Watson, Ian - Black Current 03

by The Book Of Being (v1. 1)

  Concentrate!

  One tapestry takes on hue and texture. The rooftops of up-and- down Verrino. Plus river. Here's a tapestry such as poor dead Capsi might have woven high atop the Spire, had he crafted panoramas with needle and silk instead of pen and ink.

  Sunshine shimmers on wet roofs; rain must have showered recently. Sunlight also sparkles on the river, showing how it flows. Clouds shadow-dapple the riverscape and shore. Their shadows slowly drift across the fabric like grey bruises.

  An inky ribbon swims into sight from the south. It speeds along the midstream. Suddenly it ripples free of the river. Rising, it flaps bannerlike upward towards you.

  The Worm's ugly head dwarfs buildings. Its body eclipses the whole river. But it doesn't dwarf you. Framed within the tapestry, the Worm is a huge miniature.

  The head wavers. It quests about. You know you can't play hide- and-seek with the Worm the way you could to escape the torture- foe. But maybe you can fool it.

  The Worm's head pops right out of the tapestry.

  Gotcha! My, that was quick work, getting yourself killed so soon. Glad you saw sense. Well done, Yaleen.

  Did you say quick? I was pressed to death for a year and a day!

  Nonsense! You and I were chatting, oh, not an hour ago. So what happened?

  You know very well.

  Don't!

  So take a look. Who's the master of ten thousand deaths? You are! Try another one on for size.

  Um, I'm trying. . . . Can't quite seem to find. . . . Odd! Something's clouding it. In fact, you seem a bit odd yourself—as though you aren't all there.

  (Do you hear a footfall in one of the dark corridors of your galleon?)

  Damn it, Worm! Credence tripped Mardoluc. She threw the fat bugger. And he squashed me to death ever so slowly.

  I’m really cut up to hear that.

  Hypocrite, you arranged it! You used Credence the way you used her against Marcialla that other time. That's why you scrammed in such haste—to get busy burrowing in her brain, urging and prompting.

  Gosh, Yaleen, but you re my friend.

  So you'd do anything to ensure the pleasure of my company, including crushing me to death?

  Gosh, I'm sorry. If only you'd taken my advice.

  Hmph!

  Please don't be bitter.

  Bitter? Why should I be bitter? Off on my travels, aren't I? So let the shapes of power dance! Let's see how I'm going to find the worms of other worlds. Oh, do get on with it!

  You're in such a rush, all of a sudden. Something's wrong.

  (Hidden cabins, hidden tapestries, hidey holes, alternatives . . . and footsteps, creeping too close for comfort.)

  Maybe that's because I'm the wrong shape. Such as: flat as a pancake? And who was whining about time, not so long ago? Just a few weeks left till the end of the world, nag, nag!

  (The footsteps pause.) That's possible, Yaleen.

  I'll say! The Godmind'll be mindbuming everyone before you can sing out "Jawgee Pawgee made ’em cry". Oh, it’ll clap the telescope of time to its eye. It'll spy out the key to existence in a trice. And zap you with it. So let's get busy, hey?

  (Sound of footsteps retreating in panic.)

  Very well. Pay attention. Last time, you followed the psylink back to Eeden and became a cherub. This time I'll give you an extra shove. What s more, I'll armour your Ka against being reborn. Assuming that I've got it right you 'll swing around

  Earth and fly off along another psylink. You 'll follow a psylink that’s ravelled or tainted to a world where there’s a worm in residence. . . .

  (Shapes of power begin feeding you your sailing orders, setting the canvas of your &z-ship. The tapestry has vanished.)

  ... You won’t be reborn. You ’ll simply share people's heads, the way you did with that heartwood porter and that eelwife.

  How do you know about them?

  I’ve been reading your record while we talked. Mind you, your record's strangely patchy. Can't figure out why. . . .

  (Faint tread of an intruder once again?)

  Don’t bother! What happens then?

  I'll be keeping a tighter rein on you. Once you've contacted another worm and wised it up to the situation I'll yank you straight back here—thus providing a direct link with my new ally—then I'll pump you outward again to hook another worm.

  (The shapes of power continue priming you whether you pay attention or not.)

  It'll just be two or three worlds—against hundreds!

  What's up with you? One moment you 're keen as mustard. The next, you 're pussyfooting.

  What's wrong is that I haven't any choice in the matter!

  (And you need choice. Lots of choice. Many cabins, many tapestries, many alternatives! Last time when you were in Ka-space on your way back home you saw how choices could be made. How a raven could be a writing desk. Yet you chose to be a baby girl in Pecawar, marking time and repeating yourself. Ah, but then you weren't mad—and many!)

  All in a good cause, Yaleen!

  If you say so.

  That’s my girl!

  (The shapes of power fade. . . . )

  Hang on! What about afterwards? When the great victory is won; when I'm back here for good?

  Afterwards, welcome to the Ka-store. Where you can relive any life you choose.

  Relive—aye, and not change a single detail.

  You'd rather be alive again? Hmm. Do you suppose your mother might be carrying Petrovy's child?

  No thanks! I've no wish to be anyone s little baby again.

  You are hard to please.

  What about all the loose ends I’ve left behind? What about Tam, stranded in Pecawar? What about the loose end of his arm? What about you—stopped short at Aladalia? What about men never being able to sail again? What about—?

  You can't be responsible for everything.

  (Why not, if there are enough of you?)

  That's Godmind megalomania, Yaleen. Are you sure you're quite in your right mind?

  (Footfall on a companion way. . . .)

  (Right mind, port mind; south mind, north mind. Aft mind, for'ard mind, 'tween-decks mind.)

  I feel super. Never better. I’ll settle for the Ka-store. Let’s get on with the job. Right!

  This time, no gentle pat on the back sends you zipping through Ka-space. You're picked up and hurled through the storm-front, through the blue void. Surely the Worm must have noticed that it was heaving not a cockle-shell but an argosy? No. The weight of a Ka stays the same: zero. Onward your Ka-ship sails, through a nothingness simmering with potential. . . .

  If you were many, would you see better? That's what you wondered once before.

  That's the Godmind's project: to set fire to minds on a hundred worlds, to make a many-fold Ka-lens—and in that moment to try to master time, and Being.

  The void bubbles. The void breathes.

  You once felt that you were on the brink of a transformation. Then the Worm yanked you home. You chickened out.

  The void dreams the universe. But the void is unconscious. The universe has consciousness, but it can't control the breath of Being. A strong force, the inertia of normality, rules the universe. So the universe always chooses the same state as before. It sustains itself; limits itself.

  In Ka-space, the weak force rules. The force of choice. Yet no one chooses.

  It's said in old myths that wizards could change men into toads, stones into bread. Those wizards must have tapped the weak force. Never for long, always on a tiny scale—because they lived in a universe ruled by the strong force.

  The universe is dreamed by the void. It is made out of . . . grains of choice. Grains of virtual existence.

  (Yes, now you're beginning to see.)

  These basic grains are . . . electons. They elect their state of being.

  Now look closer. Electons are really tiny dots, consisting of a circle of Ka-space rolled up compactly. Forever they unroll back into the void. Forever other bits of void roll up to replace them
exactly. Roll up, roll up! Thanks to the pressure of public opinion in the neighbourhood, the new electons choose to be just the same as the old ones.

  All these electons roll-up compactly in the same direction. Thus time flows in one direction, in the universe. In A^-space the electons aren't rolled up. So there in the never-ever all time is one, and timeless.

  A mind, a Ka, must be a mesh of electons which are only partly rolled-up. Thus minds delve into time-past, into memory. Minds resist the flow of time.

  That must be why old folk say that time speeds up as you grow older. The more you know and remember, the more your Ka resists. A fish washed along by a stream hardly seems—from the fish's point of view—to be moving at all. A fish swimming against the stream sees the water rush by on all sides. . . .

  Each death, each disappearance into ^Ta-space, removes a fraction of resistance. The forces balance again quickly. New Kas come into existence.

  What sort of shock would the death of almost all the minds in the galaxy deal to reality?

  Enough to cause a lurch, a melting, a possible re-ordering of things?

  Enough to bring about mastery of time—and mastery of Being— locally, for a few crucial moments?

  The Godmind must think so.

  Meanwhile your ship of Ka-space sails the void.

  Could it explore many routes at once? Routes which would be real for a while; and then, not real? Many routes—which would later collapse into the one-and-only?

  En route from Earth's Moon, once upon a time, the void bubbled and almost trapped you. You leapt out of that trap, into Narya's new-born body. Now you can escape any trap by shifting cabins within your many-chambered A«-ship.

  Find the place where that happened before!

  Though it isn't one place. It's everywhere, anywhere.

  Summon up a tapestry! And shift!

  Yaleen! (A distraught cry in the distance.)

  You goofed, Worm!

  Summon another! Shift again.

  Suddenly you're in a body. As before it isn't yours to operate; you're only along for the ride . . .

  . . . aboard a boat! Spray flies blindingly. Sails boom and clap. The deck pitches and rears. Through the yowling squall voices scream:

  "Get to the lee of Rokka!"

  "No, outrun! If them round north, them'll cut us!"

  "Us could double."

  "Into this? You're mad. Outrun, I say!"

  The mainmast creaks and groans as it leans this way, that way. Halyards crackle like whips. Figures in leathern cloaks haul themselves along the handrails.

  And you? You're hunched in a wooden cage. One of your ankles is shackled with rusty iron to a bar. You're barefoot. Your tom linen gown is sodden. The cage is roped to belaying cleats, yet it still lurches to and fro on the slippery planking.

  More figures loom. "It's she as them want. Toss she overboard, cage an' all!"

  "Naw. Them want we too."

  "Them might drop sails, try an' pick she up."

  "Cage 'ud break in that swell. Them never see."

  "God's mind! Try it, man!"

  "Naw. Soon be in clean water. Just think how wor vicars shall smile when us turn up with a blackmind infanta. En't been a good torment on Soltrey since last all-eclipse. Them shall forgive us wor fines, eh?"

  Bloody damn. You've been dumped in deep dung. This must be the waterworld of islands, all right, where the Godmind's good folk struggle against an evil worm. And no doubt it was predictable that you'd end up sharing minds with someone belonging to worm territory. Did she have to be a prisoner, caged, in the teeth of a storm, bound for torment?

  Probably. Probably that put the worm uppermost in her mind. Probably her mind was naked to terror and desperate hope.

  You're watching through her eyes. You're hearing through her ears. At least you aren't feeling the sting of the spray or the soak of her clothes.

  So if she is tossed overboard, you personally won't have to endure choking. Or if she's delivered into the hands of their "vicars" you yourself won't have to be cooked alive, or stretched, or whatever's planned. Presumably.

  Why complain? Quite the home from home, all things considered! Here's a boat, right? (Though on what wild wide water, in what vile weather!) Here are more sodding swinish Sons, or the local equivalent.

  Hey, men are sailing this vessel. Men.

  Don't assume that everything's the same!

  Make contact with your hostess. Find out what's what.

  Hullo there.

  Sweet Lordevil! Tis you! Save your servant! Oh Lordevil, you've come.

  Sorry, but I'm not what 's-his-name. My name s Yaleen. Is Lord of Evil what you call your worm?

  Worm? What's this?

  Is that what you call your sea-worm? Your black current?

  Lordevil, don't mock when I need you so.

  Hmm, this’ll take a bit of explaining. I’m Yaleen, right? What's your name?

  You know me, Lordevil!

  I don't—honest. I'm just visiting. But I do have an urgent message for Lordevil, if Lordevil's who I think it is.

  My black name's known only to you, Lordevil! Why do you not know it? Are you ’rasing me early, before the pains? Please call me by my black name.

  Sorry, I don't know what a black name is. How about telling me your, urn, white name?

  Tisn't my blame they took me!

  Of course not. They probably wanted lessons in elocution. Look, let's start again?

  A wave breaks from starboard and sloshes right through the cage, battering it about. The ropes wrench but they hold.

  Take me, Lordevil! Set me free! Or begging your pardon, it shall be too late. Turmoil's easing.

  You could have fooled me.

  No! Tisn 't even tempest, this. Sky s breaking clear.

  She could be right. There's a definite distinction between sea and sky ahead.

  There's still the last wave, Lord! Tis skerry moil, this. There shall be the Mountain, yet.

  If the storm's easing, your friends might catch us. They 're chasing, right?

  They shall quit at the edge of empty sea! You know that! And if they do ovei"haul before and these vicars' lice barter me, in their eyes mine's the blame; though it shan't cost my skin flayed cruel on Soltrey, only my having to be .. . but you know.

  I keep telling you I don

  You shall make me tell, still hoping for your help?

  Yes, tell.

  Why, I shall be anyone's bugger-butt, shan't I be?

  Sounds disgusting. Say no more. Er, just how do you expect me to help? If I'm Lordevil, what form do I take on this planet?

  You ask that? You can't be my Lord! You 're personating!

  I did just tell you my name s Yaleen, not Lordevil.

  You 're from the vicars' Godmind!

  I'm bloody not. I’m from another planet. I'm waging war on the Godmind—and I want an alliance with your Lordevil!

  Tis coming.

  Lordevil's coming?

  The Mountain comes!

  As my hostess stares between the bars, the boat leans over and slides downhill into a sea-valley. A hill of water looms. Mountains on this world can't be enormous—not a patch on the Far Precipices —but the onrushing mass is still noteworthy.

  " 'Ware! 'Ware tall water!"

  Sailors in their leathern cloaks cling tight to any handyhold; but your hostess hurls herself wildly from side to side, adding impetus to the slitherings of the cage. The mighty wave heaves the boat up high, askew. The spray-whipped cage slews violently. Tethers wrench at wooden bars. One bar snaps jaggedly. Rope snakes away. Cage spins, ripping free of other tethers. It's loose! It skids down the slanting deck; crashes into a rail. More bars splinter. Rail lurches outward.

  Already the deck is righting itself; the cage hasn't managed to fall overboard. Your hostess wrestles frantically. Your shackle is free! You claw and heave, careless of any hurt. You ram your body through broken bars.

  " 'Ware, captive!"

  "Stop she!"


  As the boat swings back, the hull becomes a steep and soaking hillside. Boulders of water pile at the bottom, crashing and splitting. There's no waiting! You slide headfirst down the timbers into the avalanching sea.

  And under, and away.

  You're upside-down. Twisted about. Rocks of water crush and pummel. Spew you up, drag you down. If the whole boat rolled over on you, you'd hardly know the difference.

  Now and then your head breaks surface. You grab air. Air and water are so much churned together that hard knobs of sea bum in your sinuses, lodge in your lungs like stones.

  Amazingly a barrel bobs by. With hoops of rope attached. Your spray-blind eyes nearly miss it. Blink, blink to see! Your fingers catch hold. You clutch tight—and wretch liquid fire-stones from your chest and skull.

  A rope drags across the clashing waves. A high hull grinds by, darkly. But from which boat does this life-rope hang? Is it from Bark's, or Soltrey's?

  Abandon barrel. Catch rope. Hang on.

  Papa’s "Hea------- ve---------- ho!"

  Weight Slow voice, slurred and blurred.

  Will soon Gradually the crushing weight lessens.

  Abate Air can enter. Light, and life.

  The mountain rolls aside.