Emperor of Gondwanaland

by Paul Di Filippo

  But then came Tragedy! Forced backwards, Kane stumbled upon a Root, and momentarily lost his Vigilance. Into that narrow crack of Inattention Metacomet plunged! A blow from his Tom-a-Hawk was only partially deflected before coming into Heavy Contact with Kane’s Scull!

  Now Kane measured his lanky Length upon the clammy Ground, Stunned and Bleeding. A Yawp of Sympathy and Alarm escaped my own Lips. My Beloved Conqueror had been felled, and All was Lost lest I could save him! I estimated how quickly I could reach one of Kane’s discarded Pistols, but before I could move, Metacomet bestrode my prostrate Hero like the Colossus of Rhodes and raised his evil Axe.

  “I took no such pledge of mercy as thee, Kane. Prepare to meet thy false God.”

  At that instant a Shot rang out, and King Philip plunged Rearward to the ground.

  Into the clearing stepped one of the Praying Indians, named most inaptly, as I later learned, Alderman. He it was whose Cowardly Shot had ignobly finished the Great Sagamore, once the Bane of our Land, piercing the Body of the proud Leader precisely where “Joab thrust his darts into rebellious Absalom.”

  I rushed to Kane’s side, seeking to Succor him. But his Wound was Gouting much blood, and he remained Insensate. There was little enough I could do, save cushion his Head and stroke his Gory Brow.

  Within minutes, the Islet was crowded with exultant Soldiers. Somehow, between ’em all, both Kane and the corpse of Philip were Borne out of the Marsh.

  Patient Reader, there is little enough more to indite in this Account anent the most Stirring Moments of my Young Life, now so far removed from my current Feeble Estate.

  The fate of Philip’s Mortal Remains is well known. Beheaded and quartered, the Punishment long reserved for Traitors, he was denied sanctified Burial according to either Christian or Pagan Customs. His mounted Head was displayed at Plimoth for twenty-five Years or more, and served as Grim Warning to his Dis-spirited and Dis-sheveled brethren.

  This Brutal Decomposition of his Opponent, which Kane’s Incapacitation made him unable to prevent, most assuredly occasioned Kane’s Deepest Regrets, tho’ he spoke not ever of it.

  As for Kane himself, he recovered admirably, despite the Severity of his Wound, proving once agan that whereas one Man may die from cracking his Tooth upon a Plumb-stone, another may survive an Hatchet buried in his Scull. And I shall eschew False Humility enough to reveal that it was I who had the Inspired Notion to place his Stave upon his Bosom during the initial Stuporous stages of his Recovery. Indeed, the Magical Wand seemed to act as a Sovereign Incitement to his Speedy Healing. Before a fortnight had passed, the Old Puritan was ready to return to his Native Shores.

  We made our Goodbyes at the same Newport Wharf where I had seen him step ashore, what seemed like a Small Eternity ago, so rich in Incident had the brief days been.

  Kane clasped my hand firmly, regarding me from under his crumpled Slouch Hat with an iron Gaze.

  “Think you still, young Cotton, to follow in the warrior’s footsteps after all the gruesome things you have observed?”

  I made ready Reply, having given much Consideration to this question while Kane recuperated. “No, Sir, I do not. I will most likely become a preacher, I think, like unto my father. The Reverend Cotton Mather has a nice sound to’t. In that profession, I deem, a man’s hands may remain virtuously unbloodied.”

  Kane neither disputed nor affirmed this Sentiment, but simply Saluted me, and stepped onto the vessel that bore him away.

  This story exists only because the ingenious and far-sighted Lou Anders commissioned it for his original anthology, Live Without a Net. Asked to imagine a scenario where the Internet had never been invented, or was no more, I was inspired by the work of Jack Vance, whose novella The Dragon Masters postulated a world where manipulation of animal and human breeding had accomplished all that physics ever could. And the classic motif of barbaric descendants of past glory clinging to things they half understood—a trope I had never worked with before—was also just too alluring to resist.

  Clouds and Cold Fires

  Out of a clear sky on a fine summer morning, a buckshot rattle of hailstones across the living pangolin plates of Pertinax’s rooftop announced the arrival of some mail.

  Inside his cozy, low-ceilinged hutch, with its corner devoted to an easel and canvases and art supplies, its shelves full of burl sculptures, its workbench that hosted bubbling retorts and alembics and a universal proseity device, Pertinax paused in the feeding of his parrot tulips. Setting down the wooden tray of raw-meat chunks, he turned away from the colorfully enameled soil-filled pots arrayed on his bright windowsill. The parrot tulips squawked at this interruption of their lunch, bobbing their feathery heads angrily on their long succulent neck stalks. Pertinax chided them lovingly, stroking their crests while avoiding their sharp beaks. Then, hoisting the hem of his long striped robe to expose his broad naked paw-feet, he hurried outdoors.

  Fallen to the earth after bouncing from the imbricated roof, the hailstones were already nearly melted away to invisibility beneath the temperate sunlight, damp spots on the undulant greensward upon which Pertinax’s small but comfortable dwelling sat. Pertinax wetted a finger, raised it to gauge the wind’s direction, then directed his vision upward and to the north, anticipating the direction from which his mail would arrive. Sure enough, within a minute a lofty cloud had begun to form, a flocculent painterly smudge on the monochrome canvas of the turquoise sky.

  The cloud assumed coherence and substance, drawing into itself its necessary share of virgula and sublimula omnipresent within the upper atmosphere. After another minute or two, the cloud possessed a highly regular oval outline and had descended to within five meters of the ground. Large as one of the windows in Pertinax’s hutch, the cloud halted its progress at this level, and its surface began to acquire a sheen. The sheen took on the qualities of an ancient piece of translucent plastic, such as the Overclockers might cherish. Then Pertinax’s animated mail appeared across the cloud’s surface, as the invisible components of the cloud churned in coordinated fashion.

  Sylvanus’s snouty whiskered face smiled, but the smile was grim, as was his voice resonating from the cloud’s fine-grain speakers.

  “Pertinax my friend, I regret this interruption of your studies and recreations, but I have some dramatic news requiring our attention. It appears that the Overclockers at their small settlement known as ‘Chicago’ are about to launch an assault on the tropospherical mind. Given their primitive methods, I doubt that they can inflict permanent damage. But their mean-spirited sabotage might very well cause local disruptions before the mind repairs itself. I know you have several projects running currently, and I would hate to see you lose any data during a period of limited chaos. I would certainly regret any setbacks to my ongoing modeling of accelerated hopper embryogenesis. Therefore, I propose that a group of those wardens most concerned form a delegation to visit the Overclockers and attempt to dissuade them from such malicious tampering. Mumbaugh has declined to participate—he’s busy dealing with an infestation of hemlock mites attacking the forests of his region—but I have firm commitments from Cimabue, Tanselle, and Chellapilla. I realize that it is irksome to leave behind the comforts of your home to make such a trip. But I am hoping that I may count on your participation as well. Please reply quickly, as time is of the essence.”

  Its mail delivered, the cloud wisped away into its mesoscopic constituent parts. A light misty drizzle refreshed Pertinax’s face. But otherwise he was left with only the uneasy feelings occasioned by the message.

  Of course he would help Sylvanus. Interference with the tropospherical mind could not be tolerated. The nerve of those Overclockers!

  Not for the first time, nor probably the last, Pertinax ruefully contemplated the dubious charity of the long-departed Upflowered.

  When 99.9 percent of humanity had abandoned Earth for greener intergalactic pastures during the Upflowering, the leave takers had performed several final tasks. They had re-arcadized th
e whole globe, wiping away nearly every vestige of mankind’s crude twenty-second-century proto-civilization, and restocked the seas and plains with many beasts. They had established Pertinax and his fellows—a small corps of ensouled, spliced, and redacted domestic animals—as caretakers of the restored Earth. They had charitably set up a few agrarian reservations for the small number of dissidents and malfunctioning humans who chose to remain behind, stubbornly unaltered in their basic capabilities from their archaic genetic baseline. And they had uploaded every vestige of existing machine intelligence and their knowledge bases to a new platform: an airborne network of minuscule, self-replenishing components, integrated with the planet’s meteorological systems.

  During the intervening centuries, the remaining archaic humans—dubbed the Overclockers for their uncanny devotion to both speed and the false quantization of holistic imponderables- had gradually dragged themselves back up to a certain level of technological achievement. Now, it seemed, they were on the point of making a nuisance of themselves. This could not be tolerated.

  Hurrying back into his compact domicile, Pertinax readied his reply to Sylvanus. From a small door inset in one wall, which opened onto a coop fixed to the outside wall, Pertinax retrieved a mail pigeon. He placed the docile murmuring bird on a tabletop and fed it some special seed, scooped from one compartment of a feed bin. While he waited for the virgula and sublimula within the seed to take effect, Pertinax supplied his own lunch: a plate of carrots and celery, the latter smeared with delicious bean paste. By the time Pertinax had finished his repast, cleaning his fur with the side of one paw-hand all the way from muzzle to tufted ear tips, the pigeon was locked into recording mode, staring ahead fixedly, as if hypnotized by a predator.

  Pertinax positioned himself within the bird’s field of vision. “Sylvanus my peer, I enlist wholeheartedly in your mission! Although my use of the tropospheric mind is negligible compared to your own employment of the system, I do have all my statistics and observations from a century of avian migrations stored there. Should the data and its backups be corrupted, the loss of such a record would be disastrous! I propose to set out immediately by hopper for ‘Chicago.’ Should you likewise leave upon receipt of this message, I believe our paths will intersect somewhere around these coordinates.” Pertinax recited latitude and longitude figures. “Simply ping my hopper when you get close enough, and we’ll meet to continue the rest of our journey together. Travel safely.”

  Pertinax recited the verbal tag that brought the pigeon out of its trance. The bird resumed its lively attitude, plainly ready to perform its share of the mail delivery. Pertinax cradled the bird against his oddly muscled chest and stepped outside. He lofted the pigeon upwards, and it began to stroke the sky bravely.

  Once within the lowest layers of the tropospheric mind, the bird would have its brain states recorded by an ethereal cap of spontaneously congregating virgula and sublimula, and the bird would be free to return to its coop.

  Pertinax’s message would thus enter the meteorological medium and be propagated across the intervening leagues to Sylvanus. Like a wave in the ocean, the information was not dependent upon any unique set of entities to constitute its identity, and so could travel faster than simple forward motion of particles might suggest. To span the globe from Pertinax’s home to the antipodes took approximately twelve hours, and Sylvanus lived much closer. Not as fast as the ancient quantum-entanglement methods extant in the days before the Upflowering. But then again, the pace of life among the stewards was much less frenzied than it had been among the ancestors of the Overclockers.

  Having seen his mail on its way, Pertinax commenced the rest of his preparations for his trip. He finished feeding his parrot tulips, giving them a little extra to see them through his time away from home. If delayed overlong, Pertinax knew they would estivate safely till his return. Then from a cupboard he took a set of large saddlebags. Into these pouches he placed victuals for himself and several packets of multipurpose pigeon seed, as well as a few treats and vitamin pills to supplement the forage which his hopper would subsist on during the journey. He looked fondly at his neat, comfortable bed, whose familiar refuge he would miss. No taking that, of course! But the hopper would provide a decent alternative. Pertinax added a few other miscellaneous items to his pack, then deemed his provisions complete.

  Stepping outside, Pertinax took one fond look back inside before shutting and latching his door. He went around shuttering all the windows as a precaution against the storms that sometimes accompanied the more demanding calculations of the tropospheric mind. From the pigeon coop he withdrew three birds and placed them in a loosely woven wicker carrier. Then he took a few dozen strides to the hopper corral, formed of high walls of living ironthorn bush.

  Pertinax’s hopper was named Flossy, a fine mare. The redacted Kodiak Kangemu stood three meters tall at its shoulders. Its pelt was a curious blend of chestnut fur and gray feathers, its fast-twitch-muscled legs banded with bright yellow scales along the lower third above its enormous feet. A thick strong tail jutted backward, almost half again as long as Flossy’s body.

  Pertinax tossed Flossy a treat, which she snapped from the air with her long jaws. In the stable attached to the corral, Pertinax secured a saddle. This seat resembled a papoose or backpack, with two shoulder straps. Outside again, Pertinax opened the corral gate—formed of conventional timbers—and beckoned to Flossy, who obediently came out and hunkered down. Holding the saddle up above his head, Pertinax aided Flossy in shrugging into the seat. He cinched the straps, then hung his saddlebags from one lower side of the seat and the wicker basket containing the pigeons from the other. Deftly Pertinax scrambled up, employing handholds of Flossy’s fur, and ensconced himself comfortably, the seat leaving his arms free but cradling his back and neck. His head was now positioned above Flossy’s, giving him a clear view of his path. He gripped Flossy’s big upright ears firmly yet not harshly, and urged his mount around to face northeast.

  “Gee up, Flossy,” said Pertinax, and they were off.

  Flossy’s gait was the queerest mixture of hopping, vaulting, running, and lumbering, a mode of locomotion unknown to baseline creation. But Pertinax found it soothing, and his steed certainly ate up the kilometers.

  For the first few hours, Pertinax enjoyed surveying his immediate territory, quite familiar and beloved, noting subtle changes in the fauna and flora of the prairie that distance brought. In early afternoon he stopped for a meal, allowing Flossy to forage. Taking out a pigeon and prepping the bird, Pertinax recited his morning’s scientific observations to be uploaded to the tropospheric mind. Its data delivered, the bird homed back to Pertinax rather than the cottage. In less than an hour, the warden was under way again.

  Pertinax fell asleep in the saddle and awoke at dusk. He halted Flossy and dismounted to make camp. With the saddle off, Flossy cropped wearily nearby. The first thing Pertinax attended to was the establishment of a security zone. A pheromonal broadcaster would disseminate the warden’s exaggerated chemical signature for kilometers in every direction, a note that all of wild creation was primed by the Upflowered to respond to. Avoidance of the distinctive trace had been built into their ancestors’ genes. (The bodily signature had to be masked for up-close work with animals.) Pertinax had no desire to be trampled in the night by a herd of bison, or attacked by any of the region’s many predators. Sentient enemies were nonexistent, with the nearest Overclockers confined by their limited capacities nearly one thousand kilometers away in “Chicago.”

  After setting up the small scent-broadcast unit, Pertinax contemplated summoning forth some entertainment. But in the end he decided he was just too tired to enjoy any of the many offerings of the tropospheric mind, and that he would rather simply go to sleep.

  The upright Flossy, balanced tripodally on her long tail, was already herself half adrowse, and she made only the softest of burblings when Pertinax clambered into her capacious marsupial pouch. Dry and lined with a soft down, the pouch
smelled like the nest of some woodland creature, and Pertinax fell asleep feeling safe and cherished.

  The morning dawned like the first day of the world, crisp and inviting. Emerging from his nocturnal pouch, Pertinax noted that night had brought a heavy dew that would have soaked him had he been dossing rough. But instead he had enjoyed a fine, dry, restful sleep.

  Moving off a ways from the grumbling Flossy and casting about with a practiced eye, Pertinax managed to spot some untended prairie chicken nests amidst the grassy swales. He robbed them of an egg apiece without compunction (the population of the birds was robust), and soon a fragrant omelet, seasoned with herbs from home, sizzled over a small propane burner. (Pertinax obtained the flammable gas, like many of his needs, from his universal proseity device.)

  After enjoying his meal, Pertinax dispatched a pigeon upward to obtain from the tropospheric mind his positional reading, derived from various inputs such as constellational and magnetic. The coordinates, cloud-blazoned temporarily on the sky in digits meters long, informed Pertinax that Flossy had carried him nearly one hundred and fifty kilometers during their previous half day of travel. At this rate, he’d join up with Sylvanus on the morrow, and with the others a day later. Then the five stewards would reach “Chicago” around noon of the fourth day.

  Past that point, all certainty vanished. How the Overclockers would react to the arrival of the wardens, how the wardens would dissuade the humans from tampering with the planetary mind, what they would do if they met resistance—all this remained obscure.

  Remounting Flossy, Pertinax easily put the uncertainty from his mind. Neither he nor his kind were prone to angst. So, once on his way, he reveled instead in the glorious day and the unfolding spectacle of nature reigning supreme over an untarnished globe.

  Herds of bison thundered past at a safe distance during various intervals along Pertinax’s journey. Around noon a nearly interminable flock of passenger pigeons darkened the skies. A colony of prairie dogs stretching across hectares mounted a noisy and stern defense of their town.