I don’t care much, because I was so enmeshed in it all by then that I don’t know what happened myself. The basic facts of the game have been documented. If you’ve played the game, you know that N’Rasia, as sumptuously drawn by Boris (he knocked a few years and a few pounds off her, but he got her right), has been upgraded to a major optional character. And of course her husband was part of the original story.
Boris did not see the tapes of N’Rasia—before or after he did the painting. So she’s as real as the story, however real you may finally judge that to be.
My shifting states of consciousness? That’s up to you. Draw your own conclusions. All I want to contend is that such shiftings back and forth are not inherently impossible once you admit that a port existed or had been called into existence at Grand Beach. If you breach Planck’s Wall with spiritual energies, almost anything can happen.
You want to know what I think? I think that ’Rasia and I linked up somehow in dreams or maybe her silent prayers and my dreams, as a parallel to the link in the Compaq 286 port. I don’t think she really leapt over Planck’s Wall.
Ranora, on the other hand … but that’s getting ahead of our story.
I cleaned my Powerscourt with cautious care, phoned my office, called Nat Sobel to tell him to negotiate for more money with Tor Books and also to call Larry Kirshbaum at Warner’s with the same ultimatum, and then, the decks cleared for action, unsuspended the game.
First stop was the small black-and-silver tent of Kaila. He was poring over an old vellumlike manuscript, taking notes, and writing what I thought was a poem on a sheet of modern paper. (These folks do not have word processors or TV and are not, in fact, a terribly literate society, though most of them can read if they have to. Communication, as I have said, rapid though its means were, was obscure to me and to the Lakeside team. Entertainment is mostly verbal: plays, storytelling, songs. Hence the importance of an occasional ilel or ilellike creature.)
“Do you like me, Lord Kaila?” Ranora burst into his tent, swirling. Her red-and-white promlike gown had thin straps, considerable cleavage, and a long flowing skirt.
“I always like you, Ranora,” he replied with his usual civility. “I think you look especially attractive in that gown. It is perhaps a bit revealing, on the other hand…”
“Oh, pooh!” She sat on the edge of one of his chairs. “You’re too young to be a prude.”
“I was thinking of the Lady B’Mella.” He closed his inkwell, knowing that his peace was to be disturbed as long as the ilel chose to disturb it.
“I’m not competing with her.” His fears were dismissed with an airy wave of a hand. “Anyway,” she jumped up and spun off the skirt, “this is for dancing. Is it too revealing?”
The question, asked of the skintight leotard which she was wearing under her skirt, permitted an affirmative answer only at risk of one’s life. Kaila, courteous, respectful, well-balanced, ducked the question.
“I am not certain, wise and gentle Ranora, that you are even properly invited to the dinner. However, I know there was no mention of you entertaining.”
“Ilels go where they want and do what they want,” she grinned impishly, “wear what they want and entertain where they want. Read it all in your book. Anyway, my Master will insist that they let me play my pipe.”
“Then it shall be as you say. Though in truth, gifted Ranora, I can’t recall ever reading that an ilel performed uninvited on the Feast of the Two Moons.”
“Well, you haven’t read your old books carefully enough.” She flounced over to his bookcase, pulled down a volume almost as big as she was, flipped through the pages, and pushed the book under his nose. “See!”
He read it carefully, made a note on his pad, and agreed. “You continue to astonish me, ‘Nora, absolutely astonish me.”
“Pooh,” she said haughtily, but still flattered.
“The Meal of the Two Moons is very important,” he said, a little sententiously.
“I know that.” Then came the quick change of mood so characteristic of her age and sex. She bounded into a chair, curled up in a knot, rested her jaw (truly a Michele-like jaw) on her fist, and looked admiringly at her “minder.” “Explain it all to me again.”
He closed his volume with a sigh, but he was not at all displeased by his attractive audience. “Well, I suppose the best summary” (a fellow academic, I knew one when I saw one) “is that peace is like love. Both are highly desirable states which look easy and require great skill and discipline and practice to exercise properly.”
“Uh-huh.” Eyes open wide in respect. Betty Coed. I know her well too.
“Our warriors have been fighting so long and so furiously that they don’t know how to be peaceful. We pay respect to the idea that we have noble warriors only for self-defense. If it wasn’t for the wicked, evil, blasphemous, infidels on the other side…”
“Our cousins.”
“Of course. We need our warriors to defend us against them. And vice versa, of course. A purely defensive arrangement. But we train them from their earliest years to fight. They are not much good at anything else. They are convinced that their work is peace, but they are ready to fight at the slightest pretext. So they create wars, sincerely enough, in which they fight with extraordinary bravery and skill against equally brave and skillful people from the other side.”
“If there is no war?”
“We’d have to retrain them. Their courage and dedication could presumably be put to peaceful uses.” He gestured towards his bookcase. “It’s been done before. My ancestors were warriors and look at me.”
“An effete, effeminate coward.” She winked at him.
“When you wink at me that way, good ilel, you unman me utterly.”
“Pooh.” She giggled happily. “Go on with my lesson.”
“Sometimes the balance of conflict swings towards barbarism and war that involves everyone—farmers, workers, burghers, scholars. Then there is terrible violence and slaughter. One side or the other determines that it is not enough to stay even with the other but decides that total victory is possible and the land will be reunited under their rule. We are at a time when there are strong parties in both armies that believe in the obligation to total victory. So many noble leaders have been slain and must be avenged. Moreover, the priests are pushing for an all-out war because they say it is necessary for the good of the land. In their hearts they believe that the warriors will kill one other off…”
“And most everyone else too.”
“And then they can restore peace permanently and rule as the clergy once ruled long ago.”
“No more ilels.” She waved her arms in a grand, dismissive gesture. “No more scholars either.”
“The people don’t take this talk seriously and are not worried about being raped and enslaved and slaughtered. Some of us scholars are, and some of the politicians—Linco and Malvau on the other side for example.”
“And the Duke and Duchess…”
“Ah.” He smiled. “That’s where the ilel comes in, isn’t it? And appropriately. For they are different, aren’t they? Neither of them quite fits the pattern. The Lord Our God knows they are brave enough, but ’Rau is both too sensible and too much of a dreamer to like the endless violence. ’Ella? She’s harder to describe. As hot-tempered a woman warrior as you could imagine, yet…”
“Yet sweet and kind and good…” The stubborn little jaw went up sharply. “And beautiful and loyal and wonderful.”
“You see those qualities better than the rest of us, except for the beauty, which is obvious. She has lost two husbands. She is sick of the killing. She has … what I would call a certain sensitivity which warriors rarely possess, since we breed and train it out of them. They are not greatly different from the pattern, but sufficiently different so that they offer us some little hope.”
“You agree with me that they should marry?” In tones which meant heaven help him if he didn’t.
“It would perhaps help.” He sh
rugged his well-shaped shoulders. “Yet both of them, in truth, are ill equipped by the past for either love or peace. They would have to learn slowly and painfully and are quite capable of killing each other in the process…”
“The Lord Our God wouldn’t let that happen.”
“He’s let some bad things happen before. Moreover, neither of them has children—which is fine so long as they are able to produce a child. If they should mate and there is no heir, well, then the priests would make terrible trouble in the Lord Our God’s name.”
“Everyone wants peace…” she began.
“Certainly. The warriors by victory, the clergy by power, the politicians by subtle compromises, the scholars like me by wisdom, and an occasional ilel,” he smiled fondly at her, “by love.”
“Well, we need wisdom and compromise and love anyway.”
“That’s what tonight is all about, ‘Nora.”
“And you,” she bounded to her feet and wrapped herself in her formal skirt, “aren’t very hopeful.”
“The only thing which makes me hopeful is that the Lord Our God sent us as He did long ago an ilel.”
“The greatest ilel ever?” She swirled her skirt.
“At least.”
She scampered across the room, kissed his hand quickly, and then bounced out of the tent.
Kaila flipped up his window patch and watched her as she dashed madly across the meadow.
“I hope,” he glanced up at me, “you know what you’re doing.”
So did I.
8
The Port Opens Up
We were all winging it.
I didn’t send Ranora, and I had not the foggiest notion of what an ilel was supposed to do.
I want to emphasize that point. It’s one thing to be the Great Improviser when you’re playing with a full deck and know what all the cards are and who has them. It’s quite another to be improvising and model fitting with an undetermined part of the deck. It’s also one thing to be a storyteller when you have reasonable control of your characters, it’s quite another when most of them are out of control and have to be knocked into line by such gimmicks as kicks in the rear end, rocks falling into caves, and experimental cannons exploding.
As both improviser and storyteller, Nathan’s God Game put you at a disadvantage.
The theological issue, which I will raise but not try to answer, is whether that’s what it’s like to be God. In the grace/free will game, is grace always at a disadvantage till the last of the ninth anyway?
Think about it.
I had almost forgotten about the cannon so I instructed the machine, ACCESS CANNON.
Spelled it right that time, you so-and-so.
Sure enough, there they were back up in the mountains, in the melting snow, painfully putting the pieces back together again.
ZAP CANNON.
HOW?
OH, I DON’T KNOW. HOW ABOUT A SNOWSLIDE?
EXECUTING.
A cloud of snow appeared on the mountain above the reconstructed hut and slid towards it, accelerating as it came. The warriors ducked behind walls, like characters in a slapstick comedy. The snowslide swept over them, obliterating most of the hut.
Doggedly, Larry, Curly, and Moe climbed out of the snow and began to shovel it away. Nothing if not persistent.
ACCESS CARDINAL.
The Cardinal, the two witches, and the high priest from Lenrau’s crowd were hiding behind a great rock, bent over what looked like a large kettle.
Eating a missionary?
“This sauce,” the Cardinal said in his sweetest, most pious voice, “should restrain them. Poured over their fruit, it will taste sweet but turn their dispositions sour. The meeting will serve no useful purpose.”
“Maybe they will kill the ilel,” cackled the Mothers Superior.
“Possibly. If that happens, we will of course deny involvement.”
“Excellent,” said the other priest, the man whom I had dubbed “the Admiral,” because he seemed always to be making statements for the TV camera.
“Kill her! Kill her!”
Not my ‘Nora, no way.
ZAP POT.
ERROR. ERROR #39. NO MARIJUANA PERMITTED IN THIS WORLD. DEA ORDER. ERROR ERROR.
KETTLE, YOU IDJIT.
PREFERRED MODE ZAP KETTLE?
DEFAULT.
EXECUTING.
The Admiral, as clumsy as he was mouthy, leaned over to peer into the kettle, which was bubbling away enthusiastically. “I’ll stir the pot up a bit,” he announced.
Before anyone could stop him, he pushed a large ladle abruptly into the kettle and swept it around in a vigorous, military movement.
The kettle tipped dangerously in one direction. A Mother Superior tried to tilt it back. The Admiral swept the ladle around again.
The kettle then tipped the other way, hesitated on the brink, and began to sway back.
I pushed my REPEAT key.
The kettle resumed its sway, tilted beyond the point of no return, crashed with an earth-shaking rumble, and shattered into hundreds of pieces. The liquid darted in all directions, turning the ground around the broken pot brown.
The Cardinal sat down alongside the rock. “Too many witches,” he sobbed, “spoil the brew.”
Now it was time to deliver on my promise of the night before to N’Rasia, a promise about which I was very dubious.
The yard in front of Malvau’s pavilion was bedlam. As the one in charge of the physical preparations for the feast, he apparently felt that he had to organize and instruct all responsible parties, even though their culture seemed to be notably ahead of ours on organizational skills. He was in a vile mood, snapping at servants and family and staff members, and even at a remarkably calm B’Mella who stopped by to chat happily with her councilor and his wife.
“It will go well.” She smiled. “The Lord Our God wills it.”
“With my help,” ’Vau said irritably.
Both women laughed at him. He flushed angrily, and then, realizing without my help that their amusement was based on love, laughed with them.
After the Duchess had left, N’Rasia said timidly, “Noble Lord, I need more instructions about my role.”
“Look beautiful and be silent,” he snapped.
“I believe you mean that,” she snapped back.
“I do…”
CUT THAT OUT, I demanded.
“… not mean it.” He patted her rear end, to the shock and dismay of ’Rasia and all who were watching.
It was, as she had claimed, more than presentable.
“Malvau!” she exclaimed in horror.
“Excuse me, noble lady.” He was not at all sorry. “I am so preoccupied with my responsibilities, I tend to forget myself.”
She took a deep breath. “Perhaps we could walk briefly to the lake and you could explain to me again.”
He glanced at the sundial in the middle of the courtyard. “A few minutes, surely.”
I’m sure love was the farthest thing from his mind. So it always seems. When men want it women don’t, and when women want it men don’t.
I say this on the basis of others’ testimony, not personal experience.
So they walked towards the nearest lake, hand in hand once they slipped out of sight of the pavilion. It was really nothing more than an oversized pond, but private enough on a day when most people were already in their own homes getting roaring drunk.
“Actually,” he began, “we may be the only sober men and women in the land this evening. It has been agreed that we will drink lightly. That means that wit, wisdom, good conversation, and a few crucial agreements, contained in an exchange of nods and silences between our leaders, will be enough. The Lord Kaila and I have agreed in principle to the conclusions. He’s a splendid young man, by the way, even if a bit bookish and over-formal. We only need the right chemistry between Lenrau and B’Mella to accomplish our initial goals. That’s why your wit and charm are so important.”
He swatted her again;
this time she chuckled complacently. A time and a place for everything.
“He is not a degenerate?”
“Lenrau? No, of course not. You will be sitting on one side of him and the Lady on the other. I doubt that there is a man in the land who can resist your judicious mixture of charms.”
“The Lady wishes this?”
“It was her suggestion, as I have tried to tell you.”
“Are they planning just as carefully?” She snuggled close to him.
“At least as carefully.” His hand took permanent possession of her rear. “This is a critical time in our history. Fortunately both our leaders want peace, even if they don’t know how to achieve it.”
“What about the demon child?”
“Ranora? Don’t listen to the stupid priests. They envy her because she is clearly from the Lord Our God. She will be outrageous, of course. What else? When our leaders become deadly serious and reach for their weapons, she will blow her silly little pipe and they will make peace. I want you to be nice to her, ’Rasia.”
“As you wish. I really did not believe she is a demon. She’s like our daughters were at that age … only … only…”
“More so?”
“Much more so.” She put her arm tenderly around his waist. “Will they mate, ’Vau? Our leaders, I mean.”
He pondered that. “It is likely. Risky of course—Kaila and I agreed about that—but probably necessary. They are not well matched.”
“That can be overcome.”
He turned her around, so he could face her directly. “That is difficult but not unpleasant work. Pray the Lord Our God that they have time.”
IT’S YOUR IDEA, DUMMY, I told her. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
“We will not have time for an orgy tonight, will we?” she said bluntly.
“I fear the Feast of the Two Moons will be over before we can return to our pavilion.” He touched her face affectionately. “But when did we celebrate it with an orgy?”
What a dolt! He wasn’t receiving any of the signals. We’d have to provide a lot of hormones.
“Indeed never. But now it is different between us.”
“Thank the Lord Our God,” he agreed piously.
God Game Page 11