The Crucible of Time

by John Brunner

  She refolded her mantle about her. Checking suddenly, she said, "Jing, if tomorrow you decide you never want to see me again—if you feel it was only misery which made you desire me—I shan't care, you know. You've given me such a gift as I never hoped for."

  "And you," he said fondly, "have given me such courage as an hour ago I thought I'd never enjoy again."

  "So you want my ill-starred daughter?" grunted the Count, when with difficulty his attendants had roused him from the mist of dreams in which he now passed most of his time. His ruptured tubules had been unable to heal, owing to his corpulence, and he slumped in his sitting-pit like a half-filled water-bladder. "Well, I always thought you were crazy and now you're proving it. Or have you scried something in the stars to show she's fitter than she looks? Wish you'd do the same for me!"

  "I want her," Jing said firmly, "because she possesses a sharp mind, a keen wit and an affectionate nature."

  "More than I could say of most of the women I've taken," the Count sighed. "Had I been gifted with a son ... You want a grand celebration? You want mating-presents?" Suddenly he was suspicious.

  "Nothing but your authority, Father, to continue our work together as mates as well as friends," said Rainbow.

  "Hah! Work, you call it! Wonderful benefits it's brought us all your gabble about stars the naked eye can't see—and the same goes for your people, Jing! Wiped out by plague, so they tell me! Still, you're of good stock, and maybe cross-breeds are what's been lacking in our lines. I'd rather believe too many cousins mated with cousins to keep control of the best homes and richest land, than that I was cursed by the Maker!"

  "You are perfectly correct, sir. We too, after all, arc animals."

  "Hah! What animal could find more stars in the sky than the sacerdotes say were put there at the Beginning? Oh, take her, and bring me a grandchild if you can. For myself, I'm beyond hope. And—" He hesitated.

  "Yes, Father?" Rainbow prompted, taking his claw in hers.

  "Dream of me as long as you can after I'm dead. Try not to let the dreams be ugly ones."

  "Look, Jing!" Rainbow exclaimed as they left the Count's presence. "The skies are clearing! In a little we shall see the sun!"

  But there were other matters to attend to. Qat was weak, and his servants in scarcely better shape. All of them bore plague-scars. Apparently the illness began with sacs of fluid under the skin, accompanied by fever and delirium. If they burst outward, the patient might survive, at the cost of being marked for life. If they burst inward, the victim died. Applying cleanlickers was useless; none could digest the foul matter exuded by the sores. Neither Jing nor Twig had heard of any disease remotely similar.

  "Maybe this was what the New Star heralded!" said Qat in an access of bitterness.

  "Were that so," Jing responded stonily, "would not I, the most dedicated seeker of its meaning, have been the first to be struck down?"

  Thinking how pleased the sacerdotes would be to hear of such a notion.

  By then it was midday, and the sun shone clear, albeit not very bright, being at this season close to the horizon. Rainbow was eager to get to the observatory, and Jing—reluctant though he was to abandon these three who might well be his last surviving compatriots—was on the point of consenting to accompany her, when Keepfire came hurrying with news that settled the matter.

  "Sir, Scholar Twig is at the observatory with Shine, and they have shown me yet more marvels! Come at once!"

  All else forgotten, they rushed in his wake.

  "I was right!" Twig crowed. "I did see dark patches on the sun! Now Shine has seen them too!"

  "It's true," Shine averred. He had stretched layers of furnimal membrane across branches of walbush so that one might look at the sun through them. Even so, long staring with the tubed lenses had made his eye visibly sore. "And something more, as well!"

  "What?" Jing seized the tube.

  "Look to right and left of the sun's disc, and you'll notice little sparks! They're very faint, but I definitely saw them. Perhaps they're distant stars, far beyond the sun, which just happen to lie in that direction, but your charts show that some of the brightest stars in that area of sky must lie near the sun right now, and I can't see any of them!"

  Jing did not need to consult his maps to know what stars were meant. Bracing himself on a stout branch, he aligned the tube. At first his sight, after the low light-levels of winter, would not adjust, and he saw only a blur.

  "Too bright? I can add another membrane," Shine proposed.

  "No, I'm getting a clearer view now..." Jing's ocular muscles were adapting with painful speed. "And—oh, that's incredible!"

  What he saw was not a blank white disc. There were three dark spots on it. How could that be?

  "Do you see the bright sparks?" Shine demanded.

  But his vision was overloaded. He stood back, relinquishing the tube, and for a long while was unable to make out his immediate surroundings.

  "I was right, wasn't I?" Twig exclaimed.

  "Yes," Jing said soberly. "Yes, friend, you were right."

  This too must be added to his report on their discoveries. And, given the delay caused by his grief, it could not possibly be ready for the barq presently in harbor here. At all costs, however, it must be sent by the next one. He said so, and Twig objected, "But if we have to take time to write up our findings—"

  Jing cut him short. "Did we not pledge to share what we learn with as many other folk as possible?"

  "So we did," Twig admitted humbly.

  "Well, then! Let's have a score, a score-of-scores, of keen young eyes like Shine's at work on this! I want a full account of our fantastic news in circulation during the coming summer. Even without the resources of Ntah, there must surely still be people on this continent who will respond and imitate what we are doing—and some of them, with luck, may do it better!"

  Shine had reclaimed the lenses and was staring through them again. Now he gave a gasp.

  "I see half of Sunbride!"

  "What?" The others turned to him uncertainly.

  "Half!" he repeated obstinately. "Tiny, but perfectly clear—half a disc, like half the moon, and as far from the sun as she ever wanders! Our conclusions must be true! They must!"

  VIII

  Parchments in one claw, pearlseed in the other, the steersman of the barq about to depart said, "So you want this delivered to your doctor friend in Forb, do you?"

  Something about his tone made Jing react with alarm. He said, "The price is fair, surely! If you doubt the quality of the seed, come and see what a jeweltree the Count sprouted from one I gave him last fall. Even during the winter—"

  "So you can still grow jeweltrees, can you? When your trencher-plants rot in the ground!"

  It was true; with the return of warm weather, the blight which had affected last year's crop was spreading again, and trencher-plant was their staple diet.

  "What does that have to do with—?" Jing began. The steersman cut him short.

  "Your doctor had better be cleverer than most! We aren't going as far as Forb this trip. The Maker knows whether anyone will want to go there ever again!"

  "What are you saying, man?" Jing advanced, clenching his claws.

  "The plain truth! Some filthy plague spawned of the far south is rife in Forb, and a murrain is abroad among the livestock, and the very brave-trees are wilting! We've been here three days—how is it this is the first you've heard?"

  "I've ... uh ... I've been preoccupied," Jing muttered.

  "Dreamlost, more like it!" The steersman returned the parchments with a contemptuous gesture and—more reluctantly—the pearlseed too, adding, "You'll need this to pay for medicine, I've no doubt! If you yourself plan on returning to Forb, which I don't counsel!"

  He turned away, shouting orders for his crew to pry loose the barq's tentacles and head down-channel.

  "Sure we came by way of Forb," Qat husked. "I told you so. But we aren't sick any more, none of us. Maybe I'm still softer than I shou
ld be, but that's a matter of time."

  "Yes—yes, of course," Jing muttered comfortingly. He nonetheless cast a worried glance at all three of them: Qat still limp enough to hobble rather than walk, and the boy and girl with their disfiguring scars. Not, according to rumor, that that had prevented their being taken up as curiosities by the younger members of the staff. When even the Count presently approved of outcrossing, and had let his own daughter choose a foreigner for her mate, it was the fashionable thing. Besides, the sacerdotes maintained that no plague could smite those who defied it boldly, so...

  Their influence was rising again since news of Ntah's downfall. Was this not, they declared, perfect proof of the Maker's vengeance against those who defied His will? In any normal year, such a claim would have been laughed out of conscience; now, though, the blight on the trencher-plants meant that many families were facing a hungry summer, and famine went claw-in-claw with madness, even when no plague exacerbated the victims' predicament.

  Jing had witnessed, on his way hither from Ntah, how precarious was sanity among his folk—how a single year's crop-failure might entrain surrender to the tempting world of dreams. When he paid full attention to his imagination, he was chilled by the all-too-convincing prospects conjured up. The Count's illness was withdrawing one psychological prop from the minds of the people of the valley; it was certain that when he died some of his old rivals from Forb, or their descendants, would come to squabble over his legacy—that was, naturally, if they weren't caught by the plague already. Hunger and sickness might withdraw the others, and then...

  Jing trembled at the threat the future held.

  Yet his companions declined to worry, even about a means of getting their knowledge spread abroad. If this barq's crew refused to return to Forb, they said, another steersman could be found more susceptible to a handsome payment, more prepared to run risks. It was with some reluctance that they agreed to make extra copies of the parchments Jing had already drafted; Keepfire, of course, could not write, and Twig was constantly on call to administer medicine to the Count. Shine and Rainbow, however, did their best, and by the time the next barq arrived there were six copies of the report at least in summary outline—enough, with luck, for learned folk elsewhere to repeat their studies.

  But they, and Jing too, would far rather have continued investigating the dark spots on the sun, and the bright nearby sparks which so far Shine alone had actually seen. Only their sworn pledge, Jing sometimes thought, made them obey his orders. How quickly they were defecting from their brief period of professed admiration!

  Could it be because—?

  He roused one morning from reverie with a firm and fixed dream-image in his mind, and it was shocking in its import. At once he rushed in search of Twig, and found him coming away from the Count's chamber with a grave expression.

  Not waiting for an exchange of greetings, he said in a rush, "Twig, I believe the plague is at work among us!"

  Twig gazed soberly at him. He said at length, "How did you know? I thought you said the disease was new to you, and you were unacquainted with its preliminary symptoms."

  Jing tensed in horror. He said, "But I guessed it from a dream!"

  "Then your weather-sense is far sharper than mine! Did you know the Count attempted to mate with the girl your friend brought here?"

  "I'm not surprised, but—No, I didn't know!"

  "It was futile, of course, but ... Well, today he exhibits all the signs Qat laid we should watch out for. I'm on my way to check out the other partners she and her brother have engaged with. Have you—? No, forgive me. I'm sure neither you nor Rainbow would consider the idea. But I must ask you a physician's question. Is the Lady Rainbow successfully in bud?"

  Jing nodded. "We realized yesterday. Last night we went to the observatory, but there was a bright aurora, so we talked about the future. We're both afraid."

  "Internally she's as sound as any woman," Twig assured him. "All the normal pressures are there; only her stance is distorted. But given that the Count, already weakened ... Your weather-sense informs you of what I mean?"

  "Even more. Even worse."

  "Very likely." Twig hesitated. "Tell me: how did you decide the plague had got a grip here?"

  "Because you in particular—forgive my bluntness—seemed to forget your enthusiasm for my leadership so quickly. A pledge is given with full rationality; dreams erode the recollection of it. I don't speak now of your duty to the Count, of course, but it was never my intention to prevent you serving him. It's a matter of priorities."

  "You're right," Twig said after reflection. "In my present mood of calm, I see what you mean. Service to the whole world, which can be performed by spreading our knowledge, is more important than service to an old man whose life I can't prolong with all my skills. We must get those reports away at once, in all possible directions. I'd have realized this truth myself but that—yes, you guessed correctly: I'm being pestered by hideously persuasive dreams such as I haven't known since long before I came to Castle Thorn. And fever due to the onset of the plague would best explain that."

  "I think I must believe the same," Jing muttered.

  "Oh, no! You of all people! No, you must survive! It would be unbearable to think that the greatest discoverer of our age must be struck down randomly! Far better you should escape to tell the world your tale!"

  But I've kept company with Qat," Jing said stonily. "Out of nostalgia, I've spent half-days at a time talking with him and neglecting my own greater duty. Miraculously I believe Rainbow still to be unaffected. She and the child she buds must go away and take our reports. Might I beg you to attend her before you continue with other matters?"

  "Yes! Yes, certainly! But I must warn you that nothing I say or do can alter an established fact. She may already—"

  "I know there's a risk. I want to diminish it. We'll buy the steersman of the next barq, give him all my pearlseeds so he can make for the great ocean and find one of the monster barqs that legend says can ply across it to another continent."

  "Legend? You want to trust in legends now? Surely you must after all be afflicted!"

  "I speak out of imagination rather than dream—though the two sometimes become so intermingled ... Yes, I think there's no alternative. In one of the visions which haunted me this morning, I saw the bravetrees of Forb rotting from the base wherever a corpse had been deposited. What manner of sickness can attack trees as well as people?"

  "A new kind," Twig said slowly.

  "As new as the New Star?"

  "Ah, but it was only a dream-guess!"

  "I think we'll see the same when the first victims die at Castle Thorn."

  Clenching his claws, Jing added as he turned away, "I wish with all my might it may just be a dream. But I fear it may well be correct imagining. The blight upon our trencher-plants, at any rate, is real enough."

  IX

  When next they heaved the Count out of his sitting-pit to cleanse and salve him, there were the betraying sacs beneath his skin. And they were readily recognized, for a girl at one of the outlying villages who had partnered the boy from Ntah had died from their inward rupturing that very day.

  Instantly the sacerdotes announced that this was the doom pronounced by the Maker against anyone who harbored heretics from foreign lands, and in the grip of the fever which preceded the visible outbreak of sores the peasants forgot what those same sacerdotes had been saying only days earlier about confronting the risk of plague with boldness. Keepfire managed to prevent his family and followers from being deluded from one of the confusing visions that now beset him, part sane imagination and part lunatic dream, Jing almost extracted a clue concerning life below the massive layers of rock that sheltered Twig's laboratory, but it evaded him at last because he cared more about the survival of his wife and child.

  For a little it seemed that Hedge and Bush were certain to escape, which would have dealt a logical blow to the sacerdotes' argument, especially since Twig's sole ulcer had burst out
ward and his cleanlickers proved able to deal with it. All three had been particularly close with Jing, and it was being claimed that associating with the Ntahans was the key to guilt and the Maker's punishment. But the day came when Bush succumbed, and admitted contact with the Ntahish girl, and a frenzy of hate exploded like one of the geysers that snowbelong-hunters reported far to the north.

  "On the way to the observatory they set their canifangs at me," Rainbow said. "Only Sturdy's quickness with his prong prevented me from being badly hurt."

  They sat in her bower, high in the castle and well defended, at a time when normally the night would be quiet but for distant icefaw screams and maybe a little music.

  They all cast uncertain glances toward Sturdy. Were a trained prongsman to become delirious before he was restrained there could be considerable slaughter, especially when reflex due to killing had already been established in his mind. And killing canifangs was normally no part of an escort's duty.

  Still, there were no marks to be seen on him.

  "It's essential now for you to get away," Twig said to Rainbow. Her condition was barely perceptible, fortunately, owing to her lopsidedness. But her attendants could not be trusted to keep such a secret. Let the sacerdotes once get news of it, and they would no longer be confronting angry peasants, but a systematic series of clever attempts to frustrate the budding.

  Jing drew a deep breath. "You don't yet know how essential," he said, and spread the right side of his mantle in a manner he would never normally do in anybody's presence except hers ... but these were intimate friends.

  "You too!" Twig blurted as he recognized what Jing was now revealing.

  "It would appear," Jing said with all the detachment he could command, "that even those who make a good recovery, like Qat and his companions, still carry the plague with them."

  "I'll kill him! I'll kill Qat!" Shine screamed, erupting to his full height. "He's going to deprive us of—"