On the Razor's Edge

by Michael Flynn

  Crossing the room, Donovan made a play of walking carefully on the tapestry, as if he feared falling into the illusory sable pit.

  “Really, Gesh,” Gidula said. “We know better, don’t we?” He gestured broadly with his left arm. “Please, sit.”

  Gidula had no desk, as such. He sat within a nest of shelves and surfaces and glowing screens, some of which seemed permanent, some mobile, and some of which recessed into floor or ceiling as needed. At his word, a chair slid up from the floor, locking itself in place. Donovan made himselves comfortable and waited.

  Gidula gestured with his right hand and a door slid open on the back wall to admit an androgynous servant bearing hot drinks on a wooden tray. The fey offered the drinks first to Donovan, who selected one at random, then to Gidula, who raised the second to his lips.

  Donovan sipped from the steaming mug. If Gidula had wanted to poison him, he would have been poisoned while lying helpless in the autoclinic. The beverage was an infusion of some sort, with a hint of licorice. He blew on it to cool it.

  “Why play the scatterbrain?” the Old One asked. “We brought you back to lead us, to lend your legendary name to our cause.”

  “You brought me back to learn the entry into the Secret City.”

  How better to lead us, Gidula’s shrug proclaimed, than to lead us to victory? But Donovan had long decided that the last thing a triumvirate wanted was a fourth man.

  “Naturally, your infirmity dismayed us and we had almost given up hope you would recover your wits. Oschous promised to revive you, and Olafsdottr went with him to assist. And it is clear from your actions at the Battle of the Warehouse that they succeeded. Surely,” and here Gidula’s voice took on a note of disapproval, “surely the continued pretense does not mean that Geshler Padaborn has gone shy!”

  The scarred man pondered his reply. If Gidula had hoped for a broken Padaborn, what would he do when faced with a whole? Ravn Olafsdottr had advised him to act disintegrated, and it was clear now that in doing so she had betrayed her master. “You know you get scatterwit,” he said in the Terran patois. “Billy Chins tell him so.”

  Gidula sighed. “Billy turned his coat and threw in with the loyalists. We thought he meant to dissuade us from recalling you. But no man can be impaired in the mind and still be standing after a battle with Ekadrina Sèanmazy.”

  “What man unimpaired would engage her in first place? Besides, we were barely standing.”

  “Barely is more than her other opponents have stood.”

  “Ravn slain,” he said, “we see red; go berserk, fight like madman. Which,” he added in a different voice, “is appropriate, seeing as we are a madman. Perhaps facing prospect of certain death focus our minds most wondrously.”

  Gidula said nothing for a moment. Then he crooked a finger and summoned the fey once more to his side to refresh his mug. This time, he took a deeper draft and set it on the waiting tray with a satisfied sigh. “You’ve hardly touched your drink,” he pointed out.

  “I just woke up,” the Fudir said.

  “It’s a stimulant. Tell me, Gesh: why will you not join us? It’s not for lack of inducements. Vengeance for what the Names did to you. The glory and honor of your name. Not even for Terra! I’m certain Oschous Dee took you to the mountaintop and showed you Terra. I’m disappointed.”

  He really did sound disappointed—but the nature of that disappointment remained elusive. “True Terry-fella, me. But Oschous no Terry-man.”

  Gidula invited details with his silence. So the Fudir recited the Terran rhyme:

  “Pallid and ebony, dun and sallow,

  Thus the colors of Earth do follow.”

  “There be no fur-face foxes among the races of Terra.”

  “Did Oschous claim to be a Terran? That surprises me. Dee Karnatika is generally more careful in his lies.”

  The Pedant mulled over the conversation in the fox’s shipboard sanctum. No, Donovan decided, Oschous never had made that specific claim. The best lie is the one you induce your hearer to tell himself. “His promise was smoke. Terra can never be truly free,” Donovan said. “Not in the Triangles. She stands too near to Dao Chetty and Delpaff, to Old Eighty-two.

  “A dozen lights from star to star,

  Thusly arranged the Triangles are.”

  “Too close for one to escape domination by another. It requires only a would-be conqueror with enough swagger in his step—or enough steps in his swagger.”

  “Would you rather it be Terra dominating the others, as in the ‘golden age’? I’m sure the Delpaffonis or the Eighty-seconds have other perspectives.”

  Donovan sat forward in his chair. “Those with a stake in the status quo might feel some disquiet at the thought of change.”

  “A great deal depends on the nature of the change, does it not? Most change is for the worse. Delpaff and Old Eighty-two—and a dozen other worlds beside—may chafe under Dao Chetty’s thumb, but they’d not exchange it for Terra’s. As for those worlds far from the centers of power—Henrietta, for example—they find the yoke endurable and the checkreins lightly held.”

  “The worst sort of slavery is when the slave does not feel the collar.”

  “Is it? I would have thought that the best sort.” Gidula raised a hand just so and the fey scurried over without the carafe.

  “Yes, Law Gidula? How may I serve you?” The contralto would have served either man or woman. It was drawled, halting, uncertain. The face was ageless; the eyes were old.

  Gidula smiled at him, patted his cheek, groomed his hair. “Tell me, Podiin. How long have you been in my service?”

  “Sir? Aw my life. Seven years an’ fawty, each basking in the sun of my law’s ray-dee-ents.”

  Gidula gathered both the fey’s hands and clasped them between his own. “You have served me well, Podiin. I have thought of freeing you.”

  The fey’s mouth gaped open. He fell to his knees, grabbed Gidula’s left hand, and bestowed kisses on the back of it. “Please, Law Gidula! Do no do tha’ to me!” Tears coursed down his cheek, and he moaned. “Please, my law, have I naw serve’ you well? Don’ sen’ me ’way!”

  “But you would be free, boy!”

  The fey sobbed. “No, my law! Will freedom feed me? Will it care for me? Will it ensure me again’ sickness? No, Law Gidula, only your gen’rous and open han’ cares for me—as I care for you.”

  Donovan noted to his own astonishment the tears wetting Gidula’s cheeks. “Ah, no, my boy, no,” the Old One said stroking the servant’s head. “I’ll not do such a thing to you. You will stay at my side; and when the gods call me, you alone will scatter my ashes.”

  That sent the fey into further paroxysms, only the tears now were those of joy. He bubbled his thanks, covered Gidula’s hand with kisses. Gidula with his free hand produced a kerchief from a sleeve and dried first his own eyes, then the servant’s. “Here, now,” Gidula said, “stand up, boy.”

  When the servant was once more erect, Gidula twisted a ring off his right hand and gave it to the servant. “Here, Podiin. Wear this with pride.” The fey might have collapsed once more into weak-kneed delight, but Gidula held him up. “With pride, I said.” And the fey nodded and visibly braced his shoulders.

  “Now bring the Donovan and me a selection of fruits and light-meats. Hurry along.”

  When the servant had vanished, Gidula sniffled, turned to Donovan, and spread his hands as if to say, There. You see?

  “Trained from birth, was he?” Donovan said. “Small wonder freedom terrifies him. He’s known no-but else.”

  “It’s not a bad life for his ilk. They are suited by nature to serve others.”

  “His ilk … The feys?”

  “What? No. Feys are no more servile than foxies or clappers or any other race of men. But they have their share of the mentally slow. Podiin can follow simple instructions, act on his own in familiar, structured environments, but he would be lost without the direction of others. What do you do with them out in the Periphery? K
ill them at birth? Toss them on the street to fend for themselves?”

  “It was a nice performance. I noticed he got a black pearl ring out of you.”

  Gidula shrugged. “A man may be slow but nonetheless reach his destination. He is retarded, not stupid. But enough. I take it my point is made. You might not find Terra so eager to be ‘free.’ Our society is a tightly woven network of obligations.” He interlocked his fingers and tugged. “I am as much in Podiin’s service as he in mine. No, do not sneer, Gesh. You have lived too long among the Peripherals and their anarchies. A tightly woven web, I say, of beliefs, customs, tales, fealties, and the like. Our law books are thinner than the Peripheral’s because we are led by living words and not by dead legalities. When right action is needed, a parable is a surer guide than a statute. It is what gives us stability. It is why the Confederation is still what it always was, while the Periphery is constantly stumbling about.”

  “‘Still what it always was…,’” said the Fudir. “But there was a Commonwealth, once.”

  “Ah, the fabled Commonwealth of Suns. You Terrans look back at it misty-eyed, and I grant you it scaled greater heights than either the Confederation or the League has attained. But the Commonwealth was arrogance at the center, with the reins held loose. That is not a happy formula. If you value the lightly held leash, modest fellowship is best advised. But if you would strut your boots on other men’s faces, clench the reins tight and never relax.”

  “The Commonwealth was not like that!”

  “Were you there? Well, perhaps you are right—about her early days. But the Triangles did not rise up on a whim.”

  Donovan tracked the fey as he returned with the refreshments. He hated servility in all its forms, and the Kabuki that Gidula had played with the fey sickened him; yet even he had to admit that there were gradations to the thing. Obedience need not be servile—and Gidula had wept true tears. The philosopher R. V. Ambigeshwari had spoken rightly in the autumn of the Commonwealth when she wrote: Every system works—after its own fashion; and every system fails—in its own way. Maybe so, but he didn’t have to like it.

  Podiin proffered the tray first to Donovan, who saw that “light-meats” meant thin slices of fish or meat wrapped around vegetables and caked in rice. The scarred man let the Silky Voice make the selection. Inner Child noted that the boy now wore Gidula’s ring on a chain around his neck. Podiin favored Donovan with a smirk, as if this small boon had marked him a man among men. Donovan did not know whether to rejoice with him on this small victory or pity him for his larger defeat.

  “A stable system, you say. Yet, you want to overthrow it.” Gidula was supposed to be a leader of the Revolution. There was a limit to how far he might plausibly go in defense of the status quo.

  Gidula made his own selection, then waved the boy aside, to stand by the wall out of earshot. “A dead man is stable,” Gidula said. “Only living men stumble. But that our social fabric has frayed at the top does not mean that the tapestry must be burned entire. Poor Ravn understood that. You see, Those do not command our customs the way they command our laws—and custom is king of all. If it is our part to obey Those, it is their part to be worthy of obedience.”

  Donovan, the Sleuth, and the Fudir considered this while the Silky Voice and the young man carefully studied Gidula. “And some of Those are not.”

  “It is the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not to skin it. I believe you Terrans have a saying. ‘Numpollyarky’ something, something.”

  “Numpollyarky ysceala tattoo. ‘The act is unworthy of the person.’”

  “You Terrans.…” Gidula laughed and shook his head. “You always have a great mouthful of words.”

  “It gives us something to chew on.”

  “Clever, too. I suppose with every man’s hand against you, the Fates have sharpened your wits, or you’d not have survived. Well, it’s been a long, hard time since the Commonwealth fell,” he continued. “Those were other days, and they worshiped other gods. The histories of the Late Commonwealth, while it was in power, were falsified through terror and sycophancy, and after its fall through the distortion of hatred. But the heat has gone out of it now; the coals are grown cold.”

  Donovan looked at him oddly. “And so you enjoy,” he quoted, “‘the rare happiness of times, when you may think what you please, and express what you think.’”

  Gidula shrugged and sipped from his drink. “When have there ever been such times? It is never too wise to express what you think. But our scholars now look back on the Commonwealth with neither the servility nor the enmity that once consumed men. We can begin, a little, to regard the age with dispassion.”

  “I wonder if dispassion is an improvement.”

  Gidula leaned forward. “Listen, Gesh. We must kill men in this struggle—our brothers in the Abbatoir, even some Names. Best if we don’t hate them in the bargain. Hate makes personal what should be detached. Those have done, as you Terrans say, acts unworthy of their status, and so must be expunged, some of them. But the act is no more a matter of hate than would be the stomping of a cockroach.”

  The Fudir swallowed a spiced tuna roll wrapped in a banana leaf. “I’m no cockroach,” he said. “I’d rather be hated.”

  Gidula grunted. “You may get your wish. The Names have been aroused from their delicate slumbers and have begun to meddle in affairs not proper to their offices.”

  “Oschous told me about the business at the pasdarm on Ashbanal. And two or three intervened on Yuts’ga.”

  “And that was only overtly,” the Old One agreed. “There have been covert moves, as well. And Those have shown … disturbing capabilities.”

  “They did seem to come and go rather abruptly,” the Fudir said dryly.

  “And given what Those have revealed, what might yet remain occulted?” Gidula leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “That is why I urged an infiltration of the Secret City itself. Do you see why we must end this, Gesh? And end it soon? Before the real revolutionaries, like Oschous or Domino Tight, burn the whole tapestry and we lose the good with the bad—and before Those of Name escalate the struggle with their meddling and we lose … everything.”

  Donovan took over from the Fudir and laughed. “One more enticement, eh? ‘Help us prevent a worse conflict!’ Those did this to me…” He ran a hand through the furrows of his head, over the headlands and ridges and tufts of woodland-hair where the plows of his tormenters had broken the soil of his mind. “Why should I care how badly your Confederation suffers? How can it suffer too much?”

  Gidula evinced no reaction. “Because,” he said in reasoned tones, “what has a shopkeeper on Henrietta or a schoolteacher on Delpaff done to merit slaughter? Ask yourself, who would suffer first and most of all should our cities burn? Why do you think we’ve labored these twice-ten years to keep the conflict tightly controlled? Why do you think we put boundaries to it?”

  “Boundaries of straw,” Donovan retorted. “Why suppose they will stand one moment beyond the first hard blow?”

  Gidula sucked in his breath and leaned back suddenly in his chair. “Ah. So. Wisdom dawns. You do remember—or some hidden part of you does.”

  The response was unlooked for, and Donovan retreated in confusion. “Remember what?” He growled. And the Silky Voice, deep within, said, Some hidden part?

  “How Padaborn’s Rising spun out of control. How whole city blocks were smashed in San Jösing and people whose only crime was rising early to go to work were scythed down because Padaborn rose too early for another purpose. You want to believe that the violence was inevitable, and not a misjudgment on your part.”

  “Are you done telling me what I believe?”

  “But Gesh, Gesh. A tumor can be carefully excised. There are medicines that invade the body and touch nothing but the malignancy. We can remove the malignant Names and not touch the benign ones, not touch the honorable neutrals, not touch the sheep.”

  Donovan said nothing. His inner voices were silent. He
bit into another light-meat and found the taste sour and the texture glutinous. “You almost had me, up to the ‘sheep.’”

  Gidula lifted a hand, as if helpless. “Delicacy of nomenclature will not alter the facts. The great mass of men must be led—or driven. We propose they be led.”

  “Are they to have no say in how they are governed?”

  “Does it matter how they are governed, so long as they are governed well?”

  “It matters a great deal. If it belongs to the people to choose a king, then it belongs to the people, if the king is become a tyrant, to remove and replace him.”

  The Old One pressed his hands together and touched them to his chin, just below his lips. “That has the flavor of some ancient Terran sage. But tyranny travels with the fastest ship. Your League will feel the hand of the Ardry and his Grand Sèannad heavier on her shoulder now that your Ourobouros Circuit inserts its tentacles into each man’s world.”

  “Enough,” said Donovan, rising. He started to turn, checked himself, faced the question he had been avoiding. “What happened to Ravn … and the rest?”

  Sadness overcame the face of Gidula. “Alas, the Ravn is no longer with us.”

  Donovan knew bleakness in his heart. He was not sure he had come to like his kidnapper, but he had certainly grown used to her sassy presence. There had been a mischievousness to her that he had found appealing. “She was always cheerful,” he said.

  “Yes,” said the Old One, “but she was working on that and making great improvement. As for Oschous, he fled to Old Eighty-two, along with Big Jacques. Manlius and Dawshoo had already gone to the Century Suns by prearrangement. They intend to … What do you Terrans say?”

  “Lie low.”

  “Yes. Such a colorful ‘lingo.’”

  “It’s a patois. A synthesis of a dozen different tongues. The ancient tongues—”