by Hogan, James
who matter aren't interested in any paranormal claptrap. So their real purpose
can't have anything to do with your supposed powers, can it?" He waited for a
few seconds but Zambendorf made no reply; either Zambendorf wasn't certain of
the real answer himself, or he wasn't saying anything. "Want to know what I
think?" Massey asked.
"Very well, since you are obviously determined to tell me anyway."
Massey moved a pace forward and made an openhanded gesture. "Under our system of
nominal democracy, He Who Would Shape Public Opinion doesn't need to be King.
Society can be controlled indirectly through manipulation of the mass vote. So
most people are conditioned practically from birth to have their opinions on
anything dispensed to them in the same way they get their deodorants and
prescription drugs —secondhand from TV role-models and celebrity images that
have been carefully engineered to be easy to relate to."
"Hmph . . ." Zambendorf snorted and paced away across the steel floorplates to
halt in front of a ladder leading up to a catwalk overhead. What Massey was
saying was uncomfortably close to his own reading between the lines of some of
the things Caspar Lang had been saying since the Orion's departure from Earth.
Massey went on, "That's what I figure you are—a general-purpose bludgeon to mold
a large sector of public thinking, and therefore to help shape official U.S.
policies in a direction calculated to best serve GSEC's interests."
"I see. Very interesting," Zambendorf commented.
"Think about it," Massey urged. "They knew from the Dauphin pictures that there
was an alien civilization here, but nobody knew what kind of civilization. GSEC
has a tough competitive situation globally; the West is still stalemated after
grappling with the Cold War for decades. . . . Just think what the chance of
exclusive access to advanced alien technology must have meant—and very probably
still does! In other words, the response of the U.S. and major European
governments to what happens here at Titan could turn out to be some of the most
important legislation ever passed in history . . . and we're well on our way to
seeing it being decided by a kookocracy."
"You're being neurotic," Zambendorf said impatiently. "Every generation has been
convinced that it's seeing the beginning of the end. Tablets dug up in Iraq from
3,000 B.C. say the same thing."
"It's not just me," Massey answered. "A lot of people at NASO feel the same way.
Why else do you think they sent me along? They knew enough to arrive at the same
conclusions."
Zambendorf turned back again and made a discarding motion. "Ideologists, all of
you. All of the world's troubles have been caused by noble and righteous ideas
of how other people ought to live. I look after my own interests, and I allow
the world to look after its in whatever way it chooses. That's my only ideology,
and it serves me well."
Massey looked at him dubiously for a moment. "Really?" he said. "I wonder."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Zambendorf asked.
"Whose interests are you serving here—your own, or GSEC's?"
"Is there any reason why the two shouldn't coincide? In a good business
relationship, both parties benefit."
"When they're allowed to enter into it of their own free choice, sure. But you
weren't even told what the deal was."
"How do you know what I was or wasn't told?" Zambendorf asked.
Massey snorted. "It was pretty obvious from the reactions to that stunt you
pulled just after liftout what you were and weren't supposed to know. They've
been keeping you on a pretty tight rein since, I bet. How does it feel to be
simply another owned asset on the corporate balance sheet, for use when
expedient? So whose interests do you think will count first?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Zambendorf maintained stiffly.
But Massey had a point, nevertheless, he conceded inwardly. With nothing to gain
from alienating GSEC needlessly, and being a strong believer in keeping open the
doors of opportunity whenever possible, Zambendorf had generally behaved himself
through most of the voyage and avoided further spectaculars. Now that the voyage
had ended, perhaps it was time he began reasserting himself, he decided.
"That's not possible—not in the immediate future, anyway," Caspar Lang said
across his desk in the executive offices in Globe I. "The personnel schedules
have already been worked out. Besides, you wouldn't have any defined function at
this stage."
"I want a trip down to the surface," Zambendorf said again, firmly. "Parties
have started going down, and I want a slot on one of the shuttles. I didn't come
eight hundred million miles to take snapshots through a porthole from up here."
"Small scientific teams are being sent down to remote areas to investigate
surface conditions and collect samples," Lang replied. "That's all. You wouldn't
fit into something like that."
"There's a larger expedition being organized to go down sometime in the next few
days, to attempt a first contact with the Taloids once a suitable site has been
selected," Zambendorf replied evenly.
Lang looked shaken. "How do you know about that?"
Zambendorf spread his hands and made a face in a way that said Lang should know
better than to ask. "It doesn't matter . . . But the opportunity would be ideal.
It would be good publicity for me, and therefore also for GSEC."
Lang emitted a long breath and shook his head. "It's not my prerogative to
decide," he said. Inwardly he was still seething at Zambendorf's discovering and
revealing the mission's true destination before it left Earth, which Lang felt
reflected on him personally.
"Come on, don't give me that, Caspar," Zambendorf said. "Even if that were true,
you could go talk to Leaherney. So fix something. I don't care how . . . but
just fix it."
Lang shook his head again. "I'm sorry, but there's no way at present. Maybe
later . . . I'll keep it in mind."
Zambendorf looked at him for a few seconds longer, and then hoisted himself to
his feet with a sigh. "Well, I'm not going to get into an argument over it," he
said. "Since it's a publicity matter, I'll leave it with my publicity manager to
handle. She'll probably be giving you a call later." With that, he turned for
the door.
Lang groaned beneath his breath. "It won't make any difference," he called after
Zambendorf. "I've already told you the answer, and it's final—there's no way
you're going down there, and nothing that Clarissa Eidstadt says will change
it."
14
"IT HAS LONG BEEN MY CUSTOM TO TRUST NO ONE'S ACCOUNT OF another's words, and it
has served me well," Dornvald said to Thirg, who was riding alongside him.
"Whether any Lifemaker speaks to priests and hearers, I know not—that is His
affair and theirs. But it seems to me that any services of mine that He would
lay claim upon, He would be able enough to make known to me Himself." The party
was moving just below the skyline along a ridge that would bring them to a high
pass through the mountains. The main column had doubled up on the barren, open
/> terrain, and scouts were riding a short distance ahead and on the flanks. The
forests of southern Kroaxia now lay far below and behind.
Thirg had been surprised and impressed. Although for most of the time Dornvald
affected a simple and direct manner, his conversation revealed glimpses of an
acuity of thinking and a perspicacity of observation that Thirg rarely
encountered. The outlaw seemed to display intuitively the same disinclination to
take anything for granted that Thirg had taught himself only after extensive
labors. Did the outlaw way of life breed suspicion of appearances and assurances
as a habit, Thirg wondered, or did outlaws become outlaws because they were
doubters already? At any rate the discourse was providing a welcome distraction
from the monotony of the ride.
"A proposition which I would not desire to contest," Thirg agreed. "So does the
possibility not suggest itself that Nature is no more obliged to contrive an
explanation of Life that is simply comprehended by the minds of robeings than it
is to construct the world in a shape that is simply perceived? Did Lifemaker
indeed create robeing, therefore, or, more likely I am beginning to suspect, did
robeing create Lifemaker as the more convenient alternative to widening his own
powers of comprehension?"
"I have no answer to that," Dornvald said. "But it seems to me that you are
substituting a worse unknown for one that is mystery enough already. Round
worlds and worlds beyond the sky are strange notions to contemplate, yet not
beyond the bounds to which imagination could accommodate itself. But is not the
riddle of Life of a different complexity? For is not all Life in the form of
machines that were assembled by machines, which in turn were assembled by
machines, and so for as far back as we care to permit our imaginations to
postulate? But however far that be, must we not arrive inevitably at the bound
which requires the first machine to have been assembled by that which was not a
machine? Even if your round world of distances dispenses with need of any
Barrier, this barrier more surely bounds the world of imagination. Or would you
make a circle out of time itself?"
"Again I am unable to quarrel with your reasoning," Thirg replied. "Nor with
that of priests, for that matter, for this is their logic also. That that which
was not machine assembled the first machine I would not argue, since were it
machine, then that which it assembled could not have been the first machine by
our own premise. Nor do I take exception to him who would name this nonmachine
machine-assembler 'Lifemaker,' since it is as well described by such a name as
by any other. But that the one conclusion should compel us also to construct of
necessity a realm beyond reach of reason and unknowable to inquiry, I cannot
accept. That is the barrier which I would dispute."
The column closed up again to pick its way in single file along a narrow track
crossing an icefall, with a steep drop below on one side and a sheer cliff
extending upward to the crestline on the other. Beyond the icefall the ground
became open again and resumed its rise; the riders took up open order once more,
and Thirg moved alongside Dornvald.
"The question is no more answered than before, Questioner-of-Barriers," Dornvald
observed, evidently having turned the matter over in his mind. "For now we must
ask what made the Lifemaker and the Maker of Lifemakers. It seems to me that you
have merely moved your barrier to another place. It stands as high as ever, but
now you must travel farther to cross it. The gain would appear poor compensation
for the exertion, for what does it amount to but tired feet?"
"If the barrier has been moved back, then the world of knowledge that it
encompasses is so much the greater," Thirg replied. "And if that world does not
close back upon itself but extends indefinitely, then the gain can be without
limit even though the barrier is never crossed. Therefore does this barrier in
the mind have any more effective substance to it than the Barrier which is
supposed to enclose the physical world?"
Dornvald considered the proposition for a while. "But what is there in the
knowable universe, apart from machines, that could assemble machines?" he asked
at last.
"Nothing of which I am aware ... in this world," Thirg replied. "But if there
should indeed exist other worlds beyond the sky, and if they are knowable, then
are we not obliged to include them in the total knowable universe of which you
speak? And does not the removal of a barrier to distances so vast leave room
enough within to harbor an unknown but knowable Life which, though not machine,
might create machine?"
"Now your words become the riddle," Dornvald said. "How could Life exist without
machine when both are one?"
"Is Life constrained to take no other form than that familiar to us?" Thirg
asked. "If so, by what law? Certainly none that presents itself to me with
credentials sufficient to place its authority above all question."
"Well, now you must answer your own riddle," Dornvald said. "For truly we have
arrived at my barrier now, and its faces are unscalable. What form is both Life
and not Life, for it is not machine, yet machine is Life?"
"I can conceive of none such, Retumer-of-Riddles," Thirg answered. "But then I
have never claimed that the borders which bound the tiny country of my
comprehension, and the barrier which confines the universe of the knowable must
coincide. The greater territory contains vast regions outside the smaller, with
room enough to accommodate whole nations of answers both to this riddle and
others that I know not even how to ask."
They fell silent, and thoughtful patterns came and went slowly across Dornvald's
face for a while. At last he looked sideways at Thirg and said, "Perhaps your
thoughts are not so strange after all, Wonderer-about-Lifemakers. There have
been tales of flying beasts that descended from the sky."
"I have heard them," Thirg replied. Allegedly a mysterious creature had come
down from the sky in a remote area of northern Kroaxia about twelve
twelve-brights previously and been devoured by swamp-dwelling saber cutters.
Rumors told of similar events in more distant places at about the same time too,
but always it was a case of somebody who knew somebody who had actually seen
them. "But all through the ages there have been myths of wondrous things. One
myth among many will not be made any the less a myth by mere conjecturings of
mine that would have it be otherwise."
"If it is a myth," Dornvald said.
"I cannot show that it is," Thirg replied. "And neither can I show conclusively
that the fairy beings with which children would inhabit the forests are a myth,
for both propositions rest equally on negatives. But the impossibility of
proving falsity is no more grounds for asserting the truth of one than of the
other. Just as no Lifemaker speaks to you, so no flying beast has made itself
visible to me. And neither do I know of witnesses whose testimony forces me to
discount all possibility of other explanations for their claims."
Another silence ensued. T
hen Dornvald said, "I have seen one."
Thirg forced a tone that was neither too credulous nor openly disbelieving. "You
saw a creature flying? It actually descended from the sky?"
"So I was assured by one who was there before me," Dornvald replied. "But I did
see its remains, and it was the likes of no beast that I have ever seen before
in all my travels far and wide across this world. That I can vouch."
Thirg sighed. Always it was the same. He had seen that much himself —a partially
dismantled subassembly that his naturalist friend had shown him many
twelve-brights before, taken, it was said, from such remains as Dornvald had
mentioned. It had been unlike anything that Thirg had ever seen from the innards
of any familiar kind of animal, with tissues of crude, coarse construction, and
components clumsy and ungainly. A strange sample of workmanship for a Lifemaker
to have sent down from the sky as proof of His existence, Thirg had commented.
And of course, the naturalist hadn't actually seen the descent with his own eyes
. . . but the traveler that he had obtained the trophy from had bought it from a
hunter who had been present. Thirg had never known what to make of the whole
business. He still didn't.
By late-bright, weary and hungry, the party had crossed through the pass and
descended into the valley on the far side, which after a long trek through
barren, hilly terrain brought them to Xerxeon, the last inhabited place before
entering the Wilderness. It was a small farming settlement of crude dwellings
fabricated from titanium and steel crop-pings, centered upon a few rudimentary
servicing machines and generators which supported a few score families and their
animals. The scrubland around the village had been cleared to make room for a
few meager fields of domesticated parts and body-fluid manufacturing facilities
which the peasants toiled long hours to keep supplied with materials and
components.
Dornvald, whom the villagers evidently knew from previous visits, paid for
provisions with a "tax refund," and as dark came over the sky the outlaws
commenced taking rest and refurbishment in turns while the others stayed awake
to keep watch. After seeing to his steed and Rex at a feed shop nearby, Thirg
was almost dropping by the time his turn came to lie down in a robeing-service
