Pan Sagittarius (2509 CE)

by Ian Wallace

I began the swift minute between rounds by sampling Brownie’s mind, and it was human Hell. Brotherhood with Willy had been Willy-beaten out of him: Brownie was power-drive-dynamized, vengeful-fury-inflamed: Willy was The Enemy to Be Annihilated. Toward this instant passional purpose, Brownie’s control and concentration were total and implacable. Deep in his hindbrain I detected love lurking for Willy; but in Brownie’s blood-activated forebrain, Willy glowered in the far corner there as entirely a dangerous-repulsive threat to Brownie-supremacy—a threat that had already hurt Brownie bitterly and must be pulverized.

  Out of Brownie I scurried, in ten seconds flat; and I sought and found and entered Lassiter.

  Having neutralized Lassiter’s cerebral panic button, I telepathed within his brain: “Don’t look around, Lassiter. My name is Pan, I’m a disembodied mind, I’m visiting in your brain, I’m a friend of Willy’s. You aren’t going nuts, you are entirely intelligent and conscious and sane, these things do occasionally happen to people. You and I both want to help Willy, and I am here to do it—but on the larger scene. Are you listening calmly? Don’t speak—just think your answer.”

  Lassiter took it like a Solon. “I do think I’m nuts, Pan. It doesn’t surprise me if my personality has split. If so, you are me anyhow, and I’m willing to listen to me. Go ahead.”

  I said: “I have to act very fast. Brownie is about to kill Willy, and that stupid referee won’t stop him. I want to put Willy’s mind into your brain so it won’t experience its own killing. His mind will be groggy: you’ll feel it there, but it won’t have to bother you. Just sit quiet and let it be there, and I’ll come back as soon as possible and take his mind somewhere else.”

  “Where will you be, Pan?”

  “In Willy’s brain-and-body.”

  “While Brownie kills him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What do you gain?”

  “No time to talk. Will you accept this?”

  “What if—you can’t get back to take Willy’s mind away from me?”

  “In that case, his mind will stay with you, and either both of you will go mad, or you will absorb his mind as part of yours. You have the stronger mind. Will you risk it?”

  “It is my wife’s risk too—”

  “Can you speak for her?”

  The bell rang.

  Lassiter thought quietly: “Go, man.”

  Willy plodded out of his corner, dizzy, race-angry, seeing the updancing multiple image of his brother as a Judas-fiend whom he must kill before the fiend would kill their people.

  The image monstered, filling his field, and a blow on the center of his forehead sent him stumbling backward.

  He was too groggy to be surprised when a voice inside his head said: “Willy. Don’t go to him. Stand still. Wait. When he comes to you, grab and hang on.”

  Willy stood stolid, numbly obedient.

  The Brownie-image flared before him. Willy grabbed, hugged, held. The image tried to hit him, to shake him off; Willy held tight.

  The inward voice said: “Listen, Willy. In a moment the ref will try to break you. Pay no attention. Keep holding. I’ll tell you when to break.”

  Willy clung. Vaguely he felt slapping on his shoulder.

  Voice: “He’s trying to break you now. Listen, Willy. Brownie is going to kill you, and you can’t stop him, and the ref is too stupid to stop him. I can make the ref stop the fight. Do you want me to make him stop it, so Brownie won’t kill you?”

  Willy’s mind muff-muttered: “No. I’d lose. He’d win. Can’t let him win. Better he kill me.”

  “Why?”

  The referee was shouting, tugging; Brownie, both arms tied, was cursing, wrist-jabbing; Willy held his death grip…

  Willy’s mind, into which I was pumping raw energy without directing the mind in any way, found an instant of clarity and asserted with dignity: “Brownie means White-on-Top. I mean White Equality. If he wins and I lose, White-on-Top wins and White Equality loses, so white Paladians lose: that’s how it looks to a lot of us white people, especially if I give up. That can’t be. If White Equality loses to White-on-Top, black Paladians lose too—all Paladians lose, even White-on-Top loses. So I have to beat Brownie. But I can t beat Brownie. So next best would be if he would kill me. That wouldn’t look very good for White-on-Top, would it?” Brief thought-pause; then: “Brownie’s a great guy, he’s deep, he could be good for all of us, he just all fired up—”

  Mind-talk is swift: the clinch hadn’t lasted fifteen seconds. At this instant, I wasn’t sure that Willy was right about the killing, but he was perfectly predicting what had actually resulted from the losing. I decided: “Brownie will kill your body, Willy, but I have to save your mind. I am going to take your mind and put it to bed in Lassiter’s brain, and you can go to sleep there. I will stay here and take care of your body while Brownie kills it. Okay, Willy?”

  Anguished protest: “But I got to stay with it—mind and body!”

  Whirr of mental fuzz. Out of it: “Okay then—but you keep me fightin’, hear?”

  I sped the mind to Lassiter.

  Taking hold of the bleeding brain, I drew myself into total control of its pain-throbbing sensory-motor-thought totality. I had become Willy.

  I broke out of the clinch.

  What I might expect during the remaining two minutes of the eighth round would be dangerously difficult and incredibly traumatic. My mind, like any mind, depended on having some kind of brain, even were that brain only the filamental totality of Antan; and all I had now, locked within Willy, was Willy’s bleeding shocked brain; and I was involved in this battered brain so intimately that I felt as mine its every twist of agony, its confusion was my chaos. But I had to keep my head relatively clear so that Willy would be slain the tactical way. To do this, I might have to lose my own identity forever, tangled in a pulped brain mass that would rot without letting me free.

  Resorting to a trick, I speeded up Willy’s sensorium and his frontal and parietal responses so that everything Brownie might do would seem to be done in slow motion, as though underwater. Unhappily I could not touch Willy’s midbrain or hindbrain: the Willy-body action was not speeded in any way—perceptually its motion too was slowed. But at least, now I had time to see and partially comprehend what would be coming. With the sensory slowing, the crowd noise went basso, a dull lethargic rocksurf-roaring.

  Brownie, face berserk-twisted, was cat-moving backward from the clinch; no, he was a sinuous undersea eel. Willy-feet planted hard on the canvas, I swayed. I was no stranger to boxing, but my experience was amateur, and I was years away from it. I set myself the task of being pliant with respect to Willy’s midbrain, letting it translate my cerebral commands into automatic-experienced action. So far, the midbrain seemed undamaged.

  Having backed undulently almost all the way across the ring, Brownie had leisurely gathered himself into a catspring-pause and now was beginning to unfold and weave forward.

  I got my Willy-body set.

  Brownie filled my vision, slowly feinted, oozily started a right cross. I brought a lethargic sledgehammer right under the right cross and ultimately sank my fist an inch into Brownie’s ribs just under the heart, so that Brownie winced and his right cross barely scraped my chin. I then realized that my victorious Willy-fist was now merely falling, that no automatic follow-through was going to come; and my groggy Willy-brain could not think of a thing for me to have Willy do next.

  The left poke by Brownie started, telegraphing itself, coming around-and-through on a predictable route. Knowing I should be doing something about it, idiotically I studied the fist as it made its approach to me. It became all my world and mashed Willy’s nose flat, clouding my visual field with Willy’s tears. As the fist receded, I knew that another fist would be coming in from another direction, but that was all I understood, and I could see nothing. I waited, trying to get the Willy-body to respond; and presently Willy’s hands did seem to be coming up a little; but just then the other fist crushed into
my left temple, bashing brain against bone, starting another hemorrhage that still further clouded my comprehension. It did another thing: it broke down the speed-up of the sensorium; and I was hail-hit by a left-right-left-right temple battering that kept on and on while anguish multiplied and then ebbed and ultimately gave way to the seraphic soft pleasure of the repetitious beating and

  Someone was stroking my face.

  It was Althea.

  I asked promptly: “What happened?”

  “When?”

  “In the fight. Just now.”

  “I stumbled over you here,” declared Althea. “We didn’t know where you’d checked your body, and we’d lost track of your mind. Brief me.”

  I did—quite calmly: why not? I was alive.

  “All right,” said Althea, helping me up. “That was a few hours ago our time, but eleven years ago their time; you’ll remember we’d agreed to speed up the alternate track development if the track should look promising. So it might be worth our while if you would check it out, Pan—especially since none of the three souls has checked in.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more fervently. Especially since I had failed in a detail of frightening significance. During eleven years, I had left the mind of Willy paired with the mind of Lassiter in the brain of Lassiter.

  Rather as I had speeded up the Willy-sensorium, so we had speeded up the new germinal Antan-track. Normally a new shoot from an if-node meanders down through time at the same growth rate as the original track, so that the new burgeoning stays always the same interval short of the present; and usually it withers before it can create a time-paradox. But in the rare case where a new parallel track grows faster than its father, the new track may ultimately crash through into the germinal present. When this happens, there is a brief chaos during which the new track merges with the old in the current germination, with the new taking command because of its higher energy, but with the old inertially influencing the new; and when synthesis emerges from this brief chaos, memories and history resolve themselves into a single track because any other resolution would be insane; and any phantom memories or paradoxical relics that controvert this resolved history are put down to the vagaries of the human mind…

  Eleven years later, track time! But it was present germinality that I now entered…

  I found Lassiter standing staring out an office window, hands clenched behind his back. The office was that of the Kashmir superintendent of schools. It was Lassiter’s office. About to depart that office, hand hovering near the door activator, was a tall, stocky, sad-eyed man whom abruptly I recognized as Brownie Brown.

  Brownie dropped his hand and turned: his movements and stature preserved the old pliancy, his eyes the old gleam, his face the old fair-white handsomeness that even blacks recognized. He said in a voice that was vibrant yet hesitant: “Must I conclude, Lassiter, that the first white school superintendent in Kashmir history will finally and definitely not endorse my campaign to be the first white mayor of Kashmir?”

  Lassiter did not turn. After deliberation, he replied: “Mr. Brown, you continue to have my good wishes. During the past six or seven years you appear to have established yourself as the city’s leader of moderate white militancy. Let me say it like this: a man having the identity that you now appear to have is the kind of man I would like to see as our mayor. But I repeat that the superintendent of schools cannot properly support or endorse any candidate.”

  Brownie advanced a few steps toward the superintendent’s back. “Mr. Lassiter—I know how you feel about me personally, and I confess that you are right—as of then. How much do I now have to prove?”

  Lassiter appeared to shrivel a little. “I’m not talking about that fight. It seems to have changed you. Personally I have faith that it has changed you. But I still cannot take the position—”

  Up went Brownie’s chin; and he told the window just above Lassiter’s head: “Mr. Lassiter, I’ve said this to thousands and thousands: the White Power movement is measured by the kinds of white people who lead it, and the kind of bastard who killed Willy Brown was a leader in it, and I am no longer that bastard!

  Lassiter turned, and came to Brownie, and pressed Brownie’s right hand in both of his own hands, while Brownie’s left hand covered Lassiter’s hands. Lassiter told Brownie’s eyes: “I believe you. I wish you well. In my heart I earnestly hope that you become mayor. But I can’t endorse or oppose any candidate, because of my public role.”

  After a moment Brownie responded in a voice that was oddly not his own: “Okay. I dig. Thanks. I mean it.”

  He moved toward the door. He paused. He thrust a hand into a pants pocket, scowling at the floor. Slowly he raised his head and gazed earnestly at Lassiter, who gazed back just as intently.

  Brownie said: “You’ve made your decision, and I know you won’t change it no matter what I say. So I wanna say sumpn. I got a funny feelin’ about you. A good kinda feelin’. Like you were my—older bro, or sumpn.”

  Instantly Lassiter ejected: “I feel it too. Like you were my—younger bro—or sumpn.”

  They held the gaze. Abruptly Brownie flashed the old derisive grin: “Just because I lapsed into blanco-talk,you don’t have to.” Lassiter told him soberly: “I didn’t have to.”

  Brownie frowned down. He blurted: “This is nuts.”

  And he left.

  Lassiter went back to the window.

  I entered his brain, probing the prime locus of ego between telencephalon and diencephalon. Lassiter was serene, relatively speaking: that is to say, he seethed, but about others and not about himself; and there was absolutely no sign of psychic split—nor, in his fresh memory banks, any hint of less than reasonably serene love between his wife (the same wife) and himself.

  No sign of Willy, either.

  I considered the question. Presently I probed more deeply into the diencephalon. At length, almost at the very bottom of Lassiter’s forebrain, I found the reason for the small intuitive hint of caring between Lassiter and Brownie. Telepathically there I comprehended Willy’s mind in dormancy: fused so intimately with Lassiter’s mind that Willy’s identity was almost a meaningless idea, like the whisper of vermouth in a very dry martini.

  It would be possible for me delicately to segregate Willy’s mind from Lassiter’s, convey Willy into Hell, rig there a surrogate brain for him, return him to intelligent astral consciousness purged of the old-track guilt by the new-track achievement, and in due course give Willy opportunity to choose his own future.

  I decided to defer that procedure; and I checked through to Althea an advance note to reconsider the procedure when eventually Lassiter would die. Willy was dormant—but emanations from Willy were still contexturally powering Lassiter.

  Wasn’t Willy cosuperintendent of schools? Hadn’t he helped Lassiter get here?

  Part Five

  Caerleon

  In the year 2273 (Interplanetary Convention), on the planet Arcady (which was Nigel III), a chivalric sylvan-urban utopia called Caerleon was dynamited by the persuasion of a queen and a knight that consummation of amourosis (= amour inflamed by intersexual hypnosis) takes precedence over all other values. The consequent destruction of Caerleon set back the progress of humane civilization on Nigel III by a thousand years. Perhaps from a celestial viewpoint it didn’t matter much, since the star Nigel was only nineteen years from nova. Nevertheless, to three souls it did particularly matter: to Grayle, the cuckolded king who mourned his cuckoldry far less than he mourned the death of his dream; to Gueraine, his queen who friend-liked and respected King Grayle and mourned her inability to hold amourosis at arms’ length; and to Pelleon, the Good Strong Knight whose surrender to amourosis wrecked the utopia that he had helped build and the king and queen whom he worshiped.

  Pan, we are inserting into their Antan-tracks the souls of these three, in addition to the usual supporting cast of souls who won’t mind the old-new adventure and who won’t suffer unduly if the new-created track goes awry.

&n
bsp; See what you can do, Pan. The key person is King Grayle…

  5

  I selected a large island off the coast of the quasi-European continent, an island shaped irregularly like an hourglass, perhaps five hundred miles tall and having a mean breadth of about one hundred fifty miles (nearly double that width at the base, half that wide at the wasp-waist). Positioning myself ten miles above an uncertainly forested area somewhat below that waist, I backtimed cautiously until forests and meadows and ponds were all clearly delineated. Coming down to one-mile altitude, I found motion frozen: I was too far back into Antan; so I nosed delicately time-forward, coming ever closer to the planetary surface, until finally a minute examination of an energetic pismire at close range assured me that I was now fine-tuned to the era that I sought.

  Clamping myself on this time-locus, I rose to a five-mile altitude and cruised the island, taking its measure at wide-angle perception. It seemed almost primitive, or more accurately pre-medieval—largely virginal, with small towns and villages scattered at great distances, generously beforested with mighty trees that resembled oaks, brilliantly meadowed, altogether a pleasant land. Most of the housing was thatched huts; rarely there were crude castles of timber and stone.

  I was overpowered by my honest sense of homing. For I was coming home, my brother: we were born and bred in this land, it was the year of our conception that I was entering.

  Wry Thoth, bland Althea, what caprice humored you into sending me on this errand? For the Queen Gueraine of this land had been my mother, and the King Grayle of this land I considered my father; but as for the knight whom as a child I had called Uncle Pelleon…

  Humorlessly I asked myself, Brother, whether I was about to nudge these three onto an alternate track that would not include us.

  Seen from above, the castle was low and spacious—not cold-hard or technologically high, like the late-medieval fortresses that had made the word castle a stereotype on Erth, but built mostly of wood with a good deal of rough stone exterior facing, spreading and beautiful. (We had played here…) The castle dwelt within a free-form triple moat of clear water harboring carp, bridged forward and postern by noble bridges that looked as though they had never been raised. Seen from above, this Castle Caerless was mainly a broad courtyard with an arched and shaded promenade all around the interior; in court and promenade, lords and ladies lounged. The exterior of this promenade, facing outward toward walls and moat, was stone-defended and practically windowless; but the interior was cordial.