I
Midax
set up house permanently in the Grand Hotel. From this base he set about living
through the days of the rest of his life.
He
could hardly do otherwise than resign from his former job and relinquish his
former dwelling. His quarters in the Port Authority staff block were no longer anything like roomy enough for the social and business life which he found
himself leading, and besides, since Pjerl had moved out to live with Inellan, the
place had lost its magic.
Certainly
there was no going back to anything like his old existence. For better or
worse, it was out of the question to expect that what he had done could
possibly be forgotten or ignored, for while he did his best to ignore others' curiosity about himself, popular interest in him wasn't going to fade while he
remained easily the most famous person in the world. Thus he had swapped his former obscurity for a different
brand of loneliness, which presently brought him to a strange new balance on the tightrope of
morale:
Every so
often he experienced a disturbed sleep-walker’s moment, a sudden knock on the
door of the mind, waking him to the fact that he had been on autopilot for a
week or so, an interval during which he had accomplished much business unconsciously. He would then shake himself and resume his effort to stay consciously focused, because although it was good that he had got away with so
much literal absence of mind, thus by-passing numerous bouts of melancholy, such luck ought not to be pushed, lest unguessable dangers lurk in the realms of oblivion. This warning worked for a while.
Yet, lacking the nearness of Pjerl, and cut off by celebrity from his
old routines, for a while he had nothing strong enough to keep him truly awake or to make
him take more than a pale interest in the world around him. He might tell himself not to brood and mope, and that publicity,
insofar as it could be used for some end, was not to be despised – but he could
not imagine any use for the superabundance of it which he now possessed. If it
could have helped him to win Pjerl, that, of course, would have been another
matter; but she was irrevocably lost to him, and what recompense could he gain
from the spotlight of the world?
A
few times she and her new spouse invited him to dinner at their house. Determined
not to seem a sulker, he never declined such invitations.
“Better
draw the curtain,” joked Inellan, serving meat from a dish. “The elm’s branches
shook a bit, I think; there might be a reporter up there.”
“Fear not,” said Midax with a smile. “I took the trouble
to arrive here in secret. Besides, after six months, the media have run out of
things to say about me.”
“That,”
said Pjerl, “is precisely when you can expect them to spread their net wider.”
“Meaning?”
“Anyone,”
explained Inellan, “who’s basking in your reflected glory, no matter how
obscure they may be, is in for it too. Have some more casserole.”
“Yes,
go on,” urged Pjerl with an impish smile, “before they burst in…”
How very pleasantly - reflected Midax - this pair seemed to get on together. She must belong to
that school of thought which requires that if you meld with the wrong person,
then, for the sake of others’ expectations, you should stay glued. Better to
show constancy to the wrong Other Half, than to bring the sacred glue into
disrepute. Oh, well, it was a reasonable attitude. Nothing can be perfect in
life. You can’t expect to enjoy impossible combinations, such as love and power, or happiness and fame; no one could or should have that much luck; it wouldn’t
be fair…
On
her birthday he sent her a book on botany, which was a hobby of hers. Flowers of Woodland Glades.
His
phone rang a few days later.
“Hello,
Midax. Thanks for your present.”
“Hello,
Pjerl. I sent the right book, did I?”
“Yes,
it’s fine, thank you.”
“So,
well, how are you?”
“Terrible,
actually. Inellan has just left me.”
The
floor swayed under his shoes.
He
had been absent in spirit for so many months (playing at big business while his
hopes lay buried), that he had got out of touch with his own feelings.
“What
–?” he swallowed.
“He
walked out, day before yesterday.”
“But
– what’s he playing at – ?”
She
explained:
She
and Inellan had been quarrelling more and more, over his habit of going off for
days on end and leaving her alone. Finally he had done this once too often. She
had then shouted at him to clear off. Whereupon he had taken her at her word. “Even
though,” she went on, “I called out after him, shouting, pleading that I did
not mean it.”
“I
never guessed,” said Midax in awe, “that a thing like this was possible.”
A
deadly noose called hope was dangling
in front of him. He flinched back; during the weeks that followed, he continued
being preoccupied with business.
After
all, he had developed commitments, responsibilities; he would not feel
justified in ignoring them all to look after Pjerl, assuming she might want
such a thing. In any case, he could hardly woo Pjerl so soon after her
separation and divorce (Inellan went straight for a divorce). Besides, what was he thinking of? He, Midax Rale,
had taken the Shapers’ Vow! – had solemnly avowed belief that a melding was for
life!
A
divorce was valid only in the eyes of the State. In the eyes of the Shapers’
College a romelding could never be undone.
Not
“shouldn’t” – couldn’t.
Boalo
had so decreed: The decision of Romance is final.
By
that standard, Pjerl was forever beyond his reach.
Whether
Inellan happened to be around or not.
Nevertheless
he saw no reason why he should not go to see her. She needed support at a time
like this. Was he a coward, to fear being misunderstood? Despite the attentions
of the media it should be possible for him to have some private life, sufficient, anyhow, for him to visit an old
friend.
One day when the weather was particularly foul, the sky
dark, the rain blustering, he phoned her: “Since it’s chucking it down, I’ll be
wearing a coat with turned-up collar, and a slope-brimmed hat,” he explained. “No
one will recognize me – we can meet on the library steps, just like that
morning…” The morning of the Crossing. She understood. Hurrah – it was going to
be the same.
Except
that it was better, for she was not so late this time.
She
appeared suddenly beside him, startling him as she burst out with, “I wish I
had been free when I met you!”
She
was so pitifully lovely and claspable. His tongue jammed in his mouth. He
couldn’t even point out, But you were
free; you did meet me long before you met Inellan – in fact you knew me
way back when we were at school. Instead of saying all that, he just hugged
her silently, for the past was done.
They
started to walk. She resumed speaking as if trying to puzzle something out. “The
younger man who makes me happy, who brightens my day… and the other man who was
already a part of my life…” She shook her head, unable to proceed with the
analysis of life’s mess.
They
reached her home and she made some Ellipsiteen and they sat in the kitchen with
the mugs of hot drink and she made a clutching gesture with one hand. “I should
have been more aggressive; should’ve gone straight for what I wanted.” If he
had had doubts before, he had none now, not the slightest smudge. The message
was plain: she was as much in love with him as he with her. No other conclusion
was possible from her words. No other interpretation of them made sense. Therefore,
well… he had a lot to think about.
Next
time he visited her they progressed to sitting side by side on the same settee.
He held her close and stroked her hair while she spoke in a wondering voice: “I
haven’t been treated romantically like this before.” Good, thought Midax, glad
to hear it. Lucky for me that you are not beautiful in a boring way. You’d have
brought crowds of men flocking; whereas as things are, your lack of success
elsewhere means that your unique self is destined for me…
“If
I had melded with you,” Pjerl was saying, “I’m sure we would have just let each
other get on peacefully with our own concerns, giving each other space, without
any need for shouts and quarrelling…” More confessions followed. “I really love
you,” she stated on his next visit, twisting against him as they sat side by
side; and this melting move was an event much bigger than any other happening
in Midax’s life. But though in that moment she seemed to want to twine herself
about him, a moment later she flopped back, because it would not do. After all,
they had both taken the Shapers’ Vow.
Nevertheless
just then Midax was happy. Requited at last. Life had finally got around to a
proper script. All the more serious for its banal lack of flourish, as when she
kissed him on the lips and, her words inane with wonder, simply said, “We
kissed on the lips!” So what if they had both taken the Shapers’ Vow? Silently
broadcasting to all the shades, Midax declared: In the sight of Boalo the real names in that contract are not
spelt P-j-e-r-l and I-n-e-l-l-a-n, but P-j-e-r-l
and M-i-d-a-x. Write it, universe, write it in your ledger…
She
telephoned him regularly now, and vice versa. “I wish,” said Midax at the start
of more than one busy office day, “that I was there to look after you.”
“I
wish you were, too,” said Pjerl.
Next
time she phoned with wondrous sadness, “I’ve certainly made some really bad
decisions…”
“It’s
difficult for both of us,” said Midax.
“It’s
my fault,” said Pjerl.
Yes it is, thought Midax. You’re quite right there.
The
later calls had more passion in them. Trivial little momentous words. Her
sleepy, caressing voice said, “Big hug,” and “I love you lots and lots” – this
at a fairly early hour. He had gone to his office early, to answer
correspondence from all over the world. The contrast between the wide emptiness
of his public life and the warm private impossibilities was getting to be a bit
too much for Midax.
He
began to express out loud to her his longing to be openly close, to cut out the
shim-sham, to be, in the words of the romelding, “utterly close and one” –
Shapers’ Vows notwithstanding! When he made this kind of remark she would often
reply, in a pensive tone, “You never know what’s around the next corner” – but
he knew perfectly well what was around the next corner: more of the same. Wonderful
woman, this Pjerl, but useless at making decisions; so, in the end, he sought
help elsewhere.
The Shapers’ College itself – might they not advise him? For
he really did not know what was right and wrong. He would go to Serorn again, and find out. He
could take time off business. It would mean a temporary shut-down of some of
his personal transport services, but he could give the excuse that he needed to
recoup his strength. It was a good excuse, substantially true. And his
customers, the clients of Cutting Across, would have no option but to believe the
excuse, true or not, and be patient at the delays caused. Besides, it need not
take him long to get what he wanted in Serorn. Especially as his old friend
Rermer Arpaieson had now risen to be head of the Shapers’ College worldwide,
both East and West.
Geographically
all this seemed a portent of the way the nerve centre of a global business must
naturally gravitate towards a base in the Middle Continent; an organization
with a Zanepian hub is never out of the way of things; so that Zanep, and its
peninsulas Cenland and Serorn, more particularly the latter, clearly would be
the most fitting locale for his eventual HQ… Musing on these matters, Midax
Rale walked down to a private cove on Dranl beach, climbed into a dinghy, gazed
out at the ocean and steeled his mind to perform the act which had no name.
It
was done, and he re-entered the box-realm of Glight.
No
matter how many times he did this, he must always batten down the hatches of
disbelief. Never must he conjure Glight with a naked awareness that it was
true.
He
rowed to the Serornian coast in minutes, to re-surface in the everyday world in
the outskirts of the capital of that land.
A
few more mini-trips in Glight to adjust his position, flashing in and out of
view of the avenues of P’Arlcena, and he reached the ancient terraced cone (the
oldest continuously inhabited structure in the world) composed of
interthreading temple and grove – Boalo’s Academy, the K’Tramboleion, the
Shaper World HQ.
From
here he briefly turned to gaze down Philosophers’ Street, that golden avenue which reminded
him of easier, obscurer days.
Today, there would be no relaxed intellectual chatter under the awnings. Today,
he must announce himself to the Director quickly so as to out-speed the news of
his arrival. Though relations between Discoverer and Chief Shaper had cooled
somewhat, Rermer Arpaieson would not refuse to see him.
In
the sanctum of the Academy, as he and Rermer sat in facing armchairs, Midax
confessed all regarding Pjerl.
“Here’s
the fix: I love that woman; always have; always will. For me there is nobody
else. Must I then live out my life without her? Because of a stupid mistaken
vow?”
“I
think so,” said Rermer coldly.
“How
can you be so sure?”
“Because, unlike you, I have not abandoned my belief in
the Vow, of course.”
“No,
you wouldn’t, but then, you don’t need to.” Midax spoke impatiently. “You are happily married. Sorry to sound
bitter – but the fact is, it is all right for you.”
“If
I may point out your inconsistency,” said Rermer, “please listen a moment. Think
back to when you were as strict as I. Did you not know very well, in your
strict days, that unhappiness sometimes resulted from the strictness? And did
you not nevertheless believe that it was worth while enduring that unhappiness,
to uphold the standard?”
Constrained
by honesty, Midax could not deny this.
Rermer
continued, “Of course, it was other people’s unhappiness in those days, whereas
now it is your own. But in objective principle, where’s the difference?”
Midax
ventured, “But perhaps my unhappiness has actually made me see more.”
“See
more what?”
“More
of the truth.”
“Hahhh.
You saw it magnified through nearness. Therefore you liked it a lot less. You
could not have seen anything to change the argument, though. Else you would
have deployed that amended argument by now.”
Midax
mused, “I think I shall go home and just wait for Pjerl to recover from her
current abandonment by a man whom she trusted to romeld. Then I shall ask her
to go through a civil marriage ceremony with me: a regmeld, instead of a
romeld.”
“Then
you and she are no longer Shapers; you both will have broken your Vows.”
“I
am beginning to think,” said Midax, “that a regmeld in the sight of eternity
may sometimes be equivalent to a romeld –”
Rermer
sighed, “You might as well join the coterie of Xapler Twick.”
“Liberalism?
I’ve been thinking about that, too. I don’t know that you’re right, Rermer. I
don’t agree that responsibilism is the same as liberalism.”
“It
leads to the same result, in this case.”
“No,
but you listen now. Responsibilism – saying I alone am responsible for getting
it right and for taking the risk that I may be wrong – is not the same as liberalism, which is merely saying that there are
two sides to every question and not caring which if any of them is right. Say
what you like, they are not the same.”
Rermer
then said, “Seriously, why don’t you go and see Xapler?”
“Uh?”
“Really
– I mean it.”
“Twick?!
That heretic! You are the last person I would have expected to advise that!”
“And
if I come and see him with you,” smiled the Director, “there’ll be a colourful
meeting: a heretic, an apostate and an orthodox disciplinarian.”
“I’ll
play along,” said Midax wonderingly.
The
meeting was arranged for that evening. The three men sat by the bay window in
that part of Rermer’s study which allowed a breath-taking sunset view of the
Academy gardens. Professor Xapler Twick, eminent psychologist and head of the
defeated liberal faction of the Shapers’ College, was a wiry man with steel
grey hair and bushy grey brows. His face was dry and lined; his manner relaxed
and controlled, no matter how many times he poured from the decanter which
stood within reach on a low table.
He
raised his glass to his old intellectual sparring partner. “This stuff is good.
Although wine destroys some of our brain-cells, it compensates by the way it
inspires lateral thinking along those synapses which remain.”
“Let’s
not have a lateral evening,” Rermer directed. “I’d prefer a straight tackle on
the problems of the day, such as the threat of utter ease of movement” (with a
sideways nod at Midax), “and whether such an innovation is bound to undermine
fidelity to Shaper ideals; indeed whether any standard of fidelity can endure
in a society in which anyone can disappear by what virtually amounts to teleportation.
Are you good at questions like that, Xapler?”
“Good
enough, perhaps,” smiled the Professor; “in fact my mind is sufficiently broad,
that I regard as an opportunity, that which to you appears as a disaster.”
Midax
sat turning his gaze back and forth between the wizened, twinkling-eyed Twick
to the shorter, smoother Arpaieson; two great minds continually chafing under
the other’s influence. He felt obliged to intervene:
“My
secret mode of transport is remaining secret. I’m not spreading it about. So
its effect upon your philosophies is not an issue.”
The
Professor turned, aiming his brows like gunsights.
“In that case I wonder at the Director’s purpose in
arranging this meeting. Or – do we have here a case of the one-and-only’s? The
life-wasting stupidity of Romance?”
“You
can say that again,” said Midax with a bitter laugh. “None other than
Discoverer Midax Rale afflicted by the one-and-only’s.”
“Well then, it’s time you joined the list of those who
have the sense to listen,” and Twick drew a determined breath, “as I keep on
and on trying to say to people who desperately
need to know,” he drew a yet deeper breath and his syllables emerged more
crisply, “that the mischief-making fabricators who over the ages have
institutionalized the doctrine of the one-and-only Other Half have led
themselves and others astray, towards something which Boalo never intended.”
Twick paused, sucking more air. Midax quirked a brow and
said, “Hmm… if you subtract the doctrine of the Other Half, what is left?”
With
a pitying look the Professor shook his head. “You miss my point. I said institutionalized. That’s where the
wrongness lies.”
Midax,
hesitantly, objected: “You’ve got to have institutions…”
“Not
for this. Not for Romance! Mortals can never be sure, which souls are destined
to which. You may have Another Half,
but you can never be sure, during this life, who it is. So we lack the
certainty on which to build.”
“A
part of me wants to believe you.”
“Ah.
That is something.”
“Yes,”
Midax went on, “it would be a relief, in a way, to know that I had been wrong
all my life. I could then, as the saying goes, move on.”
“Do
so!”
“But
I can’t move on by just pretending to know I’ve been wrong, when in fact I
still don’t know. If destiny is not
real, why do we have a word for it?”
(The
watching Director smiled at this point.)
Twick
conceded, “Destiny is real.”
“Go
on. I foresee a but.”
“But,”
nodded Twick, “but, we never have the right to pronounce on it, or to turn it
into rules. Our too-strict Romanticism leads to exaggerated expectations,
repressions, blighted lives… That, also, is what I keep trying to say to anyone
who will listen.”
Rermer
Arpaieson cut in, “If I were you, Midax, I should listen to him. I wanted to
help you myself, but I can’t do so directly because you are no longer
completely one of us. You have backslid, though you are not completely lost. From
the Shaper point of view you are diminished. You have descended to the point
where Professor Twick’s help becomes relevant. Xapler, you see, still considers
himself a Shaper. Admittedly, in so thinking, he is probably fooling himself;
however, he is still a good counsellor for good men who cannot remain faithful
to their ideals. Men who cannot live up to Boalo but who can yet stop short of
jettisoning Boalo altogether…”
Midax
admired the put-down for its efficiency. It nicely knocked both the Professor
and himself. Xapler Twick, for his part, laughed in appreciation of such neat
downgrading. Rermer then smiled too.
After
the Professor had cordially shaken hands and departed, Rermer said to Midax, “I
meant what I said. Xapler can do you some good. More than I can, at this stage.
He can help ex-Shapers to avoid degenerating further into anti-Shapers. He can
keep some of the old glory alive in their hearts.”
Tired
and meek, and contented by the College atmosphere, Midax did not argue. “I’m
not too proud,” he said, “to accept a telling-off. Or, come to think of it,
perhaps I am proud, as I require to
be told off, if at all, by the top man, which is you. Thanks for your time,
Rermer.”
Now
for the quick Glight way home. Insulated as ever by his own concerns from the
geographical enormity of what he was doing, he rowed across an ocean which was
diagrammatically reduced to a pond in that eerie box-realm which allowed a
drastically short cut to anywhere, and within minutes he was back in Dranl,
with his sight clicked back into normal and with the world wide once more.
It
was still not too late to end the day with a cup of ellipsiteen with Pjerl.
He
had been wondering how much to tell her. But that problem was solved because
she had news of her own to impart instead.
Good
news! She had had an amicable meeting with Inellan. He had admitted his fault
to her! Apparently, they had parted from that meeting as friends.
“Well,
I’m glad for both of you,” said Midax nobly. “It must be quite a thing, that
much reconciliation… a civilized way to end it all… and I can think better of
Inellan now. By the way, I’ve got some news too.”
And
he at last managed to tell her about the discussions he had just had with the
Shapers in Serorn.
“…And
so,” he finished, “Rermer, as I feared he would, came out strongly against you
and me being together; only Xapler supported me, in fact –”
Pjerl,
chin on hand, her elbow on the edge of the kitchen table, had gone very quiet. Midax
felt he had to say some more. He spoke on, repeating the points which Rermer
and Xapler had made, finishing with a strong hint: “ – But in any case you,
Pjerl, are more important than any Shapers’ Vow.”
Pjerl,
her face drawn, said: “I’m not confident that I could make anyone happy.”
“Hey
– modesty is all right but don’t overdo it!” He went on, “But, I do understand
how you may feel this lack of confidence in yourself; if Inellan comes back
hovering around you, tantalising you without either properly returning or
properly leaving you alone –”
“That’s
just it. If only he could just say that he doesn’t want me any more, then I
could move on…”
“I’m
suggesting that you move on now. That you move on with me.”
He
was aware, as he spoke, of the cumulative longing of years now taking its toll.
She went very quiet again. He thought of how she had changed since Inellan’s
“hovering” began.
Time
to go; they both had work to do.
“Love
you lots,” he said, hugging her.
She
said simply, “I know.”
Seconds
passed. Sickened, he realized that he was not going to get anything more. He
said, “You’ve changed.”
“I
don’t want to fan the flames,” she said, still making no move to return his
embrace.
Fan
the flames? Suddenly he experienced the shock of an utterly new thought. The publicity! Previously, no one else
knew of their love; but now he, Midax, had just been blabbing their secret to
the Shapers’ College. Could it be the publicity she was scared of? Scandal? Oathbreaking
lover of an oathbreaking famous man… if she were to break her Vows for his sake
she would be in the limelight too.
Midax
did not dare tax her openly with this. It would have been tantamount to
accusing her of moral cowardice. Besides, he wasn’t so keen on her denying it. He
very much preferred this unworthy explanation to the other possible reason why she might no longer be saying that she
loved him; namely –
That
she no longer did.
But
the uncertainty became a torment in the ensuing days. Communication was more
vitally needed than ever before, yet there seemed to be less and less leeway in
their conversation. It was as if Pjerl were constantly seeking the quickest way
out of a question. It became an uphill battle for Midax to build any argument
of more than one step. Particularly when they spoke of love, he had to keep
reminding her that he was talking of romantic love, for often she would simply
say, “I do love you,” in a context in
which “love” obviously meant “affection” only.
And
when he said, “But you said…”, it never worked. For example: “But you said you
wished you had been free when you met me,” she replied, “So I do.” Saying the
minimum to keep him quiet. Leaving the discrepancies unexplained.
II
Occasionally
it was like old times, wrapped in all the closeness which they used to have,
until something was said which uncovered signs of the change. On one occasion
he found himself making some sardonic comment about pop songs: “Listen to that
– ‘Bay-bee, bay-bee, don’t leave me bay-bee’ – why don’t they strap their
babies more carefully into their prams if they’re so anxious that they might
walk off?” Pjerl smiled wanly, and said, “That’s another thing we would
disagree on if we were melded. Music.”
In
the old days, she would never have picked on this as a difference to emphasize.
“You played the violin at school,” he reminded her.
“We
were just acquaintances at school,” she shrugged. Another put-down for the
past…
A
kind of smell of horror was creeping its way into Midax’s mind. More urgently
than ever he sought to get her to admit things. She must admit them, to rescue the past. Sometimes he tried to draw her
attention to those physical signs, to the body language and the tones she had
used to express affection during their period of greater intimacy, but he found
it was no good: he would receive replies such as, “I was just being
spontaneous”, or “I say that to all my friends; it’s my way of speaking.” What?
Finally
he had had as much as he could take of such slipperiness. He had to know whether she still loved him. It was
no use asking her. Extra help was required. He must get her consent for that
extra help.
First
he led up to what he was going to ask. Or rather he tried to; but she
interrupted the flow of his argument; she just wasn’t having any of it – she
denied, flatly, that there was any reason for him to be confused about her
feelings for him. “I haven’t changed,” she averred; “all that I ever said, I
meant.” She was kneeling by the fireside; he was sitting hunched in an
armchair; he felt almost asthmatic, the way he had to force out words against
the counter-current of her denials.
Abandoning
his pride, he began his plea.
“I
want to ask you, Pjerl, if you could please do me one favour…”
He
paused to make eye-contact with her, to make sure he could go on. What happened
next amazed him.
With
a sharp sigh, she gloomed:
“I spend my life doing favours for
people…”
The
very keenest knives, the molecular blades, are the most deceiving; if a limb
were cut off by one of those, you would spend some seconds unaware of the hurt,
unwitting as a cartoon character who has walked over the edge of a cliff and
continues for several seconds to walk on empty air.
And
how did he plummet, when that message finally did get through to him? Instead
of quietly getting up and reaching for his coat and taking his leave, for several whole minutes he treated her
comment as if it were in the common register of conversation, as if he might
reasonably go on speaking and reasoning with her, specifying the nature of the
favour he was asking: the favour simply being that she come with him to see
Xapler Twick. The idea, as he presented it, was that Twick might help them both
(it being Midax’s private belief that Xapler would see into her mind more
clearly than he himself could). Midax said all of this. He said it before
really grasping where he now stood. That she had just now snubbed his one and
only appeal for help, was so much harder to believe than the craziest dream,
after the many times he had stood by her to support her in her troubles, that
he spoke on, instead of quietly leaving. Yes: though she had said, I spend my life doing favours for people… he
did not, yet, walk out the door. He explained, he burbled all the way down the
cataract of humiliation, after which she opened her mouth and said in a low
weary voice, “All right.” She said it
without looking at him.
Midax
was not quite so far gone in foolishness as to consider accepting an assent so
late and so grudging. In fact it did not register in his mind as an assent at
all. In tone it was a “no”, though in words a “yes”. It was one more proof that
he was nothing to her but a nuisance.
So
at last he realized that the thing to do was just to go. Try to get out of here
with some dignity left intact. He heaved himself to his feet and reached for
his coat. She got up too. “Are you leaving?” she asked, uneasily.
“Yes.”
“For
ever?”
Careful,
no petulance, no slamming of doors! “No, not for ever,” he said; “just until I
sort things out in my mind.” One last hug and then, much aware that he was
going to have to cohabit with this moment as long as he lived, he walked out of
the house.
He
went to the waterfront and found his row-boat. He snapped his awareness into
the shrunken world of Glight. This was something he could do, that others could
not; it at least enabled him to get away from them. He took up the oars and
began to row across the Zard pond.
He
reached the bit of jutting shoreline about a third of the way round the pond
from the Dranl jetty. Here he pulled in and clambered onto dry ground and
readjusted his sight, so that the boxlike limits of the world expanded to
reveal the coast of Serorn once again.
Of
late he had been shifting his business to this part of the world. More of the
headquarters administration had been moved to offices in the Serornian capital.
Now as he plodded up-slope to the nearest road – determined to walk properly
into the city rather than appear in it out of thin air – he looked forward to
some comfort in the beauty of P’Arlcena in the light of morning.
He
had come to a decision.
“I approve,” said Rermer Arpaieson the next day, after
Midax had once more sought the Director in his rooms at the College. “It should
be good for Shapers everywhere, that the Discoverer is not only one of our
number, but has also decided to establish his headquarters with us permanently.
A fillip for us all.” He continued, “Now you know, Midax, I have not approved
of the liberties you take with distance, which seem to me to be a violation of
the human spirit; we need distance,
for it’s a vital property of the human mind. Yet there is no getting away from
your fame and popularity (don’t curl your mouth) and if you are known to be
closely one of us, it gives us a boost we greatly need.”
“I
am here,” Midax quietly nodded, “and here I stay.”
He
understood how significant it must seem. Amidst a secular age where Shaper
ideals were mocked and ignored, the most famous man in the world appears as one
of their number… He realized, also, that he was undertaking an obligation. A
straightforward one, from which nothing remained to distract him. The only
other important thing in his life had been separated from him by a chasm of
ingratitude and denial.
However,
he fairly soon discovered that Life refused to be clean cut, despite the
chopping action of Pjerl’s words. The first surprise came from his own action. For
some strange reason he took it into his head to telephone Pjerl a few weeks
later.
On
the phone he mumbled something about “reopening the channels of communication”.
Perhaps he only wanted to show that he was not sulking; that he was mature
enough to want to stay friends with her. Anyhow, her response was as baffling
as ever. She said she was glad he had rung, but that she had been hurt by his
long silence. She did not seem to comprehend that he had been hurt by her. She
said she would “come round and see him” – perhaps under the impression that he
was still in Dranl, though the phone display ought to have shown that he was
phoning from P’Arlcena. After the call was over, Midax mopped his brow in total
confusion.
A
few weeks later – during which time there had been no word from her – he for
some quite elusive reason rang again.
“Pjerl,
it’s Midax.”
“Midax!”
cried her warm and jubilant voice. “How great to hear from you! I was afraid
you were angry at me.”
“No,”
he said. What else could one say?
“Where
are you?”
“Phoning
from the K’Tramboleion, the College Hall in P’Arlcena. You know this
investiture thing…”
“I
heard about it on the news.” (Sure, he thought, she must know where I am, from
the news.)
It
was the eve of the great ceremony whereby one of the Notables of the New World
Order was to be invested with his authority. Political history had speeded up. World
unity had been achieved during the months while Midax was glooming about his
private problems. Agreement was widespread that his Discovery, his epic
Crossing of the Zard, had provided a vital focus to crystallize the new global
unity. It had encouraged, even incited, the framing of the Constitution of
Mankind. It was not surprising, therefore, that Midax himself was to be
appointed a Notable; nor that the ceremony of his investiture, in deference to
his creed, was to take place in the Great Hall of the Shapers’ College in
P’Arlcena. This was an unprecedented honour for the Boalonian faith; best of
all, it gave him an excuse to phone Pjerl.
“I
thought I’d phone you now, because I might be too busy afterwards, for days and
days,” he said. “What with all the junketings and so on.”
“You
couldn’t smuggle me in, could you?” she asked playfully.
“That’s
a thought,” he said, smiling into the phone. “Anyway…”
“Thanks
ever so much for getting in touch again,” she said, sensing he was about to end
the call. “I’ll try to phone you sometime next week, when things will perhaps
have quietened down a bit.”
“Good
– I’ll give instructions that you’re to be put through,” he said.
He
left the phone booth, hardly feeling the ground he trod. It was just like the
old days, as if the whole sad episode of denial had never intervened. He now
knew he would have the heart to carry himself well during the next day’s
ceremony and the festivities that followed. He might even enjoy them. He could
savour the show in a spirit of historic curiosity, recollecting some of the
interest which the saga of the world used to inspire in him.
The
morrow brought him to the hour and the minute when he must walk up the steps to
the dais in the Great Hall and receive the insigne of a Notable. The spotlights
played around him, the camera crews swivelled and panned on their support
structures… Taldis Soom of Shershan News Network was murmuring to his millions
of listeners, “Here comes the Discoverer now. I see no demonstrators; the crowd
is waiting in respectful silence as he approaches the steps… It all seems to be
going without a hitch, as so many events must do if this vulnerable newborn
global constitution is to survive… Perhaps the fact that the potentially most
controversial appointment of all is being confirmed tonight, explains the
relief pervading this vast chamber, a relief you can sense, like wreaths of
incense wafting…”
“…Wish
they’d dim those lights a bit,” broadcaster Harlei Dapron remarked to his
colleague Lavilr Zenk of Larmonn Continental News. Dapron was speaking off the
air, in between turns in the commentary box. “It’s like a steam bath in here. Do
they want to make the Discoverer sweat?”
“Wouldn’t
matter if he did,” Lavilr suggested. “He’s still a rising star.”
“But
for how long?” said Harlei with a grimace and a smirk. “I’ve worked for a
paper; I know the game. Build ’em up, knock ’em down.”
“Not
yet time to knock this one down,” said Lavilr. “Parliaments, and World Senate
Bipartisan Committees, were given every chance to do so, and they didn’t.”
The
spotlit man began to climb the steps. Surrounded by the blur of warm colour on
every side – the tapestried tiers and the splendidly dressed company – his was
the only visible motion in the scene. Commentator Soolm, inventive out of
necessity, murmured on, “We can only guess what lurks behind the Discoverer’s
unreadable face, but it’s a fairly good guess that he must be thinking about
the new duties which will devolve upon him…”
Soolm
in fact was wrong. In truth Midax was not, in any case, sure about the
responsibilities which he would soon have to take up as a Notable of the World
Chamber, responsible to World President Waretik Thanth. Certainly he was not
worrying about them. One of the effects of the talent he possessed, of
annihilating distance, was taking hold: the creepy idea that the world stayed small even after he got out of
straight-line mode; for now and then, in some ghostly way, the smallness
lingered; it happened in moments like this, when a whispering sparkle of
smallness, irreverently trickling through cracks in one’s concentration, caused glints on the sidelines of vision. That was how on occasion the vision flashed its knowing
smile, planting advance colonies of awareness in the
interstices of normal life. He did not particularly like this sensation, but it
had its points. It would at least prevent him from suffering too much awe in
this Chamber of Notables. Not that the President was here this evening; Waretik
Thanth was too busy even for this. Vice-President Muntak Farilly was doing the
honours. Easy. Just climb that last step. Let the little man put that
medallion-chain round your neck… and let the remaining hours gurgle away.
The
next week came and went. No word from Pjerl. Midax was left to soak in the
wonder of it all, as usual. To build structures of vain speculation, as usual. Fruitlessly
to ask: why – as usual – the promised word had not come.
Meanwhile
as a Notable he had acquired official duties which had to be seen to. He had
to weigh political questions, mediate, soothe, excite, take a stand or sit on a
fence; in particular he was pushed, by a written demand from on high, into a
task he had not foreseen. This task was one which, he was fairly sure, no other
Notable would have been lumbered with: that of “defusing contentious
metaphysical issues”.
“I’ve
already made a start, Mr President,” he wrote back, citing his contacts with
Rermer and Xapler of the Shapers’ College, as proof that he was an abstract
ideas-man as well as a Discoverer.
It turned out that this was not what the President meant. The
ancient, easy-going Shapers’ College presented no problem. What on the other
hand did, was –
Gevaltigall.
A
disquieting new word.
Not
many days after he first heard that name, two visitors, plus a silent secretary
with a tape-recorder, came to his rooms at the K’Tramboleion. The following
conversation was recorded:
BERCANE
CARPHRAE (a clean-cut, serious young man
with an air of confidence belying his years): You admit in principle,
Discoverer, that it could be possible to mount an expedition into Glight? An
expedition in search of the Designer?
MIDAX
RALE: I advise caution. Even at the earliest, dreaming stage!
BC:
Why so timid? If I may ask…
MR:
You talk of a – supposedly benevolent – Designer. Yet, we don’t know what
levels of possibly dangerous reality exist between this Designer and our
everyday life.
BC:
Ah, so you do then admit the existence of a Designer?
MR:
The possibility, yes.
BC:
And deep down your heart says – what?
MR:
My heart? (He almost lets out a sardonic
chuckle, but he swallows it back when one of those wafts of faint recall brings
back a distant childhood glow, the transcendent promise of the sunset clouds,
which evaporates all cynicism.) My heart used to suggest that the greatest
thing is not a Person but a Place.
BC:
Who then built the Place?
MC:
I suppose there has to be one thing which exists of itself… but I see what
you’re getting at. Yes, a thing of such quality ought to harbour Personality… I
can’t say more. I’m out of my depth.
LAFON
KOLOMONG (a sage from Poidal in the Far
East. With his long white beard he looks almost too good to be true. That butterfly-thought
flits to alight on the solider warning: watch it, Midax! Oriental philosophers do
really have, after all, thousands of years of intellect behind them! Better not
doze off during this meeting): Can you guess why we are here,
Discoverer-fon?
MR:
You sniffed the air and you said to yourself: just the day for a chat about
metaphysics.
LK:
We came to deliver a warning, Rale-fon.
MR:
Indeed, Kolomong-fon? A warning from Gevaltigall?
LK
(slowly nodding): Gevaltigall is
young and impatient, perhaps more impatient than a spiritual organization out
to be. But you of all people cannot complain, for you are virtually its
creator. Before you crossed the Zard, Gevaltigall was a tiny, obscure group. Since
then, it has ballooned into a Spiritual Congress. A force which the World
Government cannot ignore. Nor can you ignore it, Rale-fon.
BC
(chipping in): You can thank your
lucky stars, Discoverer, that Gevaltigall is taking action.
MR:
To clear up the mess I have made?
BC:
Shall we say: to give some coherent direction to the huge forces you have let
loose. But while we can to some extent direct, we cannot suppress the pressure
of human yearnings. The world knows that you may have found the key to the
ultimate reality. Serious talk is beginning, conferences are being held, about
the possibility of a Designer-Rhumb,
a Sounding into Glight. Whether or not such a mission is ever carried out, you
will need to think what you should say. You will have to have done your
homework.
MR:
Thank you, gentlemen. I admit, I may have some catching up to do.
...Yet
life for Midax remained an airy thing, much of his time spent Glighting hither
and thither on government business, facing faces, reporting reports, and
performing his duties as a Notable with a thinned and half-hearted awareness.
However,
in his spare time he did make some effort to work out his philosophical
position on the issue thrust upon him by Gevaltigall.
He
saw dangers ahead, arising from that Spritual Congress, if their “Designer
Rhumb” were to take form. Especially he saw danger if (as seemed inevitable) he
himself were called upon to lead that “Sounding into Glight”. Apart from the
possible latent terror of the expedition itself, immense socio-political minefields
must lie in wait for his return; accusations that he, Midax Rale, was
undermining – or, alternatively, confirming – the claims of religion… for the
dimension of Glight was fraught with possible religious implications. He must
think out his own position in good time…
Well,
the thought of a really meaty debate on the issue was not unwelcome. It gave some stimulus to his spirit.
Nevertheless,
what he really looked forward to was simply the quiet evenings in P’Arlcena
where he could hope, or imagine that he still hoped, that Pjerl would phone him
as she had said she would. His beliefs about Pjerl were in a kind of
suspension.
One
day Rermer Arpaieson sent for him and said bluntly,
“I
have been speaking with Pjerl Lhared on the phone.”
Midax
went numb. You? Aloud he said, “Yes?”
Rermer’s
voice became gentle. “I had to find out from her where things stood between
you. You are vitally important to us, Midax, far too important for us simply to
allow things to develop blindly… you understand?”
In
the face of this breath-taking impertinence, Midax was quite surprised to find that he actually felt no indignation whatsoever. Because
of his own desperate need to know the truth, he could even feel grateful. He
was willing to allow a latitude as wide as the ocean itself, to allow Rermer
to meddle in his private life as much as necessary, if only the investigation might yield meaningful results. “Yes? You managed to find out – what?”
Rermer
went on, uneasily, “You’re a Shaper and although we can’t force you to continue
as a Shaper, we can insist that while you are
a Shaper, you follow Shaper doctrine. That doctrine says that the decision
of Romance is final. Right? You agree, it says that. It says no person can
romeld more than once, right? Yes… but we need to know, we need to know what
you are going to do, and therefore we need to know what your options are: so I
finally phoned to find out. Because, as I say, you are far too important to
us…”
Midax
yelled, “Congratulations! You found out! So
could you please tell me what you found out and how the hell one finds anything
out –”
“I
will. Now.”
At the Director’s look of pity, the Discoverer went pale. His
fuming died.
“Now
listen, Midax, we said lots of things, she and I. We had a long talk. I had to
ask some personal questions; that was the point of the call, of course. Finally
I got round to asking if – to asking how she felt about you. And she replied,
that she thought you very special. But that she was never in love with you.”
Never.
Not
“no longer”. Never. Never. Oh by the way, cancel my life, will you? I’ve just
had a note saying it never happened…
In
a sense, nothing dramatic ensued. The mutilation of the soul is a quiet thing.
Decisive.
Irrevocable.
Permanent.
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