FSF Magazine, February 2007 Read online

  When the steward brought round a tray of wine and delicacies, the nonaut used the distraction to sneak another glance at the two men. He now saw a definite contrast between them. Across the plump one's multi-chinned face a succession of micro-expressions chased each other: mild irritation, bemusement, curiosity, and the indulgence shown toward a child whose behavior straddles the narrow line between amusing and aggravating. But the young man's face showed nothing but righteous anger, unalloyed by doubt or even self-consciousness, and with an intensity that Bandar found unnerving.

  Fortunately, whatever concerns motivated the strange young man were none of Bandar's. He turned away and looked out the gondola's wide window. The spires and terraces of Olkney were dropping below him as the balloon from which the gondola hung was allowed to rise to its cruising height. Soon he felt the slight tug of the umbilicus that connected the balloon to its dolly, now far below. The gondola rocked gently then settled as the operator engaged the system that brought the materials of which the dolly was formed into contact with the track into which it was slotted. A collaboration of energies moved the dolly forward, at first slowly, then with increasing speed, towing the tapered cylinder of the balloon and its underslung gondola in a smooth and silent passage.

  Bandar's ambition to travel the Swept had long been frustrated. It was a vast, wild land, almost entirely unpopulated except for some brillion miners. The great flatness, with its shoulder-high grass, was prowled by dangerous wildlife: omnivorous garm, both the lesser and greater species; sinewy fand, with needle teeth and ravenous appetite; and the huge but cunning woollyclaw, its well concealed burrows often full of hungry whelps.

  The Swept had never been repopulated after its artificial creation eons before, during a desperate effort to repel the last aggressive invasion of Old Earth by a vicious predatory hive species known as the Dree. A gravitational aggregator, normally used to assemble asteroids into convenient conglomerations, was brought down to crush the invaders and their legions of hapless human mind-slaves in their warren of tunnels. But the immense gravitational waves had created resonances deep in the planet's core; even today cysts and bubbles of various sizes and intensities rose to the surface, though no one could predict where or when. A building that happened to be in the path of a rising anomaly could find the weight of its components drastically and suddenly reordered, leading to a collapse. Persons traveling on foot faced the same peril, and flying was advisable only in emergencies.

  There were two safe ways to travel the Swept. One was to take passage on a landship, a great-wheeled wind-driven vessel built with enough flexibility to withstand minor anomalies and capable of steering clear of major ones. But landships catered to the truly affluent; Bandar had never been able to afford a cruise lasting weeks and the landships did not offer day trips. The less costly option was to hire a Rover to take him out onto the Swept in a two-wheeled cart drawn by shuggra. The Rovers were a fabricated species, developed from canines during a past age when trifling with life's elementary constituents was approved of. They lived as hunters and guides on the Swept, served by their innate ability to sense gravitational fluxions.

  That ability would have made the Rovers ideal for Bandar's purposes—he wished to study the effects of gravity on the formulation of nospheric corpuscles, and the anomalies offered unique experimental conditions—but Rovers disliked gravitational fluctuations. They used their senses to avoid the phenomena Bandar sought.

  He had taken the balloon-tram to Farflung twice before, during rare vacations from the housewares emporium, and each time he had tried to engage Rover guides. For his second trip, he had even learned the odd, gobbling sounds of their speech. But the moment he made his request, any Rover he approached looked down and away and professed to know nothing of anomalies, or declared himself already engaged, or under some nebulous obligation that prevented him from accommodating Bandar.

  The balloon-tram was now passing the Institute for Historical Inquiry, and Bandar looked down upon the cloisters in which he had never again been allowed to set foot after the Institute's dons judged him responsible for plunging Didrick Gabbris into permanent psychosis. That was now decades ago, and Bandar no longer let his powerful memory take him to that painful time. But the nonaut's heart still harbored a desire to return to the Institute in triumph. He would present the Grand Colloquiam with irrefutable new facts. If that meant overturning dogmas grown dusty over millennia, then so be it. And now that he was able at last to travel the Swept, Bandar saw victory as a glimmering prospect.

  It bothered him only slightly that he had connived, and indeed had probably broken a statute or two, in order to gain passage on the landship Orgulon. The cruise was offered free to persons suffering from the lassitude, the first new disease to strike the human population of Old Earth. Bandar did not have the lassitude; indeed, he knew no one who did. Astonishing himself by his own boldness, he had invented an afflicted brother and offered forged documents to the organizers. A few days later, a pair of tickets had arrived. Bandar threw one away. The other was in an inner pocket of his traveling mantle.

  He turned back from the window to take another glass of wine from the steward and found that the fat man had fallen asleep in his chair while the young one was staring at Bandar with an almost palpable intensity. Again, the nonaut was startled, but it soon became apparent that the fellow hardly noticed him, that his stare was merely the outer sign of a deep introspection. Again, too, he was struck by the quality of otherness in the young man's eyes: they would not have looked out of place in the skull of some mad prophet.

  Now the strange eyes blinked and focused on Bandar. The nonaut made the gestures appropriate between travelers whose ranks were unknown to each other and said, “By your scarf, may I take you for a graduate of the Archon's Institute?"

  The young man fingered his neck cloth. “Yes,” he said.

  "May I ask if you studied history?"

  "No. Criminology.” He had a brusque manner of speech, but Bandar sensed that it was not intended to offend. He began to speak his name, then seemed to catch himself before declaring himself one Phlevas Wasselthorpe, of the minor aristocracy. The man snoring beside him was his mentor, Erenti Abbas.

  Bandar introduced himself and said, “It would have been a convenient coincidence if you had studied history. I, myself, have spent most of my life dealing in housewares. I am now retired and taking a full-time interest in my longstanding avocation: the study of history, specifically the history of the Swept."

  Bandar turned the conversation toward a discussion of what was on his mind: the Dree invasion. Wasselthorpe, surprising for an Institute graduate, even third-tier, had never heard of it. He asked questions, and Bandar sketched the outline of events and mentioned his intent to study the gravitational residues.

  It was clear from the young man's face that the Dree did not interest him. He abruptly turned to another issue for which the Swept was famous, asking what Bandar knew about brillion mining. Bandar knew what everyone knew: brillion was a catch-all name for substances formed in the depths of the Earth from waste products deposited by the dawn-time's wastrel civilizations. Old Earth's original inhabitants, scarcely out of the caves, had fashioned many materials, natural and artificial, to use but once, then throw away. This ancient detritus was dumped into depressions, plowed under, and capped by layers of earth. Most was eventually dug up to become fodder for mass-conversion systems; however, some of the societies that had created these deposits being later destroyed or relocated, the whereabouts of many dumps were forgotten. Over geological time, the shallow deposits were gradually buried beneath accumulated rock. Some were drawn even deeper into the planet by tectonic motions, and then the same forces that make diamond from coal worked upon the rich variety of substances that paleohumans had promiscuously mixed together. The result was brillion, and it came in several varieties: blue, red, and white were the main types, though they could be found in some interesting blends. Each had its properties and uses.


  And then there was the rarest of all: black brillion, a substance so rare and precious that those who found it never advertised the news. Or so it was said. It was also said the stuff could work wonders. Bandar reserved his opinion, though Wasselthorpe pressed for a definitive answer.

  Their voices awoke the fat man, Abbas. He joined the conversation and his contributions made it less an interrogation and more the kind of amiable chat engaged in by travelers with persons they were unlikely to encounter again. At some point, Bandar revealed his true vocation. Abbas said, “Ah,” in a manner that implied both knowledge and interest, but his companion had never heard of the Commons and thus began a new interrogation.

  Bandar was always happy to talk about the nosphere. But as he did so now he saw the young man seize upon the subject with an intensity that Bandar found unsettling. He sought to redirect the conversation back to the Swept.

  "It has long been known that the existence of the Commons is in some way connected to gravity,” he said. “It is difficult to access in space, for example, and some have said that human experiences that have taken place beyond gravity wells do not register strongly and are lost to the common memory."

  Abbas responded to the diversion, wondering if the gravitational anomalies might enhance Bandar's abilities as a nonaut. It was a pertinent question and Bandar now noticed that attached to the lapel of his robe were the pin and pendant of a runner-up for the Fezzani Prize, a notable academic achievement. He responded as if he were addressing a colleague. “Indeed,” he said. “I am hopeful of conducting some remarkable research. Out of it may come the seed of a small institute."

  "The Bandar Institute,” Abbas said, and the words voiced an idea Bandar had never put so bluntly. But now the other one was boring in with a question about how the Commons might figure in the field of criminal investigation. It struck Bandar that criminology was an odd pursuit for a member of the aristocracy, even a rustic. He did not want to go off on a monomaniac's tangent and answered lightly, then followed with a brief dissertation on the formation and activities of engrammatic cells, corpuscles, and archetypical entities, knowing from experience that technical language would swiftly chase away casual interest. But Wasselthorpe's eyes failed to glaze and he continued to regard Bandar with an unsettling intensity.

  "But where is this nosphere?” he said. “Where do your engrams and archetypes do their work?"

  Bandar tapped the back of the Wasselthorpe's skull, then his own head and Abbas's. “In all of us."

  He saw comprehension dawn in the young man's face, then puzzlement. Wasselthorpe said he thought the collective unconscious was mere myth.

  To Bandar, myth was never “mere.” Myth was always an expression of fundamental truth. He would have led the discussion along other paths but again the young fellow demonstrated his unnerving literal-mindedness. He quoted Bandar from a few moments ago, when the nonaut had told him that a traveler of the Commons needed a good memory and a knack for detail. He declared that he had both.

  Bandar decided it was time to ease this peculiar young man out of an apparent enthusiasm that might lead to obsession. To test Wasselthorpe's memory, he said, “How many doors were in the waiting room at the balloon-tram station, in which walls were they set, and what was written on each?"

  Wasselthorpe paused only a moment before saying, “Four doors, two in the west wall, one each in the north and south. The two in the west wall advertised ablutories for males and females, the one in the north wall was for a closet holding supplies, and the southern door led to the station master's office.” He added, “That door had a scratch in the paint above the handle."

  Bandar was as impressed by the power of Wasselthorpe's eidetic memory as he was concerned by the intensity with which he had answered the challenge. But it was a violation of his nonaut's oath not to respond to a potential candidate for training. With some trepidation, he offered to test the young fellow's aptitude.

  Wasselthorpe declared himself keen. Bandar threw a querying glance Abbas's way, but receiving only the facial equivalent of a shrug, he explained the different mental images that a traveler might envision as the initial portal to the Commons.

  "I will see a door,” Wasselthorpe said, with complete certainty. Then he wanted to know what would be behind it.

  "Let us not skip before we can hop,” said Bandar, and was amused to hear in his own voice the dry tone of Preceptor Huffley, who had said the same words to him, long years ago. The Commons was dangerous for anyone; for some, it was indescribably perilous.

  The warning did nothing to blunt the young man's interest. The gleam in the eyes that were now locked upon his made Bandar uncomfortable. The nonaut lowered his gaze to his hands as he briefly sketched the arrangement of the psyche.

  "For now, I think we should go no farther than up to the first door,” Bandar said. “If you can hold it in your mind's eye for a few moments, that will show an aptitude."

  Wasselthorpe was eager to make the attempt.

  Bandar bade the young man close his eyes and still his limbs, then instructed him on the regulation of his breathing. The nonaut was surprised that, within moments, Wasselthorpe appeared well settled.

  "Are you ready?” he asked.

  "I am,” said Wasselthorpe, and Bandar heard in the undertones of his voice nothing that bespoke unwillingness among any of the less obvious components of the fellow's psyche. It was yet another unusual response from a complete beginner.

  "I will teach you the introductory thran,” he said. He sounded a sequence of tones and asked Wasselthorpe to copy him. The thran came back note-perfect and again Bandar heard no microquavers to indicate that some element of the young man's psyche opposed what they were about to do. How rare, he thought.

  They continued to intone the thran for a few moments, then Bandar broke off to say, “When you see anything that might be a door, raise one finger."

  He resumed the chant, expecting some time to go by before he saw a response. Instead, scarcely had he sounded the first few notes before Wasselthorpe was holding a digit almost beneath Bandar's nose. The deep conviction in the young man's chanting voice strengthened even further.

  It came to Bandar that he might be in the presence of a seriously unbalanced mind. The young stranger's intensity of focus could be the mark of a natural. If so, to plunge his consciousness into the Commons would have immediate and disastrous results: he would be sharing the confined space of a balloon-tram gondola with a full-blown psychotic.

  Even as he followed his thought to its frightening conclusion, Bandar saw Wasselthorpe's still elevated hand move forward, fingers curling as if to grasp. He not only sees the portal but reaches to open it, Bandar thought. He immediately ceased chanting and called in a peremptory voice: “Enough! Come back!"

  Wasselthorpe gave a start. The hand that had been reaching out now subsided to the arm of the young man's chair. Bandar rose to stand over him and shook his shoulder. Abbas sat forward in his chair, concern on his many-chinned face.

  The young man's eyes opened, blinking, and Bandar was relieved to see them fill with awareness. He let out a pent breath and said, “You were too fast! I almost lost you."

  Wasselthorpe seemed unfazed. “I saw a light shining from behind the door,” he said. “And my own hand was reaching to open it."

  A shock went through Bandar. “You saw light and made a hand, though you had never heard of any of this before?"

  Wasselthorpe said that he was not inclined to tease. Abbas vouched for the truth of the statement, describing his companion as “no bubbling fount of mirth."

  Bandar passed a hand across his brow, felt cold moisture. He had never seen nor heard of such aptitude. Bandar had been talented, but it had taken weeks of instruction and practice before he could call up his own portal and discern the light beyond it, and weeks more before he could open the way for more than a twinkling.

  Wasselthorpe said it had seemed only natural, a term that caused Bandar to shudder. He explained its technical m
eaning among Institute scholars and found that his voice was trembling. He asked to be allowed a few moments to reflect upon what had happened. But Wasselthorpe was undeterred and wanted to know more.

  So did his mentor. “If my young charge is no more than a skip and a jump from a serious bout of the hoo-hahs, I would appreciate knowing the warning signs."

  "He is in no danger if he does not call up the vision of the door.” Bandar looked sternly at Wasselthorpe and strongly urged him not to attempt the exercise again. Once into the Commons, he might never find a way out.

  But still the young man said, “I would know more."

  Again Bandar found the hard fixity of Wasselthorpe's gaze difficult to bear. He wondered that such an unnaturally concentrated mind had achieved only a third-tier degree, or that he should have come from an aristocracy that frequently showed the less fortunate effects of inbreeding.

  "Then let it be later,” said the nonaut. “I must think on the matter."

  By “later,” he meant, “never.” But from what the two men said to each other after Bandar returned to his seat, it appeared that they were also bound for the Orgulon. He turned and gazed out at the landscape unrolling far beneath them as the old orange sun eased itself down to the horizon. He had been looking forward to the vast openness of the Swept. Now a cloud of foreboding seemed to have risen before him.

  * * * *

  At Farflung, Bandar disembarked from the balloon-tram without speaking again to the two other passengers. He hurried through the terminal to find a ground car he could hire to take him to where the Orgulon docked. Frugality would ordinarily have inspired him to suggest that the three of them share transportation, but he wanted to put distance between himself and Wasselthorpe. The young man's unusual facility for entering the Commons disturbed him.

  As the sun slipped behind the hills at whose feet stood Farflung, the car brought him to a stretch of docks. Beyond lay the Swept. The long grass that covered the flatlands to the far horizon rippled under a constant breeze like waves on a straw-colored sea. Bandar paused to look out at the immensity and the unsettled emotions that his encounter with Wasselthorpe had evoked now gave way to a feeling that he was where he was supposed to be. It was not a sense of contentment, rather it was a sentiment of being in the right place, doing the right thing. He drew in, then released a deep breath and strode toward the landship.