question?” Another voice, this one edged with anger, displeasure. Boarmus held on to the boy’s shoulder, keeping him steady. Even this voice was not the really bad one, not the gulper. The gulper must be busy elsewhere.
“You’d have told us,” said Jacent in a firm voice. “In order that we might work toward our destiny properly. You see,
that’s how we know all gods before now were false, they never told us what our destiny really was. So, if you do tell us, you’ll be the only true one. And the answer will be so self-evident, we’d all agree with it. Because when a true god truly answers a question, that’s what happens. Everyone knows that.”
“But I am god,” muttered a voice. “We are god.”
“Of course,” quavered Jacent. “I already believe that. But
everyone
will believe it when you answer the Great Question.”
“I don’t need you to believe. I can make you do what I say even if you don’t believe.” A sulky-sounding voice, this. “God doesn’t need to prove anything, not if god can make people do what god wants.”
Boarmus patted Jacent silent. They had struggled with this argument, whispering, on the way home. Now was time to see if the Brannigan minds would understand it.
Boarmus said, “That’s true. But if people only do what you say, then you’ll only get what you’re already capable of. Gods create beings as tools to explore beyond what they already are and know. To create randomness, chaos, chance. To create discovery. You created man to discover new things for you, and man will discover them, if he knows you’re god, if he wants to please you. That is what you created mankind for, wasn’t it? After all, you’re god, you’re very busy. You created man as a kind of tool, to find things out for you.”
Silence. That silence that Boarmus had always believed meant the minds were talking together. Disagreeing. That was the key. If there was still enough individuality in there for disagreement. Which he wasn’t at all sure of!
He tugged. Time to get out of there. They fled, not quite precipitously.
“What’re they doing now?” murmured Jacent, feeling the cold sweat dripping from his jaw. “What?”
“I hope it’s arguing with itself,” whispered Boarmus, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “Pray that’s what it’s doing, boy. Arguing.”
Behind them, in the depths of the Core, there was argument indeed, though it did not go in any way Boarmus could have foreseen.
One presence. “At Brannigan we …”
And another. “… mankind’s problem only …”
And another yet. “… should prove we are what we say we are, after all….”
And another arriving, full of rage, the one Boarmus
thought of as the gulper, that one stripped out of Chimi-ahm and deprived of his fun, the gulper thwarted by Great Dragon, that one humiliated before his worshipers!
“We need prove nothing! Nothing!”
Silence in the Core, in the net, everywhere as intention wavered before this thunderous presence.
“But we always said man would answer the question.” One broke the quiet in a mechanical whine. “Not others, only man. But we aren’t man. Not anymore.”
“Then make man answer,” hissed that which had been Chimi-ahm.
“But they don’t have the answer.”
“Lazy,” it again with a horrible gulp. “No concentration. Thinking of other things than their duty to us! We will take some of them and put them somewhere and then we will make them answer!”
“Who?” whispered one. “Who will we take?”
“Those ones,” it gulped with vengeful satisfaction. “Who asked questions about us. Those ones on Panubi!”

FOUR

10

In Du-you, Curvis seized up Jory and Asner, one under each arm, and led the members of the sideshow, abandoning all their paraphernalia, in headlong flight down to the riverside. Behind them dragons rampaged through the city, appearing and disappearing while Houm and Murrey fled wildly before them. When the first dragons reached the riverfront, the chimi-hounds guarding the booms ran howling, a dereliction immediately taken advantage of by the captain of the
Dove.
Four stocky deckmen skimmed a small boat off to the nearest boom tower, the booms were raised, and the
Dove
was poled down the channel to the river. Once there, the strongest oarsmen thrust at the sweeps to move the
Dove
quickly into open water as the little boat came scuttling to catch up. The sails were raised and the
Dove
dug its bow into the River Fohm once more.
On the deck, in the midst of all this frantic activity, Fringe crouched over the recumbent and unconscious body of Alouez, a weapon in each hand, daring either Danivon or Curvis to come near her. She would not let them touch the girl, and she would not give them a reason for her action. How could she give them a reason? How say she recognized that lost expression, knew that same feeling of agonized helplessness. How say she was moved by it as by an instinctive frenzy of self-preservation. She could no more abandon the child than she could have abandoned herself, but she could not say why. She did not understand why.
“You can’t fight us both off,” Curvis threatened. “Give her
to me. I’ll take the little boat and get her back to shore while there’s still time.”
“You and what other six Enforcers,” snarled Fringe.
“Leave Fringe alone,” Jory told the two men. “Leave her!”
Danivon cursed at length.
“Leave her alone,” said Jory again. “She is only doing for this child what someone did for you.”
“Don’t talk silly, old woman. Do you expect me to believe …” he snarled.
“Yes,” she said, beckoning toward the shadows of the deckhouse where the two castaways stood. “I expect you to believe this is Latibor Luze, who fathered you; this is Cafferty Luze, who bore you. They were in Molock when you were born, and still there when you were chosen for the temple. They saved your life, then Zasper Ertigon saved you again, risking everything for you.” She shook her head at him warningly, then turned to Fringe. “Do I have that name right?”
“Yes, Zasper Ertigon,” Fringe confirmed in an exhausted voice. “And I have broken my promise to him, never to tell.” Her eyes filled with guilty tears, but they did not blink as she glared at the two men.
Danivon stared unbelievingly at the two castaways and threw up his hands. “This is all crazy! I don’t have time for this! We were sent after dragons, and we’ve found the dragons! That’s what we should be concentrating on!”
“These aren’t the dragons you were looking for,” said Jory in a firm voice. “Believe me.”
“Why should I believe you?” he yelled.
Latibor took something from around his neck and handed it to him. “Will this convince you?” he murmured, staring into the younger man’s face.
He took the thing reluctantly, bending down to peer at it. Curvis struck a light.
“My medallion,” said Danivon, grabbing for his neck. He found his own hanging where it always hung.
“Not yours,” said Cafferty softly. “Latibor’s. Jory has given these medallions to all the people she’s chosen. She calls them a conceit, but they serve to identify us to one another.”
“What is this design?” demanded Danivon.
“It is a depiction of Great Dragon ridden by the prophetess,”
said Jory in a peevish voice. “Cafferty’s right. It’s a conceit. I was a prophetess once.”
Cafferty said, “I’ve always regarded it as a promise that if we are in dire distress Great Dragon will come to our aid as he did tonight. I put my medallion around your neck before we put you in the ship that carried you to safety from Molock.”
“Great Dragon, Great Dragon,” Nela cried, “what is it? Where did it come from? Where did they all come from?”
“Great Dragon is a friend of mine,” Jory soothed. “The lesser dragons you saw are his great-great-grandchildren. They have the power to be seen or not, as they choose, and until tonight they did not choose. They are no danger to you, to any of you, and they are
not
the dragons you’re looking for. The dragons you’re looking for were seen over the wall from Thrasis, and they are something else entirely.”
“Has he been here, on this ship?” demanded the captain. “This big one?”
“Sometimes on this ship,” she replied.
“We’ve been riding low,” he said sulkily. “I wondered why. A monstrous heavy beast, this beast of yours. And where is it now?”
“He is heavy, yes. He goes on growing all his life, and my friend has had a long life. However, it is no
beast
, certainly no beast of mine. You can tell where he is now from the consternation along the Ti’il. I would say he and his descendants are leading the people a merry chase, to their discomfiture though likely to no lasting harm. Though he is prideful, he is also a most tolerant and peaceable creature.”
“Why?” cried Danivon, his Enforcer’s pride outraged. “Why did he show up now? We weren’t in danger just then!”
Asner snorted, shaking his head at Danivon, and Danivon flushed, conscious of having sounded ridiculous. He was accustomed to thinking of danger only as it applied to himself or other Enforcers, but of course there had been danger: danger to the girl child, danger and death to the people of Derbeck, danger to Jory and Asner and the twins. The danger to themselves he had believed he could handle, or escape, for he had not smelled his own death as a creeping cold thing with a stench he knew well. He fell silent, staring at the toes of his boots in order not to look at any of them.
Jory broke the silence by waving a bony finger at them all. “Listen, and I will tell you what Latibor and Cafferty found
out in Derbeck: Houdum-Bah, fed much rancid broth of resentment by the priests of Chimi-ahm, brewed plans for rebellion against Council Supervisory, deciding that his first act against them should be one of unmistakable contempt and defiance. Such gestures occur from time to time on Elsewhere, as you must know. Why else have Enforcers, save to keep such as Houdum-Bah in check?”
Danivon turned toward her, suddenly attentive.
“Houdum-Bah aspires to conquer Beanfields, and then Shallow,” offered Latibor. “The priests told him this is possible, that Council Supervisory is weak and vacillating and will do nothing.”
Jory nodded agreement. “Houdum-Bah knew you three were Council Enforcers. It was no fleeting or drunken foolishness that moved him to summon the show to his banquet. He had planned it for some time. He was told you were coming by someone who knew, perhaps by someone who knew you were coming here even before you left Tolerance. When you arrived in Derbeck, you were to be ‘invited’ to a dabbo-dam where you would be given to Chimi-ahm. Chimi-ahm was to eat you, us, his voracity being the signal for war.”
Said Cafferty: “The death of Old Man Daddy and the election of a successor are merely coincidental. Even while Old Man Daddy was alive, it was Houdum-Bah who held the power. If Great Dragon had not interrupted Houdum-Bah’s gesture of contempt, Chimi-ahm would have eaten you tonight, and his hounds would have been across the western border into Beanfields by morning.”
“He meant to kill all of us?” Nela breathed.
Jory snorted.
“Something
meant to kill at least some of us. Something wanted us dead. Possibly only you three Enforcers, but then again, perhaps whatever moves Chimi-ahm would have tried to make a meal of all seven of us. Seven is a good number, as the chimi-hound said who came to fetch us. We did not ask him a good number for what.” She wiped her mouth angrily.
“And you knew all this when you let us go in there?” demanded Fringe.
Jory shook her head in frustration. “I knew they planned an attack, yes, but who would fear an attack when there were three Enforcers along, all trained to a fine edge and with arms enough to destroy the province? Then, too, there was Great Dragon with us. I considered us safe enough.”
“I had a warning,” said Danivon in perplexity. “I had a secret warning from Boarmus. But he said ghosts.”
“Ghosts?” asked Jory, tilting her head to one side as she considered. “Ghosts of whom?”
He shook his head, “He didn’t say.” He turned to Cafferty and Latibor. “How did you find out what they were going to do? How did you know?”
“You yourself knew,” Cafferty said to him. “Come now, think. Even without a warning, you must have known. You must have smelled it. You
must
have been smelling danger.”
He shook his head at her, unwilling to admit she was right. “My nose doesn’t give me all the details you claim to know,” he said angrily.
These two did not fit his own ideas of who his parents had been. He had thought Princes, perhaps, from some enlightened province. Or respected scientists from some category-eight or-nine place. Not these weary people, draggled by years and sorrow, staring at him with tired yet voracious eyes.
“Your nose coupled to some very professional spying would have given you all sorts of detail,” snorted Jory. “Cafferty and Latibor have spent most of their lives going about among the provinces of Panubi, seeing one thing and another, charting the changes that have been going on in Elsewhere! They’ve planted their little ears to hear the councils of high priests. They’ve listened to the words of chief chimi-hounds in their secret meetings. They’ve known what was planned. And when they came aboard, they told Asner and me.”
“But why were they spying in Derbeck in the first place?” Danivon cried in a voice as much outraged as curious. “What business was it of theirs! Of yours! None of you are Enforcers!”
“Our business here is as valid as your business here, Danivon Luze,” snapped Jory. “You are not the only cock strutting this particular dunghill. Why argue matters of jurisdiction? Here are two folk who haven’t seen you since you were a toddling child! They might like to talk to you and see if you are worth the trouble they took!”
Almost unwillingly, Danivon followed Cafferty and Latibor to the opposite rail, apart from the others, in no more hurry to believe he was their son than they seemingly were to convince him of that fact. The two of them regarded him warily, nostrils flared, backs stiff, like two dogs who have found their only child has turned out to be a cat.
Jory leaned toward Fringe and stroked her cheek. “Put the weapon away, Enforcer. Danivon won’t bother you.”
“What about him?” demanded Fringe, glaring at Curvis.
“Nor him. Neither of them. Not now. Curvis may report you both later, but he hasn’t yet decided to do that.” She looked up at the giant, her eyes squinted half shut, as though trying to see into his heart.
He flushed and turned away angrily. His duty as an Enforcer had been compromised, and he was considerably annoyed. “No,” he said. “Not … I don’t know. Should I? Should I report them? Danivon’s … well, it wasn’t his fault he got saved. And Fringe can’t be blamed much, being only a woman.”
“Only!” shrieked Fringe, taking up her weapon once more.
“Shush, shush,” said Asner. “Danivon’s an illegal escapee from Molock who, so we’re told, has asked forbidden questions, and Fringe, woman or not, has interfered in the affairs of a province. Both of them have sinned against diversity and are already dead, in accordance with the laws of Council Supervisory. Isn’t that so? Of course, Curvis, you are suspect too, for having been in their company.”
Curvis bit his lip and turned away. Fringe put the weapon back on her belt and sank onto the deck beside the unconscious girl.
“What was Chimi-ahm?” asked Bertran, taking Jory by the arm. He thought from the looks of her she needed to lie down and be given hot cups of something restorative. What he could see of her face in the dim light from the wheelhouse was haggard and skull-like, her cheeks shadowed and her eyes strained. Bertran and Nela led her to a low chest and sat her upon it, remarking conversationally, “I saw him, or it. I thought he was real.”
“I thought so too,” Jory agreed, settling herself with a sigh of weariness. “Which surprised me considerably. I had expected an attack, but not from that quarter! I had not expected their devil god to be real!”
“What did you expect?” asked Nela, settling with Bertran beside her.
“Customarily the Derbeckians summon their gods through fasting and chanting, through exhaustion and suggestion and clouds of hallucinogenic smoke blown from their altars. At least, so they have done until now, and the priests profited
mightily from it. When did those priests find something to flesh out their dabbo-dam?”
“It’s probably the same thing that infected them with ideas of conquest,” said Asner thoughtfully.
“No doubt. No doubt at all. Something inimical and evil,” agreed Jory. “And whatever it is, it isn’t only in Derbeck but extends all across Elsewhere. Latibor and Cafferty have searched for it. Asner and I have gone back and forth, trying to find evidence of it. Great Dragon is concerned about it. Until tonight we’d seen only the tracks of the beast—pain, torture, violence, the worst that man is capable of, multiplied—but we had not seen the beast itself! And even tonight it wore a mask!”
“The possesseds,” said Fringe. “Before we started on this journey, Danivon said we might encounter possesseds!”
The two old people gazed at her with undisguised amazement. “Possesseds?” asked Jory. “What do you mean, possesseds?”
“Something possessed by the Hobbs Land Gods,” Curvis said firmly. “Something no longer human.”
Jory and Asner exchanged glances. Asner started to speak and Jory shushed him. “How very interesting,” she said.
Fringe said, “It would be a tragedy if they were here, for only here have we retained …” She caught her breath and looked at the girl lying beside her on the deck.
“Diversity.” Curvis finished her statement in an angry tone. “Which Fringe does not so much value now as she did this afternoon.”
“This girl is a different matter,” Fringe muttered. “You don’t know….” She fell silent, confused.
Bertran looked at the sky and drawled, “Fringe was about to say this situation is different from all other situations. While we were growing up, Nela and I learned that our own situations are always different from all other situations, and regardless of the laws or customs, only we ourselves can be trusted to make proper decisions about them.”
“Other people, however, must follow the rules,” added Nela, her lips twisting into a wry smile. “For other people are, without exception, less moral, less well informed, and less ethically motivated than we.”