(What is this, Janet and John?) Okey-dokey, I am not writing a freaking physics textbook here. I am a creative writer. What I do is write creatively, pat ideas with my paws and watch them flutter by. Really, repeated assault by the ignorant, illiterate, irrational, vindictive and entirely mad and stupid is not a requirement of the creative process.
It is not appreciated. I trust that is entirely clear. I do not give a flying fuck how many retarded sick little animals don't like what I write. I do not give a flying fuck how many 'religious authorities' dribble out of the corners of their mouths about 'protecting the little people of simple faith' in order to keep human thought in the Stone Age and retain their power.
A naturally freezing wind comes at them across the lake.
"Inside!"
The wolverine has gone.
The grate, the chimney mostly remain. They light a fire but see that other room and feel the warmth from it.
"If we just sit quietly, they will return," says Hass.
"Who!"
First come the small things, the voles, the shrews, then the snuffling of bears. Hass strokes one absent-mindedly. Hares hop across them, fearless.
"Do I destroy this?" asks Sarat.
"I don't know."
"Outside they must kill to live." The bear licks his hand. Sarat hugs it, buries his face in its coat. "It's all lies!" Hass feels his anger. "It's a worm-hole. Here time was breached by the UnMakers, here Asyrion was mortally wounded defending Ciletij." Tears glisten on his cheeks. " Why?"
"Oh Sarat."
"Why?" Sarat asks again. "Is it not painstakingly done? The throne guards the crown! The crown bears the secret of UnMaking! A word to frighten children. Asyrion was not UnMade, nor any of them. But the Planet is dead."
"Mel doesn’t know."
"Yea, do we not all trust Fidub, guardians of the greater truths, the higher realities."
"I should hate to be Airoch," murmured Hass.
I can't bear it, thinks Sarat. It's still the most awful story in the world and I have made it worse.
Sarat sits not on the throne, but on the floor, his back against it. Night has fallen, but the room is suffused with light and music. Come the Lord and Lady of Kadun, arms round each other. Sarat and Hass jump up.
"You are welcome!" says Asyrion.
"My lady…."
She is young still, willowy, her hair short, wispy round her cheeks, and her eyes are the green of the forest, but he is grizzled and his arms are thick with muscle. He might be taken for a woodsman. What else is he? There are not ghosts, but worm-holes in time and, for those who can bear it, immortality.
"Sarat," says Kaminua. He kisses him on the forehead.
"You have a terminal!" said Sarat.
"I have followed your activities with interest," said Kaminua.
"Can they come through?" wonders Asyrion. "It is not meet our guests recline on earth…"
"They are not Denzines."
"Is it true," asks Sarat, "the Denzines are called also the Time-Lords of Endor?"
"It is," she says.
Hass laughs.
"I never knew that before. And you - you are become Denzines?"
"Of a kind. Later. First we must solve this problem."
"I wondered," says Hass. "Where is the worm that made the hole?"
Asyrion grasps his meaning.
"Yes," she says simply.
Mel arrived in Var-sega’ and showed he knew how to pronounce it properly.
“Is this a private party or can anyone join in?” He started to move the armchair round. “Love the hair.”
Sarat lying back in the chair opposite, arm slung over the back, looked at him with something between a rueful smile and a mad grin.
“Fronds are next week. How’s the daughter and heir?”
Mel looked smug.
“A small round heap of black curls.”
“Not two of you!” said Sarat. “Can the world cope!”
“Can you?”
Sarat snorted. “How do I feel? This is crazy. What am I doing? There was a point at which I wanted to thank you for not joining the queue, then I thought I shouldn’t break the spell. Mel’s a sensible guy. He’ll talk when he’s ready.”
“And?”
“It doesn’t work,” mimicked Sarat. “It didn’t. It does now. That was my stuff.”
“May stuff.”
Sarat ignored that one.
“I told Venga I was looking for the end of a ball of string. Tear your hair out. You have enough to spare.”
“It would have been so unbearable, the derision? Perhaps that is largely leached?”
“7/10,” said Sarat. “It wasn’t really that at all.”
“You still love Maya.”
“Of course.”
“It is hard to love two women equally?”
“Not when one is dead.”
“Is she dead to you?”
“That’s an interesting question,” said Sarat.
Mel waited a moment.
“Not one you wish to answer?”
“Who said, you are holding my hand so why am I crying?”
“You are not – in some sense continuing to share your life with Maya.”
“I am not,” said Sarat.
Mel grinned.
“I was ready to duck. I still am. Why not?”
“Dill is there.”
“Instead?”
“Is that a question?”
“Have I got it the wrong way round?”
“I think you will have to elaborate on that one.”
“Watch me choose my words with care – “
“One must always be exact,” murmured Sarat.
“Bah! That part of you which is in any case there rather than here. Was it there with Maya?”
“Nonsense,” said Sarat.
“Then what are you talking about!”
“Cho’s fantasies, by the sound of it. Shav told me.”
“We did our best to be reasonable.”
“They were terribly worried about me. I, however, was not worried about me, merely – thoughtful.”
“What did you think!”
“That I didn’t really want to talk about it, to anyone, because I didn’t, full stop. Also because they insisted on knowing what it’s about and they didn’t have a clue and I didn’t feel particularly good-tempered or lucid concerning a conversation I didn’t want to have in the first place.”
“What is it about?”
“It is not even mostly about Maya. Of course I am and have been bereaved and bereft. It is not the case – I too choose my words with care – that I am or have been abnormally bereaved and bereft. Both the exact nature of our relationship and the circumstances of her death make more acute a normal ailment. They do not change its nature. Unfortunately this takes places against the backdrop of the Matter of Kadun. As well to say it’s about Sorg. Or Kaminua. Jaizal. You!”
“Where we no longer live wholly in linear time,” said Mel.
“But we never did. Did and didn’t. They brought us up, the beasts, to understand that we did not exist solely in linear time. But of course that had nothing to do with getting on with life!”
“What does being dead mean?”
“We have all noted that time hiccups only backwards and that perhaps is the Matter of Kadun, a burp where the future is closed. Which may also mean the whole thing is some monstrous game, though which monsters.”
Mel laughed.
“It plays in real-time, whatever that is. Precognition - ?”
“Dead wrong,” said Sarat. “Which was strange.”
I think I’m beginning to get this, thought Mel.
“Or was it?”
“You – implied I was sitting here communing with Maya or at least - implied volition, I prefer sitting here thinking about Maya to being with Dill. Perhaps – definitely perhaps – a physical me and a physical Maya are together, somewhere, some alternative future, some parallel universe. I am here and now and the physical me and the physical Dill occupy my thoughts.” He grinned. “In all our aspects.”
“Some worm-hole! Kaminua and Asyrion.”
Sarat made theatrical gestures of astonishment.
“He has a brain! I don’t want that. My time and place and – duty, it is not the right word. Role – purpose – “
“But guilt?”
“If I loved her as much as I said I did and I love her as much as I say I do – I don’t think, you know, even the Denzines could set that up once someone was dead. I did not find it necessary to enquire.”
“Why are we all so obsessed with Asyrion! That was not – future tense?”
“Our limited social circle! Suppose what everyone ‘saw’ when they attempted to gaze penetratingly into the future of Sarat and Maya was Kaminua and Asyrion?”
“That’s crazy.”
“Tell me about it. Bring it down a few levels and you come to my parallel universe. Suppose the bloody Matter of Kadun is that somehow the whole place (or at least a certain field of flowers) is also in a parallel universe. I am not of course saying I believe that! Suppose also what I, me, myself, I want to do is live and love with Dill here and now and do worthy things contributory to improving the quality of life in Kadun.”
“Suppose,” said Mel slowly, “everything is a metaphor, except that.”
“Oh verily!” said Sarat. “Now, all that said, I am not totally sure I believe in the Casin-ruhn trip. My gut reaction was special effects. That said, a lot of finely tuned minds saw the same movie. All that said – “ He grinned. “ – I am not convinced that if you mooched off to Qartly and asked him to fix immortality for you and Cantilip he would be able to oblige. Knowledge can be lost. I’ll say that before you do. I shall also say that screwing perception is very much an earthpower gig. You know Van-senok stole the chair.”
“I know,” said Mel.
“Here lies whole the emperor’s peace!” intoned Sarat mockingly.
“They didn’t mean to cause the dissolution of the empire.”
“That’s as maybe.”
“There is an Anile throne,” sighed Mel, “regardless of whether there’s anyone sitting on it.”
“The Anile throne,” intoned Sarat, “does not rust or tarnish. What it does do. Five kingdoms under the imperial crown. Only when they were finally threatened by the fiction of All-Kadun , together of course with the rise of the Cult, did it seem a jolly good idea to have the empire back, Mitch’s politics excepted, and a few hundred other things, such as the necessity of joining with the modern world.”
”Why, why, why, why, why, Mummy, why, Daddy,” said Mel. “Zani did not want the throne. How did he know? They did not want the empire. It had turned rotten. It was not the answer. What was the question?”
“Irtubi are governing Kadun, and everyone lives happily ever are. It also occurs to me – I must have been 17 at most – very bright in many ways, but apparently oblivious to the fact that a post to a Grid forum may be seen by anyone in the world – I really set the cat among the pigeons when I wrote, oy, that’s MY chair. All this crap fits together. Alternatively, all this crap doesn’t fit together. When I know what the question is I can judge if I want to answer it, if I can answer it, how much of my time I want to spend on answering it. An informed decision. Have I not insisted on informed decisions?”
Mel chortled.
“Dill was reading up on hallucinogens.”
“Clearly drinks can be spiked,” said Sarat. “It’s an interesting question, whether one can ingest or inhale something that wholly alters perception without any other physical or mental effects. There are things we know. What happened to Mitch and Dill and others. It’s a continuum.”
“It is in your view a possibility that if you crack this you’ve cracked the Cult?”
“It is in my view a possibility I can send them packing with their tails between their legs never to return.”
“Without wrecking Harn.”
“They have never, you know, been decisively defeated. At the metaphysical level. I think I can wreck their brains.”
“I’d like that,” said Mel.
“I think I walked into a trap,” said Sarat. “Certainly an unusual one, say herded, rather. Shepherded into a sheep-pen! Bit like a ram being herded into a pen of ewes to – ah, do something. Do his thing.
Since I was oblivious it hardly made any difference and the shepherds wanted nothing but the best for me and for Kadun, but nonetheless. I sort of realized. I said to Cho, it had to be a tree-hugger! I said to Cantilip and Venga, what did you expect of me. I dismissed them with a light laugh because clearly there was no malevolence, and because I was very, very, very busy. How it seems to me is that many people have puzzles. The game is that everyone thinks his – his or her – puzzle the puzzle. I think it probable all this crap fits together. On the other hand, the universe is truly not my responsibility. I reject that out of hand!”
“The ball of string.”
“The ball of string is how to be Anile emperor.”
“Got it all wrong,” sighed Mel.
Sarat grinned.
“Does He Want To Give It All Up? I did think round that one. Not Shav. Why, I thought evilly, should I not dump it on Cho? Could he refuse! What I actually want is to enjoy it and get the universe off my back. The universe to know its place in my life. The MofK is my job. It has its place in my life. It should not swamp my life. If – if there is a place in which Maya and I are living out our lives together, I do not want to be there.”
“Same old ball of string,” said Mel. “Staying Sarat.”
Sarat looked approving.
“You have talked,” went on Mel, “without pain or anguish. About that, then, I was right. I said – to Cho – I do not think you are hurting, at any rate more than – the pain of a – normal ailment diminishes with time. Why then have you driven your dear grey-haired old grandpappa up the wall!”
“I’d have thought that was obvious. What happened between Maya and me in those last moments is not his damned business.”
“I remembered,” said Mel. “Saski! It never was, was it. Anyone else’s damned business.”
“I know Dill told you.”
“It explains so much.”
“It explains,” said Sarat, “a jagged wound in my head much as if it had been cleaved open by an axe. About which no-one could do anything except me.”
“What did happen – “ It wasn’t a question. “You were both dead, weren’t you.”
“Whatever the hell that means,” said Sarat.
“Which is not a million miles dissimilar from sitting on the Anile throne.”
“Let us say,” said Sarat, “that there is possibly some state, wherein one is if not dead in this dimension, then beyond return to life. That is identical to sitting on the Anile throne. One must be exact. One may be what we call alive in that state. Another may be what we call dead in that state. Not many people know that.”
“The shock of – congruity. Dying to self, dead to the world, that is old news.”
“They never got around to telling us what it means.”
“Probably,” said Mel, “because they don’t know.”
“If we may now move on,” said Sarat, then relaxed suddenly, “to one of my madder schemes. I want to take Dill to Casin-ruhn.”
“Meet the family? See what she makes of it!”
“Days out can be real special when you’re Anile empress.”
“ I am sure Ciletij would facilitate! But that’s the opposite.”
“Or heals the wound?”
“Or explains without the need for words. If we may return,” teased Mel, “to my initial question.”
“Answer it,” suggested Sarat.
“You still need thinking time.”
“Somewhere you are Master of Kadun.”
“I don’t go on about it,” admitted Mel. “Fortunately my friends and family. Sheheela!”
“Ah yes, Sheheela. Did anyone tell you she was Var-segan’s heir?”
“That’s impossible! They would have claimed the throne – “
“It’s more complicated than that.”
Mel sighed.
“Not in the female line! That makes no sense.”
“Her elder sister was the heir, m and f. Her sister had children, indeed, she had a partner. Children and partner died of the pox, leaving sister, who never remarried. Sister duly died. Sheheela was in her late seventies. They really didn’t want the Anile heir as Mistress of Var-segan.”
“There is a sort of voice,” said Mel, “people adopt when they want to totally mask what they are thinking about what they’re saying. So who?”
“Younger sister,” said Sarat in exactly the same tone. “This is a tale of three sisters.”
“I’m sure you just love it,” said Mel. “Cho must know.”
“He does,” said Sarat blandly.
“What else does Cho know?”
“I used to tell him everything. Now I tell him nothing.”
“Whom these days do you trust?”
“What does it mean?” asked Sarat. “To whom have I confided? Dill and Shav.”
Mel closed his eyes.
“Cho’s an idiot!”
“In whom am I confiding? You. In whom shall I confide – what is this, a grammar lesson? Probably no-one else.”
“Not Hass?”
“I trust Hass to fight his way through a blazing inferno to rescue me. I trust Hass to cut his own throat rather than reveal a confidence. I trust Hass to risk his being to get me were I lost in time! All that goes equally for Cho and Venga. What then?”
Mel smiled.
“Objectivity.”
“Ex-actly. Kyse! I’m not about to pour my heart out to him but I’d trust him absolutely to keep me on the straight and narrow. The same with Fal. Did you know my revered grandmother sent Fal to me for me to cry on her shoulder?”
“Oh for - !”
“There was a lot of other stuff. Fal and I have three things in common. One of course is Maya, the second is the rather large jump from a kid in the boatyards of Zur to Falita San-yaeaga-baht, heroic widow of the heroic young officer feeling the weight of the history of Carlin on her back. Tell me about it! The third is little adventures in time. She met Kaminua in The Field.” Mel’s eyes widened. “Before that she had an experience of her and Maya as kids in Zur. It rather made me want to cry but I am expert in not crying.”
“Oh Sarat.”
“I trust that no beady-eyed little Denzine lurked in the shadows to wreck her perception.”
“Any more than Sorg was staged.”
“Ex-actly.”
“You can’t blame them for trying.”
“But I did,” said Sarat, with considerable satisfaction. “I was livid. Fal has enough stress without being set up by my bloody grandmother! She didn’t know I didn’t want to talk.”
“I’m not up to speed here. Does She Want To Give It All Up? Obviously she decided she didn’t. We all sat on the chair.”
“In the presence of each other. Except when Maya first sat.”
“Dill told me what you want to do. Sarat – what do you expect to happen?”
Sarat grinned.
“Oh, the earth to crack and writhe and five-headed monsters to sprout from it. A chorus of dancing bears at minimum. Did you know the first allusion to the Matter of Kadun predates Narulis by four hundred years?”
“A pre-literate society?”
“These scribes, get everywhere.”
Mel cocked his head.
“You actually are caching up on your reading.”
“I love it when you’re sensible.”
“As soon as they knew how to, they wrote it down.”
“Kadun is not land-locked!”
“irtubi in Fidub? Or of course Harn. What is possible? irtubi shared earthpower with Harn. Might some bright little spark not have spilled the beans in Harn, where it was picked up by the Cult?”
“You are coming to Zur! Your second cousin demands it!”
Sarat made wide eyes
“Where shall I stay!”
“That,” said Mel callously, “is your problem. One other thing. Kai. This is so much her territory.”
“You’re blushing,” said Mel enthusiastically.
“Oh shut up!” said Cantilip.
“Oy, that’s my chair! I loved that bit.”
“Yes, we all saw it,” said Cantilip.
“Yikes?” suggested Mel.
“Try tetraphonic 6D yikes.”
“And who is this fine youth! Blooming ‘ec, lad’s a tree-hugger!”
“If we’d designed a blue-print,” sighed Cantilip.
“A tree-hugger with a mind of his own,” said Mel.
“I detect a note of reproof?”
“Not exactly. Why did it matter so much?”
“Now you’re being dense. Earthpower had to heal and has healed Kadun.”
“But that’s the exact opposite!”
“I know,” said Cantilip. “It’s still true. Both are true.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Hadn’t you noticed? Kadun is a bloody impossible place!”
Mel howled with laughter.
“I almost believe in the parallel universes.”
“The chief problem with that is the sense it makes. Two opposing sets of physical laws.” Mel was still yowling with laughter. “Exactly what,” growled Cantilip, “is so funny?”
“Oh everything. Mostly – lemme try to be exact – I have this image of Sarat standing in his bedroom at home asking us very quietly and very distinctly – and you know he almost never swears – what the fuck does the Anile emperor look like? Then of course there’s the whole staying Sarat clause. No, Sarat, no, they don’t want you to look like a dashing young officer (not that you can help….__) Just put on your oldest clothes and get out there to hug the trees and Kadun will fall at your feet.”
“You know that is not exact,” said Cantilip reprovingly. She broke into a smile. “Except of course it is. Haven’t I just said? Bloody impossible!”
“My lady leaf, the impossibility of storming the Great Gates.”
“The impotence of earthpower,” said Cantilip.
Click! Whatever else Sarat is doing, he is certainly bonding with Zani Marula! Want one, Sarat? Oh yes, said Sarat. You’re staying with Dill, right, Sarat. One of the things I love about you guys – come to think of it, the only thing I love about you guys – is how you make a statement of commonplace fact sound like a scientific discovery that revolutionizes our perception of the universe. Of course I’m staying with Dill! Uh, yeah, Sarat. !!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are comments to be made in passing about the multiverse theory and the hostility it evokes.
There is the assertion 'the universe' is bio-friendly (and in its wake the whole intelligent design business). Is it really? So if I took a day-trip to one of the planets in the solar system I'd find a compatible environment? Off the top of my head, in the marked absence of friendly Martians to whom to chat, I should say that the universe is, on the contrary, on the whole bio-hostile. This very small part of the universe is friendly to carbon-based life-forms. Indeed if just one element of our physical laws were changed we should not be here to comment thereon, but perhaps life elsewhere has found a different framework in which to exist.
To sum up evolution perhaps a little breath-takingly, 'what makes it is what works' - so in the end/story so far of course it all meshes together. It couldn't be here if it didn't. I was watching a wildlife programme recently about the Arctic or it might have been the Antarctic, somewhere very icy and very, very cold, with lots of blizzards. The idea that a creator created the polar bear to be able to go months without food is really rather mad, and possibly defines this 'creator' as deeply sadistic. I mean, OK, an ice-desert appealed to its sense of aesthetics, but why should some poor bastard of a penguin have to live there? Life is mean, life is hard, for human and non-human animals alike, by no means necessarily 'we plough the fields and scatter'. In temperate climates it does all fit together very nicely. Other places, life hangs on by the skin of its teeth despite a hostile environment.
Since the whole thing is speculation and unfalsifiable, there would not appear to be any reason not to speculate that on the other side of a singularity in a separate universe exists the entity generally known as 'God', though in a form inconceivable to those who claim knowledge of him. There are three places that immediately spring to mind to go from there. One is that 'God' is directing the whole gig. One is what on earth this entity has to do with any life-form in this universe, does it even know this universe exists? One is (of course) Multiverse defined by sexual equipment of the human male.
Why should the multiverse not itself be 'God'?
We do not know. No, make that
WE DO NOT KNOW
