Worldmakers

by Gardner Dozois

  I’d fired my big guns, trying to get out the truth. Now what? From Kazumi’s description it was obvious that I was inhabiting Joto’s virtual reality. If Joto was still alive, Lady Midori could demand to know where that was. I had to assume the worst—she knew how to consume me or zero me out, and Joto was willing to help her. It wasn’t that I didn’t have faith in this “Joto” character. It just seemed prudent to hop out of here, to some private universe of my own construction, one of the many I’d made during our thousand-year voyage across interstellar space.

  I duped a personal copy of Joto’s extremely useful computer. Then I was on my way. If Lady Midori wanted to make peace, she could use the first duplicate, the one Comrade Kazumi and I left in Ready State Zero, to send me a message. To make sure I got her offer, all she needed to do was mail it several times over to forty thousand backdoor addresses.

  3175

  A year went by without any word from Hideyaki or Midori—without any contacts from Suppressionist reality. The circumstances should have bothered me, but my new life was busy and adventurous, with peculiar aspects. Universes evolve, yes, but bouncing through my repertoire, I’d found one that was way different. These last centuries someone had wandered in and taken over one of my old fantasies, and warped it to his or her purposes. Someone had left her mark.

  If Comrade Kazumi were alive, and wanted me to find her, she’d locate to one of my places. She had my memories, and she knew the addresses. I hoped to find her. I hoped to find anybody. Other souls were important to me. This fact drew me in, although truth to tell, Chyle wasn’t a scenario that encouraged thoughts of importance. It was a place of tricks and funny names, where I played a role noticeably smaller than the person I really was; feasting, fighting, and making love to amenable fictoids.

  Back in Osaka before my graphics-design career took off, I abandoned my ambitions every day for six hours as a short-order cook. To the staff at the restaurant I was a cook, not someone with an impressive artistic resume. This was like that. To keep from being hunted down by the Suppressionists, I parked my ambitious self to play a game whose only sure virtue was that it kept me busy and in hiding. To the fictoids of the game I was Dridley the Mirthwadite, freelance adventurer.

  This was hardly a seductive role, yet toward the end of this year I was more Dridley than Yoshi. You don’t have to guzzle to become an alcoholic. You can do it by sipping discreetly, if at every turn you find it easier to continue than to stop. Dridley was easy for me, like a cardboard part for a great actor. Had I meant to rescue souls from deep-game madness? At the end of my year I was perilously near needing rescue myself.

  On my latest mission I drew near a corridor lit by distant torches. I froze and listened, hoping that stealth made me invisible, for anyone who saw my exaggerated movements would find them comical. Fifty weeks ago I’d been assigned the body of a heavy-bellied gourmand, but a man who would eat is obliged to take risks.

  I’d tracked down the slave-gang I’d been hired to free. I heard the rattling of chains. Laughter echoed through white-webbed passages as Rakni’s mercenaries boasted of the infamies they’d performed last night.

  Rakni was one goddess among many, few of them pleasant. I reviewed her acts of wickedness, aggravating myself to a frenzy of zeal. Most of the time I muddled along like an actor reading his lines, but the deed I meant to do required a bravo spirit. It wasn’t enough to hide in the vaults below Rakni’s Temple, footing among skulls and casks. To prove worth my hire I had to liberate two dozen people.

  The guards posted a sentry. The others began to satisfy their lusts. Stepping back from the corner, I unbuttoned my breeks and hosed the floor. The slope of the pavement assured that a stream would trickle into view.

  A minute passed. The guard walked up the passage and turned. I stepped from a doorway to throttle him.

  He made a racket. I drew my wand and gave him a tingle. He collapsed in hysterical laughter. Two other mercenaries puffed round corner.

  I backed down the corridor, waving my weapon. I heard jangling as the shackled slaves came into sight. They pressed on Rakni’s henchmen. One turned to ward them off. I attacked the other, scoring against his bare torso. His thrust wasted itself in a pyrotechnic discharge, because beneath my gravy-stained jerkin I wore a chain-mail shirt. Now two enemies rolled about the floor, laughing helplessly. Soon the third one joined them.

  WAAAAAH! The loud honk announced the daily Peace. I’d barely freed the slaves in time. Among them was a very pregnant friend I’d met—well, what a coincidence—almost nine months ago. Item A joined me with enthusiasm. We wheezed up three flights of stairs and exited into Rakni’s outer court. The goddess’s red-robed priests stepped forward. “Are you Dridley?” one asked as he readied a clipboard.

  I squinted against the brightness of a gold-and-purple sunset. “Dridley the Mirthwadite. Minutes ago I freed the slaves sold you by Magister Gasselot. Your three mercenaries will acknowledge—”

  “Are they alive?”

  My beard concealed a smug smile. “Tingled and disarmed.”

  “But you’d not led your charges out,” the priest objected. “You might have had some difficulty.”

  “If you want the House of Gods to judge, I’ll tell them that nobody but your prevented a score of desperate men and women from reaching the plaza, and you all sworn to passivity. If we return to quid pro quo after the Peace and fresh guards run out to stop us, the priests of Mirthwad will cry foul.”

  The man in red gritted his teeth. “We can’t submit every transaction to the House of Gods. Very well, I won’t contest your claim.”

  From across the court a red-robed woman strode forward. “Dridley, your name is marked. Stay out of the dark alleys of Chyle. That big gut makes an easy target.”

  I laughed. “A month from now the gods will shift alliances. Mirthwad and Rakni will be friends again. I’ve seen it happen before.”

  Item A plucked at my sleeve. “Come,” she urged. “I don’t like these scenes. All those stairs! I need to sit and rest.”

  “How do you feel?”

  The rings under her eyes gave me concern. Her hair was unkempt. She was too tired to keep up appearances. Across the cobbled plaza from the Temple of Rakni stood a small bistro. “How about some soup and bread before we report in?” I asked.

  Item A ate a third of her supper with ravenous appetite. She shoved the rest away. “I’ll be hungry in an hour,” she complained. “The baby monopolizes my belly. I’ve no room left for food.”

  “We can wait.”

  “I say that a lot nowadays,” Item A answered. “I’ve skipped worship since falling into Gasselot’s hands. If Mirthwad’s temple were in the center of Chyle I’d go there, but it’s hard to cross the city.”

  I shrugged. “Since defeating Elsewad Mirthwad rules the Gund, but here in Chyle we’re relegated to the low-rent suburbs.”

  At the mention of Elsewad’s name Item A shivered. “Dridley, this Rakni thing is a skirmish. Elsewad is different. Bad enough you worship the god who led the Hag Queen’s army across the Latpans, but Elsewad’s priests hate you for stealing the secret of the torque.”

  “The Conventicles forbid sacerdotal violence. Elsewad would have to hire an assassin.”

  Item A shook her head. “Elsewad has money, and you’ve just freed twenty-odd slaves. They’ll peddle their services to the highest bidder.”

  I studied my empty wineglass. “That’s life.”

  Item A brushed crumbs from her tunic. “I don’t want to worship tonight. Can we just sit here?”

  Twilight crowds ambled, listened to proselytes and plotted mischief. “When the Peace ends this place won’t be safe.”

  Item A picked up her spoon and sipped her soup. “I have disturbing thoughts,” she confessed.

  “No wonder, if you’ve been skipping worship.”

  “Dridley, does it occur to you that all this—” She waved an arm made plump by the changes to her figure. “Think of Chyle, of the villages al
ong the Gund, of the wildmen of the Aglan Albabs. It doesn’t work. We’re all supposed to be part of an economy, a system with farmers at the base, and the gods on top.”

  I’d first met Item A while the hierophants of her god Techto, each bribed by a different guild of realtors, debated the course of next year’s lava flow. I was accustomed to teaching her the ways of Mirthwad, a god whose doctrines I’d adopted as protective cover.

  “Yours is exactly the kind of speculation Mirthwad means to stamp out,” I lectured. “Profundities are made of words, and words of meanings. Each ‘connotatus’ is a building block, but rarely do these blocks combine according to logic. Mirthwad’s gift is forgetfulness. We remember names and facts, but abandon economics, politics and other false constructions.”

  Item A ignored me. “Under the helmet you go. Out you come, purged. Elsewad uses a helmet too. They all do. All the gods.”

  I waggled a finger. “Elsewad’s helmets burden the mind with lost languages and useless history.”

  She kicked me under the table. “Stop your preaching! I know the doctrines of Mirthwad, Elsewad, and Techto, and several others besides. Words, mere words. They’re different, but all end with you under the helmet.

  “Life doesn’t have to be this way,” she continued. “There’s a voice in me. The more I skip worship, the more it tells me we’re in a madhouse. The gods are laughing at us, Dridley. They know something we can’t see, something the helmets keep us from seeing.”

  What was I hearing from Item A? Was it possible that computer fictoids yearned beyond their roles? Could they play effectively if they knew they were part of a game? Or was Item A more than a fictoid? I was curious to find out, but she responded blankly when I whispered “Kazumi?”—as blankly as anyone else in Chyle.

  Since I was supposed to be a pious fellow, I leaned forward and took her hand. “Item A, you can’t neglect worship night after night! Must I force you to come, or will you walk at my side and retain your dignity?”

  She stood. We paid our bill and left for the suburbs a few blocks beyond the city wall. We reached the park by the Great Library. She clutched herself. “A contraction!”

  “Have your membranes ruptured?”

  She gave me a sharp look. “Set me by those bushes. Send for the priests.”

  Item A’s child would make a fine gift for the priests of Mirthwad. I eased her into her resting place and ran down Buttermarket Street toward the temple of my favorite deity.

  I returned leading a file of priests and palanquin bearers. Item A was gone. “She fooled me!” I said.

  “Why?” asked the puffing hierophant at my side.

  A woman who refused to worship was an atheist. If I spoke the truth all Chyle would have hunted her down. I couldn’t unleash persecution on Item A. “She slipped off. She preferred to be delivered by the priests of Techto.”

  The priest frowned. “The Peace will be over in another hour. Come with us. Enjoy the blessings of forgetfulness.”

  “My place is at her side. I’ll come tomorrow.” Bowing politely, I turned and walked for Techto’s temple, slowing to a halt when my priest and his followers were out of sight.

  Time to think. Item A was lost. Worse, I’d become an enemy. She’d seek refuge where I didn’t dare follow.

  Really? During the Peace I’d dare anything, even the temple of Elsewad. No, if she wanted to hide she’d go to a place repugnant to my creed. The answer was nearby. She’d entered the very source of ideologies, systems, and hypotheses; the Great Library.

  I studied the heavily buttressed building. Lights glowed inside. The Library’s visiting hours were co-terminous with the Peace. I grimaced while treading its converging paths. How could I rationalize actually going in?

  Well, as a good Mirthwadite, wasn’t I allowed to pollute my mind, as long as I purged it?

  I entered the Library, and wandered the aisles until the novelty wore off. I found Item A bent over a display case in the Map Room. She turned, saw me and smiled. “Look!” she exclaimed.

  Item A had forgiven me, as if I hadn’t tried to force her to worship. It was only fair that I reciprocate, as if she hadn’t pretended to go into labor. I drew up to the table. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “A map of the world. A very old map.”

  “The world seems shaped like a wineskin,” I said, fingering my beard.

  “I see a pot with a thick handle where the Gund flows into the Latpans. This line marks the caravan route from Chyle. West and north of the Dying Sea lie the hills of the Aglan Albabs, where the Hag Queen rules. Now look at this! Another dotted line, running from Chyle to Quarry Mountain, then through the middle west, and off into the unknown!”

  “I see.”

  “Where does it go? What lies beyond the map? Why shouldn’t there be more mountains, more rivers? All this blank parchment!”

  I was so lost to the game that I responded like any pious citizen. “Just because the parchment doesn’t conform to the outline of the world, you think something lies beyond. What a fallacy!”

  “Dridley, come with me. We’ll follow that mysterious trail. The experience will open your eyes.”

  “You can’t travel in your condition.”

  Item A bit her lip. “I’ll buy your cooperation. If you accompany me I’ll consign my baby to Mirthwad. We’ll hold our departure until I’ve recovered from childbirth and found a wet-nurse.”

  “What about worship in the meantime?”

  She shook her head. “Swear you won’t force me into devotion.”

  I made a promise. “Item A, you’ve changed. I need to understand what’s troubling you. I’ve been thinking. I too should refrain from worship. I’ll make myself a bridge between the world and your fevered state of mind.”

  Item A delivered a baby girl a week later. The priests of Mirthwad were delighted to accept our child, though Item A embarrassed everyone by weeping during the ritual.

  It had nothing to do with loyalties to Techto. It just seemed wrong to hand over her baby, she explained, assailing a time-honored custom in that sweeping way she had. I hustled her out of the temple as quickly as possible. Her ideas weren’t for public consumption. They were disturbing and provocative.

  During the next month neither Item A nor I performed our devotions. My behavior grew erratic. In my adventures I used reason where others tried force. Clients no longer wanted to work with me. By the time we left I was poor, and glad to see the walls of Chyle behind us.

  We strode through a fringe of farms, orchards and sheep-commons. “We’re supposed to believe these fields feed all Chyle,” Item A said. “How many priests, and how few peasants!”

  A wagon wheeled by us. The teamster was on his way to Quarry Mountain after delivering a load of durium slabs. He offered us a ride. We turned him down, to revel in the luxury of free speech.

  The driver flicked his reins and drew off. Item A spoke. “This year twelve babies were born. Last year the count was six. In all the world ten women are pregnant. This is typical. Perhaps a thousand children born in any century.”

  I agreed. She continued. “Yet your memory tells you you’re twenty-nine years old. I think I’m thirty. Everyone we know places his or her birth less than five decades ago. Either our statistics are wrong or our memories lie. What keeps us from realizing these things?”

  “Everything we know is unreal.” Who was I talking to? A fictoid? A real soul, just playing a game? Or a soul who genuinely didn’t know who she was? The helmets of the gods shouldn’t work to full effect on true souls. I’d used them, and I still knew who I was.

  Did I? Comrade Yoshi. My name creaked out slowly. The sound of it wavered in my mind. Blue World seemed like a dream. I rehearsed the names of people I should have loved and hated. After just one year of middleweight gaming my emotions felt smothered. One wasted year, and I’d have to learn to love and hate all over again.

  At least I knew my identity. How many years would it take before the power of the game, or the power of t
he helmets, took that away from me? I’d be like Item A, and perhaps not courageous enough, or iconoclastic enough, to undertake a voyage of personal discovery.

  “We’re like sheep and the gods are our shepherds,” Item A said. “Now we’ve resolved to leap over the fence that surrounds our field. What will we find?”

  Next day we reached Quarry Mountain, a heaping black bulk, girdled by a string of flower-garden villas, inns, temples and quarry operations. Item A had been a child here, but her memories of childhood were growing dubious. We shuddered away from the hospitality of her priests, and trudged down the road until it became a cobbled trail.

  We continued three days through gently rolling grassland. “We’re halfway to the edge of the world,” Item A remarked as we massaged each other’s feet by that evening’s campfire.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  “Perhaps it’s just that I don’t like the name ‘Item A.’ As the hours go by odd sounds repeat inside my head: Kaiko leyamatsu. Kaiko leyamatsu.’ A veil is lifting, but what lies behind is as vague as dreams. I was proud once, maybe a god myself.”

  I nodded, “Kaiko?” I said.

  “Yes, Dridley.”

  “My name isn’t Dridley. Call me Yoshi.” I felt ashamed for waiting so long. What kind of ethics were these? Who convinced me it was right to deny myself, and wrong to betray the game?

  We spread our blankets, slept, ate, and broke camp. We trekked on for three more days. The Aglan Albabs lay to our right, a high forest country starkly unlike the bleak salt pans to our left. We’d have been entertained were these landscapes visible, but both regions lay beyond sight. Beneath fast-moving clouds we wandered a wide margin of wind-shaken grasses.

  As we walked, we exchanged revelations. My companion faltered out bits of Japanese. “We were gods once!” she exclaimed. “But we were bad gods, yes? And now they—”