The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped (33 page)

“What took you so long?” asked Mavin. She stood in the shadow, half-hidden behind a fall of small roots, almost invisible.

“We had no wings, ma’am,” said Roges, grinning at Mavin with what Beedie considered astonishing familiarity.

“Fair blow Maintainer. Well, I had hoped to tell you of a sideway by this time, some kind of trail or climb around Nextdown. I’ve looked. Up the wall and down it, behind the roots and before them. Nothing. What was there has rotted away and been eaten by the wireworms long since.”

“So we must go to Nextdown after all,”said Beedie.

“Where needs must, sausage girl. However, we’ll not do it without a little preparation. There’s a house full of Banders near the stair—the very house your Aunt Six told me you used to occupy, Beedie. Evidently all the Bander kin from upstairs and down have come to fill it full, and every window of it has eyes on this stairway. They’ve been warned we’re coming. There’s talk of assault and the taking of a Birder hostage. So, lest harm fall ...”

“Lest harm fall?” questioned Mercald, fearfully.

“We shall commit a surprise. As soon as we figure one out. However, why don’t we have something to eat first. Have you supplies, Maintainer?”

“Fresh root mice, ma’am. And things less fresh brought from Topbridge. We can have a cold supper.”

“No need for that. There’s a cave in the wall, just here, behind these roots, and a pile of deadroot in it enough to warm twenty dinners. There is also a convenient air shaft which guarantees we will not suffocate in our own smoke. Even if all this were not so near and so convenient, I would want it to be a good bit darker before we attempt to go past that Bridgers House. So we might as well rest a while and enjoy our food.”

“We saw a crawly-claw, Mavin. I wanted to hunt it, but Roges said the Hunter caste might catch us at it.”

“Are they especially delicious, girl?”

“They are the best thing next to wireworms. Even better, sometimes.”

“Then we’ll have to try and hunt one down, somewhere along the way, Hunter caste or no.” She wormed her way behind the bundle of roots, showing them the way into the cave. The sight of it surprised them all, for it was lit with one of the puffed fish lanterns glowing softly to itself in the black. Snaffled from Nextdown by a strange bird, said Mavin with some amusement. There was also a vast pile of deadroot, looking as though it had fallen there rather than been gathered in. Roges set about building a fire, laying his supplies ready to hand on a spread sheet of flopperskin.

“I didn’t know there were caves in the root wall.” Mercald was indignant, as though the existence of anything he did not know of was an affront to his priestly dignity.

“I think your people have become so caste-ridden, priest, that they do not use their humanish curiosity any longer. You have no explorer caste, do you? No. Nor any geographers? Your adventurous young are not encouraged to burrow about in the root wall?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking,” Beedie interrupted. “Bridger youngsters climb about from the time they can walk. I did.”

“Always under supervision, I’ll warrant. Always learning methods or perfecting skills. Well, it doesn’t matter; it’s only a matter of interest to me. In looking for a way around Nextdown, you see, I have found a number of curiosities, and I merely wonder that the people of the chasm seem unaware of them. For example, there is another cave somewhat below us which happens to be occupied by a strangeness.”

“Occupied?” Roges looked up from his folding grill, interested. “Someone living in the wall? A Miner, perhaps?”

“A person. He tells me his name is Haile Seiklik; by profession, a theoretician; in actuality a stranger, an outlander, not belonging in this chasm at all. He tells me he has come here for difference, for where he was before was same. I invited him to join us for supper.”

Roges made a face and turned to his pack for another handful of the root mice. He was slicing them into a pan with bits of dried f lopper meat and a bulb of thickic. He did not comment. Mavin watched their faces, interested in the ways they received this news: Mercald fearfully; Roges with housekeeperish resignation; Beedie w ith delight. “How wonderful! What is he, Mavin? I don’t know what a theo— a theor whatever is.”

“I’m not at all certain, sausage girl. That’s why I invited him. He looks hungry, for a start, so I presume a theoretician is not anything practical like a Harvester or a Bridger. He is living in an unimproved cave, so I presume it isn’t something useful like a Miner or Grafter. There is a sort of dedication in his expression which reminds me of you, Mercald, but he has no regalia at all.”

“What is he doing, then? In his cave?”

“So far as I can tell, he sits and thinks.”

“Only that?” asked Mercald, scandalized.

“Only that. He’s being fed by the slow-girules. I saw two of them come in and leave him a few nodules while I was there. They talked at him, and he talked back at them, and they purred.” She smiled again, then held up one finger. “Shhh. I think I hear him on the stairs.” There was a slow tread on the stairs, interrupted by frequent stops. Beedie ran to the cave entrance and peered between the roots, seeing a dark shape silhouetted against the lights of Nextdown, below them. “I know why it does that,”said a voice in a tone of pleased amazement. “It’s obvious.”

“You know why what does what?” asked Beedie, coming out onto the stairs. “Why what does what?”

“I know why it feels colder here than it does up above, among the trees. They always say it is because we are closer to the river, here, with more moisture in the air. Nonsense. We’ve come down a long way. There’s more atmosphere, more heat capacity, and the thicker air cools us faster. That’s all. I hadn’t thought about that until now. Interesting, isn’t it.” The person turned toward her, not seeing her. “Different. Not the same at all.” He moved blindly toward the place in the roots from which she had emerged, feeling his way between them to the firelit space beyond.

“Who’s they?” asked Beedie. “I never heard ‘they’ say that, about the river and the moisture.”

“They,” said the man, moving steadily toward the fire and food, “You know. Them.”

Beedie had no idea about them. She shook her head and followed him, seeing Mavin grasp him by one arm and lead him to a convenient sitting stone. He was dressed all in ragged bits and pieces, and his face was one of mild interest, unfocused, as though he did not really see any of them even while he took food from Roges’ hands. He had shaggy, light hair and a wild-looking moustache and beard which drooped below his chin, wagging gently when he spoke. The colour of his eyes was indeterminable, somewhere between vacant and shadow. After a long pause during which no one said anything, he murmured, “Perhaps it was some other place they said it about. That it was cooler lower down. Because it was wetter. Perhaps that was it.”

“What other place was that?” Mercald asked, suspiciously. “Nextdown? Midwall?”

The man chewed, swallowed, spooned another mouthful up before considering this question. “Oh, not any place very local, I’m afraid. Elsewhere, I think. Before I came here at all.”

“You came from elsewhere,” commented Mavin. “Perhaps from the place the ancesters of these chasm dwellers came from? Or from the southern continent?”

“Elsewhere,” he replied, gesturing vaguely at the rock around them, as though he had permeated it recently. “It started with liquids. They didn’t understand liquids. Local geometry is non-space-filling. Icosohedra. Triginal bipyramids. Oh, this shape and that shape, lots of them. More than the thirty-two that fill ordinary space, let me tell you. That’s why things are liquid, trying to pack themselves in flat space, and that’s what I told them.

“They couldn’t deal with it. They wanted order, predictability, regularity. Silly. Local geometry can be packed, I said, just not in flat space. So, I said, give them a space of constant curvature and they’ll pack. All they did was laugh. I took some liquids to a space of constant negative curvature to show them it would crystallize, and it sucked me up. One minute, there. Next minute, somewhere else. Somewhere different, thank the Boundless. Boundless. That’s a local word for it. Picked it up from someone off the stairs out there. Boundless. Good name for it.”

“I’m sure the Boundless would be gratified at your approval,” said Mercald, much offended.

“Shhh,” calmed Mavin. “The man’s a guest in our midst.”

“They said every place was like the place I was. Infinite replications of sameness. They called it translational symmetry. Well, I determined to find difference no matter what it took. So I left there and came here. It’s different here. It’s local. Rx>f and feh on translational symmetry.”

“I thought you said you got here by accident,” said Beedie, trying to make sense out of the person. “By some curvature or other.”

“Yes. Both. Hardly anything is mutually exclusive when you really think about it. You can’t look at things too closely. The more precisely you look at one thing, the more uncertain the others get. If we locate me precisely here, how I got here becomes increasingly unsure. Tell you the truth, I don’t remember.”

“ ‘Reality has many natures,” said Mercald in his most sententious voice.

“That’s the truth,” said the theoretician, focusing on the priest for a moment before drifting away again.

“That’s the truth, so far as it goes, at least.” He chewed quietly to himself, smiling at his own thoughts. “Surfaces,” he murmured. “Edges. Reality has edges.”

“That’s the truth,” Beedie muttered to herself. “So far as it goes.” She glared at Mavin. “What did we need him for?”

“Need? Well, sausage girl, what do we need you for? To make life more interesting. He’s different, isn’t he?”

Mercald circled the theoretician in slow, ruminative steps, eating, staring, eating. At last he said, “What do you mean, reality has edges?” Receiving no response, he repeated the question, finally driving it through with a kick at the stone the man was sitting on. “Edges?”

The theoretician put his plate down, picked up a length of root from the floor of the cave. “You see this? This is a system. It has surfaces. It has extent. It has size and corners and edges and impurities and irregularities.” He put it down, searched for a stone, found one. “This one, too. Here’s another. Not the same, not the same at all. And another one yet. All local. Everything’s local. Local.”

The other three looked at one another, Mercald kept on with his circling; at last it was Roges who said, “So?”

“Not to them! Oh, no, not to them. To them, everything is the same. In all directions. For ever. No edges. No corners. They used to scream at me. ‘What do you do about surface states?’ As though that meant something. I thank the Boundless for the surface states. Show me something, anything without surface states! Anything at all! There’s nothing like that in reality. But they didn’t understand. Just went on inventing ‘ons. Palarons. Plasmons. Phonons. Exitons. Vomitons and shitons soon to come. Feh.”

Beedie murmured,”I don’t know, Mavin. It seems to me we ought to let him go back to his cave and start worrying about the Banders.”

“Banders,” screamed the theoretician in a sudden expression of fury. “Infinite lattices. Homogeneous deformation. Idiots.”

“I really think it’s something religious,” said Mercald to Mavin in a thoughtful voice. “There’s a fine kind of frenzy about it. Of course, it might be heretical, but it sounds quite like doctrine.” He regarded the theoretician almost with fondness.

“We’ll take him with us,” said Mavin. “If he wants to go. Thinker, do you want to come with us?”

The man shook his head, then nodded it, reaching into the general pan for the last of the fried root mice. “If it will be different where you are going. I’ve modeled this place. There’s nothing left to do here.”

“He means he has realized it,” said Mercald with satisfaction. “I’m beginning to understand him. It is definitely religious, after all.” He stroked the theoretician’s shoulder, wrinkling his nose at the feel of the rags. “I’ve got an extra shirt I can lend him.”

“Ah,” said Mavin. “I’m glad you find him sympathetic, Mercald. I wonder if he has any practical use at all.” She stretched herself on the cave floor, seeming, to Beedie’s eyes, to flow a little, as though she shaped herself to the declivities of the place. “Thinker, will you solve a problem for me? Give me an answer?”

“Answers? Of course. I always know the answer. After I see the problem, of course. Not before. They’re always terribly simple, answers. Which one do you need?”

“We need to get to the stairs below Nextdown—that’s the bridge just below us— without being seen by anyone on Nextdown. There is no other stair and no root climbable by any of us but perhaps Beedie here.”

“Ah,” said the theoretician. “Might one ask why?”

“There are a dozen large men at the end of this stair who are determined to do us harm,” said Mavin, without changing expression. “Is that reason enough?” She had been watching Beedie’s bright, excited face, and was determined not to change into some huge climbing shape which would solve all problems and take all the fun out of the expedition. Besides, shifting was too easy. Sometimes it was more fun to plot one’s way out of trouble. This praiseworthy thought was interrupted.

“Shhh,” said Roges, moving to throw his jacket over the fish lantern. “I hear voices. Someone coming down.” They fell silent, listening, hidden as they were in the dark of the cave, the last glowing coals of the fire hidden from the entrance by their bodies. There was the sound of a dozen pairs of feet, a malignant mutter, a phlegmy cough.

“I smell smoke,” said someone from outside. Byle Bander’s voice. “Smoke, Dah.”

“Well of course you smell smoke, idiot boy. There’s Nextdown no more than a few hundred steps down. This time of evening when don’t you smell smoke? Everybody’s cooking their dinner, and good time to do it, too. I’m hungry enough to eat for six.”

“You think the Birder’s gone on down? You think our family took ‘em at Nextdown, Dah?”

“I think that’s probable, boy. In which case, we’ll have a high old time finding out from that Birder what they’re going after.”