Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson (3 page)

“True enough.” Terry was extremely intelligent. His fury at discovering the alien deception that had ruled his life raged in him, a fire undiminished in a month of burning. He had refused all scans of his own brain. (“No one will invade my mind ever again!”) The English language that his captors had insisted all the stolen children learn or retain was soft-voweled, slightly slurred on the consonants, and this somehow made his bitterness and anger seem even more dangerous: a blaze deceptively softened by gauzy curtains that might themselves ignite.

Luke said to the girl, “What did you see when you went beyond the shield?”

She looked at him mutely.

Terry said, “I know what she saw: the Queen of Air and Darkness. That’s what we were told to call her, you know. Starmother, Lady Sky, The Fairest—an ugly reptile, a liar—all lies!”

Luke said, “Is that what you saw, Carolyn? The Queen of Air and Darkness?”

“Of course it is!” Terry said. “Don’t you understand? Her presence is how they kept us like you keep dogs—come when they whistle, do what they order, bring more children to fair Carheddin under the mountain, lies lies lies—”

“Terry,” Luke said, “I’d like Carolyn to answer, please. What did you see?”

Anguish distorted the lovely face. Luke held her eyes steadily. She was torn between what she wanted to say, whatever it was, and her love for this boy, whose will was stronger than hers. A long moment passed; Luke did not relinquish her gaze. Finally she turned to Terry.

“Mistherd—”

“Don’t call me that!”

She looked down at her bare feet and fell silent, but obstinacy lurked in the set of her mouth. Was she strong enough to do without him? Luke said, “Carolyn, if you would prefer to talk to me alone, I’m sure Terry will understand.”

“I won’t,” he said, at the same moment that she clutched his hand tighter and whispered, “No.”

Not strong enough. Luke tried a different approach. “We have some new information about how the aliens cast their illusions. Dr. Cardiff’s analyses of Laura’s and Hal’s brain scans may help us deal with any future incidents, if they happen.”

“They will,” Terry said grimly. “They’re still out there, just in a new location. They won’t give Roland to us that easily.”

Us.
All his life Terry had been “Mistherd,” devoted to the Queen’s cause. You could not change sides that completely, that fast, without extreme psychological stress. Luke might well be treating the wrong patient.

He persisted with the cooling balm of objective fact: “We’ve known for centuries that the brain projects its own electromagnetic field. It’s pretty weak, but it’s there, and in a few people it has even been put to practical use. Dowsers, for instance, can sense magnetic changes associated with the presence of a water table. Apparently the aliens highly developed an ability to manipulate each other’s much stronger fields, as a means of communication, when their science developed along biological rather than physical lines. From the first stolen children, they learned to manipulate our electromagnetic fields as well, saturating the human brain with neuropsychic forces that set up feedback loops which—”

“What?” Terry said.

Luke had forgotten whom he was speaking to. The boy was intelligent, but he was also illiterate. Luke sought words to explain. “There are stories that lie in all human brains. The same stories that have turned up in one form or another in every human society, on every planet, from the beginning of time. They’re called ‘archetypes.’ They involve gods, rulers, great warriors, terrible monsters, enchanted palaces, songs and feasting—all the illusions you experienced out there.”

“All the lies,” Terry said bitterly.

“They were not lies,” Carolyn said.

Both men stared at her. She kept her eyes cast down, her mouth set in a stubborn line.

“Of course they were!” Terry exploded.

She shook her head.

Luke said quickly, “What do you mean, Carolyn?”

Silence. Terry started to speak and Luke raised his hand. For once, the boy subsided, his eyes on Carolyn. Just as Luke decided she was not going to answer, she raised her head.

“They were illusions. But not lies. Because we really
did
experience the illusions. We saw them and heard them.” All at once she began to sing:

“Cast a spell,

Weave it well

Of dust and dew

And night and—”

“Stop!” Terry shouted.

“Mistherd—”

“Don’t call me that!”

She put her hands over her face and started to cry. “Flowermother came to see if I was all right! She came in her own body and she came even though she thought humans might kill her or capture her. She came because she cares about us. And even after I went through their shield she stayed as herself. Do you understand, Mistherd? She cast no illusion in my mind!”

The girl looked directly at Luke, all of Roland’s pagan wilderness in her eyes, and said, “You asked me what I saw. I saw the alien who raised me and loves me and came to see if I am all right. That’s why she came. And—” the girl drew a deep breath—“and my name is Shadow-of-a-Dream.”

Later, after they had gone, the girl in tears, Luke sat alone in his office. He sat for a long time. Finally he activated the commlink and sent a message to Chief Halford.

“I think you should put a twenty-four-hour guard on Carolyn Grunewald. She may try to go back to them.”

Dogs were never fooled by alien illusions; evidently their brains were too different. Chief Halford was accompanied by her mastiff when she came to Luke’s office, although privately he doubted that she actually needed it. Some people’s minds seemed impervious to illusions, even the illusion of goodwill created by common courtesy.

“You failed,” the chief said. “Carolyn is refusing to see you again, and not even Terry can persuade her.”

“That was a risk I had to take. The greater risk was having her run.”

“Why would she do that? Why would anybody do that? I don’t understand!”

The plea might have moved Luke if it had been less belligerent, or if he hadn’t felt so weak. This was not one of his good days. It was so difficult pretending to not be sick, pretending to not be old. He was not moved by Chief Halford, with her small glaring eyes and self-righteous scowl, but he owed her an answer.

“The aliens’ neuropsychic projections can create the illusion of seeing whatever archetype you most desire,” he said gently. “Why
wouldn’t
that tempt a person?”

“But it’s not real!”

“No.”

“Then the girl is insane. Or you misdiagnosed her.”

“I didn’t diagnose her at all. I merely alerted authorities that I thought she might run and was therefore a danger to herself. As I am legally required to do.”

“Oh, I know, you follow all the rules, doctor.”

He had her pegged now: a fear biter. She was like certain dogs—hopefully not the mastiff lying by her side—that attacked when afraid. Chief Halford’s fear was not for herself but for Christmas Landing, for the humans so tentatively established on Roland, and for Anne.

The attack came next. “Why didn’t you tell me that you are dying of an inoperable brain tumor?”

Anger rose in Luke. “Medical records are supposed to be confidential.”

“Nothing in Christmas Landing is hidden from me!”

She actually believed it. Luke would trace the leak later, and someone would be in deep trouble for it. Now all he said was, “Total knowledge is an illusion.”

It went right over her head; she was not built for irony. She rose, looking down at him—to gain an advantage?—and said, “I don’t want you to see Anne anymore.”

“That’s really up to her. As you’ve pointed out to me, sixteen is legal adulthood on Roland.”

“We’ll see about that.” She banged the door as she left, and the mastiff growled at him.

No, not one of the good days. And only half over.

The chapel in Christmas Landing was dusty. No one had cleaned the tile floor or the deliberately simple stone altar, with its two unlit candles. But a fresh bouquet of firethorn and driftweed lay on the dusty stone.

Colonists to Roland came for various reasons and, when only two or three ships from other planets might reach Roland each century, the colonists came permanently. There were the usual fortune hunters, adventurers, and scientists. Most emigrants, however, came to isolate a cherished way of life from corrupting influences. These had their own churches, temples, mosques, shrines. The small chapel, deliberately free of anyone’s symbols, was designed for the rest, those who might want a place of comfort or meditation or merely silence. Apparently few did.

Luke stopped just inside the door. In the dim light, Shadow-of-a-Dream lay at the foot of the altar. For a heart-stopping moment, he thought that she was dead.

Then it seemed that his heart
was
stopping. Dizziness took him and he clutched at his chest. This was it, then, not his brain but his heart . . . The machine eventually wears out . . .

It was not the end. A brief vision, quickly gone, and he found himself slumped on a plain wooden bench, the girl kneeling beside him.

“Healer, are you all right?”

“Yes . . . I . . . ”

“I will bring help!”

He groped for her hand. She was naked again, save for a garland of the same flowers as lay on the altar. “No . . . no, please . . . ” He didn’t want the infirmary, the inevitable fuss and restrictions and pity. Especially not the pity.

She said, with sudden and incongruous hardness, “You do not want anyone to know.”

“No.” His breath came easier now.

“You are afraid they will keep you somewhere against your will.”

“Shadow-of-a-Dream—”

She gave a harsh laugh, whirled around, and was gone in a flurry of firethorn petals and sixteen-year-old scorn.

When he could breathe regularly again, he hobbled to the altar and picked up her bouquet. It smelled fresh and alive.

Anne sat across from him, slouched in an old padded chair. In one sense, Luke thought frivolously, the problem was aesthetic. Both Terry and Carolyn—Mistherd and Shadow-of-a-Dream—had looked wrong in this bare, ugly room that was temporarily his office. Their former lives were evident in every movement of their lithe bodies, in every glance from their forest-sharpened eyes. Even when she was dressed, Shadow-of-a-Dream wore the wilderness. Whereas poor Anne Halford looked like she belonged here.

And yet, she did not think she did. The same archetypical visions that Terry raged against, that Shadow-of-a-Dream longed for, existed deep in Anne’s brain.

“I saw a fairy,” Anne said, “but tall, maybe seven feet. Dressed in robes of starlight and petals of flowers. Light danced all around her, but shadows did, too. I saw the Queen of Air and Darkness.”

“You saw an illusion,” Luke said.

“I know that, doctor.”

But she didn’t want to know it. He said gently, “You would have liked it to be real.”

“Yes, of course. Wouldn’t we all?”

No
. He waited. She had something to say and she was going to say it. His head hurt, and the dizziness came more frequently now. But he forced himself to concentrate; they had reached that critical point in therapy where the patient was ready to open up. There would be a rush, maybe an explosion, of words and feelings. But when words came, Luke was nonetheless surprised at how Anne began.

“My mother goes to church.”

Anger in the young eyes, bitter from a lifetime of being considered a disappointment to her overbearing mother.

“I didn’t know that,” Luke said. Another surprise, but it shouldn’t have been. People were always more complicated than they appeared, with hidden corners that led only to more shadowy passages. Even Police Chief Halford.

“She goes to church every Sunday and she believes in God. I asked her how she knew that wasn’t just an illusion, and she said she didn’t know directly, but she had faith, which was belief in what could not be known directly. I said that was a good definition of ‘illusion.’ She said no, she knew which was faith and which was direct experience, but if I wanted to believe in the Queen of Air and Darkness, I was muddying that distinction, by taking direct experience of deception for truth. I said there was more than one kind of truth and she wasn’t capable of seeing that psychological truth, the truth of fiction and poetry, has its own validity. I said the really intelligent mind could hold both the truth and untruth of the alien illusions in mind at the same time. She said that was semantic hogwash. I said she was incapable of seeing it because she was incapable of doing it. I said she was an idiot. Then we had a big fight.”

Luke was startled. He’d expected an outburst, but not this eloquence. Anne sat there—mulish, belligerent, more subtle than he’d expected. Obviously she had thought about all this, perhaps even rehearsed it. She was intelligent and very unhappy. Luke would have to tread softly.

“How did the fight end?”

“I moved out. I’m sixteen, you know. I took a room in the transition dorm.”

This useful structure, unique to Christmas Landing, provided three months’ free lodging to anyone who asked for it. The intention was to house newcomers to Christmas Landing while they organized their lives as outwayers, the farmers and ranchers and miners in the hinterlands who supported Roland. The transition dorm also housed those same outwayers who had failed in those endeavors and were returning, usually broke and sometimes broken, back to Portolondon. Several families reclaiming their stolen children had stayed in the transition dorm, as did the inevitable drifters, petty criminals, down-on-their-luck gamblers. Luke could imagine what Chief Halford thought of her daughter’s living there.

“Anne,” he said gently, “have you thought what you might do when the three months are over?”

“Yes. I went to Dr. Cardiff and offered myself as a liaison with the natives. I said I would go live with them and report back, and that way his scientific team would get another perspective on them than just talking to people like Mistherd.”

He was staggered. “What . . . what did Dr. Cardiff say?”

“He said no.”

Of course he had. Project Recovery was bringing children back, not sending them out. And no matter what this frontier town said, to Luke, sixteen was still a child.