by John Brunner
“I can’t,” Dr Lem said. “Not after more than thirty years.”
“And I can’t,” Marc muttered. “If the Mutine Age can’t be prevented, I guess someone ought to be around to witness it.”
“And you?” Garsonova looked at Erik.
“Me? I just waited to say I’m sorry I screwed things up. Just walked in and pow! Knocked things down!”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Marc said, staring at the floor. “That’s the history of man.”
Erik bit his lip, hesitated a second longer, and went out.
XIX
“I am reminded,” Dr Lem said, “of somebody I haven’t thought of in years: my grandmother.”
Marc thought for a moment. Suddenly he nodded. “I know exactly what you mean,” he agreed.
They were inside the informat dome. It had been equipped—almost casually—with vidscreens more numerous and more flexible than those Dr Lem had seen in Chart’s ship. Under its impervium protection they could reasonably expect to survive whatever happened as a result of the re-creation of the Mutine Age.
Also, orbiting Yan, there were scores of remote spy-eyes, and preparations had been made to record, analyse and study whatever unpredictable phenomena might now begin. There had been several already. Last night, following the departure of the last party across the go-board, the Yanfolk had destroyed the human enclave. They had walked out of their own part of Prell carrying torches, sledge-hammers and axes, and systematically reduced all trace of the alien buildings to smoking rubble.
Marc and Dr Lem had sat here and watched the process. The Yanfolk were obviously aware of the hovering remotes which relayed the scene to the informat dome, but they made no attempt to attack them. Clearly, they wanted what happened to be made known as widely as possible among mankind.
But there had been a strange savage joy in what they did.
“You mean Earth,” Marc said eventually.
“Yes. It’s a strange feeling for an old man to have, Marc!” Dr Lem shifted his elderly bones on his padded chair, from which he had hardly stirred, except to walk about the hall and stretch himself, since the go-board was inactivated by a signal from space. There were standby demolition charges ready, just in case the totality of the Yannish organism proved able to re-start its subtle power-fields, those space-straining contortions which literally enabled a traveller to walk a parsec with every pace.
“A good feeling for a young one,” Marc said. And they both knew exactly what they were referring to: this sudden reassuring sensation that even across the gulfs between the stars the mother planet was doing her best to support and protect her offspring.
“Did you ever realise that we were—what did Officer Garsonova call us?”
“A pilot project?” Dr Lem said. “I guess I must have, now and then. Something kept me here on Yan, even though I often felt I was wasting my time and my talents. Now I know I have an important use to put them to. The automatics will take care of a great deal of the raw information—but what better witnesses could there be for this unprecedented event than a psychologist and a poet?”
“What’s Chart doing at the moment?” Marc said gruffly. He felt inadequate for the task which he had accidentally taken on.
“I don’t think you can talk about Chart doing anything any longer,” Dr Lem said. He flicked a screen to life, and they saw the Mutine Mandala shining in miniature, receiving from space the focused beams of the sun which was in fact drifting towards the western horizon. It had shone since before dawn; Chart’s ship had launched a group of relay satellites which ensured that there would always be beams directed at the proper angle to excite the play of light and colour from the crystal pillars. Like a straggly pencilled line, a succession of Yanfolk were processing towards, and across, and out of, the mandala.
“Being programmed,” Dr Lem said. “Those are what we mistook for the dramaturges: the ordinary Yanfolk, given a particular stimulus.”
“Why did the dramaturge wait so long?” Marc muttered.
“I can guess,” Dr Lem said with a sigh. “And the informat seems to agree with me, by the way. When its most ambitious plans are under way, ordinary nervous tissue won’t cope, particularly if it’s in competition, in an individual, with a higher nervous centre, a brain capable of thinking for itself. What happened to the Yanfolk was a colossal nervous breakdown, which resulted in the shattering of the moon. The reduced awareness of the collective organism was frightened. It’s immortal, or effectively so—you realised that, of course?” With a glance at Marc.
“Yes.”
“Therefore it was in no hurry to repeat the mistake it formerly made. It waited its chance to try again, hoping—oh—hoping that the Ring would ultimately dissipate, and that Kralgak would become passable again, and that the wilders would be re-integrated into the species… But what’s the use of hypothesising about something which is as far ahead of us as we are of the amoeba?”
“I don’t agree,” Marc said after a pause. “I think intelligence is a continuum, and that any rational creature able to transcend determinism—reflex—can in some sense communicate with and understand any other. There may be a gulf of the same kind as there is between a poet and a mathematician; one may have mental processes the other can’t imitate, because they’re not intrinsic to him. But one can understand the goals of the other, and to some extent the end products.”
“Perhaps,” Dr Lem conceded. “Just as you or I could share the excitement of a cosmogonist whose equations have balanced, indicating that his theory about the origins of the universe are logical ones, without either being able to grasp the factors involved or apply the necessary Operators to them.”
“You take my point exactly,” Marc said. “If we are to call any being intelligent, there must be at least one area we can share and communicate about. The rest—well, they may be as inaccessible as the core of a gas-giant.”
“I wonder whether, one day, there might be a chain of such shared areas of experience, tenuous links that connect all the intelligent races in the galaxy, such that every thinking species has some data about each of the others, at tenth or fiftieth or thousandth hand.”
“That may take a million years,” Marc said.
“But it might be starting here and now,” Dr Lem countered. “And—”
He broke off. The informat had flashed at them. “Chart’s ship is taking off,” it said. “Following an atmospheric course.”
“If it is starting,” Marc said, “I wonder if it will be anything we can understand.”
“What’s the good of guessing…? I wish I had Pompy with me, you know. What a foolish thing to say here and now!”
“Where is she?”
“I sent her off-planet with the Duccis; she’s always been fond of Giuseppe, and I thought it unfair to force her into this even if I had stupidly decided to play the hero.”
“Is that how you think of this?” Marc demanded.
“No. To be candid, no.” Dr Lem wiped his face; it was glistening with sweat. “It’s not bravery which kept me here, but obstinacy. Once upon a time I had this ambition, to unravel the mystery of Yan. And now it’s turned out the mystery hasn’t been a mystery for years, and the solution’s only been kept from me by an ingenious trick played on this informat”—a gesture around the yellow hall they sat in. “And I feel annoyed! I feel cheated! I feel I want to do something to compensate.”
He hesitated. “And,” he concluded, “I have learned to love this planet.”
“A field has been detected,” said the informat. “The rain of meteorites on Kralgak has reduced by forty per cent—by forty-four per cent—by forty-nine per cent—it is extrapolated that the meteorites will cease completely in one minute twenty-two seconds from the mark. Mark.”
“After all your work with the Mutine Epics,” Dr Lem said, “have you any clear idea what the dramaturge was trying to do?”
“Yes,” Marc said. “Control the universe.”
After which the sudden flood of s
tartling images made conversation impossible.
Once more the form of a moon hung over Yan, but this time it darted back and forth like the racing hand of a weaver, or a potter, imposing design on crude shapeless materials. The night, over most of the planet’s northern hemisphere, had been equable and mild, with a few clouds and only one summer storm, far around the world’s shoulder over the ocean. Little by little the air grew charged, and lightning began to strike randomly. The aurorae swirled towards the equator, not in disciplined patterns as on the night of Chart’s arrival, but in mere eddies, such as would attend the wake of a boat crossing choppy water at high speed.
And there were brief hiatuses in the glow from the Mutine Mandala as the full blast of the local sun in empty space was concentrated for a fraction of a second on Chart’s ship, to power it in the tasks which now it was being called upon to perform.
The Gladen Menhirs, marching in their serried line around the world, had suffered under the bombardment of meteorites. The ship paused here and there where gaps occurred in the line, or where one of the vast stone columns had been chipped. The land nearby shifted. Rock rose of its own accord, flowed as it rose, formed tidily into a match for the rest of the menhirs, heated until it was molten and then chilled to ambient in less than the twinkling of an eye. As the process continued, the vast stone blocks began to quiver.
“Minor seismic phenomena,” reported the informat.
As yet, though, there was nothing that could penetrate the impervium shell of the dome in which they watched, anchored to the planetary crust.
“How’s it done?” Marc breathed, and didn’t expect an answer, either from Dr Lem or from the informat. Analysing a technique like this would have to wait until much, much later. This was not part of human science, this means to make rock ring like a handbell.
Next, that curious hollow mountain-top which Marc had visited with Chart and Morag, with the seating for thousands facing a blank wall. The ship stooped over it, carved with a stabbing laser-beam a pathway up the slope of the peak, and Yanfolk who had been patiently waiting at its foot began to approach it.
“That’s a key part of the dramaturge,” Dr Lem said with absolute certainty. “That’s a—a cortex for it. Thousands of individuals cut off by walls of rocks from the exterior universe.”
It was obvious from their jerky gait that the Yanfolk were under the influence of the sheyashrim drug—but it was known that they had been brewing it in every city on Yan, not just in Prell, and the total quantity must amount to enough to dose every Yannish adult a hundred times over.
Next: the Mullom Wat… and the ship spun, insanely, a few metres above the water of the ocean, until it created a miniature cyclone and sucked up a huge column of whirling mist and spray. On top of the Wat itself a globe of water formed, remained intact against wind, against gravity. What the purpose of that was, they dared not even guess. But there was something in the globe of water. It gleamed now and then, apparently fixed although the water revolved.
And minor tasks: removal of a little pink thing, barely six metres high, from a post-glacial scree on the flank of Mount Frey; its installation on a nearby crest—assembly of uncountable fragments from beneath a landslide, into a shivering, howling framework of sour green light…
There seemed to be no end to the details of this preparation. Marc felt himself yawning as the screens relayed all these scenes to him, and was faintly surprised that he was still capable of feeling tired. When one could not make head or tail of what was being shown, though…
“And that’s the power-source!” Dr Lem said suddenly.
“What?” Muzzily, Marc sat up and stared at the screens; to his amazement, he had indeed managed to doze off. He had a vague half-memory of the informat saying something, and tapped for a repetition.
“Major seismic events,” he heard. “Crustal slippage on all continents.”
What?
“Did you say power-source?” he said, turning to Dr Lem. The old man didn’t remove his gaze from the screens. Now they showed vast storms, brilliant lightnings, mountains crumbling, the ocean boiling into colossal waves. Also, penetrating even the impervium dome, there was a grinding, screaming, rasping, mind-breaking drone.
“The informat is still analysing,” Dr Lem said. “But I think that’s what it must be. Informat?”
“Yes, Dr Lem?”
“Was it the intention of the dramaturge to convert the kinetic energy of the moon’s rotation into propulsive power for the entire planet Yan?”
“Current data indicates this as a likely assumption,” the machine said unemotionally. Marc caught his breath.
“In order to undertake a voyage throughout the galaxy?”
“The probability is high.”
“You were right to say the dramaturge’s ambition was on a universal scale,” the old man said to Marc. And continued to address the informat.
“Is it now intended to make the planet’s crust slip on its molten core, so that the resulting energy can be tapped and stored for the same purpose?”
“The probability is high,” the machine repeated.
“But—!” Marc leapt from his chair. In his mind the picture was instantly vivid, more vivid than anything he had seen on the screen surrounding them. “But you can’t do that, not without smashing the planet to bits! We’ll be killed!”
“It’s already happening,” Dr Lem said glacially. “Look!” He pointed at the screen which showed what was happening along the coast of what had been the wilders’ continent. The ocean was dissolving into steam and rocks were being tossed out of it like pumice from a volcano. Also there were real volcanoes on two—no, four—no, five of the other screens…
And the floor shifted under them, as though the impervium dome were a beached boat just touched by the rising tide.
XX
“Marc! Marc!”
He was aware, but distantly, as though through a grey mist, that Dr Lem was staring at him, talking to him, half-turned around in his chair. Also there were the artificial, remote, miniaturised images: the volcanoes, the tidal waves, the storms…
No matter. That was on the wrong level of awareness. That was single-pointed perception. That was petty. That was obsolete. There was something infinitely better.
With the last trace of normal, human-style consciousness, Marc Simon the poet recalled a question he had put to the informat when the technicians from Earth had removed the blocks concerning the Yanfolk which had so efficiently and for so many years deceived the inhabitants of the enclave. He had asked what kind of field, or force, united the separate members of the Yanfolk when they entered shrimashey, and how it could be detected. And the informat had stated that it could not be detected by any instrument thus far developed by human science; however, so many other fields, forces, space-continua, rings, sets, conditions and plena were already known that it must certainly lie within the limits set by n aleph* and the pi-to-the-e space of the go-board. Over six thousand seven hundred spaces were suspected which could occupy those parameters.
The likeliest detection instrument, the informat had declared, was a human nervous system.
Marc Simon was just discovering that it was right.
Skeleton…
Is a man aware that he has bones? Unless a gash opens the skin and muscle, shows the pinkish-white bone—say at the shin—there is only awareness of rigidity, articulation, and support.
Hot rock. Liquid but so compressed as to be rigid.
Skeleton.
Muscles… Supple, on the basis of bone. It took anatomists years, decades, centuries of patient cutting up of corpses to discover how the muscles set in, what bones they anchored to, that there were muscles not subject to the will.
Metabolism…
They called it second wind, and it was in fact a subtle chemical reaction triggered by the inadequacy of breathing.
(All this very rapidly, and at the same time:)
Nervous system…
For millennia human b
eings did not know that they were thinking With their brains.
What was left of Marc Simon was laughing. It was the cruellest kind of laughter he had ever imagined: the dirty insulting laughter of a man who thinks it funny to stick out his foot and trip a cripple. But it wasn’t Marc Simon who was laughing, as he had known Marc Simon. It was that which was left of Marc Simon when the dramaturge’s neural currents took over his autonomic reflexes. There was intent behind that. There was the desire to make these upstart simians from Earth respect the being, the personality, of the Yan (folk).
What Dr Lem saw was his companion lying on the floor, roaring with hysterical mirth. But he, not having been taken out of himself, also saw the images on the screens, and felt the dome shifting as the solid land under it became first plastic, then molten, then fluid. The informat reported unemotionally that the exterior temperature was eight hundred thirty degrees.
He thought of the watchful devices from Earth, orbiting overhead, and was a little less afraid of dying than he had been a minute ago.
The planet strained, cried out, struggled, moaned. Its crust cracked, its mountains collapsed, its ocean churned and now literally began to boil. Meanwhile, the Yanfolk in the grip of their drug concentrated, con cen tra ted c o n c e n t r a t e d
Like a man retaining command of his reason after finding himself without warning under water, seeing the glimmer of light at the surface, working out that he must swim to it while the cold in his nostrils presses and presses on the precious vanishing store of oxygen luck enclosed in his lungs.
And unable to stop himself wondering whether he will survive.
“You should not,” Marc thought inside his head to the dramaturge, “have risked proving what you could do to me or any other human. You over-reached yourself once. By insisting on this audience you have made certain of overreaching yourself again.”
There was a quiet content deep within him. It had nothing to do with him, personally, the individual Marc Simon. It was racial. Collective. Like the rival, the dramaturge.