Alternate Realities

by C. J. Cherryh

  And more than these—the primary Others, midnight-robed, who stalked through the streets of Kierkegaard mostly by night, with their own purposes, in their separate reality. Herrin was almost trapped into staring, for they were a sight he had never seen; they avoided Camus. But he recovered himself and pretended he had not seen, which was the only courtesy that passed between human and ahnit. It was their modus vivendi, mutually practiced, separate realities, neither contaminating the other. Presumably the ahnit gained something in Kierkegaard, but a sane man did not speculate on something that was not human, not in aspect, not in manners, not in art or logic or in any other respect. They left humans alone. It would have better pleased humanity had the ahnit stayed out of human places altogether, but there had been ahnit on the lower course of the Camus obviously for a longer time than there had been humans, and it was a question of prior occupancy. Realities in Kierkegaard overlapped, perhaps, but a little schooling in the courtesies of the city made it possible to walk a street without remarking on the dark-robes. They had nothing at all to do with man, or man with them.

  V

  Master: What is man?

  Herrin: Man is irrelevant. My own possibilities are as infinite as the possibilities of all other beings.

  Herrin enjoyed Kierkegaard.

  “Living here,” breathed Keye Lynn, who was one of Herrin’s pleasant associations in the University, “living here is Art in itself. Imagine the effect. We’re shaping ten thousand years.”

  He thought of this, lying in Keye’s bed with Keye’s body delightfully filling his arms, and experienced a cold moment when he thought that Keye was an influence on him. From that moment on he abandoned trust of anyone, suspecting that Keye, who knew herself less talented than he (they were both artists, Keye in ethics, a more abstract field than his), meant to use her art to warp him from his absolute course. It set him to thinking much more widely, analyzing all his associations past and present for possible taint, suddenly aware that there were people whose motivation might be to use him, knowing his brilliance; that they might, robbed of their own hope of consciously warping the future—lacking the personal scope or talent for that—yet might seek that effect by using him, who did have such scope and talent.

  It set him back for a time. He lay staring at the ceiling in the determination to have that matter sorted out, and resumed his relations with Keye in a new understanding which he kept entirely to himself, that now that he was aware of the possibility, he could do that to others—seize them, warp them to suit himself, that he could sculpt more than stone.

  He could widen his effect on the future by being quite selective in his relationships with others at the University. He could gain vast power in many fields by seeking out talents of great acuity but less scope.

  Like Keye.

  He was grateful to her for that thought. Like Perrin, Keye did not understand him, simply because his reach was wider. Keye would see only a part of Reality, and yet she was brilliant in ethics.

  He sought others, became far more confident and outgoing than before.

  But the loneliness was there, which Keye could not fill. He experimented with others, who might, by providing him new situations, confront him with new ethics, but his own Reality still encompassed them all, and his own ethic belittled theirs.

  There remained Waden Jenks.

  VI

  Master: Does the end justify the means?

  Herrin: What is justice?

  “I should feel myself threatened,” Waden Jenks said to him. Waden was an acquaintance of Herrin’s twentieth year, when some of the graduates of the University were separated out and returned to provincial tasks, out in Camus and some of the remoter areas; or to preparatory work on the expedition which should set them on the way to planetary domination—but Herrin was not one of those so condemned. He was entering on the rin was not one of those so condemned. He was entering on the second phase of his University existence, not as instructor but as working artist. He had an apartment-studio in the University itself, and Keye was there as well, holding seminars in ethics, and Waden Jenks ... remained. “I’m obviously of moderate talent,” Waden proposed to Herrin over a beer in the Fellows’ Hall. “I’m obviously here because I’m Cade Jenks’s son, and it’s my father’s wish that I become First Citizen after him. I should properly feel threatened by all you brilliant students. No instructor would dare set me down; that’s why I’ve gone on and poor Equeth, for instance, has been shipped out.”

  Waden was drunk, but cheerful in his self-estimate.

  “Evidently you’re exercising a subtler talent,” Herrin judged. “Strength is a talent.”

  Waden chuckled. “So is flattery.”

  Herrin flushed. “By no means. I simply state a fact: strength and possession are primary talents, not necessarily creative but of great importance. If you were weak your father wouldn’t throw you into the den of so many predators, would he? Or if he had, you’d have been pulled one way or the other by one of us and swallowed alive. After three years others have left and Waden Jenks remains at moral liberty with all his former strength; ergo, he has not been swallowed or diverted. That evidences a talent sufficient for survival. What matter whether you get marks by skill or by intimidation? Intimidation is the manifestation of your talent.”

  “‘Not necessarily creative.’”

  “Perhaps your father intends, by thrusting you into this medium, to inspire you to creativity.”

  “You’re remarkable. I say that freely.” Waden leaned across the mug-circled table and jabbed his arm with a forefinger. “Do you know, Herrin, I am strong, stronger than my father, strong enough to say that and to know that he daren’t take exception to it. I am intelligent, more than he, and again, I can say that. Frankly, most of University is beneath my abilities. You know. I think you do. You know what it is to live with wings cramped, knowing that you’ll break all that’s around you if you really extend them. You have few friends, and you dominate them. I am the same. I always have been. There’s not an instructor you haven’t terrified with your talent, not a student here who doesn’t resent you—truth, even Keye—wbo doesn’t subconsciously recognize what you’re doing to him and yet find himself powerless to stop you. You’re the rock against which most of the University sea crashes. Truth.”

  “You’re talented, Waden Jenks, and you’re constantly deprecating your own abilities, which makes you a liar, a slave, or a coward.”

  “Which am I?”

  “Liar,” Herrin said with the arch of a brow. “Because subtlety is a part of your talent for control. You are yourself capable of flattery; you flatter me. And of being invisible as the invisibles themselves. You are hated, because you stay here and others don’t know what your talent is. You’re the one they’ve never devised a class to instruct, but you take the whole University for your classroom.”

  Waden smiled and sipped at his beer, gestured toward him with the mug and set it down between them. “It is. It was created by the First Citizen to be that, do you see?”

  “To gather sufficient talents together to provide a classroom for the heir to the State.”

  “Exactly so.”

  Herrin was thoroughly amazed; the possibilities ran at foundation level of all assumptions in the University. “By gathering the greatest minds and talents in the world in one place, under one set of instructors, under the eye of the First Citizen himself—and by the shaping of those talents—”

  “To shape the course of the world.”

  “And by observing and learning them, to know potential rivals—”

  Waden’s grin became wider and wider. “Most exactly. You don’t disappoint me, Herrin. I thought you would understand when your suspicions were jogged. I am delighted.”

  “And I am in danger.”

  “A key to successful manipulation is the dispensing of information. Had you stumbled on this thought unobserved, who knows what actions you might take? I am in potential danger. Hence this conversation. Do you feel t
hreatened?”

  Herrin sat back. “So you thought that I was on the verge of discovering this for myself.”

  “You have been steadily approaching that point, yes. I shall surmise, Herrin, that right now you’re more than threatened, you are offended.”

  “I reserve judgment.”

  “It’s an observed fact, is it not, that when adults want privacy and peace they dismiss the infants to the nursery, shut the door on them; that there’s a certain amount of juvenile development that has to take place on that basis.”

  “The University.”

  “My father knows the hazard I am to him. Knows my talent, although when he began this project he was willing to have seen me destroyed, had I been weak. Indeed, the University he created would have devoured me—had I been weak. Had I failed, he would have selected the most apt as his successor.”

  “Myself, perhaps.”

  Waden laughed, picked up the mug, gestured with it before drinking. “I have no doubt it would have been you, none. But do you know, the older I grew, the more my father was certain that eugenics in my case had paid off. Oh, there are failures, a dozen little bastards farmed out and totally useless ... I’ll never threaten them because there’s no need. I could swallow them whole. No, the older I became, I’ll wager, the more Cade Jenks realized the sensible course was to occupy me. Had he seen to my upbringing, I’d have devoured him. No, instead, he sent me to the nursery—to University, collected this entire den of ravening and powerful intellects and set me out in it naked and unarmed but by wit. Survival of the fittest.”

  “So he has no prejudice for or against your survival.”

  “None. None. He simply wants to keep me here as long as possible, because on the day I emerge from this chrysalis, his existence is threatened. He knows that he can’t keep power away from me. For one thing because of our kinship and my access to the Residency. He’ll surrender his office, being pragmatic and having a strong wish to live. Indeed, he’s intelligent enough to know that the world will benefit from the exchange, that the wisest course for him is to provide me the benefit of his experience and to step quietly out of my way. But that’s in the future. I’m only beginning to do that other thing which the University makes possible.”

  “To remove rivals?”

  Waden shook his head. “I have no rivals. There’s not a one here I can’t manipulate or intimidate beyond any possibility of harm; I know the University. Those stupid enough to despise me ... are the most easily handled. Pride is useful only with those whose opinion we value, is it not? I don’t value theirs. No, I’m gathering forces. Persons whose talents are not rival, but complementary to my own. You, for instance, an artist. Do you know, Herrin, that you are the one person in University to whom I shall admit these things frankly? You’re the one mind, the one being who might rival me, if our talents were not, as they are, complementary. You create. Your supposition is correct, that my talent is not creative; so I seek out one which is.”

  “No. On the contrary, you’ve simply delivered yourself to my search, Waden Jenks.”

  Waden considered a moment, and his eyes danced. “Oh, marvelous! This conversation is worth all the years in this dreary place. Do you know, for the first time I feel I’m talking with someone, with a mind quick enough to answer me.”

  “And you wonder if you can manipulate it.”

  The grin became wider. “Absolutely. Ah, Herrin, Herrin, you’re a delight. As you’re wondering can you use me, and which of us is likely to survive. I have native advantages.”

  “Indeed you do. Which argue that I should go cautiously. Likewise there were contradictions in your arguments that suggest a silent assumption.”

  “Were there?” Waden’s smile was ingenuous.

  “What do you suppose of me?”

  “That you have ambitions. That they’re artistic in foundation, as anything would be that passed through that intellect of yours; but that they may not be limited to the creation of superlative statues, the inner vision made exterior, no. You have a very strong reality, and the grasp of a generalist. So am I, a generalist of sorts. I know how to respect one.”

  “You are a superlative generalist. You do what I do, but having captured the vision internal to each field, you store it, against need. And you will have power, Waden, indeed I believe it. I know that my talent doesn’t lie in political manipulation.”

  “No, indeed, your hubris surpasses mine.”

  “Philosophy argues that hubris doesn’t exist.”

  “But it does. There are offenses against the State.”

  “I purpose nothing against the State.”

  “No, your ambition is far greater.”

  “Then you know what it is.”

  “I know. It’s Reality itself, isn’t it? To impose your internal vision on all of Freedom. Herrin’s reality. Herrin’s perceptions. I believe you when you say you were searching. That you plan to use me. And I you. We balance one another. If I let you loose, if I let you perceive these things in your own time, Herrin Law, you might ally with some lesser talent, and you would either steer that talent against me, or you would be warped out of your true possibility. I offer you more than any other could: to be at the top, to have full scope for your ambitions. That’s the business of a good ruler—to see that the best and strongest function to the fullest. I shall give you what you want; and you’ll provide me the security of knowing you aren’t inspiring some secondary talent to rise against me. That’s what to do with complementary talents, Herrin, give them scope.”

  Herrin sipped at his beer; his mouth was dry. “You recognize what I am and confess you mean to warp me to your purposes.”

  “What, so little confidence? From you; I’d expect you to say that you were satisfied to know that you could bend me. After all, I’ll be the State. And shall I not be one of the subjects you mean to influence? Teach me art, Herrin. Isn’t that what you want, after all? Here I reveal to you all my defenses and you refuse the entry.”

  “Oh, of course, I shall trust you immediately and implicitly.”

  Waden’s brows lifted, and then he laughed. “Of course you will. That’s the trouble with my field; every amateur feels entitled to practice my art, but who would have the temerity to walk into your studio and pick up a chisel, eh?”

  “You have a sobering manner of expression, Waden Jenks.”

  “My art has the disadvantage that no one who sees it can trust the shape of it. I can lay hands on the beautiful marble flesh, and find the outlines.”

  “But if you believe it’s flesh, you’ve been taken in.”

  Waden grinned, and then went sober, his brown eyes and thin face most serious. “I like talking to you. And that’s a motive. There’s a feeling of finding someone at home when I’m talking to you, Herrin. And that is rare. It’s very rare. You know what I mean. Keye is possibly the third greatest mind and talent at the University, on all of Freedom, most probably, because previous graduates don’t rival the two of us. Keye’s mind is amazing. And yet, can you talk to her—except where it regards ethics? And even then, don’t you see things which she would not be able to take into her reality?”

  Herrin turned the mug in a circle, until the handle was facing his hand again, studying the amber and crystal patterns on the wooden table.

  “Are you never lonely, Herrin? Even with Keye—are you never lonely?”

  He looked into Waden’s. eyes.

  “I am,” Waden said. “Loneliness on a scale you understand. Keye—has you. And me. Keye has two living minds greater than her own, two walls off which to reflect her thoughts. But our scope is more than hers. There are thoughts you think she can’t comprehend, connections you perceive she can’t grasp, because you have explained all the pieces of them, haven’t you, and she still doesn’t see? No one does. Not the way you do. But I guess them. I can talk to you, and you to me. Do you know what frightens me most in the world, Herrin? Not dying. Discovering that I’m solitary, that my mind is the greatest one, and that
I’m damned to think things beyond expression, that I can never explain to any living being. Have you ever entertained such thoughts, Herrin?”

  Herrin found nothing to say, not readily.

  “I think you have, Herrin. And how do you answer them?”

  “By crowds. By crowds. Three or four pitted against me—can entertain.”

  “But satisfy?”

  “I have my art. You’re right, that I can lay hands on it, that it gives ... presence and substance. Yours, on the other hand, is far more solitary. Whoever sees it will not admire. They fear.”

  “Unless there were one to complement me. One who could take my art and put it in breathing marble and bronze, who could make me monuments, Herrin, who could provide something that would not be feared, but treasured, who would make my works visible. Complementary, Artist. I provide you subject and you provide me substance. And we talk to each other. We communicate, as neither of us can communicate with others, in our own language.”

  “How can there be trust?”

  “That too, I leave you to discover. Solve my dilemmas, Artist. Lend me vision and I lend you power to spread that vision.”

  “You don’t yet have that power.”

  “But shall.”

  “And is power shared?”

  “Dionysus.” Waden chuckled and drank deeply of his beer. “And Apollo. You are Dionysian and I Apollonian, urge and logic, creativity and rationality, chaos and order. We function in complement. Adopt your protégés. I have my own. We are opposite faces of one object; a balance of forces. Beware me, Dionysus, as I am wary of you. But cooperate we can—and must. The alternative is sterile solitude. We shall beget ideas upon each other. We shall contend without contending, by being.”

  “I reject your analogy. They’re old gods, and we are both of us half and half. Our contending is potentially more direct.”