A Circus of Hells df-2

by Poul Anderson

  She shook the dizziness from her head.

  Too much being shut in. Too much soaking myself in a world that can’t be mine. Nicky’s been gone too long. (I saw a greyhound once, well-trained, proud, clean and swift. Nicky’s a greyhound.) I can’t get away from my humanness. And I shouldn’t want to, should I?

  “N-nothing, sir. I felt a little faint. I’ll be all right.”

  “Come rest.” Stooping, he took her arm—a Terran gesture she had told him about—and led her through the inner curtain to his apartment.

  The first room was what she might have expected and what officers of the base had no doubt frequently seen: emblem of the Vach Urdiolch, animation of a homeworld scene where forested hills plunged toward an ocean turbulent beneath four moons, shelves of books and mementos, racked weapons, darkly shimmering drapes; on the resilient floor, a carved and inlaid table of black wood, a stone in a shallow crystal bowl of water, an alcove shrine, and nothing else except spaciousness. One archway, half unscreened, gave on a monastic bedchamber and ’fresher cubicle.

  But they passed another hanging. She stopped in the dusk beyond and exclaimed.

  “Be seated if you wish.” He helped her shortness to the top of a couch upholstered in reptilian hide. The locks swirled over her shoulders as she stared about.

  The mounted skulls of two animals, one horned, one fanged; convoluted tubes and flasks crowding a bench in the gloom of one corner; a monolith carved with shapes her eyes could not wholly follow, that must have required a gravsled to move; a long-beaked leathery-skinned thing, the span of its ragged wings equal to her height, that sat unblinking on its gnarled perch; and more and more, barely lit by flambeaux in curiously wrought sconces, whose restless blue glow made shadows more like demons, whose crackling was a thin song that almost meant something she had forgotten, whose smoke was pungent and soon tingled in her brain.

  She looked up to the craggy highlights of Ydwyr’s countenance, tremendously above her. “Do not be afraid,” said the lion voice. “These are not instruments of the darkness, they are pathfinders to enter it.”

  He sat down on his tail, bringing his ridged head level with hers. Reflections moved like flames deep within the caverns under his brow ridges. But his speech stayed gentle, even wistful.

  “The Vach Urdiolch are the landless ones. So is the Law, that they may have time and impartiality to serve the Race. Our homes, where we have dwelt for centuries, we keep by leasehold. Our wealth comes less from ancient dues than from what we may win offplanet. This has put us in the forefront of the Race’s outwardness; but it has also brought us closest to the unknowns of worlds never ours.

  “A witch was my nurse. She had served us since my grandfather was a cub. She had four arms and six legs, what was her face grew between her upper shoulders, she sang to me in tones I could not always hear, and she practiced magic from the remembered Ebon Mountains of her home. Withal, she was good and faithful; and in me she found a ready listener.

  “I think that may be what turned me toward searching out the ways of alien folk. It helps Merseia, yes; we need to know them; but I have wanted their lore for its own sake. And Djana, I have not perpetually found mere primitive superstition. A herb, a practice, a story, a philosophy…how dare we say nothing real is in them, when we come new to a world that gave birth to those who live on it? Among folk who had no machines I saw, a few times, happenings that I do not believe any machine could bring about.

  “In a sense, I became a mystic, in another sense, none, for where is the border between ‘natural’ and ‘transcendental’? Hypnosis, hysterical strength and stigmata, sensory heightening, psychosomatics, telepathy—such things are scorned in the scientific youth of civilizations, later accepted, when understanding has grown. I am simply using techniques that may, perhaps, advance comprehension where gauges and meters cannot.

  “Once I got leave to visit Chereion. That is the most eldritch planet I have seen, a dominion of the Roidhunate but only, I think, because that serves the ends of its dwellers, whatever those ends are. For they are old, old. They had a civilization a million years ago that may have reached beyond this galaxy, where we have barely started to burrow about at the end of one spiral arm. It disappeared; they cannot or will not say why, and it suits a few of them to be too useful to Merseia for us to risk angering the rest. Yes, we haughty conquerors walk softly among them!

  “I was received among the disciples of Aycharaych, in his castle at Raal. He has looked deeper into the mind—not the mind of his people, or yours, or any single one, but somehow into that quality of pandemic Mind which the scientists deny can exist—he has looked deeper into this, I believe, than any other being alive. He could not evoke in me what I did not have to be evoked; or else he did not choose to. But he taught me what he said I could use; and without that skill, that way of existing in the cosmos, I would never have done half what I have. Think: in a single decade, we are well on the way to full communication with both races on Talwin.

  “I want, not to probe your soul, Djana, but to join with you in exploring it. I want to know the inwardness of being human; and you may see what it is to be Merseian.”

  The flames danced and whispered among moving shadows; the figures on the monolith traced a path that could almost be followed; the smoke whirled in her veins; around her and through her crooned the lullaby voice of Father.

  “Do not be afraid of what you see, Djana. These things are archaic, yes, they speak of pagan cults and witchcraft, but that is because they come from primeval sources, from the beast that lived before mind was kindled in it. One day those tokens may no longer be needed. Or perhaps they will be, perhaps they go deeper even than I imagine. I do not know and I want to know. It will help to mesh awarenesses with a human, Djana…no terrified captive, no lickspittle turncoat, no sniveler about peace and brotherhood, no pseudomorph grown up among us apart from his own breed…but one who has come to me freely, out of the depths of the commonalty that bred her, one who has known alike the glory and the tragedy of being human.

  “These are symbols, Diana, certain objects, certain rites, which different thinking species have found will help raise buried parts of the soul. And brought forth, those parts can be understood, controlled, strengthened. Remember what the discipline of the body can do. Remember likewise the discipline of the spirit; calm, courage, capability can be learned, if the means are known; they take nothing but determination. Now ask yourself: What more remains?

  “Djana, you could become strong.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  And she was gazing into the water, and the fire, and the crystal, and the shadows within…

  A hostel at night. Fire leaping red and gold, chuckling as it lights the comradely company, rough-hewn furniture, fiddler on a chair tuning to play a dance; at the table’s far end, a woman, long-gowned, deep-bosomed, who bears a sheaf and an infant on her lap.

  Wind. A black bird sudden athwart the pane. The sound of its beak rapping.

  Descent down endless stairs in the dark, led by one who never looks back. The boat. The river.

  On the far side they have no faces.

  “I am sorry,” Ydwyr said. “We do not keep a pharmacopoeia for your species. You must forego drugs. Furthermore, the Old Way is not for you to tread to its end—nor me, I confess. We have the real world to cope with, and we will not do so by abandonment of reason.

  “Tell me your dreams. If they grow too bad, call me on my private line—thus—and I will come to you, no matter the hour.”

  The snake that engirdles the universe lifts its starry head. It gapes. Scream. Run.

  The coils hiss after. The swamp clings to feet. A million years, a step a year out of the sucking muck, and the snake draws close behind.

  Lightning. Sinking. Black waters.

  He held her, simply held her, at night in her room. “From my viewpoint,” he said, “I am gaining matchless experience with human archetypes.” The dry practicality, itself comforting, yielded to mild
ness. A big hand stroked her hair. “But you, Djana, are more than a thing. You are becoming like a child to me, did you know? I want to raise you up again and lead you through this valley of shadows you must pass before you can stand by your own strength.”

  At mornwatch he left her. She slept a short while, but got to breakfast and subsequently continued her regular schooling. It did not keep her from dwelling within her dreams.

  Outside, the first mists of autumn sneaked white over the wet earth.

  The waters are peace. Dream, drowse…no, the snake is not dead.

  The snake is not dead.

  His poisonous teeth. Struggle. Scream. The warm waters are gone, drained out with a huge hollow roaring. Hollow, hollow.

  The hollow sound of hoofs, shaking a bridge that nine dead kings could not make thunder. Light.

  The snake burns backward from the light.

  Raise hands to it. But bow down from its brilliance.

  That blaze is off the spear of the Messiah.

  “Khraich. I would be interested to know if an abortion was attempted on you. Not important, since you survived. Your need is to learn that you did survive, and that you can.

  “Do you feel ready for another session this evening? I would like for you to come and concentrate on the Graven Stone. It seems to have traits in common with what I have read your Terran usage calls a…a mandala?”

  A mirror.

  The face within.

  One comes from behind on soundless feet and holds a mirror to the mirror.

  Endlessness dwindles toward nothingness.

  At the heart of nothingness, a white spark. It flames, and nothingness recoils and flees back outward to endlessness, while trumpets triumph.

  “Ur-r-rh.” Ydwyr scowled at her test scores. They sat prosaically in his living room—though what was prosaic about its austere serenity? “Something developing, beyond question. A hitherto unrealized potential—not telepathy. I’d hoped—”

  “The Old Way to the One,” she said, and watched the wall dissolve.

  He gave her a long stare before he replied, crisply: “You have gone as far down that road as I dare take you, my dear. Perhaps not far enough, but I am not able—I suspect none less than Aycharaych would be able—to guide you further; and alone, you would lose yourself in yourself.”

  “Hm?” she said vaguely. “Ydwyr, I know I touched your mind, I felt you.”

  “Delusion. Mysticism is a set of symbols. Symbols are to live by, yes—why else banners?—but they are not to be confused with the reality for which they stand. While we know less about telepathy than psychologists usually pretend, we do know it’s a perfectly physical phenomenon. Extremely long waves travel at light speed, subject to inverse-square diminution and the other laws of nature; the principles of encoding apply; nothing but the radical variation of sensitivity, from time to time and individual to individual, ever made its existence doubtful. Today we can identify it when it occurs.

  “Whatever happened in these last experiments of ours, you are not becoming a telepathic receiver. An influence of that general nature was present, true. The meters registered it, barely over threshold level. But analysis shows you were not calling the signs I dealt with above-random accuracy. Instead, I was not dealing them completely at random.

  “Somehow, slightly, unconsciously, you were influencing me toward turning up the signs you guessed I would be turning up.”

  “I wanted to reach you,” Djana mumbled.

  Ydwyr said sternly: “I repeat, we have entered realms where I am not fit to conduct you. The dangers are too great—principally to you, possibly to me. At a later date, maybe, Aycharaych—for the present, we stop. You shall return to the flesh world, Djana. No more magic. Tomorrow we set you to gymnastics and flogging, exhausting, uninspiring work with Eriau. That should bring you back.”

  He on the throne: “For that they have sinned beyond redemption, the sin that may not be forgiven, which is to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, no more are they My people.

  “Behold, I cast them from Me; and I will raise against them a new people under a new sun; and their name shall be Strength.

  “Open now the book of the seven thunders.”

  Talwin’s short autumn was closing when the ship came from headquarters. That was not Merseia. No domain like the Roidhunate could be governed from a single planet, even had the Race been interested in trying. However, she did bear a direct word from the Protector.

  She stood on the field, slim, sleek, a destroyer with guns whippet-wicked against the sky, making a pair of counterparts from Morioch’s command that were likewise in port look outmoded and a little foolish. The captured Terran scoutboat hunched in a corner, pathetic.

  Few trees showed above the stockade. Early frosts had split their flimsy trunks and brought them down, already to crumble back into the soil. The air was cool and moist. Mists coiled about Merseians working outdoors; but overhead heaven reached clear, deep blue, and what clouds there were shone dazzling white beneath Siekh.

  Djana was not invited to the welcoming ceremonies, nor had she anticipated it. Ydwyr gave her a quick intercom call—“Have no fears, I am authorized to handle your case, as I requested in my dispatch”—and wasn’t that wonderful of him? She went for a walk, a real tramp, kilometers along the bluffs above the Golden River and back through what had been enclosing jungle and was becoming open tundra, space, freedom, full lungs and taut muscles, for hour after hour until she turned home of her own desire.

  I’ve changed, she thought. I still don’t know how much.

  The weeks under Ydwyr’s—tutelage?—were vague in her recollection, often difficult or impossible to separate from the dreams of that time. Later she had gradually regained herself. But it was no longer the same self. Old Djana was scarred, frightened, greedy with the greed that tries to fill inner emptiness, lonely with the loneliness that dares not love. New Djana was…well, she was trying to find out. She was someone who would go for a hike and stop to savor the scarlet of a late-blooming flower. She was someone who, in honest animal wise, hoped Nicky would soon finish with his expedition, and daydreamed about something between him and her that would last, but did not feel she needed him or anybody to guard her from monsters.

  Maybe none existed. Dangers, of course, but dangers can’t do worse than kill you, and they said in the Vachs, “He cannot respect life who does not respect death.” No, wait, she had met monsters, back in the Empire. Though she no longer quailed at the remembrance of them, she could see they must be crushed underfoot before they poisoned the good beings like Ydwyr and Nicky and Ulfangryf and Avalrik and, well, yes, all right, in his fashion, Morioch…

  Wind lulled, tossing her hair, caressing her skin, which wore less clothes than she would formerly have required on this kind of day. Occasionally she tried to call to her the winged creatures she saw, and twice she succeeded; a bright guest sat on her finger and seemed content, till she told it to continue toward its hibernation. To her, the use of her power felt like being a child again—she had been, briefly, once in a rare while—and wishing hard. Ydwyr guessed that it was a variety of projective telepathy and that its sporadic appearance in her species had given rise to legends about geases, curses, and allurements.

  But I can’t control it most of the time, and don’t care that I can’t. I don’t want to be a superwoman. I’m happy just to be a woman—a full female, no matter what race—which is what Ydwyr made me.

  How can I thank him?

  The compound court was deserted when she entered it. Probably all personnel were fraternizing with the ship’s crew. Dusk was falling, chill increased minute by minute, the wind grew louder and stars blinked forth. She hurried to her room.

  The intercom was lit. She punched the replay. It said: “Report to the datholch in his office immediately on return,” with the time a Merseian hour ago. That meant almost four of Terra’s; they split their day decimally.

  Her heart bumped. She operated the controls as she had done
when the nightmares came. “Are you there, Ydwyr?”

  “You hear me,” said the reassuringly professional voice he could adopt. By now she seldom needed the computer.

  She sped down empty halls to him. Remotely, she heard hoarse lusty singing. When Merseians celebrated, they were apt to do so at full capacity. The curtain at his door fell behind her to cut off that sound.

  She held fist to breast and breathed hard. He rose from the desk where he had been working. “Come,” he said. The gray robe flapped behind him.

  When they were secret among the torches and skulls, he leaned down through twilight and breathed—each word stirred the hair around her ear—

  “The ship brought unequivocal orders. You are safe. They do not care about you, provided you do not bring the Terrans the information you have. But Dominic Flandry has powerful enemies. Worse, his mentor Max Abrams does; and they suspect the younger knows secrets of the older. He is to go back in the destroyer. The probing will leave mere flesh, which will probably be disposed of.”

  “Oh, Nicky,” she said, with a breaking within her.

  He laid his great hands on her shoulders, locked eyes with eyes, and went on: “My strong recommendation having been overruled, my protest would be useless. Yet I respect him, and I believe you have affection for him yourself. This thing is not right, neither for him nor for Merseia. Have you learned to honor clean death?”

  She straightened. The Eriau language made it natural to say, “Yes, Ydwyr, my father.”

  “You know your intercom has been connected to the linguistic computer, which on a different channel is in touch with the expedition he is on,” he told her. “It keeps no records unless specifically instructed. Under guise of a personal message, the kind that commonly goes from here to those in the field, you can tell him what you like. You have thus exchanged words before, have you not? None of his companions know Anglic. He could wander away—’lost’—and cold is a merciful executioner.”