The Scholarium of Ummsu contends that Benadek is the divinely inspired apposition to the evil Achibol. But who, in this presentation, is good, who evil, who merely uninformed? Clearly at odds with the classical version, it only exacerbates the disputes.
This pared-down, cybernetically reconciled Achibol story is no myth. Repetition, variation, and elaboration upon themes and subthemes (themselves elements of other cycles, in other cultures) is entirely missing. Appositions, moral lessons, and supernatural elements are gone, leaving a simple (no pun intended) narrative of events in the lives of odd human beings.
Past mythic reconciliations yielded "cultural blueprints"underlying principles that provided insight into the cultures that created them. Invariably, fragmentary "historic" memories were discarded as bastardized by generations of faulty remembrance, transmission, and translation.
Suspicions that this narrative was artifactual were laid to rest when the processing of the raw data was reviewed. Gathered not from one cultural tradition but from many, no one set of values could apply, so the biocybes removed such "taints." Freed of culture-specific references, the reconciliation could not but proceed along an entirely different path: a "historic" narrative whose cultural attributes required only internal consistency.
Truth is elusive. This rendering is consistent to the limits of cybernetic error checking. But is it real? Was Achibol in fact an old brown-skinned biped? Was he immortal, as he seems to claim? Was Sylfie really so good-natured and Benadek so quick-witted, insensitive, and abysmally ignorant?
Perhaps future reconciliations will yield a map of Achibol's heavens or the coordinates of his forgotten homeworld. The neuro-credits you have spent to purchase this volume will be applied to the distilling of just such information. Additional financial aid is urgently needed. Gauge your contribution not by your credit balance but by the depth of your curiosity. At this point you have read perhaps half the translation. Whether more follows is entirely up to you.
(Kaledrin, Senior Editor)
Unlike the last swamp, this one was almost all water instead of soggy ground. Great, stubby trees lined interwoven channels, their roots covered with water from a few inches to twenty feet in depth. Reptilian creatures shyly retired as the sailboat approached.
Breezes upon the topmost portion of the large triangular sail seldom filled it completely. Benadek fidgeted and fumed, but Achibol assured him the honches could not gain the swamp's far terminus ahead of them by land or boat, so he relaxed into the slow pace of their travel.
Sylfie was the least content, though not obtrusive about it. She found a spot on the pulpit atop the bowsprit, wide enough to sit with her legs dangling. No one could come alongside her, or see her face. When she came aft for a drink, Teress attributed the redness of her eyes to the glare off the water.
"There are eyeshades below," she said. "You've been staring into the sun all afternoon."
"I don't need anything." Sylfie gulped water, then went forward again.
Achibol kept his hand on the tiller, having eyes only for their course.
"Something's wrong," Teress said, forcing him to notice her. "Sylfie's been crying."
"I suspect so," the sorcerer replied without expression. "She didn't want to be here."
"I know. She had it all planned, and then that stupid . . ." She cut herself short. Benadek was stretched on the bunk below, his cracked ribs tightly bound. Achibol had dosed him with a nostrum. He seemed to be dozing, but she was not sure, and did not want him to overhear, to resume their quarrel in such close quarters. "What's wrong with her?"
"She's a poot. She has fewer options than you, and rage isn't one of them. Her creators considered only mild pettishness feminine and desirable. Some of her melancholia could be assuaged by any simple male who'd bed her, but none are here. That, too, is innate."
"That's disgusting! She needs a good fuck? Doesn't she have any self-respect?"
"She isn't suffering from a dearth of sexual activity," Achibol replied with a sad shake of his head.
"You mean Benadek's no good that way? I should have known . . ."
"Lay your peevishness aside, girl!" Achibol snapped. "Sylfie is a poot, and Benadek is pure-human. That is the root of their pain. She cannot conceiveby him. Were you taught nothing of the world in your village?"
Chastened, Teress bowed her head. Achibol, satisfied by her contrition, leaned forward to speak in low, confidential tones, his face a wrinkled, tragic mask. "There is one more thing, which you must not repeat. She may die before we quit these waterways. She knows, but the lad does not. She will soon become ill. Once that happens, death is inevitable."
"Why protect him? He should suffer right along with her, because if it weren't for him . . ."
"No! It must not be." The mage's eyes narrowed and the dark skin of his face darkened further. "He's foolish and selfish, impetuous, shortsighted, an egoist, and immaturemuch as was I at his age. He's a child of what passes for a ghetto and a slum in this age. Did your village teacher include those words in your lessons?" Without waiting for her nod, he went on. "He's the best tool I have. I don't want him ruined by guilt. Will you honor my confidences?"
"There's no one better than him?"
"Not on this continent, in this generation. None I could smoke out in this decade or the next. A century ago, there was another, who failed me, and others before that . . ."
"I won't tell him anything, then. But you must explain it to me."
Achibol nodded. "Come closer. He must not overhear."
Teress bent her head toward him. Eventually, she leaned back. Her cynical smile did nothing for her pretty face. " 'Dispucket,' huh?" she murmured. "Well, just so Benadek really suffers. You're sure he will?"
"Even if he makes the right choice, his suffering may never end."
"Not even in death?"
"If he chooses wrongly, even that escape will be denied him."
"You, Master Achibol, are a cold, nasty man . . . and I love you for it."
"You hate him, you mean."
Teress turned her face away.
"Aren't you hot?" Teress asked. "It's shady in the cockpit. Won't you come back?"
"No. Thank you. I like to listen to the water." Teress heard croaking, buzzing, small splashes, and the continuous lapping of wind-ripples and wake on the tangled roots and trunks.
"Would you rather I left you alone?"
"Stay, if you want to." Sylfie's words wafted back like leaves on the water, slowly. Teress fought with her frustration. Sylfie was not curt or impolite, just disinterested. Teress tried several approaches to get her to talk. "In my village we had two teachers. Who taught you?"
"A boffin. And other poots."
"What could poots teach?"
"To make fires and cook things."
"You cook better than my mother, even without all the pots, or a hearth."
"Thank you." Sylfie accepted the compliment without pleasure.
"What will you do when we get out of here? Will you have to find work somewhere?"
"I'll buy new clothes, and I'll find a . . . man." She used the pure-human word with bitter emphasis. "A boffin or a cozie, that is. Not a honch."
"And then?"
"A house, if I'm lucky. Children."
"Don't you want anything else?"
"What else is there?"
"This. Adventuring. Won't you miss it?"
"I suppose. It doesn't matter. What matters is that I'm a poot. I don't have to like anything."
"How can you say that? Where's your self-respect?"
"None of this matters, anywayI'm not leaving this swamp. Master Achibol knows it, and so do you. Only Benadek doesn't, because he doesn't want to." For the first time, she turned to look at Teress as she spoke. "You'll never understand about poots. Do you know what I regret most?" Teress shook her head, her black hair swaying gently. "Babies. What I was designed for." She spat the word hatefully.
Benadek awakened. The voices wafting through the open foredeck hatch were unintelligible, but he recognized Sylfie's anger. He eased forward until he was below the hatch.
" . . . you can't give up," Teress protested. "If . . . when . . . won't you teach your own babies to read?"
"What for? If they're boffins, others will teach them. Otherwise, they'll be happier being what they're intended to be. My own `father' was cruel to think otherwise."
Teress got up. "You're rightI'll never understand." She saw Benadek's head and shoulders in the hatchway.
"You know why you'll never understand her? " he said vehemently, rage welling up from unplumbed depths, "She's normal, that's why. Millions of poots are satisfied to fuck and cook and have babies . . . and then there's you. What do you want to be? A sorcerer? Or are you satisfied just to be a . . . a catamount?"
Teress froze, her mouth half-open for a retort that stuck like cold grease in her mouth. Benadek, oblivious to the pain he caused Sylfie, whom he thought he was defending, was equally blind to Teress's confounded silence. "She's pretty and normal, and you're a pervert. You only act like you're special."
Teress knew how his insults to her must drive into Sylfie like hot irons. "You disgust me. I could vomit on you!" She launched a vicious kick at his head.
He ducked back in the hatch. "Ow! My ribs!"
"I hope they puncture your lungs!" she muttered, kicking the hatch shut and sitting atop it, her chin pressed into her hands.
Achibol caught Teress's eye, and shook his head sadly. She looked away.
The foursome made their way ashore on the first patch of solid ground they found. There was no practical reason for the excursion, but all four craved the semblance of freedom that a few acres of dry land afforded, the impression that they could walk away from each other and the intolerable stresses that had built up on the boat.
Sylfie made tea. Teress collected clean yellow sand and scrubbed insect specks, footprints, and leaf-stains from the boat's deck and cockpit. Benadek set up the tent, brought the sorcerer's trunks ashore, then found a grassy spot to watch late afternoon clouds float slowly overhead.
Achibol gave him an hour of solitude, then sat beside him. The mage pulled a stem of sweetgrass and nibbled it thoughtfully. "I'll bet you liked it better when you and Teress weren't speaking," he mused.
"It was easier," Benadek replied. Sun and clouds had done their workhe was calmer than in days, in a mood to forgive not only Teress, but more importantly, himself. "I don't mean what I say, most of the time, it just comes out nasty. I guess it's because she hates me."
"Ummh," Achibol replied.
"I thought she was picking on SylfieI guess I didn't hear enough before I opened my mouth. I hurt Sylfie's feelings, didn't I?"
"Mmmph," Achibol answered.
"What really bothers me is why Teress hates me so much. If Sylfie and I could fall in love, and we're not even the same kindwe can't breed togetherthen why isn't it better with Teress, since we're both pure-humans?"
"Sylfie is simple," Achibol replied. "Her choices are limited, and thus her expectations. And there was that potion I gave you. I suppose that was a mistake, but I didn't expect it to last more than a night."
"Did you know it would end like this?"
"I knew it wouldn't last forever. I thought `what does it matter? They're happy now, and happiness is rare. They'll at least have memories to savor.' "
"I still don't understand Teress."
"She's pure-human," Achibol murmured. "Like you, she has complex motivations. Unlike Sylfie, you and Teress can believe in a better world, where no honches pillage, where children grow up with families and mothers never starve. Teress can imagine a kinder, more perceptive, thoughtful you. Thus, imagining, you and she can rage at what is."
"A better me?" Benadek sat up suddenly. "Who is she to . . ."
"Sylfie spoiled you. Youand Teresswere chosen by millions of years of natural selection to struggle. Simples were created in decades by short-sighted men." The mage turned to meet his apprentice's eyes. "It's why I've gone on year after year, century after century like thisto restore strife and bickering and unreasonable expectations to the world." *
Benadek nodded, chin bumping his drawn-up knees. "How do pure-humans put their expectations aside long enough to breed? How could my mother and father have stayed together long enough to . . ."
Achibol's chuckle interrupted him. "Common upbringing helps. Most pure-humans don't have as hard a time as you and Teress. But nothing is as straightforward as for simples. The best and worst about being pure-human is the capacity to dream better things and to choose one's own path to them."
Benadek slept in the tent with his master that night. Teress and Sylfie shared the boat's cabin.
Achibol awakened to the first diurnal creatures stirring. Cold dew on leaves and grass left nowhere dry to sit. He took a rolled map from his trunk, and wandered to the opposite side of the small island, where he'd seen a good-sized flat rock.
He spread the map. It was hand-drawn and stained, a trader's map of the channels and islands. He marked their location with one brown index finger, and traced a route with the other. "Not far," he thought. "Maybe not too far. But the choice of routes isn't mine alone." Twice he rolled up the map, shaking his head. Twice more he unrolled it and pondered, in an agony of indecision, before he rolled it a final time, and with a decisive tread strode to the boat. He waded out to awaken Sylfie.
They walked the narrow strand away from the moored boat and the tent. Teress peered indifferently from the boat. Benadek watched from the tent door, intensely curious. Neither thought to interrupt the old man and the poot, or to eavesdrop.
"I may be wrong to speak of this."
"Whatever it is, Master Achibol, I'll share it with you if I can."
"I know you will, and that grieves me. Once spoken, it can't be recalled."
"I may not have much time," Sylfie said matter-of-factly. That sent pains through Achibol's heart that were not entirely figurative. He was, after all, very old.
"That's the substance of the weight I bear," he replied.
"Tell me."
"You're not the only one running out of time. Benadek . . . I don't think he'll make it to Sufawlz in time to save him from . . . from . . ."
"Master Achibol, you must not try to spare me pain."
"You understand, don't you? Of all the women * I've known, pure-human and poot, you're . . ." He squeezed a bright tear from his eye, angrily wiping it with the back of his hand. "You're right. I must be callous and say my piece. Less would cheat you of your freedom of choice. Sit here, and I'll begin." They had reached the flat rock, sun-warmed now. Man and poot dangled their feet over the water.
"I had another apprentice before Benadek," Achibol began, "a boy much like he is today. Too much like him . . ."
* * *
When they returned to camp, Sylfie looked happy. Contrary to Achibol's fears, a heavy weight had been removed from her. She kissed Teress affectionately, then kissed Benadek in a more sensual fashion. Achibol, however, now bore the burden of her suffering, or so it seemed. He growled at Teress and refused to eat breakfast.
"What's happened?" Benadek asked, drawing Sylfie aside.
"We had an argument," she said lightly. "And I won. Master Achibol is unused to having a pootor anyonedictate to him." Benadek could not draw her out further.
"Have you noticed how much you've grown?" she asked him. "You're taller than me now. And this . . ." She ran her palm over fine, dark hairs on his cheek and upper lip. "You'll have a fine, black beard someday. Look at your reflection sometime." She hugged him before wading out to the boat, where she went forward to her spot in the bow, alone.
Teress glanced from Achibol to Sylfie and back. What had the old fart told her? Obviously, not what he had promised Teress. Sylfie was too nice to be that happy, if she knew that tomorrow was going to be the worst day of Benadek's life.
"I was right!" Kaledrin exulted. "Here and here." His manipulators spread across the hard copy of the sources Saphooth had drawn upon. "No wonder old sticks-and-skin is upset. Serves him right!"
"Forgive my ignorance, Scholar," Abrovid interrupted with broad sarcasm, "but these documents are about reproduction among simian-forms. `Mating patterns of the Tree-dwarves of Alnak Five,' " he read. " `Genetic Anomalies in Palantian Land Apes.' What, precisely, is Saphooth upset about?"
Kaledrin gave a mean-spirited chuckle. "He's afraid that because he can't change, he's not descended from pure-human stock, that he's like . . . like . . ."
Kaledrin's outburst of laughter had little effect upon Abrovid. He waited until it ran its course, then asked, "Like what?"
"Saphooth now suspects he is a . . . a . . ." Again laughter overcame Kaledrin. Resisting a strong urge to kick him, Abrovid was finally rewarded by two final words almost lost among Kaledrin's giggles and snorts. ". . . a simple!"
At that very moment, with Kaledrin's exoskeleton in disarray, his spiracles half-choked with mirth-induced mucus, his nether tentacles entwined about himself like twine around a child's handmade ball, a shadow cast itself across the open doorway, followed by . . . Saphooth!
"Enlightening One," Kaledrin burbled, frantically untangling himself and attempting to rise from his cluttered floor. "Wha . . . What brings you here at this late hour?"
Saphooth ignored him, addressing Abrovid instead. "Is he sick? I've long suspected this demanding work would take its toll."
Abrovid, whose thoughts were deep and complex, was no quick thinker. "Uh," he said, and, "Uhhh . . ." again.
Saphooth spun on a bare, bony heel to face Kaledrin, now erect on his still-rubbery motational extremities. "When was your last vacation? Perhaps you should explore the riverbanks and sun-wallows this Institution provides for your somatoforms. Your work surely suffers from . . . instability . . . as you demonstrate here."
"But Perceptive One, Chapter Eleven is due any day."
"Never mind!" Saphooth said. "I'll write the chapter introduction and collate the reference list. Your continued participation in this project hinges more upon pulling yourself together."
Unable to correct Saphooth's error without explaining what had been so uproariously funny, Kaledrin let his eyestalks droop in acquiescence. What harm could it do? He could take a few days to enjoy warm riverbanks, gentle breezes, and sun-wallows where lethargic females lay, too full of fresh, unfertilized ova to flee his advances. The idea had more and more appeal as he thought about it.
Saphooth snapped up Kaledrin's access-module on his way out. Now Kaledrin had no choice: the office's facilities, databases, and AIs were henceforth closed to him. He could not even read Chapter Eleven until he returned from his enforced sabbatical.
Abrovid said nothing, afraid that Saphooth, for all his bluster, had not misinterpreted anything.