by John Barnes
"I think we never know enough about other people," he said, finally.
"I'm so glad you'll be my Secundo. Do you think I should challenge without limit?"
"Why not? Teach the sadistic bastard what it's like." The grin that swept across his face would have been equally at home on a shark; I was sure mine was similar. Our hands clasped, and some loop that had opened with his arrival at my father's house in Elinorien closed around both of us at the moment.
"How are they bearing up?" I asked Aimeric, as we got a cot set up for him, and another for whomever, in my room. "Your father and Reverend Peterborough, I mean."
"Dad is taking it like a martyr ... but that doesn't quite mean what it would in Nou Occitan. I mean he's very conscious of other people in the past who've endured a great deal for what they believed. And he's ... trying to live up to them." Aimeric sighed. "On the other hand, Clarity ... she's not doing well at all, Giraut." He sat down at my breakfast bench and I could see some of the tension run out of his muscles, not because he felt better, but because his body was realizing that there was nothing to fight and nothing to achieve. "Her whole view of the world—what she's always told her congregation, and how she's always approached things—well, it's all built on the idea that the Caledon system is basically a good, fair, rational one that only needs a little tinkering, that the whole problem was a few stiffnecks, or some rigidly moral people who wouldn't let the system work as it should, or something like that. For that matter, she really did believe in that gentle, reasonable, loving God..."
"And now she doesn't?"
"Praise God. Give Thanks. Think Rationally. Be Free. Queroza's Four Articles ... and what Queroza taught was that they were all the same thing; we praise God by imitating Him, since He's the supremely rational being, and we give thanks to Him for being rational, and by doing all that we no longer must struggle against the rational world we live in, and therefore we're free. Free in the sense of a body in free fall, you see; you don't experience gravitation if you do just what the gravity wants you to." He sighed and shuddered, whether from cold or from sympathy I could not tell. "Clarity believes in all of that. Because she's—well, you know her. Generous and kind and loves everyone—because she's that way, those ideas take on a particularly important meaning to her. She doesn't know—I don't think you can know if you live in Caledony all your life—that it wasn't that she was good and kind because of the words, but that the words meant those things because she was good and kind." His eyes got far away again, and suddenly I knew more than I ever had before about that first stanyear of his in my father's house at Elinorien—how he must have been astonished to see people behaving decently when what they believed was absolute anathema to him. His swings between anger and debauchery were as explicable as Morning Storm here was.
"So what's she doing?" I asked after a long moment.
"She sits much too still. She barely talks. It took me a long time to get her to agree to even send a message via me to her congregation. And the things she says ... I don't think right now she wants to live, Giraut. She's about given up on God, at least as she's always known Him. Saltini's coup—carried out by the most devout believers in Caledon—has made her think she's been wrong all her life. When they let her out, I think she won't be any threat to them at all; she'll probably just sit at home and stare at the wall. There's just no fight left in her; that's what happens when you really believe in something, and find out that it was never true." He stood and began to undress. "I'm too tired to eat. I've got to sleep. Anyway, Dad is fine; the only thing Saltini's done is turn him into a blazing liberal. I'm glad to have the old dragon on our side—he'll be a real asset."
"I hadn't thought of us as having a side, yet," I said.
"Oh? Well, we will." He tossed his tunic into the laundry fresher. "In any society there are reasons galore for being unhappy with the existing order. As long as everyone has a substantial stake in it, though, that unhappiness never focuses into anything coherent enough to make much difference. Classic mistake—economic game theory of coups—when one little faction grabs the whole works, it takes on everyone's unhappiness. My bet offhand is that in three years Saltini will be beating down Shan's door begging for asylum and safe passage offworld."
Sitting, as I was, in a city of many millions, in one of two buildings not in Saltini's hands, with a force made up entirely of a couple of hundred unarmed, frightened, and exhausted social misfits, my conclusion was that hypothermia had set in on Aimeric. As he was tossing his boots into the corner and getting into his pajamas, Thorwald showed up at the door with soup and rolls for him. Aimeric accepted them and sat down to eat as if he were a child just come in from a long day playing in the snow. "And right to bed after you're done," Thorwald added, for all the world like somebody's mother. "Mr., um, that is, Giraut, some of us are having cocoa in the small kitchen if you'd like to join us to talk things over."
"Certainly," I said, and we left Aimeric in there to finish his dinner and get to bed. As we closed the door, I said, "I'm quite impressed with what you accomplished today, Mr. Spenders."
He grinned. "I'll get the habit of using your first name in a little while—Giraut. I might even get used to your nasty habit of teasing."
I laughed and didn't deny that I'd been doing it; apparently the laugh was all the apology required. As we went down the big stairway, I could hear an unfamiliar buzz; in a moment I realized that even in a very large building, a couple of hundred people make enough noise so that you're always aware of them. To my surprise—I had thought one thing I liked about the Center was that it was so perfectly shaped to my own mind—somehow the intruders, while creating some mess and confusion, made the place seem much more warm and human than ...well, than any place I'd ever lived.
It was a stray thought, no more, but it was the second idea for a good song I'd had that day. There was a prespaceflight poet, I remembered, Wordsworth, who had gotten a lot of the spirit of his work from having been in France when the Ancien Regime fell ... maybe I would at least come out of all this with something to sing about, which might put me ahead of many another Occitan performer.
The kitchen turned out to contain just me, Paul, Thorwald, Margaret, and a huge lasagna that somebody had baked. My stomach rolled over and I suddenly realized I had not eaten since before First Dark. The situation was general; at first all we did was gobble the wonderful hot food down.
"All right," I said. "Officially, Paul, since we're finally face-to-face, you're hired too. I assume you at least guessed that was going to happen."
"Sure did," Paul said. The tall young man leaned back and sighed. "If anyone had ever told me I'd be glad to have a job that was this much work..." He grinned. "You're certainly doing a good job of teaching us all not to be rational."
I took it as a compliment, and asked, "So how did your attack on the PPP's databases go?"
"No luck, I'm afraid. The generic aintellects available commercially have all been asimoved to the nth. Not only can they not hurt people, they can't help people violate any religious precepts. And it's really carefully woven into them—no way to get it out of them while you're customizing them. I'm afraid I drove two of them stark insane before I realized it just couldn't be done." He took a big gulp of the warm red Babylon Basin wine that Thorwald had found a couple of jugs of. "And they've got a lot of aintellects that are over a hundred stanyears old working for the PPP, some of which have spent all their time running simulations. Within twenty seconds of my trying to penetrate, they had gone from almost no defenses to a complete set of self-improving ones. To get anywhere against that, we'd have needed ten thousand aintellects from somewhere outside the culture in a coordinated attack."
I shrugged and nodded. That had been the story of data raiding for a thousand years; a thousand parts of offense could be turned back by a thousandth part of defense. Still, it had been worth a try. I suppose any good burglar tries all the doors and windows, just in case one is unlocked, before he breaks anything.
> "I did pick up one set of files, but it's only sort of half useful," Paul said. "It looks like Saltini and his merry men are all Selectivists."
"What?" Thorwald said, his mouth hanging open.
"What did you find?" Margaret asked.
"The files had a list of tilings the Council of Rationalizers was going to ratify in the next three months. Most of it was just regularizing Saltini's 'emergency measures' into permanent policy, plus some of the Sabbath regulations they've been pushing for all these years. But they're also going to make Selectivism doctrine—which is just about the best thing they can do from our standpoint. Talk about stirring up rebellion—"
"If it's not too much trouble," I said, "I'd like to know what Selectivism is."
Margaret grinned. "Life evolves faster in the presence of mind, and even faster in the presence of rational mind."
I must have looked baffled, because Thorwald jumped in. "It's a crackpot explanation that some of our ultrareligious people use for why this was already a living planet when we got here. They say it's because the rational purpose of life is intelligence, and so when there's intelligence around, life develops faster. So because this world was predestined to be the home of Rational Christianity, just that predestination was enough to make planetary evolution run one thousand times faster than it would have otherwise."
I found it hard not to snicker, but I had vowed not to laugh at anything Caledon.
Paul sighed and said, "Incidentally, any half-witted theologian could knock it down; since God is infinite intelligence and is omnipresent in the universe, if Selectivism were true, everything—rocks, stars, and vacuum itself—would be alive."
"So they're going to actually make it doctrinal?" Margaret asked, as if she still couldn't quite believe it.
"Anyone want to tell me what difference it makes?"
"You have to swear you believe all the doctrine before you can take communion," Thorwald said, "and you have to have taken communion within three days prior to voting."
"So they're going to disenfranchise all but their own crazy supporters? That doesn't seem like it's progress for our side—"
"Hah. Wait till you see what happens when the average stolid churchgoer has to swear an oath that he believes in obvious bullshit before he's allowed to vote against tax increases. Paul's right. We couldn't have better recruiting from them."
I took his word for it; Caledon politics, even when I was up to my neck in them, always seemed to slip away from my mental grasp.
"So is there anything else, besides seconds, that we need to consider tonight?" Margaret asked, as she cut another slice of lasagna. "Informally, I guess we're the nearest thing to the executive council of the resistance there is at the moment."
Thorwald grinned and said, "Well, I have a slightly silly idea, but let's see if you all like it. I think what we should do is launch an artistic movement."
The idea fell incredibly flat. Even I, an Occitan, could hardly imagine a less worthwhile project. But Thorwald's lopsided little grin meant that there was something in his mind.
We all ate; the lasagna was good, after all, and we were all still hungry, and we had very little desire to give him the satisfaction.
After about three more bites, with a glance at both of us, Paul said, "Okay, Thorwald, I can't stand it anymore. Why an artistic movement? Why don't we start a sewing club or an elevator racing association?"
"Those might work too," Thorwald agreed cheerfully. "But consider the following: What is it rational for an artistic movement to do?"
"Seek acceptance," I said. "I think I see what you're getting at. So it might be possible to say all kinds of things—and perhaps to do all kinds of things—under the claim that what you're doing is art. But didn't they shut you down for good after last night?"
"Ah, but we had no manifesto at the time," Thorwald said.
"And now we do?"
"We will tomorrow," Thorwald said, cutting himself a third large slice of the lasagna. "By the way, if this is an example of what Prescott Diligence can do, I'd like to suggest that Giraut hire him as chef first thing tomorrow."
In fact, cooking class had been the one thing Prescott was any good at, and I had already thought of it, but it was impossible to say all that with my mouth as full as it was just men, so I merely nodded vigorously.
"So just who is going to write this artistic manifesto?" Margaret asked. "I happen to be exhausted, and my current plan is to run down to the locker room, take a hot shower, and then race to whichever spare cot remains, in about five minutes." She finished off her glass of Babylon Basin red and tossed her dishes in the regenner. "Unless we actually plan to start the revolution tomorrow morning, there's going to be a lot of things to get done."
"There's just two cots remaining," Thorwald said, "the one in my room and one of the two in Giraut's, and Margaret and Paul, you're the only unallocated bodies. Anyone have a preference?"
Margaret started to turn purple—the drawback of very pale skin—and I knew perfectly well what her preference was, but before I could think of what to say (invite and thus encourage her, but make her feel appreciated? invite Paul and hurt Margaret's feelings right now while she was tired and discouraged?) Paul pulled out a coin and flipped it high. "Call it, Margaret."
"Heads."
A slap as he laid it on his wrist. "You're with Aimeric and Giraut. That room has a shower, so you can just go straight up."
"Thanks." If she'd left the room any faster there'd have been a sonic boom. "Which way did that coin come up?" I asked.
"Tails, of course. Poor thing lost." Paul's expression of innocence would not have fooled a two-year-old.
"Yap." I guess I didn't look perfectly pleased.
"Giraut," Thorwald said.
"Yes?"
"You don't have to fall in love with Margaret. You just need to be very kind to her. You're the first fellow she's ever been interested in at all; even if you have to let her down, do it gently." He grinned at me. "Otherwise I might have to try to break your nose."
"You don't have the skills," I pointed out, glumly, as I tossed my dishes in the regenner.
"No, but if I force you to beat me up to defend yourself, the guilt you'll feel will be worse than anything I could do to you anyway."
"The horrible part, Thorwald, is that you're right. But in any case, Margaret is a fine person, and I won't hurt her deliberately. New hearts are tender, though..."
"Yap, understood." He solemnly extended a hand, and we shook on the arrangement. At just that moment it occurred to me that I probably had more real friends here than I had ever had in Nou Occitan.
On the other hand, I realized as I went up the stairs, I had also been maneuvered into a position where pursuing Valerie would be nearly impossible, and Paul had done the maneuvering.
I was going to have to stop underestimating the Caledons at the grand game of finamor.
When I got into the room, Aimeric was sleeping like a corpse, and so was Margaret. I made the resolution to remember the power of exhaustion as a defense, just before my head touched the pillow and I was asleep.
TWO
The prompter shouted into my ear. "Time to get up! Time to get up!" I might have gone back to sleep after I hit the shut-off, except that Aimeric was groaning his way off the cot and stumbling around, and Margaret was repeating the same five not-very-imaginative obscenities over and over.
As I stood up, I realized that I had chosen roommates very poorly; Aimeric had already beaten me to the bathroom, and Margaret was securely second in line.
She wasn't any more impressive in pajamas.
Mufrid was not yet up, but the moon was shining in through the narrow windows, so it was quite bright already. I staggered over and hit the light switch, causing Margaret to blink painfully. "Oh, God," she said, "we've got a whole day ahead of us."
"Maybe we can get a long nap at First Dark," I said, without much hope. On second thought, though she wasn't any better looking at this hour or in the pa
jamas, unlike Garsenda or any of my family, she had the common decency to be grumpy and out of sorts in the morning.
Aimeric emerged, and the moment Margaret was in there tried to hurl himself into his clothes before she finished. If I had been in the mood, it might have been very entertaining; as it was, when she emerged, modesty had been served but dignity had disappeared somewhere into the tunic that was now flapping around halfway down over his head, his arms groping for the sleeves like blind pigs in a sack.
"I'd have been willing to step out into the hall," Margaret said, one corner of her mouth twitching.
"Not me," I said. "I wouldn't have missed this for anything."
Aimeric's head popped out of the tunic at last, his long hair so fallen about his face that it wasn't immediately apparent whether we were looking at the front or the back of his head. As he pulled the hair back, he commented, "I hate people who are cheerful in the morning."
I hated realizing I was becoming one of them. I ducked in and did the necessary, and when I came back out Aimeric was combing his hair and Margaret was mostly dressed. Maybe they were more casual about nudity than we were? I would have to ask Aimeric, privately, but for right now—
"I think I hear a unicorn in the hall," Margaret said. "Better go out and take a look at it" She stepped out the door, still brushing her hair, though what difference it could possibly make to run one set of bristles through another was beyond me.
As I dressed, I whispered the question to Aimeric. "Er— well," he said, "yes, Caledons are often nude around family members. Or around people who are, um, too old or too young to be of interest."