Genesis

by Poul Anderson

  The Persian Empire fell into internecine war, then fell to Alexander, whose own empire did not outlast his untimely death. What followed was a prolonged bloodbath.

  Within four centuries of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, Christians were killing heretic Christians.

  The peace and refinement of Heian Japan gave way to incessant struggle between clans and war lords. In China, dynasty after dynasty claimed the Mandate of Heaven and eventually, bloodily, lost it.

  The Mongols galloped from end to end of Asia, deep into Europe, until their Khan reigned over half a continent. In a few generations that sovereignty crumbled. Nonetheless a remnant of it turned the nascent democracy of Russia into the Tsardom, and another remnant bore Islam to India.

  The mighty Aztec and Inca realms broke before a handful of Spanish invaders. The wealth that flowed thence into Europe energized the trading nations of the North but rotted Spain itself, whose long-term legacy became one of tyranny and corruption.

  From the “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” of the French Revolution sprang Napoleon. From the idealism of Sun Yat-sen sprang Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong.

  No one in power understood what such modern weapons as the machine gun portended, nor was able to end the stalemate they brought before it had destroyed four empires, lives in the tens of millions, and the spiritual foundations of Western civilization. A greater war ensued, and then a twilight struggle for half a century more, while on its fringes countries newly established went at each other’s throats.

  In an age when science was reaching from the innermost atom to the outermost cosmos and scientific technology was transfiguring I he human condition, ancient superstitions ran rampant, everything from astrology to witchcraft. What slowly overcame them was neither reason nor the major faiths but those lesser, often despised sects that had never compromised their creeds. Then slowly their own dominance eroded.

  Instead of making governments almighty, global communications speeded the effective breakup of societies into self-determining coalitions of all kinds, ethnic, economic, religious, professional, cultural, even sexual.

  Environmentalist crusaders preached, official agencies strove, but what rehabilitated an Earth devastated by overpopulation and overexploitation was a new set of technologies and the economic incentives and disincentives they brought about.

  “There are no final answers, not while humans remain human. Nine thousand years is further ahead than our most ancient written records go back. What changes, what violences, what revolutions will they see? Above all, what revolutions of the spirit? We do not know.

  “For the sake of our unborn and the sake of life itself on Earth, let us accept a few small sacrifices and make an irrevocable commitment now to the security of our planet—while we can do it, while we can choose to do it. Our descendants will bless us. Whatever they do, whatever they become, surely they will bless us. But already we, in this our mortal day, will have blessed ourselves.”

  3

  Afterward Laurinda went topside for a walk. She needed motion and aloneness. In the house she felt too connected.

  Evening light streamed low, nearly level. It seemed to fill grass and leaves with gold. A flight of nestbound rooks passed across the sky. Their calls drifted faintly down to her. A breeze cooled the air like a whisper from oncoming night.

  Striding, she felt tension and anxiety drain away and peace flow out of the ground. It was as if her England thanked her.

  The old church rose ahead. The machines that removed the deserted city had kept this relic, restored it, and maintained it. She spied an unobtrusive guardian robot—scarcely needed, as rare as visitors were. Another tended the graveyard. The names on the headstones were weathered into oblivion, yet somehow the headstones remembered.

  So did the church. She entered. A window above the doors made its own sunset. Elsewhere the stained glass glowed more softly, angels and saints under a ceiling that arched toward heaven. She could just make out Christ crucified above the altar. Not for the first time, she wondered how the archeologists and the machines—ultimately, Terra Central, in whose database lay all surviving records—decided what to model the emblem on; for the Protestants must have destroyed the original. Or had they? Sometime she should ask. The thought dropped from her. She sat down in a pew and listened to silence. She imagined ghosts gathered around, worshipful and humble, in the deepening dusk.

  When she left, only a westward purple remained of the daylight. Soon that too was gone. Now and then she had to glance at the attendant on her wrist, which she had ordered to point the way back. Stars twinkled forth, one by one, more and more. Seen through this slightly misty air they were not as bright or as many as they might have been. Just the same, after a while their multitude and the sense of their remoteness came upon her. Which of those that she could see had intelligences reached by now? She wasn’t sure. News from the explorers came in so slowly. Nor did she follow it very closely, being more concerned with Earth. Probably the explorers were still in Sol’s purlieus. Nevertheless, those machines, i raveling close to the speed of light, multiplying themselves wherever they found raw material and sending their offspring onward—in one or two million years the machines would have ranged over the whole galaxy.

  Laurinda shivered. Once the vision had been glamorous and glorious. Tonight she began to ache, and recalled that she had eaten hardly anything all day. Yes, she was growing old.

  Having descended to her house, she sought the part that was her own, not a workspace or entertainment and communication center or personal clinic but a small refuge for dreams. Virtuals weren’t enough; she wanted reality, which whim could not alter. Wainscot made a background for framed pictures of ancient scenes and shelves of ancient books; the music she played was Baroque; a copper kettle gave off steam, and soon her tea was ready and soon thereafter her supper, indistinguishable from one that might have been set forth for Jane Austen.

  She didn’t command the servitor to simulate a human retainer, nor instigate a search for a friend somewhere on the planet who would feel like conversing with her. She thought she wished only for quiet, a bit of reading, and then bed.

  When a voice like her mother’s contralto spoke to her, she realized that Terra Central had detected otherwise.

  “May I interrupt? I would like to say you did wonderfully well. Public reaction has on the whole been positive and enthusiastic.”

  “Good,” Laurinda said. “But I was just a single speaker. We need more.

  Her mind went on: The effort you are mobilizing moves softly but is huge. And what if it fails, if the vote does go against your urging? What might you then call upon?

  And why do I think of you as a—person?

  Because you are. Not human; however, an awareness… a soul?

  “You were eloquent,” said Terra Central, “and with an insight beyond mine.”

  Startlement answered, “How?” What am I, that you are mindful of me?

  “Shall I explain tonight, or would you rather wait till you have rested?”

  Always Terra Central was considerate of her interfaces. Almost always, she guessed rightly. Laurinda’s heart leaped. “Please, now.”

  The voice paused before continuing—to calm her a little? “I am dedicated to the well-being of life on Earth. No change I make in myself will change that. Your race is the sentient part of life. But I as I am cannot fully understand it.

  “Texts, relics, perceptions, talk, are not the same as direct experience. I can follow the thoughts—even a shadow of the emotions—of gentle, rational humans such as you. But I have not the capability, the empathy if you will, to interpret why others do what they do or why your history as a whole has followed the courses it did.”

  “Who, who does?” Laurinda stammered.

  “It appears to me that your race is mad—not you, dear, nor most people by themselves, but your race—torn between instinct and intellect, the animal and something beyond the animal. Is this a misinterpretation? If not, then most lik
ely, without guidance, humankind will put an end to itself long before the cosmos would. I cannot as I am understand it well enough to know, or to provide that guidance.

  “Help me, Laurinda.”

  “How?” she asked, atremble, wondering what further she could do in what years were left to her.

  “Do not die. When your body is worn out, let me upload your mind and memories.”

  Cold struck through. “No! No. I’ve… thought about it, of course, but everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve heard—I don’t want to be a robot.”

  “I know. But would you become one with me?

  “A kind of Nirvana, yes, you no longer a uniqueness but an enrichment of the whole. Yet you’ll be there for millions of years or more, and, as need may be, I can resurrect you in emulation as you were.

  “It’s an offer I can only make to a few. This is a newly created capability, and my capacity for it is limited thus far. Later—But I would like to take you, Laurinda, before you are gone forever,

  “Think about it. Remember, though, your last hour for choosing is not so very far away.”

  VI

  Seventeen hundred years later, a thing occurred that lived in people’s memories for generations, until lifeways changed too much for them to make sense of it.

  In those days communities, fellowships, nations, and ethnoi all had their own ways of observing New Century’s Eve. In Tahalla it climaxed a month of ceremonies and celebrations. Some of these equalled Creation Day or Remembrance in solemnity, others rivaled Fire Night or the Festival for Children in joyousness. The quinquennial Darvic Games now took on an even greater importance; the glory that winning players brought to their clans would heighten the standing of every member and the influence of every captain for the next decade or more.

  The opening procession moved grandiose down Covenant Boulevard. Sunlight out of a hard blue sky flared off metal and seemed to set banners afire. Folk stood ten deep on either side. One did not sit at home and merely watch an occasion like this. One came, partook, joined in the hymns and the cheers, saw high-born and heroes pass by in the living flesh, felt the surge and throb of exultation, and needed no psychotrope for the spirit to soar. Most had arrived in groups, wearing the special garb of guild or society, but the groups had mingled randomly. The white gowns and red sashes of educators might be wedged between the purple-and-gold tunics of Magnificos and the scarlet cloaks and plumed headdresses of Torchmen, or some Falcons in close-fitting blue and gray cluster by some green-clad physicians. Only the philosophers kept individually apart, a scattering of hooded gray robes trimmed with iridescent flickercloth. As was their traditional right, the Terpsichoreans cavorted in front of everybody, on the street itself, limbs, long hair, and filmy garments flying. The morning was already hot, but nobody heeded. It baked fragrances from the pavement.

  Behind reared the many-hued walls, shimmering colonnades, and jewel-faceted cupolas of central Roumek. Everything was cleaned and polished; often intricate patterns of mosaic or sculpture had been added; but no facade changed appearance except as shadows shifted with the sun. Owners vied to produce astonishing effects only at the Festival of Illusions. The Games were different, an occasion religious as well as secular.

  Trumpets rang, sonors pealed and thundered, tuned fountains and the Singing Tower blent their own music in. Helmets and cuirasses agleam, lances and lasers held high, a squad of Honorables went in advance, riding white elks whose antlers had been gilded. Hierophants, one from every hinterland in Tahalla, followed on foot, wearing their canonicals and bearing their symbols according to their orders: of God the Dreamer of the Universe, God the Mother, God the Summoner (black cassock, impaled skull), God the Lover (rainbow hues and wreathed staff). After them glided the car of the Holy Interpreter. Robotic agents attended his sumptuously canopied throne and comforted him in his opalescent vestments with fans from which streamed cool breezes. Another detachment of Honorables rode behind.

  Then came the Regnant and First Consort. Their thrones were on a dais at the center of a great moving stage, from whose corners undulated the shapes of a golden dragon, a scarlet flame, a blue whirlwind, and a flowering vine. On the Regnant’s left sat the heir apparent, on the Consort’s right the Chief Enactor. Benched below were the Council. Senior guardsmen stood along the sides, tossing tokens of diamond and ruby into the crowd. The garb and accouterments of all these dazzled every beholder.

  A dozen men who stood at the front wore simply the insignia of the clans of which they were captains, together with emblems of whatever societies they might belong to—except for the one at the center, from whose shoulders hung the Cloak of Darva and in whose hand rested the Staff of Supremacy. Yet gazes followed them more than any others: for these were the appointed stewards of the Games.

  Magnates of the city, commanders of lesser communities, and rural landkeepers rode after, most in open cars, some on horses of fanciful genetics, each attired in his or her finest. Behind them marched the players, in bands under the standards of whatever contests they were to enter but every individual proudly dressed in a tunic of the color pattern marking his or her clan. And the shouts burst over them like surf.

  Mikel headed the auvade contingent, for his father Wei, captain of Clan Belov, was among the stewards. Of course, kinship disqualified Wei from judging that competition. However, Mikel would have scorned nepotism and needed none; already he had won Second Master status. He should have gone toward the sacred grounds afloat on happiness, awaiting fresh renown at the very least, hoping for triumph.

  Rancor filled his mouth. He felt as if the hurrahs around him and the blossoms thrown at his feet were mockery. His overriding thought was of how he might turn victory into revenge.

  2

  Almost seven decades older than his son—otherwise he and his lady had set a good example and contented themselves with virtual children—Wei Belov took the matter stonily. “It is a disappointment, yes,” he said. “It is not a humiliation unless we let it be.”

  Nevertheless Mikel raged. So did a number of young clansmen. They roiled about the manor, crying denunciations of Arkezhan Socorro and the Chief Enactor, then whistling in unison the sinister ancient Gun Song. They galloped or careened over the countryside, to the terror of innocent grazers. They flitted to Roumek and got into drunken brawls with any Socorros they happened upon. Finally Wei broadcast an injunction. “This behavior disgraces us,” he declared. “It shall cease at once. Whoever continues it will be publicly censured and barred from next year’s Affirmation Day rites.” The furore died down.

  None but his lady knew how he himself felt, and perhaps not even she. A captain of Clan Belov bore his own troubles uncomplainingly, as befitted his dignity. Still, she and Mikel could guess. His silences at home, his solitary walks, and his withdrawal from most global intercommunication told them much.

  The Regnant should have made him not simply a steward but Supreme Steward of these Games. While the five-year cycle of succession was not immutable, it was customary, and this time Belov’s turn fell on New Century’s Eve. Wei had served well at earlier Darvics. Moreover, in his youth he had won trophies for mountaineering on the moon and dune skiing on Mars. He was president of the national wildlife commission, which often involved him in interethnic negotiations under the auspices of the Worldguide. Surely he deserved to bring this additional honor to his clan.

  Now, for many years Arkezhan, Captain Socorro, had been his enemy. Wei never found out quite why. He knew of no harm he had ever done to the man or the clan, nor could he discover any that might have happened unwittingly. But Arkezhan was forever backbiting him, insulting him to the very limits of propriety, and playing nasty little tricks on him. At last Wei shrugged it off as due to jealousy. Arkezhan’s career had been less than brilliant.

  Yet he made himself a favorite of Mahu, Captain Rahman, who became Chief Enactor of the realm. And Mahu prevailed upon the Regnant to appoint Arkezhan Supreme Steward of the Games.

  The unspoken r
ejection fell like a soot cloud over all Clan Belov, deepest upon the captain and his immediate kin. Arkezhan crowed. His sycophants spread rumors.

  Thus matters stood on the day of the auvade.

  3

  Although a sunshade had deployed its film above the stadium, the tiers were brilliant with the clothes and jewels of spectators. From the judgment booth high up, they resembled terraced flowerbeds. Talk made a ceaseless murmur and rustle, as if one somehow heard the faraway sea. Down on the great hexagon, the teams stood alert, each man a spot of color on a tile along a given side, facing their mates on the opposite side, blue for Sirius, gold for Altair, red for Betelgeuse.

  Wei leaned close to the viewer before which he sat and whispered an order, for he did not wish to draw attention to himself. The instrument scanned, identified its target, and lighted with the image of his son. He commanded an enlargement to one square meter. There was Mikel, panther-poised, every muscle clear to see beneath the form-fitting azure, bone strong in the amber face, a defiant cockade in the headband confining the raven’s-wing hair—a Belov to the last chromosome. His role was Comet; the insigne shone argent across his breast. If only the boy were less tense, his look less grim. Even more than strength and agility, a player needed wits.

  A voice brought Wei’s glance around. Arkezhan Socorro had strolled over to his chair. “Ah,” said the Supreme Steward, “you arc anxious about your offspring, I see.”

  With an effort, Wei remained seated. To be looked down at like this was detestable, but to rise would show irritation. And that would mean loss of dignity, especially here in the Presence. “I am interested, naturally,” he answered as softly as he could. “Not anxious. He is a capable athlete.”

  He slightly emphasized the pronoun. Arkezhan’s son took no part in sports and was rather notoriously ungraceful in both social and ceremonial dancing.

  Arkezhan concealed whatever he felt. “That will be for impartial stewards to determine.” He nodded at the three of them, Ibram Ahmad, Jon Mitsui, and Malena Mogale, where they sat ready at their own viewers. They sensed hostility in the air and looked uncomfortable.