Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER TWO,

in which Benadek enters a
foul Temple and confronts
the Demon within. He gains
Forbidden Knowledge, but
is judged yet unready for
his great Purpose.

Most chapter headings in this volume are taken unchanged from the orthodox Ksentos Venimentum text, long considered the most complete and reliable rendering of the Achibol legend. The KV is a derivative story based on ancient, perhaps autochthonous * tales. Use of the well-known KV headings is this editor's whim. Their archaic flavor provides piquant contrast to the biocybes' contemporary style, and highlights the changed emphases of the new text.
The Demon incident exemplifies this. Schoolchildren know it as the climax of the Battle for the Temple, but herein it is only the passing, fearful fantasy of a child; it emerges, is dealt with in short order, and is dismissed forever. Forbidden Knowledge, contrastingly, has been demystified, presented as oddly distorted "science," plausible-sounding, only slightly at odds with what we know.
(Kaledrin, Senior Editor)

 

The temple. Benadek alone, as far as he knew, had never been in a temple. Everyone else paid visits. Travelers made detours in order to call at a temple. Regular visits, every month or so, were the rule.

Rites of passage took place there: boys became cozies, honches, or boffins, and girls* became poots, and fertile. Old folks and sick ones died in the temples—or at least were never seen to leave.

Once, Benadek had worried that he would remain always a boy, lacking whatever magic the temple performed, but his fears had been groundless. His body hair arrived on schedule, and his libido grew strong—uncomfortably so, for no poot would submit to one as ugly as he. Perhaps that was the temple's magic—to gift boys with whatever it was that made poots like them. Surely, temple magic made muscular honches or smart, edgy boffins out of some boys, and plain, stolid cozies out of the rest. But he, Benadek, who had never been "templed," was neither fish nor fowl, and did not belong.

Many times, after humiliating rejection by one poot or another, Benadek had come close to giving in. He'd come as far as the temple's courtyard gate, but people died in there. As his father had died.

Benadek pushed such thoughts away. He'd forced himself to forget all but the bare fact of his father's death, but this much he remembered: the temple had killed him. And old Klert, who had suffered from nearsightedness and headaches—he'd gone to the priests for a cure, and had never come out. Even young Jigbo, frightened when he discovered the stub of an extra finger on his right hand, had gone to the priests, and was never seen again. Benadek had neither headaches nor extra fingers, nor was he nearsighted—but neither had been his father. No, he had determined to stay well away from the priests and their lair.

Now he had a problem: how could he deliver Achibol's message without going inside? The sorcerer would discover if he lied and pocketed the gold piece, and that would put paid to his hope for a career. Not that Achibol had made any promises, Benadek reminded himself, but he had not really said "no," either—at least not directly.

Benadek thought long and hard. Could he skirt around his instructions? Achibol would not fault him if he delivered the message in a different way—perhaps he'd never even know about Benadek's improvisation.

The boy scurried down the street to a scribe's kiosk, devising a stratagem en route. "Sir scribe!" he called out, "I delivered the six chickens to your room."

"Chickens?" The boffin, skinny and sharp-faced like all his kind, set down the pen he had been sharpening. "You mistake me for another, boy."

"Don't you live over the Broken Axle? I've seen you there. At any rate, I brought the chickens, and spread papers from your table about, to protect your clean floor from their droppings."

"My papers! My letters!" Grasping his purse, the scribe dashed off to rescue his labor from the imaginary chickens. He left pen, ink-pot, and blank sheets that fluttered to the ground with the breeze of his exit. Benadek hid them in his shirt. Mission accomplished, he strode jauntily away.

Benadek believed himself the only urchin who could read and write. He had vague memories of the mother who had lovingly taught him, but memories of that part of his life were vague, shut out to damp the pain of his losses. But he had not forgotten his letters.

In the quiet dimness of the crawl space beneath a tailor shop he drew forth a dogeared book of ABC's. Referring to it for the correct shapes of certain letters, he scribed Achibol's words on his stolen paper:

 

THIS IZ THE OFRING OF ACUBOL THE CARLATIN WHU WIL VIZIT HIZ BRUTHERZ IN SUPERNACURAL NOLEGE ON THE MARO. SINED, ACUBOL.

 

He wrapped the gold tenday coin in the note, folding the corners so it would not come apart, and set off for the temple.

Outside the courtyard wall, Benadek waited and listened. On occasion he'd noticed that, where a warehouse across from the temple leaned outward, voices from inside the wall bounced off the smooth stone and were directed downward to the street. He would know if chattering priests passed on the other side of the wall.

Sure enough, he had not waited two fingers of daylight when voices seemed to issue from the blank stone above. For a moment he was distracted: had the voice in the alley been Achibol himself, somehow casting his voice to reflect from those walls? But Achibol's mouth had not moved, and the voice had been clear, not muddled with echoes.

He remembered his reason for being there, and tossed the paper-wrapped coin over the wall. Muffled, echo-distorted voices told him his delivery had been found. Satisfied that he had fulfilled the spirit of his task, he turned once more toward the inn.

 

Assured that his message and offering had been delivered, Achibol bought Benadek a meal the likes of which he had never imagined—tiny fowl stuffed with chopped nuts and dried fruits, vegetables lightly fried in sweet oil, a slab of meat, red in the center and crisp around the edges, so tender that he hardly had to chew it, and finally, a bowl of creamy stuff so cold it made his teeth hurt but tasted of fresh raspberries! With each course, Achibol urged upon him a fresh, tiny glass of tart wine, a different flavor each time.

Later, when the sorcerer led him to his room above, Benadek was so full of food and wine that he could hardly have cared if the old man had taken advantage of him (some urchins earned coins that way), but Achibol tucked him in a bed, muttering the while about children who took advantage of foolish old men.

"But he can read," Achibol had marveled again and again, "and even write, after a fashion!" Benadek was vaguely aware that he had, after his fourth or fifth glass of wine, told Achibol how he had delivered the coin and message.

Having seen the boy to bed, the mage unlocked his two heavily built trunks, then spent an hour or so poring over a heavy tome from one trunk and a map from the other. But the wine he had imbibed affected his concentration, and he laid his head on his arms for a short rest. He slept more soundly than he'd expected—surely more soundly than he would have, had he known Benadek was awake.

With a youngster's resiliency and an urchin's instincts, the lad threw off the wine fumes and quelled the fatigue that had incapacitated him. In a glance, he took in the sleeping sorcerer, the guttering wick, and the open trunks. He slipped silently from the bed. The trunks had locks, he reasoned, and must therefore contain things of value that warranted his inspection.

Benadek did not intend to steal from the man who he hoped would take him on, but it was impossible to ignore the trunks. The habits of his short lifetime were grounded in one basic precept: survive. Survival meant never overlooking potential gain. He peeked in the first trunk. Books. Books and wooden racks of tiny bottles strapped with canvas and buckles. The books' lettering was a strange script, unreadable. Perhaps someday . . . Perhaps the bottles were love-potions he could use to his own advantage, but how could he tell? He could make nothing of their labels.

The second trunk held instruments of unfamiliar design, and tiny packets that must contain things of value. There were clothes, and beneath those . . . He insinuated a hand beneath folded fabric, and was rewarded by something slick and cool, of irregular shape, heavy, but not as dense as metal. Just then the dying light went out.

Benadek held the object in moonlight from the window. He gasped. With shaking hands he replaced it. He shut the trunk lid and slipped the padlock through its hasp, but did not snap it shut. Perhaps the mage would not notice anything amiss. He retreated to the bed.

From under his coverlet he peered across the room, every sense honed. When nothing happened after an undefined but interminable time, Benadek dozed. He awoke in a state of confused panic, then dozed again. Finally, he slept, but not without frightening dreams of what he'd held in his hand.

Death. He had held death, and stared into its dark, empty eye sockets. He had held the cool, heavy skull of a man. The mage's familiar, to be called up and refleshed at the sorcerer's command? Had Benadek known human anatomy he would have seen that the cranium was not ordinary. With a little knowledge he might have suspected it was that of a demon. With a little more, that it was human, but incredibly old. Had the light been better, and had he turned the ancient calvarium over, he might have seen tiny white-painted lettering:

 

H. Sapiens neanderthalensis104598 MUSEE de l'HOMMEParis, Fr

 

Had he possessed the ability to peer beyond the veil of time itself, he might have seen what part that same ancient skull would play, in one possible future, in saving him from a fate far worse than mere death could ever be.

 

In the morning, Benadek was treated to a repast only slightly less impressive than supper had been. He ate eggs whipped with cream, deftly cooked in butter until they were light as air; he tasted crisp sliverings of roast meat from the proprietor's dinner table, refried and hot; with stern urging from Achibol, he drank a bitter, hot, black brew that the sorcerer insisted would make him preternaturally awake and alert. Philosophically, Benadek drank it, though he shuddered with each sip. Everything could not be wonderful—and it was, after all, a magic potion, not really a drink.

"Well, isn't it time we were on our way?" Achibol asked, suddenly impatient. "The morning gets no younger." We? Benadek wondered, hardly able to believe his good fortune. Was he to stay on? He dared not broach the subject, afraid of breaking the delicate spell of hope. "The temple, boy, the temple. I—or rather, you—promised I'd pay them a call."

Benadek was ecstatic at the chance of further employment (and soft beds and delicious food and fine, tart wines), but deeply concerned that he would not be able to avoid entering the temple itself, the very place from which his father had emerged, screaming and clawing at his body as if invisible fire . . . No! He would not think about that. Not now, not ever! Numbly he followed Achibol through the dusty streets.

The sorcerer strode up to the temple gate and struck the bell with unseemly vigor. A dark-robed figure arrived immediately, a silhouette with a drawn, white face. "Open for Achibol the Charlatan, colleague. I wish to pay my respects to your superiors."

"In one sense," the priest replied dryly, "all men are my colleagues. In the same sense, hardly stretching the reasoning, the fleas and lice that infest your shabby garments are colleagues as well, for in their own way they glorify the spirits with their tiny lives. In that sense, I accept your affiliation with my order. You and your tiny colleagues may enter. But my superiors can't be troubled by the importunements of semiliterates and late-risers."

"Semi . . . See what you've done, boy?" Achibol said. "Your poor scribbling has cost us our converse with the high priest. And a great loss it is." He stepped through the opening gate. "Even among the poor, uneducated clergy of underprivileged towns like this, even in such tatty, run-down edifices, occasional bits of wit and wisdom can be gleaned, if only by the bleak example the priests set, illustrating the fate of laziness and sloth in the schoolroom.

"Very well then," he said to the priest, whose white face had turned fiery, "since your own masters have shut themselves in the latrine without rags or papers, I'll be content merely to experience the temple's rite. Move aside."

Surprisingly, the priest did so, and Achibol strode in with Benadek close upon his heels. The boy tried hard not to gape, his terror masked by confidence in Achibol, but priests had been known to seek out those who avoided the temple rite, and Benadek had carefully maintained his position as a dirty-faced urchin interchangeable with other boys. He hoped the priest would assume that he had come into town with Achibol, and had performed the rite—whatever it was—in another place.

Achibol seemed to know his way, and the priest did not follow. There was much to gape at. The temple anteroom had been cold and stony, dingy with time and neglect, but the inner corridor walls were smooth and jointless, and the ceiling glowed with cold, white light. The floor looked ground from a uniform mass of pebbly rock, cracked in a few places, but otherwise shiny and perfect. The last door they passed through was metal. Iron-bound doors were common on better houses and shops, but how could a smith have hammered a single piece of iron so flat and smooth?

This final room had metal boxes with tiny windows that pulsed and glowed with pure shades of monochromatic light: cerise, cyan, emerald, and amber. A few had larger windows, where numbers and letters scrolled down, or wavy, jagged lines cavorted. Only Achibol's calm, unruffled presence kept Benadek from bolting. He sensed an evil presence, but that could have been only active imagination.

"Now, boy, we have work to do." Achibol swung his robe from his shoulders and spread it flat on the floor. He removed an array of shiny tools from pockets in his undergarment, a form-fitting black suit of leather unlike any Benadek had ever seen. Surprises and mysteries multiplied. Who is the magician—or what? What is this forbidding place? Why are we here? Surely, this is not the temple where dutiful citizens make monthly pilgrimage. Was this what those who disappeared saw, before they vanished forever? Was a room like this the last place his father had seen? He shuddered uncontrollably, expecting priests or demons at any time.

"Don't gape, boy," Achibol scolded. "Bring me that toolbox—the gray one by the door. I can't do all this myself, or we'll miss dinner." The sorcerer's voice should have brought priests scurrying, Benadek thought. He looked meaningfully at the door.

"Don't worry about the priests, boy. They are enjoying a rest. None will disturb us while I fix this damnable machine."

Machine? But machines are noisy, dirty things of wood and iron that leak and spit black oil. Benadek's concept of "machine" broadened immediately.

"Rest, Master?" he asked. "Why are they tired? It's still morning."

"Magic, boy. The magic of my talisman and that coin you delivered yesterday. They'll sleep—or at least stand motionless and oblivious—until I am ready to leave, and be none the wiser for the time that has passed—if, that is, we hurry, so the discrepancy is not too great. Now get the toolbox."

Benadek fetched it, then watched the sorcerer open first one box, and then another. He connected colored strings to shiny knobs in the toolbox, and stretched them to points within the innards of first one box, then another, punctuating his actions with muttered exclamations and sighs. "It's a wonder this system's stayed on-line as long as it has, with only oafish priests to care for it. There was a dead roach on that circuit board! A roach, mind you. If not for me, every temple in the land would be spewing toadstools instead of simples."

"What are simples, Master?" Benadek asked as he handed the oldster a "screwdriver."

"Simples are people like you and those priests—poots, honches, ordinary cozies like the innkeeper and cook, boffins, and a rare pattum or so."

Benadek had never known there was a collective term like "simples". People were just people. There were poots—the female of the human species, desirable to every male past puberty but interested in nothing more than cooking and raising babies (unless it were making more babies.) A delicious shudder ran from Benadek's groin to his extremities.

Cozies were ordinary males with common jobs and tastes, and faces much alike but for age and attitude. Benadek suspected he was a cozy, but he was not old enough to know for sure. He was smart, so maybe he was destined to become a boffin, like the scribe or the lord mayor. He was absolutely sure that his further development would not make him a honch, for honches, of all people—all "simples," he corrected himself—were cruel and domineering even as children, and progressed by matters of degree to full, burly adulthood. Of pattums, he knew nothing, except that poots threatened uncooperative infants by saying, "The pattum'll get you."

"And you, Master? What sort are you? A boffin?"

Achibol laughed. He bellowed, and slapped his skinny thighs. "I'm sorry, boy," he said when he'd recovered. "I'm not a simple."

Benadek suddenly saw the sorcerer in a different light. What, if not a person, was he? A demon! The being Benadek had hoped to apprentice himself to was not a man, but a denizen of the black depths, come to devour and destroy! No wonder he had fed Benadek—he was fattening him like a poot fattens a hen!

The boy backed slowly until the door was cold and hard against his back. His hand groped for the handle.

"What's wrong, boy?" the demon demanded, with a leer that Benadek would have interpreted minutes earlier as a puzzled frown. "What's eating you?"

The phrase was unfortunate. With a shrill cry Benadek turned and clawed the door, breaking fingernails and tearing skin from his fingertips. Achibol, concerned, grasped him by the shoulder, and the boy collapsed in a dead faint.

He awoke in the old man's arms, staring into his brown, leering face. "Are you going to eat me now?" he asked in a quavering falsetto.

"Eat you? Whatever for?" Achibol asked, genuinely surprised. "In a thousand years, I've never eaten anyone—though, when I was younger, there were women I wouldn't have passed up, had they been shorter of leg, and I longer." It was a joke, Benadek realized. He was not about to be eaten. Not right then. But what was a "woman *," anyway? Achibol questioned him further, and gradually came to understand what had terrified the boy.

"I'm not a simple, boy, but I'm still a man, not a demon. Some of my kind call themselves `pure-humans' or `true humans', and consider all others to be `simples.' Actually, we're all humans, and the `pure' ones are no more pure than the rest. They are less . . . less simple. It's a matter of genetic makeup." Benadek watched the blinking, winking lights that flickered across the sorcerer's dark face.

"Once," Achibol explained, "there were really `pure' humans, with a full complement of human genes. You know what genes are, boy? Of course you don't. But no matter—listen, and you'll learn. The world was different then. There were no song-snakes in the trees, no liver-beasts in forest pools, and no simples. There were millions of different kinds of creatures, all neatly divided into species, so that all of a species were much the same. `Dogs' had four legs and fur, snakes had no legs and scales. There were no six- or eight-legged dogs, and no snakes with feathers.

"Humans made machines to do everything for them—wash their clothes, cook their meals—and dirtied the world with machine by-products—PCBs, PBBs, mercury, dioxin, acids of every kind, and finally DFK and compound X. Some chemicals were mutagenic; in combination with the deadly sunlight of an atmosphere stripped of its protective ozone, they caused species to change. Most changes were lethal, but some creatures survived, to pass on their changes."

Benadek understood only a fourth part of what Achibol said, but was heartened by the magician's assumption that there would be further opportunities for him to listen and sort out the unfamiliar words. His fear faded. A demon would not have explained anything.

"Humans," Achibol continued, sorting through his odd tools, "either died or changed. None were pleased, because they believed they were created in the image of a god, and to be different was a terrible thing.

"The poisons and mutagens were long-lasting, and the atmospheric degradation wasn't reversible in their lifetimes or their children's children's. A thousand years would have to pass before the human genetic code would be safe from meaningless change. But in a mere hundred years their race would be dead, or changed beyond recognition.

"Boy! Hand me my talisman—the small gray box with the buttons. Ah! Good, you're learning something.

"Desperate proposals were made. Suggestions that humanity migrate to orbital habitats were dismissed—the hazards in space outweighed those at home. Living in sealed caves for a thousand years was an unhealthy solution, and for only a few; sterilization or extermination of the new, changed humans was rejected too, because the mutation rate threatened to match exactly the birthrate.

"In desperation geneticists, molecular biologists, eugenicists, and other scientists developed a plan to simplify the human genome to the point where it could be recorded in the memories of computers like these that surround us here. The simplified codes would be inserted in fertilized human eggs and implanted in host wombs where they would develop, eventually to be born as the first of the new, simplified human race.

"The advantages of the plan were many: first, the simpler code, though just as vulnerable to change as the old natural one, was more easily read by machines. As each `simple' human had four copies of their streamlined code, it was easy for the machines to tell when a copy had mutated. Cell samples could be taken from children before puberty, and those with defective genes—genes that did not fit the established template—could be painlessly sterilized.

"Second, `defective' pregnancies could be aborted, and females implanted with standardized fertile eggs even if their own genetic capabilities had been altered by the mutagenic environment.

"But less than a millionth of the world's population could be so treated. The rest had to be sterilized, or left to die of their own genetic flaws. It was necessary to automate the process, because a reduced population could not keep up the science, technology, and culture of a system that had evolved to serve—and to be served by—billions. The poor remnants of humanity couldn't maintain the computerized laboratories that would preserve them. Those had to be reliable enough to maintain themselves for a thousand years.

"The engineers built such automated genetic laboratories in heavily protected installations, each able to grow and implant standardized embryos in suitable human subjects, or to sterilize `flawed' ones. No human needed to enter the labs except as a subject.

"The system worked, as far as it went. But when a thousand years was up and the danger was past, real human genotypes had to be reintroduced into the world. Until then, those would exist only as information in computer memory, but would be reconstituted, and implanted into the wombs of simplified human females. The changelings would, in a matter of generations, reassume their proper place, and the last `simples' would be sterilized or euthanized. For that to happen, the laboratories had to know when the time was right.

"They were programmed to record the deviance of every genotype they examined. Such information was sent, via satellite links, to a central storehouse deep in a mountain burrow. The central computer would signal the laboratories when the level of deviations dropped below a predetermined point, and command them to instigate the full-human regeneration program. It should have worked, too."

Achibol began putting away his tools. "Time passes, boy. The priests will suspect something is wrong. They've lost half an hour from their miserable lives, as it is. Pick up those screwdrivers."

"Master? Will you finish the tale later?"

"Finish? It isn't over yet. How can I, a mere charlatan and an old man, finish it? Must I perform heroic labors to bring on the new age? How do you suggest I go about that?"

"I only wish to know. I understood what you said only in small measure, but my head burns with the desire to comprehend."

"Good! Such burning is the beginning of wisdom. Knowing how little one understands is the spur to discovery. Later, then, when we're out of here." He draped his robe over his leathery suit. "Come. We must awaken the priests." He flourished the worn metal rectangle with tiny tiles on its face. Minuscule black numbers and letters marched incessantly across it. "My magic talisman controls the coin. When we approach the final door, I'll deactivate the sleep function.

"Boy?" Achibol asked, as an afterthought. "Do you crave templing? I'll wait while the rite is performed."

"Oh no, Master," Benadek replied, almost too abruptly, "I feel no need."

"Very well then, let us be gone."

 

They returned to the inn with Benadek still safely untempled, and Achibol went to his room. He seemed to have forgotten the boy, who followed, painfully reminded of his tenuous hold on his new profession.

In the corner chamber with cool, whitewashed walls and glass doors opening onto sunny balconies, there was little sign of Achibol's occupancy except for his trunks. The mage withdrew a book with covers of the same material as his under-suit. Its leaves were smooth and white, like no paper Benadek had seen.

Achibol made tiny, neat entries with a cylindrical pen that needed no ink-pot. Magic—or is the ink held inside that fat shaft? Even with short exposure to the old man, Benadek's ways of thinking were changing.

With no desire to disturb Achibol at his writing, he sat on grassy matting in a bright sunbeam, and let its warmth lull him to sleep.

Achibol interrupted his doze. "It's time to dine." Benadek had observed that townsmen took meals at sunrise, high noon, and sunset, but urchins ate when there was food in hand, and fasted otherwise. But regularity freed a portion of his mind from constantly thinking about food. He had time to think upon his new experiences, and to catnap as well.

Their noon meal was cold meat sliced thin, on slabs of black bread drizzled with rich, spicy red sauce.

"Can you tell me more of the world that was, Master? My mind still burns."

Surprised, as if he had forgotten Benadek's presence, Achibol set down his mug of cool ale. "Of course, boy. Where was I? What were we talking of?"

"I asked you why I am a simple, while you are not. And you were going to tell me why the plan to bring back real humans failed."

"So I was—and both are related. The plan failed because the scientists were sure that the increasing mutation rates would kill off those who were not simplified. With four copies of every essential gene, `simples' could take much more damage without dying for want of an enzyme or an amino acid, you see. But there were too many humans, back then. The survival rate of the `pure-humans' didn't have to be high to insure that a few kept on breeding.

"Their population has never been large. Most live in small villages, or isolated families. But they mix with simples all too often, and that's where the plan failed.

"To explain this, I must tell you of another of the planners' clever tricks: they needed a way to assure that simples would visit the laboratories periodically, to be checked against the standard genetic templates, so they omitted the genes for a particular neurotransmitter hormone and an associated polypeptide—substances the body needs. Without them, simples become irrational, depressed, and eventually go mad and die. The only sources of what they need are the laboratories. Are you getting this?"

"I think so, Master. Are templates the same as temples?"

"Ah! You're perspicacious, boy. The `temples' are buildings put up by unscrupulous priests—boffins—to bilk the population of their coins. That's a tradition far older than temples, planners, or plan. The true templates are inside the machines themselves, and are mere memories of the patterns that make up men. But as the machines house the templates, and the laboratories house the machines, so the `temples' grew up on the laboratory sites, often covering them entirely, as has been done here.

"To continue, simples come to the temples, and thus to the laboratories, when they sicken, are brought by relatives if they become irrational, or by honches—city guards and the like—if they are wild or mad. Those occasional pure-humans who drift into the towns are eventually `templed' too. And that's the greatest problem of all."

"Why? Do they suffer the same lack as simples?"

"The priests suffer always from a lack of cool, shiny gold, so their honch minions bring all strangers to the temples. Failing that, if the pure-humans become disagreeable or seem odd (and don't all foreigners seem so, at times?) then their neighbors force them. Too, when they hear of the benefits of templing, they're often convinced to go on their own."

"What happens to them?"

"Can't you see, boy? Have you been daydreaming? The machines read their strange genetic codes, and pronounce them defective, and they are destroyed. And there the problems begin."

Benadek's head filled with horrid images of his father writhing and screaming. He shuddered, but Achibol had not noticed, and was still talking.

" . . . the tallies of mutated versus normal `templings' are sent to the central processing facility. The computer considers all the counts of flawed genes—mutant `true human' ones—and puts off the day when the original human genotypes will be reconstituted. This has happened again and again." He shook his head sadly, then fixed Benadek with a bright, reptilian stare. "Do you know how long it's been since the world has been free of mutagens? Almost a thousand years! It's been two thousand years since the plan was effectuated, and there will never be an end to it, I fear."

"Can't something be done, Master?"

"I try, of course, but then, I'm only one man, and the world is large."

"What do you do?"

"I reprogram `temples' to erase readings outside simples' parameters, so the mutation counts stay low, where they belong." Seeing Benadek's blank look, he rephrased the statement: "I cast spells on them."

"How did you learn so much, Master? Who was your teacher?"

"I had many teachers. They've been dust for ages. I'm a tool of men and women who opposed the planners, set in motion long ago and still running on my own inertia." He shook his head sadly and then, annoyed that Benadek had seen his lapse into self-pity, snapped at him. "Enough questions, boy. I can't spend all day entertaining you. Run off and play."

"Can't I stay, Master? I won't be in the way." Though hurt by the sudden dismissal, Benadek was determined not to be thrust aside. "Your shoes are dusty. I'll clean and oil them."

"Enough, I said! Find someone else to bother! And the same goes for tomorrow, and the next day. I have no more time to waste on foolish boys." He got to his feet and stalked off to the stairway. Benadek, hopes crushed, slowly trudged through the gate into the narrow street that led, eventually, to his cold burrow and a crust of stale bread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTERLUDE

The Great School, Midicor IV

 

"Exalted Wisdom! I didn't expect you so soon." Kaledrin's dry, unpolished chitin rattled like ill-tuned castanets. "You've read the second chapter?"

"Indeed!" Saphooth responded, his two-eyed face expressionless despite its evocative wrinkles and creases, his beaky breathing-bulge unflared and still.

"What quirks of simian evolution does such odd physiognomy represent?" Kaledrin wondered, not for the first time. Three breathing orifices, two which function as chemosensors as well, and the third a toothy ingestor and communicator—and gods know what else. How crude! How inefficient! "What do you think of the tale, so far?" he asked, not without trepidation: MYTHIC had been his idea, and while Saphooth would bask in the glories of its success, failure would fall upon Kaledrin alone.

"Intriguing," Saphooth mused dryly. "A melange of myth and pseudoscience that might credit an imaginative schoolchild . . . but a scholarly work?" His blue-gray light-sensors flashed reflected sunlight from beneath bushy, pileous over-shades. "This is, after all, your project," he reminded Kaledrin ominously. "What do you think?"

"I'd rather not speculate, Cognizant One. The tale is evolving. What makes little sense now may be clarified further on."

"Indeed," Kaledrin silently complained even as Saphooth departed, wearing an expression he suspected was self-satisfied, even smug, "it evolves, and I have no more idea than he what it will become—my guarantee of tenure in the Great School, or a monster that will consume me.

"Dictation!" he snapped at his resident AI. "Introduction to Chapter Three." He did not want to work any more, but it was too early to leave. The sun-wallows would not even be warm, this early in the day.

 

Back | Next
Contents
Framed