Man of the World by Robert Gibson

28:  the crossing

Side-stepping the toy boats on wheels pulled by excited children, Midax Rale pushed his way through the densely crowded market place in the centre of Old Dranl. An omnibus rumbled past, Quincentennial logos blazoned on its sides. A loudspeaker blared the popular song, Ocean Dream. It was the morning of Departure Day.
    In less than two hours Rinka II would weigh anchor. The hubbub on the waterfront was spraying its carnival mood to permeate the atmosphere of the city.
    “I like a man who knows what he wants,” said the saucy saleswoman at the souvenir stall, after Midax had said a definite “yes” to one souvenir boat and a definite “no” to another. She gift-wrapped it for him, in paper covered with extravagant nautical designs, while he peered back along the lane, keeping an eye on the steps below the clockface. Then, after fumbling with his change, he would have forgotten to pick up his purchase if the woman had not called out to him. He grabbed the parcel, gasping thanks, and almost sprinted along the stalls and up the library steps, to peer around each fat stone column. No, no sign of Jerre, though she ought to have been there waiting. It was he who must do the waiting.
    Getting tenser, he endured five minutes, then ten. He did think she might have troubled to be prompt on this day of days… Each Jerre-less minute edged him closer to the great fear that she might not turn up at all.
    However, reassuring precedents existed, occasions when worries had turned out baseless. Quick, he must fish them out of the purse of memory – coins to feed the meter of morale.
    For example there was that time she had kept him waiting half an hour in the restaurant… and it turned out she had had to take her nephew to hospital after an accident.
    Besides – “I’ll always be there for you,” she had once said. Quite a promise, that. Again he glanced round. As though the recapitulation of those words must cause her to appear. But maybe they had merely meant, “I’ll always be there if you want a shoulder to cry on”. Another minute gone.
    She had also once said, “I’ve got a funny feeling about us… I think one day we’ll be together.” As though there might come a time, if only he could wait long enough, when history would be re-written and she would have made the other irrevocable choice. A thought to fondle. Especially since yet another minute had now gone by, with still no sign of her.
    His memory hastened further back. Quarrelling voices, heard through the partition wall: the start of open trouble between Jerre and Inellan. Shouting, more shouting and then silence. Footsteps and a knock on his door. Jerre in a tearful state. She told him that Inellan was “dragging his feet” about fixing a date for the wedding.
    Midax, who found it impossible to imagine how any man could be such a fool, had spoken his mind. “I know it’s not my place to criticise him, but… with all due respect, he seems like a nutcase to me.” Jerre, far from resenting these words, had apologised to Midax for talking such an awful lot about her troubles.
    “I hope,” she added, “that you’ll confide in me if ever you feel the need.”
    More than another minute gone by. The delay was definitely getting scary.
    What about those fond little wistful jokes, banter on the subject of elopement? Or what about the day Jerre handed him an envelope containing a card, a Romance Day card, unsigned – as was the custom on Romance Day – and thus supposedly anonymous; whereupon he had slipped one onto her mantelpiece in return? Each then had known where the other stood.
    But what kind of “romance” was it if she couldn’t even bother to turn up to say goodbye?
    Time to bring up reinforcements. The most dazzling memory of all was urgently needed now. But dare he place it in play?
    The most valuable piece on the board – he must risk it in range of destroying fact.
    The earliest and best of all the moments, the point when they admitted out loud that they were fond of each other; the moment when she had said, “Don’t be alarmed at this, but I would have preferred someone like you…” Whereupon he, in a kind of floating fire, had dared to say that he felt the same about her. Great, ecstatic dollop of bliss. Unfortunately she had also said, “Of course I would never have dared to say this, if we didn’t know where we were.”
    That additional remark rather undermined it all. Since (for anyone who believed in the Shapers’ Vow) the ones destined for each other beyond space and time were not Jerre and Midax but Jerre and Inellan, maybe all she had meant was that she wished she could, but she couldn’t, or – worse still – she wished she did, but she didn’t, love Midax instead of Inellan.
    Yet in the next swing of the pendulum – back towards hope – he wondered whether the “I would never have dared to say this” might not simply count as one item among many others on the emotional expense account, one debit in the ledger of courage, nothing conclusive in the way of denial. She’d been playing safe, that was all. After all, it was never easy to confess one’s love to someone, even under the shelter of the Vow. And since it would be very unfair and wrong on her part to give Midax the impression that she was about to ditch Inellan, was it not safer for her to gloss the message “I love you” with the escape clause “It’s safe to say so because we can’t do anything about it”? For that was the truth: his was a hopeless love, as far as the future was concerned. Hopeless because Jerre was now not only married in the civil sense but romelded, in accordance with the transcendent Vow to which he, likewise, was committed. Hopeless yet perhaps not unrequited! In which case – he could still save the past.
    That was the vital thing. He could still keep his memories believable. If only she didn’t mystify him today!
    Then how about switching off from the whole subject?
    How about switching his mind to the 96-day ocean journey which he was about to face?
    Could he not stop moping? Could he not, instead, stand tall in the presence of history?
    Unlikely. For yesterday evening he had heard a piece of news which blew down the fence between yesterday and tomorrow. He had popped his head round her door for a brief “How are you, Jerre?” (they were still neighbours, after all) and he had seen her head was thrown back and she was sitting very still.
    “Not very well,” she had answered lightly. “Inellan is going away on Rinka.”
    “What?”
    “Yes.”
    Midax sighed in disbelief. “96 days there and 96 days back.”
    “Should give him plenty of time away from me.”
    “I do not understand. I just do not understand.”
    “Worse,” she went on, “he’s not coming back home on the same ship but on a later one a year from now. That’s how he’s doing his Year Troth.”
    She got up from the chair, and threw herself sobbing into Midax’s arms, unwittingly carpet-bombing his every sense with her loveliness. It was a dangerous moment, or it would have been except that old universes murmured and nudged him safely past the chance of losing control. Jerre had a story to tell him: he must concentrate.
    Inellan’s ailing sister, who lived across the ocean in Heism, had at last died, and Inellan as her executor had to go there to settle affairs. The sister had not left a lot of money but it had long been agreed that he would take on this responsibility, and so he must go. Furthermore, Inellan said that in order to save money, he must skimp on transport. Rinka gave him the once-in-half-a-millennium opportunity to do this on the outward journey; and as for the return, he would use not the normal scheduled liner but the cheap and austere “pilgrim ship” which once a year carried Year-Trothers across the Zard. He definitely could not afford a standard passenger ship or a plane.
    She had protested, “But can’t you stump up the fare even for one of the cheaper liners? Even just coming back? Then, even if you’re determined to sail there on Rinka, you would at least be back much sooner.”
    Inellan then changed tack. He began to talk about the spiritual value of the Year Troth, the customary separation before marriage. It was a tradition which he and Jerre had regrettably failed to observe; his plan now was, that an after-marriage year of separation would make up for not having had it before. Honestly, he assured her, this arrangement wasn’t unknown. There was sanction for it in Shaper writings… All this seemed unbearably shifty to Jerre. She was devastated by the way he seemed to hedge, adopting first one excuse and then another for the action which he was determined to take anyway. He obviously did not mind what he said so long as it justified the desired result, namely, ridding himself of her for a year.
    Midax absolutely agreed: the entire rigmarole from beginning to end was no more nor less than humbug. Year Troth for the middle-aged was unnecessary anyway. And as an after-marriage afterthought it was absurdly unconvincing. As for the business angle, more than one other member of Inellan’s numerous family in Heism could have performed the duties of an executor as well as, if not better than, he. It was all a lot of humbug and madness.
    Meanwhile all the time there was Jerre’s increasing warmth towards, and evident longing for, Midax himself…
    …Yet could any of these memories preserve him now? Preserve him from the sick fear that she was not going to turn up to say goodbye?
    Less than an hour to embarkation. Soon he must make a move.
    Then at last he saw, a crowded block away, hastening in stooped embarrassment, a form which he recognized as Jerre.
    Immediately an entirely fresh spool of thoughts clicked into his head: of course she’s late, who wouldn’t be, after the traumatic news of yesterday? It’s quite understandable. No cause for mistrust or worry at all.
    At the same time, his mind served the writ on her: you dear wonderful stupid being, you must by now have acknowledged the mistake of your life.
    She hurried up to him with a distressed, wincing expression. “I’m so sorry,” she began. (“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” he murmured.) “A friend phoned me,” she continued in a diminished voice. “Just as I was about to leave. Kept me talking ages. I suppose,” she finished with a sad shrug, “you’ll say I ought to have told this caller to get lost.” (Yes, thought Midax.) “But it isn’t that easy…”
    Midax hugged her and said, “Stop fretting. I’ve got an hour. I’d just as rather spend it here with you, out of range of the jokers from the Press…”
    “Jokers?”
    “Reporters with twinkles in their eyes. Asking me what it’s like to be a hero from the Age of Discovery. Here, take this,” he added, handing her the souvenir toy boat; “it’s for your little nephew, though I expect he’s got one already.”
    “Ah, thank you,” she said, mournfully grateful.
    Just at that moment several similar toys, accompanied by youngsters’ yells, clattered past below where they stood. Jerre and Midax looked at each other and chuckled.
    “They certainly don’t let you forget,” remarked Jerre. “But seriously, Midax, I’d hate it if I turned out to be the cause of you being late…”
    He put up his hand. “Believe me: even if I failed to turn up at all, the only consequence would be that the Relief Helmsman would take my place. No one would notice any difference. You haven’t yet grasped how perfect the operation is.”
    “Well,” sniffed Jerre, “the more boring you make it sound, the happier I am. At the moment I can do without having to worry about your safety, on top of my other problems. Still, I have to say, it doesn’t seem a secure thing to me – crossing an ocean in a replica of an old ship.”
    “An ‘old’ ship with regular aircraft overflights to check on our position,” said Midax drily. “As I expect you’ve heard, ‘Helmsman on Rinka Two’ has become a joke phrase, proverbial for ‘sinecure’ and ‘fake risk’.”
    “The sea’s not fake, whichever way you look at it,” persisted Jerre. She peered into his face. “Midax, what’s the matter?”
    He scarcely heard her. His mind felt the brush of a near-miss quarrel; he almost ducked his head as the unvoiced spat swished close to reality before serving back into the realm of might-have-been.
    It was that morning edition of the Courier, poking one of its corners out of Jerre’s shopping bag. It almost made him say to her: “Seen the light?”
    She might then have followed the direction of his pointing finger and said, “You mean, that rag – my getting the Courier instead of the Shield? Well, the Shield was sold out, you see. And I was in such a hurry, I was prepared to grab any old rubbish.”
    “So – looks as though you’ll somehow have to manage without the Champion of the Oppressed for today.”
    (Crazy, absolutely crazy, how two people who loved each other could hurt each other by voicing contempt of each other’s favourite newspaper! Yet his tongue would have run on:)
    “Anyhow, in this enlightened age, the ‘oppressed’ are those who can’t afford a colour TV set. So the Shield is not quite so indispensable, perhaps, as it was when one’s hovel was being pillaged by robber barons…”
    The stage-mist cleared; the non-memory faded; he realized that none of this dialogue had taken place.
    In further relief he also realized that his actual words were all right. Those words that she had really heard him say, were of sympathy for her troubles. Sympathy for Inellan’s desertions of increasing length; for the fellow’s unpredictable temper; for his dithering about the marriage. Yes, thought Midax, I have said the right things.
    Time had elapsed; much of their hour had gone, harmlessly it seemed.
    “I feel bad about leaving you at a time like this,” he remarked; “in a manner of speaking, I too am deserting you.”
    “Ah, but you and I haven’t exchanged vows,” she replied simply.
    Midax sighed and looked at his watch.
    Goodbye seemed the only word left to say. “Number of things I’ve got to do,” he muttered. “Get changed and so on. No sense in prolonging…”
    She seized his hand. “Tell me, Midax: does that Vow – Inellan’s and mine – seem silly to you?”
    What a question to ask a member of the Shapers’ College! But then again – come to think of it – what a good question to ask a member of the Shapers’ College.
    “No,” he assured her, “grand gestures are sometimes necessary. They inform Reality that we mean business.” He withdrew his hand from hers. One more farewell hug, and they parted on that note.
    He was glad to get moving. As if there were a taste of truth in what he was about to do. Some savour which prevented him from being wholly disgusted with the hype surrounding the Quincentennial voyage. And as for bidding farewell to Jerre – how amazing – he had actually been impatient to leave her. It was evidently possible: possible not to wish to dally with someone whom one loved with all the fibre of one’s being. Possible, when the time was wrong.
    Maybe – thought Midax as he headed in the direction of the waterfront – maybe he had stumbled on, or blundered into, the one and only power to grow new shoots in his depleted soul. The touch of history was what he needed: the sudden irradiance of the spotlit and the special: that could indeed be a cure, or at least compensation – could it not? Was not a re-enactment of history, history? Did it not thrum, did it not have juice, did it not bring people together in a mighty web of awareness? He toyed with this bombastic thought as it swelled. A fragile, vulnerable thought, yet potently persuasive. How easy it would be to burst the bubble – yet he let it live; he allowed the thought to persist.
    For their final change into period costume, Midax and the rest of the crew had been directed by the Re-Enactment Committee to a “period inn”. This, erected on the beach itself, was a group of portacabins disguised as five-century-old rooms. They formed a ramshackle, romantic-looking structure laid on the sand. Midax wanted to laugh – and yet…
    Approaching this “inn” from behind a fence on the landward side, he joined a few recent acquaintances as they entered by the rear door. Without speaking to each other they climbed the sham-rickety stairs.
    In the room allotted to him Midax found the coarse grey helmsman’s garb laid out, and he changed into it, leaving his own normal clothes to be taken care of by Committee helpers.
    Through the window, Rinka could be seen floating a hundred yards off shore, under the eyes of thousands of spectators and scores of TV cameras, on which Midax would register as soon as he emerged from the front door of this fake building. He wondered: was he really about to commit himself to spending ninety-six days cooped up in a thirty-yard-long vessel, along with thirty-nine other 're-enacters'?
    There had been no lack of volunteers… What was the fascination?
    The day before, he had read in Jerre’s copy of the Dranl Shield a leading article which suggested that a number of people had wangled berths on board Rinka merely for the sake of free passage across the Zard. He remembered the words:

    It is remarkable how many would-be travellers who just happen to have business interests on the other side of the ocean also just happen to have developed a keen interest in historical re-enactments…

    Stupid daft paper, thought Midax. Imagine any entrepreneurial business-class freeloader being motivated to put up with ninety-six days on board that.  Any businessman would take a plane… Although, no doubt, some volunteers had wrong motives, the explanation for them was sure to be psychological rather than financial.
    Compare the Shield’s mean words with the apt comment by the Courier this morning:

Anniversaries are the rhymes of history… We must heed their occasional poetry. In an age where “Rmr.” and “Rms.” are heard less and less, we welcome the rare breath of romance…

That said it all, thought Midax. And that was the answer to the historical purists who objected that the Re-enactment focused merely upon the first part of deRoffa’s historic voyage, the crossing of the Zard, ignoring the explorer’s subsequent rounding of Sycronn and attainment of Poidal. For the crossing of the Zard was what had given deRoffa mythic status in the public imagination. To voyage into the blue, out of sight of land – that was a purity of daring; whereas the coastal voyage round Sycronn, though actually more dangerous because of the Cape of Gales and the military clashes with the nations of the East, was tainted by bloodshed, commercial greed and imperialism. So we forget all that, and we rightly admire the first stage, the epic, eternally remembered first-ever crossing of the Zard.
    In his brand-new medieval boots Midax thumped his way down the creaking stairs to exit the inn.  Others, wearing similarly diffident expressions, appeared out of doorways, like him doing their best to swank along in their anachronistic attire. Nobody spoke as they emerged on the sand, while laughter got no further than to die on the lips.
    Dressed as a helmsman of five centuries ago, Midax stared around the crowded beach.
    Captain Fadron and Navigator Wadd – the chunky Wadd particularly incongruous in tights and cape – were forming the crew into line. Midax did not envy them the task; it was far from clear to him, who was crew and who was not; many of the general public who were swarming forward to the roped-off lane which led down to the sea had likewise donned traditional garb. They were cheering, shouting, waving to the mustering group of voyagers.
    The lighter waited to ferry the crew to Rinka, but it looked like it was going to be a hefty job to embark them. Some spectators were standing in front of, instead of behind, the ropes. Come to think of it, realized Midax, those must be the folk from the media. Were there crowds like this five hundred years ago? Who knew? Conditions had been so different then: Monto deRoffa’s expedition was a royal business venture, democracy unimaginable in those days. No government then could have felt any need to make a popular holiday out of the embarkation… unless… unless...
    The crowd, come to think of it, always has to be kept amused, in any century.
    Well, whatever the case, naturally it was not possible to re-enact the conditions of the time.  Besides, an attempt to do so would miss the point: an event and its commemoration are not supposed to be identical - rather they are intended as complimentary, variations on a theme. The development of a tune in the life of a man, or nation, or world, or universe -
    “On you go, helmsman.” It was the voice of Wadd.  As though Midax were dithering, as though he didn’t know his proper place in the procession, the tone broke rudely in upon his awareness, but it did not mar the spell of the morning for his spirits were running on credit – on promissory notes from the future!  Shouldering his kitbag he followed in the steps of those in front of him who had begun to make their way to the shoreline.  I’m glad I’m not the Captain, anyway, he thought.
    Captain Fadron, colourfully attired in slashed doublet, cape and hose, hatted and plumed, must be an irresistible target for the witticisms of unsympathetic reporters – those who had reached the “knock ’em down” stage of the “build ’em up / knock ’em down” cycle of reportage. Midax himself, on the other hand, felt himself to be fairly safe. Soberly dressed as befitted a member of the lower orders, in grey jacket and canvas leggings, he must be inconspicuous compared to Wadd and Fadron. At any rate he had a good chance of getting to the ship without being accosted by a reporter – or so he hoped. The press, except the right-wing Courier, were apt to be facetious about the whole enterprise, even while supporting it, so it was to be hoped that he could avoid being on the receiving end of any acute inquiry, especially as he did not have any snappy answers ready: he had still not worked out a plausible explanation for what he was doing on this voyage.
    As the line made its way across the sand he saw out of the corner of his eye the media folk converging on either side, holding out their microphones as they walked alongside the voyagers. Towards the end, one bored-looking reporter, sated with the pickings further up the line, was turning to look at Midax…
    This fellow was definitely not dressed up in medieval style, what with his square-set figure, broad face and close-cropped hair that matched the brown of his immaculate modern suit. Here, plainly, was one who refused to be excited by the Re-Enactment.
    “Helmsman Rale? Xanesif Trint from the Shield. So how do you feel on this great day, Rmr. Helmsman?”
    Meanwhile from the other side a stringy girl came up and thrust a second microphone at Midax. She was wearing the “LBC Lightning News” logo on her tee-shirt. Beyond her, a TV camera crew had trained their lenses in this direction.
    “Full of it all,” said Midax to both of them.
    “Any last words before you embark?” asked Trint. “Any impressions or thoughts which you’d care to share with our readers?”
    “Or our viewers?” said the girl. “What does it all mean to you personally?”
    Midax shrugged and grunted, “Just along for the free ride to Heism.” His grim tone was aimed at Xanesif Trint, who ought to recognize the sarcastic allusion to yesterday’s cynical leader in the Shield.
    The point was taken. “That joke,” nodded Trint, “has died the death. Look in today’s page, if you will.” Well-prepared, he unfolded a copy, and pointed.
    
We wish the shop and its crew a safe voyage, and we pay tribute to both them and their predecessors. Let us respect the skills of yore, and the tenacity and fidelity with which they have been (we trust) re-learned.

Midax doubted that one could ever win against the Shield. Yet, still whimsically contentious, he reached into his pocket for the cutting he had taken from this morning’s Courier.
    He held it out and quoted: “ ‘Anniversaries are the rhymes of history.’ That says it better, Rmr. Trint.”
    He happened to look up as he spoke. Clouds had been passing overhead for several minutes; the sea looked greyer. Around him, those crewmen who like himself had reached the shore now began to jostle. The embarkation was underway.
    “I prefer blank verse,” retorted Xanesif Trint loudly. “Rhymes can be rather twee. You had better get moving.”
    Midax was left to fume at the lost battle of wits. Lost, because there was no time for a retort. His turn had come to board the lighter. The TV girl meanwhile, separated from her camera crew, and carrying a film recorder instead, had aimed it at the waiting boat, and Midax now felt himself being filmed from behind as he turned to climb in; he felt self-conscious about it but he had to resign himself to the fact that he and his companions in the boatload were filmed all the way out to where Rinka rode the choppy waves; filmed as he swung himself awkwardly up the boarding ladder; filmed as he struggled to heave himself onto the ship.
    Next, he knew, he and the rest of the crew were supposed to be lined up on deck by Navigator Rersh Wadd. And it was happening. With no grins. Stumbling into place, Midax felt weakly surprised that things had got so far with no tomfoolery. A minute later the last man was brought on board: this was Captain Fadron himself, who ordered silence.
    The roll-call came next. Officers were named first, each of them addressed with the title “Rmr.” as well as their rank. Then the lower ratings including Midax, without the honorific “Rmr.” – but no discourtesy intended here: everyone on board had two names, their own and the name of his counterpart five centuries ago, and five centuries ago you didn’t use Rmr. for the plebs... Wadd eventually cried out “Prenn Zann / Midax Rale, helmsman.” Midax obediently replied, “Present, sir,” both for himself and for his long-dead predecessor.
    When roll-call was over they continued standing stiff and straight while the Mayor of Dranl’s speech blared by megaphone from shore, bidding the ship farewell. “This great day… historic event for Dranl… Our hearts are with Seaknife Two as it cleaves the waves to reaffirm a glory which for five centuries has not faded from the hearts of Larmonn…”
    Midax gazed at the ocean swell which by now had turned a vasty grey, except for a patch where sunshine broke through the cloud cover and turned a patch of the water into an undulating molten mirror of brilliance some few hundred yards away.  The TV crew on deck were panning out to those prettier waves.  Meanwhile the Mayor had finished speaking. And the line of crewmen was breaking, as people moved to their stations, and he, Midax, must soon take his own place.  As if listening to music he appreciated the tones of old-style command, the voices of Fadron and Wadd crying out orders to the crew in words he could not distinguish or understand.  But through the window of a foredeck cabin he spotted an incongruous thing: a crewman wearing headphones, pressing a button as Midax watched. A departure from medieval practice! – doubtless this was the sending of the signal across the ocean, to announce the start of the voyage.  Consequently, three thousand miles away, the people of Heism could now begin the countdown for their celebrations. Tut tut, inauthentic, thought Midax, you should have left that to the shore authorities to perform out of sight…
    “To your posts, men,” repeated the Captain as he walked down the deck. Anchor was weighed, the sails were unfurling – that slide of canvas down from the yards causing Midax to experience a sudden material thrill and to sense that something authentic was creeping in among them after all. The ship was on the move. He made his way to the poop, thinking, this is all silly, yet I am still going to play my part properly. Still aware of the cameras, he perfected his stance at the helm… but he could not prevent his thoughts from straying. That TV crew certainly did not look dressed for a voyage of ninety-six days. Of course. Midax reached for his un-medieval binoculars and with a sweep round to the airstrip on Dranl South headland he spotted a hydroplane with the LBC logo on its flank. That was what would soon come alongside to fetch off the newspeople from the ship; probably as soon as Rinka had been filmed clearing the harbour. Meanwhile it looked as though other high-tech folk were emerging from the woodwork… a couple of men whom he recognized from the computer programming department of the Port Authority were approaching the helm.
    One of them was Stid Orpen, Midax’s former classmate long ago, now a top civil servant. He and his colleague nodded to Midax. Without ceremony they then stooped and crouched to peer at the illuminated screen beside the helm shaft.
    A vertical white line had been painted down that screen, and now two lights were winking on it.
    The vertical line indicated the ship’s pre-planned course. The brighter winking light showed the current course-deviation and the secondary light showed the average deviation over time. That second light must be kept to the central line, by compensatory deviation of the brighter light whenever necessary.
    Midax knew he must keep an eye on this; he knew it from the training session. However, he had never bothered with the jargon. So when Stid now uttered some remark about the guide programs, which he called “gobbets”, Midax answered, “It’s just a black box, to me; I don’t care what’s in it.”
    “And why should you,” agreed Stid. He inserted a small plastic disk into a slot.
    Suddenly a hum, ever so faint, vibrated into Midax’s fingers and palms, as he continued to grip the wheel. And the wheel began to turn of itself.
    The ship was properly under way. Midax the superfluous helmsman could now relax. He continued to grip the turning wheel for a minute or so, after which, overcome by a sense of the futility of it all, he made as if to stand back, but Stid glared at him and from another direction Rersh Wadd’s voice snapped at him without a trace of his ordinary friendliness: “Remain at your post!” Still being filmed, realized Midax, so he kept his hands on the wheel for a few minutes more.
    Accidentally as the ship rolled and lurched on a particularly heavy wave, he found the wheel moving slightly to his touch once again, and therefore realized that the autopilot had been turned off. They were just testing it. They don’t want it on all the time.
    His feelings swayed back and forth between respect and contempt for the whole enterprise, but as he felt and heard the planks creak under his boots, belief was winning. The man with the sounding line called out the depths as Rinka nosed out through the harbour and into the open sea, while Midax Rale faced the fact that he stood on the actual deck of a lateen-rigged caravel, preparing to spend ninety-six days out of sight of land; a ship admittedly equipped with computers as well as quadrants, but possessing the opportunity (given the will) to put away modern technology. They could if necessary – though doubtless they would not – fight the ocean as the men of old had fought it. They had the option – though they would never exercise it – of crossing the Zard with pre-industrial skills alone, at the whim of currents and storms.
    Rinka’s bow ran up and down the waves and the open sea widened before them. Even false glory, thought Midax, is better than none. Land receded; sea and sky expanded; the sounds from shore had faded minutes ago; the music and the cheering, if they continued, no longer reached the ship.
    The media personnel, interested solely in the dramatic embarkation and departure from the harbour, had no intention of sticking it out for a ninety-six day voyage; they and their equipment were now being lowered into boats to row out to the hydroplane… which took off minutes later, and away they all went, and, thought Midax, Rinka II is that much more authentic for their departure.
    More time passed. Some aircraft buzzed overhead, supposedly filming the voyage though also, guessed Midax, they would be checking to ensure it was kept on course. And here came chief navigator Rersh Wadd himself, strolling along the deck, gazing after the wheeling and departing aircraft.
    Wadd muttered to Midax, “They don’t trust the program. Or they don’t trust me.”
    Midax rattled the blocked wheel – the autopilot had come on again.
    Then he studied his erstwhile boss and guessed out loud, “You’re regretting that the computer can’t be thrown overboard. You want to maximise the human element, Rmr. Wadd sir.”
    “Yes,” smiled the frustrated Navigator. “I’m determined so far as is possible, to plot the course myself, and if it agrees with the gobbets and flyovers, the voyage will turn out genuine.”
    “Then leave it on manual for now. I can easily man the helm for two watches. I know what to do.”
    “You certainly ought to by this time,” grunted Wadd, and went to call Captain Fadron.
    Midax watched them conferring. The Captain gazed round. Midax guessed his mind: the weather was gentle and all seemed to be going well.
    Fadron spoke out heartily: “Why not? Yes, let’s make it a real test. Let’s determine whether the men of today are equal to those of deRoffa’s time.” He strutted past Midax: “So, Helmsman, I give you some leeway. Man your post until you tire, then press that switch to auto. Never cease to watch both lights!”
    Midax could spot no twinkle in the Captain’s eye; it was as if the fellow were completely unconscious of the anachronism in asking a deRoffa-age pilot to keep an eye on a computer screen. Anyhow, appropriate or not, it was hardly a daunting task. Screen Light A might go wide, but Light B would always indicate how much compensation was needed. Besides, the ninety-six days included the delays which deRoffa himself had suffered, and the course-corrections which deRoffa had had to make. Hence likewise there was enough leeway on the schedule, if need be, to make up for an entire nightful of mistakes on Rinka II.
    One way or another, they should arrive at Heism on time.
    Rersh Wadd added, “Don’t worry, Midax, the system’s idiot-proof.”
    The captain and the navigator walked away, leaving Midax to digest the friendly insult.
    And here comes that fool Inellan.
    Stepping into view around a forward bulkhead, Pjerl’s husband was walking beside the stringy LBC newsgirl Mezyf Tand, the one reporter who had stayed on board. “…So then what are your views,” she was asking him, waving a voice-recorder in his face, “about the crew’s motivation? On the original expedition, that is.”
    “Ah – h – h, that word ‘motivay-shun,” rambled Inellan with loose doddering mouth. “It’s funny how in those days nobody ever used that word…”
    They strolled on past. Midax found himself at that moment actually liking Inellan for the glint in his eye and the mischief in his tone. So I can’t even hate him; hate is blocked off. No hate, no conflict, no quarrel that might lever change. How much easier it would have been if he had made some heartless remark about the early explorers: that they signed up for long voyages to get away from their wives, as he himself has done. Then could I have exploded with fury. But as things are, I can do nothing but watch, calmly, with no ‘give’ in my predicament: I the faithful Shaper, the Vower pipped at the post by this charming idiot who is unable to appreciate what he’s got, what he’s stolen – Stolen? Hang on (his thought veered) I am way, way, way above believing that Pjerl was “stolen” or that the rules about respecting others’ vows do not apply to me. I am not jealous or mean. Am I? I took the Vow at Thilpar, and since then I have been to Serorn for Confirmation Week, so I am a votary and no one can take that away from me; I do respect the melding of Inellan and Pjerl. I prize the rules like gold. I am a votary, I repeat, and I have been to Serorn.
    Serorn, golden Serorn during Entrants’ Confirmation Week: customary for any new Shaper. Now he focused sharply on the fact that he had done it “by the book”, he had been orthodox, he had followed custom and gone to spend an unforgettable seven days in P’Arlcena, the capital of Serorn. Four days’ train journey on the Northern Intercontinental Express had brought him there, another four days brought him back after the golden week. His own personal private odyssey of commitment.  Midax clung to the memory as to a newel or bannister to save himself from being kicked downstairs into jealousy, that dark basement of the soul.
    The people who ran the Shapers’ College knew what they were about. They knew of, and understood, the depression which was liable to succeed the elation of taking the Vow. So persistent is it, the “Hang on, where’s my reward?” reflex, whereby, without meaning to, without consciously demanding anything, we allow the expectation to creep into our minds that surely our gesture, our move, must have set in motion some force to compensate us for our fine commitment – so persuasive is that voice, that when nothing happens, when the world goes on as before, mocking the ideal or just taking no notice, we experience the flat feeling of one who has strained his ears in vain for civilization’s applause; one who expected the world to dance and the sky to blush with purple pleasure because one has Vowed…
    But in Serorn there was some comfort.
    In Serorn they did take notice.
    Physically his hands gripped the wheel as his imagination blazed with desperate grabbing power. His mind clutched at the memory of the old creamy stone buildings, the pleasant lanes of P’Arlcena, the temple and grove, redolent of sun-drenched antiquity. That hallowed place where Boalo and his fellow philosophers had argued their big truths, had whiled away the magic hours so that – as folks say – “when the Serornians chat, the sun stands still”… he had been lucky, his first day there. He had gone sightseeing along Philosophers’ Street…
    Ambling beside the bright awnings, he’d heard a stranger’s voice address him: “How’s it hitting you?” It was a young man who by his clothes seemed to have come from his own part of the world. With absolutely no strain they began to compare notes about Serorn’s capital city. The young votary suggested they stop at a soup-counter. (Owing to the hot climate, warmed by the gulf stream, chilled soups were the delicacy in P’Arlcena. Besides, soup is easy to consume while talking – a vital consideration for street philosophers.) Soon they were seated under an awning, each with his bowl, chatting unhurriedly. The youngster voiced some doubts, saying, “I hope it’s all true, this Boalonian stuff. This stuff I’ve Vowed myself to…”
    “So you’re having second thoughts?”
    “Not exactly regretful. I do sometimes get a bit scared. I wonder, could it be that I’ve just got a crush on the pattern? The doctrine is so beautiful and neat. The idea that Romance is valid, rooted in eternity, that one’s chosen love is actually predestined and meaningful – I can’t resist it! I very much want to believe it. Want to believe that Maywa, my betrothed, and I knew each other before we were born. But if it is true, how did Boalo know? How can this sort of thing be surely known? I am still unclear on that point.”
    “Yet clear or not, you took the Vow,” Midax remarked.
    “Because I wanted it to be true.”
    “So you’re on record now. If Maywa lets you down (I’m not suggesting she will), you’ll be stuck.”
    “Stuck or not – like I said, I can’t resist the idea,” the young votary said, and swallowed some soup with a smack of his lips.
    “I suppose,” said Midax, “that’s true of scientists, too, when you really get down to it. Cosmologists can’t resist the isotropic principle, though if you ask them ‘Why should the universe be largely the same in all directions?’ they just hem and haw. Physicists want their unified field theories, though they never explain why reality shouldn’t be ramshackle instead; they just don’t want to confess their pattern, the bias in favour of beautiful ideas.”
    “Hmm… and do you have any trouble believing yours?”
    “None,” said Midax truthfully.
    “Well, this is an amazing place; conversations actually get somewhere here. Now it’s your turn to fire a problem at me.”
    “All right,” Midax had then said. He went on to explain why he bewailed his own infidelity to Shaper ideals; why to him it smacked of hypocrisy that he should have returned to the fold only after having made the amazing discovery that his former and current loves were one and the same; that a true Shaper should have been more consistent, should have kept a continuous record of devotion throughout his life. “You see, there’s no getting round the fact that, when I thought Pjerl and Jerre were two different people, I was prepared, for Jerre’s sake, to be unfaithful to the memory of Pjerl; and that only when I realized that they were one and the same, did I welcome the news that I had, after all, been following the Boalonian path all along.”
    “Ah, you’re just a perfectionist,” the other fellow had said. “Over-excited with your new status, you can’t stand getting anything wrong. All you did was fall short of an ideal. So what. That merely goes to show – reassuringly – that you do have an ideal to fall short of.”
    Midax interrupted, “So – isn’t one expected to attain –”
    “Nope, for if you do attain, it’s not an ideal, it’s an achievement.”
    Suddenly they heard a chirpy greeting. “Well, Juf Dest and Midax Rale – good morning, sages! May I join this select colloquy?” A stocky man stood by their table, beaming in chubby confidence. Anywhere but in Serorn, the approach of a person of such importance as the Director of the Shapers’ College in Thilpar – the ranking Shaper in the Western Hemisphere and the man who had recorded Midax’s own Vow – would have alerted the eye. Rermer Arpaieson, none other! But this was Serorn, where status doesn’t bother to dress smartly; status comes from inside your head and out of your mouth…
    “I’m taking some minutes off,” confided Arpaieson, seating himself, “and be damned to the Admin Committee. No, that’s not fair. I shouldn’t damn anything that gives me an excuse to visit this country. Anyhow, how are you fellows doing? Serious answers, please – this is Philosophers’ Street.”
    Midax and Juf then explained what they had been talking about. Arpaieson heartily agreed with Juf’s solution to Midax’s problem. “Re hypocrisy – that’s a word people can’t handle nowadays. You might as well accuse a scientist of hypocrisy if he abandons a theory as soon as it no longer seems to fit the facts and then returns to it when it does turn out to fit them after all. Ideals pull you forward. Ideals are ahead of where you are. Hypocrisy is not failure, it is deception – another matter entirely. And you are not guilty of that. You simply returned to the Shaper ideal as soon as you found out that you were being true to Pjerl after all. Or, in other words, - upon your discovery that the Shaper ideal fits the facts.”
    “I see – thank you –” Midax muttered at the welcome absolution. Sweet and strong as the honey-coloured stonework of the old College buildings, the idea stood vindicated. “If only I lived here, I might get this standard of help more often.” (Noises off-stage – the creaks and groans of the planking of the ship – try to put across the message, “Hey, helmsman, pay attention to where you are.” But he goes on with his reverie:)
    “Might that mean you are actually thinking of moving to Serorn?” Arpaieson had asked.
    “In fact, yes,” Midax admitted, “I’ve seriously considered it. To resign from the Port Authority and come here to drown my old life in the Serornian sunshine, where the big thoughts are prized, the big questions discussed; a country where you’re not made to feel that you’ve been wasting your life pining for an illusion… a country blessed with more than just the usual trace elements of idealism.” And there was a further quality which was the most important of all, though the hardest to pin down: a quality which made Serorn a land of extraordinary refreshment: the “non-sinister haunting”, eerily good, which enticed one’s spirit to believe that here the barrier between one’s self and the transcendent was thinner here than anywhere else…
    “But,” he added drily out loud, “it wouldn’t be exactly easy to buy a house here.”
    “Naturally,” nodded Arpaieson, “prices are sky-high in such a place. But you might be lucky. Only – you’re merely toying with the plan, aren’t you?”
    “You’re right,” said Midax. “Too much like searching for the rainbow’s end.”
    “An ivory tower,” said Juf, “does have that about it.”
    Arpaieson, rising from his chair, said: “To run for comfort to a place is as unreliable as to run for comfort to a person. Comfort comes from within. And now I must be getting along – much as I’d prefer to stay and make the sun stand still with our chatter.”
    A grave quip, in that fortunate timeless atmosphere, the atmosphere which Midax now, weeks later and thousands of miles away, recalled in a daydream, while the dumb passion of it flowed down his arms and put grip into his fingers’ ends. He grasped the helm of Rinka II as if he might wrench this replica ship thousands of miles off course to a haven in Serorn and get there in a magical instant, though all the while that he had been remembering and picturing Serorn he had nevertheless been aware of the slow pace of the real, of the deck-planks under his boot-soles, of subordination to prosaic fact. Replica. Commemoration. Cannot do any great new thing. Else we would be doing things for others to commemorate. A wry, sad thought. (Meanwhile the disturbing cry, “Land!”, failed to penetrate his self-centred gloom.) He went on lamenting to himself that even here on this supposedly special voyage, there was no escape from the limits which made plain that he wasn’t really doing anything great at all. (Yet a voice shouted, “The coast of Serorn!” “Don’t believe it!” shouted a white-hot denial from another throat.  Just what was the shouting all about?  “We can’t have gone thousands of miles off course in a few minutes!” “Helmsman Rale,” another, lowered voice, began, but Midax did not react at first: he was in his own bitter spell, his grim disgust that neither he, nor anyone else he knew, had been doing anything great. Might as well go back to his daydream. Think of Serorn and the friendly voices there. But – if it’s a daydream, the mind and the ear should not agree – those Serornian accents outside his head, chiming with those within, finally woke him to the fact that, after all, something extra-ordinary had at last happened for real.
    Whatever it was, it demanded wakeful attention. Other ships were alongside. New faces had boarded Rinka II.  They spoke words that were pleasant but in the circumstances terrible –
    “Welcome to Serorn!”
    Geographical impossibility, the most hideous of nightmares, strained his eyes wide.  “Helmsman!” gibbered the Navigator, Rersh Wadd. “Answer, damn you.” Wadd shook him, and in this pivotal moment of Midax’s life, he found the courage not to slap the label “hallucination” onto what was happening.
    For it would not do.  Never mind that he was seeing things that would mean madness if believed. A world whose appearance had gone suddenly small. A blurry limit a few miles off. Distank peaks shrunk into nearby hills. The ocean become a pond. And what were the others seeing? The same? No, from their words, “Serorn, Serorn, the coast of Serorn,” the ocean was still an ocean, to them; their astonishment came from the particular end of the Zard at which they found themselves. Midax also, when his private spooked moment had passed, agreed with the communal amazement of his fellow voyagers: here they all were, the ocean waves beating upon the beaches of Serorn. Somehow he had got them here, but (he hugged himself) they weren’t to know it was he who had done it. He was just a make-believe helmsman, after all. He’d been put at the wheel just for show.
    Only he knew that he’d then given them a show they hadn’t expected, that no one had expected, that was not possible to expect; his sight adjusted again… and he somehow saw how he had done it: for again, just as he had spookily glimpsed a few moments before, he was able to view a shrunken world around him - to see the Zard as a mere pond, across which the boat could be steered in a couple of minutes. Madness. Utter madness. His cheeks stung as blood drained from his face.  One thing was certain: the others, amazed though they were, still were not seeing it the way he could see it.  So he did not have the comfort of companionship in insanity.  His shipmates all still believed that they were bobbing on ocean waves, not on the ripples of a mere pond. Their fear was, that he had brought them thousands of miles in a minute. His fear was, that no thousands of miles existed any more.
    But the most terrible thing about that close parade of hills, like hunched shoulders, around the rippling little waters of Zard Pond, was that they were not as mysterious as they should be; they gloatingly usurped the status of familiar things, as though some power had painted them with Recognizability.  Amid a cyclone of confused emotions he perceived that he was in a compressed world, the size of a park yet more awesome than ever, huge in its bulging meaning.  A world which might allow him (here came a deep croak in his mind) to do something colossal. A world in which a further choice or choices, unguessed-at as yet, might let him shove at history. Furiously he attempted to sweep away his overcrowded sensations but conscience told him I am responsible for this, some ability of mine has brought forth this monster event, and I, therefore, must do something about it.
    The intuitive action he then took – which saved his sanity and perhaps his skin – must have come dredged up from layers of voiceless hope, preserved in his years of inner isolation, until at last some diagrammatic awareness showed him the situation: showed him lifelong crookedness pulled straight. Whereupon thought erupted into action. Like a dream in which the will to fly becomes the action of flying, he began to put the ship’s position’s right. Using the ridiculous compressed world as a guide, he steered. Back to the south-west. Past the little Serorn-headland on the Zard pond, yes, that’s the right direction, and in maybe three more minutes he could hand at Heism, over in Vevtis, a ‘continent’ away. Of course, his reasoning had to puff and pant, yet he remained eerily sure that he could do what needed to be done. He was able to trust: “I am going to believe in something which I do not believe yet.”
    A terrified officer was pushing at him – a Serornian who had just embarked. Midax smiled, preserving his stance, ignoring the appalled man, who fell back, twitching, as Midax turned the wheel again. He had a few minutes, perhaps, before anyone else tried to touch him.  Under his direction Rinka II swung to starboard. Eastwards again she sailed.  Surveying the compacted world that had condensed around him, Midax suggested to himself, for convenience’s sake, why not call everything a dream? He did not yet precisely ‘believe’, he merely knew he could steer without all those unnecessary zigs and zags which for some reason were such a part of the movements of all life. The zigs and zags which up to now had made everyone take tens of thousands of times as long as they needed to go anywhere! Poor old deRoffa! That man’s achievement was nothing to this! The ancient explorer had taken months to complete a journey that ought to have taken minutes; little had Monto deRoffa known, that all he’d needed to do was to row in a few straight lines – really straight lines…
    That concept of the straight line was the ideological depth-charge that could blow every mind in the world.
    Midax’s comet of awareness passed its mental perihelion and began receding fast. The insane vision of truth was ending, the waves on the pond un-smoothing. They were rising, growing once more into ocean waves. Glittering, fractal curl on curl, they roared once more, smashing against the continental beach of Vevtis. Here we are! he exulted. He had given the necessary course to the ship. It was approaching Heism docks. This was the completion of the so-called “96-day voyage” on the same morning that it had begun.
    To the sound of whimpers on the deck around him, he was vaguely aware that the international repercussions had already started. Some Vevtians were making a commotion on shore, others were rowing out to meet the ship, and all would soon be shouting at Captain Fadron for answers. And he, Midax Rale, could not leave the Captain to take the blame. Time to step beyond my old cushiony life…
    As surely as a baby must face being born, Midax must face the authorities and the public.

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