Pan Sagittarius (2509 CE)

by Ian Wallace

  Pan Sagittarius

  Also by IAN WALLACE

  DR. ORPHEUS

  DEATHSTAR VOYAGE

  CROYD

  PAN

  SAGITTARIUS

  Ian Wallace

  COPYRIGHT © 1973 BY IAN WALLACE

  All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  Published simultaneously in Canada by Longman Canada Limited, Toronto.

  SBN: 399-11105-0

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 72-94258

  Printed in the United States of America

  Stanzas from The Divine Comedy, translated by Lawrence Grant White, copyright 1948 by Partheon Books, Inc., reprinted by permission of the publisher.

  Conjointly, to Pan, Althea, and Thoth and to certain other fictional friends from several planets and worlds: Edom, Ave, Willy, Brownie, Lassiter, Grayle, Gueraine, Pelleon, Merleon, Ninevé, Ben, and Meri Makrov, Paige, O’Duffy, Hertha, Von Eltz, Guyon, Katharina, and Petruchio

  May this my affectionate representation of your selves and your honest concerns not miscarry too far and come out almost as fair as it was felt.

  Then with a golden egg Donander made another world; and from

  the entrails of a spider he drew another; from the carrion of

  a dead cow he made a fifth world; and with the aid of a raven

  Donander made yet one more…And throughout . …these

  whiles Donander was pottering with his worlds, keeping them

  bright with thunderbolts and volcanic eruptions, diligently

  cleansing them of parasites with one or another pestilence,

  scouring them with whirlwinds, and perpetually washing them

  with cloudbursts and deluges.

  —James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion

  Contents

  Auctorial Comment

  Part One

  Sagittarius in Scandia

  Part Two

  Operation Second Chance

  Part Three

  A Certain Garden

  Part Four

  Willy the Villain

  Part Five

  Caerleon

  Part Six

  Makrov

  Part Seven

  The Bishop’s Halo

  Part Eight

  Adult, Western

  Part Nine

  Von Eltz in Vimy

  Part Ten

  Creation of a Metagalaxy

  Auctorial Comment

  The author has old, old concerns with clinical psychology; and these concerns may be showing through in Pan Sagittarius, for sexuality clamant or latent is invariably a motif and sometimes the motif. But those who understand will swiftly see that the sexual motif is never sounded in the sense of Freud’s mechanistic metaphysics. Consider the variations: The frank sexuality in “Sagittarius in Scandia” is pleasure for its own sake as a pagan good, even though Althea seems a bit desperate and excessive about it (not for reasons of. repression, but for reasons of Pan and prior privation), and even though Pan is using it with enjoyment to steer Althea, and even though Althea is using it with enjoyment to steer Pan. Sexuality is not visible at all in “Operation Second Chance,” but who can doubt that directly or indirectly it has contributed to the troubles of the souls in question? Sexuality is a rampant motif in “A Certain Garden”—but it is open and natural in a simple primitive world, and the tragedy-threat coils around its puckering distortion by taboo. Sexuality as such does not motivate the hard racial rebellion of “Willy the Villain”; nevertheless, the rebellion is driving-male, race immaterial, and at the heart of degradation is sexual degradation that a naïve-educated hero feels he must explore in order to understand the people. Disguised as something between lady worship and amour, a style-highlighted fever called amourosis threatens in “Caerleon” to destroy a noble dream. The thin, browbeaten heroism of “Makrov” is purely human, and I am one who refuses to shackle the broad warmth of family love and reverence within the category “sexuality”; yet perverse sexuality motivates Makrov’s enemies, whereas by contrast, at one point the starkly sexual symbolism of soul love between Makrov and his wife is for me a near approach to what Heaven stands for. Lewis Paige in “The Bishop’s Halo” is almost antiseptically asexual, and the same has to be said for the gauleiter in “Von Eltz in Vimy”; perhaps one has to be a technician to appreciate how deep-repressed sexuality indirectly expresses itself in obsessive-compulsive mentalities. Hertha, the wretchedly masochistic prostitute in “Adult, Western,” addresses sexuality with a twisted directness: loves it, hates it, cries out to know what is so special about it. And even in the subhuman preorganic antics that are focused in “Creation of a Metagalaxy,” Pan inescapably sees an inexact prelude to male-female thrust-allure.

  But the coin has another side. For Althea, sexuality is a value that she caresses with her left hand, while with her right she hard-reaches toward stars, and when there is conflict, the stars dominate. Problems far deeper than sexuality have thrust the souls of this novel into Hell. Until the serpent came, sexuality was merely one among the interests of those in the garden. All three of the leading men in “Willy the Villain” are idealists for causes beyond themselves, causes such that it is outrageously outstretching professionalese to assert that they are sex-connected. All the principals in “Caerleon” revere the dream and are piteously rended when they recognize that sexuality has trapped them; indeed, for a very long while Pelleon and Gueraine seek between them a dreamed beauty that is wholly asexual. For me, Makrov—making allowances for his souldraining desuetude—treads the high roads. Even if Paige and Von Eltz are gripped in neuroses that science knows to have psychosexual roots, is it not human-prime that with all their conscious energies and wills they are reaching for what is lofty? Hertha is earthy, she is ordinary folks, trapped in her own environmental pressures, at once allured and repelled—but note: it is not the pleasures of sexuality that she questions; instead, what she questions is why the soul-trap. Leroy Guyon cannot be confined within any category. As for the preorganic centers of allure and thrust in “Creation of a Metagalaxy,” perhaps they suggest a controlling theory to which Freud might pay less attention than Jung.

  Although Pan in these pages is usually narrator of adventures whose foreground people are other people, Pan is always intimately and causally involved in the action. Meditation of this fact has evoked in me a good deal of speculation about Pan’s outlook on life and on lives. Every adventure is revealing of him—is self-revealing by him—and yet, how much is revealed? To me, his author, at the end of it still he is ambiguous, I am still far short of his horizons.

  Earth is not the locus of any of these adventures; but in several of them the locus is Erth—a planet in another metagalaxy, but a planet which is so much like our Earth that a whole essay (which here I eschew) would be needed to explain the subtle differences.

  All characters and their names are fictions invented by the author. Any name-resemblance to the name of a real person would be mere coincidence; and any character-resemblance to a real individual would be equally inadvertent, except in the supporting cast of “Makrov” and in the stars of “A Certain Garden,”

  “Caerleon,” and “Von Eltz in Vimy” where some obvious historical or quasihistorical characters were partial models.

  Nevertheless, all the major characters have become real in my private world; I like and empathize with all of them except the Führer and Dubois, and even with these I can empathize. Consequently there is no satirical intent anywhere in this book, despite some straight-faced partial comedy in the first, second, third, fifth, seventh, eighth, and final adventures. And although the situations in all but t
he first adventure are meant to reflect (with distortions and reversals) human-universal situations, these my percepts must be viewed as personal-individual.

  Ian Wallace Earth, 1973

  My dear twin brother,

  I dare venture that you have once in a while let yourself worry about me during these two years of silence: not for long, though, since I am physically your duplicate and mentally almost so. Worrying, you would have said to yourself: “Pan is as safe as I would be, probably; he is silent for his own good reasons, probably: go to, I will not worry—probably.” And you would have straightened your long hard body, and run a big hand back through your short auburn hair, and grinned with your wide mouth and sapphire eyes, and checked in a prayer-thought for me, and gone on about your business.

  So hey, look! I am reporting! with tri-d multicolor thought-feeling flakes in which I recall for you in some detail ten outlandish adventures with a number of remarkable people and one embryonic system, on several planets and in two out worldly nonplaces over a large range of millennium-epochs.

  But, Brother—keep it all confidential, except for the one other person whom you know. Reading these flakes, you will see why.

  It does now seem, doesn’t it? that there is adequate reason for both of us to exist.

  I know you’re fine, I’ve checked. My best to you always.

  PAN

  Hell, 2509 ad

  Part One

  Sagittarius in Scandia

  So the two began the ascent of Vraidex, by the

  winding road upon which the dreams travel when

  they are sent down to men by the lord of the seven

  madnesses.

  —James Branch Cabell, Figures of Earth

  1

  Since it was impossible for me to kill myself by ordinary human means, I got myself a 100-G scouter with a 1:100 inertial shield and cut loose for Sol at maximum drive with manual controls jammed: I’d be crisped long before I would hit star surface. My major problem, as I leaned back in the face of a mild apparent 1-G wind, was self-restraint: under fear-stress, I might automatically dissociate myself from my brain and wing it for some space-time security point, there to kidnap some body and make a new start at the expense of his soul. But it would be self-defeating: I had no business continuing to live, especially as a parasite. So last night I had made a point of debilitating my vigor with a covey of women and gallons of liquor; right now I was under heavy sedation, the scouter was guiding itself straight into the sun.

  Unluckily I came out of sedation just as we were cutting Mercury-orbit: I was in an oven, and I hadn’t been smart enough to expect this awakening and provide myself with extra dope.

  Agonized and terrified, grimly I went to work on my brain—setting stops, opening emotic switches to chop fear and dull pain, throwing a spiderweb of self-restraint around my escape straining mind, widening every memory and motive that reinforced suicide: it was all I could do; again I leaned back, required myself to relax and go blank, endured growing heat: it would be only a matter of minutes before consciousness would go…

  Heat eased, unaccountably. I opened eyes, frowning. There was no G-wind. To be certain, I unjammed the manuals and cautiously rheostated out the inertial shield: no doubt about it, either I was motionless or I was in freefall—and to the latter, the progressive normalizing of heat gave the lie.

  Cautiously I relaxed pain inhibitors: no real pain, although my skin was burned: well, that I could correct. Very gradually I closed my fear switch: my fear was only residual, not enough to drive my mind into silly behavior. Then I unspun my mind and opened viewports.

  From what I could see outside, my scouter reposed in the center of a vast hotel lobby. And I was alone here.

  Had I in panic done something ridiculous, translating not merely my mind but my body and my scouter vehicle some where when?

  Anyhow, suicide had obviously failed, although reasons for it continued clamant. Heigh-ho: let’s see what the deal is, and then we’ll try again…

  I stepped out of the scouter into the deserted lobby without even bothering to pretest whether the atmosphere would be oxygen or methane or nothing: either I would live or I would die, and the latter would be preferable.

  The room was high-lofted rococo with opulent ceiling murals flanked by sculptured and gilded scollops; marble nymphs and satyrs graced wall niches; my feet sank into a deep-pile crimson carpet, I was tempted to take off my shoes. There was no furniture, there were no people…

  There were two pieces of furniture: a round heavy green-marble table flanked by a luscious armchair in forest-green plush. This table and this chair reposed thirty feet from broad steps that led up to a theatrical proscenium backed by a closed forest-green plush curtain. On this table, conveniently close to the chair, were an ashtray, a fat virginal cigar, matches, and a tall glass of what-appeared to be frosted zac (but could not be zac in this evidently primitive time-era).

  I turned to consider my scouter. It had vanished.

  Shrugging, I went to the table, sat in the chair, lit the cigar, sipped the drink (which with difficulty, on a basis of uptime prowling experience, I identified as a Tom Collins), considered the proscenium.

  The whole setup was twentieth century. Was it staged—or had I been swung six hundred years into my past—or both?

  Perhaps ten minutes dawdled by; cigar and drink were half gone.

  The curtain parted. The stage that it revealed was wide and deep; there was no backdrop, apparently the background was all the world—isome world: the remote past of my own Erth, maybe? Centered on the stage was a broad low dais, and centered on the dais was a low throne, and seated on the throne was a dark-haired uncrowned woman who seemed uncommonly tall and slender; a man and a woman flanked her, standing below the dais; and other men and women arhythmically passed from wing to wing before her—paying her no notice.

  The woman on the throne was looking at me.

  I stood; she continued to look.

  Leaving cigar and drink behind, slowly I mounted the steps to the stage: I would see what this might be, I would suicide later…

  She arose; and, after standing a moment on the dais regarding me, she descended and greeted me with both hands, while behind me a basso profundo enunciated: “The Honorable Miss Althea Candless, Chief of the Nordian Power Ministry: Mr. Pan Sagittarius.” I didn’t remember passing a man, but I didn’t look back—it would have been impolite, and it was psychically impossible.

  Still Miss Candless held my hands in her slim strong hands, standing back so that our arms were extended. She was as tall as I, grace to her two-inch heels, and so slender that she seemed almost thin (but this was mainly an effect of height); clearly she was self-conscious about her height, for her shoulders drooped slightly forward so that her quite respectable breasts were deem-phasized; and yet she was inwardly and outwardly graceful, sheathed in a black gown, her black hair falling to her shoulders, her black eyes wide-set, her black eyebrows flat, her small-nostriled nose just a bit retroussé, long in lip and chin, her wide mouth semismiling…

  She said (and her voice was dusky alto): “I am sorry to have interrupted your smoke and your drink.” But she didn’t suggest either completion or replacement. And she didn’t mention having interrupted my dandy suicide.

  I was reflecting that no matter how valid a decision for suicide may be, failure is like any other mors interruptus: there is always something else to be savored, if you aren’t depressive—and depression had not been my motive…I replied, essaying a smile: “I am grateful for the half-smoke and half-drink, and for the opportunity—”

  Her smile flashed altogether wide: “Skip the graces, Mr. Sagittarius: think of me as a man, we have business.”

  Her left hand let go of my right, she swung me around beside her, she switched hands so that her left had my left, she hooked her right under my left arm, she moved me toward the rear openness, telling me confidentially: “Moskovia is about to blow Kebec loose from us—”

  It wa
s not going to be easy to think of her as a man. But as a human, male or female immaterial—that I could dig.

  She steered me through the back of the stage and out into the busy city, tightly clutching my arm with both hands that were astonishingly strong. We were out on an energetic avenue in daylight, I recognized it as Fifth Avenue in the astonishing Nordian-Kébecois metropolis of Montvrai. “Here we catch a bus,” she told me. Waiting with her, trying to make meaning-ends meet, I became conscious of two small glowering men behind us. A bus paused; we swung aboard, they followed; she slid into a double seat, I joined her; the small glowering men took a double seat not far behind us; the bus took off.

  Still she held my left arm, she squeezed it in warning; I sat waiting, presumably she would be telling. The bus went and stopped and went and stopped; people descended, nobody boarded; presently we were alone except for the two small glowering men and the driver; rather surprisingly, the bus had swung onto the Skyland Freeway, had built up speed to sixty, was thrusting northward toward the mountains.