Grimus (28 page)

—In some Dimensions, said Grimus, the Object is different. It varies according to the capabilities of the ruling species, you see. There are settings for space-warp, Travel to parallel dimensions, and so forth.

Flapping Eagle spoke.

—I haven’t changed my mind, Grimus, he said. I am going to break that thing. You can’t control it. It controls you. And then there are the blinks. The Rose is damaged, Grimus. It is dangerous. It has made you dangerous.

Grimus’ eyes gleamed for a moment, then went dull.

—Please, he said, and there was a new pleading tone in his voice. I would like to show you just one more discovery of mine. If it does not persuade you of the enormous value of the Rose, of the importance of preserving it and maintaining it when I am dead, then I will allow you to do whatever you wish. Just one discovery.

Flapping Eagle could not deny him. It was a small thing to concede. Now that he had the Rose in his reach, Grimus could not hold him back. After all, Flapping Eagle told himself, he was armed. Not just with bow and arrow, but with a powerful obligation. To Virgil. To his own, destructive past. This time his Ions could be put to good use: if he was a destroyer, let him at least destroy dangerous things.

Grimus had moved to a darkened corner of the small room. He took a cloth off a small object lying there. It was a transparent, spherical shape with a hançlle on each side. As Grimus picked it up by one of its handles, it began to glow.

—I foresaw I would have great difficulty in getting you to see my point of view, he said. It was for this reason that I conceptualized the Subsumer. If you take the other handle, we can communicate telepathically. Through the medium of this sphere. Are you willing?

Flapping Eagle hesitated for a moment.

—Are you afraid? asked Grimus in a child’s sing-song voice.

Flapping Eagle said: —No. He could take anything which Grimus, the ancient infant, could take. He had already proved the strength of his will, after all.

He put down his ju-ju stick on the edge of the Rose’s coffin and came up to Grimus. Then, taking a deep breath, he grasped the proferred handle of the—what was it?— the
Subsumer
.

The last thing he remembered as Flapping Eagle was Grimus’ high, shrill voice saying delightedly: —
My old mother always told me, you’ve got to trick people into accepting new ideas
.

(I was Flapping Eagle.)

(I was Grimus.)

Self. My self. Myself and he alone. Myself and his self in the glowing bowl. Yes, it was like that. Myself and himself pouring out of ourselves into the glowing bowl.

Easy does it. You swallow me, I swallow you. Mingle, commingle. Come mingle. Grow together, come. You into me into you
. His thoughts.

Yes, it was like that, Printing. Like printing. Press, his thoughts pressed over mine, under mine, through and into mine, his thoughts mine. Mine his.
The swallow is a graceful bird
. Two swallows, and then one half-eagle-half-him and the other half-him-half-eagle. Yes, it was like that. We were one there in the glowing bowl, two here in the flesh. Yes.

My son
. The mind of Grimus rushing to me. You are my son, I give you my life.
I have become you, I have become you are me
. The mind of Grimus, rushing through. The mandarin monk released into me in an orgasm of thinking. The halfbreed, semisemitic prisoner of war and his contradictions, the aportance of self coexisting with the utter necessity of imparting that self, cruel necessity, ineluctable, the mind of Grimus rushing through. Like a beating of wings his self flying in.
My son, my son, what father fathered a son like this, as I do in my sterility
.

The light faded in the glowing sphere; the transfer was complete. I let go of my handle—my body was mine to command once more. He released his grip as well. The sphere fell.

And shattered on the stone floor.

—Now, he said. Now we are the same. Now you understand.

Mad? What is mad? It would be easy to call him mad, but he is in my head now and I can see his whys. They are not whys which go well into words. The undermining horror of prison camp, the destruction of his human dignity, of his belief in the whole human race; the subsequent burrowing away, away from the world, into books and philosophies and mythologies, until these became his realities, these his friends and companions, and the world was just an awful nightmare; the monkish man finding beauty in birds and stories. And then the Rose and a chance to shape a world and a life and a death exactly as he wanted, and naturally since he had no regard for his species he did not care what he did to them. They had done enough to him. To his birds, he was kind. He gathered them around him and lived out his favourite story, his ornithological myth. Mad? What is mad? To him, ideas were the sole justification for existence; and when he found the knowledge and power to play with his ideas, he could not be stopped. Knowledge corrupts; absolute knowledge corrupts absolutely. Yes, he was mad. But he is in me, and I know him.

There is still an
I
. An
I
within me that is not
him
.

We are at war about the Rose.

—Look, said Grimus. (I was in him as he is in me. The Subsumer works both ways.)

He held up a small mirror, held it against his chest, angled up towards my face.

My hair had become white. It was his face now, his face entirely, his head on my shoulders.

I was Flapping Eagle.

A second secret door, leading into the room where Media slept. This small room, at the very centre of the house, adjoining most of its rooms. Grimus (who was partly Flapping Eagle) led Media by the hand to where I stood, by the coffin which held the Rose.

—Stay here, he said. Look after each other. They will come soon. But even Bird-Dog does not know about this room.

There was fear in his face. I recognized it; it was my fear. It was the
me
which he had imbibed that was scared of dying.

—You will not harm the Rose now, he said. We are the same.

And he left.

—He’s changed you, she whispered.

Media was looking at me, wide-eyed.

I held her hand. At least she was the same. One constant thing in a transfigured universe.

The Rose. The
him
in me had a will of its own, and it was forcing me to bow to its wishes. The
I
in me was weakened, enfeebled by the shock of subsumation. I stood looking at the Rose for a long, long time. The bump on its stem seemed to acquire a great fascination for me, a magnetic attraction. Perhaps it was the
him
in me which did that.

Suddenly, I grasped the Rose. By the bump. It fitted well into my hand. Then I screamed, and Media screamed. I screamed in pain. She screamed because I disappeared from the room altogether.

I had Travelled.

The pain is caused by one’s first experience of the Outer Dimensions. Suddenly the universe dissolves, and for a fraction of time you are simply a small bundle of energy adrift in a sea of unimaginably vast forces. It is a devastating, agonizing piece of knowledge. Then it—the universe— assembled once again.

When the Gorfs created the Objects which linked the infinity of Conceived and Inconceivable Dimensions, they always included one element which beamed directly to the planet Thera. The bump served that function on the Stone Rose.

I was there, on Thera, beneath the star Nus, at the edge of the Yawy Klim galaxy in the Gorf Nirveesu. In a small airbubble, sitting on a wide flat rock. Being observed.

Outside, yellow sun against black sky, and a number of stone monoliths surrounding me.

—They look like frogs, I thought. Huge stone frogs. (I-me thought it, not I-Grimus. I-Grimus was reserving its powers to fight me over the Rose.)

—Is it Grimus?
The thought, unspoken, unformed into words, came into my mind. It was followed by a second, a deeper, wiser thought-form.

—
Yes … no … ah, I see
. I had the sense of being stripped naked. My mind had been scanned.

—Where are you? I shouted, and the I-Grimus within me told me that these monoliths, lumpy, huge and surrounded in a slight haze, were the most intelligent life-form in any Galaxy, and that the second thought-form had been that of the great thinker Dota himself.

—
The non-Grimus element appears to be marginally in command
, came a third thought-form.

—
Good
. Dota again.
Listen
, he thought at me, slightly too loud, like a man dealing with a stupid foreigner.
We are the Gorfs
. There then followed a very rapid series of thought-forms which told me the history of tibe race and the Objects.

—
We have two great concerns
, thought Dota.
The first is for the Gorf Koax, who has settled irrelevantly in your Endimions. Should you meet him, kindly let him know that his gross Bad Order has led to his being banned from Thera. He is not welcome here. He stands or falls with your Endimions
.

—Ah, I thought.

—
Which leads us to our second concern
, thought Dota.
We are extremely perturbed about Grimus’ misuse of the Rose. It was never intended to be a tool for intra-endimions travel. Nor a magic box for the production of food. It is a flagrant distortion of Conceptual Technology to use the Rose to Conceptualize a packet of
(he searched for the right form)
coffee
.

Most particularly we are worried about the sub-endimions he has set up on the mountain-top. Sub-endimions are Conceptually unsound. A place is either part of an Endimions or it is not. To Conceptualize a
place which is both a part of an Endimions and yet secret from it could stretch the Object to disintegration-point. We would like this ridiculous Concept to be dissolved forthwith. That is all. You may return
.

I could feel the I-Grimus part of me throbbing angrily at Dota’s reproof. Then I realized there were some questions that could be answered here better than anywhere else.

—Dota, I thought.

—
Yes?
The thought was curt, the form of a great mind disturbed.

—Are the blinks in our Dimension a result of the mutilation of the Rose?

—
We don’t know
, came the reply.
Yours is the only Object to have been defaced, and the only Endimions which blinks. There may be a cause and effect relationship. There may not. It may be something which should concern you. It may not. We don’t know everything, you understand
.

—One more question, I asked. The air in my bubble felt stale. I would have to go soon.

—
Well?

—Is it possible to Conceptualize a Dimension … Endimions … which does not contain any Object?

A long pause, in which I felt complex arguments flashing between the assembled Gorfs.

—
We cannot be sure
, said Dota.
For us, the answer would be No, since the very existence of the Endimions relative to us is a function of the Object. But for a dweller in the Endimions
… a mental shrug-form followed.

—
Goodbye
, said Dota’s lieutenant.

I searched in the I-Grimus and found the technique for returning to the Rose. A moment later I stood in the secret room again.

Media looked very relieved!

Flann O’Toole, wearing his Napoleon hat, right hand concealed in his buttoned greatcoat, face whisky-red, climbing the steps. At his side, One-Track Peckenpaw, raccoon hat jammed on, bearskin coat enveloping his bulk, coiled rope hanging over one shoulder, rifle in hand. And behind them, P. S. Moonshy, a glaring-eyed, unshaven clerk. An unlikely trinity of nemesis nearing its goal.

Grimus stood in the shade of the great ash, beside his home, the particoloured head-dress fluttering in the slight breeze, his birds lining his shoulders, clustered around him on the ground, watching over him from the vast spreading branches. His hands twitched; otherwise he was completely still.

And eventually, the four of them stood facing each other, knowing what had to be done.

Grimus said:

—I have learnt all I wish to learn.

I have been all I wish to be.

I am complete.

I have planned this. It is time.

But in his high, shrill voice was the uncertainty of the subsumed Eagle within him, the second self protesting. It had not chosen this death.

Flann O’Toole said: —Where is your machine, Mr Grimus? You kept it a secret from your servant woman, we know that, surely. You’ll not keep it from us.

Grimus said nothing.

—One-Track, said O’Toole, try and persuade the gentleman to converse with us.

A few moments later, when Grimus’ nose was broken, his eyes closing, his skin bruised, and his lips still sealed, O’Toole said: —Don’t kill him, man. Not yet. Peckenpaw released Grimus. Who swayed on his feet as the blood streamed from him, but remained erect. Birds screamed in the tree.

—Search the house, said Flann O’Toole.

One-Track Peckenpaw and P. S. Moonshy went into Grimushome then, but found nothing. They did, however, wreck whatever they could; and when they came out, Grimus’ shrouded collection lay around its pedestals in fragments, the shards of a lifetime’s Travel. The Crystals, broken. The Ion Eye, trodden on and crushed.

Suddenly, as they emerged into the misty dawn light, the whine stopped. Abruptly, without any warning. It was simply no longer there.

Flann O’Toole was watching Grimus; so he saw the face sag, saw the look of horror in the blackened eyes, saw the exhaustion seep through the pain. He saw it, and smiled.

—You found it, then, he said to Peckenpaw.

—We found a whole lot of things, said Peckenpaw. So we broke them all. I dunno what they were.

—O, you found it, said O’Toole. Mr Grimus here has just this minute told me.

Grimus remained silent.

—One more thing, said Peckenpaw. I want Flapping Eagle. Where is he?

Grimus said nothing.