He could content himself with one realization, however: He had not been dumped into this specific Location by random chance. Nor had he been sent here to be eliminated; there were many Locations in the Commons where life expectancy was to be measured in seconds. Instead of being popped into a lightless steerage cabin far below the deck of a sinking ocean liner or into the path of a superheated pyroclastic cloud rushing down the slope of an erupting volcano at almost the speed of sound, he had been eased into a slowly evolving Event.
Bandar knew enough about the noösphere to be certain that the self-aware Commons had placed him here so that he could receive the collective unconscious's most routine product, that which was dispensed through myth, fable, joke and every other kind of story from classic literature to popular entertainment: a lesson.
He couldn't learn his lesson if he were dead, and it would do him no good if he was to be absorbed into this Event. So the wisest course was to go along with the Commons's scheme, until he could contrive an escape.
Bandar lay awake and mulled. The obvious lesson to be drawn from being enslaved and forced to push massive blocks under punishing sun and lash was obedience. Although, he reminded himself, the noösphere was not always obvious. Sometimes it delivered its messages through side doors or by the sudden emergence from the background of some overlooked but telling detail. He resolved to remain vigilant.
After what seemed a long while, the overseer crawled out of the shade beneath the cart where he had slept in relative isolation and began kicking feet and poking buttocks with the butt of his whip. The slaves arose, stretching and yawning theatrically, and drained the last of the beer from the jug. Several of them went off behind an outcrop of rust-colored rock to relieve themselves then straggled back to strike the awning and load it, along with the empty baskets and beer jugs, into the old man's cart.
The cart trundled back toward town while Bandar and the others resumed their labors. As the afternoon wore on, the block inched toward the monument. Bandar scanned the huge structure, trying to determine what its ultimate form and dimensions might be, but it was early in the construction process and all he could know for sure was that the final creation would rest upon a colossal foundation of stone.
As the sun touched the horizon, they delivered the block to a staging area where a man wearing a linen wrap and a headdress chased with colored threads used a stick of charcoal to draw symbols on its upper surface. The stone was apparently no longer the concern of Bandar's gang, because the overseer efficiently chivvied them into a double column and directed them to march back the way they had come. The return journey was remarkably quick after their laborious day-long progress.
Bandar found himself walking in the middle of the formation, Doomed Innocence on his left and the Toady literally on his heels. But he paid no attention to either the former's renewed attempts at conversation nor to the latter's treading on his tendons. His placement in relation to the others would not be coincidence—in the Commons, coincidence was never a random event, but rather a sign that the noösphere's operating system was functioning at optimum efficiency. The less Bandar responded to idiomats' overtures, the more slowly he would be absorbed.
Near the end of their march they passed a substantial encampment of linen tents set in neatly ordered rows around a playing field where idiomat soldiers drilled in formation with spear and shield or sparred in pairs with wooden swords and war hatchets. The slave quarters lay on the edge of town, an unwalled cluster of large huts made from plaited reeds and thatched with matted straw. Cooking fires burned in mud-brick ovens, tended by typical female idiomats: a few Crones, some Maidens (both the Demure and Saucy variants) and at least a couple of Sturdy Matrons, all dressed in lengths of coarse cloth wound about their bodies and pinned at the shoulder. They were stirring communal pots full of the evening meal, a bubbling concoction of generic grains and meat scraps with a pungent odor.
Bandar found that the food was eaten communally as well, with everyone seated on woven reed mats surrounding a bonfire in the open space at the center of the slave quarters. First he must get in line and take a shallow wooden plate from a stack on a table. Then he shuffled along to where a Demure Maiden ladled out a thick concoction of grain, vegetables and chunks of gray meat. Bandar saw a complex exchange of looks between the Maiden and Doomed Innocence and wondered if this was the situation in which he was supposed to involve himself. He did not meet the young female idiomat's gaze as she ladled out his share. He looked about for utensils but saw none; then he noted the man in front of him taking some thin flat bread from a stack on a nearby table where he also collected a cup of the weak beer.
Bandar did likewise then followed the fellow over to some empty spots on the mats, several feet from where Doomed Innocence was clearly saving a space for his friend the mute. Bandar paid no heed to the increasingly puzzled idiomat's attempts to attract his attention. Instead he watched as the man beside him put the bowl before him on the ground and tore off a swatch of bread half the size of his palm; then, holding the scrap between thumb and fingers, he used it to pinch up a mouthful of the bowl's contents. Bandar copied the action and was rewarded with a taste so spicy that he reached at once for the beer.
The heat of the day faded rapidly as full dark came on. Bandar shivered and wondered where he was to spend the night. Probably one of the big huts, with everyone squeezed together for warmth, he decided. Though not quite everyone, as the squinting overseer led the Maiden who had served Bandar his food toward a smaller hut at the edge of the open space, while Doomed Innocence regarded them glumly.
Bandar knew that the archetypal Mute usually manifested in one of two main sub-archetypes: Sinister or Sympathetic. He seemed to be of the latter species. He had no idea how the collective unconscious had contrived to replace an existing figure; it would be well worth a paper for the Institute, if he survived to write it, and if the scholars would ever deign to listen to him again, now that their minds had been subtly poisoned against him from within.
He was not yet sure what his role was supposed to be, but his speculations became moot when a steaming dab of pottage unexpectedly struck Bandar's bare chest, the stuff hot enough to sting. He brushed it away with the backs of his fingers, then looked up to see the Toady sneering at him from the other side of the communal fire, a short lath of wood cocked in his hands, ready to flick a second scalding missile Bandar's way. Behind him, the Bully and the Henchmen stood laughing.
Bandar reacted without thinking, a flash of anger causing him to hurl his empty beer cup at his tormentor so that it struck the man square in the forehead. The Toady fell back, howling, his feet kicking in the air. A general laugh went up from the crowd but quickly subsided when the Bully leapt to his feet, glared at Bandar and pointed a thick, calloused finger. "You!" he said.
Bandar had regretted the flinging of the cup even as it left his hand. In the Commons, it was best to act only upon conscious reflection. An automatic response could be a sign that the Location's rules of procedure had begun to seep into the noönaut's virtual being, a precursor to absorption. Now he had scarcely the span of two breaths to reflect on how to respond to the Bully, because the big idiomat and his thugs were coming around the bonfire and the expression on their faces left no doubt as to what they intended to do.
Bandar knew a number of techniques for self defense—it was a necessary skill for anyone venturing into the noösphere. But a Sympathetic Mute would not stand and fight a Bully and his gang. For him to do so could introduce a sharply disharmonious element to the Location, triggering potentially dangerous chaos. Serious disruptions could even cause an Event to reinitiate itself prematurely; if that were to happen, Bandar's consciousness would not survive the changeover. He thought these things as he sprang to his feet and ran into the darkness, the bellowing idiomats pounding after him.
No walls confined the slaves. Once out of town, they had nowhere to go but the desert and the river that probably teemed with crocodiles. Bandar took his chances
with the town. It was laid out haphazardly, and first he ran through narrow streets curling among huts and rough corrals that penned baaing goats and sheep. Then he came into broader streets, though still paved only with dirt, of more substantial habitations, mud brick with wooden shutters over glassless windows; some were even walled compounds with gates of squared timbers. All of these details Bandar acquired on the run, finding his way by the light of a half-moon, augmented by occasional oil lamps flickering in windows or by burning torches affixed over gates.
The Bully and his gang stayed with him through every twist and turning. The big idiomat was probably too simple to do other than follow his nature, Bandar thought, and too strong to tire easily. The noönaut did not look back but he could hear his pursuers' heavy footfalls and panting breaths coming ever nearer. The Mute was not built for a long chase.
He was racing down a wider street than most, the way lined with walls and stout fences. Here might be Officials in whose presence the Bully would have to prostrate himself and forego his violent intentions. Bandar saw an open gate flanked by burning brands, a lit courtyard beyond. He took the risk of slowing, felt the angry idiomat's fingers graze his shoulder as he turned and dodged through the gate.
He had hoped to find a person of rank at ease in his yard, perhaps with guards or stout servants who would cow the bully. Instead, Bandar pulled up short in the dust-floored open space, seeing only a moderately ample mud-brick house with an open front. Here, under a thatched awning, an idiomat man and boy were doing something the noönaut did not have time to identify, because the pursuing Bully immediately struck him from behind and knocked him sprawling.
Bandar tumbled to the ground and tried to roll away, but a foot caught him under the ribs and the pain and impact drove the air out of his virtual lungs. The Bully and his gang stood over him, mouthing imprecations Bandar couldn't quite catch over the roaring in his ears, then a second kick grazed his head and the night erupted in colored lights.
He hugged his head between his forearms and curled up, waiting for the next strike. But it didn't come. He heard another voice, then the sound of flesh smacking flesh followed by grunts and a moan. Bandar inched apart his arms just far enough to peek out.
He saw the Bully getting to his hands and knees, blood pouring from a nose that had acquired a new angle. A brawny man wearing a scarred leather kilt was bringing one sandaled foot to connect with a Henchman's buttocks, causing him to stumble quickly through the gate and into the street. The other thug, along with the Toady, stood beyond the gateway wearing looks of wide-eyed consternation.
In a few seconds the yard was cleared, Bandar's former pursuers issuing dire threats but putting distance between themselves and the brawny idiomat who laughed as he slammed the gate shut then turned to regard Bandar. "What did you do to set that lumbering mutton thumper after you?" he said.
Bandar got to his knees and strove to reorder his breathing. He indicated to his rescuer that he had no voice, and saw the man nod. The idiomat approached and put a thickly calloused hand under Bandar's arm, lifting him to his feet as if he weighed no more than the skinny youth who was watching them from the open space before the house.
Bandar recognized the setting: the front of the house was an open-air smithy—with anvil, forge, hammers and tongs, tub of water—and the older idiomat was a Smith while the younger was clearly a version of the Shiftless Apprentice. The noönaut now experienced a shiver of alarm as he noted that the Smith was a more than averagely realized idiomat. His intervention to save Bandar argued that he was at least partially formed of Hero-stuff, and therefore potentially a more significant figure in this Event, perhaps even one of its Principals or Subprincipals.
I should get away from here, he thought as he bowed and gestured to disavow any need for the Smith's further care and solicitude. The pain in his abdomen was fading.
"If you say so," said the idiomat, returning to the anvil where he had been working before Bandar erupted into his yard, "but your friends might be waiting for you down the street. They didn't seem the kind to forgive and forget."
Bandar shrugged. Interaction with a Principal would accelerate his absorption. He needed to put distance between himself and this element of the Location. He bowed again, managed a grateful smile, and turned toward the gate.
"Good luck," he heard the Smith say. Then he heard something else: a clink of metal on metal, a clink that was precisely the tone of the second note in the seven-note emergency escape thran. Bandar turned back.
The work was not hard. Bandar took the place of the lazy idiomat boy who operated the bellows. This was a sewn-up goat-skin with two wooden handles that Bandar pulled aside and pushed together, filling and emptying the trapped air which rushed through the skin's neck to feed the glowing charcoal in the forge.
The overseer had come in the morning, Bully and Toady eager in his wake, to demand the runaway's return. The Smith had stood up to him, speaking in tones of genial reason.
"The Subgovernor constantly demands that the work proceed more quickly. He needs more tools, sharper tools. I need strong arms at the bellows. Why don't we go and ask His Excellency?"
Bandar saw alarm flicker in the Functionary's eyes. "We need not trouble the Subgovernor," the idiomat said.
"Then it is settled."
"My tally will be short."
The Smith gestured to the boy. "Take back this boy you gave me the last time I said I needed help. He's better at running errands than squatting at the bellows. Let him bring your cup and carry messages."
Faced with a combination of unyielding will and an avenue of lateral evasion, the overseer acceded. The boy went, Bandar stayed, and the Bully left with thunder in his face, cuffing the Toady out of his way at the gate.
Bandar easily settled into the rhythm of the Smith's days. In the early morning and evening he attended at the forge. When the heat grew oppressive, they worked in the relative cool of the mud-brick house, sharpening iron chisels and wedges with file and whetstone and shaping the molds of damp sand in which bronze and copper castings were made. The Smith seemed pleased with his efforts and they worked well together. For his part, Bandar felt comfortable in the role of helper. At least he was not involved in the inevitable strife that would pit Doomed Innocence's infatuation against the overseer's appetites. Nothing hastened a noönaut's absorption into a Location faster than joining in a conflict.
At midday, along with the rest of the town, they took their siesta, Bandar curling up on a rough mattress of coarse cloth stuffed with grass against the back wall of the smithy. He had never slept in the Commons before; sensible noönauts rarely stayed long enough to feel the need and when they did, they sang open a gate and left. He noted that he experienced no dreams, though this made sense to him when he thought about it: a conscious unconscious was enough of a contradiction in terms; the dreams of dreams were not to be thought of.
Every other day, in the evening, a wagon arrived, driven by an overseer drawn by a donkey and surrounded by a squad of guards armed with sword, spear and shield. When the entourage halted in the smithy's yard the gates were closed and the guards took up positions to secure the area. Bandar came out with the Smith and together they took from the overseer—this one the type classified as Exacting Functionary—three baskets of iron and bronze tools to be sharpened or repaired. They carried them into the smithy where, under the watchful eye of the overseer and the captain of the guards, each item was counted out and checked against a tally.
When the procedure was completed, the Smith brought out a second load of tools that had been refurbished over the preceding two days. Again, each tool was meticulously checked against a list written in charcoal on a roll of papyrus. When every piece had been accounted for, the wagon was loaded and reversed, and the guards alertly checked the street before allowing it to roll through the gate.
Once the days had settled into a routine, Bandar took action to change his situation. While the rest of the household napped in the heat of the d
ay, he rose from his straw tick and went to the forge. To anyone who might chance to observe him, he was a smith's helper arranging tools and materials in better order on the workbench. But his true purpose was to strike each metal object with a small scrap of iron, listening to the note that rang in response.
The medium-sized tongs were what had made the note he had first heard, the second in the series of seven. A strip of iron banding, used to strengthen tubs and barrels, sounded with the frequency of the fourth note. That left five to be discovered. Bandar worked his way along the bench, found a punch that rang with the tone of the third.
He allowed himself a moment of happy anticipation. He had worked out the situation. The Multifacet had sent him here for some purpose. He was sure it had to do with Doomed Innocence, since he had been plunked down in the virtual body of a Sympathetic Mute who would have been the youthful idiomat's natural companion in the work gang. Bandar was supposed to learn a lesson of altruism, perhaps even of self-sacrifice, which would suit him for whatever task the Commons wished him to perform in the future.
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