by Ed Hurst
George leaned over a bit toward Fortis. “I would like to apologize for not showing you a map yesterday, but was worried you might have absorbed too much already. You’ll get a look at one when we stop for the day.”
Fortis cocked his head to one side and looked hard at George. “Why do I get the feeling you are reading my thoughts?”
George looked almost sheepish. “Any answer I give would make little sense to you, I’m afraid. It’s not as if I am conscious of your thoughts, as it were. I simply speak as it occurs to me. More than that would be hard to put in words, though I intend to try once you have spent some time among us.”
Fortis realized for once he was actually just a little scared.
Chapter 9: Catching Wind
It was on the fourth day and the smell of sea was much stronger. The map Fortis saw the first afternoon, an electronic display sheet George produced when they had set up camp, showed how there were a great many long sea inlets, snaking inland, making the polar island look like a splatter. They had crossed several shallow inlets of varying widths, but none deep enough to more than wet the boots Fortis wore, had he waded across them. George had explained only the polar island was like that, and the map images indicated it was so. However, the islands farther north were themselves rather scattered, randomly shaped, but fairly dense in the southern hemisphere. There was a wide band of continental land masses on the equator, with narrow seas cutting between them. The northern hemisphere was rather more thinly scattered islands, mostly smaller.
“What you notice as a sea smell will soon fade to olfactory accommodation, since it is nearly ubiquitous outside the equatorial lands,” George explained.
Fortis settled himself for a long and tedious journey, still tossing around his intuition how George seemed to read his questions. It never dawned on him George, or his entire world, would possess anything like it themselves. Indeed, for all their primitive culture and technology, their mental abilities were far outside the norm, if George was any representative sample. Not in the sense of pure intellectual acumen; Fortis had seen lots of that in his studies. Some cultures encouraged such a high level of intellect one would think they all had the most advanced chip implants, but it went well beyond mere algorithm processing. It was more like a highly advanced process of branching off into new connections, and doing it altogether faster than most of the human race. Such people would have nearly died of boredom in this quiet long journey, because their worlds were filled with constant, rapidly shifting inputs. Here, it was simply on a different plane, as if intellect were itself an afterthought.
For all his rather ordinary intellect, with his secret gift of intuition, Fortis was terribly uncomfortable in those cultures. Yet, rather than the milder case of boredom he expected with George’s ebullient and informative chatter, Fortis was stunned as George began to lay out the more shocking map of reality on Misty, the philosophical orientation unlike anything Fortis had seen in his long years of study. After three days of entertaining and encyclopedic discussion of standard anthropological data, Fortis was anything but bored. George halted their progress for lunch.
Over the meal of smoked, dried meat, and a little of the harshly flavored fish Fortis could not yet bring himself to consume, along with various dried fruits and roasted nuts and grain, George remarked rather casually they would not be setting up the tent that day.
“In just an hour from here we’ll be at the shore near the boat. We use something like a raft to move the animals out to the ship. They could easily wade out, but then we’d have to lift them aboard. They aren’t particularly fond of getting wet, anyway. By nightfall, we’ll be within reach of an island with no predators, and a fairly sharp bank so we can tie up directly to it. The currents just north of here are a bit fast and strong, so they create some unusual topography, though nothing dramatic. Tomorrow you’ll get a taste of some stronger winds. Still, only in the high deserts, and the shores just near them, are they strong enough to threaten a boat much.”
No sooner had they remounted and set out through the scattered sparse grass, when George said something in a totally different tone of voice. It was almost somber. “Some of the data coming back on our birds the past few years make us nervous here on Misty.”
Fortis turned to look directly at George, who had been staring straight ahead, almost stony faced. Then the elder’s gaze sank to the reins in his hands, sighing deeply. Fortis was paying full attention, now.
George continued, “You are aware several religious temples were destroyed on three different worlds?”
“They weren’t really very significant as buildings go,” Fortis offered.
“But they were all belonging to a particular sect, or a family of sects. They held to some odd practices, such as chanting, or simply sitting quietly for hours. While the buildings were never large or fancy, they always included the latest sound dampening technology, so you could go inside and not know there was a whole modern world out there roaring away. They practiced a form of meditation.”
Fortis remembered, but hadn’t given it much thought. “I seem to recall they rejected all implants, insisting whatever they really needed to know could not be reduced to data streams.” As soon as he said it, Fortis realized the possible connection to his own use of intuition.
George half smiled. “They roamed the Land without Words.” Fortis was slightly amused at how George could make it obvious the words were a proper noun. “The old generic term for such religions is ‘mysticism.’ Directly experiencing ultimate truth, they would claim, using non-intellectual faculties.”
Fortis recognized the quoted standard academic definition. He filled in the rest. “It was regarded as a superstition, something which hindered normal human development. It also tended to make them socially troublesome. Too many of them were elitist, refusing to adapt or negotiate logically with the various social structures in which they lived. It hearkened back to ancient prejudices which have no place in such a far-flung humanity. When mankind went out to the stars, diplomacy was so essential it became hard-wired, something written into the very structure of the standard Galactic language. It’s one of the first things infants learn when they begin to vocalize.”
George halted his mount. “Whatever they did wrong, this oppressive move threatens to destroy the last hope for humanity.” He dismounted.
Fortis realized there was a flat, oblong platform in front of them pulled up some distance from the water’s edge. Glancing about, he could see they were on a spit of land just a dozen meters across, and wide expanses of water separated them from any other fingers of land.
George strode to the platform and lifted the end closest to the water. Fortis noted it looked as if the surface was woven grass, with a curved frame providing the oval shape, apparently of that same light, hard wood used for almost everything. Before Fortis could dismount and offer to help, George had waded out a ways and let the platform down in the water. Letting it go, Fortis could see it was still resting partially on the bottom, with the front edge under water.
George called out in that odd gibberish used to direct the beasts’ behavior, and the draft animal pulled forward alone, walking slowly toward the platform. George halted it, then stepped quickly behind the wagon and turned the crank which slid the wheel carriage forward until the harness began to pull upward slightly. In one smooth motion he released the harness and allowed the wagon to tip back, raising the arms of the harness skyward. He then directed the beast onto the platform. Fortis was no longer surprised to see something so flimsy looking bear the weight without flexing. Then George bent down and turned some handle Fortis could not see below the edge. There was an audible hissing sound as some sort of bladder inflated under the entire platform, spreading out and raising the whole thing out of the water just a bit, leveling the platform to float. From one side, George pulled up a long pole and pushed the raft away toward the boat some meters off shore. Fortis hadn’t really noticed the larger craft before.
It took only an
hour to ferry the three beasts and the men together with the wagon. Near the waterline, the boat was almost as flat as the raft, which was now strung behind the boat. Fortis had noticed during their approach and embarkation the underside had smooth, almost shiny pontoons on both sides. Up close, he glimpsed a ribbed structure under the surface, running straight the length of the pontoons. The beasts stood on the lowest deck in the center. Apparently they never laid down; Fortis never saw them when they weren’t standing or walking. The wagon was rolled to the stern and locked in a frame made to receive it. Fortis had seen rigging for pleasure craft on many worlds, some with wind sails of all sorts of designs. He noticed this boat had a complicated framework of very stiff sails, which still appeared to be gossamer fabric. They could be turned vertically by a simple control on the foredeck. They had been folded together when he boarded, but George quickly got them spread out and turned to catch the breeze somehow. Almost immediately the vessel began to move.
Fortis sat on a woven fabric seat mounted near the steering station. George sat down facing him once he was satisfied everything was working properly. He kept one hand on the controls while glancing back and forth among the bright sails.
Still looking up, “You know, Fortis, the emperors had special tutors for their children and some of their staff. Among those tutors, it was a long tradition to have one or more of those mystics whose temples were destroyed recently. Legend has it they helped the rulers and close counselors anticipate things a whole planet of scientists could not have guessed. They took the mystics seriously. The imperial policies only failed when someone murdered the staff mystics in fit of political jealousy. While the last emperor of our most recent Imperium hadn’t really been paying much attention to the mystics, they still held strong ceremonial importance. Once they were dead, imperial favor for them declined. That trend carried over into the break up, and the council in that sector has been pressing them hard ever since then.”
Fortis had not heard all the details, but recognized the story. “I take it something is brewing which you believe requires mystics to discern. Without them, the population of the galaxy is somehow threatened?”
George turned to Fortis with a grin. “Your intuition is quite good.”
Chapter 10: Home Unknown
Fortis noticed George used the small electronic display sheet, on which he had previously displayed the map, for navigation. It was mounted near the steering controls. “George, you don’t have the common navigational beacons around this planet, for obvious reasons. How does your navigation system work?”
“Every planet – every celestial body – has a magnetic polarity. The instrument reads it and reports direction, but as you noted, can’t tell us much about latitude, since that’s not a matter of polarity.”
A decision washed over Fortis. This was not a mere intuition, though it seemed to come from the same source inside him. There was no name for it, only a wordless imperative. He asked, “Does electromagnetism work here on Misty?”
“It does, just barely. You may recall that technology was deprecated during the period on Terra just before the discovery of hyperspace. There was a craze with wireless power transmissions and devices proliferated. The fields around most people were so numerous and intense, it caused all sorts of medical problems. Once the scientists realized the connection, and the information got out, popular pressure demanded alternatives. The use of electromagnetic fields became one of those unwritten cultural taboos, though we know very weak ones aren’t really so harmful. The problem here is the fields generated are weaker than on most other planets. And the hardware required is an expensive import for us.”
So the spooler Fortis carried was not necessarily useless baggage. He tested it and found if he held the device directly against his head, he could read from it. The technology worked both ways, of course, so Fortis spent some hours that first full day of sailing dumping all the anthropological data George had given him. Between the chip in his head and spooler’s own artificial intelligence, the information was reduced algorithmically to take up comparatively little memory space on the device, fully indexed and searchable.
He showed the spooler to George. “In the case something should happen to me, I would ask you try to return this thing to my ship. There’s a slot near the ladder where you can insert this. The ship’s computer will read it automatically. It contains instructions for the ship to return to my home planet on automatic pilot with the data.”
George turned it over in his hand. “Not a bad idea. I would surely be willing to try, and will inform others as necessary. So far there is little we’ve discussed which could return to haunt us here on Misty.”
He handed it back and Fortis poked it into the pocket made for it. He announced gravely to George, “I’m not recording anything else. It seems I am forced by circumstances to cross the line, now.”
“I could take you back to your ship, if you wish,” George offered.
Fortis sat down. “No. Whatever it is I came to do officially is finished, but my own personal mission has just begun.”
“You know you can’t go back, then. You may be able to return physically, but you will be an alien to your own past.” George was quite serious, but his expression held its normal subtle exuberance.
Fortis accepted that without further discussion. “Something tells me mysticism isn’t really about predicting the future, as everyone assumed it was for the emperors.”
George’s smile twisted on one side. “It was never about future, past or present, really. Mysticism is focused on the ultimate reality of things regardless of time and events. The imperial mystical tutors were responding to things science can neither grasp nor explain when they warned of impending threats. Human intellect is rather confined to what can be measured. For all the wonders of advancements in materials, artificial intelligence, medicine, psychology, exploration of celestial phenomena, particles, fields, and such, they still can’t reach a grand unified theory of the universe. Such answers lie outside the universe.”
Fortis gazed off at the fuzzy horizon. “The old paradox of anthropology is you can’t really study it from the outside, but once inside, you can’t be truly objective.”
Fiddling with the steering controls, George noted, “It’s almost the reverse image for mysticism. You don’t go into mysticism; you come out of the object realm. So called ‘objective reality’ is the confined space, a prison you escape.”
Fortis cocked his head to one side. “I thought the only way to get outside of reality was to die.”
George sat down again. “There is more than one kind of death.”
A lot of things died in Fortis, but some rather slowly.
It was his life long exposure to planets with distinct polar climates which made him expect a long dreary voyage northward, but Misty’s climate was virtually the same every place. In less than a week they sailed past inhabited islands and spotted other boats sailing the sea. There were no storms, just some times a little more wind. It never rained, but it was always somewhat dampish, especially during the relative darkness of night. He became comfortable sleeping in the open air with a blanket, and under a small awning to ward off the heavy mists of night.
Eventually he forced himself to eat the repulsive little fish necessary to supplement the lack of sunlight. The complete lack of direct sunlight would have been oppressive, depressive even, had he not been so utterly absorbed in the questions brought to life by his embrace of mysticism, and the long discussions with George on the voyage. Thus, while he felt as a bird leaving its cage, he found the cloudy embrace of Misty rather comforting in removing distractions of extreme variability in his surroundings.
Still, even after some three weeks, his eyes fully adjusted, he didn’t see as well as George.
“There,” George was pointing off into the hazy horizon. “I can see the spire on the hilltop of the southern approach to the largest city in this region. It bears the flag of Clan Johnston.”
Fortis strained to
see it, but detected nothing through the intervening mist. “You told me there were precious few permanent buildings on Misty. I take it there are some here?”
“Yes. But most of them are simply static frames with the same tent fabric for covering. That’s always been enough here on Misty, and we have compelling reasons for clinging to semi-nomadic living. That’s not so much a part of mysticism itself, but a peculiarity of our religion.”
So far, Fortis had only gained a bare, intellectual view of the dominant religion on Misty. He knew it was based in a very primitive version of Christianity, but there were a plethora of religions in the galaxy claiming that. Yet they were all incredibly varied in ritual and intellectual content of teaching. Most were hardly more than a cultural variation with similar terminology and key phrases. Most still made some reference to the ancient Book, but that seemed about all they had in common. George had not yet said much about doctrine.
Turning back to Fortis, George said, “This city has one of the best academies for our religion, and you’ll learn more from them than you would from me. It will be perplexing, to be sure, at first. Still, you’ve already passed the greatest barrier. Without the mystical approach, you’ll never really understand any part of it, except perhaps a confusing array of external manifestations. We still have a great many people among us who can’t get that far, but we do our best not to alienate them. They have their place. Misty is their home, too, and mysticism isn’t required for full participation in life. You could, given time, grasp what our religion is like for them, but you wouldn’t really understand it that way.”
In the silence, George stepped back over to the steering station and idly checked the controls. Fortis turned back from the horizon with a half-smile. “So the name of your planet is more a pun.”
George threw back his head in full laughter. Still chuckling, “Now I can say to you truly, welcome to Mystical Misty.”