MacRoscope (66 page)

Authors: Piers Anthony

Tags: #sf, #sf_social, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Science Fiction, #Science fiction; American

BOOK: MacRoscope

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Why?
Why interfere at all, this creature with a galaxy to supervise? Could it have seen some hope in her, in humanity? Did it want them to return to Earth with their message of galactic and intergalactic culture? Yet Afra could not return to Earth by herself, and she had turned her back on him.

At least, he thought with transitory irony, he didn’t have to worry about Schön interfering. Geis apart, Schön could not take over again, since Afra wouldn’t cooperate with him and the destroyer fields suffused all the galaxy. Schön was barred from space. He, Ivo, could now draw freely on any or all of Schön’s talents as required without risking his identity. He could get home. He had only to reduce his personality when actually dealing with the destroyer, protecting his immunity; at other times he could, literally, be a genius.

Fat consolation
, he thought, watching Afra’s dainty feet moving.
You can use it to fathom why you lost her
.

Yes — the genius of Schön would clarify that, at least. Ivo reached… sunburst! He understood exactly what Afra was doing.

“Girl,” he said clearly.

She halted. She had not been walking rapidly and had not yet entered the adjacent chamber. She was still, in the imagery of the recent contest, in Pluto or Neptune. Obsession, obligation — yet so much more, positive as well as negative.

“What the cloud doeth,” he said, “the Lord knoweth; the cloud knoweth not.”

She turned slowly. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s a quote from Sidney Lanier. The course of the cloud may be predestined, but Man possesses free will.” He had spoken in Russian.

Her capitulation was as sudden as her awakening. She skipped across the room and threw herself into his arms. “I knew you weren’t a cloud, Ivo!” she murmured before she kissed him.

Further explanation was unnecessary, yet the hard-core Ivo in him ran it through during their extended embrace. Afra had wanted neither the omniscient supercilious Schön nor the stodgy ignorant Ivo. She required compromise: Ivo’s personality with Schön’s abilities. For neither identity alone represented the complete man. Schön had never grown up, while Ivo had shied away from the exercise of his rightful talents. How could a woman really love half of a schizoid personality?

But the destroyer had shifted the balance and broken the stalemate, making Ivo the artist. He could unify and control — and time and experience had made his identity the more fit of the two for human intercourse. A child normally grew into an adult — and to abolish the adult Ivo in favor of the child Schön would be a foolhardy inequity.

Thus the personal equation. Boy had not won girl; man had won woman.

What, now, of Earth? Mankind was a child-culture with adolescent technology; were they to present it with devastating
adult
technology? Or would it be better to stay clear and allow natural selection to function, as it did elsewhere in the galaxy?

“What the artist doeth,” he murmured, “the Lord knoweth; knoweth the artist not?”

Certain astrological passages used in the text are quoted and/or adapted from ASTROLOGY,
How and Why It Works
by Marc Edmund Jones, copyright 1945, and
The Sabian Symbols
by Marc Edmund Jones, copyright 1966, both published by the Sabian Publishing Society. Reference is also made to
Astrology and Its Practiced Application
by E. Parker, translated from the Dutch by Coba Goedhart: P. Dz. Veen, Publisher, Amersfoort, Holland, 1927.

ISBN: 0-380-00209-4

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