The Rituals of Infinity

by Michael Moorcock

  They were still chanting as Steifflomeis made his appearance. He had found a sword from somewhere and was gleefully leading the black-hooded acolytes into the arena. Maggy White, looking rather uncertain, followed behind. She seemed to be almost as much in Steifflomeis's power as the men who were with him.

  Gordon Ogg turned as Steifflomeis shouted something in the same strange language they had been chanting in. From Steifflomeis the words seemed halting, as if he had learned them with difficulty.

  Faustaff knew that Steifflomeis was shouting a challenge.

  Gordon Ogg handed the cup to Nancy and drew his sword.

  Watching the scene, Faustaff was suddenly struck by its ludicrousness. He began to laugh aloud. It was his old laugh, rich and warm, totally without tension. The laughter was picked up by the high walls and amplified, its echoes rolling around the arena.

  For a moment everyone seemed to hear it and hesitated. Then, with a yell, Steifflomeis leapt at Ogg.

  This action only caused Faustaff to laugh the more.

  18

  The Encounter

  Steifflomeis seemed bent on killing Ogg, but he was such an inept swordsman that the Englishman, plainly trained in fencing, defended himself easily, in spite of the fact that his movements were so formal.

  Faustaff snorted with laughter and stepped forward to grasp Steifflomeis's arm. The android was startled. Faustaff removed the sword from his hand.

  'This is all part of the ritual!' Steifflomeis said seriously. 'You're breaking the rules again.'

  'Calm down, Steifflomeis,' Faustaff chuckled and wiped his eyes. 'No need to get emotional.'

  Gordon was still going through the motions of defence. He looked so much like Don Quixote in his armour and long moustache that his behaviour seemed funnier than ever to Faustaff who started to roar with laughter again.

  Ogg began to look bewildered. His movements became more hesitant and less formal. Faustaff placed himself in front of him. Ogg blinked and lowered his sword. He frowned at Faustaff for a moment and then snapped down his visor and stood there rigidly, like a statue.

  Faustaff raised his fist and tapped on the helmet. 'Come out of there, Gordon—you don't need the armour any more. Wake up, Gordon!'

  He saw that the others were beginning to stir. He went up to Nancy and stroked her face. 'Nancy?' She smiled vaguely, without looking at him. 'Nancy—it's Faustaff.'

  'Faustaff,' she murmured distinctly. 'Fusty?' He grinned. 'The same.'

  She looked up at him, still smiling. He chuckled and she looked into his eyes. Her smile broadened. 'Hi, Fusty. What's new?'

  'You'd be surprised,' he said. 'Have you ever seen anything so funny?' He waved his hand to indicate the costumed figures about them. He pointed at the suit of armour. 'Gordon's in there,' he told her.

  T know,' she said, i really thought I was dreaming—you know, one of those dreams where you know you're dreaming but can't do anything about it. It was quite a nice dream.'

  'Nothing wrong with dreams, I guess,' Faustaff said, putting his arm round her and hugging her. 'They serve their purpose, but ...'

  This dream was serving a purpose until you interrupted it,' Maggy White said.

  'But did you agree with the purpose?' Faustaff asked her.

  'Well—yes. The whole thing is necessary. I told you.'

  i still don't know the original purposes for the simulations,' Faustaff admitted. 'But it seems to me that nothing can be achieved by this sort of thing.'

  i'm not sure,' Maggy White replied thoughtfully, i don't know ... I'm still loyal to the principals, but I wonder ... They don't seem very successful.'

  'You're not kidding,' Faustaff agreed feelingly. 'What have they scrapped? A thousand simulations?'

  'They'll never succeed,' Steifflomeis sneered. 'They've lost touch completely. Forget them.'

  Maggy White turned on him angrily. 'This whole fiasco is your work, Steifflomeis. If you hadn't disobeyed your

  orders E-Zero would now be well on the way to normal activation. I don't know what's going to happen now. This will be the first time that anything has gone wrong before full activation!'

  'You should have listened to me. We need never have allowed full activation if we had been careful. We could have ruled this world easily. We could have defied the principals. At best all they could have done would have been to start afresh.'

  'There isn't time to start afresh. It would be tantamount to destroying their whole project, what you would have done!' Maggy glowered at him. 'You tried to defeat the principals!'

  Steifflomeis turned his back on her with a sigh.

  'You're too idealistic. Forget them. They are failures.'

  Gordon Ogg's armour creaked. His arm moved towards his visor and slowly began to raise it. He looked out at them, blinking.

  'By God,' he said wonderingly. 'Am I really dressed up in this stuff. I thought I was ...'

  'Dreaming? You must be hot in there, Gordon,' Faustaff said. 'Can you get it off?'

  Ogg tugged at the helmet. 'I think it screws off,' he said. Faustaff grasped the helmet and with some difficulty eased it around. Ogg took it off. They began to unstrap the rest of the armour, Nancy helping. A .murmur of voices around them showed that both the people who had been with Steifflomeis and the people who had followed Gordon and Nancy were now waking up, confused.

  Faustaff saw Maggy White stoop towards the sword and jumped up from where he was trying to unbuckle Gordon's left greave.

  She had brought the sword down on Steifflomeis's skull before he could reach her. He turned towards her with a smile, reached out for her, and then toppled. The top of his head had caved in completely, showing the brain. No blood came. Maggy began to hack at his body until Faustaff

  stopped her. She become impassive, looking down at Steifflomeis's corpse. 'A work of art,' she said. 'Like me.'

  'What are you going to do now?' Faustaff asked her.

  'I don't know,' she said. 'Everything's gone wrong. All the rites you've seen are only the beginning. There's a series of huge assemblies later on—the final pre-activation rituals. You've broken the pattern.'

  'Surely what's happened can't make much difference on a world scale.'

  'You don't understand. Every symbol means something. Every individual has a role. It's all connected together. It's like a complicated electronic circuit—break it in one place and the whole thing seizes up. These rituals may seem horrifying and primitive to you—but they were inspired by a deeper knowledge of scientific principles than anything you're likely to have. The rituals establish the basic pattern of every individual's life. His inner drives are expressed and given form in the pre-activation rituals. This means that when he "wakes up" and begins to lead his ordinary life, the code is imprinted in him and he will exist according to that code. Only a few, comparatively speaking, find new codes—new symbols—new lives. You're one of them—the most successful.

  'Circumstances and your own integrity have enabled you to do what you have done. What the result will be, I can't think. There seems to be no division between your inner life and your outer personality. It's as if you are playing a r61e whose influence goes beyond the bounds of the principals' experiments and affects them directly. I don't think they intended to produce a type like you.'

  'Will you tell me now who these "principals" are?' Faustaff asked her quietly.

  'I can't,' she said. 'I obey them and I have been instructed to reveal as little about them as possible. Steifflomeis said far too much and by that action, among others, helped to create this situation. Perhaps we should have killed you

  straight away. We had a number of opportunities. But we were both curious and delayed things for too long. We were both, in our ways, fascinated by you. As you can see, we let your personality assume too much control over us.'

  'We must do something,' Faustaff told her gently.

  i agree. Let's go back to the house first and talk it over.'

  'What about all these others?'


  'We can't do much for them—they're confused, but they'll be all right for a while.'

  Outside the movie lot stood the small truck in which Steifflomeis had obviously brought his followers. Faustaffs car stood near it. In it a naked girl tugged at the doors and hammered on the window. Seeing them, she began to wind the window down.

  'What the hell's going on?' she asked in a harsh, Brooklyn accent, is this a kidnapping or something? Where am I?'

  Faustaff unlocked the door and let her out.

  'Jesus!' she said. 'What is it—a nudist camp? I want my clothes.'

  Faustaff pointed back at the main gate of the lot. 'You'll find some in there,' he told her.

  She looked up at the S-D-K sign. 'You're making a movie? Or is this one of those Hollywood parties I've heard about?'

  Faustaff chuckled. 'With a figure like that you ought to be in pictures. Go and see if anyone spots you.'

  She sniffed and began to walk towards the gate.

  Gordon Ogg and Nancy got into the back seats and Maggy White climbed in beside Faustaff as he started the car, turned it neatly in the street and drove towards downtown L.A.

  People were wandering about everywhere, many of them still in their ritual costumes. They looked puzzled and a bit dazed. They were arguing and talking among themselves. There didn't seem to be much trouble; nobody looked afraid. There were a few cars on the road and sometimes a group of people would wave to him to stop as he passed, but

  he just waved back with a grin.

  Everything seemed funny to him now. He realised that he was his old self again and wondered how and where he had started to lose his sense of humour.

  Faustaff noticed, as he passed the spot, that the Time Dump had vanished and the anachronisms were gone, too. Everything looked fairly normal.

  He asked Maggy White about it.

  'Those things are automatically eradicated,' she told him. if they don't fit the pattern then the simulation can't work smoothly until everything is rationalised. The pre-activation process gets rid of anything like that. Since it's been interrupted, perhaps a few anachronisms will continue to exist. I don't know. It hasn't happened before on any large scale. It's like anything else, you see. The apparatus can't be tested thoroughly until it is tried out on whatever it was designed for. This is another function of the pre-activation process.'

  The house, in which they'd travelled from E-3 to E-Zero, was still there and so was the cathedral, visible behind it.

  Faustaff had a thought. He dropped the other three at the house and drove round to the cathedral. Even before he opened the door he heard shouting echoing around inside the building.

  There was Orelli, still nailed to the cross. But he was far from tranquil. His face was twisted in pain.

  'Faustaff!' he said hoarsely as the professor approached. 'What happened to me? What am I doing here?'

  Faustaff found a candlestick that could probably be used to get the nails out.

  'This is going to be painful, Orelli,' he said.

  'Get me down. It couldn't be any more painful.'

  Faustaff began to lever the nails from Orelli's flesh. He took the man in his arms and laid him on the altar. He moaned in agony.

  'I'll get you back to the house,' Faustaff said, picking up the ex-cardinal. 'There'll probably be dressings of some kind there.'

  Orelli was weeping as Faustaff carried him out to the car. Faustaff felt that it wasn't the pain that was making Orelli weep, it was probably the memory of the dream he had only recently awakened from.

  Driving away from the cathedral, Faustaff decided that it would be better to go to the nearest hospital. Presumably it would be equipped with antibiotics and medicated gauze.

  It took him a quarter of an hour to find a hospital. He went into its empty hall and through to the emergency rooms. In a big medical.chest he found everything he wanted and began to treat Orelli.

  By the time he had finished, the ex-cardinal was asleep from the sedative he had administered.

  Faustaff took him to a bed and tucked him in.

  Orelli would be all right for a while, he decided.

  He drove back to the house, parked the car and went inside. Maggy White, Gordon Ogg and Nancy were sitting in the living-room, drinking coffee and eating sandwiches.

  The scene seemed so normal as to be incongruous. Faustaff told them what he had done with Orelli and sat down to have some food and coffee.

  As they finished and Faustaff lit cigarettes for himself and Nancy, Maggy White seemed to come to a decision.

  'We could use the machinery in this house to get to the principals,' she said thoughtfully. 'Would you like me to take you to them, Faustaff?'

  'Wouldn't that be going against your instructions?'

  'It is the best thing I can think of. I can't do anything else now.'

  'Naturally I'd like to contact your principals,' Faustaff nodded. He now began to feel excited. 'Though at this stage I can't see any way of sorting out the mess that everything's in. Do you know how many of the other simulations still exist?'

  'No. Perhaps they have all been destroyed by now.'

  Faustaff sighed. 'Their efforts and mine both appear to have been wasted.'

  'I'm not sure,' she said. 'Let's see. We'd have to leave your friends behind.'

  'Do you mind?' Faustaff asked them. They shook their heads. 'Perhaps you could go and make sure Orelli's all right,' Faustaff suggested. He told them where the hospital was. T know how we all felt towards him, but he's paid a big enough price, I think. I don't think you'll hate him when you see him. I'm not sure his sanity will survive even now.'

  'Okay,' Nancy said, getting up. 'I hope you'll get back soon, Fusty. I want to see more of you.'

  'It's mutual,' he smiled. 'Don't worry. Goodbye, Gordon.' He shook hands with Ogg. 'See you!'

  They left the house.

  Faustaff followed Maggy White into the other room where the equipment was.

  'There's just one button to press,' she told him. 'But it only works for Steifflomeis or me. I'd have used it before if I could have got the house to myself, but I got diverted—I had to stay to see what you did.' She reached out and pressed the button.

  The walls of the house seemed to change colour, rapidly going through the whole spectrum; they seemed to flow in on Faustaff, covering him with soft light, then they flattened out.

  They stood on a vast plateau roofed by a huge, dark dome. Light came from all sides, the colours merging to become a white that was not really white, but a visible combination of all colours.

  And giants looked down on them. They were human, with calm, ascetic features, completely naked and hairless. They were seated in simple chairs that did not appear to have any real substance and yet supported them perfectly.

  They were about thirty feet high, Faustaff judged.

  'My principals,' Maggy White said.

  'I'm glad to meet you at last,' Faustaff told them. 'You seem to be in some sort of dilemma.'

  'Why have you come here?' One of the giants spoke. His voice did not seem in proportion to his size. It was quiet and well-modulated, without emotion.

  'To make a complaint, among other things,' said Faustaff. He felt that he should be overawed by the giants, but perhaps all the experiences that had led up to this meeting had destroyed any sense of wonder he might have had otherwise. And he felt the giants had bungled too much to deserve a great deal of respect from him.

  Maggy White was explaining everything that had happened. When she finished, the giants got up and walked through the walls of light. Faustaff sat down on the floor. It felt hard and cold and it made the parts of his body that touched it feel as if they had received a slight local anaesthetic. Its perpetual changing of colour didn't help him to feel any more comfortable.

  'Where have they gone?' he asked Maggy.

  'To debate what I have told them,' she said. 'They shouldn't be long.'

  'Are you ready to tell me who they actually are?'

  'Let them t
ell you,' she said, i'm sure they will'

  19

  Conversation with the Principals

  The principals soon returned. When they had seated themselves one of them spoke.

  'There is a pattern to everything,' he said. 'But everything makes the pattern. The human failing is to make patterns out of parts of the whole and call it the whole. Time and Space has a pattern, but you see only a few elements on your simulations. Our science reveals the full dimensions and enables us to create the simulations.'.

  i understand that,' said Faustaff. .'But why do you create the simulations in the first place.'

  'Our ancestors evolved on the original planet many millions of years ago. When their society had developed to the necessary point, they set off to explore the universe and understand it. Approximately ten thousand of your years ago we returned to the planet of our origin, having mapped and studied the universe and learned all its fundamental principles. We found that the society that had produced us had decayed. We expected that of course. But what we had scarcely realised was the extent to which we ourselves had been physically changed by our journeyings. We are immortals, in the sense that we shall exist until the end of the current phase of the universe. This knowledge has altered

  our psychology, naturally. In your terms we have become superhuman but we feel this as a loss rather than an accomplishment. We decided to attempt to reproduce the civilisation that had produced us.

  'There were a few primitive inhabitants left on the Earth, which had long-since begun a metamorphosis into an altered chemical state. We revitalised the planet, giving it an identical nature to the one it had had when civilisation first began to exist in any real form. We expected the inhabitants to react to this. We expected—and there was no cause then to expect otherwise—to develop a race which would rapidly achieve an identical civilisation to the one which had created us. But the first experiment failed—the inhabitants stayed on the same level of barbarism that they had been on when we first found them, but they began to fight one another. We decided to create an entirely new planet and try again. So as not to alter the balance of the universe, we extended a kind of "well" into what you call, I believe, "sub-space", and built our new planet there. This proved a failure, but we learnt from it. Since then we have built more than a thousand simulations of the original Earth and have gradually been adding to our understanding of the complexity of the project we undertook. Everything on every planet has a part to play. A building, a tree, an animal, a man. All link in as essentials to the structure. They have a physical role to play in the ecological and sociological nature of the planet, and they have a psychological role—a symbolic nature. That is why we find it useful to have the populace of every new simulation (which is drawn from previous abandoned simulations) externalise and dramatise its symbolic and psychological role before full activation. To some extent it is also therapeutic and in many ways has the effect of simulating the birth and childhood of the adults we use. You doubtless noticed that there were no children on the new simulation. We find children very difficult to use on a freshly activated world.'