“What do I —”
“Tell me. Advise me.”
The senior oracle is playing a little game with me, I suppose. Shrugging, I say, “Obviously Runild’s trying to gain attention through all these crazy pranks. Let’s try to reach him and find out what he really wants, and perhaps there’ll be some way we can give it to him. I’ll speak to Voree. I’ll talk to his sister, Kitrin. And tomorrow I’ll talk to Runild. I think he trusts me. We were very close last year, Runild and I.”
“I know,” Sleel says gently. “Very well, see what you can do.”
Still later that afternoon, as I cross the central courtyard, Runild erupts from the second-year house and rushes up to me. His face is flushed; his bare chest is shiny with sweat. He clings to me, pulls me down to his height, looks me in the eye. His eyes have already begun to stray a little; one day they may be like Sleel’s.
I think he wants to apologize for his invasion of my group. But all he manages to say is: “I am sorry for you. You wanted so much to be one of us.” And he runs off.
To be one of them. Yes. Who does not long to dwell in the House of Double Minds, living apart from the noise and chaos of the world, devoting oneself to oracular contemplation and the service of mankind? My mother’s father’s sister was of that high company, and in early girlhood I was taken to visit her. How awesome it was to stand in the presence of her all-knowing Right, to feel the flood of warmth and understanding that emanated from her wise eyes. It was my dream to join her here, a dream doubly thwarted, for she died when I was eight, and by then the fact of my left-handedness was irremediably established.
Left-handers are never selected to undergo the oracle-making operation. The two halves of our brains are too symmetrical, too ambidextrous: we have speech centers on both sides, most of us left-handers, and so we are not likely to develop those imbalances of cerebral powers that oracles must have. Right-handers, too, are born with symmetrically functioning brains, each hemisphere developing independently and duplicating the operations of the other. But by the time they are two years old, their Lefts and Rights are linked in a way that gives them a shared pool of skills, and therefore each half is free to develop its own special capabilities, since the gifts of one half are instantly available to the other.
At the age of ten this specializing process is complete. Language, sequential thought, all the analytic and rational functions, center in the Left. Spacial perception, artistic vision, musical skill, emotional insight, centre in the Right. The brain’s left side is the scientist, the architect, the general, the mathematician. The brain’s right side is the minstrel, the sculptor, the visionary, the dreamer. Normally the two halves operate as one. The Right experiences a flash of poetic intuition, the Left clothes it in words. The Right sees a pattern of fundamental connections, the Left expresses it in a sequence of theorems. The Right conceives the shape of a symphony, the Left sets the notes down on paper. Where there is true harmony between the hemispheres of the brain, works of genius are created.
Too often, though, one side seizes command. Perhaps the Right becomes dominant, and we have a dancer, an athlete, an artist, who has trouble with words, who is inexpressive and inarticulate except through some nonverbal medium. More often, because we are a word-worshipping people, it is the Left that rules, choking the subordinate Right in a welter of verbal analysis and commentary, slowing and hindering the spontaneous intuitive perceptions of the mind. What society gains in orderliness and rationality it loses in vision and grace. We can do nothing about these imbalances —except to take advantage of their existence by accentuating and exploiting them.
And so the children come here, a dozen of our best each year, and our surgeons sever the isthmus of neural tissue that links Left and Right. Some kind of communication between the hemispheres continues to operate, since each half remains aware of what the other is immediately experiencing, if not of its accumulated memories and skills. But the Right is cut free from the tyranny of the word-intoxicated Left. The Left continues to operate its normal routines of reading and writing and conversation and computation, while the Right, now its own master, observes and registers and analyses in a way that has no need for words. Because its verbal skills are so feeble, the newly independent Right must find some other means of expression if it is to make its perceptions known: and, through the dozen years of training in the House of Double Minds, some of the children succeed in achieving this. They are able —I do not know how, no one who is not an oracle can ever know how —to transmit the unique insights of fully mature and wholly independent Rights to their Lefts, which can transmit them to the rest of us. It is a difficult and imperfect process, but it gives us access to levels of knowledge that few have ever reached before our time. Those who master that skill are our functional oracles. They dwell in realms of beauty and wisdom that, in the past, only saints and prophets and the greatest artists and a few madmen have reached.
I would, if I could, have entered those realms. But I came forth left-handed from the womb and my brain, though it is a decent one, therefore lacked the required asymmetry of function. If I could not be an oracle I could at least serve them, I decided. And thus I came here as a girl, and asked to be of use, and in time was given the important task of easing the new children into their new lives. So I have come to know Jen and Timas and Jalil and Runild and the others, some of whom will live to be among the most famous of oracles, and so now I welcome Hirole and Mulliam and Gybold and Galaine and their companions. And I am content, I think. I am content.
We gather in the main hall for the evening meal. My new group has not come before the older novices until now, and so my twelve undergo close scrutiny, which they find embarrassing, as I lead them to their place. Each year-group sits together at its own circular table. My dozen dine with me; at the table to my left is my group of last year, now in Voree’s charge. Runild sits there with his back to me, and his mere presence creates a tension in me as if he is giving off an electric radiation. To my right is the third-year group, reduced now to nine by the culling of Timas and two deaths; the fourth-year children are just in front of me and the fifth-year ones, my darling Jen among them, at my rear. The older children are in the center of the hall. Along the sides of the great room are the tables of the instructors, those who have daily care of the ordinary education of the twelve groups of novices, and the senior oracles occupy long tables at the hall’s far end, beneath a panoply of gay red and green banners.
Sleel makes a brief speech of welcome for my twelve, and the meal is served.
I send Galaine to Voree’s table with a note: “See me on the porch after dinner.”
My appetite is poor. I finish quickly, but I stay with my group until it is time to dismiss them. All the children troop off to the auditorium for a show. A warm drizzle is falling; Voree and I stand in the shelter of the eaves. She is much older than I am, a stocky woman with kinky orange hair. Year after year I pass my fledglings on to her. She is strong, efficient, stolid, insensitive. Runild baffles her. “He’s like a monkey,” she says. “Running around naked, chattering to himself, singing crazy songs, playing pranks. He isn’t doing his lessons. He isn’t even doing his disciplines, half the time. I’ve warned him he’ll be culled, but he doesn’t seem to care.”
“What do you think he wants?”
“To have everyone notice him.”
“Yes, surely, but why?”
“Because he’s a naturally mischievous boy,” Voree says, scowling. “I’ve seen many of his sort before. They think rules are for other people. Two more weeks of this and I’ll recommend a cull.”
“He’s too brilliant to waste like that, Voree.”
“He’s wasting himself. Without the disciplines how can he become an oracle? And he’s upsetting all the others. My group’s a shambles. Now he’s bothering yours. He won’t leave his sister alone either. Culling, Mimise, that’s where he’s heading. Culling.”
There is nothing to be gained from talking to Voree. I join my
group in the auditorium.
Bedtime for the younger ones comes early. I see my children to their room; then I am free until midnight. I return to the auditorium, where the older children and the off-duty staff are relaxing, playing games, dancing, drifting off in couples. Kitrin, Runild’s sister, is still there. I draw her aside. She is a slender, delicate girl of fourteen, a fifth-year novice. I am fond of her because she was in my very first group, but I have always found her shy, elusive, opaque. She is more so than ever now: I question her about her brother’s behavior and she answers me with shrugs, vague unfinished sentences, and artful evasions. Runild is wild? Well, of course, many boys are wild, she says, especially the bright ones. The disciplines seem to bore him. He’s far ahead of his group —you know that, Mimise. And so on. I get nothing from her except the strong feeling that she is hiding something about her brother. My attempts to probe fail; Kitrin is still a child, but she is halfway to oraclehood, nearly, and that gives her an advantage over me in any duel of wits. Only when I suggest that Runild is in immediate peril of culling do I break through her defences.
“No!” she gasps, eyes widening in fear, cheeks turning pale. “They mustn’t! He has to stay! He’s going to be greater than any of them!”
“He’s causing too much trouble.”
“It’s just a thing he’s going through. He’ll settle down, I promise you that.”
“Voree doesn’t think so. She’s going to request a cull.”
“No. No. What will happen to him if he’s culled? He was meant to be an oracle. His whole life will have been thrown away. We have to save him, Mimise.”
“We can do that only if he can control himself.”
“I’ll talk to him in the morning,” Kitrin says.
I wonder what she knows about Runild that she does not want to tell me.
At the evening’s end I bring Jen to my chamber, as I do three or four nights a week. She is tall and supple and looks more than her fourteen years. Her counselor tells me she is moving well through her mid-novitiate and will be a splendid oracle. We lie together, lips to lips, breasts against breasts, and we stroke and caress and tickle one another, we smile with our eyes, we enter into all the rituals of love. Afterward, in the stillness that follows passion, she finds the bruise of this morning’s struggle on my thigh and questions me with a frown. “Runild,” I say. I tell her about his erratic behaviour, about Sleel’s uneasiness, about my conversation with Voree.
“They mustn’t cull him,” Jen says solemnly. “I know he’s troublesome. But the path he’s taking is so important for all of us.”
“Path? What path is that?”
“You don’t know?”
“I know nothing, Jen.”
She catches her breath, rolls away, studies me a moment. At length she says, “Runild sees into minds. When he puts his head very close to people, there’s transmission. Without using words. It’s —it’s a kind of broadcast. His Right can read the Rights of other oracles, the way you’d open a book and read it. If he could get close enough to Sleel, say, or any of them, he could read what’s in their Rights.”
“What?”
“More, Mimise. His own Right talks to his Left the same way. He can transmit messages completely, quickly, making better contact between the halves than any of the oracles can do. He hasn’t had the disciplines, even, and he has full access to his Right’s perceptions. So whatever his Right sees, including what it gets from the Rights of others, can be transmitted to his Left and expressed in words more clearly even than Sleel himself can do it!”
“I don’t believe this,” I say, barely comprehending.
“It’s true! It’s true, Mimise! He’s only just learning how, and it gets him terribly excited, it makes him wild, don’t you see, when all that contact comes flooding in? He can’t quite handle it yet, which is why he acts so strange. But once he gets his power under control —”
“How do you know anything about this, Jen?”
“Why, Kitrin told me.”
“Kitrin? I spoke to Kitrin and she never even hinted that —”
“Oh,” Jen says, looking pained. “Oh, I guess I wasn’t supposed to say. Not even to you, I guess. Oh, now I’ll be in trouble with Kitrin, and —”
“You won’t be. She doesn’t need to know how I found out. But —Jen, Jen, can this be? Can anyone have such powers?”
“Runild does.”
“So he claims. Or Kitrin claims on his behalf.”
“No,” Jen says firmly.”He does. They showed me, he and Kitrin. I felt him touch my mind. I felt him read me. He can read anyone. He can read you, Mimise.”
I must speak with Runild. But carefully, carefully, everything in its proper moment. In the morning I must first meet with my group and take them through the second-day exercises. These are designed to demonstrate that their Rights, although mute and presently isolated, are by no means inferior, and have perceptions and capabilities which in some ways are superior to those of their Lefts.
“Never think of your Right as a cripple,” I warn them. “See it, rather, as some kind of extremely intelligent animal —an animal that is sharp-witted, quick to respond, imaginative, with only one flaw, that it has no vocabulary and is never going to be able to acquire more than a few simple words at best. Nobody pities a tiger or an eagle because it doesn’t know how to speak. And there are ways of training tigers and eagles so that we can communicate with them without using words.”
I flash a picture of a house on the screen and ask the children to copy it, first using their left hands, then the right. Although they are all right-handed, they are unable to draw anything better than simple, crude two-dimensional representations with their right hands. Their left-handed drawings, while shakily drawn because of their left arms’ relatively backward muscular development and motor control, show a full understanding of the techniques of perspective. The right hand has the physical skill, but it is the left, drawing on the vision of the brain’s right hemisphere, that has the artistic ability.
I ask them to arrange colored plastic cubes to match an intricate pattern on the screen. Left-handed, they carry out the exercise swiftly and expertly. Right-handed, they become confused, frown and bite their lips, hold the cubes long moments without knowing where to put them down, eventually array the cubes in chaotic mazes. Clane and Bloss give up entirely in a minute or two; Mulliam perseveres grimly like one who is determined to climb a mountain too steep for his strength, but he accomplishes little; Luabet’s left hand keeps darting across to do the task that is beyond the right’s powers, as if she is at war with herself. She must keep the impatient left hand behind her back in order to proceed at all. No one can complete the block design correctly with the right hand, and when I allow the children to work with both hands the hands fight for control, the formerly dominant right one unable to accept its new inferiority and angrily slapping at the cubes the left one tries to put in place.
We go on to the split-screen exercises in facial recognition and pattern analysis, to the musical exercises and the rest of the usual second-day routine. The children are fascinated by the ease with which their Rights function in all but word-linked operations. Ordinarily I am delighted, too, to watch the newly liberated Rights come to life and assert their powers. But today I am impatient to be off to Runild and I give only perfunctory attention to my proper work.
At last the session ends. The children move off to the classroom where they will receive regular school-subject instruction. Runild’s group, too, should be at school until noon. Possibly I can draw him aside after lunch. But, as though I have conjured him with a wish, I see him now, tumbling by himself in the meadow of crimson flowers by the auditorium. He sees me, too: halts in his gambol, winks, smiles, does a handspring, blows me a kiss. I go to him.
“Are you excused from classes this morning?” I ask, mock-stern.
“The flowers are so pretty,” he replies.
“The flowers will be just as pretty after school.”
“Oh, don’t be so stuffy, Mimise! I know my lessons. I’m a clever boy.”
“Perhaps too clever, Runild.”
He grins. I do not frighten him. He seems to be patronizing me; he appears to be at once very much younger and very much wiser than his years. I take him gently by the wrist and draw him down, easily, until we are sprawled side by side in the grass. He plucks a flower for me. His look is flirtatious. I accept both the flower and the look and respond with a warm smile; I am flirtatious myself. No doubt of his charm; and I can never win him by acting as an authority figure, only as a co-conspirator. There was always an underlying sexuality in our relationship, incestuous, as if I were an older sister.
We talk in banter, teasing each other. Then I say, “Something mysterious has been happening to you lately, Runild. I know that. Share your mystery with me.”
At first he denies all. He pretends innocence, but lets me know it is only pretence. His sly smile betrays him. He speaks in cryptic ellipses, hinting at arcane knowledge and defying me to pry details from him. I play his game, acting now intrigued, now eager, now sceptical, now wholly uninterested: we are stalking one another, and both of us know it. His oracle-eye pierces me. He toys with me with such subtlety that I must remind myself with a glance at his slim hairless body, that I am dealing with a child. I ought never forget that he is only eleven. Finally I press directly once more, asking him outright what strange new gift he is cultivating.
“Wouldn’t you like to know!” he cries, and pulls an outrageous face, and dashes away.
But he comes back. We talk on a more serious level. He admits that he has discovered, these past few months, that he is different from the other children and from the senior oracles, that he has a talent, a power. It disturbs and exalts him both. He is still exploring the scope of it. He will not describe the power in any specific way. Of course I know from Jen its nature, but I prefer not to reveal that. “Will you ever tell me?” I ask.
Trips: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Four Page 47
