A Voyage To Dari

by Ian Wallace

  “I win one, I lose one; it balances—I end up winning. You have not told me what you think of my city.”

  “It is Plato’s republic.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “All the people in it are frozen at their respective statuses, and are happy in those statuses, each knowing that he in his own special way is contributing to the overall good of the eternal city.”

  Dzendzel purred, “You appear to be apprehending us perfectly.”

  “Is this your plan for the metagalaxy, Dzendzel—when you will have subjugated it?”

  “Is it not perfect? Is it not eternal? Is it not exquisitely feudal?”

  “It is all of these. But even in Plato’s terms, there is an element that I miss.”

  ‘There is no missing element. What do you think you miss?”

  “Ruling guardians.”

  “I am their ruling guardian. Roland is their ruling subguardian. There are other high vassals who are their guardians.”

  “Plato’s guardians were dedicated.”

  “Roland and I are dedicated.”

  “Plato’s guardians renounced power, wealth, individualism, and every pleasure except the pleasure of self-abnegatively guiding-guarding their city.”

  “Roland . . . Dzendzel stopped, frowning heavily at his adversary.

  Croyd asserted, “There is such a thing as a feudalism that is good and creative. Once upon a time, although a certain princess doesn’t grasp this, it existed on Dari. I have not seen it, my Lord of the Fissure, in your fissure; here I have seen only the frozen forms of feudalism in frozen form. I do not recommend your version for the metagalaxy. But I do not suppose that my attitude makes any difference.”

  “It makes none.”

  “Then pray leave me to my vigil against tomorrow.”

  Dzendzel wheeled and departed, slamming the heavy door. Its lock was noisy.

  Rather than brood on tomorrow’s joust with the formidable Roland—since, merely by reaching back two centuries into his Nigel memory, he was memory-fresh in the mood and the practice—Croyd, crouching on his cot with hands clasped between wide-apart knees, gave attention to what he had learned tonight during the city overflight with the Lord of the Fissures. What he had learned was what was most practically important for the immediate and long-range future.

  The city of Dzendzel was a brain. A colossal brain. And the boulevard that he had cruised was its Rolandic fissure—the center of control coordination at computer level, although this center fissure was only an instrumentality to the will and ego which was otherwhere and used it.

  A brain he understood—Rolandic fissures of brains he understood—quite independently of the special powers that Childe Roland had stolen from him.

  All the behavior of the little glowing deformed and specialized people on the boulevard was entirely consistent with this understanding. They were “people” only in a Pickwickian sense; actually they were ephemeral subjective impulses, each specialized in terms of a particular quality and orientation of impulse depending on his location in the fissure city.

  Each meeting of two little people, each exchange between them, represented an exchange across the fissure between the brain’s frontal interpretative area and the brain’s parietal sensory area. That was why Croyd, a while back, had been concerned to determine which side of the boulevard was spawning the people who were stimulators. Having determined this, he had the brain oriented.

  If somehow he could get loose in this brain, perhaps he could use it.

  Was this mighty brain, occupying much of the meta-galactic fissure created by the lobes of Galaxy Sol and Galaxy Djinn, the creation of Dzendzel—or of Roland under Dzendzel’s domination?

  Croyd thought either possibility so improbable as to be dismissable. More probably, the brain had evolved here through natural causes as a primordiality of cosmic action, and Dzendzel somehow had stumbled upon it and had found egotistical wit to enslave it and use it. So Dzendzel had once again illustrated a curious historical irony: it requires less intellectual intelligence to be a political executive than to be a high-level technician.

  Perhaps there were morals to be drawn. But that was for later. At the instant, Croyd’s problem was comprehension.

  How had this brain grown into existence?

  Perhaps (since basically a brain is energy organization, and only by gross organization spongy matter) its begin-rungs were the continuous photon stream from galaxy to galaxy that constituted the metagalactic surface tension. Gradually, while the current of the photon underlay on the inward metagalactic surface continued, responsive energy clusterings in the exterior fissure began partially to differentiate themselves into quasi-personalities. However, having no somatic bodies, but depending continuously and directly on their parent photonic-stream underlay, their self-differentiation could not approach the individualities of human beings. They developed therefore as collectively a social organism in the sense that Spengler had affirmed and Toynbee had denied: in effect, a brain.

  But this brain had developed no function or purpose. Consequently it had never been able to generate a mind that would unify all its “people” while transcending all of them. It had no effectiveness. It received full sensory input information from all galaxies but had no reason to respond even with amusement.

  Croyd suspected that Childe Roland had evolved as liege lord of this brain: i.e., as prime coordinator of its sensory input and perceptive integration, but without yet having arrived at the concept of exercising directive will either to chuckle or to do. Roland perceived, and that was all. He was like the neural apex of a Hymenopterum who merely accepts stimuli and redirects them into suitable ganglia without entertaining any concept of doing something new about anything.

  The dimensions of this brain awed Croyd, who had dandled concepts of mighty magnitude. When he had cruised this boulevard, chaperoned by Dzendzel, who had myopically assumed that Croyd would see only the perfection of feudal order and would not penetrate the meaning, Croyd had been moving with the swiftness of mind: the boulevard’s length must be millions or billions of light-years. Nevertheless, Croyd reflected, with a brain the problem is not distance as such; the problem is swiftness of interplay, and while in a human material brain the speed of impulse propagation is relatively low (but practically instantaneous because of short distances), this metagalactic fissure brain propagated photon impulses at three hundred thousand kilometers per second.

  Eh, but in this brain, that velocity had to be stepped up by a factor of billions. This, apparently, had occurred: evolution is spectacular, utilizing in bizarre ways every degree of freedom that natural circumstances may offer it.

  As Croyd imaginatively visualized the appearance of the whole metagalactic exterior—not just the Sol and Djinn lobes, but all the millions of galactic lobes thrusting out in all directions—the external surface of the metagalaxy startlingly resembled the external surface of a human brain: lobes among fissures, fissures among lobes, convolution on convolution. And all was live energy. Why shouldn't all this have become a brain?

  Conversely, though, why should this particular fissure be unique? The chances were that among the countless fissures between galaxies, there were numerous rudimentary-primal Rolandic fissures. Some, presumably, had attained high levels of evolution. The Sol/Djinn fissure was one.

  Duke Dzendzel had somehow discovered its potential. He had taken charge of it. The minimal result was that this fissure, under the duke’s control and with Roland’s willing-dedicated-innocent aid, had swiftly ascended to a level that might be called intelligent if you included the duke’s will and direction as the peak component in its intelligence. The chillingly possible maximum result was that all the metagalactic surface everywhere was one brain under domination by the Lord of the Fissure.

  For example, Croyd did not now doubt that Dzendzel had used this brain to induce feudalistic Darian piracy as a pilot study. If a brained mind acquires possession of a second brain, the mind will not necessar
ily use the second brain to free itself; more likely it will invest the second brain with its own old preconceptions.

  If, then, humankind (mammalian or otherwise) or any planet in any galaxy in this metagalaxy considered its will free, this was a howlingly laughable mistake. Duke Dzendzel, with his dandy extra brain, was in fact the God of All the Metagalaxy.

  Duke Dzendzel did not, however, correspond perfectly to Croyd’s concept of the God meaning.

  (And then, again, there was prayer—for a speeding up of time; for a win or at least a draw tomorrow; for escape from the brain scan, not for comfort’s sake but for rescue freedom; for some sort of inspiration that would solve this insoluble problem of rescue; for the continuing lives of Djeel and Hanoku and Tannen, at least until he could get at them; for the acquisition of some incredible sort of control. Control for the sake of the galaxy. Control for the sake of a half-begotten son or daughter intensely desired by this croyd Thoth who was sterile with a Homo sapiens like Greta but who might have been able to half-breed with a Meria melans like Djeelian.

  (So very much depends on time!)

  Phase Five - DUEL AT PHANTOM DAWN

  Day 5

  There was russhynge of sperys and swappyng of swerdis, and sir Gawayne with Galantyne, his swerde, dud many wondyrs. Than he threste thorow the prece unto hym that lad sir Bors, and bare hym thorow up to the hyltys, and lade away sir Bors strayte unto his ferys.

  —Sir Thomas Malory, The Tale of the Noble King Arthur That Was Emperor Himself through Dignity of His Hands (e. 1485) Ed. Eugene Vinaver

  THE JOUSTING COURT was (Croyd wryly estimated) as long and wide as any particular person might please, irregularly walled by Norman-Gothic stone walls, some windowed, some crenellated, some high-turreted, with multicolor pennons everywhere fluttering in a breeze that only the pennons could feel—a court brightly illuminated now in midmorning, by an invisible sun that somehow cast no shadows. Along the wall of the castle facade had been arranged a long low pavilion that was filling now with gaily dressed courtiers, male and female, all faintly glowing in a way that significantly reminded Croyd of the little people in the brain city. Croyd, ready but as yet unarmed and without his mount, stood inconspicious in a corner of the court where he could survey the pavilion; he had been given the armor that he had requested (light tough leather, perfectly replicating the sort of armor that he had learned well to live in two centuries ago on Nigel III); and they had promised him the mount he had requested, although this steed had not yet been given him. Violating protocol, he had ambled out of his dressing room to survey the grounds.

  They all stood as the duke entered; they did not cheer, they merely stood. Ceremoniously, aided by servants, the duke found his front box in center pavilion, poised, and sat; and everybody sat. Heralds stood before the box awaiting his pleasure. The duke nodded once and clapped hands thrice. The heralds sounded a fanfare on long, straight cire-perdue trumpets hung with pennons.

  Roland, walking, emerged from his dressing room beyond the pavilion at the duke’s far right. He wore fifteenth-century golden armor, highly stylized and ornate, intricately jointed for maximum flexibility at knees and long-spiked elbows, fitted at right hip with a great hooked lance rest, with a spreading protective target plate in front of left shoulder and chest, where the enemy lance beak was most likely to strike, with the rest of his chest armor a single smooth-polished surface pigeon-breasted into a point so that lances would slide off harmlessly. In his left arm he carried his helm, which was a nearly opaque turret with long narrow horizontal eye slits and otherwise shaped like a beaked gander. Behind Roland walked his page, leading his mount, a great-chested great-hooved armored charger capable of juggemauting at high speed for distances up to a hundred yards and then perhaps yet another hundred, after which he would require a great deal of rest for the next hundred.

  Croyd, meanwhile, was walking toward the duke’s box, there to meet Roland. And from the stable at the duke’s far left, a page led out Croyd’s mount: a Nigelian graul resembling a tyrannosaur, only unmistakably mammalian rather than reptilian, prancing on mighty hind feet, pawing grotesquely with ineffectual foreclaws, bridled but not saddled, its shoulders towering several feet higher than the shoulders of Roland’s horse.

  They met before the duke; they saluted each other, Roland looking past Croyd to inspect his graul intently. Then Roland turned to kneel on one knee and bend his neck before the duke; while Croyd, who whimsically respected diversified protocols and saw no point in creating a scene that might embarrass Childe Roland, knelt likewise.

  The duke said lazily, “Stand, Roland, good knight. Stand, Croyd, mighty enemy.”

  The combatants stood shoulder-to-shoulder, Roland cradling helmet in left arm, Croyd’s arms hanging because he carried no helmet.

  The duke asserted—and it was noticeable that he did not raise his voice enough for the spectators to hear—“You will ride up to three tilts in the lists. If neither is un . . .” (he paused an instant, glanced uncomfortably at Croyd’s graul, and continued fluidly) “. . . horsed in three tilts, it is a draw, and Croyd may crave a boon until tomorrow morning. If either of you is unhorsed but still can fight, use secondary weapons until one of you can no longer fight; if Croyd wins, or if both of you simultaneously lose ability to fight, Croyd may crave a boon until tomorrow morning. Questions?”

  “None, my liege,” said Roland.

  “None,” said Croyd.

  Now the duke studied Croyd’s graul, allowing Roland also to study Croyd’s graul while Croyd studied Roland. The duke commented. “The mounts appear unequal in Croyd’s favor. Roland, do you wish to have the size of your horse augmented?”

  Roland refused. “I am used to the size of my horse as he is, and Croyd has indicated that he is used to his graul as it is. I would not wish a larger horse unless Croyd were willing to exchange his lethally inadequate leather armor for an adequate fitting of iron.”

  Croyd warned, “Roland, watch out. With this leather I can move faster than you, my graul has the speed of your horse and more momentum, and on my graul I will sit higher than you. I will keep my leather, but for equal handicapping I suggest that you augment your horse.”

  As Roland prepared to enter further objection, the duke intervened, “Perhaps before a decision is reached, we should examine the primary and secondary weapons.” Roland and Croyd wheeled back-to-back and bawled at their corners: “Weapons!” From Roland’s corner, two pages marched out, carrying between them a fourteen-foot hardwood lance beaked with brass; and a third followed burdened with a heavy sheathed two-hand sword. From Croyd’s corner, one page emerged, easily carrying in his right hand a seven-foot hardwood splinter beaked with iron and in his left a sheathed one-hand sword.

  Having inspected the weapons, Roland quietly told Croyd, “Perhaps I should shrink my horse.”

  “I rather suggest,” returned Croyd, “that for your own good you shrink your lance.”

  Roland swung to the duke. “Liege, each of us has chosen his mount and his weapons. I will stay with mine, and I think that Croyd will stay with his. I ask only your full assurance that our arms and weapons and mounts and myself are temporarily reified so that we fight honestly as two knights able normally to fight and wound each other even unto the death.”

  The duke said, “Granted. Mount, and take the lists.”

  Croyd watched Roland mount, perforce aided by all pages, one steadying the restive mount, one holding a stirrup, one with both hands and arms straining-boosting Roland’s rump up into final swing position; nevertheless Croyd nodded brief approval—the armor was enormously heavy, Roland himself had displayed strength and agility.

  Then Croyd turned to his graul, stood under its neck (while it twisted head downward to study him with a bulbous eye), looked up at it as he stood with arms akimbo, told it quietly, “We’re new to each other, so hold still and let’s see what happens.” The graul shivered all over; the nervous page who was holding the bridle dropped it; Croyd leaped, seizing t
he neck with both arms, swung himself onto the shoulders, and reached down for sword and spear, meanwhile with subtle knee pressures talking reassuringly to his mount. The graul seemed to get it: he semiquieted with a bit of prancing and snorting, while Croyd buckled on the sword and hefted the short lance, for which he had no rest.

  Roland called, “My mount knows me. Take a little time to get acquainted with your own.”

  Croyd, saluting and smiling, called back, “Therefore my mount tires and you get to size him up.” Then, at the falling face of Roland, who was not yet helmeted, Croyd amended, “Your pardon, I know you are honest. Yes, I wish to do this, thank you.”

  Roland and the duke for the next five minutes watched a virtuosity of graulsmanship all over the courtyard.

  Then Croyd reined up at his end of the lists. “Childe Roland!” he cried. “Unarmed and on foot, we are equally matched, I am certain! Are you sure that thus armed and mounted we are equally handicapped?”

  For reply, Roland, helmeted now, one-handedly guided his mighty horse into a complex of curvetage that equalled with major qualitative differences the display by Croyd and his graul. Then Roland took his place in the lists, raising the visor of his helm.

  The duke, standing now, clapped thrice. The heralds trumpeted. The knights trotted forward to meet at the center of the lists. With one hand Roland raised his fourteen-foot lance to the vertical, while Croyd erected his seven-foot wand. They were closely face-to-face; their steeds held relatively quiet; they considered each other with profound respect.

  Roland said, “Sir, I know you depend on agility to defeat me. If I may be forgiven a postmedieval twentieth-century reference, it is a tank against a jeep, except that I have no seventy-five-millimeter rifle and you have no bazooka. However, what I have can penetrate you, and what you have cannot penetrate me. May I prevail on you, at this last instant, to wear a helmet at least?”