The Caterpillar's Question by Piers Anthony and Philip José Farmer (39 page)

He could get the answers to his questions later. If, that is, Tappy and he and the others survived. Just now the Gaol dreadnoughts were moving toward them through the storm. Why? He could only guess. But the commander must have been astonished to see them performing a savage's ritual when they should have been conferring about her demands. She may have decided that the four hours' grace was a waste of time for the Gaol. Had she given the order to move in and capture the Imago's host while they were deeply involved in their ritual? Or had she ordered, the ships just to come closer to the group because the vast chaotic energies of the lightning were disrupting her observation capabilities?

But if she had seen the light issuing from Tappy, she must have known that the Imago was about to manifest itself.

Jack groaned, and the tiny hot coal of hope inside him darkened. All the commander had to do to stop the Imago was to order that all within the crater walls be destroyed at once.

He prayed to the God in whom he did not believe.

Then he cried out in wonder, though he had expected more wonders.

The brightness was a sphere extending from Tappy to about ten feet from her. It included himself, Candy, Garth, and the Integrator. It did not touch the people in the three circles, the honkers whose feet now struck the earth rapidly turning into mud with a mighty squishing sound. But, as suddenly as if someone had pushed a button, the sphere shot out many thin rays. At first, Jack thought that the sphere was doing it. But a much more intense ray was shooting out, laser bright, from Tappy's left breast through the bright sphere.

It had to issue from the Imaget upon her breast. It fell upon each of the dancers as each passed into and through it in his and her circuit. It made each of them glow as if each had swallowed a giant firefly. Or a saint's halo. Their lights paled the darkness among them. Despite the suddenness of this, they hesitated for only a second and then resumed their whirling and their forward progress.

Scarcely had Jack cried out than he did so again.

Now a ray shot out from each dancer into the black storm and toward the crater wall. The beams angled slightly upward.

If the Gaol commander knew of this, she must be whistling the equivalent of a human screeching into her communicator. "Destroy them! Destroy them!"

Now the dancers were whirling faster and had also speeded up their passage over the circles described in the mud by their feet. Somehow, despite the energy output that should have made them short of breath, they were still chanting. And their gourds were rattling even more furiously. The thunder and the lightning had raced past the group. The rain quit as quickly as if a giant stagehand had cut it off. Though the clouds were still black above, the storm had quit for now. A few minutes later, the clouds took their darkness over the eastern wall. The sun sprang out as if from ambush.

But the sphere of light and the ray emanating from the Imaget and the rays shooting from the dancers were easily visible.

Jack saw that the beams from the dancers were impinging upon the images and the symbols on the crater-wall ring. He did not know until then that he had unconsciously expected this.

He cried out a third time.

The figures on the ring flashed as each passed through a ray. The ring was moving much faster. Though it was at least twenty-five miles from him and the figures were gigantic, they could be seen now only as almost unrecognizable smears. While he stood astonished, he saw them become even more blurred.

The outer rings, the two concealed within the crater wall, must also be rotating at an incredible velocity.

The Gaol spaceships were truly colossal now. They were poised halfway between the throne and the wall. Poised! Not moving!

He turned to look westward. The storm had hidden the fleet in that direction, but now he saw that it was also hovering halfway to the ritualists. In fact, the entire array of vessels formed a circle around them.

The Integrator blew a very loud and long blast. After a sustained single honk, the dancers became silent. They stopped their frenzied motion and turned to face the wall. Quickly, they broke up the circles and rearranged themselves in a long line facing the western wall. Their work was done, the wheels no longer needed them to spin them, and they were going to watch the results.

The ray from the Imaget had ceased. But the glow from Tappy spread out and sped across the plain until it filled the crater. Its brilliance was not diminished by being diluted. It was not, however, a photonic light. Glaring as it was, it did not make Jack close his eyes. Like the glare in that other world reached via the death-shadow, it seemed to fill every cell in his body. But this light did not hurt or blind. That other light had done so because he and Tappy were in a place where they should not be.

Soundlessly, lubricated by an unknown substance or field, the ring spun until the blur of the images and symbols became a single dark streak. The air near the ring was agitated, however. It quivered and shimmered. Vague figures flew around in it as if they were birds in a mirage.

"No!" Jack said aloud.

He realized suddenly that he had been mistaken. First, he had thought that the weapon which left a shadow like a bad aftertaste in Death's mouth was what Tappy had talked about in her dreams. "Alien menace... only chance is to use the radiator," she had muttered. Then, he had suspected that it was not the weapon but the Imaget. But now... he knew the truth.

The radiator-- the Radiator!-- was the crater-wall ring. The three rings, rather. They were pouring out radiations of empathy, the empathy which would conquer the Gaol. No, not just them. The entire universe of sentient beings. All, Gaol, honkers, humans, the multitude of language-speaking species which must be scattered throughout the single world made of many worlds.

If there was anything faster than light, it would be the empathy waves. These were infraphysical. At least, he assumed that they would be if they were going to affect a significant number of sapients.

Also, there were the gates such as the boulder-gate he and Tappy had passed through from Earth to this planet. There must be many throughout the cosmos. And the gates on this planet would be transmitting the waves to Earth and to gates on Earth which led to other worlds and to gates on this planet which led to other planets. The effect would spread much more quickly through them.

Was it already affecting the people of Earth? God knows that that planet needed it. But then every planet probably did. The end of wars and of murder and of viciousness? The lessening of hate and greed and ruthlessness? The growth of love and compassion?

The spaceships had stopped in their advance toward the Imago and its host. He did not know, but he was sure that the Gaol in them had been overcome by an onslaught of empathy far more powerful than anything Tappy had radiated before the real Radiator, what the honkers called the Generator, had started to function. Its waves had reached up to the fleet in orbit and stunned the Gaol in it. And the waves were on their way, directly or through gates, to the rest of the empire and beyond it.

He got a flash of something. Then it was gone. But it would be back. For a second or two, he had been in a Gaol. Or, maybe, in every Gaol. He had been in the mind of a Gaol. In that fraction of a second of full comprehension and actually being a Gaol, he had been as frightened as he had ever been. But now he also understood what drove them. Despite their repulsive appearance and behavior, they were not unlike human beings. What was ugly in them (and also what was ugly in humans) would change into beauty.

He was surprised that he had not had this feeling before now. After all, he was standing in the very center of the radiation. But his location was similar to being in the eye of a hurricane. All around him was a gigantic surge of the force that had been, as it were, born and slain many times before it could get anywhere near full fruition. Now it was the mightiest force in the many universes. Compared to the combined energies of a trillion trillion stars, the Imago was a sun beside a candle.

He, however, was in a null area. Comparatively null, that is. Once he went to where he would be in the full force of the empathy, he would be as filled with it as the Gaol now were.

The rays from Tappy's breast and from the Imaget were fading now. Their work had been done, though they still lived and would again become as bright as angels if they were needed.

Jack hoped that they would never have to be invoked again, that their force would endure. Surely, they would not have to be used in Tappy's lifetime.

But he could see on Tappy's face a golden aura, faint but still evident. Evident to him, anyway. It was probably his imagination. No one else could see it, though he would ask others if they detected it. It was an afterimage of the holy light. Yes, the holy light. Though Jack was an agnostic and would have felt uncomfortable calling anything "holy," he now would think of the aura as, if not holy, the echo of holiness.

Tappy would be something to be worshipped by him.

Would that interfere with the union of their flesh? Would he always be inhibited somewhat when they made love or-- a mundane thought but valid and realistic-- when they argued about the budget or when they disagreed about disciplining their children? Would he always give in, even when he knew he was right?

He hoped not, but he would have to wait to find out.

They would have to get back to Earth first. Neither he nor Tappy wanted to stay here, no matter how pleasant it might be. Despite all the madnesses and hideousnesses that stalked Earth, it was their home. And, now that the Imago was flooding the souls of its people, Earth would become far better. Perhaps the Earth that all sane people wanted it to be.

How to get back? That should be no problem. The honkers would know of a gate to it. If they did not, the Gaol would.

He laughed. Whoever would have thought that he could ask the Gaol to help him? Or that they would do so willingly, even gladly?

There was still one question unanswered. What had Tappy meant in her sleep-talk when she had said, "Reality is a dream"?

Later, much later, when they were living on an Earth the societies of which were greatly changing for the better, he asked her about the phrase.

She had to probe her mind for some time before she remembered where she had heard it. So much was buried there, and so much was still difficult to find. "My father," she said. "He told me that several times. I was so young, I did not ask him what it meant. Or, if I did, I've forgotten his explanation. Anyway, I did puzzle over it, then I forgot about it. So many bad things were happening then. But my unconscious evidently did not forget it. I really don't know what he meant by it."

"He must have meant that dreams shape reality," Jack said. "The Makers had a dream of the means whereby they could conquer the Gaol even after they, the Makers, were gone. Hence, the Imago. The honkers and the humans allied with them continued to dream the Makers' dream. They made the Imaget, and they dreamed of how they could use it to let the Imago come to full bloom.

"Dreams shape reality. Thus, dreams are reality."

"That must have been what he meant."

Authors' Notes

PIERS ANTHONY

This really started in 1963. Back then I was a hopeful writer, with one sale to my credit. I was taking one year to stay home and write, while my wife went out to earn our living, and the year had started in September 1962. If I didn't prove myself by September 1963, I would have to return to the mundane grind and give up my foolish dream of being a writer. As it happened, I did sell two stories in that year, for a total of $160, so was technically a success. But realism intruded when it came to paying the bills. I did return to mundane labor, but in 1966 tried writing full- time again, this time doing novels instead of stories, and that was the one that took. It was after all possible to earn a living doing novels. I have been writing ever since. The details of my life and career are too tedious to go into here; they are in my autobiography, Bio of an Ogre. What concerns me now is just one story written in that first year, and the story of that story.

The story was "Tappuah." I wrote it for God rather than Caesar; that is, for love instead of money. The name derived from the Bible; I am hardly a Bible scholar, but in a concordance or some such I had seen the name, and learned that it meant apple, and it intrigued me. The setting was the Green Mountains of Vermont, where I was raised. The character turned out to be the first of a type I have explored considerably since: a young and tortured girl. Critics accuse me of having nothing but luscious and sexy women; Tappy is the evidence that I tried other kinds, but without success on the market.

In February I completed the monster story "Quinquepedalian," and in March I would complete my farcical fantasy story "E van S." Between them I fitted in "Tappuah." It moved better than anything else I had done up to that time. I wrote just over 2,000 words a day for three days, and had it complete at 7,000 words in February, my favorite. It had a fantasy theme: Tappy, lame and blind, nevertheless had an affinity for extinct creatures, and they tended to show up.

I was then in touch with several other hopeful writers, such as Robert E. Margroff, H. James Hotaling, and Frances T. Hall, with all of whom I subsequently published collaborations. I sent "Tappuah" to them for comment. They liked it; they felt it was the best I had done. That was my own sentiment.

I tried it on the market. It bounced at Playboy (as I said: about non-luscious girls and the market...) and at Cosmopolitan, Ladies' Home Journal, Redbook (probably they didn't like the fantasy element), The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Fantastic. Evidently the genre magazines didn't want it either; one of them sent a scribbled note suggesting that I try it on the "straight" market. So I tried it on a mainstream literary magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and it bounced there too. So much for that; seven markets had rejected it, and I had to retire it. For a while. But I did not forget it.

Meanwhile I went back to college to get my certificate to teach English, and I became an English teacher. It was a poor substitute for the real thing, creative writing. But I took advantage of the interim to show the story to my literature professor there, Wesley Ford Davis, himself a published novelist. Intrigued, he read it to one of his classes, and relayed the students' comments to me. They liked it, but felt that the human element of Tappy's situation warred with the fantasy of the extinct animals; it might be better as one type or the other.