Manshape (2 page)

And of those there were a horde.

If you were an Earthside representative for a whole buzzing lively world, you rated a human secretary, as Angoss rated Maida.

If you were the Director, you rated as many as you cared to ask for, and disappointed applicants still had to be turned away.

If you were an Earthside representative, you had a staff of agents here and at home, capable of comprehending your intention from a curt memorandum, authorised to act in your name on the strength of it.

If you were the Director, your staff was numbered in the thousands, and some were lightyears distant.

And you still had to do the work.

A dozen men and women were busy in the anteroom he had to traverse to regain his own sanctum; there was something old-fashioned about their being physically present. But the way the Bridge System was run had been dictated by master psychologists, and so far their judgment had been proven right. Thorkild himself was grateful for this practice; to lay a hand on someone’s shoulder now and then…

But right now he could not bring himself to acknowledge their greetings with anything more than a smile and nod. Not until he was safely ensconced behind his desk did he speak again, and then it was to the air, activating the circuits with a coded order, and continuing.

“Anything since I’ve been out?”

“Responsible van Heemskirk called, and will call back in a few minutes,” said a sweetly-inflected artificial voice. It always reminded him of his mother’s, but he had never dared mention the fact to anyone, since he suspected it must be policy on the part of the machines which actually ran the Bridge City, struggling to puzzle out the whims and preferences of the unpredictable humans to whom they were notionally subservient. Arguing with computers was a special talent, and one which Thorkild feared he might not possess.

“Also Alida Marquis called and wants you to call her. I have a contact series for her. And Inwards Traffic wants to know whether Preacher Rungley will require Earthside surveillance. The request is flagged
immediate.”
Alida…

Every time he thought of her, he thought of Saxena, unavoidably, and right now as ever wished he hadn’t. A portrait of him hung on the wall, as of all previous holders of this exalted post. It did not show the face of a worried man. Having been taken on the day of his appointment, it rather suggested dedication, enthusiasm, and excitement. So what the hell went wrong?

His own portrait would doubtless imply the same when it was added to the range following his retirement… or death.

So what the
hell
went wrong?

The machine said again, with a feigned anxiety, “The request is flagged
immediate!”

“Oh, yes… Let Rungley go on his way but make sure people bring him the most poisonous snakes to be found in all our zoos. Keep a watch on him and let me know as soon as he’s hospitalised, then ensure that the media make a splash about it.” And that, though it sounded like his own decision, was in fact one made by an untidy, ill-dressed man drinking beer and singing a dirty song. Never mind. It was still his. Whether he fathered it or adopted it.

He wished very much that he could be a father. And that made him think again about Alida. And, in due time, made him wish he hadn’t.

The artificial voice was still speaking. “Noted and implemented, Director. May I apply to Wild Conservation if the zoos can’t furnish sufficient snakes?”

Oh, these machines were getting too damned smart for comfort! Affecting a bored tone, he said, “Reserve status but authorised.”

“Acknowledged. Target zone?”

“Embarrassed enough to head back to Riger’s within thirty days.”

“Acknowledged. Thank you. Shall I return Alida’s call?”

Thorkild felt a stab of foolish anger. Even as he uttered his reply he knew it would prejudice his chances, perhaps beyond hope. He spoke nonetheless.

“No, let her call me back.”

“Very good, Director. And—Oh, Responsible van Heemskirk is calling again. Do you wish communication?”

“Ohhh…! Yes, all right”

Responsible van Heemskirk appeared in the office, as though he were sitting in an armchair facing Thorkild’s desk. In fact he was suspended in mid-air;
the solido equipment in the Bridge Centre was the finest in existence, but it could not always arrange to have the right piece of furniture in place at the receiving end, so there was half a metre of vacancy beneath his rump. But one was used to that “Day, Jorgen,” he said in a cordial tone. “Day, Moses.” Fat as butter and twice as greasy—if any butter were to be found of his dusky South African coloration. No, that was unfair. He was a career politician, and no worse than others of his stamp. He might even really be as affable as he pretended. Only with politicians, how to tell?

“We have these two aspirant worlds,” van Heemskirk went on. “Ipewell and Azrael. You haven’t forgotten that their delegates are due at the Bridge Centre this afternoon?”

As though he could! Much though he would have liked to…

“Moses, you know that if there’s one thing I hate—” “It’s showing around parties of giggling outworlders. I know!” The voice from the solido image was soothing. A ripple indicating a sigh moved under the politician’s yellow satin robe. “However, this is very different from the ordinary. These are delegates from worlds not yet spliced into the Bridge System, not your run-of-the-mill ambassadors and diplomats. They must know what the Bridges represent already, since that’s how they came here, but they haven’t signed contracts—” “They will! Everybody always has!” “True, I grant you”—inclining his head. “But among the crucial factors which have ensured our thus-far unbroken record of success I would cite the privilege of being shown over the Bridge Centre by its most important personage. Admittedly these delegates
are important on their own worlds, but the further out we explore the more backward the societies prove to be—inevitably. And the parties in question strike me as being somewhat overwhelmed by Earth. Your usual warm welcome, your no-non-sense, equal-terms approach, could go a long way towards setting their minds at rest.”

“Are you implying that they’re suspicious of our motives?”

“You could say that twice and I wouldn’t accuse you of exaggeration,” van Heemskirk replied in a judicious tone. His manner was disarming; against his will, Thorkild found a smile on his face.

“Very well. I’ll do my best You’ll be here at fifteen hundred, isn’t that right?”

“As punctually as possible. And don’t let the problem get you down. It could be years before we find another outworld. Let alone two within a month of one another!”

True enough. But as van Heemskirk made to cut the circuit, Thorkild checked him, reaching out as though he could take a grip on the intangible image.

“Moses, just a moment!”

“Yes?”

“How many times have you travelled by Bridge?”

“Goodness, I’ve no idea. But no more often than I could help, except on duty or for occasional vacations. Why?”

“I just wondered.”

The politician raised one eyebrow. “I suppose you use the Bridges every day?”

“No.” Thorkild couldn’t help sounding puzzled. “Like you, when I absolutely have to. And sometimes I wonder why. Until fifteen!”

He watched the image dissolve, then went on staring at the place where it had been.

Half a million people a day, he thought And I
would rather walk. Who am I? What am I? What are
we?

Saxena’s portrait drew his gaze again, and as he looked at it he found he was thinking about Alida.

When the local sun shone on this, the greatest city of the planet Azrael, its harsh radiance seemed incongruous. This morning’s early mists, the occasional lift of wind and sift of drizzling rain, were more appropriate.

Jacob Chen drew close the native cloak which concealed his Earthside clothing, tightened the hood about his head to hide his foreign features, and walked circumspect along a narrow alley. The buildings were mostly of dark stone, glinting where the sheen of wet upon their walls caught and somehow reluctantly gave back the glimmer of the occasional street-lights.

There were lights in a few windows, too. Not many. It still lacked half an hour of dawn.

One should not have to think of people as being formed by their climate, not in this age when climate could be controlled. It had been done on more than thirty planets. Here, had the inhabitants neglected to do so because they could not afford to, or because they were ignorant of the means? Hardly. Long before their ancestors departed Earth, the techniques were commonplace and tolerably cheap. No, the decision must have been made as a matter of principle.

But what principle? He did not know; he was baffled by a wall of incomprehension between himself and them. And he was monstrously ashamed. He felt he had failed in his duty by not understanding. Worse still, he had failed by the standards he had set himself, and doubt of his own capability was the fearfullest horror he could imagine.

In the beginning he had fancied that he would find the key in his own ancestors’ traditional fatalism; he had rashly assumed that he if anyone could analyse this culture. A local year had ebbed away, and it was autumn again in this hemisphere, as it had been when he arrived aboard the scoutship
Hunting Dog
. Since they preferred to keep the natural seasons, why did these people have no ceremonies to mark the cycle of them? Why was there no public celebration of the spring, or harvest-tide? Why was there no defiance of mid-winter, with lighting of symbolic fires? Such actions were known to stabilise the human psyche, to locate the individual amid the random fluctuation of an adopted world…

Yet they did have rituals and ceremonies, and were perfectly prepared to let them be witnessed, and to explain with infinite patience their supposed significance. Only to Jacob Chen, and all those who had come with him from the mother world, they made no sense!

Of late this fact had been costing Chen his sleep, climaxing in this night which he had spent walking at random through the city, seeking with all his senses for some hidden clue.

And found nothing.

He sniffed the air. Bitter smoke. Someone lighting a stove. Grey against grey was spiralling up from the chimney of a house across the way. A window opened. Fearful of being observed, he hurried onward, and emerged from the alley into a junction of
streets he had not passed before, forming a circus with a blank obelisk in the centre. Seeing it automatically crowded his mind with anthropological data: fertility symbols, upstanding to the sky.

No, it wasn’t one. It was merely itself, merely an object. It had not been shaped or polished or submitted to a mason’s skills. It had been found exactly in its present form, and erected for no better reason than that it had happened.

Beyond it, one whole side of the circus was occupied by a large drab building, featureless but for a flight of steps and an entrance. He approached it, listening for what he knew would be audible. Sure enough, he detected chanting. Sometimes there was a hiss-and-slap and a groan or cry. Why should the location of a building so important to this culture be signalled by a creation of pure chance? Was he never going to understand these people?

He ascended the five shallow stone steps towards the door. It was huge, six metres high at least, and because it was so difficult to open without power hinges, which he could see it did not have, another smaller door was set in it. This latter stood ajar. After brief hesitation, he stepped inside.

One dim lantern swung in the wind beyond the door, from a low false ceiling which—together with plain native-wood partitions—formed an anteroom with another, sliding, door on the far side. No decoration, no symbolism, no cult-objects… As starkly functional as a spaceship’s emergency airlock.

And that was correct. What went on here and in other similar places was functional. This was the dynamo that powered the entire society. But the nature of the function eluded him, so that he felt like a savage confronting a computer.

Not to understand—worse yet, to understand wrong!—was what could certainly destroy him.

Giddy with fatigue, moving more by reflex than intention, he slid aside the panel in the interior partition and went into the great hall which occupied most of the high-roofed building.

Here there was no furnishing except plain wooden benches, and again no decoration. There were half a dozen lanterns. The windows, still full of darkness, were tall slits with many small pieces of clear glass set in metal frames. The floor was of rough stone flags. About fifty or sixty people were present, some sitting on the benches with their eyes closed, rocking back and forth and chanting the dull tuneless song he had heard from outside, while a few more lay on the floor unconscious. The benches were disposed to form three sides of a square; in the area between them, at the geometric centre of the hall, four men and two women wearing only coarse kilts were scourging each other with the things that made the hiss-and-slap noise: broad-lashed whips with short thick handles.

That was all.

No one turned to look at him. The only acknowledgment those on the benches accorded the intruder was to draw closer around themselves cloaks similar to the one he was wearing, hiding the whip-marks which—he knew—all of them must bear by now. The ceremony would have begun at sunset, and would continue until daylight brightened the windows.

How could a society be built on this?

Chen looked about him, and shuddered, and returned to the cold unwelcoming street.

But the stream of his thoughts cast up a phrase like a decaying corpse oozing from its mouth the water of a putrid river, stinking of decayed hopes.

I must be wrong…

He could not bear the possibility. The concept of being wrong was one which he had systematically
eliminated from the pattern of his existence. He was a pantologist. A pantologist could not be wrong. A pantologist had insufficient data.

And here if anywhere must be sought the extra data that he needed.

He stopped in his tracks, turned, a great pounding in his chest as though his heart had suddenly grown to twice its normal size and the hardness of iron, clanging at every beat. His belly stretched tight with apprehension, like the skin of a drum.