Manshape (16 page)

Now there was no room for pleasure, and that offended him. Be it only the refined delight he himself found in conquering an intractable problem, Hans Demetrios held that people should be entitled to enjoyment. It was the right reward for existence. Oblivion could come later.

Little by little, he hinted at this idea to those who accompanied him on his investigative rounds. They dismissed what he said with incredulity, or at best with a harsh laugh—the only laughter he had heard since his arrival.

Alone among them all, Yard rebutted Hans’s arguments
with arguments of his own. He was the grand master of this planet’s weird casuistry… chiefly, Hans thought, because he believed in it the least, could stand outside it and take a more nearly objective view than his colleagues. At any rate, he was the only one who seemed capable of hypothesising an alternative way of life and drawing accurate conclusions concerning it.

On the last day to which his inquiry could be protracted, the day after the last person involved in the ceremony when Chen was killed had testified that all were voluntarily present, all took the risk willingly one with another, all might have done what the killer did, all might equally have been his victim, by pure chance, Hans was reduced to despair. For that was also the day when Yard informed him with confidence that—assuming Hans himself to be as exact a representative of Earthside culture as Yard of Azrael’s—Earth would never do as had been threatened. Lacking the insight of those who colonised Azrael, he said, they could never regard one man’s death as reason to depopulate a planet. Only those who had attained contempt for life could make such a decision. Had the positions been reversed, it would have been a different matter.

“You mean,” Hans suggested, “that if Long had died of his snake-bite, you would have accepted the Bridge because lacking other contact with Earth you could otherwise not have exacted revenge?”

It was a brave attempt; it failed. Yard brushed aside all recollection of Long.

“He betrayed us!” he rasped. “You trapped him. A rational person would have foreseen the risk of having his retreat cut off. He was insufficiently alert. Yet it was as well that we selected him. Almost any other of us would have been a greater loss.”

That added one more factor to Hans’s social analysis,
and effectively completed it. But before he could do what he felt now was imperative—signal the
Hunting Dog
to come and fetch him, because the rest of what had to be done constituted a long-term project—Yard had signalled to two men who all today had been following him like a bodyguard.

“Return him to his cell,” he instructed. “He will remain there until Long and his delegation are sent back from Earth. And on the way shave his head. We’ve detected signals emanating from him when he’s alone, and I suspect there’s something hidden in his hair.”

The cell-door closed on the ruin of Hans’s hopes. He had been so confident when he realised these people needed to brand themselves as a prop for their convictions; he had thought they would prove vulnerable to the horns of the dilemma he had created… and instead they had mercilessly exposed the flaw in his own position, or at any rate one of them had. Now, instead of bringing them salvation, he was condemned to stay here until the cessation of signals from his communicator obliged Captain Inkoos to order her ship back from orbit and retrieve his corpse. Detachment of the device from his scalp would register on the ship’s detectors as though he had been killed. Very shortly he might be. And because he had been beaten, he felt it didn’t matter if he was.

Unable to sleep at night, unable to concentrate on her work by day, Alida Marquis could think of nothing but the predicament Hans had voluntarily wished on himself. Over and over she reviewed the data Chen had filed before he died; over and over she played the tapes of what Long had done and said since his arrival on Earth. There was a great deal of the latter now, and the existence of an Azrael Society was multiplying problems almost by the hour. Uskia was known to be offended by the way the Supervisor of Relations
was neglecting her, but that was a minor nuisance. Work was proceeding on the creation of an Ipewell section in the Bridge City, and most of the rest of the work could be left to the machines. Ipewell was, although unique, well within the parameters established by contact with other human worlds.

Azrael was utterly different.

Why—wh
y-why
did Hans rely so much on those artificial horns? Surely they implied a capacity for self-delusion! Externalising one’s beliefs to a symbol like that was a mark of society after primitive society which had collapsed under its own misconceptions. Circumcision—cicatrisation—tat-tooing—clitoral excision-all sorts of mutilation had been exploited to brand people as members of an exclusive group, keep them isolated and identifiable among the hordes of infidels, goyim, pagans, or whatever… And the out-come was what? The interstellar society created by the Bridges, whose members met—at least in the persons of their Earthside representatives—in the giant city she could see spread out below the windows of her office. Pacing back and forth, gnawing her lip, she stared achingly at that marvellous panorama, or sometimes at its miniaturised version in the transparent depths of her table, as though by mere inspection she could unravel the mystery.

Hans had overlooked something. She grew more and more certain of it. And he had staked his existence—worse, his sanity—on his assumptions. She had actually believed that he was going to work a miracle; he had seemed so confident…

The solido projector uttered its priority override signal and all of a sudden she found herself about to walk through the portly figure of van Heemskirk. She stopped dead.

The politician was mopping his forehead with a kerchief that matched his yellow robe. He said without
preamble, “I thought you’d better hear this before I tell even Shrigg. Captain Inkoos reports that all signals from Hans’s communicator have ceased. Either it’s failed, which is unlikely, or it’s been ripped off his head, or he’s dead. She needs authority to proceed and wants to know on which assumption.”

Alida’s hands curved into claws; her nails pressed painfully into her palms.

“If he did beat them, as he promised,” van Heemskirk pursued ruthlessly, “they could very well have killed him for his pains. Couldn’t they?”

She stood there swaying, eyes closed, in the grip of a lightning-flash of insight, as though it had taken the belief that Hans too could be killed to bring all her thoughts into focus. But it was her job, and she had gradually become extremely good at it.

“Alida!” van Heemskirk said in alarm. “Are you listening to me? Are you all right?”

She opened her eyes. With painfully correct articulation she said, “Don’t tell Shrigg. Not yet. Don’t answer Captain Inkoos. Let me put some questions to some people and I’ll call you back.”

“What?” The plump man blinked rapidly. “What questions? What people?”

“Maybe not so much the people as their machines,” Alida muttered. “But Laverne is one, and Lorenzo is the other. Hold for five minutes. As you love me and Hans, Moses, hold for five more minutes.
I think I got what Hans has overlooked!””

And, she glossed privately, even if I haven’t, then this instant when I can make myself believe I know more than a top pantologist is still going to remain a treasured memory…

In fact it was less than the promised five minutes before she called van Heemskirk back, very pale, speaking in a voice barely louder than a whisper.

“Moses, Laverne thinks I must be right and Lorenzo
is sure of it What we have to do is this! Listen carefully!”

A while ago a peal of thunder had rolled across the dismal city, and made the walls of Hans’s cell shiver. Well, that was nothing new or remarkable. Folded up like an unborn child, he was lost in a miasma of self-pity at his own incompetence.

Suddenly the bolts of the door were drawn aside, screeching. He recovered enough of his self-possession to rise and greet the new arrivals standing. But they were only a pair of guards, who chivvied and jostled him back to the hall where he had formerly confronted Shang and his colleagues.

This time the high-backed chair was occupied by Casimir Yard, and his expression was that of a man who has tasted wormwood.

He said without preamble, “It seems we must consent to your crude blackmail, and accept the imposition of a Bridge.”

Hans almost fainted; with all his might he clung to consciousness. As though this was precisely what he had been expecting all along, he said, “Very well, I’m glad for your sakes that you finally saw sense. You understand the conditions attached—that anyone of legal age may travel by it once it’s been installed?”

Yard muttered something inaudible, making a gesture as to brush aside a fly. And continued, “You will be taken to the spaceport at once. The ship will descend to fetch you. And I hope very much that I shall never set eyes on you again.”

He rose and stormed away.

After that things happened to Hans in such a rush he scarcely had time to register them. Suddenly, it seemed, he was standing on the spaceport in a grey drizzle, and the ramp of the
Hunting Dog
was being lowered, and there were two women advancing to
meet him. Captain Inkoos he had naturally expected, but the other was Alida Marquis.

Taken aback, he knew he had to say something. All that offered itself was the damning admission, “I—I was wrong, Alida!”

A look of horror crossed her face as she made to embrace him. Taking a step back, she demanded, “They refused the Bridge-again?”

“No—no!” Bewildered, Hans shook his head. “It’s just that I don’t understand why they did accept it! It wasn’t because I reasoned better than they did!”

“Ah, but you did!” She seized his hand and gazed into his eyes. “You reasoned so well that you made it clear why they must—to
me
, if not to
them!”

He stood transfixed for long seconds. Then the implication of what she had -said began to sink in. From a dry throat he said, “Spell it out.”

“But it was all implicit in what you said about Lancaster Long! You said he could let himself be bitten because he didn’t know he would be killed. If he’d wanted to die, deep down in his guts, he would have killed somebody. That’s the pattern he was raised to. But he let the snake bite him because he’d seen Rungley bitten and knew that at least some people recovered. So long as there’s a chance of survival, he and his kind will gamble on it. He didn’t refuse therapy when they took him to the hospital, did he?”

“It’s coming clearer,” Hans said, eyes focused on another world. “Go on!”

“The same pattern holds with the élite that wear the devil’s horns! Every time they decline to take part in the ritual that may lead to them being killed at random, they have to pay, and that involves irritating the area where horns are made to grow!”

“You found this out from back on Earth?”

“No, not
found
it out
—worked
it out! It occurred to me to ask Laverne and Lorenzo what they would
deduce if a patient from a foreign planet presented at an earthside mental hospital with all of Lancaster Long’s symptoms!”

Thunderstruck, Hans gaped and threw his hands in the air. “Obvious!” he said as soon as he could. “And it never occurred to me! So simple a question!”

“What was it?” Captain Inkoos demanded, glancing from one to the other of them.

“Why!” Hans exclaimed.
“Are they actually insane?”

She rounded her mouth and whistled. “You know, I’d never thought of that! I’m too used to people being—well, less than crazy. Capable at least of organising their lives.”

“And so are the people of Azrael,” Hans said, frowning now as the full extent of the consequences gripped him. “But it’s almost a non-human response, and… Never mind, I’ll work the rest out later. What I want to know right now is this. How the hell did you bust through their armour against reality?”

“Oh, you must have heard it going off, surely!” Alida said, and glanced at the captain. Who shrugged.

“Well, I guess it was well within auditory range. Mark you, I never expected to be called on to issue such an order, and I sincerely hope that any inquiry will exonerate me from—”

“What did you do?” Hans rasped, advancing on her.

“Shot a multimegaton torpedo into their northern ocean about five hundred kilometres from here and sent an artificial tsunami over a string of coastal villages. I hope nobody was seriously hurt! But several houses got washed out to sea, and it’s going to take a long time to make good the damage.”

“Got it,” Hans said. He had shut his eyes and was rocking back and forth on his heels. “They were prepared to put up with any sort of suffering so long
as it was under their control. They wanted to be victims of their own decisions. Hence the ritual of whipping and sometimes killing. But when the suffering came from beyond their sphere of influence, it reduced them to the condition of mindless animals—that’s by definition, in terms of their creed. Coupled with the fact that no matter how confident Yard might sound, he could never be sure that Long had not voluntarily abandoned Azrael and its ideals. Neat! Oh, very neat! A good tight snare, better than the one I invented!”

“You keep talking about Azrael in the past,” Captain Inkoos said, sounding puzzled. “Past tense, I mean.”

“That’s where it belongs,” said Alida immediately. “Along with all the other human societies so terrified by the fragility of their own uniqueness that they had to brand their members by deforming them. Your ancestors must have done the same, I guess; I’m sure mine did.”

“Well, sure they did. But I never expected anything like that to crop up in the here-and-now.” Captain Inkoos licked her broad lips. “And I still don’t see why setting off one explosion did more to change their minds than Hans could by all his reasoning.”

“Ah, that’s what proves they aren’t so insane as to be past hope,” Hans stated promptly. “It merely showed them there are some events which could, in their own terms of reference, reduce them to a condition they affected to despise. That’s to say, they would have no control over how and when they died. That’s what has convinced me it was worth my while to risk trying to save them. I didn’t admit that was what was in my mind, and it’s as well. Because in the upshot someone had to come along and save me!” He turned to Alida. “I hope you realise you saved not only my life but my sanity?”