Pan Sagittarius (2509 CE)

by Ian Wallace

  “But you do claim to represent truth.”

  “I do not claim to represent truth. I am truth.”

  There was a good deal of silence while I inspected him coldly. “/ could say,” at length I responded softly, “that you are a fine specimen of truth—a Gallian prisoner in a gauleiter’s uniform.”

  “It is true that I am a Gallian prisoner. It is also true that I wear a gauleiter’s uniform. So by your own admission I am a perfect specimen of truth.” His mouth was faintly whimsical.

  I was puzzled. “It does not fit my conception of you that you would play with words over an important issue.”

  He sobered. “You are right. I wasn’t playing with words until just now I slipped into it. I am whatever I am, and that is truth. If I lie, it is true that I lie.”

  Something like astonished recognition flitted through my mind. But I made the inevitable error of looking squarely at Guyon’s words, and of course in my mind they hardened into sophistry. I laughed wry. “How I wish,” I sighed, “that the truth were so simple.”

  “There was once a minister of state—this is an excellent parable, Gauleiter, by a Vespucian named Poe—who hid a purloined letter by placing it where it was perfectly visible. It could not be found by detectives who were servants of pure intellect. It was found by a detective whose reason was the servant of his imagination.”

  “Parables, parables! Redempteur, can you not quit aping the Messiah? More than anything else, his fondness for parables turned me from him: his parables were for peasants, not for intellectuals; he could seldom say anything directly. Why did he not state his metaphysics, codify his ethics, describe his Father-God? Even Matthew felt the lack: do you not agree that Matthew put words into his mouth? Who would preach a sermon like that of the mount and expect even to be heard to the end, much less followed? Still, it would do you good to adapt a little Matthew into your method, if only for clarity. I ask you for this truth of yours, and instead you mouth parables that every man can interpret in his own way. What kind of truth is that?”

  “As I tell the parables, they are my truth. As you hear them, they are your truth.”

  I snorted. “Are you a pragmatist? Your ancestral self would be startled to hear that!”

  Guyon was tiring too rapidly, and the seed was in the furrow but not yet covered with fertile erth…

  “Listen, Von Eltz!” he—commanded me! “You are close to understanding, your account of eternity just now was unusually good; but your mind is a labyrinth, and even its innermost passage only runs tangent to the heart. You are caught in a mechanical trap: one jaw is named Logic, the other Objectivity; the whole trap is named Intellect. It is a most useful trap, it has produced our amazing industrial and scientific world; but its narrowness has also produced the instruments for this worst of all wars, along with the commitments and intrigues that force wars into being. Its purpose is to hold ideas quiet while the human mind examines them, but Intellect was never designed to immobilize the whole examining mind: when it exceeds its purpose by doing this, wars come and Von Eltz happens. And even ideas must be freed from time to time; for an idea must range freely in order to keep pace with a developing reality, this being the truth-criterion; whereas an idea in a trap quickly loses its power to denote a reality that grows away from it—loses, that is, its truth.

  “I said that I am truth. There again I copied words of Jesu—but his words were imperfect, as all words are, although they were the best that had been spoken of the soul. I cannot speak for Jesu, I can only point out that in the thought of his day no clear distinction had been made between truth and reality. Whereas I, twentieth-century Guyon, do make this distinction in my mind. But because people generally do not, I usually allow myself in speaking to blend the meanings of truth and of reality into the single word truth; and I say, truly in-so-far-forth, I am truth.’ But now I speak to Von Eltz who is careful about such distinctions, and so I too must be careful.”

  “D’accord, Guyon,” I applauded, just a bit preciously. “Reality is what is. A truth is a proposition that accurately designates a reality.”

  “Also a truth can be a sign, or a way of life that accurately signifies reality by being intentionally harmonious with the essence of reality.”

  “Well—yes, for the argument. Well, Guyon?”

  “In this second sense, Von Eltz, I believe that I am truth. And I believe that you are, indeed, a badly distorted, self-falsifying attempt at truth.”

  “On the second count, perhaps I agree. So then?”

  “And without qualification, I am reality. To this you agree, Von Eltz?”

  “Yes, not being a solipsist.”

  “All right. Now listen, Von Eltz—will you repeat something after me?”

  Deeply involved, I commanded: “Say it.”

  “I may be distorted truth, but I am vital reality.”

  Obediently I began to repeat: “I may be distorted truth, but I am—”

  I went paralytic.

  Outside, the crowd was loudly fretful: they had waited a full hour, they were restless for the gauleiter’s judgment.

  Inside, their gauleiter hunched low in his little chair, feeling utterly stupid and small.

  Guyon, eyes closed, lips pale, held himself uncertainly erect by clutching the desk edge.

  Dubois reentered and touched my shoulder. He waited an instant and touched me again. I looked up. Dubois raised an eyebrow and jerked a thumb toward the door. My confusion deepened: I stared at the door, and at Dubois, and at Guyon…

  I expostulated: “This is impossible! I can’t judge this Guyon out-of-hand, the case is too complex! Besides, I need him, he has something that I don’t quite understand, I had to test it, it is a lead that I had not thought of trying. Look here, Dubois, I want to keep him with me—I need time, time, and there are those damned priests yelling for his neck! How can I shake them off? You’re Gallian like them—you tell me!”

  “You are gauleiter,” said Dubois sensibly. “If you want him, keep him.”

  “That sounds easy enough—” I meditated; and then I swung decisively on my prisoner. “Guyon! I am going to save you!”

  Closed eyes, pale lips, desk-clutch…“But you will not,” Guyon just audibly asserted. “Saving me would require a clear-cut decision that you cannot make. You want to keep me by you, to study me, to see whether I am the truth, and if so, why; or if you decide against me, you will write a paper about my mania. For you it is a pleasing prospect; and in a way it pleases me, because given time, I think I might help you redeem yourself. But you are also considering that if you save me, you will antagonize the priests and the bishop and many of the Maon people to the point of undermining your usefulness to the Führer. So your saving of me would ruin you. If I should prove not to be truth, you would have lost your leisure, and perhaps your head, to pursue a fallacy. So you will not save me. You cannot decide so cleanly.”

  “You are predicting? You are a divine prevoyeur?”

  “I am diagnosing.”

  “Nevertheless,” I desperately blurted, “I will save you! I will even save you without antagonizing them! I have thought of a compromise! Dubois, bring him outside—”

  I pranced through the open door onto the terrace; and Dubois pulled Guyon to his feet and almost carried the prisoner outside, gauleiter’s jacket and all.

  They roared anger when they saw Leroy Guyon. “Blasphemer! Heretic! Antichrist!”

  Guyon, strengthened by the open air and challenged by the insults, opened his eyes: his wayward sheep were milling on the lawn; on the terrace postured the bishop and the priests. Von Eltz was talking rapidly to the bishop.

  The gauleiter went to the head of the stair and stood looking down on the lawn His police created silence. Von Eltz was tall and grand and noble: could such a man make himself ridiculous? Such a man could not, if his figure were truth; but Guyon knew the real Von Eltz, and Guyon knew that the upright nobility was only a twisted attempt at truth.

  And Guyon sorrowed. A
nd not for Guyon…

  I announced: “I have examined this Guyon. If there are faults in him, they are religious and not political. He does not appear to be an enemy of the Reich—”

  And then, unaccountably—instead of saying, “Therefore I will not hang him”—I asked: “How can I then hang him?”

  “BY THE NECK!” somebody claqued; and the mob laughed angry derision and began a rhythmic beating bellow: “HANG him, HANG him, HANG him—”

  Guyon felt pride in the quick erthy wit of his Gallia: Gallic wit was going to kill him against the will of a Nazi gauleiter!

  I held my ground, awaiting a lull…

  Guyon clenched teeth, embarrassed for the gauleiter. Worse followed. The position of Von Eltz was unassailably correct: Guyon was no more an enemy of the Reich than any peaceable Gallian; Guyon was not properly in Brunildic jurisdiction: the gauleiter could, and should, have set his foot down.

  Yet the gauleiter offered a compromise! Von Eltz imagined, mused Guyon, that the people must be human, that this prisoner was beloved by the proletariat if not by the priests, that the compromise could not fail. But Von Eltz was forgetting what happens to individuals when they meld into a mob…

  “Listen!” I commanded when the police had forced silence. “Guyon is not the only prisoner whom the Reich is now judging. There is also—Père Abbé!”

  Guyon saw what was coming. This Père Abbé was a young opportunist who had fled to Maon from Paris when the gendarmes there learned where to look for him. Brunildic soldiers had captured him at the request of civil authorities, and the gauleiter was holding him pending receipt of a more complete dossier. Now Von Eltz—who had no proper hold on Abbe or on Guyon either—in effect set the pair of them in the balance before the mob, offering to hang the one who was hated more.

  Von Eltz presented the choice fairly well—he who did not have to offer any choice at all…

  I cried grandly: “The good people of Vimy-sur-Maon have been acceptably loyal to the fostering Reich, and so I want to help them keep their peace. I am holding two prisoners, Leroy Guyon and Père Abbé: the latter should really be in the hands of civil authority, the former in the hands of the Church. I ought to release both of them. Yet I will hang the one you choose, but I cannot go so far as to hang them both. Now, look, it is your choice. Abbe is a murderer, a robber, a rapist, he fears nobody, he hates Gallians and Brunildics alike: nothing can be proved, but all is known, you know him, each of you fears him. But Guyon is a man of peace and justice. It is true that he has been indicted by your Church as a heretic; yet his record is one of unselfish service to the peasants—comfort, advice, healing. I leave it to you, People of Maon: whom shall I hang, whom shall I free?”

  There was no hesitation: they were shouting, “Guyon! Guyon!” Even I was surprised at how easily it had been done.

  “Good,” I said in relief. “Then I will hang Père Abbé—”

  At first I took the roar to be approval; I had started back into my chateau when I hesitated, sensing the tone. It was deep-throated hatred. I faced them, beginning miserably to understand. They were yelling: “NO! NO! HANG GUYON! LIBERATE PERE ABBE!”

  I stood an instant at the stairhead, swaying. Then I wheeled and rushed into the chateau. Dubois pushed Guyon inside, slamming the door, slamming out some of the noise. In the center of my office, I was at bay.

  Dubois growled: “I could have warned you of that. Abbe is more valuable than Guyon—to them. You are a Brunildic with a Nazi viewpoint. You forget that to a Gallian, rebellion against Brunilda is a virtue so bright that it blinds Gallians to an occasional rape. But Guyon is a traitor to this virtue: he does not lead them violently against the Führer, he preaches peace on Erth and glory in Heaven. He tells them to be passive, but they want a rally of the Gallian people followed by a thousand years of Brunildic misery and Gallian gloire. You ruined it at the start, and so I think Guyon is destined for the noose, I think he will get the noose.”

  I suddenly sobbed; and Guyon unsteadily left Dubois and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Don’t mind hanging me,” Guyon soothed. “There is little more I can tell you that you have not heard; you can expand your salvation from that, once you have grasped it. Besides, I have lived as the truth, and I must die as a sacrifice to the truth, in order to join the immortality of truth. I must die at the hands of my own people, so that their guilt will scourge them into realization of themselves. You are their hands to strangle me: that is your destiny, Von Eltz. But by killing the god, you will bring about a higher self-realization of God within. That is your role, and you cannot escape it, for your own compulsions are driving you to play it out.”

  I went violent. Irritated and shamed by my failure, I quivered at Guyon’s reiterated charge that I was a tool of God. I shouted: “I tell you, Guyon, you will not die! There is another corn-promise, an appeasement for the Church and a sop for your crazy vanity! You will die a little death, a half-death of shame and pain, publicly, like the criminal they take you to be. I will give you the long flogging of the god, it is harder than the quick killing of the god: they will hack you to bloody pieces, and afterward you will lie on the ground like the dead god, and when the soul comes back to you it will be like a little resurrection. See, Guyon? the people will be pleased, and afterward I can spirit you away to teach me; and when I know the truth from your teaching, I will be a man in a high place who can write and teach the light and enforce the way. Guyon, isn’t it that we need each other?”

  Guyon smiled his last smile. It was not derisive.

  Dubois called SS men who pushed Guyon into the garden and stripped and whipped him.

  Next day he was hanged. I suppose it was I who did it.

  I, Pan, free of Von Eltz, wavered miserably down into Hell. There I stood before seated Thoth and Althea, while a Thoth-arm encircled her shoulder and an Althea-arm encircled his waist, and they listened.

  I told them, frowning hurtfully: “It was totally botched. The alternate track endured only for the length of their private conversation. Once they went back out on the terrace, the tracks merged again, it was the same old stuff repeated; and even though afterward there was again a brief parturition, it aborted, and again the tracks merged. Guyon stayed marvelous; Von Eltz stayed miserable.”

  I waited while they stared at me. That was my second failure with an obsessive-compulsive. They would fire me, now; and I would resume my suicide dive into the sun.

  Thoth said deadpan, while Althea stared at me deadpan: “For good, the tracks had to merge again, so that Guyon could have the same old ending. But the conversation that you nudged him into was helpful. The soul of Von Eltz is back here again, and of course it is miserable. But this time, it is not quite so miserable.”

  Part Ten

  Creation of a Metagalaxy

  Take a vacation, Pan. You are unusually strong, but not infinite; and nothing is as debilitating as commerce with souls in trouble. Go wherever you like, rest, work at what you like, study what you like, play, debauch, rest, whatever; stay as long as you like. You are the one who will best know when you are ready to go again without inadvertently doing harm to somebody.

  10

  A place that I particularly favored was a nonplace; and it wasn’t easy to find, but I knew how to find it, largely by dead reckoning. This is how I went about it: If you take all the metagalaxies or superclusters of galaxies that exist, no matter how far apart they may be, then their outermost periphery rinds a finite volume of space; and should a new metagalaxy be born outside this rind, no matter how remotely, ipso facto it bulges the rind to include itself, and still all the metagalaxies occupy a finite volume of space. And always in all directions outside this rind, there extends space endlessly; for one does not reduce infinity by subtracting from it any amount no matter how great, since infinity by meaning and by reality infinitely exceeds all finite amounts no matter how colossal.

  The nonplace that I particularly liked was far outside the rind of all metagalaxies—so rem
ote that no energy from any metagalaxy or from all metagalaxies could be interchanged with any energy in this place. Nevertheless it occupied indexically a definite position with respect to metagalaxies, and at a definite distance (within the inexact vignette of its not clearly self-defined range); for along a defined line between anything real and anything real, the distance is definite.

  Identifying the right five pointer-metagalaxies and lining them up to obtain the extrapolation curve was a bit tricky, especially considering the size of a metagalaxy: an error of one second of arc could make you miss the place by googollions of parsecs; but once you had the curve, it was merely a matter of traveling along it at a given velocity for a set time—say 19 x10197 parsecs per second for 229 seconds—and there you were, in the middle of it.

  Where you were, apart from the indexical coordinates, was another question; and it took some experience to notice any distinguishing features about this volume of raw space that I was in. It was a relatively small volume having a radius of maybe a million parsecs from what I considered the active center, although at any instant some other part of it or something outside it might become the active center; and of course if you counted this volume as a theoretical metagalaxy, which in fact it wasn’t, it would be inside the rind of finity.