“Why did you do that?” asked a voice from above. “Why did you run off?”
He looked up to see Nela teetering above him once more, on barely manageable wings.
“That was silly,” she gasped.
“Possesseds,” he hissed at her. “Not human anymore. Take us over.”
She half landed, half fell beside him. A snuffly bustling approached through the reeds and erupted at his side, spilling the furred creature between them.
“Why did you run away, Danivon?” asked Bertran.
Danivon put his hands over his eyes and shuddered, still moaning wordlessly.
“He’s scared of us,” said Nela in a sad, remote voice. “Really scared. The way Turtledove used to be scared. Of nothing. He used to scare himself, invent monsters, make up horrors.”
“Danivon,” said Bertran pleadingly. “Danivon. Look at us.”
He looked at them and saw monsters. Horrible, nonhuman monsters with feathers and claws. He howled and hid his face once more, lost in nightmare.
Bertran patted his knee with one webbed hand. “Danivon. You were going to take us apart and rebuild us, weren’t you? So? Something else took us apart, is all, and all we can figure out is it knew we’d always dreamed of being … different from what we were … so it gave us different shapes…. That’s all. We’re the same. Inside, we’re the same.” His tone betrayed him. He did not believe he would ever be the same. “Jory says it will put us back, if we like….”
Danivon trembled, gulped for air, fought for air, couldn’t breathe. “It got Fringe,” he gasped. “It got Fringe. She isn’t Fringe anymore.”
“Isn’t she?” asked Nela. “Really? She did seem odd….”
“Cold,” he howled. “She’s all cold! When she heard Zasper was dead, she didn’t even cry!”
“But she probably wanted to be like that!” cried Nela. “Fringe wanted something else, Danivon. All her human feelings kept getting in the way. She wanted to be fearless and immune to pain, without all those muddles and pangs. Poor Fringe, she used to hurt all the time. So now maybe she doesn’t.”
“She didn’t want to be like that!” he cried.
“But …” said Nela.
“Maybe she really didn’t,” said Bertran. “We didn’t really want to be like this, Nela.”
“But …”
Danivon didn’t hear, couldn’t move. He went on cowering, unable to think, unable to accept. The twins murmured to each other in subdued voices, then went away. After a time Jory and Asner came tunneling through the rattling stems, complaining in cracked voices, to hunker down beside him with many groans and gasps. They talked more to each other than to him.
“Of course, what’s here in noplace isn’t the Hobbs Land Gods,” said Jory, patting Danivon on the knee and peering into his eyes.
“No,” Asner agreed. “Not really.”
“Similar, but not identical,” she said. “Because the Hobbs Land Gods had mostly humans to work with, whereas this device is both controlled by the Arbai and dominated by their thoughts and sensitivities. Only if it were freed from their control could it become like the Hobbs Land Gods.”
“True,” said Asner, squeezing Danivon’s shoulder. “Which is no doubt why it affected the twins as it did. And Fringe. If it had enough experience with humans, it would have repaired them differently.”
Danivon merely shuddered, scarcely hearing, while some remote part of himself stood aloof and amazed at this craven animal, this cowering creature he had become. He had not believed himself capable of this. Where had this terror come from? Of course he had always been taught the worst things in the universe were the Hobbs Land Gods, but still….
The two old people went on chatting, of this, of that, of old times, of recent events. After a considerable time, Danivon found his fists unclenched and his jaw relaxed. It was like being under running water, like listening to rain. The remote, judgmental part of himself went away somewhere. The old voices went on and on, unhurried and untroubled, like little fingers, untying all his knots. The tension dissolved. All the fear dissipated. He wondered, rather vaguely, if he was now possessed, but he didn’t protest when Asner and Jory took his arms and half led, half leaned on him as they made their way out of the reeds and across a grassy plot to the place near the buildings where the others sat around an open fire, dining on bits of roast meat and awaiting his arrival with curious faces.
“Danivon, and you, Fringe, listen to me,” said Jory. “If you want no interference from what you think of as the Hobbs Land Gods, you’ll get none.”
“They’ve already interfered,” said Fringe in her chilly voice. “It’s too late. I will die rather than live possessed.” She said it as though she commented on the weather.
Jory shushed her. “It’s not too late. They’ll put you back precisely as you were and leave you alone. It’s just … they, it had no reliable human index, no one much to cross-check with and very little time.”
“They’ll put me back dead?”
“They’ll put you back however you like! Dead. Alive. Reconstructed as you were before the gaver got you. However.”
“Enslaved,” said Fringe emotionlessly.
“Not,” said Jory in a dispirited tone. “Not enslaved any more than you already were. You will still be enslaved by yourself, by custom, by opinion, by all the hierarchies you have accepted from others or built for yourself, but you’re used to that.”
Fringe merely stared, disbelieving, but Danivon sat up straighter.
“How?” he asked. “How do I get … unpossessed?”
“Simply think of yourself as you were,” Jory said. “The device will help you do it. It won’t cheat. It has no desire for power. It has no ego to assert. It is simply what it was designed to be, a communication device. Because most people like to think of themselves as better than they are—kinder and more generous—the usual net effect of the device is an improvement in people’s ability to get along with one another. There is more trust, more faith, as Asner could tell you. Nonetheless, if you spend some time remembering incidents from your life and how you felt and reacted toward them, you’ll become more and more what you were. The Arbai Device has no use for grieving, rebellious participants.”
Danivon looked only partially convinced.
“How can you prove this?” Fringe demanded. “How would I know it had left me?”
“Are you aware, now, of how Nela feels? No, don’t look at her. Are you aware?”
Fringe nodded, unwillingly. She was. She knew exactly how Nela felt, and Bertran, and Danivon….
“It is the device informing you. Say to yourself now that you do not wish to know how Nela feels. Keep in mind that you do not wish to know about others. Shortly, you will find you do not know.” Jory spoke with rueful and unimpassioned conviction.
“When you are as deaf and unperceiving as you were before, you will know it has gone. When you feel yourself a solitary creature, walled inside yourself, you will know you are alone.”
Fringe turned away, believing she had heard the truth.
“But I always …” murmured Danivon. “I could smell …”
“For you, Asner and I will think up a different test,” said Jory, almost angrily. “But I assure you, you will not be an unwilling part of anything!”
“You haven’t really met Alouez,” Cafferty murmured, changing the subject. “You haven’t met Haifazh, who has only just come.”
The girl nodded, the woman nodded. Danivon merely stared at them, not even hearing their names, as he mentally took an inventory of Danivon as Danivon knew Danivon to be. Seeing his vacant expression, Jory pushed him toward a bench against the sun-warmed wall. He sat there, concentrating on himself-qua-himself, running over the catalog of his faults and virtues, breathing through his mouth, trying not to smell anything or think anything that might make the terror rise up once more.
Jacent was still reciting a catalog of events he had experienced in Tolerance. He went on and on, concluding, “
… and it isn’t just Tolerance. All the people of Elsewhere are dying. Children, women, men, old people. All dying. Boarmus said the dragons were his last hope. So what should I do now?”
Jory said firmly, “It’s unfortunate that Boarmus placed any hope in dragons. The Arbai won’t do anything, young man.”
“What’s happening?” Danivon blurted, suddenly aware that what she had said had to do with him. “Who won’t do anything?”
“Tell him,” Curvis demanded, giving Danivon an almost-contemptuous look. “Tell him all about it. He doesn’t know all about the Arbai Device yet?”
“What more should I know?” cried Danivon.
Jory seated herself and folded her hands in her lap. “The device is a living thing. When it is small, it’s simple, without thought or volition. As it grows larger, it draws on the minds and consciousness of every intelligence in the net and becomes synergistic, predictive, even creative. It can draw on the dreams and imaginations of the minds it includes. It can evolve syncretic symbols to interpret among different life forms. It can convince all its parts that they see or feel or hear or smell certain things. It can create a reality that all its parts accept.”
“It did that on Hobbs Land,” said Asner. “Hobbs Land was dull, but we settlers longed for marvels, so it drew on our imaginations to create marvels for us. Some of its creations—the ones that could be grown, like trees or beasts—were real. Other creations, geographical ones, were sort of … illusory, at least, to start with. Eventually they became real too, though it took a long time to make a canyon or a mountain range by moving a molecule at a time. Eventually, when our world was threatened, it drew on our experience and its own growth potential to create a defense.”
“It interfered with you,” snarled Curvis. “That’s all Danivon needs to know. It took you over! And it’s now taking us over! Taking him over.”
Jory waved a bony fist at him. “Though I have repeatedly said that does not happen, it is beside the point Asner was making! He’s saying the device can actually create or destroy in response to the needs of the intelligences it includes.”
Danivon cried suddenly, “What are you saying, woman?”
Jory repeated, “I’m saying the Arbai Device could eliminate the Brannigan network if allowed to get at it.”
“And the Arbai won’t let it?” Danivon asked incredulously.
“They won’t let it. They have programmed it to grow only where they wish it to grow. The limit has always been at the wall.”
“Why won’t they let it go farther?”
Jory raised her eyebrows at him, miming astonishment. “That question yet again? You sound like Curvis, Danivon. Here you are, both Enforcers. You’ve both seen fit to lecture us on noninterference all the way up the Fohm, yet both of you get swollen about the neck when I tell you the Arbai hold the same point of view.”
Danivon closed his eyes, trying to understand. “They won’t use it beyond the wall even to save the lives of all those on Elsewhere.”
“Correct,” said Asner.
“Millions of people are going to die.”
“Likely,” said Asner again. “Or already have.”
Danivon said desperately, “I’ll ask the Arbai to change their minds. Just because our forefathers chose doesn’t mean we have! We aren’t choosing now! We don’t choose to die like this now! The Derbeckians didn’t choose for Chimi-ahm to be real!”
“The only difference between Chimi-ahm real and Chimi-ahm illusory is that the real is able to do in person what the priests and hounds used to do in his name,” said Jory.
“All right! But Derbeck’s only one province!” he cried. “Surely, under the present situation …”
Jory laughed harshly. “Situation? What situation? When man first came here, the Arbai examined his history in an attempt to understand him. They found holocaust after holocaust, armageddon after armageddon, each of them as dreadful as this situation. Man has always tortured in the name of his gods and committed atrocities in the name of his culture.”
She threw up her hands, her hair making a white mane about her wrathful face.
“I knew that as well as the Arbai did, but still, when I became aware there was another force at work, I asked the Arbai to reconsider. The Arbai then asked me: ‘Was there any difference between what the new forces were doing to man and what man had always done to himself?’”
“Jory …” said Asner, troubled, putting out a hand.
“Let me rave, Asner. Their question took me back in time. Back to the planet on which I was born. Back to the planet from which Great Dragon and I came. Back to the places we have seen in the centuries between. Everywhere, men have perpetuated myths of honor and death, everywhere men have worshiped gods who have destroyed them. So, the Arbai asked, ‘Why should man be saved from customs and gods he himself had created?’”
She leaned to speak into Danivon’s face. “If they ask you that same question, what answer will you give them?”
“I might say something about mercy,” he cried. “Something about pity!”
“You’re a fine one to talk, Enforcer! But, as a matter of fact, that’s what I did say. In my womanly way, I talked a good deal about mercy. And I was told mercy was an end, but the means to achieve that end was interference, and that ends do not justify means. Which, surprisingly enough, is precisely the male promulgated doctrine I was weaned on as a child!”
She came to herself, dwindled before their eyes to stand fragile and trembling before them. “Sorry,” she said, tottering. “I sometimes forget I am no longer a prophetess.”
“You will always be a prophetess,” said Asner tenderly, putting his arms around her. “Until you are no more. And by that time, there will be no need for a prophetess.”
“Certainly not here,” she said wearily. “For everyone will be dead, all talk of mercy notwithstanding.”
Curvis growled at her in a bitter voice, “Not quite all if what you say is true. The people out there, yes. But not your people behind the wall.”
“All,” Jory mumbled tiredly. “All! I’m grieving for all of them, stupid boy. For Fringe and you and Latibor and Cafferty. For my people as well as the others. The Arbai may have no concept of evil but they have a horror of pain, so they’re going.” Jory turned and laid her forehead on Asner’s shoulder, clinging to him. The air behind her moved in a convoluted way. Shadows chased one another across scales and fangs and great, smoldering eyes.
“Going?” asked Fringe wonderingly.
It was Asner who replied. “They’re retreating under the massif. They’ve got some kind of redoubt down there, built long ago in case of need. They’re pulling in the Arbai Device behind them, and in case you’re wondering, no, our people are not invited to join them.”
“We’re too discomforting for the Arbai,” murmured Jory. “All these human thoughts and desires getting into the device make it painful for them. Like rocks in their shoes, hurting every step they take. They can’t handle ambiguity. And once the device is gone, there’ll be nothing to stop the Brannigans.”
“How can your Arbai friends let you die?” Bertran asked the old woman.
“You didn’t make that choice,” cried Nela. “You came from outside! Surely they’d save you!”
“Ahh …” said Jory.
“Ahh …” Asner echoed.
Nela cried, “If they won’t even save you, then none of us can escape. They’ll still kill us, just as they were going to do! We’ve no place to go.”
“Even if there were a place, I wouldn’t leave my comrades to fight alone,” said Fringe, as though surprised at the thought. “And it is better that the Hobbs Land Gods are going. If we are to die, we should die freely, as we have lived.”
Jory looked at Fringe and shook her head in irritation.
“There now,” whispered Asner. “She won’t stay this way.”
“She would die happier this way,” said Jory.
“Do you want that kind of contentment for her?”
“Oh, Asner. Of course not.”
“When are the Arbai going?” Danivon demanded.
“They’ve already gone,” Jory replied. “They left immediately after you arrived because they did not wish to explain yet again. They’re finding explanation increasingly painful as more and more humans come behind the wall, ready to dispute with them about evil.”
“And the … the Arbai Device?”
“Is already withdrawing from the wall. Little by little. A few days, perhaps, before it too is gone.”
Danivon darted a glance from Fringe to Curvis, finding no response from either of them. Curvis seemed absent, as though he were lost in some other time and place, while Fringe had the firm exalted look of a heroic statue graven to memorialize some great triumph—or some terrible martyrdom. So far as she was concerned, it seemed to make no difference which.
There seemed to be nothing more to say. Even Danivon was silenced.
When evening came, Fringe found Jory on the terrace, petting a cat. Danivon and the twins sat upon the wall nearby, Danivon staring at the forest but Bertran and Nela watching Jory as though her action were rare and wonderful, and indeed, her hands wove a spell of contentment above the purring animal.
“Why do you do that?” asked Fringe wonderingly.
“Because one can, if one wishes, distill all the happiness of a lifetime into one soft, furry body and a stroking hand,” said Jory. “When one is very old, one can.”
“Ah,” said Fringe, unconvinced, her brow furrowed.
“You’re troubled,” said Jory, including them all.
“I wasn’t until this afternoon,” she replied thoughtfully. “Truly, Jory. I thought we would die, yes, but dying is what Enforcers often do. There was no point in being troubled. But then, this afternoon I began to worry over it….”
“Thank God for that,” said Jory.
“I was more comfortable before,” said Fringe plaintively, sitting down beside the old woman. “I suppose because I wasn’t me …”
“No.”
“… or not all of me, at any rate. So, I should probably say ‘Thank God’ also.” Her tone was plaintive, as though she was not sure she meant it. “Though, since I’m going to die, I might as well have been comfortable about it.”
Sideshow Page 51
