Logorrhea

by John Klima

  “Yes, yes, everything came exactly as it was ordered and we have followed the preparation instructions most carefully.”

  “I gather that’s essential,” Sao said. “Someone—I forget who, perhaps Therabin—once said that a predilection towards poisons was the mark that a race had reached its apogee of decadence.”

  “One could hardly characterise the Duality as decadent,” Moynec reproached him. “After all, if not for their wisdom and generosity, very few of us would even be here.”

  “True. I suppose if one has to have an elder race, it might as well be this lot.”

  “Well, it could be worse,” Moynec said, and there was a brief pause, as they both contemplated just how much worse. The Uniqt had demonstrated that. And look what had happened to them, whereas here were the Duality, chatting about whatever highly advanced aliens chatted about, over light wines and sugared fancies.

  “Vice Chancellor, about this banquet…”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m concerned about the seating arrangements.”

  Sao silently called upon gods in which he had never believed. “You’ve had the instructions for the seating arrangements for months. What’s the problem?”

  “It’s just that—seeing them here, you see, I’ve never actually met anyone from the Duality before, and it’s rather brought it home to me. What they are.”

  Grant me patience. Moynec was proving even more incoherent than usual. Sao had noticed lapses in concentration on a number of occasions. Perhaps it was time the old boy retired. “And what is that?”

  “Well—which one do they eat with? Which face?”

  “The front one, of course, Moynec. Look at them. Which one are they drinking with?”

  Moynec looked. “Ah. The front one.”

  “I must confess that I have very little notion of what constitutes ingestion etiquette among the Duality. Perhaps it’s rude to eat with the mouth of your back-face. Perhaps it’s just not done.”

  “They speak with their back mouths, though.”

  “Yes, but for pronouncements concerning the past, as that’s what they see out of their back-faces. Maybe with the front…” Sao gave up. “I hate to admit to ignorance, Moynec”—especially in front of you—“but I really know very little about janus species.”

  “There aren’t many of them. The Duality, and some rat-thing on Chorvus Eight.”

  There was no further time to discuss the issue. Sao had been observed. A member of the Duality was gliding towards them, using—Sao had a moment of panic before recalling the signifying robe-pattern—front-face. The Duality member’s caster-feet made a displeasing squeak against the marble floor. Sao winced and hoped it wouldn’t be noticed.

  “Vice Chancellor! How delightful!” The Duality member’s front face was male, signifying his primary gender, and to Sao’s untutored gaze, fairly typical of his species: a broad forehead beneath a central ridge, large oceanic eyes with a slit pupil, and a nose and mouth that appeared classically human until the nose briefly flared to reveal the dust-gathering flanges within. Sao assumed that an early visit by the Duality was responsible for large chunks of classical human myth—they had certainly been around and spacefaring for the requisite twenty thousand years—but given the behaviour of early human deities, he had never felt it was politic to ask. Besides, humanity had done enough to change itself in the interim without getting snippy about visits from—after all—benign aliens.

  “You may call me D-jiva,” the Duality member was saying. Was there a brief echo from his hind-mouth? Sao could not tell, but it wasn’t a pronouncement concerning the past, so probably not. “Such a pleasure to be here. One of my colleague’s ancestors is alleged to have visited Karquom during the time of the Uniqt. An unhappy period.”

  “Indeed. Might one ask whether this was before the Uniqt slaughtered all other indigenous life on this planet, or afterwards?”

  “Before.” D-jiva’s brow furrowed. “My colleague, A-vokt, tells me that his relative was attempting to bring resolution—to explain, in other words, that it was not in fact essential to prove one’s worth to one’s gods by rendering oneselves the only species in existence. Alas, the attempt failed.”

  “At least they didn’t have spaceflight,” Sao remarked.

  “Quite so. I must say, the presence of your institution is a vast improvement.”

  “Culturally sanctioned genocide is not usually an evolutionary advantage,” Sao said. “Even in academia.”

  “I gather there were only two of the Uniqt at the end,” D-jiva acknowledged. “One can’t help wondering if they had second thoughts.”

  “I can’t help wondering what happened to the sole remaining one.”

  “Ah, well, that is supposed to be the last mystery of the Uniqt,” D-jiva said.

  “I should have said that it was hard to care,” Moynec said, with a shudder.

  “That, too. Now. Vice Chancellor, as designated confluence spokesperson, I have already reviewed the banqueting arrangements and I must say, your institution has excelled itself.”

  “I certainly hope all will prove satisfactory,” Sao said. He had entertained serious reservations about the wisdom of agreeing to a banquet in which everything—everything being, moreover, an alien substance—had originally been toxic. The reason for this was apparently not decadence at all; it was intended to bring home the essential impermanence of life—although, given how long the Duality lived, and what was now known about the continuation of existence, this seemed rather superfluous to Sao. Those reservations about health and safety were still present; he’d be glad when this whole thing was over.

  “I must not take up more of your valuable time,” D-jiva was saying. “I know you have other things to be concerned about besides our little poetry confluence. You have a lyceum to run, after all.” With a fluid bow, he spun gently on his casters and wheeled back to the main grouping.

  “What a pleasant fellow,” Moynec said.

  “Charming. But then, all of them are.” Sao sighed. The encounter had brought the usual academic bickering and moaning, the atmosphere in which he spent his days, into sharp relief. What a pity reincarnation had been comprehensively disproved—although he doubted that he’d led a pure enough life to return as a member of the Duality.

  An hour later, Sao was beginning to calm down. Everyone had survived the hors d’oeuvres, a collection of plant dishes from various jungles around various parts of the galaxy. Things that were blue and coiled, that wafted a sinister perfume across the banqueting hall. Things that were green and slimy, served beneath a dish in case their foul odor caused a miasma to build up within the confines of the Lyceum. Things that were small and black, like wizened brains: the seedpod of a rare sentient orchid. Sao remembered those negotiations; he had been rather shocked that someone might be prepared to sell off what were essentially their children, although he had been assured that they would grow more. It still seemed…unnatural, but then that was the essence of this banquet, in many respects. Perhaps the Duality, despite their philosophical ideals, were slipping past the peak of true civilization.

  After this initial course, a pause was announced and a series of poetic readings were presented. Sao sat restlessly through this: his speciality was history, and poetry did not particularly interest him, particularly poetry with a lot of long, weighty silences to allow listeners to ponder on an especially abstruse semantic fragment. He was grateful when the entrees were brought in and the banquet recommenced.

  Gratitude, however, lasted only so long. The first course of the entrees—some kind of flambéed whelk—passed without incident, but not so the second dish. This—Sao surreptitiously consulted his notes as a series of domed platters were carried in—was probably the most toxic of all the food: a form of moss from the swamps of a world called Destire, which released a vitriolic toxin when disturbed. The toxin dissipated within nine seconds, and there was then a window of about three seconds during which the moss was edible. Left to its own devices, it d
ecomposed rapidly into a stinking mass. A light at the head of the table was to be lit, signalling the edibility of the moss after the required period.

  Sao watched uneasily as the transparent domed coverings were lifted. The moss—an unobtrusive beige beneath the covering—began to glow as the toxin was released, a rather impressive neon green. The glow grew brighter, and brighter yet, until Sao nearly threw his Vice Chancellor’s long sleeve across his eyes to protect them.

  The light had come on—Sao blinked. But it wasn’t the light at the head of the table, it was a ray, a brief flicker of neon blue, coming from the direction of the desert. He could see the little turret of the Uniqt outlined against the rocks: it had come from there—but surely, he had imagined it.

  But the glow from the moss was not quite dazzling enough to stop him from seeing, with a dizzying sense of disbelief, D-jiva start to rise from his place, crying, “No! Wait!” as Duality member A-vokt leaned forward and spooned a glowing morsel of moss into his mouth. It didn’t take long. A-vokt seemed to quiver, then grow still, and then pitched forward into the still-glowing plate.

  At least the sudden demise of the Duality member stopped anyone else from eating the damned stuff. Sao was already on his feet and halfway down the dining table by the time A-vokt’s shocked colleagues started to react. He was propelled more by horror and dismay than by forethought, so it was just as well that when he reached D-jiva’s place, the Duality member’s hand shot out and caught his arm in a grip like an iron clamp.

  “Wait a moment,” D-jiva said, in two mellifluous voices. “Empty the room. Then we can talk.”

  Morning. Vice Chancellor Sao still hadn’t gone to bed, but the customarily grim results of a night without sleep were being postponed by adrenaline. Their eventuality might, however, be indicated by the fact that, when not being appalled, he was considering D-jiva’s hind-face and reflecting that she was really quite attractive from this angle. The huge, calm, blue eyes, the delicately aquiline nose and curling mouth…he could not help but wonder what lay underneath the Duality member’s flowing robes. He was too old for this kind of thing—never mind lèsemajesté, it practically verged on the blasphemous. In either case, it would not do. He had to concentrate on the matter at hand.

  “Suicide,” Moynec remarked, for what must have been the thousandth time. “It must have been suicide.”

  “Members of the Duality,” D-jiva’s female face replied, “are not prone to suicidal thoughts, let alone actions.”

  “The conference was dedicated to the frailty of existence,” Sao said wearily. They had been over this several times; the conversation was developing the character of ritual. “Perhaps he felt an obligation to make a metaphorical point. This is an institution of learning, after all. Where better to illustrate a delicate ontological argument?”

  D-jiva’s hind-face smiled with an ancient benevolence. “We are not prone to such crude illustrations. Metaphorically, in the context of the poetry which we have experienced this evening, such an act might be considered the philosophical equivalent of a child’s scribble.”

  Sao was too tired to be chastised, even by a member of an elder race. “You might be right. But who knows what really goes through people’s heads?” Especially those endowed with two faces. He expected D-jiva to demur, but instead the Duality member was silent.

  “D-jiva?” he said.

  “Chancellor?” The huge blue eyes turned an oceanic gaze upon him and he saw that they were filled with an unfamiliar, a human, anxiety. “May I speak with you privately for a moment?”

  Moynec, as Sao had expected, was only too pleased to be relieved of any semblance of responsibility and dispatched to his overdue rest. Once the old academic had tottered off, D-jiva turned to Sao.

  “You must suspect that this was murder.”

  Sao rubbed his eyes. They had stopped focusing properly some time ago and everything seemed fuzzy. “Yes. Of course. But you didn’t mention it, so I didn’t mention it, and we’ve all been stepping around the subject. We don’t have any kind of law enforcement here, D-jiva.” Belatedly, he realized that he probably should not have called the Duality member by name, but D-jiva didn’t seem to mind. “This is a lyceum, and nothing else. We have proctors.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” D-jiva said carefully, “do you often have trouble with students?”

  “No. Well, occasionally. But not the kind of trouble that a normal planetside university—Belen, or Faunta, or Tsajarai, for instance—might experience. This is primarily a postgraduate institution, so the students who come here are older. Some of them are in their seventies. It’s expensive—we have to make a living, we’re not quite self-sufficient yet, things have to be shipped in—and let me be honest with you, this is not an egalitarian place. It’s elitist. We are probably the best human university in the known universe. Groundbreaking research gets accomplished here. The Lyceum has solved the question of life after death. It has proved the existence of the human soul, it has made great strides in the question of whether the universe is teleologically oriented. That’s not cheap. People have nervous breakdowns all the time. Occasionally, with the young and impressionable—people kill themselves. But not one another, and not guests. There’s no crime here. Why would there be?”

  “No plagiarism? No rivalry?”

  “Departments aren’t structured like that. They’re largely individual affairs. We are talking about geniuses. Geniuses don’t tend to work in teams, at least, not on the level of discovery.”

  D-jiva swivelled round to reveal his front face. To Sao’s secret relief, it looked as weary as he himself felt.

  “I accept that. I also accept that your proctors must handle this, and I understand that a forensic freeze has been placed upon the banqueting scene.”

  Sao was silent for a moment. “The proctors—all right. The proctors will do as I tell them, which is why we have placed the forensic freeze on the hall. I have made sure that word has not gotten off-world. The Duality are an elder race; I wanted to discuss with you what kind of legal issues might be paramount.”

  The discussion took a great deal of time, and afterwards Sao felt like a wet rag. Apart from dealing with D-jiva, he had to confer with the proctors and watch the security footage of the banquet. The whole thing seemed fairly straightforward, if baffling. A-vokt had indeed leaned forward several seconds before he was supposed to and taken a mouthful of lethal moss. No one was standing near him; the nearest person, at least a foot and a half away, seemed lost in contemplation of his own dinner. Sao could not see what had prompted the Duality member to act as he had.

  Once informed, the proctors swung into leisurely action. The banquet hall was thoroughly investigated. Sao asked two of the proctors to take a look at the Uniqt turret, but they reported that they had found nothing. The Duality members present were confined to their quarters, in the politest of ways, and questioned. When Sao examined the transcripts, however, he discovered that the answers received were oblique in the extreme.

  “This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” he complained to D-jiva. “Here, when asked the routine question of where Duality member S-paith was during the time of the incident, S-paith questions the notion of existential presence within a limited time span rather than simply replying that she was sitting at dinner.”

  He thought D-jiva might have sighed. “I’m afraid the minds of the various members are on higher things.”

  Sao’s eyebrows rose. “Higher things than the death of one of their colleagues?”

  “You said it yourself. When the mystery of life after death is solved—as it was within the Duality several centuries ago—it’s hard to take even a murder as seriously as it might have been once upon a time.”

  “I can’t help feeling that this isn’t really the point. Perhaps it’s my old-fashioned human sensibilities.”

  “To be honest, Vice Chancellor, I tend to agree with you. A-vokt might indeed be in a better place, consorting with the group soul of the Dualit
y. But I need A-vokt down here, in this life, to assist in a tricky diplomatic issue on Essack Four next month. We might be on what passes for leisure activities at present, but that does not mean serious business must be ignored. Besides, there is a general feeling that this has ruined the poetry confluence.”

  “Lowered the tone?”

  “Well, quite.”

  “So we are still required to investigate?”

  “It might not stop at A-vokt,” D-jiva pointed out. “Presumably you would rather not have members of the Lyceum slaughtered one by one, just in case someone has lost all sense of proportion.”

  But it seemed that the other members of the Duality did not feel the same way.

  “A-vokt’s death was most regrettable,” one of the female front-faced members informed Sao. “But one cannot dwell on unpleasantness. A-vokt is even now partaking of the wisdom of the group soul after his sojourn in this incarnation.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And there is work to be done.” With a firm smile, the female rose and glided before Sao to the door, which she held open for him. The rest of the Duality would, she said, be leaving in the morning.

  Sao felt unable to give up. Requesting the proctors’ records, he watched the banquet recording once again, and as he did so, the conversation with Moynec came to mind.

  The hind-face of the Duality sees the past, only by a few seconds; the fore-face glimpses the future, and the two are merged into a kind of present. What if something had interfered with this process, so that A-vokt had seen the moss as it would be in a few seconds’ time, safe? Remembering the light he had glimpsed, Sao left the study and went to the gallery of the banqueting hall. He was sure that the proctors had done their best, but he had to check for himself.

  It was late and the Lyceum was quiet. The only sound was the soft rustle of Sao’s robes, hissing against the stone floor as he walked. Beyond the columns, and the windows, the desert was still beneath the smallest of the moons: Sao felt as though both of them were looking back at him, the moon a hard chilly eye, the desert itself a presence.