He realized that Shvarden was not a stupid man when the black-hat immediately drew the right conclusion and also a shocked breath. “There are secrets no irregular is allowed to know.”
“But you can know these secrets because you are of the Ideals, is that not right?” Imbry said.
“Of course, I am of the Congress of the Ideals. But more than that, I am one of the Called, an arbiter, a last of the last.”
“I do not understand ‘last of the last.’”
“It means that my conformation is within the last percentile of the last percentile.”
Imbry turned the figures over in his mind and understood. “Your deviation from the Golden Mean is less than one percent of one percent. You deviate by no more than one part in ten thousand from the perfect.”
He could see that the black-hat was impressed that an irregular could do arithmetic. Clearly, those who were not of the Ideals were not burdened by an excess of education. “So,” the fat man continued, “your purity prevents you from revealing arcane knowledge to one such as me?”
“I am glad you understand,” said the bound man. “I did not make these rules. They were laid down millennia ago by one much wiser than we.”
“The Blessed Haldeyn?”
“No, no. It was long after Albar had brought us here to Fulda, long after the First Ideal had left us. The rules were set by Dansk the Visionary, when he received the revelation concerning the Renewal.”
“Ah,” said Imbry, “which brings us back to what I want to ask about.”
But Shvarden closed his mouth. “You cannot know, and I cannot tell you.”
“Yes, yes, because you are of the Congress of the Ideals.” Imbry went to the table, which he had righted and on which he had replaced the supplies that had come with him from Pilger’s Corners. Among the objects was a sharp knife that he had used to cut up vegetables for the pot. He picked it up and felt its edge with his thumb, then turned back to Shvarden. “How many percentiles would you be in deviation from the Golden Mean,” he said, “if I removed one of your ears?”
The black-hat’s face went gray. “You wouldn’t.”
Imbry moved toward him. “Answer me,” he said. “Could you still be an arbiter with only one ear? Could you still hear the ‘Call’? Or would you have to run away and join the circus?”
Shvarden regarded him with horror, then his eyes fell to lock on the knife as Imbry angled the blade to let it catch the late afternoon sun that came through the open doorway. “No,” the black-hat said.
“Is that, ‘No, you couldn’t be an arbiter,’ or ‘No, please don’t cut off my ear’?”
Shvarden looked up at him, swallowed hard. “Both,” he said.
“You must understand,” the fat man said, “that I didn’t make these rules. I need to know things that none of the Ideals can tell me. The simplest solution is to turn you into an irregular like me. Then we can have a frank and productive talk.”
He reached with his free hand and took hold of the top of Shvarden’s right ear. The bound man shrieked and tried to pull away. But Imbry held fast and laid the edge of the blade against the cartilage-stiffened flesh.
“Wait!” cried Shvarden.
Imbry lifted the knife. “Have you just remembered some provision that allows you to ignore the rule during occasions of extreme need?”
“I believe,” said the bound man, his voice coming in gasps, “I have.”
“Excellent,” said Imbry. “I did not think you had it in you to make a good irregular. Why don’t you assume I don’t know anything and start with the most elementary facts. I will interrupt to ask questions if necessary.”
“One thing first,” Shvarden said. “You won’t tell anyone that I told you?”
“Not unless I’m tortured,” said Imbry. He affected an imitation of Decider Brosch’s sepulchral tones. “Begin.”
Theirs was a lengthy conversation. While Shvarden talked, Imbry made them a simple supper, though he ate his meal first and did not untie the other man until he was sure he had heard all he needed to hear.
The Idealist movement had originated on a secondary world whose name they had deliberately allowed to be forgotten. It was referred to only as the Pit. They had been driven from that world after seizing power in an armed revolt against a corrupt and venal regime. At first, the change had been welcomed by the populace, but once the Blessed Haldeyn had consolidated his rule and begun to put the precepts of Idealism into ruthless practice, social war had erupted. People who had not been willing to risk death, torture, and incarceration to remove the earlier cabal of thieves were forced to do so again when the near-naked Ideals pursued their philosophy to its logical ends of relocation and sterilization.
The remnants of the movement had fled to Fulda, a barren, almost abandoned little place that had once been the center of a short-lived mining boom. The planet had possessed a unique composite mineral, clitch, which had apparently been left scattered around the lowlands of the planet in huge lenses, giant versions of the small one Imbry had found. The clitch lenses had been set like dull jewels into the pale circles that were mainly associated with the globular ruins. All of the lenses had been broken up—clitch apparently shattered easily—and shipped off-world, where it was put to uses since forgotten.
When the clitch was gone, so went most of the world’s inhabitants. By the time the Ideals came thundering down from space, Fulda was home to only a sparse population of “misanthropes, mystics, and mooks,” as Shvarden phrased it, “who lacked the imagination or the means to go somewhere else.”
The Ideals had rounded up and deported most of them, dumping them haphazardly on nearby worlds. Those who managed to slip through the newcomers’ net or who had the temerity to return from exile were eventually found—it was not as if they could blend in with the majority—and, so Imbry gathered, were made examples of. The Blessed Haldeyn’s followers settled down to a simple life without many of the conveniences found in more varied societies. This was a matter of necessity rather than of philosophy: Fulda had lost all its manufacturing capabilities at the end of the clitch boom, and the Ideals did not care to trade with citizens of other worlds whose shapes and colorings departed widely from the Golden Mean.
So Fulda became a backward, inward-looking place, ruled by its corps of arbiters, who themselves were chosen for their lack of deviation from the standard Haldeyn had set. Inevitably, recessive genes produced occasional deviants, or uterine mishaps turned a would-be Idealist newborn into an irregular. For millennia, the response to these mishaps had been infant exposure.
But during those same millennia, something unusual had been happening among the Fuldans: they dreamed strange dreams, thrashing on their pallets, while odd characters passed before their inner eyes and they muttered words in no known language. The deepest study of the scriptures brought from the Pit could tell them nothing. The populace was distressed and the arbiters baffled—until a man who was taking his newborn irregular out into the desert that surrounded their oasis experienced a waking vision.
He had carried the infant the prescribed distance, far enough that its pitiful cries would not disturb the community’s rest. But, out of a misguided tenderness, he had swept the ground smooth of pebbles and projections that would have pressed into the doomed child’s flesh while it died of thirst. In sweeping too vigorously, he had torn the fingertips of his gloves, and when he lifted the baby from its swaddling cloth, its flesh accidentally came in contact with his own.
Immediately, he saw in the air before him a figure of five lines—two long parallels, crossed by three short strokes at an angle of forty-five degrees. At the same time, he heard a sibilant sound that he recognized from his own dreams and those of others who had reported them to arbiters. The man had rewrapped the infant and carried it back to the settlement where he told the community’s arbiter what had happened.
The College of Arbiters had investigated, subjecting the visionary, a farmer named Dansk, to various experiments. They also
collected a few subsequent irregular newborns and arranged to have them touched by Ideal volunteers. Some of the test subjects contaminated themselves for nothing; but a few saw visions like those of Dansk.
Many generations had now come and gone, and the College had long since concluded that the visions were attempts by the Blessed Haldeyn to make contact from Perfection. This was the place of the spirit in which the Blessed Founder was now occluded—a true Ideal could never, of course, simply expire—and where he would someday be joined by all Ideals who had lived in righteousness. Perfection was believed to be located in either the Fourth or Fifth Plane.
At first the Blessed Founder had tried to reach them by dreams, but the method had been deemed ineffective. But with Dansk a new avenue of investigation opened. The visionary had heard and seen a letter of the New Syllabary, as the arbiters had named the code of Perfection. The revelation had come through contact with the forbidden flesh of an irregular. It was a clear message from the Blessed Haldeyn. No more were the statistically defective to be killed at birth; instead, they must be allowed to live—though theirs would be a sequestered, segregated existence—so that contact could be made, under circumstances closely monitored by arbiters, and the new dispensation made plain.
The Colleges had determined that, through visions, the Blessed Founder was teaching the Ideals the actual language of Perfection. This was not only the sublime tongue that all Ideals would speak once they had crossed over. It was also a language of power that would import from the abstruse dimension where their Founder waited for them the means to burst through the membranes that separated the Planes.
A community was established at the hitherto unpopulated oasis of Nid in a remote part of the southern desert. There the first irregulars were raised by select arbiters until they reached adulthood and could begin to care for their own. Though “their own” would never include their own offspring—all irregulars were sterilized at the onset of puberty. But defective newborns were brought to the new town and handed over to be brought up as those before them were.
Idleness being almost as great a sin among the Ideal as irregularity, it was seen as necessary that the irregulars should have something useful to do. They could not, of course, engage in the agricultural or simple manufacturing pursuits that occupied the bulk of the Fuldan population. Anything they touched was unclean. But professional entertainers had always been regarded by the Ideals as lacking in true merit—the Blessed Haldeyn himself had accused them of “shillifying and laziness”—and so the irregulars took over the white-hat function.
In order to give as many Ideals as possible the opportunity to touch an irregular, under controlled conditions, the latter were formed into traveling troupes. Given tents, wagons, and barbarels, they progressed from town to town, the several different companies swapping routes from one “show season” to the next.
A troupe would set up its tent beside an Idealist community. In the evening, the adults would come and sit in chairs no irregular had touched. The players would come on stage, one at a time, to perform in some way, never daring to let their eyes meet those of the watchers. The arbiters would closely examine the crowd. When they saw subtle signs—known only to the black-hats—that a particular member of the audience had “attached” to a particular performer, they would take note. After the performance, the arbiters would bring the connected pair into contact with each other, as Imbry had witnessed in Pilger’s Corners.
Under a black-hat’s supervision, the chosen one would sit upon the stool provided. The irregular would approach and stand before the Idealist. At the arbiter’s signal, the latter would reach out and touch the former. Usually, nothing definitive came of the contact. The Idealist was taken to the tabernacle and cleansed.
Sometimes, though, at the moment of contact the seated Idealist would go rigid and moan, eyes glazed over as the chosen one’s vision turned inward. Then limbs might vibrate, mouths open and close spasmodically. Spontaneous sexual arousal was sometimes evident among the men. The arbiter would instruct the visionary in techniques that intensified his or her focus. If all went well, the chosen one would identify one, sometimes two, rarely three of the characters on the ceramic tablets, and would voice the phoneme that the indicated symbols represented.
The process had now been going on for more than a century. The arbiters had devoted intense scholarship to the mystery and had now identified seventeen consonants and four vowels, as well as eight symbols that, when combined with elements of the seventeen and four, appeared to modify their pronunciation. The meanings of nine other symbols were still indeterminate, but a breakthrough on one of them was considered imminent.
As Shvarden told it, the continuing revelation had now progressed beyond nouns and consonants. A handful of visionaries had reported groups of symbols together; arbiter scholars, at first skeptical, were now leaning toward the view that the chosen were hearing and seeing actual words in the tongue of Perfection. A message was being sent, and the faithful were confident that, through time and effort, they would receive it—and know a new joy.
“The Blessed Haldeyn speaks to us,” the black-hat said, his eyes grown large and luminous in the fading light that came through the hut’s door. “What wonders we shall soon comprehend.”
“It seems odd that he must first teach you an entirely new language,” said Imbry, “and in such a roundabout fashion.”
“The Truth of Perfection cannot be expressed in the base tongue we must speak here in the Commonplace,” the bound man said, and Imbry heard the capitalization of the Idealist term for the physical universe. “When we have mastered the tongue of Perfection, our thoughts will rise to a sublime plane. All shall be transformed.”
The fat man allowed the black-hat to contemplate the ineffable while he turned over what he had heard. The tale explained much that he had seen. Though not all, he realized. “But what of the First Eye? And the ‘Finder’?”
Shvarden descended from the high and airy place to which his thoughts had elevated him. His aspect grew troubled. “I should not discuss—” he began, then changed his view as Imbry issued a heavy sigh and reached for the knife. “You swear you will tell no one?” the black-hat said.
“What can an irregular swear by?” Imbry wondered.
Now it was Shvarden’s turn to sigh. “True, you come from the fetid cesspits and rank warrens of worlds like the Pit, and are therefore beyond all piety.” He rallied himself to hope. “Still, there must be something you hold sacred,” he said.
“I will swear,” Imbry said, “by Mindern. I hold him in the highest regard.”
“Some false idol?”
“Does it matter?”
“I suppose not.”
Imbry assumed a formal posture. “Then I swear by Mindern that I will tell no one anything of what you reveal to me.”
“I have no choice, in any case,” said the black-hat. “But know that what I have told you so far is widely known among the laity; what follows is known only to the few.”
“Then say it,” said Imbry. He was becoming hungry, and hunger fed impatience.
Shvarden spoke on, telling of how a new recurring dream had lately arisen among the Ideals. The vision was not of the New Syllabary per se, but of an object, a perfect lens of rarest clitch, housed in a ceramic box marked with the symbols of Perfection. It was to be found by an irregular, a figure of mystery and one who was well acquainted with death, and its finding would be attended by signs and wonders.
“Death and mystery precede him,” said Shvarden. “The Finder brings dire discord, but beyond the troubles awaits the Renewal.”
“And what is the Renewal?” Imbry said.
“I cannot say,” Shvarden said, then as Imbry took up the knife, “I mean I cannot say for sure. Our scholars have puzzled over the messages, but the consensus of the College is that the Blessed Founder is transmitting to us a phrase of power. It must be spoken by . . .”
Here Shvarden censored himself. Imbry took up the knife again. A
fter the blade touched an even more sensitive part of his anatomy, the arbiter shuddered and said, “After the Finder is revealed, another steps forward: the Speaker.”
“Who will, presumably, speak the ‘phrase of power.’”
“Yes.”
“Power to do what?” Imbry said.
That led to a digression from the arbiter. It was known, Shvarden said, that in some of the Planes certain words were more than mere symbols; they were engines of power, sometimes huge power. Spoken under the right circumstances, such phrases could accomplish wonders. “Even,” he said, “burst the membranes between the Planes themselves.”
Imbry held his face steady. He did not want to mock the young man and dry up this flow of information. “You believe that your leader is trying to open a way for you to join him in the Fourth or Fifth Plane?”
“We are almost certain of it.”
“And you believe that somehow he has drawn me to Fulda so that I might find the talisman that makes the exercise somehow possible?”
“It does seem unlikely,” Shvarden said, a look of wonder filling his eyes, “and yet it is the sheer unlikeliness of it all that compels me to believe it is true.”
Again, the young man’s gaze turned inward. “And now, now that the First Eye is found”—he looked up at Imbry—“now that the Finder has appeared, the controversy must end. The Reorientation—”
“Enough!” said a new voice, harsh and peremptory. “Disgusting! You prattle like this before a filthy odd-lot?”
Imbry turned, the knife in his hand. In the doorway of the hut stood a man who wore a brown hat marked with a trio of circles. On his face, almost a duplicate of Shvarden’s, was an expression of outrage, and in his hand was a tube of metal mounted on a wooden grip. With unmistakable intent, he aimed one end of it at Imbry.
The fat man dropped both the knife and his gaze and took a step backward and away from the bound man. “Investigator Breeth,” he said.
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