Wyrms

by Orson Scott Card

  "You came through Tinker's Wood when he didn't want you to."

  "If he had really wanted to stop me, he could have."

  "I say he couldn't. Because you long ago separated yourself from your body's desires."

  She remembered the cold breeze from the unglazed window of her room. She nodded.

  "So." He did not teach as Father did; there was no sense of triumph when she bent before his argument. He merely went on. "The second part of the triune soul, the memory-it's more difficult. It has another kind of desire, one that is born in us as surely as the need to breathe, but because it is never satisfied, we don't know that it exists. For a moment, between breaths, we don't need to breathe, so we recognize the need to breathe when it returns."

  "But this one is never gone, so we never notice it."

  "Yes. Yes, you see-our memory can't hold everything.

  Can't hold every vision we see, every sequence of events that happened to us, everything we read, everything we hear about. It's too much. If we actually had to do that, we'd be insane before we left our infancy. So we choose. The things that are important. We remember only what matters. And we remember it in certain orders, in patterns that mean things together. In daytime, the sun is up; and all daytime becomes one day, and all nighttime becomes one night-we don't have to remember every day to remember the idea of day. But we -don't just remember this-we remember the why. It is daytime because the sun is up. Or the sun is up because it is daytime. You see? We don't remember randomly. Everything is connected by threads of cause."

  "I'm not one of the Wise," said Patience. "Maybe the Wise understand the cause of everything, but I don't."

  "But that's just it, that's just where the hunger comes.

  Every shred of experience that we remember comes as a story-a series of events that are connected by the pushes and pulls of cause. And we believe this story, of how everything is causally connected, without questioning it.

  I did this because. I did this in order to. And this is the world we live in, this pattern of events that cause each other. It becomes the framework by which we remember everything. But some things come along that don't fit."

  "Not just some things."

  "The weak-minded never notice it, Lady Patience.

  Everything fits for them, because they simply don't remember the things that don't belong. They never happened, the memory is gone. But for those who live in the mind, the places that don't fit, they don't disappear.

  They become a terrible hunger in the mind. Why, they shout. Why, why, why. And you can't be content until you know the connection. Even if it means breaking apart all the network that existed before. Once there was a time when mankind was locked on a single planet, and they thought their star circled that planet, because that was all they saw. That was the evidence of their eyes.

  But there were some who looked closely, and saw that it didn't fit, and the why pressed upon them until they had an answer. And when it all fit, they were able to send starships to worlds like this."

  "Every child asks why," said Patience.

  "But most children stop asking," said Will. "They finally get a system that works well enough. They have enough stories to account for everything they care about, and anything their stories can't handle, they ignore."

  "The priests say that the self is in the memory-that we are what we remember doing."

  "That's what they say."

  "But I remember doing the acts of hundreds of Heptarchs, and a few geblings, too. Are they part of myself?"

  "You see the problem as few people see it," said Will. "The self isn't in the memory, only the story we believe about ourselves. It can also be revised. It's constantly being revised. We see what it was we did, and we make up a story to account for it, and believe the story, and think that we understand ourself."

  "Except the dwelfs, who can't hold long memories in their conscious minds."

  "Yes."

  "So what did you tell Heffiji-that she had no soul?"

  "Only that her soul had no story. Because ourself is something else."

  She knew what he would say; it was clear to her now.

  "The will, of course. It's strange, Will, that you're named for the thing that you think is most important. Or did you decide it was important because it was your name?

  "Will wasn't the name I was born with. I took that name the day Reck looked at me and said, 'Who are you?' "

  "What's the desire of the will, then? You said all three parts of the soul had their desire."

  "The will makes only a simple choice, and it's already made. Your whole life is nothing but acting out the choice that defines who you really are."

  "What's that?"

  "The choice between good and evil."

  She let him see her disappointment. "All this talk, and we come to that?"

  "I'm not talking about the choice between killing people and not killing people, or between stealing and not stealing. Sometimes killing a person is evil. Sometimes killing a person is good. You know that."

  "Which is why I decided not to care about good and evil a long time ago."

  "No. You decided not to care about legal and illegal."

  "I decided there wasn't any absolute good and there wasn't any absolute evil. You just said the same thing."

  "No I didn't," said Will.

  "You said sometimes killing is good and sometimes it's evil."

  "So. Killing isn't absolute. But now, when you go to Unwyrm, what's wrong with doing what he wants? What's wrong with you having his children?"

  "Because I don't want to."

  "Why? You know he'll give you pleasure. And your children-they'll be human, perfectly human, only stronger and smarter, wiser and quicker, and they'll no doubt have a perfect connection between their minds, all of them like Unwyrm combined with the best human traits.

  You'll be the mother of the master race. The most magnificent intelligent beings ever created. The next step in human evolution. Why don't you desire it?"

  "I don't know," she said.

  "If you don't know, then at the crucial moment, when you are with him, and all your desire is for him, you still won't know. You'll still refuse, but perhaps not with all your strength. And it'll take all your strength to resist him, I promise you."

  "Come with me," she said. "Kill him for me."

  "I'll come with you, if I can. And I'll kill him, if I can. But I think I won't be able to. I think there's only one person who'll ever come close enough to hurt him, to stop him."

  "Then tell me. What is it I need to know?"

  "It's simple. Nothing exists except in relation to something else. An atom is not an atom. It doesn't exist, except in relation to other atoms. If it never responded to anything else, it would not exist. All existence is like that-utterly isolated pieces that only come into existence in their interaction with other pieces. Human beings too.

  We don't exist except in relation to the other events of the world. Everything we do, everything we are depends on our responses to other events, and other events' responses to us."

  "I knew that."

  "You didn't know that. It's so obvious that no one knows it. If nothing you did caused any change in the world outside, and nothing in the world outside caused any change in you, then you wouldn't know there was a world outside, and it wouldn't know you existed, and so it would be meaningless to speak of your existence at all.

  So your existence, all our existence, depends on every piece, every person in the universe behaving according to certain set patterns. The system. The order in which everything exists. The laws that bind atoms and molecules are very firm. They have no freedom to vary, because as soon as they vary, they cease to be. But life-ah, there the freedom begins. And we who think we are intelligent, we are the freest of all. We make our own patterns and change them as we like. We build systems and orders and tear them down. But you'll notice that none of our choices have any effect whatever on the way that atoms and molecules behave. Just as we have
no idea what any particular molecule is doing, they have no notion of what we're doing. We can't change their order at all. We can use it, but we can't break down their system and cause them to wink out of existence."

  "I suppose that's true. We can burn wood, but the atoms that are torn from certain molecules combine again with others, and the system hangs together."

  "Exactly. So we can't do good or evil to most of the universe. Only to other living things. Mostly to each other. Because the systems of human beings are ours to control. They're every bit as real as the universe itself, and they are what gives us our existence-but we can manipulate them. We can change the systems that create the terms of our life. And we do change those systems, according to the single simple choice of our will."

  "What's the choice?"

  "It arises from the desire of the will. And the desire of the will is simple. To grow."

  "I don't want to grow."

  "Every living thing has this same desire. Patience.

  Angel touched on it, in his childish way, when he spoke of people who own things. That's the most pathetic way people have of growing. The way Sken makes this boat part of herself-it makes her larger. Eating .also makes her larger."

  Patience smiled. "You're being ridiculous now."

  "I'm not. Kings also make themselves larger, because their kingdom is part of themselves. Parents make themselves larger through their children. Some few people, though, have such a powerful hunger that they can't be satisfied until their self includes everything alive."

  "The King's House is all the world," murmured Patience.

  "What did you say?"

  "Something my father taught me."

  "Oh."

  "So, is it good or evil to desire to be larger?"

  "Neither. It's how you choose to grow larger. The system lives on sacrifice. No order could exist in which every person in it received everything he desired all the time. The system that gives us our existence depends on people making sacrifices. I give up something I desire, so that others can receive some of what they desire. In turn, they give up something they want, so I can have some of what I want. Every human society depends on that simple principle."

  As always, her mind raced ahead, trying to solve the problem before it had to be explained to her. "So you're saying that good people sacrifice everything, and evil people sacrifice nothing."

  "Not at all. I'm saying that good people sacrifice anything that is necessary in order to maintain the order that allows all others to exist, even if they have to sacrifice their own life. While evil people manipulate and force the sacrifice of any and every other person in order to wholly gratify their own hunger. Do you see the difference?"

  "This is theology. Kristos was good, because he sacrificed his life."

  "Don't speak foolishly, Patience, not to me. Everybody dies, and some have been martyrs in stupid causes.

  Kristos is Kristos because we believe he sacrificed himself for the whole world. For the largest order of all. He would not have died for anything less. Because his self had grown to include all the systems of mankind, and he acted to protect them all."

  "Now I see how you became a heretic."

  "Of course you do. These fools who think their Kristos will come to unite humans in perfect peace, without including the millions of geblings, gaunts, and dwelfs-it would not be good, because such a Kristos would be forcing the sacrifice of half the people of the world, to serve herself. So if Kristos is to be Kristos, she is willing to sacrifice anything to maintain the order that gives life to all."

  "I'm no Kristos. I don't believe any of this."

  Will looked sad. "Oh, you believe my story," he said.

  "But you won't know that you believe it until after, looking back. If either of us is alive then."

  "It's a pretty philosophy," said Patience. "It makes sense within itself. You'd have a sure career in the School."

  He let the insult roll off him. "When you face him, Patience, you'll remember. A tiny part of your memory will hold on to my story, and you'll remember who you are, and who he is, and you'll doubt your own desires and believe my story. You'll destroy him, even though at that moment you'll love him more than all the world.

  You'll destroy him, because you know he's evil."

  "If I can destroy him, it will be to save myself."

  "Yourself is the world, and all the worlds. How long before his children, after they've replaced all other intelligent life on this world, build starships and go out to conquer every other world that humanity has visited?

  There was once a philosopher who said that there could never be war between the worlds of different stars, because there'd be nothing to gain. But he was a fool.

  There is greatness to be gained, largeness of self, to have every world filled with your children. It's the most powerful urge of all life. Questions of profit or politics are trivial beside it."

  "When I face Unwyrm," said Patience, "it won't be a grand question of good and evil. It'll be me, my body, my wit, such as it is, against his. Nothing more."

  "His house against the King's House. The prize is the world."

  "I don't want the world."

  "That's why you'll have it."

  She laughed in frustration. "Will, what can I do with you? You see me larger than I am. I can never be what you imagine me to be."

  Will shook his head. "I imagine you to be a girl, fifteen years old, sometimes frightened, always brave. I imagine you to be unaware of your beauty, which makes you infinitely beautiful; unaware of your power, which makes you dangerously powerful. I have had many masters in my life, but you are the only master I could follow until I die."

  "You see? How can I bear that? I can't be perfect."

  "If I can be perfect, you can be perfect." He showed no sign that he was aware of how boastful he sounded.

  "You're perfect?" she asked.

  "I made myself perfect, so I could serve you when you came. You are skilled in all the skills of government but one: war. I made myself perfect in that, so I could serve you in it. My masters were all generals, but I served each one the same-I made them all victorious."

  "You? A slave?"

  "A trusted slave. They all learned that when they took my counsel, they won. I prepared myself so that you would find me ready when you needed me."

  "How did you know that we'd ever meet? There on your farm with Reck and Ruin. What were the chances I'd ever find you?"

  "There's no chance in this. From the time I discovered the truth of the soul, the Cranning call was always with me, Lady Patience. Then one day we marched along a road, from Waterkeep to Danswatch, and for a brief moment, as we passed a hut at the north end of the village, the call faded. And was replaced by a repulsion, a powerful desire not to go toward Cranning. And then we went a little way, and the Cranning call returned to me. I knew at once that something in that house-"

  "Reck and Ruin."

  "I didn't know that geblings lived there. I certainly didn't know they were the gebling king. But I knew that whatever was there, Unwyrm feared it, and if Unwyrm feared it, it was good, and I must ally myself with it. So I escaped and went to Reck. With her and Ruin, the Cranning call disappeared, so I was at peace. But that wasn't why I went to them, and it wasn't why I stayed. I stayed waiting for you."

  "How could you possibly know that I would come there?"

  "For the same reason that I went there. Because if you didn't, Unwyrm couldn't be defeated."

  "That's not the reason."

  "Nevertheless, it is the reason."

  "You're too mystical for me."

  "I don't think so," said Will. "I think I'm exactly mystical enough for you."

  "I liked you better when you were silent," she said.

  "I know," he said. "Endure me." He reached out his hand. With the tips of his fingers he stroked her cheek, her hair. His fingers traveled down her body, her neck, her shoulder, her breast, her waist. Finally he rested a hand on her thigh. "When you want me to speak aga
in," he said, "I will. As slave to master. As subject to king.

  As Vigilant to Kristos. As husband to wife."

  Then he leaned down and kissed her lips. Unwyrm again filled her with revulsion at his touch, but this time she ignored it, put it behind her, and accepted the agonizing gift he gave. When the kiss was finished, he stood and walked across the deck to where his boots waited for him. "Time for me to clump around," he said, "and wake the others."

  It was true. Light was coming in the east, over the trees; the stars were fading. And the high wall of Skyfoot rose in the northern sky, topped with eternal snow, where Unwyrm waited for her, hungered for her. Will has told me stories, and some of them I believe, but what will it matter when I come to you, Unwyrm? You're the only husband that was prophesied for me.

  Even Unwyrm couldn't stop her from wishing for Will's hand to touch her again, his lips to invite her.

  After all Will's philosophy, she suspected that the only thing he had given her that might help her at all when she faced Unwyrm at the end would be the dream of a human lover. She could not hold on to a mystic view of good and evil. But she could hold on to the memory of the touch of a living man.

  She turned around, just to look downstream, just to be turning, and happened to see River's face. His eyes were open, gazing at her. Tears had tracked their way down his face.

  "Did we wake you?" she asked inanely.

  His lips answered, silently: The river is all the life I need.

  But she knew it was a lie. For a few minutes in this early morning, she and Will had reminded him of life.

  Chapter 15. STRINGS

  THE CLOSER THEY GOT TO SKYPOOT, THE BETTER THEY COULD see that it wasn't a sheer cliff at all. It was steep, but a slope nonetheless, with occasional deep ledges that were thick with orchards or farmland. Large reaches of the mountain were terraced for farming, while houses and buildings clotted and clumped in towns and villages and vast cities on the mountain's face. There were horizontal roads high up the mount, with carts that had been built on the mountain passing back and forth. There were hanging platforms that were constantly rising and lowering to carry passengers and cargos to towns hundreds of meters above or below. The whole face of the mountain as far and as high as they could see was a hive of activity.