Supermen: Tales of the Posthuman Future (18 page)

"Not here. Try those fruits."

Luminous spheres dangle from a tree of golden limbs. Noort plucks one, tries it unhesitatingly, claps his hands, takes three more. Then he pulls a whole cluster free, and offers one to Bhengarn, who refuses.

"Not hungry?" the Dutchman asks.

"I take my food in other ways."

"Yes, you breathe it in from flowers as you crawl along, eh? Tell me, Traveler: to what end is your journey? To discover new lands? To fulfill some pledge? To confound your enemies? I doubt it is any of these."

"I travel out of simple necessity, because it is what my kind does, and for no special purpose."

"A humble wanderer, then, like the mendicant monks who serve the Lord by taking to the highways?"

"Something like that."

"Do you ever cease your wanderings?"

"Never yet. But cessation is coming. At Crystal Pond I will become my utter opposite, and enter the Awaiter tribe, and be made immobile and contemplative. I will root myself like a vegetable, after my metamorphosis."

Noort offers no comment on that. After a time he says, "I knew a man of your kind once. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten of Haarlem, who roamed the world because the world was there to roam, and spent his years in the India of the Portugals and wrote it all down in a great vast book, and when he had done that went off to Novaya Zemlya with Barents to find the chilly way to the Indies, and I think would have sailed to the Moon if he could find the pilot to guide him. I spoke with him once. My own travels took me farther than Linschoten, do you know? I saw Borneo and Java and the world's hinder side, and the thick Sargasso Sea. But I went with a purpose other than my own amusement or the gathering of strange lore, which was to buy pepper and cloves, and gather Spanish gold, and win my fame and comfort. Was that so wrong, Traveler? Was I so unworthy?" Noort chuckles. "Perhaps I was,
for I brought home neither spices nor gold nor most of my men, but only the fame of having sailed around the world. I think I understand you, Traveler. The spices go into a cask of meat and are eaten and gone; the gold is only yellow metal; but so long as there are Dutchmen, no one will forget that Olivier van Noort, the tavernkeeper of Rotterdam, strung a line around the middle of the world. So long as there are Dutchmen." He laughs. "It is folly to travel for profit. I will travel for wisdom from now on. What do you say, Traveler? Do you applaud me?"

"I think you are already on the proper path," says Bhengarn. "But look, look there: the Wall of Ice."

Noort gasps. They have come around a low headland and are confronted abruptly by a barrier of pure white light, as radiant as a mirror at noon, that spans the horizon from east to west and rises skyward like an enormous palisade filling half the heavens. Bhengarn studies it with respect and admiration. He has known for hundreds of years that he must ascend this wall if he is to reach Crystal Pond, and that the wall is formidable; but he has seen no need before now to contemplate the actualities of the problem, and now he sees that they are significant.

"Are we to ascend that?" Noort asks.

"I must. But here, I think, we shall have to part company."

"The throne of Lucifer must lie beyond that icy rampart."

"I know nothing of that," says Bhengarn, "but certainly Crystal Pond is on the farther side, and there is no other way to reach it but to climb the wall. We will camp tonight at its base, and in the morning I will begin my climb."

"Is such a climb possible?"

"It will have to be," Bhengarn replies.

"Ah. You will turn yourself to a puff of light like those others we met, and shoot over the top like some meteor. Eh?"

"I must climb," says Bhengarn, "using one limb after another, and taking care not to lose my grip. There is no magical way of making this ascent." He sweeps aside fallen branches of a glowing blue-limbed shrub to make a campsite for them. To Noort he says, "Before I begin the ascent tomorrow, I will instruct you in the perils of the world, for your protection on your future wanderings. I hold myself responsible for your presence here, and I would not have you harmed once you have left my side."

Noort says, "I am not yet planning to leave your side. I mean to climb that wall alongside you, Traveler."

"It will not be possible for you."

"I will make it possible. That wall excites my spirit. I will conquer it as I conquered the storms of the Strait and the fevers of the Sargasso. I feel I should go with you to Crystal Pond, and pay my farewells to you there, for it will bring me luck to mark the beginning of my solitary journey by witnessing the end of yours. What do you say?"

"I say wait until the morning," Bhengarn answers, "and see the wall at close range, before you commit yourself to such mighty resolutions."

During the night a silent lightstorm plays overhead; twisting turbulent
spears of blue and green and violet radiance clash in the throbbing sky, and an undulation of the atmosphere sends alternating waves of hot and cool air racing down from the Wall of Ice. The time-flux blows, and frantic figures out of forgotten eras are swept by now far aloft, limbs churning desperately, eyes rigid with astonishment. Noort sleeps through it all, though from time to time he stirs and mutters and clenches his fists. Bhengarn ponders his obligations to the Dutchman, and by the coming of the sharp blood-hued dawn, he has arrived at an idea. Together they advance to the edge of the Wall; together they stare upward at that vast vertical field of shining whiteness, smooth as stone. Hesitantly Noort touches it with his fingertip, and hisses at the coldness of it. He turns his back to it, paces, folds and unfolds his arms.

He says finally, "No man or woman born could achieve the summit of that wall. But is there not some magic you could work, Traveler, that would enable me to make the ascent?"

"There is one. But I think you would not like it."

"Speak."

"I could transform you— for a short time, only a short time, no longer than the time it takes to climb the wall— into a being of the Traveler form. Thus we could ascend together."

Noort's eyes travel quickly over Bhengarn's body— the long tubular serpentine thorax, the tapering tail, the multitude of powerful little legs— and a look of shock and dismay and loathing comes over his face for an instant, but just an instant. He frowns. He tugs at his heavy lower lip.

Bhengarn says, "I will take no offense if you refuse."

"Do it."

"You may be displeased."

"Do it! The morning is growing old. We have much climbing to do. Change me, Traveler. Change me quickly." A shadow of doubt crosses Noort's features. "You will change me back, once we reach the top?"

"It will happen of its own accord. I have no power to make a permanent transformation."

"Then do what you can, and do it now!"

"Very well," says Bhengarn, and the Traveler, summoning his fullest force, drains metamorphic energies from the planets and the stars and a passing comet, and focuses them and hurls them at the Dutchman, and there is a buzzing and a droning and a shimmering and when it is done, a second Traveler stands at the foot of the Wall of Ice.

Noort seems thunderstruck. He says nothing; he does not move; only after a long time does he carefully lift his frontmost left limb and swing it forward a short way and put it down. Then the one opposite it; then several of the middle limbs; then, growing more adept, he manages to move his entire body, adopting a curious wriggling style, and in another moment he appears to be in control. "This is passing strange," he remarks at length. "And yet it is almost like being in my own body, except that everything has been changed. You are a mighty wizard, Traveler. Can you show me now how to make the ascent?"

"Are you ready so soon?"

"I am ready," Noort says.

So Bhengarn demonstrates, approaching the wall, bringing his penetrator claws into play, driving them like pitons into the ice, hauling himself up a short distance, extending the claws, driving them in, pulling upward. He has never climbed ice before, though he has faced all other difficulties the world has to offer, but the climb, though strenuous, seems manageable enough. He halts after a few minutes and watches as Noort, clumsy but determined in his altered body, imitates him, scratching and scraping at the ice as he pulls himself up the face until they are side by side. "It is easy," Noort says.

And so it is, for a time, and then it is less easy, for now they hang high above the valley and the midday sun has melted the surface of the wall just enough to make it slick and slippery, and a terrible cold from within the mass of ice seeps outward into the climbers, and even though a Traveler's body is a wondrous machine fit to endure anything, this is close to the limit. Once Bhengarn loses his purchase, but Noort deftly claps a claw to the middle of his spine to hold him firmly until he has dug in again; and not much later the same happens to Noort, and Bhengarn grasps him. As the day wanes they are so far above the ground that they can barely make out the treetops below, and yet the top of the wall is too high to see. Together they excavate a ledge, burrowing inward to rest in a chilly nook, and at dawn they begin again, Bhengarn's sinuous body winding upward over the rim of their little cave and Noort following with less agility. Upward and upward they climb, never pausing and saying little, through a day of warmth and soft perfumed breezes and through a night of storms and falling stars, and then through a day of turquoise rain, and through another day and a night and a day and then they are at the top, looking out across the broad unending field of ferns and bright blossoms that covers the summit's flat surface, and as they move inward from the rim, Noort lets out a cry and stumbles forward, for he has resumed his ancient form. He drops to his knees and sits there panting, stunned, looking in confusion at his fingernails, at his knuckles, at the hair on the backs of his hands, as though he has never seen such things before. "Passing strange," he says softly.

"You are a born Traveler," Bhengarn tells him.

They rest a time, feeding on the sparkling four-winged fruits that sprout in that garden above the ice. Bhengarn feels an immense calmness now that the climax of his peregrination is upon him. Never had he questioned the purpose of being a Traveler, nor has he had regret that destiny gave him that form, but now he is quite willing to yield it up.

"How far to Crystal Pond?" Noort asks.

"It is just over there," says Bhengarn.

"Shall we go to it now?"

"Approach it with great care," the Traveler warns. "It is a place of extraordinary power."

They go forward; a path opens for them in the swaying grasses and low fleshy-leaved plants; within minutes they stand at the edge of a perfectly circular body of water of unfathomable depth and of a clarity so complete
that the reflections of the sun can plainly be seen on the white sands of its infinitely distant bed. Bhengarn moves to the edge and peers in, and is pervaded by a sense of fulfillment and finality.

Noort says, "What will become of you here?"

"Observe," says Bhengarn.

He enters Crystal Pond and swims serenely toward the farther shore, an enterprise quickly enough accomplished. But before he has reached the midpoint of the pond, a tolling sound is heard in the air, as of bells of the most pure quality, striking notes without harmonic overtones. Sudden ecstasy engulfs him as he becomes aware of the beginning of his transformation: his body flows and streams in the flux of life, his limbs fuse, his soul expands. By the time he comes forth on the edge of the pond, he has become something else, a great cone of passive flesh, which is able to drag itself no more than five or six times its own length from the water, and then sinks down on the sandy surface of the ground and begins the process of digging itself in. Here the Awaiter Bhengarn will settle, and here he will live for centuries of centuries, motionless, all but timeless, considering the primary truths of being. Already he is gliding into the Earth.

Noort gapes at him from the other side of the pond.

"Is this what you sought?" the Dutchman asks.

"Yes. Absolutely."

"I wish you farewell and Godspeed, then!" Noort cries.

"And you— what will become of you?"

Noort laughs. "Have no fears for me! I see my destiny unfolding!"

Bhengarn, nestled now deep in the ground, enwombed by the earth, immobile, established already in his new life, watches as Noort strides boldly to the water's edge. Only slowly, for an Awaiter's mind is less agile than a Traveler's, does Bhengarn comprehend what is to happen.

Noort says, "I've found my vocation again. But if I'm to travel, I must be equipped for traveling!"

He enters the pond, swimming in broad awkward splashing strokes, and once again the pure tolling sound is evoked, a delicate carillon of crystalline transparent tone, and there is sudden brilliance in the pond as Noort sprouts the shining scales of a Traveler, and the jointed limbs, and the strong thick tail. He scuttles out on the far side wholly transformed.

"Farewell!" Noort cries joyously.

"Farewell," murmurs Bhengarn the Awaiter, peering out from the place of his long repose as Olivier van Noort, all his legs ablaze with new energy, strides away vigorously to begin his second circumnavigation of the globe.

One of the most powerful and innovative new talents to enter SF in the past few decades, Bruce Sterling sold his first story in 1976. By the end of the eighties, he had established himself— with a series of stories set in his exotic "Shape/Mechanist" future, with novels such as the complex and Stapeldonian
Schismatrix,
and with the well-received
Islands in the Net
as well as with his editing of the influential anthology
Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology
and the infamous critical magazine
Cheap Truth,
as perhaps the prime driving force behind the revolutionary "Cyberpunk" movement in science fiction, and also as one of the best new "hard-science" writers to enter the field in some time. His other books include a critically acclaimed nonfiction study of First Amendment issues in the world of computer networking,
The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier,
the novels
The Artificial Kid, Involution Ocean, Heavy Weather, Holy Fire,
and
Distraction;
a novel in collaboration with William Gibson,
The Difference Engine;
and the landmark collections
Crystal Express
and
Globalhead.
His most recent books include the omnibus collection (it contains the novel
Schismatrix
as well as most of his Shaper/Mechanist stories)
Schismatrix Plus;
a new collection,
A Good Old-Fashioned Future,
and a new novel,
Zeitgeist.
His story "Bicycle Repairman" earned him a long-overdue Hugo in 1997, and he won another Hugo in 1997 for his story "Taklamakan." He lives with his family in
Austin, Texas.