Sideshow (52 page)

“What more should I know?” cried Danivon.
Jory seated herself and folded her hands in her lap. “The device is a living thing. When it is small, it’s simple, without thought or volition. As it grows larger, it draws on the minds and consciousness of every intelligence in the net and becomes synergistic, predictive, even creative. It can draw on the dreams and imaginations of the minds it includes. It can evolve syncretic symbols to interpret among different life forms. It can convince all its parts that they see or feel or hear or smell certain things. It can create a reality that all its parts accept.”
“It did that on Hobbs Land,” said Asner. “Hobbs Land was dull, but we settlers longed for marvels, so it drew on our imaginations to create marvels for us. Some of its creations—the ones that could be grown, like trees or beasts—were real. Other creations, geographical ones, were sort of … illusory, at least, to start with. Eventually they became real too, though it took a long time to make a canyon or a mountain range by moving a molecule at a time. Eventually, when our world was threatened, it drew on our experience and its own growth potential to create a defense.”
“It interfered with you,” snarled Curvis. “That’s all Danivon needs to know. It took you over! And it’s now taking us over! Taking him over.”
Jory waved a bony fist at him. “Though I have repeatedly said that does not happen, it is beside the point Asner was making! He’s saying the device can actually create or destroy in response to the needs of the intelligences it includes.”
Danivon cried suddenly, “What are you saying, woman?”
Jory repeated, “I’m saying the Arbai Device could eliminate the Brannigan network if allowed to get at it.”
“And the Arbai won’t let it?” Danivon asked incredulously.
“They won’t let it. They have programmed it to grow only where they wish it to grow. The limit has always been at the wall.”
“Why won’t they let it go farther?”
Jory raised her eyebrows at him, miming astonishment.
“That question yet again? You sound like Curvis, Danivon. Here you are, both Enforcers. You’ve both seen fit to lecture us on noninterference all the way up the Fohm, yet both of you get swollen about the neck when I tell you the Arbai hold the same point of view.”
Danivon closed his eyes, trying to understand. “They won’t use it beyond the wall even to save the lives of all those on Elsewhere.”
“Correct,” said Asner.
“Millions of people are going to die.”
“Likely,” said Asner again. “Or already have.”
Danivon said desperately, “I’ll ask the Arbai to change their minds. Just because our forefathers chose doesn’t mean we have! We aren’t choosing now! We don’t choose to die like this now! The Derbeckians didn’t choose for Chimi-ahm to be real!”
“The only difference between Chimi-ahm real and Chimi-ahm illusory is that the real is able to do in person what the priests and hounds used to do in his name,” said Jory.
“All right! But Derbeck’s only one province!” he cried. “Surely, under the present situation …”
Jory laughed harshly. “Situation? What situation? When man first came here, the Arbai examined his history in an attempt to understand him. They found holocaust after holocaust, armageddon after armageddon, each of them as dreadful as this
situation.
Man has always tortured in the name of his gods and committed atrocities in the name of his culture.”
She threw up her hands, her hair making a white mane about her wrathful face.
“I knew that as well as the Arbai did, but still, when I became aware there was another force at work, I asked the Arbai to reconsider. The Arbai then asked me: ‘Was there any difference between what the new forces were doing to man and what man had always done to himself?’”
“Jory …” said Asner, troubled, putting out a hand.
“Let me rave, Asner. Their question took me back in time. Back to the planet on which I was born. Back to the planet from which Great Dragon and I came. Back to the places we have seen in the centuries between. Everywhere, men have perpetuated myths of honor and death, everywhere men have worshiped gods who have destroyed them. So, the Arbai asked, ‘Why should man be saved from customs and gods he himself had created?’”
She leaned to speak into Danivon’s face. “If they ask you that same question, what answer will you give them?”
“I might say something about mercy,” he cried. “Something about pity!”
“You’re a fine one to talk, Enforcer! But, as a matter of fact, that’s what I did say. In my womanly way, I talked a good deal about mercy. And I was told mercy was an end, but the means to achieve that end was interference, and that ends do not justify means. Which, surprisingly enough, is precisely the male promulgated doctrine I was weaned on as a child!”
She came to herself, dwindled before their eyes to stand fragile and trembling before them. “Sorry,” she said, tottering. “I sometimes forget I am no longer a prophetess.”
“You will always be a prophetess,” said Asner tenderly, putting his arms around her. “Until you are no more. And by that time, there will be no need for a prophetess.”
“Certainly not here,” she said wearily. “For everyone will be dead, all talk of mercy notwithstanding.”
Curvis growled at her in a bitter voice, “Not quite all if what you say is true. The people out there, yes. But not
your
people behind the wall.”
“All,” Jory mumbled tiredly.
“All!
I’m grieving for all of them, stupid boy. For Fringe and you and Latibor and Cafferty. For my people as well as the others. The Arbai may have no concept of evil but they have a horror of pain, so they’re going.” Jory turned and laid her forehead on Asner’s shoulder, clinging to him. The air behind her moved in a convoluted way. Shadows chased one another across scales and fangs and great, smoldering eyes.
“Going?” asked Fringe wonderingly.
It was Asner who replied. “They’re retreating under the massif. They’ve got some kind of redoubt down there, built long ago in case of need. They’re pulling in the Arbai Device behind them, and in case you’re wondering, no, our people are not invited to join them.”
“We’re too discomforting for the Arbai,” murmured Jory. “All these human thoughts and desires getting into the device make it painful for them. Like rocks in their shoes, hurting every step they take. They can’t handle ambiguity. And once the device is gone, there’ll be nothing to stop the Brannigans.”
“How can your Arbai friends let you die?” Bertran asked the old woman.
“You didn’t make that choice,” cried Nela. “You came from outside! Surely they’d save you!”
“Ahh …” said Jory.
“Ahh …” Asner echoed.
Nela cried, “If they won’t even save you, then none of us can escape. They’ll still kill us, just as they were going to do! We’ve no place to go.”
“Even if there were a place, I wouldn’t leave my comrades to fight alone,” said Fringe, as though surprised at the thought. “And it is better that the Hobbs Land Gods are going. If we are to die, we should die freely, as we have lived.”
Jory looked at Fringe and shook her head in irritation.
“There now,” whispered Asner. “She won’t stay this way.”
“She would die happier this way,” said Jory.
“Do you want that kind of contentment for her?”
“Oh, Asner. Of course not.”
“When are the Arbai going?” Danivon demanded.
“They’ve already gone,” Jory replied. “They left immediately after you arrived because they did not wish to explain yet again. They’re finding explanation increasingly painful as more and more humans come behind the wall, ready to dispute with them about evil.”
“And the … the Arbai Device?”
“Is already withdrawing from the wall. Little by little. A few days, perhaps, before it too is gone.”
Danivon darted a glance from Fringe to Curvis, finding no response from either of them. Curvis seemed absent, as though he were lost in some other time and place, while Fringe had the firm exalted look of a heroic statue graven to memorialize some great triumph—or some terrible martyrdom. So far as she was concerned, it seemed to make no difference which.
There seemed to be nothing more to say. Even Danivon was silenced.
When evening came, Fringe found Jory on the terrace, petting a cat. Danivon and the twins sat upon the wall nearby, Danivon staring at the forest but Bertran and Nela watching Jory as though her action were rare and wonderful, and indeed, her hands wove a spell of contentment above the purring animal.
“Why do you do that?” asked Fringe wonderingly.
“Because one can, if one wishes, distill all the happiness of a lifetime into one soft, furry body and a stroking hand,” said Jory. “When one is very old, one can.”
“Ah,” said Fringe, unconvinced, her brow furrowed.
“You’re troubled,” said Jory, including them all.
“I wasn’t until this afternoon,” she replied thoughtfully. “Truly, Jory. I thought we would die, yes, but dying is what Enforcers often do. There was no point in being troubled. But then, this afternoon I began to worry over it….”
“Thank God for that,” said Jory.
“I was more comfortable before,” said Fringe plaintively, sitting down beside the old woman. “I suppose because I wasn’t me …”
“No.”
“… or not all of me, at any rate. So, I should probably say ‘Thank God’ also.” Her tone was plaintive, as though she was not sure she meant it. “Though, since I’m going to die, I might as well have been comfortable about it.”
“You’re getting your self back,” said Jory, laying one hand on Fringe’s head. “You’re beginning to become yourself, so you’re troubled, as Fringe would be.” She sighed, stroking Fringe’s hair. “I’m glad you are becoming the Fringe I picked out … as a daughter. As an heir. To whom … I would leave what has been mine. I’d hate to have lost you.”
Fringe looked at her wonderingly, thinking it an odd concern to have at such a time. There would be nothing left to inherit.
“Let me tell you all a story,” Jory said, settling herself back in the chair and pulling the cat close against her. “Once upon a time, there was a turtle….”
Nela made a sound, halfway between a snort of laughter and a sob.
“Perhaps you’ve heard this tale before?” Jory asked. “Never mind. You can hear it again, Nela, and you, Bertran. This story is for all of us.
“Once upon a time, there was a turtle who lived in a pond: gray reeds and gray mud and gray moonlight falling, which was what turtles see who cannot see color. Not for him the glory of the sunset or the wonder of the dawn. Not for him the flash of a hummingbird’s throat or a butterfly’s wings. For him the liquid sounds of water moving, the slosh and murmur of the stream, the wind in the trees; for him the difference between shadow and darkness. He was content, as turtles are
content, to be deliberate in his habits and slow in his pace, to eat leaves and the ends of worms and suchlike fodder, and to think long slow thoughts on a log with his fellows, where he knew the sunlight was warm though he did not know it was yellow.
“But a time came on an autumn evening, gray leaf and gray thorn and gray mist rising, when he sat overlong on the log after the sun was well down, and the swallows came to drink and hunt on the surface of the pond, dipping and dancing above the ripples, swerving and swooping with consummate grace, so that the turtle saw them as silver and black and beautiful, and all at once, with an urgency he had never known before, he longed for wings.
“‘Oh, I wish I could see them more clearly,’ he murmured to the bullfrog on the bank. ‘That I might learn to fly.’
“‘ If you would see them clearly, you must go to the secret sanctuary of the birds,’ said the bullfrog in a careless voice, as though he did not take the matter seriously.
“And when the turtle asked where that was, the bullfrog pointed westward, to the towering mountains, and told the turtle the sanctuary was there, among the crags and abysses, where the birds held their secret convocations and granted wings to certain petitioners. And this made the turtle think how wonderful it would be to go there and come back to tell the bullfrog all about it.
“And on the next night, he asked again where the birds went when they left the pond, and the owl pointed westward with its talon, telling him of towering peaks and break-back chasms in a calm and dismissive voice. And again he thought of making the journey and returning, and of the wonder the bullfrog would feel, and the owl, to hear of it when he came back.
“On the third night, he asked yet again, and this time it was the bat who answered, squeaking as it darted hither and yon, telling of immeasurable heights and bottomless canyons. ‘No one dares go there,’ the bat squeaked, and the turtle told himself that he dared even if no one else could.
“So, for three nights the turtle had watched, each night his longing growing. And at midnight on the third night, when the bat had spoken and the swallows had departed, the turtle went after them without telling anyone good-bye, slowly dragging himself toward the great mountains to the west.
“He went by long ways and rough ways and hard ways
always, first across the desert, where he would have died of thirst had not a desert tortoise showed him how to get moisture from the fruits of a cactus. And then across the stone, where he would have died of hunger had a wandering rabbit not given him green leaves to eat, and then into the mountains themselves where he would have given up and died many times except for his vision of himself going back to the pond to tell the creatures there of this marvelous and quite surpassing quest.
“‘They didn’t know,’ the turtle told himself. ‘They had no idea what it would be like. They made it sound easy, but when I go back to tell them what it was really like …’ And he dreamed the cold nights away visualizing himself telling his story to his kindred turtles on the sunlit log, and to the bullfrog among the reeds, and to the owl and the bat, all of whom would be admiring and astonished at his bravery and his perseverance.
“And so, sustained by this ambition, he went higher and higher yet, gray stone and gray cliff and gray rain falling, year after year, until he came at last to the place the swallows danced in the air above the bottomless void.
“When they saw him, they stopped dancing to perch beside him on the stone, and when he saw them there, silver and black, beautiful as a night lit with stars, he was possessed once again by a great longing, and he told them of his desire for wings.
“‘ Perhaps you may have wings, but you must give up your shell,’ they cried. And even as they told him he might have wings, he seemed to hear in their voices some of the carelessness he had heard in the voice of the owl and the bat and the bullfrog, who had told him where to go without telling him the dangers of the way. He heard them rightly, for the winged gods have a divine indifference toward those who seek flight. They will not entice and they will not promise and they will not make the way easy, for those who wish to soar must do so out of their heart’s desire and their mind’s consent and not for any other reason.