Sideshow

by Sheri S. Tepper

  And Great Dragon came, Great Dragon was there, taller than Chimi-ahm, more powerful, one huge paw on the edge of the altar, his fanged maw no more than an arm’s length from Houdum-Balal’s surprised face.

  “No,” whispered the dragon in a voice of hushed thunder. “No Chimi-ahm. No Zhulia the Whore. No Chibbi the Dancer. No Lord Balal. None of them. Dabbo-dam is done, boss chief. Dabbo-dam is done!”

  Fringe thought she heard the words, believed she heard the words, but they had no sound to them. No timbre she could identify. Almost as though she heard them through some other part than her ears.

  Great Dragon was turning, tail flailing, claws reaching, snatching at the priests, tossing them, eating their torches, swallowing their smoke, shredding the images of the gods, sending them screaming out into the night with the dragon in pursuit, leaving Houdum-Bah, suddenly dwindled, with his mouth open and all his chiefdom in disarray.

  “Let’s go before he decides whose fault that was,” said Jory.

  The girl child lay behind Fringe where she had fallen, unmoving, her eyes rolled up into her head. Fringe snatched her up, wrapped her in a fold of the oracle’s cloak, and carried her along, shrugging aside Danivon’s clutching remonstrance.

  “Get off me!” she growled at him. “Get off!”

  “She belongs here,” he whispered, running at her side. “For the love of diversity, Fringe. She’s not yours to take!”

  “Someone took you!” she snarled in return. “Someone took you. Kept you from ending up on the skull rack in Molock. Kept them from killing you, beating your bones to powder. Zasper Ertigon took you, Danivon! Now I’m taking her. Get out of my way.”

  And there was no time for argument, for the city came awake like a hive disturbed, with riot and burning and screaming in all directions, for there seemed to be dragons everywhere, pursuing the populace wherever it would run.

  • • •

  In City Fifteen, Sepel and his colleagues set aside the sensory recordings left by Clore and Thob and Breaze and Bland. Those left, only a few, are by Jordel of Hemerlane.

  “Join me?” Sepel invites his colleagues.

  Tentacles are joined. They are conscious of being Sepel794DZ and colleagues….

  Then, in an instant, they are Jordel of Hemerlane.

  Jordel of Hemerlane, unconscious of any being save himself, seeing what Jordel saw, knowing what Jordel knew. Being where Jordel had been….

  High in the tower room. Such heights usually give him a feeling of exhilaration, an appreciation of the forces supporting such great structures in their skyward reach. Today he feels only depression, frustration, anger. Across from him, outside the windows, clouds scud by on a summer wind. At a distance is a glimmer of banners on pinnacles, a shiver of windblown flags. This is Brannigan Galaxity, heartbeat of humanity.

  Before the windows, silhouetted against the racing clouds, stands Orimar Breaze, handsome and silver-haired, his head like that of a prophet. The group is assembled in his place, his important place, this apartment at the top of the highest tower, this apartment that is above even the Pinnacle Study where the meetings of the Great Question Committee are held. And handsome Orimar Breaze is making a scornful shape with his lips as he hears what Jordel has to say.

  Jordel feels his tongue flap between dry lips as he pleads with them. “… must protest this unwillingness to accept our specifications! We can’t risk this!” He swallows, trying to mitigate the panic he feels in the presence of these uncomprehending, unscientific … idiots!

  No understanding on the face of Orimar Breaze, nor on the faces of Mintier Thob or Therabas Bland, who already have their mouths open in incipient argument.

  “Dear boy …”

  So speaks Mintier Thob as she smiles that patronizingly maternal smile. Though it convinces many people she is sensible and honest, it no longer convinces Jordel of anything:

  “When we go into the Core on Elsewhere, you want our patterns to remain in stasis except for fully automated annual updatings. Believe me, dear boy, we understand what you’re saying. However, we prefer that our patterns shall not remain in stasis and they shall be updated and corrected on a discretionary basis rather than automatically.”

  She smiles, she speaks: calmly, briefly, seeming to cleave to the point while actually grazing it only slightly. So she has enlightened many desperate issues with ignorant complacency. So she does now. Secure in her comfortable, motherly tone, she solicits approval from the others.

  And receives it. Yes, say Breaze and Bland and Clore. We prefer our own discretion to your automatics, dear boy. Yes, we do.

  “Then you don’t understand the implications,” he cries, stung into undiplomatic truth.

  “Oh, my boy, indeed!” squawks Therabas Bland, a stringy old hen who eschews body sculpting and syntheskin to sag unappealingly in the dangling beads and flowing draperies of her girlhood. Beauty and grace are nothing to her, she often says, nothing to one to whom the secrets of the universe have been disclosed. She is a mathematician and proud of her mind. She will not believe it might fail her. Her own thoughts must be correct, else she would find them unthinkable. So she waggles a finger at him, cackling, “My boy, indeed, let us say it simply. We prefer to stay awake. We prefer not to emulate some fairy-tale heroine and sleep for a few hundred years. Surely you can understand that!”

  What can Jordel say he has not said a thousand times before? He nods, he holds out his hand placatingly. “It is instinctive to respond as you are doing. My gut response is the same as yours. It is not, however, the correct thing to do, and the implications of it are very grave.”

  “In what way?” Orimar’s left nostril lifts only a little; Orimar who never pays attention to the sense of any argument, but only to his own place in it, his own allegiances. His place in this one is beside Thob, beside Bland.

  “Error,” Jordel hears himself cry, doing his best to make a tocsin of it. “Error will creep in. If the matter of update and correction is left to the discretion of individual minds, we will be wide open to error.”

  And from across the room sounds a rasping snort as the cadaverous form of Subble Clore rises from a half-hidden chair, wearing an unpleasantly predatory smile that makes Jordel shudder. Clore has made a life-long study of organisms exposed to negative stimulation, of survival or mortality under stress, of the evolutionary response to agony. Clore is a scholar of pain. His place at the Galaxity has been challenged from time to time, but it is whispered he has a hold upon the almighty Chancellors. There are tales of unspeakable agreements made in the pursuit of power, but despite all the tittle-tattle he is here, one of the elect of Brannigan.

  “You are saying we are untrustworthy.” He lifts his hands, palms up, to the ladies, to Orimar, the gesture a sneer.

  Jordel clears his throat. “I’m saying we are all human.”

  “But some much less fallible than others,” remarks Mintier Thob. “Which surely includes the faculty of Brannigan Galaxity. You are one of us, Jordel. Have you no pride! Do you so mistrust yourself?”

  Jordel considers pride. Orimar is a narcissist. He will use the Core to go on worshiping himself. Thob is enormous in complacency. She will go into the Core because she cannot conceive of a universe without herself in it. Bland believes herself incapable of error. For her, the Core represents a new universe to set right. Clore … Clore’s restless mind plays with life and death. He will enter the Core because it will offer new forms of life, new kinds of death. These are not the reasons they would give, but Jordel knows them well. Still, he answers softly, hoping yet. “Of course I mistrust myself, Lady Professor. I’ve told you that before.”

  “Enough, Jordel!” explodes Subble Clore. “If you’re weighed down by self-doubt, keep it to yourself. Leave it alone, for humanity’s sake!”

  “It’s for humanity’s sake I don’t,” Jordel replies forcefully. “Time in the matrix is not like time outside, it is more like dream time. Episodes that seem to go on for days may actually last only mom
ents. If you are awake in the Core you may achieve many years’ worth of memories while a single year passes outside.

  “These memories will not be anchored by sensory feedback as they would be in the real world. In the outside world, sensory feedback provides the necessary referents to anchor our emotional and intellectual experiences. Our experiences are separated and made discrete by sensory trivia—by movements, smells, the sound of voices, the sight of a face. In the Core, there will be no sensory data at all, and where there is none, minds tend to create it, just as they do during dreaming.

  “So, you will create environments and experiences. And by the time a year has passed, your pattern will have deviated considerably from its original. Returning your pattern to its original configuration would be equivalent to wiping out years, perhaps decades of your life! They will be the most recent, vivid years. To wipe them out will be like dying. You won’t … we won’t be able to bring ourselves to do it!”

  Bland smiles, a world-weary smile. “Nonsense, dear boy. I’m an adult, a scholar. I know the need for correction of data from time to time. I can trust myself to take care of it.”

  “I don’t trust myself that much. Truly,” Jordel replies.

  “Among our peers, I think you’ll find yourself virtually alone in that,” Mintier Thob responds reprovingly. She strides to the window and gestures outward, across the tower tops to the far horizon, including in the gesture all that is Brannigan. “The academic world is ideal for the development of humane qualities, Jordel. I think we here in this room have proven that. We’re more sane than most people. We’re more patient. We’re kinder.”

  She smiles her detestable smile, and Jordel, remembering recent bloodletting sessions among these same academicians, tries not to let his reaction show.

  “After all,” the Lady Professor goes on, “think what trust Brannigan has reposed in our committee: the very destiny of mankind. And we are not about to leave any part of that destiny to an automatic function designed by some mechanic!” She spits the last words, looking directly at him, leaving no doubt just which mechanic she has in mind.

  Jordel is silent. So. He has tried. He has done his best. Now let them do as they will do. He will do what he must to protect himself….

  And the recording trailed off in feelings of anger, disgust, and firm resolve.

  “Twaddle,” said Sepel794DZ, angrily returning to himself. “All twaddle. Those people weren’t responsible for the destiny of mankind. They were merely discussing mankind’s destiny, not creating it!”

  “That’s manness for you, confusing the manipulation of symbols with reality!” snarled a colleague dink. “And if Jordel was right, it tells us what happened to the inhabitants of the Core.”

  “But what happened to Jordel himself?” asked another colleague.

  Sepel replied: “You felt his intentions as I did. Either he never entered the Core, or he arranged to have himself processed in accordance with specifications. If he found someone —a technician, a fellow engineer—whom he could trust, that person may have begun the little rhyme we learned from Boarmus.”

  “‘… then Jordel of Hemerlane/chased them all back home again,’” quoted a dink thoughtfully. “If that’s true, then Jordel went into the Core all right. If that’s what he meant to do, he’s still in there somewhere.”

  During the return to Tolerance Boarmus steeled himself for the stratagem he had decided upon. He and Jacent discussed it on the trip back, whispering into each other’s ears, the boy white-faced but resolute—or perhaps only foolhardy. Boarmus thought that likely. Still, Jacent had been fond of Metty, and Boarmus spared no description of what had happened to Metty and would, no doubt, happen to all of them if the thing or things down in the Core weren’t stopped.

  “I guess I don’t understand how this will stop anything,” the boy had whispered, shamefaced.

  “We don’t know that anything will. This idea may slow it down, that’s all. Give us some breathing space. If you can think of something better….”

  Jacent couldn’t, of course. He wouldn’t even have thought of this.

  “Remember”—Boarmus put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed hard to reinforce the point—”you’re merely an average citizen. Someone who’s concerned about the matter.”

  “And if it kills us?”

  “Then we’re dead,” said Boarmus flatly. “And maybe better off!”

  They did not wait for the ghosts to come to them. As soon as it was late enough for traffic in Tolerance to have fallen into its nighttime mode, Jacent followed the bulky man to the secret tube, down into the featureless room, through it and into the winding way to the Core. It was vacant. No one was there.

  “Something will show up,” said Boarmus, pressing a lever down. In the ramified structure beneath him, a signal was emitted: Report time. The Provost is present.

  “Where will it come from?” whispered Jacent.

  “Elsewhere,” muttered Boarmus. “Anywhere, boy. Halfway around the world. Hold your water. Look subdued.”

  It wasn’t difficult. He was subdued. He started violently when the voice came from the wall.

  “Boarmus,” it said softly. Not the gulper voice. One of the female-sounding ones.

  “I have been considering what you said to me last,” said Boarmus, putting his hand on Jacent’s shoulder.

  “There is an unauthorized person with you.”

  “True. He is here as an example.”

  “An example of what?”

  “An example of the awe in which the people of Tolerance hold you,” said Boarmus. Under his fingers, Jacent shivered. Very good, Boarmus thought. Let the boy be scared half to death, so long as he doesn’t forget his lines. “An ordinary person of Tolerance. Not a Provost. Not a member of the Inner Circle.”

  “Does he hold me in awe?”

  Boarmus shook him. “Do you hold, ah … her … in awe, boy.”

  “Oh, yes.” Jacent shivered. “Yes, I do.”

  “In reverence?”

  Jacent nodded, and had to be prodded into speaking aloud. “Oh, yes.”

  “What does he think I am?” The voice managed to sound curious.

  “Now,” signaled Boarmus’s fingers, almost gladly. He’d worried about working the conversation around to this point; now he wouldn’t have to.

  “Well,” said Jacent from a dry mouth. “Some people think you’re god. But others don’t.”

  (Good boy.)

  “Why don’t they?” Still curious, not yet angry.

  “Well, because,” Jacent said. “God is omniscient. God knows the answers to all questions. If you are god, you’d know the answer to the Great Question. I mean, people say if you’re really god, you’ll answer that question. Then everybody will know you’re god. Everybody will know.”

  “How do you know I haven’t answered the question?” Another voice, this one edged with anger, displeasure. Boarmus held on to the boy’s shoulder, keeping him steady. Even this voice was not the really bad one, not the gulper. The gulper must be busy elsewhere.

  “You’d have told us,” said Jacent in a firm voice. “In order that we might work toward our destiny properly. You see, that’s how we know all gods before now were false, they never told us what our destiny really was. So, if you do tell us, you’ll be the only true one. And the answer will be so self-evident, we’d all agree with it. Because when a true god truly answers a question, that’s what happens. Everyone knows that.”

  “But I am god,” muttered a voice. “We are god.”

  “Of course,” quavered Jacent. “I already believe that. But everyone will believe it when you answer the Great Question.”

  “I don’t need you to believe. I can make you do what I say even if you don’t believe.” A sulky-sounding voice, this. “God doesn’t need to prove anything, not if god can make people do what god wants.”

  Boarmus patted Jacent silent. They had struggled with this argument, whispering, on the way home. Now was time to see if
the Brannigan minds would understand it.

  Boarmus said, “That’s true. But if people only do what you say, then you’ll only get what you’re already capable of. Gods create beings as tools to explore beyond what they already are and know. To create randomness, chaos, chance. To create discovery. You created man to discover new things for you, and man will discover them, if he knows you’re god, if he wants to please you. That is what you created mankind for, wasn’t it? After all, you’re god, you’re very busy. You created man as a kind of tool, to find things out for you.”

  Silence. That silence that Boarmus had always believed meant the minds were talking together. Disagreeing. That was the key. If there was still enough individuality in there for disagreement. Which he wasn’t at all sure of!

  He tugged. Time to get out of there. They fled, not quite precipitously.

  “What’re they doing now?” murmured Jacent, feeling the cold sweat dripping from his jaw. “What?”

  “I hope it’s arguing with itself,” whispered Boarmus, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “Pray that’s what it’s doing, boy. Arguing.”

  Behind them, in the depths of the Core, there was argument indeed, though it did not go in any way Boarmus could have foreseen.

  One presence. “At Brannigan we …”

  And another. “… mankind’s problem only …”

  And another yet. “… should prove we are what we say we are, after all….”

  And another arriving, full of rage, the one Boarmus thought of as the gulper, that one stripped out of Chimi-ahm and deprived of his fun, the gulper thwarted by Great Dragon, that one humiliated before his worshipers!

  “We need prove nothing! Nothing!”

  Silence in the Core, in the net, everywhere as intention wavered before this thunderous presence.

  “But we always said man would answer the question.” One broke the quiet in a mechanical whine. “Not others, only man. But we aren’t man. Not anymore.”

  “Then make man answer,” hissed that which had been Chimi-ahm.