Now Then (v1.0) - John Brunner, page 9
In Kanish-Kulya they were fighting a war, and each side was breathing threatenings and slaughter against the other.
“Oh that fire would descend from heaven and eat up our enemies!” cried the Kanishmen.
“Oh that the earth would open and swallow up our enemies!” cried the Kulyamen.
“As you wish,” said the traveler, “so be it.”
He tapped the ground with his staff, and Fegrim who was pent in a volcano answered that tapping and heaved mightily. Afterwards, when the country was beginning to sprout again—for lava makes fertile soil—men dug up bones and skulls as they prepared the ground for planting.
On the shores of Lake Taxhling, men sat around their canoes swapping lies while they waited for a particular favorable star to ascend above the horizon. One lied better than all the rest.
But he lied not as his companions lied—to pass the time, to amuse each other harmlessly. He lied to feed a consuming vanity hungrier than all the bellies of all the people in the villages along the shore of Lake Taxhling, who waited day in, day out, with inexhaustible patience for their menfolk to return with their catch.
Said the braggart, “If only I could meet with such another fish as I caught single-handed in Lake Moroho when I was a stripling of fifteen! Then you would see the fisherman’s art! Alas, there are only piddling fish in Lake Taxhling.”
“As you wish, so be it,” said the traveler, who had accepted the offer of food by their fire. And the next dawn the braggart came home screaming with excitement about the great fish he had caught, as great as the one he had taken in Lake Moroho. His companions crowded round to see it—and they laughed till the mountains rang, because it was smaller than some others they themselves had taken during the night.
“I do not wish him to love me for my beauty or my riches,” said the haughty child of a rich merchant in the city called Barbizond, where there was always a rainbow in the sky owing to the presence of a bright being chained inside a thundercloud with fetters of lightning. The girl was beautiful, and rich, and inordinately proud.
“No!” she continually declaimed, discarding suitor after suitor. “I wish to be loved for myself, for my nature!”
“As you wish, so be it,” said the traveler, who had come in the guise of a pilgrim to one of the jousts held for this lady to view her possible future husbands. Twenty-one men had died in the lists that afternoon, and she had thrown her glove in the champion’s face and gone to supper.
The next time there were jousts announced, no challenger came, and the girl pulled a face and demanded that more heralds go forth. Her father summoned a hundred heralds. The news went abroad. And personable young men said, “Fight for a stuck-up shrew like her? I have better ways of passing the time!”
At length the truth was brought to her, and she became miserable. She had never been happy. She had only thought she was happy. Little by little, her pride evaporated. And one day, a young man came to her father’s house and found that she was a quiet, submissive, pleasant girl, and married her.
And the journey approached its end. The traveler felt a natural relief that nothing untoward had occurred, as he hastened his footsteps towards the goal and climax of the trip—towards Ryovora, where men were noble and clearsighted, and made no trouble for him. After this city, he could be assured that his duty was fulfilled.
Not that all was well with the world, by any means. There were enchanters, and ogres, and human problems remaining yet. Still, all those were getting fewer. One by one, the imprints of the original chaos were fading away, like the footsteps of travelers on the road above where Laprivan of the Yellow Eyes was prisoned.
Then, as the golden and silver towers of Ryovora came to view, he saw that an aura surrounded it as of a brewing storm, and his hope and trust in the people of that city melted away.
III
At the city called Barbizond, where he had been but recently, there was likewise that aura around the city. There, however, it was a good thing and pleasant to look upon, coming as it did from the bright being Sardhin, chained in his cloud. Ryovora was free from such disadvantages as elementals and principalities and powers; the people of Ryovora had always been—until now—creatures of hard sense, practicality and rational thought, giving little trouble to the world and investigating its nature with a certain singleness of purpose.
That something had happened to change this—there was a fact to make the very universe shiver in cold anticipation.
The traveler turned aside, frowning, from the track, and instead of pursuing a straight course into the city, he went across a pleasant-seeming meadow in the midst of which was a mist like the mist of early morning, but more dense. When the gray wisps had closed around him entirely, he dissolved one of the forces which curdled the light he used as a staff, and a clear bright beam cut through the opacity. It had barely sheared the mist when a quiet voice spoke to him.
“Since you know where you are, I know who you are. Come into the castle, and be welcome.”
The mist lifted, and the traveler went forward into the courtyard of a castle that reared seemingly to heaven, with great towers that almost pierced the sky. Two dragons chained beside the portcullis bowed their heads fawningly to the traveler; four man-like persons whose bodies were of burnished steel came to escort him—one before, one behind, one at each side—through the gateway and across the yard; twenty heralds sounded a blast from a gallery as he ascended the steps towards the chief tower of the castle.
There was a scent of magic in this air. Echoes of half-forgotten cantrips resounded, incredibly faint, from the stone Of the walls. Here and there blue light dripped from a projecting cornice; shadows moved with no one to cast them.
Then a door of oak studded with brass swung open on protesting hinges, giving access to a room across which slanted a thick bar of sunlight from a wide-open window. The sunlight fell on the shrivelled mummy of a mandrake. In jars covered with black cloth, ranged on shelves, were twenty homunculi. A brazier burned, giving off a thick, very pleasant smell like warm honey.
From a table on which heavy books were piled that served also as a perch for a sleepy-looking owl, a man rose to greet the traveler, and spoke, inclining his head.
“It is traditional that no one shall pierce the mist with which I protect my privacy save an invited guest or one who has a single nature. And, the universe being what it is, only one—person—has that single nature. I am the enchanter Manuus. Be welcome, sir.”
The black-clad traveler bent his head in acknowledgment. A chair was placed for him; he sat in it, disposing his cloak comfortably over the arm. The enchanter Manuus took from a cupboard a large flask and two mugs; he poured a few drops of sparkling liquid from the flask into mid-air, muttering words which made the walls hum faintly in response. The drops vanished before they reached the floor, and the enchanter gave a nod of satisfaction and filled the two mugs.
“What is your business, sir?” he said, resuming his own seat after having given his visitor one of the mugs.
“There is an aura about Ryovora,” said the traveler. “I wish to ascertain what its cause may be before I enter the city.”
Manuus nodded thoughtfully, stroking the wispy gray beard that clung at his sharp chin like a wisp of the mist with which he guarded his privacy.
“You will forgive me mentioning the fact,” he said in an apologetic tone, “but it is said somewhere in one of these books—a book, moreover, in which I have come to place some trust—that your nature is single, and also that it is part of your nature not to ask questions without answering them.”
‘That is so. And I see plainly that you put trust in the book of which you speak. The faceless drinker to whom you poured libation a moment ago is referred to only in that one volume.”
There was silence between them for a moment, while each contemplated the other.
“Ask your question, then,” said the traveler at length. “And I may say that the more involved your question, the simpler and more difficult to understand will my answer be.”
“And vice versa?” suggested Manuus, his old eyes twinkling.
“Exactly.”
“Very well, then. Who are you? Note please, that I do not ask your name. You have many names.”
The traveler smiled. “You are a man of understanding,” he said. ‘That is a good question. So I will answer frankly: I am he to whom was entrusted the task of bringing order out of chaos. For that reason, I have but one nature.”
“If your nature was such that you demanded honor in full measure with your worth, all the days of my life would not suffice to do you homage,” said Manuus seriously. “Ask now what you would know.”
“What’s the trouble in Ryovora?”
Maliciously, Manuus made his eyes twinkle again. “I am not bound by your laws, sir. Therefore I will answer in the human style—simply, to simple questions. There is dissatisfaction with the order of things as they are.”
“Ask again.”
“What is the purpose of your task?”
“When all things have but one nature, they will be subsumed into the Original All. Time will stop. This object is desirable.”
Manuus looked thoughtfully at the brazier. “Desirable, perhaps—but appallingly dull. Speak again.”
“In what particular respect are the citizens of Ryovora dissatisfied?”
Manuus turned the question over and over in his brilliant mind, seeking a way to milk a further chance to question his distinguished visitor from it. He failed
“They are displeased that they have no gods,” he replied.
Three bolts of lightning sheared the clear blue sky beyond the window; three claps of thunder in succession made the room echo, and startled the sleepy owl into giving three little hops across the great book on which he squatted.
The black-clad traveler sat calmly in his chair, sipping from his mug, but on his face a frown was suddenly written. “Ask a third time,” he said, not ceasing to frown.
“Why, this is not altogether necessary,” said Manuus in high delight. “But I will ask.” He cast his eyes around as though seeking inspiration, and finally lit on the right line of inquiry.
“What was there, before things became as they are now?”
“I will show you,” said the traveler, and dipped one fingertip into his mug. He drew forth a drop of liquid in which was entrapped a sparkling bubble. “Regard this bubble,” he instructed Manuus. “And see …”
In those days, the forces were none of them chained. They raged unchecked through every corner and quarter of the cosmos. Here ruled Laprivan of the Yellow Eyes, capricious, whimsical,, and when he stared things melted in frightful agony. There a bright being shed radiance, but the radiance was all-consuming, and that which was solid and dull was flashed into fire. At another place, creatures in number one million fought desperately with one another for the possession of a single grain of dust; the fury of their contesting laid waste whole solar systems.
Once—twice—a third time something burgeoned, which had about it a comforting aura of rationality, of predictability; about this aura, time was created from eternity. Time entails memory, memory entails conscience, conscience entails thought for the future, which is itself implied by the existence of time. Twice the forces of utter chaos raged around this focal point, and swallowed it back into nonexistence; then the will of Tuprid and Caschalanva, of Quorril and Lry, and of an infinite number of elemental beings, reigned once more. But none of them was supreme, because in chaos nothing can endure, nothing can be absolute, nothing sure or certain or reliable.
In that age, suns flashed like fires, burning brightly one instant, ashes the next. On planets under a million suns, men and those who thought like men struggled to reduce the chaos to order, and when they thought they had most nearly achieved it chance ordained that all their work should go for nothing, absorbed again into the faceless dark.
“That was not right,” said the traveler, and squashed the bubble between his fingertips so that it burst.
“I have seen,” said Manuus with infinite weariness after a long pause. “But I have not understood.”
“Man does not understand chaos. That is why man is man, and not of another nature.” The traveler blinked at him. “I wish now to pose my last question; do you grant that I have well and sufficiently answered yours?”
“You have only given me another million questions to ask,” said Manuus, shaking his grey head. “But that also, I suppose, is in the nature of mankind. Ask away.”
“Your supposition is correct. Now my last question^) you: enchanter, what is your opinion of a god?”
“I do not know what a god is,” said the enchanter. “And I doubt that any man knows, though many may think they do.”
“Fair enough,” said the black-clad traveler, and rose to depart.
“Have you not even one more question to put to me?” suggested the enchanter with a wan smile.
“No,” said the traveler.
Manuus gave a shrug and rose also. “Then I can only thank you for having graced my dwelling, sir,” he said formally. “Few of my colleagues can have had the honor of receiving you personally.”
The traveler gave him a hard, forthright look.
“I have many names, but one nature,” he said. “Man has one name, and more than two natures. But the essential two are these: that he shall strive to impose order on chaos, and that he shall strive to take advantage of chaos. You, sir, are not a better enchanter for having received me here, but a worse—and, I may say, such people as you are often the greatest allies of the powers who were before me.”
“I object, sir,” said Manuus frostily. “Let it not be said that I oppose you.”
“A third element of man’s nature,” said the traveler, “is this: that he shall not understand what he is doing. Good day to you, Manuus.”
The traveler left Manuus deep in thought, with one elbow on a book in front of him, his chin cupped in his hand, his eyes staring vacantly and contemplatively at the owl on his table. The traveler set forward, towards the gold and silver towers of Ryovora, and there went among the populace, asking questions that any man might have put—and indeed, that many men were at that time putting.
Before the houses of the great merchant-enchanters, who conjured the city’s goods from the far corners of the world, he put his question; in the market square, in the private houses, in the taverns and theaters and laboratories, he put his questions. And when at length he came to stand upon a high silver tower and look forth over the sleeping city at midnight of that same night, he had reached certain definite conclusions.
The people of Ryovora were dissatisfied. They had struggled through centuries, inquiring of the mute cosmos what its nature and what the nature of man might be, and they were left still hungering.
This hunger, they said, would be assuaged if only they had a god, as did the people of Acromel a few miles away. News had come, of course, that the god of Acromel had caused the death of many citizens, and widespread misery, but they assigned that all to Duke Vaul and to his stupidity. “We are sensible people!” they shouted. “We would know how to treat a god!”
The traveler stood looking out over the placid sleeping city. Moonlight shone on the roofs of glorious buildings, on the river which ran between them, on the bridges and the homes and the wide, fine roads.
He had asked them, “What is the nature of a god?” and they had said confidently, “We have no god, so how can we know? But if we had one—ah, then we should know!”
The traveler stood wrapped in thought for a long time. At last a quirk of a smile twisted his mouth upwards, and he put out his hands over the city and said, “As you wish, so be it!”
Then, his task for the moment being accomplished, he departed.
IV
To park a car while one goes for a walk in the woods is not uncommon. To return and find that the car is no longer there is not unprecedented. But to return and find that the road itself, on which the car was parked, has likewise vanished, is a different matter again.
Yet to a man who rules himself by the straightforward logic of common sense, this is not an insuperable problem. Bernard Brown was one such, and it was to him that this improbable event occurred.
“Well!” he said, looking at the indisputably grassy stir-face of the narrow ride between two high hedges where to the best of his recollection—and his memory was a good one—there had shortly before been a tarmac highway. “Well!” he said again, and since there was no obvious alternative sat down on a rock covered with moss and smoked a cigarette in a philosophical manner.
However, no one came by who might enlighten him on the whereabouts of his car, and when the cigarette had reduced to a stub, he dropped it in the grass, ground it out with his foot, and began to walk along the lane between the hedges.
By the straightforward logic of common sense, this was entirely improper; therefore he must have missed his way in the pleasant summer woods, and have returned to the, road at the wrong point.
He strolled along jauntily enough, not much worried by the turn of affairs, and whistled as he went. Occasionally the hedges on either side parted after he had gone by, and eyes studied him thoughtfully, but since he did not see them he was not troubled by them.
At length the hedges ended, and with them the trees of the wood, and he emerged on to a rutted track between two plowed fields. On the near side of one of these fields a man with a kerchief tied round his neck and his legs soiled to the knee with earth was backing up a large and obstreperous horse, harnessed to a cart whose contents were indeterminate but stank incredibly. Politely ignoring the smell, he spoke to the man directly.
“Excuse me—can you tell me the way back to the London road?”
