by Brian Aldiss
I dropped the instruction manual and stared.
"What are you saying? We have only done what we have done, fought as we have, for the sake of the poor wretches enslaved here. What else did we fight for?"
He was crouching beside me. His face set hard. His words fell from his lips like little graven images.
"I have done nothing for any slaves. What I have done has been against the Church."
"As far as that goes, I'm pretty startled by its conduct too. In my matrix, the Christian Church is a power for good. Although it condones war, its tenets. ..."
"Death to the Christian Church! It's the Christian Church I fight against!" He jumped to his feet. I leaped up too, my own anger awakened by his words, and we stood glaring at each other.
"You're crazy, Mark! We may not agree with the Church, but it has been the established church in Britain now for centuries. To start..."
"Not in my Britain! It's not established in my Britain! Christianity is the faith of dogs and underlings where I come from. When Rastell started to tell us his history, he talked about the Roman Empire being established in the East by Constantine the Great, and he said that Constantine, followed by an emperor he called Theodosius, installed Christianity as the official creed of the Empire. Did it happen that way in your matrix?"
"Yes, just as Rastell said."
"Well, it didn't happen that way in mine! I know of this man you call Constantine; we call him Flavius Constantinus. Of Theodosius I have not heard. Constantinus was killed by his father-in-law Maximian and never became emperor. Maxentius the Great became emperor after Diocletian."
I was puzzled now, as well as angry. Gibbon no doubt would have been delighted to hear of this setback for Christianity, but its implications left me baffled.
"All this was seventeen centuries ago. What has it to do with us?"'
He was rigid with hostility.
"Everything, my friend—everything! In your matrix and in this one, Christianity was imposed on the West by your two misguided emperors. In mine, Christianity was stamped out, though it still survives among the barbarians and slaves whom we rule in the East, and the True Religion was fostered and grew, and flourishes irresistibly!"
"The True Religion?"
"By my shrine, Sherry, have you never heard of the soldier's god? Then bow down before the name of Mithras!"
I saw it then, saw above all my criminal stupidity in thinking that because we seemed to have a common purpose we might have a common past. This man, with whom I had spent the fiercest hour of my life, was my enemy!
How much of an enemy I saw before he did, and there lay my only advantage. He was less clear about conditions in my matrix than I was now about his. I saw that he would go back to his matrix and probably return with legions of warriors to tumble the unwarlike Church regime here. Though I wanted slavery abolished, I did not want that.
The thought of intermatricial war and conquest was horrifying. Knowledge of the portals must never get back to his Mithraic world. The conclusion was obvious—I had to kill Mark Claud Gale!
He saw murder in my eyes before I reached him. He was quick, Mark! As he stooped to grasp his knife, I kicked it flying and caught his shoulder with my knee. He fell, taking me with him, his fingers digging into my calf. A personal wrestle was what I did not want; he was probably in better condition than I. A weapon was what I wanted!
As his right hand came up to grasp me, I planted my free knee in his windpipe and wrenched his arm down hard over it, at the same time pulling myself loose from his grasp. Jumping up, I ran into the artificial garden.
Behind the cafe" were rows of garden tools on display. He hurled a can at me before I reached them. The can struck my shoulder and bounced through the front of the cafe in a shower of glass.
I turned. He was almost on me! I kicked one of the light tables between us and backed off to the tool racks. Feeling the shaft of one of the tools behind me, I brought it forward, flinging my weight with it as if it were a lance. I had hold of a rake. It struck Mark in the thigh as he jumped aside.
I had time to make another lunge, but he had the other end of the rake. Next moment, we were struggling face to face. He brought his skull down hard on my nose. Pain and fury burst like a volcanic eruption over me. I caught him by the throat, jabbing him in the groin with my knee. He hooked a leg around my other leg and jerked it. As I fell, I stamped on his instep. He doubled in pain, leaving the back of his neck unprotected. Even as I chopped the side of my hand down on it, I felt the weakness of my blow. I was dizzy from the pain in my face.
We broke apart. The rake lay between us. Gathering my strength, I turned, snatched another tool from the rack behind, and swung it in a circle. He had stooped to grab the rake. Changing his mind, he backed away, and I ran at him with the tool upraised. It was a fool's move. I broke the shaft over his shoulders as we fell backward into the ornamental pool.
The water was warm, but the shock of it helped me to keep my senses. The pool was about three feet deep. I floundered to my feet, beating off slimy lily stalks, still grasping one end of the tool. I was bellowing for breath like a hungry sea lion.
Mark took longer to surface. From the way he moved, from the way his left arm hung limp and he clutched his shoulder, I knew I had broken something useful. He turned away from me and headed for the opposite bank, where banana trees and tall grasses grew.
Compassion rose in me. I had no heart to go on. Had he not been my ally? But in that moment of weakness, he turned and looked at me. I understood that look. We were enemies, and he was going for a weapon with which to kill me. There would be plenty about: pruning knives, shears, blades of all kinds. I could not let him get away.
He dragged himself onto the bank, using only one arm.
The broken half of the garden tool in my hand was the business end of some sort of edging implement, with a sharp crescent-shaped blade. I threw" it hard.
Mark swayed and grasped at the banana tree. He missed. He tried to reach the shaft in his back with his good hand, but failed. He fell back into the pool and disappeared among the reeds. There was a good deal of thrashing about in the water, but it stopped at last. I climbed out of the pool.
Staggering, gasping incoherently, I made for the portals.
It is useless to ask me how I went through the vanishing routine. I don't know. Somehow I did all that was necessary, injected myself, tuned my portal. As I sat in the seat, I could hear noises outside the store, distant and meaningless, and the sound of a door being broken down, and the squeal of whistles. Then the effect overcame me.
Blackness. Blankness.
And—I was sprawling on a crowded night-club floor with three half-naked dancers shrieking their heads off in fright! I was back home!
They threw me out of the club without bothering to ask questions. Just as well! One thing I could not have told them: I could not remember the classification number of the matrix from which I had escaped. There was no going back there, except by accident Rastell's world was lost among a myriad of others in the multidimensional universe.
This fortunate bit of ignorance saved me from a severe moral problem. Supposing we could have gotten back to Rastell's world, had we in fact any right to intervene on behalf of the slaves? Should we cultivate someone else's garden? In any one world, there's enough trouble in circulation without looking for it in others. Or so I explained the situation to Candida.
She pulled her moral face at me. Recovering from the influenza she had contracted at Noordoostburg-op-Langedijk, her pallor made her moral face even more moral than usual.
1 am well enough to attend evensong in St. Giles today, Sheridan," she said. "And I suggest you come with me. After your unholy adventures in that benighted matrix, you are plainly in need of absolution in this one."
At that time, I believed that she meant merely that the lolling of Mark in self-defense lay upon my conscience; and since it did, I meekly bowed to her suggestion.
I sp
ent the day resting up. In the evening, as dusk settled over our festering old city, and before Royal and Turton could return home from work, Candida and I slipped down into the crowded streets and made our way up the hill to the grand old Gothic pile of Edinburgh's cathedral.
Resourceful little Candida led me by a shortcut down a slope between blank damp-stained walls. It was so narrow, we could not walk side by side; I went after her, noticing anew how slight was this strong-willed little fey sister-in-law. Footsteps sounded behind us—someone was catching up to us—a hand grasped my shoulder. I spun about, instinctively raising my fists, and stared into a strong square face with intense dark eyes. When I had last seen that face, it had quailed before death in fear, but there was no fear in it now.
"Captain Apostolic Rastell!"
"I am Captain Apostolic no longer," he said. "I am a man on the run—as you are!" He gave me a hard scrutinizing look as I pressed back against the wall.
Candida had stopped and was examining him haughtily.
"So this is one of your friends from that disgraceful matrix, Sherry.... Well, aren't you going to introduce me to him?"
With Candida, one always remembered one's manners. Only when I had performed hurried introductions did I ask Rastell, "What do you mean "by saying I am. on the run? I am safe and in my proper matrix! I never thought to see you again! You are the fugitive here!"
"You are a fugitive as much as I!" He clutched my arm. 'Is there somewhere that we can talk?"
"There is nowhere," Candida declared. "We are on our way to divine service. You may join us if you care to—and from what I hear of the goings-on in your dimension, you should care to, for the sake of your soul. After service, you can talk to Sheridan."
"As safe there as anywhere, I suppose," Rastell said, half to himself.
After the service, it was Candida who pointed out that the cathedral itself was the best place in which to talk. Perhaps she had no wish for Royal's interference at that stage. But Rastell was convinced by the swarms of anonymous worshipers, and by the great darkness that towered up through the somber and fretted interior—a darkness which the meager lighting could do no more than punctuate.
Persuaded by this general obscurity, if not by my sister-in-law, Rastell led us from the side chapel into the Moray aisle. Lurking under Moray's monument, he said, addressing us both, "Insurrection is now rife in my home matrix! No, not the subs, poor craven things—it's the extra-matricials we brought in who are causing the trouble. And you began that trouble, Sheridan Meacher!"
"I'm delighted to hear that things are going so well!"
"Things are going badly with you, never think otherwise! Both church police and Matrix Corps are already on your track, combing the nearest matrices. They are determined that you shall die for your part in the insurrection.”
"Why do you come to warn me, Rastell? We are no friends!"
"Church knows, that is the truth. Yet you spared my life, Meacher. And I too am on the run. I was lucky to escape. They will have my blood for what they call my inefficiency—so I also have to get away from them."
I looked up bewildered, my eye catching the horrible stained-glass window representing Moray being murdered and John Knox grimly reading his funeral oration, to which the fading daylight lent stark emphasis. To be food for a similar oration was as yet far from my desire.
"Why have you bothered to come and inform Sherry of all this, Mr. Rastell?" Candida asked.
He turned to her. "Because he is the only person I know outside my own matrix—because we must cooperate if we are to escape death."
"And how do you propose to do that?"
"Why, we must flee together to another matrix, one far from our own probability line, and lie low there for a few months—longer if necessary—until they grow tired of searching for us."
"I see," said Candida, in a tone that could have frozen John Knox. "From that, I deduce that you have near at hand one of these extra-matricial portals and that you intend to whisk my brother-in-law away through it."
"Correct, madam."
"You will do no such thing! We are a small but devoted family. I will not have Sherry disappear into matrices even more perverted than ours. He has got himself into enough unholy trouble already."
"He is in danger here."
"He would be in danger there." They stared at each other in the waning light. I did not know what to say. Finally, Candida said, "There is a solution. I shall come with you. Through the portal."
"Madam!"
"Both of you are weak in the faith. I shall accompany you and see that you do not fall into sin. Lead on, Mr. Rastell!"
Rastell had left his portal in a seamy room in a lodginghouse not far from the church. He assembled it as Candida and I stood by. I tried to argue her out of her decision as Rastell prepared the nicomiotine injections, but she was adamant
"You have already made clear your somewhat lax attitude to other matrices, Sherry. "There's enough trouble in circulation in our world without going looking for it in others.' That's what you said. I disagree. Christ's teaching shows that we are morally responsible for everyone. If they are human and have souls to lose, then the people in other matrices are as we are, whether they happen to live in another dimension or not."
"But they have their own standards! Our moral obligation is to not judge them by our moral standards."
"Our moral standards? They are not ours, but come from On High. We merely follow them; and we must see that others follow them. The standards exist in their own right, whether acknowledged or not, just as God does."
The Meacher family enjoys such arguments and takes them up at a moment's notice, like embroidery.
Rastell had brought out a small black notebook and was looking up classification numbers.
"Then we will escape to a matrix far from this, where no God has ever been acknowledged on Earth," he said. There must have been irony in his voice, but Candida said eagerly, "There is such a matrix? Then indeed we can be of some positive good there!" She clapped her hands.
Rastell put her through the portal first. I went next. He came last, and I saw he materialized carrying the portal, like a circus clown who jumps through his own hoop. But I had no time to ponder this minor wonder of science, for Candida was already involved in a flaming row with an inhabitant of our new matrix!
The matrix or the inhabitant? Which to start with? The inhabitant—I had better not refer to him as a Scot—claimed all of Candida's attention, and so it was on him I looked first, and he shall be first described.
He was an undersized specimen, of brutal demeanor, with coarse hair that I suspected covered all his barrel-body under its coarse clothing. Evidently, he had grasped Candida as soon as she materialized. He was chattering at her in a language I could not understand—and getting the worst of the battle, for she was clouting him with the heavy shopping bag she had carried to church. Even as I ran to tackle her assailant, he broke away.
Just for a moment, he bent and made a gesture of such animal obscenity that Candida shrieked in indignation. Then he made off downhill fast, running flat-footedly along the paved street.
I say street-track would be a better word. For this Edinburgh—our fair Auld Reekie—hardly resembled in any way except the characteristic lie of the land the city of my or Rastell's dimension. The houses appeared to be merely senseless accumulations of stones and branches of trees. The street, as I say, was a mere track between these shacks and was piled with refuse and human droppings. Where, in our matrix, St. Giles had stood, was a rough building, almost like a crude parody of a church, with a sort of spire that on closer inspection proved to be the apex of a dead fir tree.
All this I could see because here it was happily still only midafternoon, and I resolved that we should be gone by dusk. Whatever had befallen the miserable inhabitants of Earth here, I saw no reason why we should inflict their lot on ourselves.
"So this is what a world is like without belief in
the Lord!" exclaimed Candida. "The heathens! They look and act like godless ones! Yes, the devil rules here. Be off!"
This last was directed at a group of capering loons who had collected to see the fun. They jumped up and down with glee, cackled, turned cartwheels, mimicked our actions.
I turned to Rastell. "They're a pack of apes! Nothing but a pack of apes! What sort of trick is this? You've shot us into a kind of prehistoric matrix, haven't you?"
"No, it is no trick. This is a matrix exactly contemporary with ours. Only the human race has taken a different path."
"Away from God!" said Candida. "If only I could speak their language!"
A piece of filth hit her on the shoulder. Our spectators—perhaps angered by the dullness of our performance—had started to throw things. I grasped Candida around the shoulders and urged her away. The spectators bunched fingers at both ends of their long lipless mouths and whistled in derision-wonderful, long, whooping, spiky, swooping, whistles; wish I could do it! With Rastell following, we hurried between two of the fetid shacks, nearly tripping over droves of little hairy black pigs as we went.
And there Edinburgh ended, in mud and wretched fields. What I knew as Cowgate was unkempt agricultural land. And it was being worked! Two groups were at work, engaged in some sort of plowing operation. Above the plow itself sat, in each case, an ape overseer on a perch, which he grasped with his feet while wielding a crude thong whip over the backs bent before him. In one group, these backs were many: puny little monkey backs, where a dozen simian captives sought to drag the plow through the stony ground. In the other group, the back was but one: a broad black back, as some immense creature like an overgrown gorilla tugged at the shafts that moved the furrowing blade.
The magnificent horror of the scene got through to me at once. Only later did I see its significance and guess that this was a form of agriculture involving the use of captives of other tribes. The little figures toiled below tatty gray and fawn clouds bringing rain.
We had not long to look, for a straggle of weird shapes was progressing from behind the shacks toward us. Rastell held out a warning hand.
