Child of Fortune

by Norman Spinrad

  For while freedom from the present situation was a concept I could readily enough grasp, the question of freedom to do what seemed entirely unanswerable at the time. Freedom to wander aimlessly around the research dome? Freedom to return to a vie of endlessly wandering the Bloomenveldt? When it came to resuming my life’s journey, I had no more concept of how to proceed or what to demand than did Moussa, Rollo, Dome, and Goldenrod.

  Therefore, for want of any active goal to pursue or coherent demand to present, there seemed to be nothing for it but to passively submit to the samplings, measurements, and poking about of the scientists, who, au contraire, seemed to lack nothing in the way of purposeful motivation. Electrodes were affixed to various portions of my anatomy, instruments prodded and glided over every centimeter of my body, syringes withdrew blood, urine was demanded and delivered up, even samples of my tears, sweat, nasal mucus, saliva, and vaginal juices found their way into vials.

  When these exercises were finally concluded, we were fed another indifferent meal, and then left alone once more. For what must have been several more hours, no event of significance occurred save those taking place within my own skull, and even these were of little note, for the inescapable passivity of my position cloaked my consciousness in a pall of ennui. What was I to do? What was I to even wish to do? Indeed, now that the tale of the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt had reached what should have been its triumphant conclusion, who in fact was I?

  After some immeasurable period, the storeroom lights were extinguished, and I lay there on the unfamiliar cot in the darkness longing for an escape into sleep that was a long time in coming, for here the irresistible perfume thereof was of course absent, and my metabolism, long-accustomed to the nightly cycle of same, kept me awake and tossing until—

  —I was rudely shocked into full wakefulness by a sudden blaze of light that had me leaping off the cot and halfway across the room to follow the sun, follow the yellow, before the sight of the bare gray walls and ceiling, the piles of crates and canisters, and the three men who had entered with breakfast, brought me back with a psychic thump to this most unpleasantly quotidian of all the worlds of men.

  As far as I was concerned, the second day in the storeroom was no different from the first, though no doubt, from the point of view of science, much novel data must have been accumulated by the new rounds of intimate explorations.

  Be such valuable research as it may, from the point of view of the subject thereof, nothing of significance could be said to have happened. I ate, I suffered examination, I lay torpidly on my cot, was fed another meal, was subject to further scientific ministrations, and once more was plunged into the darkness of an ersatz night.

  But the next morning, shortly after a breakfast of toasted grains and nuts mixed with dried fruits, a new assortment of mages began to parade in and out of the storeroom. Which is to say that though the traffic of the past few days had been perceived as nothing more coherent than a blur of bodies, apparatus, and faces, I perceived that these were new visitors, for, if nothing else, their actions were quite different.

  There were no more samplings of body fluids, no more pokings, proddings, and arcane measurements of protoplasmic functions, for these assorted newcomers were laden with no instruments or apparatus at all.

  Rather, like a tribe of Wayfaring Strangers divvying up their loot, one by one, and not without a certain haggling among themselves, but entirely without regard for any wishes of the objects thereof, they began making off with my lost children of the forest.

  Rollo was the first to go, allowing himself to be dragged off passively by two dour-looking women. “Wait!” I cried, but they quite ignored me, and when I essayed a physical intervention, I was restrained by a veritable wall of mages. In like manner were Dome and Goldenrod removed from the storeroom against my incoherent protestations. Nor would any of the mages deign to enlighten me as to the nature of these occurrences.

  Indeed, neither Rollo, Dome, nor Goldenrod themselves either made any move to protest events or so much as bade farewell to their onetime savior. Only Moussa dug in her heels for a moment as two men dragged her off, and seemed to gaze inquiringly into my eyes. “Follow…?” she seemed almost to ask. “Follow Piper…? Follow…? Follow…?”

  This was more than I could bear, and had I had my full wits about me, no doubt I would have activated the Touch and employed it in a manner that would not at all have been to the liking of these mages. “Where are you taking my Gypsy Jokers?” I demanded at the top of my lungs while three of them held me back by main force. “Are you mute Bloomenkinder? Speak—”

  At length one of the men bearing off Moussa deigned to pay me verbal heed. “The Bloomenkinder have been assigned to various mental retreats where they will be well treated, kind,” he told me. “Mayhap we will succeed in restoring them to full sapience. In any event, rest assured that your friends will have the best of care, and will have abundant opportunity to serve the cause of science.”

  And with that, Moussa too was gone. I was never to see any of them again, and, upon exhaustive inquiry years later, learned as I have said, that only Moussa was ever returned to full sapient sovereignty. Poor Rollo lived only a few more years, whereas Dome and Goldenrod still dwell in mental retreats on Belshazaar even to this day. Dome has never learned to truly speak, whereas Goldenrod eventually attained the verbal level of a small child.

  To those who would now say that, given these results, I might have done better to leave the four of them to their blissful union with the flowers, myself at times, if truth be told, among them, I would say that the return of Moussa to full citizenship in the human species, vraiment, mayhap Goldenrod’s eventual transformation into an innocent child at least equipped for some true human congress, justifies my actions when the karmic accounts are debited and credited.

  Be all that as it may, I had no prescient foreknowledge of their future fates when they followed me across the Bloomenveldt, nor, once they were removed from my care forever, did I have any alternate course of action to suggest, even if the same would have been heeded. I only knew that I was now quite alone in the storeroom of the research dome wondering what fate I was now to suffer in the service of science.

  But I was given little opportunity to brood on this, for almost as soon as Moussa had been removed, a tall, somewhat portly man with short iron-gray hair and a kindly if somewhat over-proper demeanor, entered the storeroom alone, ignored all his colleagues, and made straight for me.

  “Guten tag,” he said quite pleasantly. “Ich bin Urso Moldavia Rashid, servidor de usted. Bitte, I would discuss with you a proposition of mutual benefit.” So saying, he executed a little bow, and gestured with perfect politesse for me to follow.

  After all those weeks on the Bloomenveldt sans even the sound of coherent discourse and these two days during which I had been treated with less courtesy than that due a household pet, I was utterly charmed by this sudden display of civilized manners toward my person, and went along without even thought of demur. Urso ushered me out of the storeroom, down a hallway, and into a small chamber which might have been someone’s office commandeered for the occasion, equipped as it was with desk, terminal, racks of word crystals, arcane charts, and chairs. He seated me on a chair directly before the desk and took his place behind it, for all the worlds as if this were to be some sort of interview for a position of importance.

  “You are said to be quite verbal,” he began, “so now that I have introduced myself, bitte favor me likewise, though a formal exchange of name tales can await another occasion.”

  I struggled to marshal my thoughts sufficiently to reply in quotidian kind, for it was the niceties of civilized discourse which then seemed to me arcane, and the spieling of my endless tale the mode ordinaire of my verbality. “I am the only tale there is to tell which has taken us from the ancestral flowers to…” I blinked. I paused. With a great effort, I made myself go on in a long-unaccustomed vein. “I am Moussa…I am Sunshine Shasta Leonardo, Gypsy Joker
, Child of Fortune, ruespieler,” I managed to say, and I was quite pleased with the results of my efforts.

  Urso smiled warmly. “Gut,” he said approvingly. “And I am Urso Moldavia Rashid, Healer, mage of psychic therapy, domo of the Clear Light Mental Retreat, in which capacity I tender my invitation.”

  “Invitation?”

  “Invitation, proposal d’affaires, offer of succor, la même chose, nicht wahr, to wit, I offer you residence in the Clear Light on terms to be agreed upon.”

  “Incarceration in a mental retreat like my fellows?” I exclaimed in alarm and dismay.

  “Nein, nein, nein!” Urso declared as if he found this notion as heinous as I did. “While I was forced to purchase droit of guardianship from these scoundrels in order to be allowed to make this offer, and while your mental competence may be a matter of some dispute, I hereby waive, as a token of good faith, any right of involuntary custodianship. The terms that I offer do not include involuntary incarceration. You will be provided with a decent enough private chamber, three meals per diem, a modest though civilized wardrobe, use of our therapeutic services gratuit, and within reasonable limits you may come and go at your own pleasure. All that your end of the bargain requires is your aid in our researches.”

  “Never will I agree to partake of the psychotropics of the Bloomenveldt and become a Bloomenkind of the mental retreats!” I told him with growing coherence, for I was beginning to remember all too well what sort of researches were carried on therein.

  Urso laughed and brushed this objection aside with a wave of his hand. “Fear not,” he said, “for in any case your prolonged exposure to the psychotropics of the Bloomenveldt renders you quite unfit as a subject for psychopharmacological research, nicht wahr. But you style yourself a ‘ruespieler,’ so-called, nē? And this, I have been given to understand is one who earns her keep by the telling of tales…?”

  I nodded my assent.

  “Well, then consider my offer one of employment in your professional capacity.”

  “Ruespieler in a mental retreat?” I said in perfect befuddlement.

  “As it were,” declared Urso. “For if the statements of the scientists of this dome are to be credited, you own to, among other things, having penetrated to the realm of the so-called Perfumed Garden, having been a Bloomenkind of the deep forest, and, as evidenced by my own eyes, to have returned with the tale thereof to tell. Wahrlich? C’est vrai?”

  Once more I nodded. “I have followed the tale of the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt from our ancestral flowers back to the far-flung worlds of men,” I agreed.

  “Well then surely you perceive that such an adventure of the spirit holds considerable interest for the sciences of the mind,” Urso said. “So what is required of you is several hours per diem during which you will spiel us your tale thereof and your answers to whatever elucidatory questions we may pose to assist our inquiries into the scientific facts thereof. And while I freely admit that our primary aim may be the advancement of science, in the process thereof you will certainly gain sufficient renewed clarity to once more rejoin the body politic of the worlds of men as an independent agent. You will accept, nicht wahr?”

  “And if I do not?”

  Urso shrugged. “As a man of honor who has sworn the oath of Hippocrates, I am constrained to eschew all coercion in these matters,” he said, not entirely convincingly. “As my bona fides thereof, I offer sufficient alternative largesse to pay your passage back to Ciudad Pallas should you refuse…”

  “And how am I to survive on the streets of Ciudad Pallas?” I asked, for I now remembered all too well the vile bleakness thereof, and the fact that the only employment available to a Child of Fortune therein was as an experimental subject.

  Urso threw up his hands in an admission of ignorance and favored me with a smile that was a bit too smugly self-assured for my taste.

  Nor did I have any rejoinder to make to this eloquent silent reply. Indeed, now that consideration of the practicalities of survival had been thrust upon me, even in my present state, I knew all too well that I was being offered a good deal less than a free choice.

  For I was confronted with an alternative of impotent indigence even more perfect than what I had faced when I had been expelled from the Hotel Yggdrasil. At least Edoku had provided fressen and Public Service Stations for the indigent. As for returning to Glade with my tail between my legs, the chip of credit which would have allowed me to do so was now lost with my pack in the depths of the Bloomenveldt. And while my father would no doubt have supplied me with a duplicate, it would take weeks to apply for same by Void Ship mail and more weeks for it to arrive, during which I would expire of starvation.

  Surely Urso Moldavia Rashid was hardly ignorant of this situation, which is to say that while he may have sworn an oath against coercion, fate had paid no heed to such niceties, and as he must have known quite well, I must accept his offer or perish.

  25

  And so, after a short shuttle flight to Ciudad Pallas and a quick floatcab ride through the unappealing streets thereof in the company of Urso Moldavia Rashid, I took up residence in the Clear Light Mental Retreat.

  By the esthetic standards of Ciudad Pallas, this no doubt might have passed as a triumph of the architect’s art. A sprawling, single-story, crescent-shaped structure, windowless from the vantage of the street upon which it was sited, its inner curve embraced about two hundred degrees of a large circular garden, the circumferential boundaries of which were completed by a high concrete wall cunningly hidden from the easy perception of those within by a closely planted screen of even taller fir trees. The garden itself was mostly green lawn, dotted randomly with oaks and veined with winding flagstone paths that went nowhere in particular. Here and there small beds of flowers had been planted, wooden benches set out, and little shaded gazebos erected.

  My room, like those of all the other residents, faced this interior garden with an entire wall of glass which slid aside to allow egress directly thereto, and which could be opaqued at my pleasure. There was a bed, an armoire, several chests, and a chaise, all crafted of reddish rough-hewn wood, and the usual toilet facilities done up in grainy gray stone. The walls were a cheery yellow, the ceiling cerulean blue, and the carpet a tawny concoction of shaggy ersatz fur.

  All in all, an environment crafted to tranquilify the mind and brighten the spirit, though to my eyes the enclosed garden with its cleverly concealed wall soon seemed rather reminiscent of the vivarium of the Unicorn Garden, which had similarly masked the reality of confinement behind a screen of trees.

  Nor were the other terms of residency less than as promised. I was supplied with a small wardrobe of tunics, skirts, and trousers, and three meals were indeed provided daily in the refectory. And if these left a good deal to be desired in the way of culinary artistry by the standards of a Grand Palais, a proper Edojin restaurant, or even the finger food of the Gypsy Jokers, at least it could be said that the fare of the Clear Light was an improvement over that of the research dome storeroom, let alone the monotonous raw produce of the Bloomenveldt.

  As for the promise of freedom to wander the streets of Ciudad Pallas when my presence was not required by the mages of the mental retreat, this was a privilege of which I sought not to avail myself for quite some time, for on the one hand my rapidly returning memories thereof were entirely depressing and uninviting in comparison to the bucolic ambiance of the Clear Light’s garden, and on the other, I hardly felt myself yet ready to sally forth into the long-unfamiliar milieu of urban thoroughfares.

  Nor was the vie of the mental retreat one of boredom or ennui, at least at first.

  After weeks of spieling my endless tale to no other truly sapient ears than my own, indeed for that matter after perfect lack of avid audiences as a ruespieler in Great Edoku, it was quite exhilarating to find myself encouraged to babble on daily at great length to rapt audiences of Healers and mages, no less, and to observe that my least mutterings were duly recorded on word crystal fo
r posterity.

  This is not to say that I was set behind a podium in an auditorium like a learned lecturer. Rather did I spend four hours a day and more in a small windowless room in the bowels of the mental retreat seated across a table from two to half a dozen people at a time, with Urso usually presiding during this stage of the process.

  As for my audiences, a different combination seemed to appear daily, apparently drawn from a pool that must have numbered several dozen scientists; how many of these were on the staff of the Clear Light itself I was never to learn.

  At first, I was simply encouraged to retell the Tale of the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt over and over and over again sans interruption or interrogation and was not even properly introduced to the audiences for same, exactly as if I were indeed a ruespieler declaiming before random anonymous throngs, though alas no ruegelt was forthcoming at the conclusion of the performance.

  During these first two weeks or so, such recitations seemed to be the sole form of my therapy, and I would be an ingrate if I dismissed the benefits thereof as accidental byproducts of entirely self-interested scientific inquiry. For I was allowed, indeed encouraged, to tell my tale in all its endlessly mutating versions long after the variety thereof must have been thoroughly exhausted from the point of view of my listeners, indeed beyond the point where it began to seem like so much repetitious babblement even to myself.

  This, it would seem, was precisely the nature of the therapy.

  First the endless retelling of the tale began to converge toward a consistent version, much as the odes of the preliterate bards must have converged toward the memorized consensuses that were to be eventually transcribed into those written versions which have passed down to us today.

  Then I began to attain a certain self-consciousness of this very process, at which point craft entered the picture as I struggled to compose my verbal gushings into a coherent spiel capable of being reproduced for the understanding and delectation of the worlds at large. Which is to say I developed during this period the spiel which I was later to declaim for ruegelt in the uninspiring streets of Ciudad Pallas.