Code Of The Lifemaker

by Hogan, James

  transmission lines and distribution transformers, beyond which the track joined

  a wider road that crossed a stretch of open ground to a bridge. The party had

  just emerged onto the road when a group of horsemen wearing the uniforms of

  Carthogian soldiers appeared ahead, approaching at full gallop from the bridge.

  Thirg braced himself for the brutalized fanatics that Kroaxian teachings had led

  him to expect; then he saw that Dornvald had eased his mount to a halt and was

  sitting relaxed and at ease with a broad grin on his face while the column drew

  up behind. "Major Vergallet, unless I'm much mistaken," Dornvald murmured to

  Geynor, who was shading his imagers next to him.

  "It is," Geynor confirmed. He glanced at Thirg and explained, "From the

  Carthogian border fort across the bridge."

  Thirg nodded and turned his head back to look. The Carthogians were smartly

  attired, alert, and well disciplined, and their leader was at that moment

  smiling in a way that was anything but brutally fanatical. He drew up before

  Dornvald and saluted crisply. "It's good to see you back again, sir. I trust

  your mission was successful." Thirg blinked his imager shades, jerked his head

  round toward Geynor for a moment, and then stared back at Dornvald. Sir?

  "Very much so, thank you, Major," Dornvald replied. He turned and indicated

  Thirg with a gesture. "This is Thirg, an inquirer, who has wearied of Kroaxia's

  stifling ways and comes to enjoy fresher air among our thinkers and artificers

  in Carthogia. Thirg, meet Major Vergallet."

  "We are honored to have the general's companion as our guest," Vergallet said.

  General? Thirg blinked again and shook his head. "The honor is surely mine to be

  admitted into such league," he replied lamely as the column began to move again

  and the soldiers formed up on both sides.

  Dornvald laughed at Thirg's bemusement. "You will find Kleippur's officers in

  the most unexpected places and the strangest garbs," he said. "A small nation

  such as ours has to live by its wits and its ability to know more about its

  enemies than they know about each other."

  "And more by the skills and knowledge of its armorers than by the size of its

  army," Geynor added as he saw Thirg looking curiously at one of the strange

  elongated steel tubular devices which the Carthogian soldiers were carrying

  slung across their backs. "And that of course, Question-Answerer, is one of the

  reasons why you are here."

  The party rested and refreshed themselves at the border fort, and by the end of

  even that brief stay Thirg had already dismissed most of what he had heard about

  the Carthogians as ignorant superstition at best, and at worst as a campaign of

  misinformation and lies waged deliberately by the more orthodox ruling elites of

  other nations to protect themselves from the threat that Kleippur's social

  experiment represented. "The servility and obedience that the Kroaxian priests

  teach as a duty heretical even to question serve the nobles and princes in ways

  that are clear enough," Dornvald remarked as he and Thirg talked over their

  meal. "But why the whims and fancies of mere mortals should be of such concern

  to an all-powerful Lifemaker is far more difficult to conceive. And does it not

  seem strange that eternal salvation for the many, in a hereafter which they are

  asked to accept on mere assurances, should be attainable in no other way than by

  their enduring hardships gratefully and laboring their lives in wretchedness for

  the further enrichment of a pious few who exhibit a suspiciously unholy interest

  in the quality of their own herenow?" Neither Dornvald nor his companions

  mentioned the Skybeings, and Thirg followed their example.

  When the party left to continue its journey, the garrison commander assigned a

  detachment of troops to escort it to the city of Menassim, apparently because

  the Waskorians had been causing trouble again in an area that the road passed

  through. The Waskorians, Dornvald explained to Thirg, were an alliance of

  extremist sects who denounced as sinful and decadent the liberties that had come

  with Kleippur's rule and were committed to bringing down the regime in order to

  return the land to its old ways. The rulers of Kroaxia and Serethgin had been

  quick to exploit the resentments of the Waskorians, and supplied them with

  weapons and fomented uprisings. The freedom to earn their salvation in their own

  way if they thought they needed to be saved from something wasn't sufficient for

  the sects, it seemed; everyone else, willingly or otherwise, had to be saved

  their way too.

  The remainder of the journey passed without incident, however, possibly because

  of the escorts. Slowly the rugged border country fell behind and was replaced by

  hills of thin pipeline, power cable, and latticework scrub, giving way to open

  slopes of bare ice higher up. After leaving the hills, the riders passed through

  many miles of dense forest, and the first edge of dark was showing low in the

  sky before signs of robeing habitation began increasing noticeably. At first

  isolated homes and then villages appeared; at the same time the landscape took

  on a tidier appearance with lubricant-fractionation columns standing in

  well-kept rows, neatly cultivated nut, bolt, and bearing orchards, and rich

  fields of electrolytic precipitation baths. Dornvald advised Thirg that they

  were approaching the outskirts of Menassim.

  It no longer came as any surprise to Thirg to see that the reactions of the

  populace showed no signs of the fear and hatred manifested by downtrodden slaves

  encountering their oppressors; on the contrary, the soldiers were greeted with

  smiles and friendly waves, and children in the villages ran to the roadside to

  watch them pass. The adults seemed healthy and well plated; they were neatly and

  adequately dressed; and their houses were trim and in good repair. It was a

  strange kind of "living in perpetual terror" that produced such results; he

  thought to himself.

  The city too, though bustling and crowded, was clean and seemed prosperous: The

  shops and stalls of the merchants were amply stocked, and the wares were of good

  quality; the streets were paved and cleared of rubbish; and the taverns and

  eating houses were noisy and busy. Other things that Thirg, who had tended to

  avoid cities as much as possible in Kroaxia, would have considered inseparable

  from the urban scene were conspicuous by their absence. There were no beggars or

  derelicts to be seen pleading or picking a living from the gutters, and neither

  did priests or nobles in tall headgear ride haughtily in six-legged carriages

  behind burly servants wielding bludgeons to clear the way. There were no burned

  or partly dissolved corpses on public display as a warning to others against

  blasphemy and heresy; no lesser offenders being exhibited and tormented by mobs

  in the marketplace; no penitents in emery cloth and carbon black confessing

  their sins to the world from street corners; no ascetic monks shackled to

  pillars for the length of a bright—no signs at all, in fact, of the holy and the

  devout dreaming up what had always struck Thirg as ever more absurd ways to

  degrade and debase themselves in order
to prove themselves worthy creations of

  an all-wise and all-benevolent Lifemaker whose judgment and disposition were

  supposed to be capable of being influenced by such antics.

  Nearer the center of the city the buildings became larger and taller, with

  organically grown structures giving way to fabrications of welded blocks of cut

  ice. Building with ice was not unknown in Kroaxia, but the scale and ingenuity

  of the Carthogian architecture made everything that Thirg had seen previously

  appear crude by comparison. Such advanced art was made possible, he learned, by

  the discovery of new methods for actually synthesizing artificial lifting and

  cutting devices from metals and other materials, which could mimic many of the

  functions of natural, living machines. Such discoveries also accounted for the

  extraordinary proficiency of the Carthogian army. The strange tubes that the

  soldiers carried on their backs, for example, were actually weapons that used

  explosive gases to hurl a projectile capable of shattering a slab of ice a

  finger's-breadth thick at over a hundred paces.

  Thirg was astounded. To exercise his intellect he had often speculated on the

  possibility of creating artificial machines, but he had never expected to see

  anything actually come of it. He remembered a friend who long ago had

  entertained preposterous notions of creating a device to harness vaporized

  methane for turning wheels. The friend had vanished abruptly after escaping

  arrest on sorcery and heresy charges issued by the High Council of Pergassos,

  and Thirg had almost forgotten their interminable arguments. On impulse he asked

  the Carthogians if they knew of his friend's whereabouts. The friend was alive

  and well, he was told, and in fact lived not far away on the outskirts of

  Menassim. He was trying to improve a device he had constructed which used

  vaporized methane to turn wheels.

  The news of Dornvald's arrival had gone ahead, and a messenger met the party to

  advise that Kleippur would receive them at his official residence, which turned

  out to be an elegant but not over-ostentatious ice-block building inside a

  walled courtyard, situated not far from the former royal palace, which now

  served as government offices. On arrival the riders were conducted to guests'

  quarters and invited to bathe and change into clean clothes, after which,

  refreshed and considerably more presentable, Thirg was taken to the warm,

  brightly furnished and cheerfully decorated Council Chamber on the ground floor,

  overlooking the courtyard across a wide terrace. Inside, Kleippur, flanked by

  two aides, was sitting at the far end of the large table that took up most of

  the room; Dornvald, Geynor, and Fenyig were also present, now wearing the

  uniforms of officers of the Carthogian army, and another figure was sitting with

  its back to the door. By the wall on one side of the room, one of Lofbayel's

  maps was fastened to an easel, and more were stacked on the table in front of

  it.

  Then Lofbayel himself turned in his seat, grinned delightedly at the amazement

  on Thirg's face, and stood up to pump his hand vigorously. "Welcome to

  Carthogia, Thirg! I'm pleased to see you here safely. Have no doubts—you will

  find your true home here. I guarantee it."

  "You h-here?" Thirg stammered. "What of Kersenia and the family? Are they—"

  "All here at Menassim, and well. Indeed, we would have you as our guest again if

  it pleases you."

  "But how? I thought you were watched constantly."

  "Another escapade of Dornvald's, of which you will no doubt hear in good time.

  But come forward and meet Kleippur, and let us obstruct the more important

  business no longer."

  Kleippur, who was younger than Thirg had imagined, and wore a tunic of gleaming

  plate gold with a short cloak of royal blue ceramic links, began by welcoming

  Thirg to Carthogia a second time. It had been a somewhat irregular way of

  extending an invitation, he said, but he hoped Thirg would understand the

  occasional necessity for such measures. Though not of exceptionally tall or

  heavy build, Kleippur carried himself with an unhurried dignity that Thirg found

  impressive, and commanded an authority that stemmed more from an instinctive

  respect displayed by his followers than from any overt exhibition of rank or

  assertion of status. He spoke with a soldier's directness and singleness of

  purpose, yet with an air of detachment and a disinclination to passion that

  marked him as a thinker. He introduced his two colleagues as Lyokanor, a senior

  officer from a part of the Carthogian army that Kleippur described as

  "Intelligence," and Pellimiades, a director of military constructions and

  inventions.

  Thirg said he was glad to be in Carthogia; there was no need for apologies. He

  had been treated well and courteously despite the difficult circumstances, and

  on top of that had enjoyed stimulating and thought-provoking company. "It had

  become a mystery to me even before the high pass above Xerxeon," he said in

  conclusion. "For what kind of outlaw was this who rode my philosophical

  challenges as skillfully as he did his steed?"

  Dornvald laughed. "I'm surprised that you could have been so easily deceived.

  For most of the time it was all I could do to cling with my philosophical

  fingers to avoid falling off."

  The preliminaries over with, Kleippur turned and gestured toward the maps. "I

  don't have to explain how valuable this kind of information is to us," he said.

  "Lofbayel has told me that you too believe the world to be a sphere, Thirg—a

  strange notion, and one which I admit causes me more perplexity than comfort ...

  but nevertheless I will concede the possibility and grant that you have

  considered the evidence at greater length than I. So can this claim be tested?

  If so, how? If it is within my power to furnish the prerequisites, it shall be

  done, for I would sooner know the world as it is than place misguided trust in

  false appearances."

  The utterance was so unlike anything that Thirg was used to hearing from those

  in authority that for a second or two he just stared in disbelief. Then he

  recovered quickly and remarked, "It would appear that heretics have little to

  walk in fear of in this land."

  "Facts cannot be changed by convictions," Kleippur answered. "He who is willing

  to change his convictions to suit new facts cannot be a heretic, while he who

  persists in holding convictions that deny the facts is not a heretic but a

  fool—as would I be for fearing him. Therefore the term has no meaning to me."

  "So is this the new faith of the nation that you would build?" Thirg asked.

  "A philosophy, not a faith," Kleippur replied. "Since it acknowledges the

  existence of nothing unknowable to reason, it has no place for belief without

  reason. I could not build such a nation, but I would help it build itself."

  "This is the land that Kroaxia has pledged to free from its chains and fetters?"

  Thirg said, sounding incredulous and allowing his eyes to come to rest finally

  on Lofbayel.

  "Now you see which has the greater need to be freed," Lofbayel said.

  Thirg looked mildly uneasy. "So does Carthogia now pledge itself to fre
e

  Kroaxia?" he asked.

  "The chains that bind the Kroaxians are in their minds," Kleippur replied,

  shaking his head. "Can a robeing be freed who asks it not, for is it not a

  self-contradiction to speak of imposing freedom? The Kroaxians must come to see

  truth as you have—each by his own way and in his own time. Only then can a mind

  be free and not merely have cast off one set of chains for another."

  "A noble thought," Thirg agreed dubiously. "But let us not forget that my eyes

  were opened only after I was brought to this land forcibly."

  "Not so," Dornvald said. "We merely brought your eyes to where they could behold

  the truth. You opened them yourself, a long time ago."

  Thirg thought for a moment longer, and at last nodded, satisfied. "Then the

  building of your nation shall have the help of both of us," he told Kleippur.

  Kleippur nodded and seemed unsurprised. In that brief moment Thirg felt a touch

  of the compulsion that Kleippur was able to radiate as a leader. His simple and

  unassuming acceptance of Thirg's declaration had done more to cement a bond of

  mutual respect and trust than any kind of elaborate speechmaking ever could.

  "And so to business," Kleippur said briskly. He looked at Dornvald. "Well, what

  tidings do you bring from Kroaxia? The Serethginians are reequipping and

  recruiting mercenaries as far afield as Corbellio in preparation for a new

  campaign against us, I am advised, but jealousies war within their camp which I

  have designs to turn to our advantage. What is new from beyond the Meracasine?"

  A short silence fell. Dornvald's two lieutenants glanced at each other

  ominously. Eventually Dornvald said, "Serious though that matter may be,

  Kleippur, events have come to pass which render it insignificant. We do indeed

  bring tidings—strange tidings—not from beyond the Meracasine, but from within

  it."

  Kleippur frowned from Lyokanor to Pellimiades, and then looked back at Dornvald.

  "Explain yourself, Dornvald," he said. "What new events?"

  Dornvald nodded at Fenyig, who reached down and produced a flat package of what

  looked at first like more charts, and put it down on the table. When he removed

  the wrappings, however, the contents were seen to be not handproduced drawings,

  but thick, glossy sheets carrying pictorial representations that contained