All The Myriad Ways

by Larry Niven

  "Whatever that is," said Hap. "it can't hurt me. No magic can affect me while I carry Glirendree."

  "True enough," said the Warlock. "The disc will lose its force in a minute anyway. In the meantime, I know a secret that I would like to tell, one I could never tell to a friend."

  Hap raised Glirendree above his head and. two-handed, swung it down on the disc. The sword stopped jarringly at the disc's rim.

  "It's protecting you," said the Warlock. "If Glirendree hit the rim now, the recoil would knock you clear down to the village. Can't you hear the hum?"

  Hap heard the whine as the disc cut the air. The tone was going up and up the scale.

  "You're stalling," he said.

  "That's true. So? Can it hurt you?"

  "No. You were saying you knew a secret." Hap braced himself, sword raised, on one side of the disc, which now glowed red at the edge.

  "I've wanted to tell someone for such a long time. A hundred and fifty years. Even Sharla doesn't know." The Warlock still stood ready to run if the swordsman should come after him. "I'd learned a little magic in those days, not much compared to what I know now, but big, showy stuff. Castles floating in the air. Dragons with golden scales. Armies turned to stone, or wiped out by lightning, instead of simple death spells. Stuff like that takes a lot of power, you know?"

  "I've heard of such things."

  "I did it all the time, for myself, for friends, for whoever happened to be king, or whomever I happened to be in love with. And I found that after I'd been settled for a while, the power would leave me. I'd have to move elsewhere to get it back."

  The copper disc glowed bright orange with the heat of its spin. It should have fragmented, or melted, long ago.

  "Then there are the dead places, the places where a warlock dares not go. Places where magic doesn't work. They tend to be rural areas, farmlands and sheep ranges, but you can find the old cities, the castles built to float which now lie tilted on their sides, the unnaturally aged bones of dragons, like huge lizards from another age.

  "So I started wondering."

  Hap stepped back a bit from the heat of the disc. It glowed pure white now, and it was like a sun brought to earth. Through the glare Hap had lost sight of the Warlock.

  "So I built a disc like this one and set it spinning. Just a simple kinetic sorcery, but with a constant acceleration and no limit point. You know what mana is?"

  "What's happening to your voice?"

  "Mana is the name we give to the power behind magic." The Warlock's voice had gone weak and high.

  A horrible suspicion came to Hap. The Warlock had slipped down the hill, leaving his voice behind! Hap trotted around the disc, shading his eyes from its heat.

  An old man sat on the other side of the disc. His arthritic fingers, half-crippled with swollen joints, played with a rune-inscribed knife. "What I found out -oh, there you are. Well, it's too late now."

  Hap raised his sword, and his sword changed.

  It was a massive red demon, horned and hooved, and its teeth were in Map's right hand. It paused, deliberately, for the few seconds it took Hap to realize what had happened and to try to jerk away. Then it bit down, and the swordsman's hand was off at the wrist.

  The demon reached out, slowly enough, but Hap in his surprise was unable to move. He felt the taloned fingers close his windpipe.

  He felt the strength leak out of the taloned hand, and he saw surprise and dismay spread across the demon's face.

  The disc exploded. All at once and nothing first, it disintegrated into a flat cloud of metallic particles and was gone, flashing away as so much meteorite dust. The light was, as lightning striking at one's feet. The sound was its thunder. The smell was vaporized copper.

  The demon faded, as a chameleon fades against its background. Fading, the demon slumped to the ground in slow motion, and faded further, and was gone. When Hap reached out with his foot, he touched only dirt.

  Behind Hap was a trench of burnt earth.

  The spring had stopped. The rocky bottom of the stream was drying in the sun.

  The Warlock's cavern had collapsed. The furnishings of the Warlock's mansion had gone crashing down into that vast pit, but the mansion itself was gone without trace.

  Hap clutched his messily severed wrist, and he said, "But what happened?"

  "Mana," the Warlock mumbled. He spat out a complete set of blackened teeth. "Mana. What I discovered was that the power behind magic is a natural resource, like the fertility of the soil. When you use it up, it's gone."

  "But-"

  "Can you see why I kept it a secret? One day all the wide world's mana will be used up. No more mana, no more magic. Do you know that Atlantis is tec-tonically unstable? Succeeding sorcerer-kings renew the spells each generation to keep the whole continent from sliding into the sea. What happens when the spells don't work any more? They couldn't possibly evacuate the whole continent in time. Kinder not to let them know."

  "But...that disc."

  The Warlock grinned with his empty mouth and ran his hands through snowy hair. All the hair came off in his fingers, leaving his scalp bare and mottled. "Senility is like being drunk. The disc? I told you. A kinetic sorcery with no upper limit. The disc keeps accelerating until all the mana in the locality has been used up."

  Hap moved a step forward. Shock had drained half his strength. His foot came down jarringly, as if all the spring were out of his muscles.

  "You tried to kill me."

  The Warlock nodded. "I figured if the disc didn't explode and kill you while you were trying to go around it, Glirendree would strangle you when the constraint wore off. What are you complaining about? It cost you a hand, but you're free of Glirendree."

  Hap took another step, and another. His hand was beginning to hurt, and the pain gave him strength. "Old man," he said thickly. "Two hundred years old. I can break your neck with the hand you left me. And I will."

  The Warlock raised the inscribed knife.

  "That won't work. No more magic." Hap slapped the Warlock's hand away and took the Warlock by his bony throat.

  The Warlock's hand brushed easily aside, and came back, and up. Hap wrapped his arms around his belly and backed away with his eyes and mouth wide open. He sat down hard.

  "A knife always works," said the Warlock.

  "Oh," said Hap.

  "I worked the metal myself, with ordinary blacksmith's tools, so the knife wouldn't crumble when the magic was gone. The runes aren't magic.

  They only say-"

  "Oh," said Hap. "Oh." He toppled sideways.

  The Warlock lowered himself onto his back. He held the knife up and read the markings, in a language only the Brotherhood remembered.

  AND THIS, TOO, SHALL PASS AWAY. It was a very old platitude, even then.

  He dropped his arm back and lay looking at the sky.

  Presently the blue was blotted by a shadow.

  "I told you to get out of here," he whispered.

  "You should have known better. What's happened to you?"

  "No more youth spells. I knew I'd have to do it when the prognostics spell showed blank." He drew a ragged breath. "It was worth it. I killed Glirendree."

  "Playing hero, at your age! What can I do? How can I help?"

  "Get me down the hill before my heart stops. I never told you my true age-"

  "I knew. The whole village knows." She pulled him to sitting position, pulled one of his arms around her neck. It felt dead. She shuddered, but she wrapped her own arm around his waist and gathered herself for the effort. "You're so thin! Come on, love. We're going to stand up." She took most of his weight onto her, and they stood up.

  "Go slow'. I can hear my heart trying to take off."

  "How far do we have to go?"

  "Just to the foot of the hill, I think. Then the spells will work again, and we can rest." He stumbled. "I'm going blind," he said.

  "It's a smooth path, and all downhill."

  "That's why I picked this place. I knew
I'd have to use the disc someday. You can't throw away knowledge. Always the time comes when you use it, because you have to, because it's there."

  "You've changed so. So-so ugly. And you smell."

  The pulse fluttered in his neck, like a hummingbird's wings, "Maybe you won't want me, after seeing me like this."

  "You can change back, can't you?"

  "Sure. I can change to anything you like. What color eyes do you want?"

  "Ill be like this myself someday," she said. Her voice held cool horror. And it was fading; he was going deaf.

  "I'll teach you the proper spells, when you're ready. They're dangerous. Blackly dangerous."

  She was silent for a time. Then: "What color were his eyes? You know, Belhap Sattlestone whatever."

  "Forget it," said the Warlock, with a touch of pique.

  And suddenly his sight was back.

  But not forever, thought the Warlock as they stumbled through the sudden daylight. When the mana runs out, I'll go like a blown candle flame, and civilization will follow. No more magic, no more magic-based industries. Then the whole world will be barbarian until men learn a new way to coerce nature, and the swordsmen, the damned stupid swordsmen, will win after all.

  UNFINISHED STORY # 1

  As he left the blazing summer heat outside the Warlock's cave, the visiting sorcerer sighed with pleasure. "Warlock, how can you keep the place so cool? The manna in this region has decreased to the point where magic is nearly impossible."

  The Warlock smiled-and so did the unnoticeable young man who was sorting the Warlock's parchments in a corner of the cave. The Warlock said, "I used a very small demon, Harlaz. He was generated by a simple, trivial spell. His intelligence is low-fortunately, for his task is a dull one. He sits at the entrance to this cave and prevents the fast-moving molecules of air from entering and the slow-moving molecules from leaving. The rest he lets pass. Thus the cave remains cool."

  "That's marvelous, Warlock! I suppose the process can be reversed in winter?"

  "Of course."

  "Ingenious."

  "Oh, I didn't think of it," the Warlock said hastily. "Have you met my clerk? It was his idea." The Warlock raised his voice. "Oh, Maxwell

  UNFINISHED STORY # 2

  There are some things Man was not meant to know.

  Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex

  He's faster than a speeding bullet. He's more powerful than a locomotive. He's able to leap tall buildings at a single bound. Why can't he get a girl?

  At the ripe old age of thirty-one (*Superman first appeared in Action Comics, June 1938*), Kal-El (alias Superman, alias Clark Kent) is still unmarried. Almost certainly he is still a virgin. This is a serious matter. The species itself is in danger!

  An unwed Superman is a mobile Superman. Thus it has been alleged that those who chronicle the Man of Steel's adventures are responsible for his condition. But the cartoonists are not to blame. Nor is Superman handicapped by psychological problems.

  Granted that the poor oaf is not entirely sane. How could he be? He is an orphan, a refugee, and an alien. His homeland no longer exists in any form, save for gigatons upon gigatons of dangerous, prettily colored rocks.

  As a child and young adult, Kal-El must have been hard put to find an adequate father figure. What human could control his antisocial behavior? What human would dare try to punish him? His actual, highly social behavior during this period indicates an inhuman self-restraint.

  What wonder if Superman drifted gradually into schizophrenia? Torn between his human and kryptonian identities, he chose to be both, keeping his split personalities rigidly separate. A psychotic desperation is evident in his defense of his "secret identity."

  But Superman's sex problems are strictly physiological, and quite real.

  The purpose of this article is to point out some medical drawbacks to being a kryptonian among human beings, and to suggest possible solutions. The kryptonian humanoid must not be allowed to go the way of the pterodactyl and the passenger pigeon.

  I

  What turns on a kryptonian?

  Superman is an alien, an extraterrestrial. His humanoid frame is doubtless the result of parallel evolution, as the marsupials of Australia resemble their mammalian counterparts. A specific niche in the ecology calls for a certain shape, a certain size, certain capabilities, certain eating habits.

  Be not deceived by appearances. Superman is no relative to homo sapiens.

  What arouses Kal-El's mating urge? Did kryptonian women carry some subtle mating cue at appropriate times of the year? Whatever it is, Lois Lane probably didn't have it. We may speculate that she smells wrong, less like a kryptonian woman than like a terrestrial monkey. A mating between Superman and Lois Lane would feel like sodomy-and would be, or course, by church and common law.

  II

  Assume a mating between Superman and a human woman designated LL for convenience. Either Superman has gone completely schizo and believes himself to be Clark Kent; or he knows what he's doing, but no longer gives a damn.

  Thirty-one years is a long time. For Superman it has been even longer. He has X-ray vision; he knows just what he's missing. (*One should not think of Superman as a Peeping Tom. A biological ability must be used. As a child Superman may never have known that things had surfaces, until he learned to suppress his X-ray vision. If millions of people tend shamelessly to wear clothing with no lead in the weave, that is hardly Superman's fault.*)

  The problem is this. Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during sexual intercourse show that orgasm resembles "a kind of pleasurable epileptic attack." One loses control over one's muscles.

  Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened concrete, accidentally. What would he do to the woman in his arms during what amounts to an epileptic fit?

  III

  Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge to achieve greater and greater penetration. Remember also that we are dealing with kryptonian muscles.

  Superman would literally crush LL's body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout.

  IV

  Lastly, he'd blow off the top of her head. Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all other forms of terrestrial life. It would be unreasonable to assume otherwise for a kryptonian. But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El's semen would emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet. (*One can imagine that the Kent home in Smallville was riddled with holes during Superboy's puberty. And why did Lana Lang never notice that?*)

  In view of the foregoing, normal sex is impossible between LL and Superman.

  Artificial insemination may give us better results.

  V

  First we must collect the semen. The globules will emerge at transsonic speeds. Superman must first ejaculate, then fly frantically after the stuff to catch it in a test tube. We assume that he is on the Moon, both for privacy and to prevent the semen from exploding into vapor on hitting the air at such speeds.

  He can catch the semen, of course, before it evaporates in vacuum. He's faster than a speeding bullet.

  But can he keep it? All known forms of kryptonian life have superpowers. The same must hold true of living kryptonian sperm. We may reasonably assume that kryptonian sperm are vulnerable only to starvation and to green kryptonite; that they can travel with equal ease through water, air, vacuum, glass, brick, boiling steel, solid steel, liquid helium, or the core of a star; and that they are capable of translight velocities.

  What kind of a test tube will hold such beasties? Kryptonian sperm and their unusual powers will give us further trouble. For the moment we will assume (because we must) that they tend to stay in the seminal fluid, which tends to stay in a simple glass tube. Thus Superman and LL can perform artificial insemination. At least there will be another generation of kryptonians.

  Or will there?

  VI

  A
ripened but unfertilized egg leaves LL's ovary, begins its voyage down her Fallopian tube.

  Some time later, tens of millions of sperm, released from a test tube, begin their own voyage up LL's Fallopian tube. The magic moment approaches...

  Can human breed with kryptonian? Do we even use the same genetic code? On the face of it, LL could more easily breed with an ear of corn than with Kal-El. But coincidence does happen. If the genes match...

  One sperm arrives before the others. It penetrates the egg, forms a lump on its surface, the cell wall now thickens to prevent other sperm from entering. Within the now-fertilized egg, changes take place...

  And ten million kryptonian sperm arrive slightly late.

  Were they human sperm, they would be out of luck. But these tiny blind things are more powerful than a locomotive. A thickened cell wall won't stop them. They will all enter the egg, obliterating it entirely in an orgy of microscopic gang rape. So much for artificial insemination.

  But LL's problems are just beginning.

  VII

  Within her body there are still tens of millions of frustrated kryptonian sperm. The single egg is now too diffuse to be a target. The sperm scatter.

  They scatter without regard to what is in their path. They leave curved channels, microscopically small. Presently all will have found their way to the open air.

  That leaves LL with several million microscopic perforations all leading deep into her abdomen. Most of the channels will intersect one or more loops of intestine.

  Peritonitis is inevitable. LL becomes desperately ill.

  Meanwhile, tens of millions of sperm swarm in the air over Metropolis.