by John Brunner
“After such a long time,” Dr Lem said, “the awareness of that must have drifted to the backs of our minds.”
“Hmm! Yes! Moreover several mistakes have been made, not here, but in the original planning. Still, we have a chance to correct them now. More to the immediate point: have any of you bothered to question your informat concerning the nature of the Yanfolk recently?”
They all looked blank. “I don’t think I quite follow,” Hector Ducci said at length.
“Galaxies in collision!” Garsonova exclaimed, putting her hand to her forehead in a pantomime of horror. “Why do you think we equipped this enclave with that informat, enough to service a full-sized city? I found the key data just by going to my own informat at home on Earth and tapping for it! It’s been sitting in store for over ten years: shrimashey, the dramaturge principle, everything! And did none of you bother to…?”
She let her hands fall to her sides. “No, that’s absurd. Dr Lem, I must use your communet Quickly!”
He made a vague gesture of invitation. She shot her hand into the air and whistled for a floating extension; the instant it reached her, she began to tap, then to talk.
“Category Yanfolk. Sub-category cultural manifestations. Sub-sub, shrimashey… I don’t believe it. A blank screen.”
“I’ve tried over and over, of course,” Dr Lem said. “The most one ever gets is a rehearsal of various recordings. Tapes that sometimes go clear back to the original landing.”
Garsonova’s dark face seemed to have turned grey. She tapped a different code and spoke in condensed technical jargon to someone they didn’t recognise, one of the team at work in the informat dome. They waited, horribly aware that something might have gone irremediably wrong, and tortured by the knowledge that they had no least conception what it might be.
“Got it,” the man from the screen said. It had taken about three minutes. “Blocks on circuits QA-527 through QC-129. We’ll clear them, but it’ll have to be by hand. Slow job. Local only, luckily.”
“You followed that?” Garsonova said, pushing the ‘net extension aside with a trembling hand.
“Blocks on the data circuits!” Ducci burst out. “But I personally maintain those circuits!”
“Maintain, yes. But question the data they’re putting out? Never!” Garsonova thrust back a lock of smooth dark hair from her face. “No wonder you let yourselves get tangled up in this! And to think we never spotted it until… Oh, never mind! I’ll tell you! We know what shrimashey is, this fantastic population-control mechanism which looks like a drug-induced sadistic orgy. We know what the Mutine Flash is, and why it affects people the way it does—”
She checked, listening to the data-unit on her shoulder, which was still providing its automatic running commentary. Paling, she stared at Marc.
“You experienced the Mutine Flash from inside the Mandala?”
“Ah—yes, I did.”
“Just before you commenced your translation of the Mutine Epics?”
“Y-yes!” Marc’s voice shook, and his fists were so tightly clenched his nails were biting into his palms.
“Has anyone else done the same?”
“Morag Feng. Chart’s mistress. Who persuaded him to come to Yan and perform.”
“But this is terrible!” Garsonova said. “I— Yes, Dr Lem? Have you suddenly caught on to what’s been happening?”
“I’m dreadfully afraid I have,” the old man said in a gravelly voice. “You’re trying to tell us that the Mutine Flash took control of Morag Feng, ordered her to go and find Chart—or more exactly, to find someone who could carry out the project of re-creating the Mutine Age. And Marc here, similarly, was instructed to make his translation of the Epics so that Chart would find his—his script ready and waiting.”
“That’s right,” Garsonova said. “And what you’ve so cleverly been prevented from discovering, even though it was already informat data, is this. The Yanfolk, under the sheyashrim drug, are components of a superhuman organism whose collective brain consists in their lower spinal ganglia, the dramaturge—singular, not plural—which designed the wats and mandalas, and smashed the moon.”
XVIII
From the days when he had first become interested in the concept of the human enclave on Yan, and had studied up the readily-available description of it which the local informats on any planet carried as standard, Marc recalled seeing that among the things it did not boast were competitive commerce, public transport, and representative government. Why bother, when there were only a few hundred people, capable of being linked over the communet or even, when a town’s meeting was called at the customary quarter-year intervals, assembled in a single spot?
But this town’s meeting, called by Chevsky before he was indicted and dismissed by his superiors from far-away Earth, was unique.
Virtually the entire population of the enclave had arrived well ahead of time in the informat dome. It doubled as a public assembly hall when Hector Ducci hit the right switch and created a horseshoe of seating from its yellow floor. By the time Marc entered, it was almost full.
He had remained in his old home, not wanting to return to the enclave. The air in Prell proper might be full of the never-ending stink of sheyashrim. In the enclave, it was full of the odour of hatred. Chevsky had so successfully convinced everyone that having Chart perform here would make them rich and famous, there was now an almost universal dislike for himself, for Dr Lem, for everyone who was suspected of having thwarted the project.
Customarily the warden took the one seat facing the audience. Tonight, when everyone was settled, Garsonova took it instead. Marc had had the idea of punching her name into the communet’s encyclopedia facility, and had been astonished to discover that she, like Chart, rated a full article during her own lifetime—and she was barely half Chart’s age. Before entering government service, it appeared that she had been one of the human race’s leading experts on non-human intelligence, having pioneered important communication breakthroughs with the Altaireans and the Denebolans.
“Why didn’t they send someone like that to Yan?” he had said despairingly to Dr Lem.
“Because it’s a big galaxy, and there aren’t enough people like that to go around.”
The sullen hostility in the yellow hall could almost be felt, like a chill fog. Most of it formed an aura around a group near the front, centred on the Dellian Smiths and others of Chevsky’s former cronies. A corresponding group had formed on the opposite side of the hall, directly in front of the platform where Garsonova was sitting in place of the warden, including Dr Lem’s associates. Alice had attached herself to the fringes of this latter group, having hung around at Marc’s side ever since Rayvor abandoned her. He liked her no better than he had ever done, but he felt a pang or two of sympathy.
He missed Shyalee. He missed her terribly. For all her faults, he had found much happiness in her company. But the last time they had chanced across one another, she had not even smiled at him.
Not one of the intruders from Earth, Garsonova excepted, had put in an appearance. They had done what they had come to do—check out and repair the informat which someone had tampered with—and faded away. But Erik Svitra was still here, and present; he was entitled, as were all humans whether passing through or resident.
“Extraordinary town’s meeting,” Garsonova said abruptly, and silence fell. “Called by the former warden, Guillaume Chevsky, to vote a motion concerning the enclave’s support for or rejection of a proposed performance here by Gregory Chart.”
“Chart said himself he wasn’t here to perform for us!” called Dellian Smith loudly. “What’s the point of this pantomime tonight?”
“If the people here so wish, they can apply for free go-board programmes to get them away from Yan until the performance is over—or permanently,” Garsonova said.
“Miss a performance by Chart? When people travel scores of parsecs to try and be around when he’s working?” That, Marc realised with dismay, was Hector’s wi
fe, Mama Ducci, still unconvinced after long argument.
“You miss the point. This is not a commonplace event, and the purpose of this debate is to acquaint you with data you may not so far have. First off, from the chair, I will read you an injunction which has been issued against Gregory Chart, to interdict him from a plan expressed verbally to Marc Simon—”
“That traitor!” Dellian Smith shouted. “We all know he wants to keep Yannish culture to himself, to be the only person in the galaxy who’s recognised as an authority on it!”
“Who cares about the wilders, anyway?” From Boris Dooley, not one of Chevsky’s closer associates but apparently—according to what Marc had heard—so incensed by Chevsky’s dismissal that he had come down squarely on the wrong side. “The Yanfolk don’t!”
“Perfectly true. They don’t.”
The words were slipped in with the precision of a scalpel. The voice, unmistakably, was Gregory Chart’s. Garsonova whipped around in her seat. The sound had come from behind her, on the platform, and now, as though from an obscuring haze, two hitherto unseen human figures were taking shape: Chart himself, and Morag Feng, in unison dialling the anti-see units they wore at their belts.
“Forgive this subterfuge,” Chart murmured. “But to have come here openly might have caused a distraction, and since we are legally entitled to attend we thought it best to exercise our rights.”
“Rights?” Ducci was on his feet, shouting hoarsely. “You don’t have any right to—”
“Yes, we do!” Morag snapped. “Any Earthsider transient or resident may come to one of these meetings!”
“And speak and vote,” Chart glossed. “His vote, however, is progressively discounted once he has notified the informat of his intention to leave Yan again. I have no present intention of leaving Yan, and nor has Morag.”
Garsonova said into a babble of noise, “You are quite correct. And your presence is fortunate. I now have the chance to serve you personally with the injunction which has already been imposed on the automatics of your ship for your attention. It prohibits you from taking away any of the Yanfolk known as ‘wilders’ from their customary living-zone, and specifically it forbids you to remove their brains or otherwise programme them for incorporation in—”
“I’ve already seen the injunction,” Chart broke in. “I came here to say that while you may have caused me a lot of extra trouble by doing this, you haven’t sabotaged the project as you hoped to. I’m going ahead. Not with your permission—I don’t need it. But by direct invitation of the dominant species, the Yanfolk, in the person of their Speaker and the other hrath.”
“Great! Great!” Dellian Smith shouted, and there was a ragged burst of applause. It was led by someone Marc didn’t know. There were eight or ten strangers in the hall, who had come off the go-board as a result of the news-machine’s tip-off. And they were only the first, he feared. More would follow.
Abruptly he jumped to his feet. “You told me you had no facilities for making Yannish androids! You said it would be too expensive and too time-consuming—”
“Oh, yes,” Chart said. “It was you, no doubt, who put me to the extra trouble, or tried to. But the Yanfolk have solved the problem. They are presenting volunteers.”
“What?”
“Volunteers. Take my word for it, they’re genuinely willing. Indeed, they’re excited about the prospect.” Chart’s deep eyes fixed Marc like spears. “Here are some more new data for you to compute with. I was right about the Mutine Flash; it is the key to the eleven other books of the Epics. My computer, built on Tubalcain as you know, to the highest standards ever, has already worked out a tentative reading of its signal and every noon it’s reinforced and clarified. As of now, for the first time in almost ten thousand years, the knowledge of the Yannish dramaturges is being recovered—and it’s going to be applied. Convinced of this, numerous Yanfolk have offered themselves as vehicles for its expression, and among them you may be interested to know is a former friend of yours called Shyalee. So too is a male named Rayvor.”
“You’re going to pith them and—? Oh, no!” Alice was on her feet, poised to hurl herself bodily at Chart. Marc caught her arm.
“Save your breath,” Chart said curtly. “There’s no law against accepting a volunteer to take sheyashrim. Right there beside you is a drug-tester, who’s made his living for years by finding new ways of turning off people’s reasoning faculties in favour of their autonomic reflexes. True?”
“And whether they are volunteers in your sense, or not, isn’t up to you to determine,” Morag said with a hint of smugness. “That’s in Yannish jurisdiction, not human.”
“I’m afraid it is,” Garsonova said after listening for a moment to the data-unit on her shoulder.
“So there we are!” Chart said with a grin. “On the threshold of a newly glorious Mutine Age. Don’t be too hard on Marc Simon, by the way. He was instrumental in helping me to develop this project. And in case you’re worried about one final point, I don’t propose to cast a vote in this matter. For one thing I’m an interested party; for another your opinions won’t make a smidgin of difference. Morag, shall we leave them to it?”
“Just a second!” A reedy, forced voice. Dr Lem was rising. “Before you go, I have a further question or two.” He patted his seat-neighbour, Marc, reassuringly on the arm. The poet had doubled over, head in hands, as the impact of what Chart had said about Shyalee reached him.
“Yes?”
“You have yourself viewed your—your decoded version of the Mutine Flash?”
“Of course. How else could I be so confident of eventual success, me a human dealing in Yannish concepts?”
“Did you know that after she had experienced the Flash your companion Morag—during her period of apparent insanity—put blocks on certain data-banks in this very informat?”
Morag paled and put her hand to her mouth. Chart rounded on her.
“What’s all this nonsense?”
“I—I don’t know what he’s talking about,” Morag muttered. But she was apparently giddy all of a sudden; she swayed visibly.
“And did you know,” Dr Lem pursued, to the accompaniment of vigorous nods from Garsonova, Ducci and several others, “that there are similar blocks on some of your data-stores?”
“Rubbish!” Chart cried. “My computer is from Tubalcain, one of the most advanced ever built!”
“I can prove it,” Dr Lem said, letting his thin old hands fall to his sides. “Just now you spoke of the dramaturges of Yan, plural.”
“So?” Chart rapped. “Come to the point! Of course there were dramaturges plural!”
“It appears not,” Dr Lem countered dryly. “I must admit I found it hard to credit, too, when Officer Garsonova told me, but I’m now satisfied of the truth. You see, these blocks planted in the informat had a purpose: to conceal from anyone making chance inquiries right here in the enclave the fact that when the Yanfolk enter shrimashey, they cease to function as individuals, and become part of a self-repairing collective organism. The process is much analogous to that of a cut healing, or a bruise: a certain prescribed number of cells replace a roughly similar number of damaged predecessors. This ought to have been widely known a long time ago, certainly some decades ago, because the mindless operation of the informat discovered it at least ten years back, and human intelligence is better at spotting patterns than any machine we’ve yet designed, even your vaunted ship’s computer from Tubalcain.
“It was the—the cortex of that organism which was destroyed when the moon was shattered here. It was its higher nervous system. All that survived was its reflex functions. As individuals the Yanfolk have long been aware of this, and they have been looking for a substitute focus through which they could once more achieve what was once achieved by the dramaturge. Singular. The race in absolute rapport, every single member of it reduced to a component part of a planet-wide union. They have found not you, but your ship. And, thanks to Morag’s interference while under the influ
ence of the Mutine Flash, they have managed to hide the truth so completely that even you don’t believe it.”
“I…” Chart’s mouth worked. “No!” he blasted. “No! Lies! Lies! Morag, come with me!”
He seized her anti-see unit, twisted it, and in the same moment dialled his own. They vanished even as Marc leapt up on the platform to try and stop them, and when tire confusion simmered down, they were gone.
“Was—was that all true?” Dellian Smith said at last.
“As far as we can tell, yes,” Garsonova said. “It was why we called you together, to inform you of it.”
“Then you’ve got to do something! We can’t let him re-create this monster!”
Beside him his wife Rachel mopped sweat from her face. She wasn’t the only one.
“What would you have us do?” Garsonova said stonily.
“Well—blast Chart’s ship from the sky if you have to! But stop him!”
“A few moments ago you were all for letting him—ah—perform here,” Garsonova said, and let the point sink home. “No, that is the one thing we can not do. We are forever going to meet things without precedent as we spread through the galaxy. We are trying to evolve a code of principles which will serve us regardless of what happens. We will not wipe out somebody simply because what he does is unpredictable.”
“Well, then, I’m going to get off Yan!” Smith barked. “You had no business turning us loose on a world like this, with—with…!”
“Right! Right!” A chorus. Everywhere in the hall people were scrambling out of their chairs.
A few minutes, and there were only Marc, Alice, Dr Lem, Ducci and Garsonova. And, hovering uncertainly by the exit, Erik Svitra.
“You’re not leaving?” Garsonova said. “You’ll get help if you want to—free go-board routes, a grant to resettle you somewhere else.”