Danger, Religion!

by Brian Aldiss

  He felt my pulse, which labored beneath my skin like a man struggling to free himself from imprison­ment in a sack. Sunk in an ocean of feeling, I said nothing; I could see the benefit of remaining uncon­scious all one's life. Then one could be free to pursue the real things.

  "You probably won't know this, Meacher, but nico­tine used to retard the passing of urine. It set in motion a chain of reactions which released a sub­stance called vasopressin from the pituitary gland into the bloodstream; when the vasopressin reached the kidney, the excretion of water taken by the mouth was suppressed.

  "Nicomiotine releases noradrenaline from the hy-pothalamus and from the tegmentum of the limbic brain, that part of the brain which controls the func­tions of consciousness. At the same time, the drug builds up miodrenaline in the peripheral blood ves­sels. This results in what we call an 'attention trans­fer.' The result—I'm simplifying here, Meacher—the result is the dislocation of consciousness necessary for switching over from one matrix to another. The flow of attention is, so to speak, given a Mobius twist and tagged onto the next matrix."

  "Curiouser and curiouser," I murmured.

  "The seat on which you sit is in a circuit which can be turned to various vibratory levels, each of which corresponds to one matrix of the multidimensional universe. I move this switch here, and you will slip easily through the portal into the matrix from which I have come. Don't think of it as going through a barrier; rather, you are avoiding a barrier.

  "The effects of this technique can also be achieved by long mental discipline; it was this that the yogi were unwittingly reaching out for when they—ah, you are sliding through now, Meacher. Don't be alarmed.”

  I was not alarmed. I was standing outside my own shell and seeing that to all of us come moments of calm and detachment; that stillness might be the secret which only a handful of men in any generation stumbles on. In the same long-drawn moment of time, I was aware that my left foot had disintegrated. No dismay assailed me, for the right foot had disin­tegrated too. The wisdom and symmetry of this event pleased me.

  Everything was disintegrating into mist—not mat I took it seriously, although for a moment I was fright­ened by the basilisk stare of my jacket buttons, glar­ing up unwinkingly at me, so that I was reminded of those lines of Rimbaud's about "the coat buttons that are eyes of wild creatures glaring at you from the end of the corridors." Then buttons and Rimbaud and I were gone into mist!

  A feeling of sickness preceded me into Rastell’s matrix.

  I sat up shivering in the seat, my head suddenly clear and my body temperature low. The drug had built up a certain pitch and then abandoned me. It was as if a passionate love affair had been ended by an unexpected desertion, a betraying letter. In my misery, I looked about me and saw a room very like the room I had left.

  The room was the same shape; it had the same doors and windows, with the same view out of the window; but the curtains were not drawn, and it was light outside. I fancied the furniture was different, but had not taken in the other room clearly enough to be positive. One thing I was sure of: the other room had not contained a little ugly man dressed in over­alls standing motionless by the door, staring at me.

  As I got to my feet, Rastell materialized, pulling the collapsible screen with him.

  "You'll soon feel better," he said. "The first time's always the worst. Now well have to get a move on. Can you walk all right? We'll catch a cab in the street."

  "Where are we, Rastell? This is still Edinburgh. What's happened? If you are fooling with me...."

  He snapped his fingers impatiently but answered in a quiet voice.

  "You have left the Edinburgh of AA688, which is how we designate your home matrix. We are now in the Edinburgh of AA541. In many respects, one much resembles the other. In some ways you will find them identical. Only the workings of chance have brought divergencies from what you at first will think of as the norm. As you adjust to inter-matrix living, you'll realize that norms do not exist. Let's move."

  "I don't understand what you are saying. Are you saying that I may find my brother and his wife here?"

  "Why not? It's quite possible that you may find yourself here—here and in a thousand other matrices. It is a property of matter to imitate itself in all matrices and of chance to modify the imitations."

  He said this as if repeating some sort of received idea, walking over as he did to the shabby fellow, who, all this time, had stood patiently unmoving by the door. I saw this fellow wore a bracelet over his overalls below one knee; from the bracelet radiated four short arms that bit into his flesh. Rastell pro­duced a key from his pocket and thrust it into a lock in the bracelet. The four arms fell outward and hung loosely from their hinges on the bracelet's rim. The man rubbed his leg and hobbled around the room, restoring his circulation. He kept his eye on both Rastell and me, but especially on me, without looking at either of us directly, and without speaking.

  "Who is this man? What are you doing?" I asked.

  "He would have tried to escape while I was away if I had not locked him still," Rastell said. He produced a bottle from under his tunic. "They still have whiskey in this matrix, Meacher, you'll be glad to hear. Have a good pull—it will help you take control of yourself." Gratefully, I drank the warming stuff from the

  "I'm in control of myself, Rastell. But this talk of matter imitating itself in all matrices-it's like a vision of hell. For God's sake, how many matrices are there?"

  "There is not time to go into all that now. You shall have the answers if you help us. As yet, in any case, we have uncovered more questions than answers. Verification of the existence of the multimatrix uni­verse came no more than twenty years ago; the Matrix Investigation Corps was established only fifteen years ago, in 2027, the year the Fourth World War broke out in your matrix. In this matrix, the war did not take place."

  "Rastell, I cannot accept a word you are saying. I want no part of this."

  "You are a part of it. Dibbs, get the portal folded up."

  Dibbs was the voiceless one. Keeping his eyes to the ground, he did as he was told, folding the portal to the size of a satchel and clipping it onto Rastell's back. Rastell grabbed my arm and pulled me around, not unkindly.

  "Pull yourself together and let's get along. I know it's a shock at first, but you are a man of intelligence; you'll adjust."

  I knocked his hand away.

  "It's because I'm a man of intelligence that I reject all this. How many of these matrix worlds are there?"

  "The Matrix Investigation Corps measures con­sciousness in dees. Spaced three dees apart from each other lies an infinity of matrices—yes, an infinity, Meacher, and I see the word does little to reassure you. Only a few dozen worlds are explored as yet. One or two we are using. Some are so nearly identical to ours that only by a few details—the taste maybe of the whiskey or the name of a Sunday newspaper—do they differ at all; others—we found one, Meacher, where the earth was in an improperly created state, just a ball of turbulent rivers of mud, lying under permanent cloud. On one, there were only winged things in a forest world."

  He opened the door as he was speaking, and we went together down the winding stair and out into the street by a grimy door.

  My adventure had begun. At the sight of that grimy alien door opening, I was myself again, excited by the challenging novelty of everything.

  It had been evening when I went into that house, or a house like it. Now it was iron-gray day, with a daylight forged to match the stones of the city. Oh yes, this was Auld Reekie all right, unmistakably Auld Reekie—and unmistakably not the Edinburgh I had been born in.

  True, the buildings looked similar, though a strangeness in the pattern they presented told me that some of them were altered in ways I did not recollect. The people looked different and dressed differently.

  Gone were the shabby and talkative crowds among which Royal, Candida, and I had jostled only a short while before. The streets were almost empty, and those that moved about on
them were easily observed to fall into two classes. Some men and women there were who traveled the streets with their heads held high, who walked briskly, who smiled and saluted each other; they were well dressed, in what I thought of then as a "futuristic" style, with wide plain collars and short cloaks of what looked like a stiff leather or plastic. Many of the men wore swords. This class of people walked on the sidewalks.

  There was another class of people. These men were allowed to use only the road itself for walking. They did not greet each other; they moved through the streets with no grace in their carriage, for whether they walked or loped—as many of them did—they kept their heads down and looked about furtively from under their brows. Like Dibbs, they all wore overalls, like him they carried spiked bracelets below one knee, and like him they bore a yellow disc on their backs, between their shoulder blades.

  I had plenty of time to observe these people, for Rastell, as he had promised, had got us a cab, and in this we set off in the direction of Waverley Station.

  The cab amazed me. It was worked by manpower. Three men in overalls—I was already, I think, refer­ring to them mentally as the slave class—were chained to a seat behind the cab; Dibbs climbed up with them to make a fourth; together they worked away at foot pedals, and that was the way we moved, propelled by four sweating wretches.

  In the streets, several similar cabs were bowling along, and there were even sedan chairs, well suited to the uneven nature of Edinburgh's topography. There were also men riding horseback and occasional conventional trucks with internal-combustion engines. I saw no buses or private cars. Remembering how the latter class of vehicle had been forbidden in my own matrix, I asked Rastell about it.

  "We happen to have more manpower than we have fuels," he said. "And unlike your wretchedly proletari­an matrix, here most free men have leisure and find no need to hurry everywhere."

  "You impressed on me the need for hurry."

  "We are hurrying because the balance of this entire matrix is in a state of crisis. Civilization is threatened and must be saved. You and others like you from other matrices are being brought here because we need the perspective that an extra-matricial can give. Because your culture is inferior to ours does not mean that your abilities may not be invaluable.

  "Inferior? What do you mean, inferior? You appear to be a couple of centuries behind us, with your antiquated sedans and these anachronistic pedal cabs."

  "You don't measure progress just by materialistic standards, Meacher, I hope?" Up came his Gothic eyebrows as he spoke.

  “Indeed I don't. I measure it by personal liberty, and from the bare glimpse I have had of your cul­ture—your matrix—you live in nothing better than a slave state."

  "There is nothing better than a slave state. You are a historian, aren't you, a man capable of judging not simply by the parochial standards of his own time? What race became great without slave labor, includ­ing the Soviet Union and the British Empire? Was not Classical Greece a community of slave states? Who but slaves left all the lasting monuments of the world? In any case, you are prejudging. We have here a subject population, which is a different thing from slavery."

  "Is it different for the people concerned?"

  "Oh, for Church's sake, be silent, Meacher. You do nothing but verbalize."

  "Why invoke the church about it?"

  "Because I am a member of the Church. Take care not to blaspheme, Meacher. During your stay here, you will naturally be subject to our laws, and the Church keeps a firmer hold over its rights than it does in your matrix."

  I fell gloomily silent. We had labored up onto George IV Bridge. Two of the slaves, working at the farthest extent of their chains, had jumped down from the back of the cab and pushed us over that stretch of the way. Having crossed the bridge, we began to go steeply down by The Mound, braking and freewheeling alternately, though a flywheel re­moved most of the unpleasant jerkiness from this method of progress. Edinburgh Castle, grandly high on our left, looked unchanged to me, but in the more modern part of the town before us I saw much change, without being able to identify any particular bit of it with certainty; for Royal, Candida, and I had not lived very long in Edinburgh, and we were not completely familiar with it.

  Whistles sounded ahead. I took no notice, until Rastell stiffened and drew a revolver from his pocket. Ahead, by the steps of the Assembly Hall, a cab had crashed and turned over on its side. The three slaves attached to it could be seen—we had them in sight just around the bend—wrenching at their chains, try­ing to detach them from the cab. A passenger had survived the crash. He had his head out of the win­dow and was blowing a whistle.

  "The subs have allowed another crash—this is their favorite spot," Rastell said. "They get too negligent."

  "It's a difficult corner. How can you tell they al­lowed it to happen?"

  Giving me no answer, Rastell half opened the door of our cab and leaned out to shout at our slaves.

  "Hey, you subs, stop this cab at once. I want to get out. Dibbs, jump down!"

  We squealed to a halt on the slope. When Rastell jumped out I did the same. The air was cold. I was stiff and uneasy, well aware that I was so far from home that the distance could not be measured in miles. I looked about, and Dibbs and the three ped­dlers watched me with their eyebrows.

  "Better follow me, Meacher," Rastell called. He broke into a run toward the wrecked cab. One of the slaves there had wrenched his chain from its anchor­age in the wooden panels of the cab. Moving forward, he swung the loose end of the chain and brought it across the head of the passenger. The whistling stopped in mid-note. The passenger sagged to one side and then slid out of sight into the cab. By that time, the slave had jumped onto the top of the cab and turned to face Rastell. Other whistles began to shrill. A siren wailed.

  When the slave on the cab saw that Rastell carried a gun, his expression changed. I saw his look of dismay as he motioned his fellows who were still captive and jumped down behind the cab. His fellows stood there trembling, no longer trying to get away.

  Rastell did not fire. A car came tearing up the hill with sirens wailing and bucked to a halt between Rastell and the upturned cab. On the roof of the car was a winking sign that read church police. Black-and-white-uniformed men jumped out. They wore swords and carried guns. Rastell hurried over to them.

  I stayed where I was, half in the shelter of our cab, undecided, not wanting any part of anything. Dibbs and his fellow subs stood where they were, not mov­ing, not speaking.

  A crowd was collecting by the steps of the Assem­bly Hall, a crowd composed of the ruling class. The sub who had broken loose was kicked into the back of a police car. While the others indulged in argument, I had time to look at the police car more carefully. It was an odd vehicle, driven by an internal-combustion engine, a powerful beast, but without any of the streamlining characteristic of the cars with which I grew up. It had a double door set in either side, and another, through which the wretched sub was pushed, at the back. Its windows were narrow, point­ed, and grouped in pairs, in the style of windows in Early English churches; even the windshield had been divided into six in this way. The whole thing was elaborately painted in white and light blue and yellow. Why not, I thought, if you have plenty of time and slave labor is cheap?

  And the stained-glass motif about the windshield-why not, if most of the people you are likely to knock down are expendable and have no rights?

  Rastell was returning, though the debate around the steps of the Assembly Hall was still in progress.

  "Let's get on," Rastell said. He signaled curtly to Dibbs and the subs. We all climbed aboard and re­sumed our journey. I looked at the crowd about the church police car as we passed it. With a start, I thought I recognized one of the hangers-on in the crowd. He looked much like my brother Royal; then I told myself that my nerves were being irresponsible.

  "There's too much of that sort of incident," Rastell said. "This trouble flared up all at once a few years ago. They must have a leader."<
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  “I’d guess they also had a cause. What will happen to the man who broke free from the cab and clubbed the passenger?"

  "That sub?" He looked at me, his lips curving in a smile not entirely free from malice. "He struck a churchgoer, I was not the only witness. Hell be hanged at the castle next week. What else could we do with him? Hell be granted last rites."

  The grand stretch of Princes Street, a street fit for any capital, was changed, although many buildings were as I knew them. Their rather commercial gaiety had gone. They presented a drab uniformity now. Their windows were unwashed; the goods displayed for sale in the shop windows looked uninviting. I peered eagerly at them as we thudded by at a stiff walking pace. The big electronic showrooms had gone, the shops were not piled with the gadgets I knew.

  On the sidewalks, greater variety was in evidence. Many people were about, looking cheerful as they shopped. Few slaves were in sight, and I now ob­served that among the free some were evidently far less prosperous than others. Sedans, pedal cabs, four-wheel bicycles, and little electrically powered cars moved busily about. I was sorry when we halted before a large gray building and Rastell signaled me to alight.

  "This is the headquarters of my, chapter," he said, as we pushed through the door with Dibbs following.

  "I believe it's a block of offices in my matrix."

  "On the contrary, it is the Commission for Nuclear Rearmament. Are you already forgetting how war oriented your matrix is?" He relented then and said, in less ironic tones, "However, you'll probably find us too religious. It's a matter of viewpoint, really."

  The place was bustling. The foyer reminded me of an old-fashioned hotel; its furniture was cumbersome and oddly designed, reminding me of the late Windsor style of fifty years ago or more, except that everything was so colorless.