Far Thoughts and Pale Gods

by Greg Bear

  Tatsumi tried to say something, but Yoshimura was angry and raised his hand. “They are all fools. This Englishman Philby, by what right does he dictate his philosophies?”

  “I regret Philby’s determination—” Tatsumi began.

  “They are all troublemakers!” Yoshimura shouted.

  “Director, please hear me out,” Tatsumi said, her own voice rising the necessary fraction of a decibel to break through her superior’s indignation.

  “My apologies,” Yoshimura said, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. “I am not angry with you, nor critical of the work you have done.”

  “I understand, sir. Philby’s fears are well-founded. Already Carnot has spread his religious beliefs to nine Genji villages. Already nine temples to their version of Jesus, and to Kammer, have been built. Carnot will soon have a broad enough base of support to endanger our own mission, should he so choose—using Irdizu as his soldiers.”

  Yoshimura considered this with deep solemnity. “Do you believe Carnot will go that far?”

  “He has been pushed beyond reason,” Tatsumi said. “By the plague, and now by the rationalists.”

  “I once would have counted myself among the rationalists,” Yoshimura said. “But I have never tried to impose my will upon those who disagreed. Has Carnot made any converts in our camp?”

  Tatsumi reacted with some surprise to this question, which had not occured to her. “Not to my knowledge,” she replied.

  “I will inquire discreetly. You look shocked, Suzy.”

  “I find it hard to believe any of our people would believe such drivel,” she said, with more heat than she intended.

  Yoshimura smiled sagely. “We are human, too. We are in a strange land, far from home, and we can lose our bearings as quickly as anyone else. We do have some Christians among us—Aoki, for example.”

  “Aoki is very circumspect,” Tatsumi said. “Besides, traditional Christians would hardly recognize the beliefs of the God the Physicists.”

  “Such an awkward name,” Yoshimura said. “Still, I would hate to face an army of Irdizu—led by the females, no doubt.” His expression slumped once more into solemnity and he seemed very old and tired. “Try to reason with Carnot again. If he is still unwilling to meet with Philby, then ask him if he will meet with our people—with you.”

  “I do not believe he will. He is exhausted and depressed, sir.”

  “Do you know that for certain?”

  “It’s obvious.”

  “Then he’s even more dangerous,” Yoshimura said. “But we will try anyway.”

  Tatsumi sighed.

  Philby stood up under Genji’s excessive affection, muscles aching from the hour of acclimatizing exercise. With most of his time spent on kinder, simpler Chujo, the storms and thickness and heaviness of Genji was like being immersed in nightmare; but here was the core of their problem, among the apparently gullible Irdizu, who were building temples to Kammer—and to Carnot’s Jesus.

  Theresa O’Brien joined him in the makeshift gymnasium, dressed in exercise tights, short hair frizzed with moisture. “How’s the tummy, Edward?” she asked.

  “Ah, tight as a drum,” Philby responded, thwupping his abdomen with a thumb-released finger. “I’ve never been in better shape.”

  O’Brien shook her head dubiously. “You’ve always inclined to more muscle than you needed, then neglected, then to gut.”

  “Brutal Theresa,” Philby said drily, continuing his leg-lifts.

  “When are you leaving for the temple site?”

  “In four hours,” Philby said.

  “I’ve come from Diana’s bungalow,” O’Brien said, squatting slowly, carefully beside him. Exercise on Genji seemed ridiculously slow; anything faster and they might injure themselves. She sat and watched his red face. “Don’t overdo it.”

  “What, the exercise, or … ?” Philby didn’t finish.

  “We don’t like what Carnot’s doing any more than you do,” O’Brien said. “But the Japanese concern us, too. We’re making an impression here, not just with the Irdizu and the Chujoans—with our fellow humans, as well.”

  “They seem to be on our side, certainly more than on Carnot’s side,” Philby said, stopping to devote his full attention to their conversation. “I hope Diana’s not re-thinking our plans.”

  “It seems to some of us that you’re the one doing the re-thinking.”

  “Diana put me in charge of relations with the Benevolent. We’ve all agreed they’re dangerous; I’m following through.”

  O’Brien nodded. “Edward, it sometimes seems you’re the aggressor, not them. What will the Irdizu think if …” She shook her head and didn’t finish.

  “If Carnot’s made such an impression on them, and we constrain him?” Philby finished for her. She raised her chin in the slightest nod, as if wary of him.

  “I apologize, Theresa,” Philby said. “You know my temperament better than anybody. I’m thorough, but I’m not a loose beam. Reassure Diana for me.”

  “She’s on the ship now, arranging for a reception. The Japanese are coming—and she tells me they’re trying to get Carnot to come, as well.”

  “I’m always a man for dialogue,” Philby said. He replaced the padded bench and weights and wiped his face with a towel. “But Carnot … I think he is not.”

  “Will you listen to Carnot if the Japanese convince him to come?”

  “What will he …” Philby realized he was being excessively contrary, and that more argument might tip the balance in O’Brien’s eyes. “Of course. I’ll listen.”

  She turned to leave, and he could not restrain himself from saying, “But Theresa, there must be constraint on their part. That should be clear to all of us. We are protecting the Irdizu from the worst parts of ourselves.”

  “Are we?” O’Brien asked over her shoulder.

  “Yes,” Philby said after a pause. “Any doubts on that score and we might all be lost.”

  “I do not doubt Carnot is a danger,” O’Brien said, and closed the door behind her.

  That evening, the communications manager on their starship told Philby something extraordinary, and the wheels began to turn in his mind. If he must meet with Carnot, then he would be prepared to shatter that little plaster prophet once and for all. Now, he might have the hammer to do so.

  When traveling at close to lightspeed, our geometry is distorted, such that, to an outside observer, we reveal aspects of our shapes that are not usually seen … around curves, edges. We are warped in ways we cannot feel … Is this also not true of our souls?

  Philby inspected the fourth finished temple, his legs and feet aching abominably. He used two canes now to support his weight; to the Irdizu, he called them “Kammerstaffs.”

  He had begun to spread the story of Kammer’s striking him. He had found an interesting analogy to his contretemps with Kammer in Irdizu storytelling, a resonance he could take advantage of. Indeed, this was very the village, so said Irdizu legend, where the angelic Szikwshawmi had landed in ancient times and struck the female warriors with staffs of ice to give them superior strength. At the same time, the Szikwshawmi had frozen the tongue-penises of the males, making intercourse in both senses of the word impossible. The females had gone out in their frustration and gathered in new males from distant villages, leaving the females of those villages frustrated, and they had gone forth and done likewise … and so on, a great wave of Sabine rapes.

  It was hardly a precise analogy. In some respects it was embarrassingly inappropriate; but the Irdizu found it a compelling comparison, and when searching for mythic roots, one had to bend, and to be bent.

  The temple, constructed in a thick patch of manzanitas-like beach forest, deep in a shadowy hollow filled with drifting mist, sea-spray, and dark tidal pools, was certainly the gloomiest that had been built so far. The Irdizu in this village were larger, more sullen, more suspicious than any they had encountered before. The females certainly seemed more brusque and dominating.
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br />   The village had been visited by humans—Japanese—only once, years before. Yet still the stories of Jesus and Kammer and Carnot and the Chujo connection had spread even into these shadows, and taken root.

  The temple matched the necessary specifications. Carnot blessed it, and moved on.

  There was a disturbing trend. Five villages had so far refused Carnot, and rejected his doctrines. All of these villages had been visited by Philby and his agents, spreading rationalist doctrine. Carnot had only heard bits and pieces of this antithesis to his thesis: Philby was apparently feeding them visions of a potential future, when Genji and Chujo would be united, not in any mystical sense, but politically, in league with human advisors.

  A dry, deadly sort of myth, Carnot thought. To tell the truth, he wasn’t sure what role humans would play in his own scheme; perhaps none at all. There were so few of his people left. They could find comfort in a small corner of Chujo, perhaps acting as the spiritual advisors, setting up a center for pilgrims. They would certainly not stride hand-in-hand into a bright future with the rationally corrected and technologically equipped Irdizu and Chujoans …

  And yet still the Japanese tried to arrange a meeting, and still Philby’s people visited village after village, creating territories where he could not operate.

  It was a war.

  Carnot realized how reluctant he had been, until now, to accept that fact. He had always felt hunted, opposed; he had never devised a strategy whereby he might counterstrike. But it was clearly becoming necessary.

  “You have done well,” Carnot told the chief females, who bounced and swaggered solemnly on their large chicken legs, horizontal bodies quivering. He cringed inside, craving the company of humans, wishing to be relieved of this burden; and he retreated on his Kammerstaffs to the ship, where Madeline and Lin-Fa Chee waited.

  “Another message from the Japanese,” Madeline said quietly when they were settled, and the transport had lifted off. The ship’s engines made a high-pitched whickering noise and one side settled as they rose; Lin-Fa Chee corrected, and the transport gained altitude, but more slowly.

  “Of course,” Carnot said.

  “The Captain thinks we should talk to them.”

  Carnot lifted an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “We need to barter,” Lin-Fa Chee said. “We need spare parts.”

  “The Captain has spoken with the Japanese, with Suzy Tatsumi. She says they will trade or manufacture spare parts for us …”

  “Generous,” Carnot said, closing his eyes.

  “If we meet with them, and with the rationalists,” Madeline concluded.

  Carnot pretended to sleep.

  “Robert, we have to make a decision soon,” Madeline said. “There’s a lot at stake here.”

  “We’ll meet,” he said softly. “How many more temples?”

  “Three, I think … Perhaps more next week.”

  “I want to see the ceremonies completed.” Suddenly, he was feeling very mortal—with more than a suspicion that what lay beyond mortality was not what he most fervently desired.

  Philby walked slowly toward the loose line of twelve bullyboys, reeking of Chujoan protective scent. They lifted their heads, sniffed the air casually, remained where they were. Surely they could see he was not Chujoan; surely they had minds enough to recognize that scent alone did not guarantee his belonging. But they restrained themselves, and once again added to the mystery of how they functioned in Chujoan society.

  He passed between two of them, barely a meter on each side from their claws and fangs barely concealed behind loose lips.

  The shamans formed the next loose line. Beyond them lay the edge of the village, and the hut which Kammer had taken, or had been assigned, who could say which. He was on the outskirts, rather than in the center; that might be significant. Perhaps he was not as important to the Chujoans as this peculiar reception ceremony implied; perhaps Chujoan ritual went beyond the simple analogy of enfolding and protection, putting their most valuable icons on the edge of the village rather than in the center.

  Perhaps he didn’t understand Kammer’s meaning at all.

  A loose dry breeze blew dust between the shamans’ spindly legs. The line parted, as if Philby had ordered the breeze as a signal.

  He could feel the casual, unresponsive presence of the bullyboys behind him.

  The work he had done in the past week to make this meeting useful—to be able to ask the question he would now ask of Kammer—had taxed his patience to its limit. He had asked five of his ship’s biologists, and three of the Japanese doctors and biologists, how much of a risk Kammer might be to crews if they were actually exposed to his physical presence. None had been willing to give a straight answer at first; fear of the wineskin plague had distorted simple rational judgments, leading to hedged bets, hems and haws, a reliance on very fuzzy statistics. Finally Philby had been able to draw a consensus from the scientists and doctors: Kammer was not much of a threat now. If indeed the wineskin plague had begun on Kammer, which was almost universally accepted, then it was likely that they had protected themselves against all possible varieties he might have generated. Unless—and this possibility still haunted Philby, if only for its fearfully nonsensical aspects—unless Kammer or the Chujoans had deliberately created the plague …

  Kammer could walk among them, if he so chose.

  Philby stood outside the mud-brick and reed hut. “Hello,” he said. Nothing but silence within. His communications with the Chujoans had led him to believe Kammer was willing to have another meeting—had in fact requested it.

  “Hello,” he called out again, glancing over his shoulder at the shamans, shivering despite himself. Which was worse—to be ignored as if one didn’t exist, or to be recognized by something so intrinsically alien? In some respects, now that he was familiar with the two species, the humanoid Chujoans seemed much more alien than the Boschian Irdizu …

  “Doing you here?”

  Kammer came around the other side of the hut. Philby started, turned slowly, trying to regain dignity, and faced Kammer.

  “I’ve brought a message,” Philby said. “From your starship, on its way back to Earth. They intercepted reports that you had been found alive …”

  Kammer glanced up at the sky speculatively with one pale eye, lips moving. “Must be about two and a half light-years out,” he said. “Doing fast by now. Bit-rate way down. Band width doing the very narrow.”

  “A woman who held you in high regard sends you a message,” Philby said. This, he hoped, was the shock that would jolt Kammer back to some human sense of responsibility. “It’s rather personal, but its reception by our ship—and the Japanese ship, simultaneously—was hardly private.”

  “Something to be read, or just spoken?” Kammer asked. Philby interpreted that question as a promising sign. Curiosity, plain English syntax, a tone of some concern. “I know her. I did life with her.” He tapped his leathery pate. “In dreams.”

  “Her name is—”

  “Nicole,” Kammer said.

  Philby said nothing for a time, watching the brown, tortured face reflect some inner realization, some reawakening of old memories.

  “What does she say?”

  Philby held out a slate. Nicole had convinced the powers that be—apparently her husband, Captain Darryl Washington—that a message of several hundred words was necessary. This had required considerable diversion of resources—turning antennas around, readjustment, expenditure of valuable communications time. Philby had read the message several times. He had no idea what Kammer would make of it. If he had been Kammer—and Kammer still retained any human emotions, a long-shot of supposition—Philby would have been deeply saddened.

  Dearest Airy,

  I cannot believe what we have heard. That you are alive! By what miracle is not clear to us; we have only been able to receive about three-quarters of the transmissions from Murasaki. We all feel incredibly guilty about leaving you behind. There was no chance of your survival�
�we knew that, you must believe we knew that! I grieved for you. I punished Darryl for years. This has been cruel to all of us, but especially I think to him. Whom I punish, I feel the most sympathy for …

  What are you now, after so many years with the Chujoans? Do you still think of us, or have they changed you so much you have forgotten? I cannot tell you all that has happened to us … We feel like such cowards, such fools, having left Murasaki just when the rush from Earth was beginning. We should have stayed, but we did not have the heart. What reception we will return home to, I cannot say … Perhaps the reception reserved for (L.O.S. 2.4 kb?).

  …were the better man. I chose you. Know that about me now, Aaron, that in the end, I chose you, my body chose you. Darryl has lived with this, and I think I admire him more now, despite my punishments and inward scorn, for having lived with it.

  We have a son, Aaron. You and I. He is your boy. He was born five months ago. I have named him after your father, Kevin. He is healthy and will be a young man when we return to Earth.

  He will be told that you are his father. Darryl insists, especially since we’ve learned you are alive.

  That knowledge grinds Darryl down more each night. Who can understand the grief of strong men?

  I love you, Aaron.

  Nicole

  Kammer let the slate drop to the ground, then swayed like an old tree in a slight breeze. “I am not that same person,” he said throatily. “He did the dying.”

  “I think that person is still here,” Philby persisted. “You remember Nicole. You remember who you were. And you knew that Carnot would cause great damage. You hit him to stop him.”

  “I hit him to save him,” Kammer said with a sudden heat. “Could not see them do all the dying.”

  “I don’t understand,” Philby said, eyes narrowing.

  “They gave me this,” Kammer said, lifting the stick covered with patchy snug. “Long times past. Years, maybe. I did the bloating too, and the filling with liquids, the twisting of bones. This,” he indicated his contorted trunk and limbs, “was not from breaking my back. I did the sickness myself. Body like a skin full of wine. They gave me the stick, and the snug took me over. It found what was making me sick, and it killed them, or tamed them. I got better.”