Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (16 page)

The door slid open and Mohawk stepped outside. “What about your mask?” asked the bursar.

“I’ve adjusted,” she answered. “This Trimaton is in my special care. I call it Peter after my first husband. Come out and meet him. Keep your masks on, he smells pretty dreadful.”

Outside we pushed through the tree ferns. The ground was soft and marshy. We came to a wooden ladder which led up to an observation platform. We climbed.

We looked into solid jungle. We could have been on any of a hundred planets. Mohawk put her fingers to her lips and whistled a low wailing whistle. Immediately the whistle was repeated as though by many flutes and we detected movement in the jungle. A sinuous yellow and orange shape moved in the branches above us. It might have been a snake or a tentacle. We could not tell. Then another moved and a tree shook and it seemed that every tree and bush had its own inhabitant.

“I thought there was only one . . .” began Tancredi, but then fell silent for the entire beast revealed itself. It reared up from the jungle floor. It was like a giant sunflower and the yellow and orange shapes we had seen in the trees proved to be tentacles. The yellow body pulsed like a huge muscular heart. It beat and throbbed and the surface was never still. Dotted along the upper parts of the tentacles we could see ducts which opened and closed like fishes’ mouths and through which were squeezed trickles of oil. The Trimaton rubbed this oil over its body using other small tentacles. It caressed and preened itself sensuously. But most remarkable were the eyes. They rose like thousands of black poppies from the center of the Trimaton’s yellow body and they moved individually and collectively, like flowers in a breeze. They surveyed us. Then the Trimaton changed color. Almost all the yellow deepened to orange.

Several of the ducts blew out violently spitting oil toward us and then they compressed and whistled, sounding a harsh melody.

“He wants to know who you are. He’s frightened of you.”

“Can you explain to him?”

“I can give him a general idea. He is very bright. He has already met Jon Wilberfoss so he can guess the rest.” Mohawk began to whistle and pointed to each member of the party and even to me. Then she turned to us. “I’ve introduced you all, but I’m going over to it. It is very alarmed by you. I didn’t expect this. It’s enduring stress. I trust you saw the color change. That is not a good sign. Go back to the platform and get inside. The platform will automatically take you to the exit point from the DME sector. It has been nice meeting you. But my work here must come first. You understand.”

A tentacle snaked down from the tree above us and curled around her shoulders. There was trilling of notes from the giant beast that faced us. “Hurry,” said Mohawk as she anchored herself and the next time she whistled she was lifted off the platform and carried over to the large pulsating body. She waved before she was lowered among the eyes which parted to receive her and then covered her. We saw her begin to massage one of the oil ducts and then the Trimaton lowered out of sight behind the bushes. We heard a soft whistling which might almost have been a lullaby. This was followed by a raw breathing of notes as though a church organ were sighing to itself.

We did as Mohawk asked and returned to the platform. I closed myself down and when Tancredi reset my circuits some five minutes later we had passed out of the Trimaton’s zone and were already high and skimming across the flickering blue haze. No one was talking. Everyone felt they had witnessed the first throes in the death of a great alien. Hearing its music they had encountered something of alien magnificence and strangeness.

Thus ended somewhat sadly and dramatically our visit to the DME section of the
Nightingale.
I think all the confreres were impressed by Consoeur Mobovich, but as Tancredi said to the bursar, “That is one job I could not do—DME Contact Nurse. I’m too squeamish and too sentimental. I lack that hard compassion.”

The bursar nodded. “Yes, as you say, those nurses are tough- But I must say, if I was a DME and I was sick, I’d feel content with Consoeur Mohovich climbing all over me.” The other members of our party looked at her in surprise for this was an uncharacteristically direct remark for the bursar. At the same time they nodded in recognition of Consoeur Mohovich’s obvious strength and capacity.

We completed our tour with a visit to the main control deck and there we found Jon Wilberfoss waiting for us. The control deck resembled Jon Wdberfoss’s house in the Pacifico Monastery. Much of his furniture had been brought up and there was a pleasing feeling of age and stability. I noticed a picture of Medoc and his children propped up near his desk.

If we had been expecting a high-tech layout then we would have been disappointed. Everything was homely and comfortable as old clothes. The technology was there of course, flowing in the walls, and Wilberfoss could communicate instantaneously with any part of the
Nightingale
if he wished—but it was hidden. Only one room suggested the symbiotic nature of the
Nightingale's
relation with its Captain. In this room there was a single chair which reclined back. Above this chair was a helmet which was not unlike a small version of myself. This helmet, indeed the whole chair, linked Wilberfoss directly to the bio-crystalline brains. Here he could lie and absorb the entire complex running of the ship from the flushing of toilets to the realignment of force fields in the DME sector. Here he could observe, override and control.

“Looks like a dentist’s chair,” observed the bursar when she saw it.

Wilberfoss, when we met him, was different. He was as vigorous as ever but he seemed older and he gave the appearance of always saying less than he thought. Conversation was not easy, though there was nothing rude or unfriendly.

A meal was served in a well-appointed staff canteen which was just down from his quarters. Tables had been pulled together for our party. While the members ate, regular staff workers aboard the
Nightingale
came and went. For them this was a normal working day. Wine was served and the atmosphere gradually thawed.

Wilberfoss was called away briefly and Tancredi commented on the change in him. “I suppose what we experienced down there in the DME sector when we passed through the force field was a minute instance of what he must have endured when he linked up with the biocrystalline brains. That experience made me feel strange to myself. He must feel very detached.”

“Is he happy, would you say?” asked Confrere Isidor, the cook.

“Happy. Ah, happy. Now that is hard to say. Do you know what makes you happy? Does anyone? We think we do, but happiness is a transitory commodity. I don’t know what would make Wilberfoss happy.”

“I know what makes you happy.” This from Isidor. “What?”

“Good wine and good food.”

“Yes, but they are transitory.”

“All things are transitory,” said the bursar solemnly and drained her glass. Immediately it was refilled.

The conversation was becoming silly and its further progression was stopped by Wdberfoss’s return. He was smiling. “That was Consoeur Mohawk,” he said. “She wanted to let you know that the Trimaton had calmed after your departure. It is now eating and making music.”

Tancredi led a round of applause for the Trimaton. He then raised his wine glass. “To Contact Nurse Mohawk,” he said. “Long may she serve the needs of the Gentle Order of St. Francis Dionysos.”

“Contact Nurse Mohawk,” came the reply from all the people around the table.

A short time later we departed on one of the land-rafts. Tancredi managed to have a few moments alone with Jon Wilberfoss before we set off. He shooed me away when I hovered close, so I do not know what they said. But at the end Tancredi kissed Wilberfoss on both cheeks and then wiped away a tear. The meaning is, I think, obvious.

We landed, disembarked, and the land-raft took off again.

That night the
Nightingale
withdrew its laser lines which had kept it in precise orbit and edged away from Juniper. I was among those who sat on the hills to watch it depart, Male and female Tallines, consoeurs and confreres of the Gentle Order, spindly technicians from the Blind Man System joined hands and waved as the ship grew smaller and fainter.

Then suddenly the
Nightingale
became brilliant, incandescent. The space between the symbol transformation generators (the “claws” as I have called them before) came alive and began to crawl with strange shapes of power. The mirrors glowed red and then blazed, creating a ball of energy as dimensions of space were teased open. The ship advanced and entered its own orb of power and was gone.

Silent and mysterious. A candle snuffed without smoke.

Now you see it. Now you don’t. And not a sound.

Gradually eyes and sensors adjusted to the dark and the
familiar
night sky became again apparent. Those who had brought wine stayed to drink it on the hillside. Others drifted home and the night rang with called goodnights and messages for the morning.

For myself, since Magister Tancredi was snoring and had no further need of me, I drifted down to the Pacifico library and began to gather the threads of my research into the causes of the War of Ignorance—research that had been interrupted by this whole Jon Wilberfoss business. I put Jon Wilberfoss out of my mind.

INTERMISSION

I include this chapter out of conscience, out of my own sense of propriety, reasoning as follows: how can you understand this story unless you know the story teller? History is nothing more than the songs of historians.

On another level this is but another pebble in my mosaic and one which may entertain you during the brief half hour it takes for Jon Wilberfoss and the
Nightingale
to whisper their way from the Lucy System where we exist to the Oriente System where the main hospital worlds of the Gentle Order are located. Later I will add another pebble and tell you about Lily.

I am older than Lily.

Age is of course hardly significant. Given favorable conditions I could probably tick-tock along for many generations of humankind. No matter.

I am aware that deep inside me there are primitive circuits which reflect the mind of my first maker. These still function and provide the core of my talent. Stamped within me on a thin platinum plate is the year of my manufacture, CE 2092.

I began my proper working life as a quality inspector with a carpet and imported fabrics firm called Tonks Bros. I was part of their automation, one of their first robots. My job was simple. I would watch hour-in, hour-out as bolts of fabric unrolled before my sensors. Dyed linen, woven wool, fine-spun bark-thread temple matting, carpets from all comers of the world and domestic plastic sheet, were all part of my trade. I possessed the most rudimentary speech organs. I knew just enough to growl, “Error here,” “Dye mismatch,” “Oil stain,” “Chemical fade,” “Tension variation,” “Yam weakening,” etc. I had some one hundred and fifty comments in my vocabulary. I had second-phase analytic powers which meant that if you asked me to describe a dye mismatch, I could tell you by what percentage a particular color differed from its parent and even what quantity of pigment needed to be added to a dye vat of given size to bring that color up to its true value.

Clever stuff eh? Bah! Routine stuff. Thank my maker that bio-crystalline consciousness had not yet been developed or I might have devised plans to become an artist! In those days, if you had asked me about a design I would not have known what you meant beyond the elementary mathematics of pattern. But I had this one supreme talent: I was a brilliant observer of shape and line and color. As the fabric flashed before me I could analyze it down to its finest fibers. In this I was special. I was a prototype. I was a one-off. Many machines could analyze but I was the fastest and the most discriminating and what’s more, I was flexible. Given the right “hook ons” I could have devoured a Mona Lisa or a Sistine Chapel ceiling or a Granu-Laferg Laser Striation and told you everything about the composition of those works . .. but I could not have told you why they are great works of art. My maker, an inventor called Su-lin, had built “secret” circuits into me which have never been duplicated. A historical accident! It was not intended to be this way.

Su-lin was a genius in his way: a lonely genius more at home with abstract circuits than with the world of men. He hawked me around from country to country displaying my promise and skill just as young W. A. Mozart, if this comparison is not too bizarre, was paraded by his father. Su-lin sold me to the Tonks Bros textile house and I believe I would have been brought into mass production except that this was the time when anti-gravity and particle physics were being developed. They gobbled up all the R and D funds. How could a humble pattern analyst compete with the multi-dimensional physics which led to the first starships? For whatever reason, I remained unique.

To cut a long story short, anti-gravity led to space travel and space travel led to the War of Knowledge.

I cannot remember this time but I can reconstruct it.

It was the physicist Christian Jenner who first calculated the entropic effects of artificial gravity and gave the first mathematical description of how a minor gravitational field can operate within a major field. This was in CE 2127.

The engineer Mungo, who had served his apprenticeship designing ice crawlers for use on Neptune, constructed the first integrated anti-gravity unit and flew it at the 7th Interplanetary Exposition which was held on Mars in CE 2140. He lifted four kilos through twenty meters in 0.5 of a second using a standard 9 volt battery. Almost overnight the traditional forms of transport and locomotion were obsolete.

Finally Jenner evolved a series of equations which were able to bring together particle physics and alternative dimension probabilities. These equations provided the basis for the Noh-time drive. For the first time it became possible for humankind to think of visiting the stars.

Experimentation went on apace all over the Earth. Initially it was multinational corporations that sought to use research to gain a technological advantage over their competitors. The multinationals bought entire universities. The race was on and the War of Knowledge had started in earnest.