Man of the World by Robert Gibson

30: never

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.

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.