Web of Everywhere

by John Brunner

  Never mind. They were both here, and there was tea or coffee – the scents mingled – and Satamori had come fresh from a place that flavored his presence with jasmine, lavender and the smoke of some resinous tree being burned on an open fire.

  And rose and clasped his host’s proffered hand and spoke formal greetings that conveyed less information than the sweat of his palm.

  This man, Mustapha thought, is frightened. So am I. But he, having eyes, is less likely to be aware of the fact.

  Good!

  Relaxing, he sat down and inquired, ‘Fred, why bother to come calling in person when there was a risk of my discourteously making you wait? You should have phoned!’

  ‘There are times,’ Satamori said dryly, ‘when waiting for a call to be put through makes one more impatient than waiting to be let past a privateer. Today is – ’

  ‘My servants made you wait in the skelter?’ Mustapha interrupted in horror.

  ‘No, no! They were the soul of courtesy! Indeed it was not my idea to disturb you, but Ali’s; I was very happy to break my journey.’

  ‘Break …?’

  ‘Why, yes. I have to go around the world today, to its other side. Switching from dawn to evening is no longer easy for me. I’m old.’

  ‘That isn’t true,’ Mustapha said.

  ‘You are kind, but I’m afraid it is. I’m still under sixty, but the strain is beginning to make me understand what old age is.’ Satamori sighed loudly and took a sip of the coffee he had chosen from the range of available refreshments.

  ‘And so,’ he added after a pause, ‘are too many of us.’

  Mustapha waited.

  ‘Anyway,’ the visitor resumed, ‘I felt it worth the risk of interrupting your contemplation and was quite content to hang about for an hour or two until Ali’s patience was exhausted, thinking we might go on together to Chaim’s party.’

  ‘What party?’

  Satamori almost dropped his cup. ‘But – but surely of all people you must have been …?’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘I begin to comprehend,’ Mustapha said. ‘Are you referring by any chance to a treasure-hunt party?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I see,’ Mustapha murmured, and relished the conscious irony of the phrase. ‘You too believe that by sprinkling the planet with clues that may come to the attention of random people, and which require a moderately advanced IQ to unravel, we can find the next generation of managers and administrators for Earth.’

  ‘I – I can’t conceive a better way,’ Satamori granted. ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned the matter, though. I’m sorry. I simply was not aware that you were opposed to it.’

  Mustapha leaned back, stretching cramped limbs. He said, ‘It is not I who are opposed. It is something deeper, the force which evolved us.’

  Brief blank silence. Satamori said eventually, ‘You are adherent to the Way of Life? One had assumed that you must be – ’

  ‘Moslem because I chose to live in Egypt?’ Mustapha cut in. ‘Not at all; I am a skeptic. But I picked on Egypt because it was here that the cycle of the seasons, the rise and fall of the Nile, taught men to create absolutes: strict measures of distance, area, time elapsed … I often think of death. When I do, I feel certain I would rather die in the faith of the modern upstarts than in the faith of my ancestors. Has that notion never crossed your mind …? Forgive me; it is not something one asks a friend. Being blind occasionally makes me tactless.’

  ‘You … ’ One could hear Satamori moistening his lips. ‘You hold Moslem ceremonies here at your home.’

  ‘Indeed, indeed. But as to the Koran – well, without wishing to appear arrogant, I could have compiled a more convincing book of divine revelation myself. The same goes for the Christian Bible, and the Little Red Book as well!’ Mustapha laughed to diminish the weight of his words.

  ‘And you could no doubt also have edited the doctrines of the Way of Life?’ Satamori snapped.

  ‘My dear friend, I did – I did!’

  The silence was half-strangled. At long last Satamori forced out, ‘If this is another of your subtle jokes, you must pardon a foreigner for not – ’

  ‘Ah, I am doing what I always do without being able to help myself!’ Mustapha cried. ‘When I’m interrupted during the composition of a poem – no, don’t blame yourself, I was making very poor headway and the result will be all the better for being punctuated by a night’s sleep – but when I am interrupted I tend to grow snappish. I’ve given offense without intention. Let me hear that I’ve apologized for it to your satisfaction!’

  ‘No offense was taken,’ Satamori muttered.

  ‘Ah, I’m glad. But I did provoke you into suspecting me of a somewhat silly joke, did I not? I should erase that notion too. I meant what I said to be literal. I did edit many of the sayings of Prince Knud – from an English version admittedly, not the original Swedish – and if there is any form, shape, structure to the texts which leave our ateliers it’s because I imposed it.’

  Satamori indrew a hissing breath, and with it seemed to come all the chill of the northern winter (the Erikssons’ home locked in Arctic night!) and the threat of Ragnarök that rode the flood-tide of the skelter. Some time passed.

  Eventually Mustapha said, his tone thoughtful, ‘One is inclined to wonder how the world views what one does . . For an artist, it’s rare to be pleased that what he is proud of is anonymous and uncredited, but in this instance that paradox is the truth. It was painful to discover that all the tenets I had been brought up to were false. But I am not alone in that. What perhaps I may claim to be alone in, is that I did something about it.’

  ‘I’m glad that you said nothing about this before,’ Satamori snapped. ‘I might not have – ’

  It sounded as though he was threatening to rise. Mustapha reached out a hand, unseen, to check him.

  ‘My friend! Remember, I did not do what I did to insult you and your creed, only to give what light I could to the world after the light was stolen from my eyes.’ A wave at his bright but sightless gaze, turned by sound to confront and transfix the older man.

  ‘I … Yes, granted.’ Satamori resumed his chair. ‘Even so, I – ’

  ‘You still believe that doing honor to the ancestors is among a man’s primary obligations. I will not contradict. I would prefer to – to supplement.’ Mustapha’s tone was persuasive without being downright wheedling, a narrow path to walk with words. ‘You must at least concede that it’s better to honor the ancestors for what they did right than for the mistakes which, had they the chance, they would repent?’

  Satamori hesitated. ‘I believe I read a poem of yours on that subject,’ he muttered. ‘In translation, I’m afraid.’

  Mustapha wanted to tremble – this was so close to what he had been worrying about within the past hour, the notion that someone would ultimately look at his work and see through it – but he overcame the impulse. Not a quaver showed in his voice as he answered, ‘I am always glad when somebody reads and recalls my poetry, in whatever version. But do you not concede I have a valid point?’

  ‘I suppose I have to.’ Satamori heaved a deep sigh. ‘I do believe it was the – the continuity of our beliefs which carried us through the terrible period after the Blowup; I do believe that if we hadn’t had our respective faiths to use for crutches, we might never have risen again, even as far as we have done today.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Mustapha said, ‘it was because we held to the beliefs that we did, that we reached the point of striking out insanely in all directions, with some of our most terrible weapons. The Blowup is now two generations in the past, but it has left so deep a scar on the collective psyche of mankind that we will go to any lengths to avoid a repetition. For an intelligent young person today, it is more significant that we suffered a population crash corresponding with incredible precision to the example set by rabbits infected with myxomatosis, or lemmings, or indeed any species that has exceeded the ability of its environment to support
it – think of coral and the crown-of-thorns starfish if you like! – it’s more significant, as I was about to say, that we have thus been shown subject to natural laws than that idealistic dreamers in ancient times conceived of man as being superior to his animal cousins. Moreover, so many of us died. As we re-open the contaminated areas of the planet, we find we are walking through a giant graveyard. It is almost literally impossible to ignore the presence of our forebears’ dead bodies.’

  ‘You always had a sweet tongue, Mustapha,’ Satamori said. ‘Today you are excelling yourself; you’ve touched me on a very raw spot, too. Half of me knows, in my head, that one must fight the superstitious fear of death, or we shall forever be shut off from vast tracts of what are now again becoming habitable land – and we need that space, precisely because we did suffer a typical population crash. The other half of me stands in irrational awe of our ancestors, as though they had indeed become ghosts, or spirits, or whatever you call them, and ought not to be disturbed.’

  He set aside his coffee-cup, now empty, and declined Ali’s solicitous offer of a refill.

  ‘On the other hand, by inventing the privateer Chaim did free us from that terrifying abolition of privacy which was so alarming to us we stopped at nothing to – But I said that to you before, and didn’t convince you.’

  ‘Nothing, I’m afraid, will convince me that applying the same principles which led to our near-suicide can rescue us from our remaining troubles,’ Mustapha said in a tone of regret. ‘I wish I could believe that. It would make life simpler, wouldn’t it? But in fact I’m certain that only a complete re-assessment of our place on the planet, our relationship to other life-forms, in sum an abdication of our arrogance, will enable us to escape another, and another, and maybe another absolutely final, disaster similar to the Blowup. Skeptic though I am, I regard the teachings of the Way of Life as likely to encourage a proper humility in us, the sort of attitude that alone can permit us to survive.’

  He gathered the skirts of his gown and rose.

  ‘So I shall not attend Chaim’s treasure-hunt party, even by direct invitation. I have no wish to see another generation of managers, bureaucrats and administrators wrap this species of ours in their steel-wire web of inflexible rules and regulations. I don’t want to be party to the perpetuation of a system which condemned to death two-thirds of humanity. Better to expire of plague, starvation or cold than to be killed by the voluntary act of another man!’

  ‘In so many ways I agree, and in so many I don’t … ’ Satamori also rose, shaking his head; Mustapha could hear the faint brushing of his nape-hairs on the stiff collar of his formal coat.

  ‘What it comes down to,’ Mustapha said, ‘is that mankind from now on must be governed by artists, not by politicians. There is no other conceivable manner in which a survival-prone society can be organized. We must evolve an aesthetic of government, free from ideological trammels; we must commit our fate into the hands of those who derive artistic satisfaction from seeing a well-ordered community, who will crack their skulls into the small hours of the morning over a flaw in their scheme as I may worry myself sleepless over a line in a poem until it suddenly turns head over heels and comes out right.’

  ‘You think those in power don’t worry like that already?’ Satamori countered wryly. ‘Oh, we do – we do! But, since the subject of your work has arisen by implication, and I have an hour to waste before continuing to Chaim’s, I should much enjoy another tour of your ateliers …?’

  ‘It will be my pleasure,’ Mustapha said, bowing.

  So they passed the next hour in walking around that part of Mustapha’s home where his corps of assistants were at work. He had over a hundred now. They were orphans, of both sexes, whom he had recruited as little children – their parents being dead of violence or disease – and taught a trade that would furnish employment for a lifetime. Some worked in the scriptorium, copying out not only his poems but far more ancient texts, chiefly in Arabic though some in European languages for which they used a classic chancellery hand, and illuminated the result with tiny exquisite drawings based on models provided by the chief scribe, Muley Hassan. Others were busy in the paper-mill, converting old rags, straw, corn-husks and a score of miscellaneous vegetable substances into fresh new deckle-edged sheets. Still others worked in the bindery, where the air was pleasantly scented with glue and size, putting the final touches to the volumes which now commanded collector’s prices the world around, irrespective of whether or not the buyer could read the contents.

  Satamori fell instantly in love with a collection of old folk-tales and put down a deposit of five thousand to secure possession of it when it was finished and properly bound.

  INTERFACE F

  Once a fool who loved gold

  Killed his rival to possess

  A lovely golden statue of a god.

  Afraid of being caught

  He melted the statue down

  Saying fire could not destroy its worth.

  They found him starved to death

  In a waterless valley

  His bare fingerbones clutching the gold.

  I do not call him foolish

  Because he could not eat gold

  But because beauty is the food of the soul.

  – MUSTAPHA SHARIF

  Chapter 6

  Hans was shaking as he entered his darkroom. It was always like this when he returned from one of his secret expeditions. He was on edge because he could never tell in advance whether he would have anything to show for the risk he had run.

  It was getting harder and harder to purchase reliable film. The Economics Authority, of course, knew to the last centimeter how much was currently being manufactured, so for a project of this kind he had to depend on recuperated stock which all too often proved to have been fogged by radiation.

  Neo-Polaroid was easier to come by; the available computing capacity was simply not up to determining whether or not a given buyer was telling the truth when he claimed he’d wasted half his last batch because he was drunk, and thrown the failed pictures in the garbage a month ago. But Hans would not have dared switch to it, because it had to be developed as soon as it was exposed. Carrying visual evidence of his surreptitious journeys would have been suicidal. A film could be blurred by springing the cap of its cassette – he had modified several specially, to make that easier in an emergency – and he always took along decoy film too, exposed at places he was entitled to visit.

  Dany, of course, was not party to his secret. She would have betrayed him in a fit of depression, without a doubt.

  Humming, in total darkness but moving with the ease of long practice (and thinking about blindness while he worked, as he frequently did), he decided that for once he would process his important film first, not the decoy he had shot on his way to rendezvous with Mustapha. That could serve again. In any case he was suspicious of its quality. He prepared his developing bath, opened the cassette with a tingle of excitement –

  And was suddenly dazzled by brilliant light as the door was flung wide.

  He stood rigid as a rock, looking at the ruined film in his hand.

  A shrill voice gnawed at his mind like a worm attacking the core of an apple.

  ‘Hans, you were right about Athens! There’s a public skelter terminal called Lyceum only they spell it a funny way. So I went there, but then somebody changed my card for another one and I can’t figure this out either … Oh. Is something wrong?’

  Gone: cobwebs. Gone: dust like snow unmarred by footprints. Gone: the irrecoverable ‘after’ to pair with the reconstructed ‘before’ …

  In the next five seconds he came close to murdering his wife. But he changed his mind. He thought of something sweeter and more fitting. He tossed aside the film and turned, cordial of expression and tone.

  ‘Well, what does the second card say?’

  She proffered it uncertainly. Like the first, it bore a clue in rhyme. The answer, unless he was overlooking something ridiculously subtle, mus
t be Oaxaca.

  ‘Can you work it out?’ Dany pressed. ‘I do so much want to get to Aleuker’s party!’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you do,’ he agreed, moving forward as though to obtain a better light on the card. And continued, having drawn a deep breath: ‘Only – what makes you think Aleuker will want you as a guest? He’s inviting people intelligent enough to solve these puzzles for themselves: knowledgeable people, well-informed, interesting to be acquainted with. You, on the other hand, are stupid, silly, greedy, selfish, boring, and totally inconsiderate of other people. When you burst in on me just now, you wrecked something I set a lot of store by. It’s gone past recall because you were too impatient to knock!’

  ‘But I asked if anything was wrong!’ In a wail. He ignored the interruption.

  ‘So I think it would be a good idea if I kept out of your way for a while, because if I see you again today I shall certainly beat you to a whimpering pulp. I’ll go to Aleuker’s party. When I get back I may have sweated out my anger.’

  ‘No! No, you wouldn’t steal my chance!’ Clawing at him with slow pudgy hands. He slapped her accurately on the left cheek, and as she shrank back, convinced by pain that he meant what he said, made for the skelter.

  An echo of her curses seemed to follow him, though he knew that was impossible.

  It was not a short trip, nor a quick one, but he relished the going.

  At Oaxaca Concourse, overlooking the abandoned airport, it was raining, and there were cracks in the concrete roof of the skelter hall which allowed warm dirty water to drip down into many handle-less plastic buckets.

  There a shabby young man exchanged the card Hans was carrying for still another, under the watchful eyes of the travel-hungry who pretended not to be: a vast group, hundreds strong, of so-called stucks, so terrified of skelter travel that they could not summon up the courage to pass the non-existent barrier dividing them from the clustered transit booths. It wasn’t inability to pay that held them back; skelter travel cost nothing. Had to. There was no way of pricing infinite speed over nil net expenditure of power. And besides, mankind’s resources of imagination and ingenuity had been slashed by far more than two-thirds when the population crash occurred, so it was imperative always to be able to bring the available talent to bear where it was needed.