Myths from the
Central Suns
"What do you think of Chapter Seven?" Saphooth asked, eying Kaledrin from orbs shaded to obscurity beneath bushy white eyebrows. How conscious I've become, Kaledrin reflected, of the nuances of simian-form expressions. They're so much more complexand at the same time more transparentthan my own hard-shelled reserve. It's Benadek's fault, I suppose, and Achibol's. I read of "smiles" and "frowns," and I seek analogues in Saphooth's face. "I think," he said aloud, "that the tale will bring us both to grief."
"How so?" Saphooth queried.
"The tale, as the Biocybes tell it, is too `real.' People cease to think of it as a construct of programming, myth, and artificial minds, and take it seriously. I've read letters from simulnet subscribers who want to know where `Earth' is, and whether all humans descend from simians. Some letters are from scientists who should know better than to ignore the evidence against a single origin-world."
Saphooth nodded. "I've answered several such letters myself," he said. "You must admit, the tale seems to lead in that direction." He raised shoulders and eyebrows simultaneouslya shrug, Kaledrin translated. "And though the one-world theory has been ignored in recent years, the biocybes' acceptance lends it credence. After all, they've taken all the evidence into account."
" `Ignored?'" Kaledrin blurted. " `Theory?' The one-world myth has been thoroughly debunked. Only primitives and cultists cling to it in the face of clear paleontological evidence to the contrary. The prospect of this project supporting such nonsense terrifies me." Saphooth's blase attitude terrified him even more. "Is it possible you're more than just a physical anachronism, Saphooth? Can a man in your position still believe a planet is flat, or that the universe revolves around it?"
This short chapter has no counterpart in any orthodox mythology, and thus no classical heading. It seems to have been fabricated from petty details. * It is our editorial guess that it will function solely as a transition to succeeding chapters.
Myths of Achibol portray him as demon and tempter, mage, even god. There are two distinct traditions, and their common use of Achibol's name is explained as a late imposition of a dominant culture upon an autochthonous mythology. The source-lists for this chapter show that the biocybes have joined them in this narrative. Future chapters, we suspect, will be drawn mostly from that larger body of works available from the worlds nearer the galactic core.
(Kaledrin, Senior Editor)
Achibol was uncomfortable with his own thoughts. Benadek had changed. Not, admitted the old man, necessarily for the worst. He seemed to have lost a certain childish heat, and to have gained an air of clear-eyed rationality. The boy was no longer the puppy who had joined him in Vilbursiton. And that bothered him.
The sorcerer had sworn time and again over the course of his centuries that he would not succumb to any more puppies. Their lives were too shortor his own too longand he was inclined to become distracted by grief at old dogs' passing. But he had done it again, he reluctantly admitted. Benadek's "crush" on him had not been as one-sided as he'd pretended, though he had tried gruffly to keep a safe distance between himself and the boy. Oh, yes. From the first he'd tried to push him away, as much for the boy's own good as for his own peace of mind, but circumstances had intervened.
Now Benadek had changed. Achibol sensed a new hardness, a determination. Gaining his past anew, had the lad also gained a future? Achibol laughed. He was worrying like a schoolgirl. Would the "new" Benadek still find meaning in his apprenticeship, or would he seek goals of his own, now that he was free of his self-inflicted amnesia? Enough! Give the lad time. He'll either see it through, and give me a few more years of his company, or he won't, and neither way will I be less the old fool.
"Master? What now?" Benadek's words were no different than they might have been before, but their delivery differed subtly. He wanted to know, so he asked without subservience.
"We'll go on, I suppose. Is there aught we should do?"
"Just that? Exactly as before?"
Achibol read unease in the boy's voice. "Well . . . not exactly. You have much to learnthings I can't teach you by myself."
"If you can't, who can?"
Despite Benadek's new maturity, it was obvious to the sorcerer that the boy still considered him highly, and he was pleased. "There's a place where you can learn what you must. It's near an abandoned city called Sufawlsidak, north of here."
"A school? I've never been to a school."
"It was a hospital and a laboratory, among other things. An experimental lab. Now it's a graveyard of frozen memories." Benadek, used to his master's enigmatic utterances, altered his expression only slightly to signify his perplexity.
"There are machines that teach, and drugs distilled from the recollections of men. Partaking of such enchantments one can gain knowledge that others spent their lifetimes accumulating, without the years of effort they expended. You'd be a surgeon? A flier of aircraft? A mage? A single dose, and you'll grasp all that one of the finest minds remembered."
Benadek's eyes lit up at the prospect of even more knowledge than Achibol possessed. He tried to imagine vast other fields of learning, and failed. "Have you done it, Master?"
"Have I gained all my pinches and tidbits in that manner, you mean? Or have I given my own memories over to a frozen flask?" He chortled. "I've done neither. Nor would I want to. The process may seem simple, but it won't be easy on you. But then, there'll never be an easy way for you."
Sensing a trap, Benadek proceeded carefully. "Is there something wrong with the spells and potionsthe frozen memories?"
"Not to my knowledge. One difficulty is a moral one. When the machines render a brain's contents into a jar, the donor dies. Thus for every dose of second-hand experience you take, a man's life was consumed. Half-portions have no effect, and once thawed, the potion cannot be returned to its vial. How many lives can a man justify taking, thus? The burden of one alone, it seems to me, is as much as a decent fellow could bear."
Benadek's momentary confusion rapidly evaporated. After all, he was a pragmatist. Wisdomand the power it gavewas not to be lightly spurned, no matter the weight of it. A lifetime's journey without the toll of years ordinarily demanded was treasure indeed. Achibol's reservations were cause for care, but on balance would weigh lightly enough on his apprentice's slender shoulders.
"Is there another consideration, Master?"
"Yes. It is this: to know a thing is not the same as having it in your bones. I know tricks, but I am no Houdini, no Blackstone or Merlin. I am still Achibol, a charlatan and no more."
"Then what good is it, Master? If such knowledge can't be used, why take it?"
"You don't attend my words precisely, boy. What do you have in your very soul? What deep talent and craving consumes you? If what you take fits what you are, and if you use it before it fades like the glow of last night's wine, then it's yours to keepand your incessant questions lead me to suspect you will retain enough to warrant sacrificing a minor historian, at the very least."
Achibol doesn't know everything, the boy reflected. A historian? There's more worth knowing than dead rulers and ancient countries. How can he even guess how much I want to know, or how much my bones will hold? And these memories are already dead, so what guilt will I bear for bringing them to life once more?
Benadek's mood was broken by Sylfie's arrival with their breakfasts. In spite of their passion the night before, by daylight she seemed distant, treating him with the same reserve she did Achibol, but without the daughterly fondness she showed his master.
"What's wrong?" he asked when they were packed.
"Nothing. I'm just not used to your being so different."
"I haven't changed. It's just that I remember everything now. You should be happy for me."
"I'm glad you remember. It's just . . . just that . . ."
"Boy! Come here," Achibol called. "Kick this mule's belly for me. The beast is puffing himself up again." Sylfie looked relieved.
"You should leave well enough alone, boy," the sorcerer said. "Some things don't bear talking about."
"She should be happy for me."
"What of her gratification?" Realizing that Benadek had no idea of what he meant, he continued cheerlessly. "You're a pure-human. She is a poot. Not only is the disparity between you greater even than she feared, but her own prime function cannot be fulfilledwith you. Be grateful for every moment she remains with us, for she cannot linger indefinitely."
"What do you mean?" True, Sylfie's life with him was nothing to celebratebedding at the side of the road, walking or riding all day long, but didn't she love him too?
"Babies, boy," Achibol exclaimed. "You can give her none."
Babies! The thought had never crossed Benadek's mind. What did he want with babies? The connection between infantstiny, noisy, smellyand his customary nightly pleasures was indistinct. He knew, of course, but it did not bear thinking about. An uneasy feeling crept upon him. "Is something wrong with me?"
"Is something wrong with a horse that mates with a deer?" The old man snorted disdainfully. "What about a bird and a fish?"
"We're not horses or . . . Oh! I'm a pure-human, and she isn't. But can't the temples do something about her? There are poots who have babes without men."
"The temples sometimes implant embryos in empty wombs," Achibol agreed, "but that depends upon the population balances they record as local simples pass through them, not upon a poot's desire. Should a healthy female appear at the same temple many times without being pregnant, an irreplaceable fertilized egg might be provided for herbut Sylfie only visits temples once. While she remains with us, she'll remain indefinitely unfulfilled."
"Must she have babies?"
"Must you ingest food, quaff wine, and excrete? Denied all that, what would you be? Dead. Were you content with your sex life before I intervened? Would you be so again? Some things are beyond rational control."
"What must I do, Master?" Benadek quietly asked. "How can I make her happy again?"
"You can let her go. You can let her know that you understand, and that you care enough to release her."
"But I want her! I don't want her to go."
"You want. You don't want. Are your petty desires what we've been examining? I remember otherwise."
"I'm sorry, Master. But I love her. I do want her to be happy."
"I know, boy," Achibol sighed. "And I know how hard it will be on you, when the time comes. But you will mend, as will she. She, with a babe in her arms, you in some other manner." His old, dark eyes bored intensely into Benadek's. "I know what it's like to lose someone. I also remember what it's like to survive it." Benadek believed him.
"On another subject," the old man said, "I've been thinking of a pure-human camp not far off our route to Sufawlsidak. I may have inadvertently steered that troop of honches there, before you and I met in Vilbursiton."
"What would honches do?" Benadek asked.
"In the past, they've raided camps and killed the inhabitants. I'm sorryis it too soon to remind you . . ."
"No. My memories are fresh, but old too. I can live with them."
Achibol nodded approvingly. "On other occasions, less killing was done, and captives were takento the temples, I presume, which would be no less fatal to pure-humans in the long run."
"Why can't they just let the . . . let us pure-humans . . . alone?"
"Honches were bred, or created, to be the controlling arm of their creators, and to maintain civil order among the simples. Those you've seen in the towns have been of the lesser breed. Most honches experience restlessness and dissatisfaction in adolescence, and wander far from their birthplaces. Some merely settle in different towns, but others find their way into free-roving military units, remnants of their creators' armed forces. Those who hunt pure-humans, and who pursue me, are the latter sort.
"As to why they hunttheir ancestors were programmed to do so, and the programming is reinforced by their standing ordersa relict of the planners' last attempts to salvage their failing plan. When they discovered that not all pure-humans were dying they feared that surviving full-spectrum humans would wreck their program."
"But that was the plan's goal, wasn't it? Pure-human survivors? Why didn't the planners help instead?"
"Their goal was not the survival of `twisted mutants,' boy, but the eventual restoration of their own kind of humanity." His eyes narrowed to shiny black beads almost hidden in crumpled brown leather. "I don't believe there are `simples' with brown hides like minenor are the genes of my kind stored in the computer records with those of the paler races. The brown and yellow peoples of the earththe stock to which most of humanity belongedwere, in the terminal moments of the ancient's reign, deemed unfit to inhabit either the interim world of the simples or that which would follow."
Seldom had Benadek heard his master speak in such sepulchral tones. He had not considered Achibol's brown skin, his odd, puffy white hair and goatee, to be other than sorcerer's affectations, artifice to distinguish him from common folk. The apprentice had even speculated that his master's odd coloring was a result of his long life, that anyone who attained such an age might turn brown and wrinkled like overripe fruit. That Achibol had seen his own folk die, and had lived on, added a new dimension to Benadek's understanding. He had known suffering to surpass Benadek's own.
There was nothing the boy could say, just as he himself would not be comforted by words. Only time could mute such painyet Achibol's intensity demonstrated that pain could endure a thousand years.
The mage shrugged off his black mood. "Here is an aspect of plans and programs you might keep in mind, should you ever set any in motion: once begun by individuals, committees, or governments, they acquire lives of their own. The goals of such programs are forgotten, and their means become ends in themselves."
Benadek hardly absorbed his master's cautions, for bitterness had risen in his own throat. It had all been for nothing. The ancients should have dropped their plan once they saw that race survival was assured. Had there been no great plan, perhaps he, or whoever his genes might have represented, might have found a pure-human Sylfie who could go where he went, and Achibol might be grandsire to dozens of small, brown children. There would be no honches, no poots constrained to be lovers, mothers, and housekeepers. What was so special about the ancients? How could they have raised themselves above the likes of Achibol, or even himself?
With his bitter thoughts came a fresh, new resolve, born of his recent revelation: a goal that surpassed Achibol's puny determination to repair the temples so that in another thousand years or so a sterilized and sanitized humanity might join the pitiful bands of "pure-humans." But he would not discuss thatnot yet.
He pulled himself up to his full heighthe was almost able, he noted with surprise, to look his master in the eye. "I'm ready to go to Sufawlsidak, and ready to take on the burden of as many frozen lives as I may need, Master. Whether I myself live a thousand years or only a few score, I must do what I can to set things right. My own children, should there ever be any, must not be required to forget their parents or survive their childhoods alone.
"You must teach me all you can even as we go, so I can be ready for this `school.' I'll be your apprentice yet a while, but what I want to be taught goes beyond your craft, beyond repairing temples and charlatanry. There will come a time when I will be . . . when we will be . . ."
"Partners?" Achibol said, smiling broadly, supplying the very word Benadek did not quite dare utter.
"Yes. Partners. It will come to that."
"I'm sure it will. And none too soon, I foresee."
Abrovid squeaked his manipulator-tendrils against the smooth chitin of his mouth-parts, an irritating sound Kaledrin interpreted as amusement. "So the old biped is falling for my pets' stories, eh?" He chuckled. "And do you think that should displease me? Why?"
Kaledrin was exasperated. "Because he's not accepting them on their merit, but for his own twisted reasons. He's crazy, and when peopleinfluential scholarsfind out, they'll toss out everything we've begun to accomplish, along with him."
"What's wrong with him?"
"Can't you see? It's his ailment. How it must rankle him, to be fixed in that ridiculous two-legged form, never to sample all the other worldsthe ones that are too hot or too cold, where the air is too thin or too rich. And how smug he acts now, convinced that his bony form is identical to Achibol's, to Benadek's. He's convinced that his is the one, true ancestral image not just of one world's sentients, but of us all. He'll make a fool of himself, and we won't be able to disassociate ourselves."
Kaledrin crossed his eyestalks in negation, picturing his Great School tenure receding further into the mists of improbability, hearing with his mind's ears the rage of a million mutable humans on as many worlds crying for his removal. . . .