by Ian Stewart
It’s good to be home.
Will’s thoughts were less happy. “I think the murdering bastards got them all,” he said, studying a data summary displayed on his command screen.
The remark brought May back to ground with a bump. “All forty-nine corpses have been identified?”
“We have twenty-two, plus twenty-seven probables. A lot of them were so badly damaged that it’s difficult to distinguish them from offal in an abattoir. Until we know it’s safe to recover the bodies and genotype them, we won’t know for sure. But I’d bet my lifetime trade profits that every last mariner on Aquifer is dead.”
“I was getting quite close to the little fat one,” said May, sad beyond measure at her loss. “The one apprenticed to that bane of my existence, Second-Best Sailor.” She shook her mane, as if that might undo what had happened and bring the annoying but engaging polypoid back to life. “Fat Apprentice asked such foolish questions . . . yet such difficult ones. He made me rethink some of my most strongly held assumptions. I shall miss him.”
“As shall I,” said Will, absently stroking the crevit slung across his muscular shoulders, hoping to make it buzz. He had reviewed Talitha’s recordings. Nocturnal cloud cover had hidden events in the bay itself, but six floaters had been spotted to the north, where the cloud thinned. They had continued due north until the horizon blocked the view.
“I shall miss the others, too,” May added. “Even Second-Best Sailor.”
Will took the statement at face value. “There is more to this than personal tragedy,” he pointed out. “The reefwives fear that this disaster could spell the end for their race. Cosmic Unity is closing in on No-Moon, and all the patterns point to it being in thrall to a benevolent memeplex.”
“Which may not be as benevolent as its adherents imagine.”
“Exactly. The memeplex holds itself to be benevolent, but the reality may be different. The worlds that this memeplex has touched all seem to be peaceful, but the reefmind wonders at what price such unnatural peace has been bought. And there are hints in certain Galactic records. . . . Aquifer was a backup strategy, a safe refuge for a small group of husbands who would later be provided with wives, ready to rebuild the polypoid population should that become necessary. But now, if No-Moon is overrun, there is no backup.”
May understood that all too well. Like Will, she was terrified out of her wits. Anyone would be.
And to make their immediate problems worse, there was a high-tech race on the loose on Aquifer, completely contrary to Galactic records. Armed and vicious. Willing to attack for no reason, or for reasons of its own . . . reasons so alien that they would make no sense outside that one species. If it was one species. It might be an alliance.
What was it? Who were these murderers?
Could they be Cosmic Unity? The Church might be on the planet already. Could a religion whose central tenet was tolerance boil forty-nine harmless mariners alive merely for being where they were not expected?
Maybe not. But the reefwives were certain that the Cosmic Unity fleet heading for No-Moon represented the biggest threat their world had ever faced. They thought that a religion whose central tenet was tolerance could become twisted enough to enforce that belief through holy war. It was often the religions that boasted most loudly of their love for their fellow beings that most readily perverted their beliefs into cruelty and destruction. Because they knew what was good for you, and sometimes they would stop at nothing to make sure that it happened. This, May realized, was the self-laid trap that awaited every benevolent memeplex.
7
THE NETHER ICE DOME
Be cherished, O my lifesoul
free from suffering
free from grief
free from the perversion of Unbelief
Attended
mended
protected until ended
Each cell, each entity, each clan, each race
each species builds a Heaven
in its rightful place
With rock and cloud and mud and fire and ice—
Until the healer can no longer heal
Until the Lifesoul-Stealer comes to steal
the mortal being
from its self-made paradise
Deathsong of the eighty-first ecclesiarch
Sam’s patience was rewarded more quickly than he had expected. Halfway through his third day back on duplicator duty, he was interrupted in the middle of preparing the machine to duplicate a batch of spiky things whose end use was, as always, unknown to him. Previously, such ignorance had never bothered him. Yet now, as he was whisked away before he could complete his assigned task, he found himself questioning the decision. Only within the confines of his own mind, to be sure—he was not so foolhardy as to voice his concerns, in case that should be interpreted as dissent. It was just that—well, the replacement servant would have to start the sequence of ritual gestures all over again, and if he made any mistakes, it might take several hours to get back to the stage that Sam would have reached if they’d allowed him ten more minutes at the metaphace.
The realization that he was questioning received authority bothered him a lot more than what the authorities had actually done. No doubt, they knew best. They must have reasons beyond his limited comprehension. But now, thinking back, he got the distinct impression that, more and more, he was privately questioning the actions of his superiors in the Community. He was thinking about how his instructions fitted into the broader context of the Monastery’s work, and the Community’s own Great Mission.
He fervently hoped he didn’t accidentally voice any of his doubts. He was starting to clamber his perilous way up the ecclesiastical greasy pole, and it would set him back years if he appeared to be acting above his station. Blatant insubordination might well prove terminal to his career, and then he would complete his days carrying out tasks far less agreeable than running a duplicator.
Sam was amazed to find himself thinking any of these thoughts. He never used to think like that. But then, he hadn’t been exposed to the training regime of a novice lifesoul-healer. In fact, he now understood in a flash of insight, it was the training that had led him to start asking himself such questions. His instructor, he realized with a rush of excitement, wanted him to think for himself. Not too much, but enough to have some control over his own direction.
If he was to heal damaged lifesouls, he must first take charge of his own.
But with humility.
That was the key; that was the lesson that the Veenseffer-co-Fropt had been hoping he would learn, but could never overtly teach. It could not tell him how to take responsibility for his own life, for then he would merely be carrying out his instructor’s bidding. He had to be given the opportunity to think it out for himself. And that would be the next step in his advancement. He had to make it clear that he had made this vital step in his thinking, while continuing to appear humble.
He corrected himself hurriedly. To be humble. But even the humble could have plans and dreams.
He was getting used to the cold corridors and the bare, unfinished walls of the tunnels. He was even getting used to the pallid, downcast, hollow-souled beings whose paths constantly crossed his as he threaded his way through the under-ice maze. He passed a squad of Illensan monks, dragging a large chlorine tank along on crude runners, and scarcely noticed how distressed they were at the physical effort involved, or how labored their breathing had become. Had he given the matter any thought, he would have wondered just how effective their breathing masks were; their splutterings and inflamed nasal passages would have suggested they were suffering from a small, nonfatal but irritating excess of carbon dioxide. But such things were commonplace, and his task was to heal the lifesouls of his clients, not to interfere with beings who had been consigned to the care of others.
There were three querists in the room when he arrived and made entry. Never before had he been in the presence of more than one. He was unsure what this meant, but presumably it had to be imp
ortant.
One he recognized: It was his own instructor. The other two looked older; one was a Rhemnolid, who ran to fat and had pronounced storage pouches, and the other had to be a !t!, for no other sentient being possessed such a slender exoskeleton. Sam had never encountered a !t! before, for they were the rarest species in the Community, but he had seen many images of them, for the same reason.
The Rhemnolid glanced at the knotted silvery braids, identification marks on Sam’s maroon robe. A Precursor translation field enveloped the room, and Sam had no difficulty in understanding the sibilant spurts of fetid air, laden with chemical content, that Rhemnolids used for speech. “Thisss is the novice, then. He is a Traversss? That is a name well known and respected in the Church. The Travers women are mostly virtuous, so I am informed; their men are ssseldom of poor faith. The son of Godwin . . . Mmm, I have held awarenesss of several Godwins, all trustworthy humen.”
“I read that this young servant,” said the !t!, speaking as if Sam were not present at all, “is the fourteenth member of his lineage since his forefathers first embraced the righteousness of the United Cosmos. I have encountered smaller generation numbers, but seldom in a healer-novitiate.” Its speech, a rapid-fire sequence of chirruping clicks produced by flexing a special joint in its ventral forelimb, could be heard in the background as a patchwork of frequency textures.
“His family’s progress has indeed been of unprecedented rapidity,” said Sam’s instructor. It was true. Only fourteen generations in the same task. Sam was indeed fortunate for his lineage to have advanced so quickly.
“Yes, and so has his own. You tell me that he handled that setback with that Neanderthal child . . . ?”
“Dry Leaves Fall Slowly.”
“Yes, that was its name. He handled it with delicacy and well-directed love. It was not his fault that the child needed . . . extra love. Special treatment. No, it was not his fault; he outperformed any novice I have encountered.” The !t! flexed its joints, uncomfortable in the relatively high gravity despite the support of its exoskeleton. “He is most unusual, as we had already noticed. He conforms, but that is not his true nature. He is actively engaged in everything he does—he is not merely playing out a role.”
The Rhemnolid instructor settled into his sling-couch—a ponderous procedure. “The novice is not yet aware that the child was a tessst?”
“That she was deliberately selected because of her incurable obstinacy? Her wicked lies and delusions? Assigned to him so that he must fail? Not until this moment.” For the first time the !t! instructor addressed Sam directly. “Do you understand what I have just revealed about our training methods, Samuel the son of Godwin, fourteenth in the male lineage of the Travers clan?”
Sam swallowed hard and tried to regain his poise. “Masters, I understand—now that you have told me—that the child was deliberately assigned to me to . . . to test my patience, my faith, and my . . . uh . . . capacity for love. And I understand that I was expected to fail, that I was bound to fail. That . . . that what counted would be the manner of my failure.”
Sam’s instructor fluffed his olfactory tufts with pride. “You see?” he said to his companions. “It is just as I predicted.”
“That is ssso,” said the Rhemnolid. “Do you also understand, Fourteen Sssamuel, that in failing so magnificently, you triumphed? For when you learned that other techniques had saved the lifesssoul of the child, you showed not the slightest sign of envy or jealousy. You were pleased for her, and for those who had begun the long, slow processs of healing her.”
Sam remained as he was, head bowed, but his eyes shone. Praise was almost unheard of in the monastery of equals. But he did not wish to be seen to have sought it. Or to take pride in hearing it. He could not trust himself to keep pride from his voice, so he said nothing.
“He is ready, is he not?” said the Veenseffer-co-Fropt.
“For the next ssstep in his training? Undoubtedly. Now he must face the ethical dilemma that has exercised the Church since its Founders first encountered the wickednesss that infesssts so many souls . . . the sin of intolerance. Can the Church tolerate sin? No. So can it tolerate the intolerant? That is a paradox. For can the sole route to the One be self-defeating? Fourteen Sssamuel, what do you think?”
Sam’s breath caught. He would need to be careful, but he had to answer, and quickly. It would have helped if he had any real idea of what the querists were talking about. But the general gist seemed clear.
“The . . . Wisdom of Unity cannot be denied,” Sam said, reciting a text from Conversations with Huff Elder that he had been taught almost before he could walk. “Action that defeats itself is not true action at all, for it contains the seeds of its own annihilation. But—masters, forgive me if I err, but it has long seemed to me . . .” (Here Sam took a golden opportunity to demonstrate that he had absorbed the meta-lesson of his training and that now he was developing a mind of his own.) “. . . it seems to me that it may be possible to meet intolerance with tolerance, and yet overcome it.”
The Rhemnolid’s thick-lipped eyes stared at him impassively. “How?”
“Uh . . . one may, perhaps . . . be tolerant in one’s mind, master, while still enforcing correction in the external world. Wickedness cannot be permitted to continue as a fact, but there is no inconsistency in pitying the wicked for the cause and accepting that their error may result from cultural inadequacies, not from their own true lifesoul.”
The Rhemnolid nodded, and gave the !t! a quick, approving glance. Its spatulate tongue licked quickly over its face and was reabsorbed. Sam, encouraged by the informality of this display, developed his theme. “Of course, an individual’s true lifesoul will often be obscured by the habits and . . . uh, the values of their culture. A key duty of the lifesoul-healer is to save the lifesoul from such cultural tarnish. And so . . . I think, masters . . . that one may tolerate the occurrence of tarnished lifesouls, but not their continued existence in that state.” He stopped abruptly. “But I do not wish to overstep my place. This was only an idle thought. If I am in error—”
“No, your thinking is orthodox, though more subtle than anything you could have been taught explicitly,” said the !t!. “However, your thinking goes only so far. You are not yet aware of its practical implications, Fourteen Samuel. Thought must be translated into action, if it is ever to accomplish anything, and actions are harder to accept than words. You understand why?”
Sam shook his head. “Master, I do not.”
“Words are . . . idealizations. They have no reality. Their consequences are hypothetical. Actions are different. Their consequences are real, and immediate, whether imagined in advance or not. If you speak, the implications of the words may remain concealed. If you act, the implications will be undeniable—even to those who wish to deny them.
“And, Samuel, those implications may not be anything that you desire. Does not the Church rest on two Great Memes?”
Kiddygarten stuff. “The health of the Whole must outweigh that of its parts,” Sam recited. “And the long-term health of the part must outweigh its immediate comfort.”
“Hmm. And what do those slogans mean?” The spindly !t! inclined its midlimbs questioningly. “In your own words, not those of your kiddygarten teacher.”
Sam’s face flushed, as if his mind had been read. Maybe it had. There were rumors that the !t! possessed Precursor telepathy machines . . . No, that way lay paranoia. “Uh . . . Unity itself is what is important, master—not the wishes of any individual. And . . . uh . . . individuals . . . no, an individual, must . . . er . . .”
“Sometimes one must be cruel to be kind,” said the Veenseffer-co-Fropt, hurrying to the aid of his tutee. “A trite, dismal, yet ultimately liberating truism, Fourteen Samuel, in which you will now receive unforgettably vivid instruction. And I assure you that you will wish to forget. Until you see the ethical beauty that the dilemma conceals, and transcend your emotional limitations. If you wish to become a lifesoul-healer, you must understa
nd this truth in the deepest recesses of your being. It must become an inalienable part of the very fabric of your mind. Otherwise, you will fail, and that failure will destroy you. Come.”
Was it a medical center? The dimly lit room had the astringent smell that Sam associated with medical treatment. And some of the equipment looked like things he’d seen in hospitals—gas cylinders, masks, tubes. The walls were bare, and the floor was made of some kind of ceramic; it had been washed recently.
Like the three querists and their half-dozen assistants of varied races, Sam was wearing life-support equipment. In his case, all that was needed was a simple spray-on monomolecular coating to retain bodily heat, a transparent face mask, and breathing apparatus. The arrangements for some of the assistants were more elaborate.
“The environment has been configured for the client,” the Rhemnolid’s voice hissed quietly in his ear. There was a hint of machine-talk in the voice, no doubt resulting from the Precursor translation system into which they had all been linked. “His name is Clutch-the-Moon Splitcloud.”
The client was spread-eagled on a low, circular dais. It could be moved to position it anywhere in the room. His nine limbs were neatly arranged like the spokes of a wheel, each held in place by a series of clamps. The blimp’s eye ring was fixed on the roof above, where an icicle had formed.
“A Jovian?” Sam enquired.
“A helium blimp from the twin gas giants of Delta Hyractis,” the !t! corrected. “The blimps are a sister species to the original Jovians, but they differ in many vital ways. For example, they are algivores, not filter-feeders. Do not let your feelings be colored by naive associations with the legendary Founders, Fourteen Samuel.”
“I stand corrected, master. Why is the blimp restrained?”