Watson, Ian - Black Current 03 (22 page)

 
          
Not
much of a sailor, are we?

 
          
This
isn't sailing. This is lunacy. How much further?

 
          
Just till I reach where I was formerly.
Soon, soon.

 
          
The Worm's head rolls through a hill
of water. Spray smashes into the open jaws.

 
          
Of a sudden, the onward motion
ceases. The Worm lolls.

 
          
Have
we arrived?

 
          
Yaleen!
It's starting! Mindbumer's starting! Oh the light, intolerable light! Oh the
dying! The lens o/Kas is forming. Oh the power—it's sweeping all the stars. I
can't shelter, can't protect—/

 
          
Worm?

 
          
A scream in the
mind.

 
          
Escape! Track back. Shift, shift!

 
          
Mount
Mardoluc
, in falling upon you,
broke your leg. You stayed on at the temple, scoffing gourmet meals while your
bone mended. Peli also stayed. Credence made her peace with you.

 
          
Then you stayed on some more, really
getting yourself involved in the synchronous rite and the periodic rite. By the
time
The Book of the Stars
was in
print everywhere, you were too deep into the rites of
Being
to tear yourself away. Besides, the river guild would dearly have loved to lay
their hands on you.

 
          
Some tens of weeks later, while
you're en-tranced in the synchronous rite, Mindbumer strikes. . . .

 
          
Shooshi and Zelya saved you from
suffocation; and Credence fled. She jogged back to 'Barbra. To win her way into
the favours of the river guild, she not only told where you were—she betrayed
the whole scheme to distribute
The Book
of the Stars
secretly everywhere from Tambimatu to Umdala.

 
          
A runner arrived with a warning, not
far ahead of Donnah's guards. You fled the temple, with Peli and Peera-pa.
Papa, of course, couldn't flee. By forest and jungle ways you fled, ending up
at last with friends of the 'Barbra cultists in Ajelobo.

 
          
Donnah burnt down the glorious secret
temple; so an Ajelobo newssheet reports. The story doesn't say whether Papa
Mardoluc was inside at the time. . . .

 
          
You didn't open your big mouth to
boast, aboard the
Crackerjill
docked
at Guineamoy. You blamed Stamno the renegade for the publication. You blamed
the river guild for bringing him to Pecawar to corrupt you. You were shocked.
You bitterly regretted. Donnah believed you.

 
          
In the end Mindbumer comes. When the
Worm is quenched and wrenched through time and space, your shield is gone.

 
          
And the Godmind slays you
impersonally. Not even in revenge for blighted roses. More like piranha-mice on
the rampage, hungry for every last living morsel. . . .

 
          
You stand atop the Spire at Verrino,
looking down upon town and river, remembering your first view of this vista.

 
          
Suddenly, there appears below you the
bowl of a valley instead. Farms, forests, lakes of flying fowl, and a strange
town (yet not so strange)—all enclosed by a great rim of crags.

 
          
One tiny fierce sun glares through a
second foggy red sun, like a life-seed incandescent in the yolk of an egg. The
seed is near the edge of the yolk. There's also a third sun, mellow yellow. A
moon of bone shares the sky.

 
          
An inner light blinds the universe. A
worm writhes and withers. Mindbumer!

 
          
"And as my wedding gift to you,
dear Podwy," the small chubby old man promises, "I shall weave the
grandest of all illusions!"

 
          
You're on the topmost platform of
Master Aldino's tower. Flagstones spiral outward from an open stairwell, each
flag painted with a different faint and flaking but still potent symbol, work
of the previous owner. The circuit wall is a shade too low for comfort. It's
barely waist-high. Immediately below, there's turf. Then jagged crags drop
away. On the north side of the tower these dive down to the black sea.
Southward, they tumble into the valley. To east and west the chain of hills
strides away. This keep is poised on the sharpest ridge of all, as if balanced
on an axe blade.

 
          
A path winds steeply down the south
face; none down the north face. Omphalos harbour lies far away, beyond the
softer southern crags.

 
          
As hat, the tower wears a cone of
wood on stilts. A system of gutters pipes rainwater down into tanks on the
floor below. One of these tanks is heated—spasmodically, clouds permitting—by a
mirror contraption jutting from the wall, which by means of clockwork follows
the path of Homesun to concentrate its rays. Thus there is hot and cold running
water in the living quarters, gravity-fed from overhead. This is only one of
the ingenious comforts. As a home, the keep isn't to be sniffed at; though
admittedly it's a strenuous climb down to the valley and back to fetch
groceries. If the crags were a bit nearer vertical, a bucket on the end of a
rope mightn't be a bad idea. Two other wives already reside in the keep, along
with a number of servant lads—potential Wizzes. So there's company, besides
Aldino's.

 
          
He gestures grandly across the
valley, almost overbalancing. "This afternoon, yon vale of Omphalos shall
wear any guise you choose.
Um, within reason."

 
          
And tonight, in the bedchamber, shall
he don his best illusory body in Pod's honour?

 
          
So long as old Aldy isn't too drunk
to concentrate (said senior wife Lotja, teasing—or bitching).

 
          
"Choose, my dear! Choose one of
those other worlds which you farsee! We shall let the good folk of Tomf wend
their way for an hour or so bemused through alien thoroughfares. Um, I hope no
other Big Wizz gets annoyed. Still, why should they? We're all friends, after a
fashion. It's my third wedding day. Licence is allowed."

 
          
"Shall other Wizzes be coming as
guests?"

 
          
"Perhaps some shall peep in,
from far." Aldino's finger wavers about till he locates the fretted bump
of another keep away to the east. "Perhaps Master Airshoe shall float
over. Let's hope he doesn't bother. Has an eye for my Lotja, does Master
Airshoe; and this evening I shall have my attention diverted, eh Podwy?"

 
          
Time to prompt Pod.

 
          
"Do tell me, Master, how do you
manage to weave such wonderful illusions for all to see?"

 
          
"Um.
Well, let me see. Waves of energy are forever rebounding off the world. Some of
these waves—only a
few,
mark you, out of many—pass
through the windows of your eyes.
Right?
So already youTe gathering in just one aspect of a reflection.
What's more, your eyes don't actually see. They simply gather the waves. When
those waves wash against the back of the eye, echoes are made. And those echoes
of an aspect of a reflection travel onward into your head."

 
          
He taps his balding pate. "In
here your brain dreams up images which it believes to correspond to those
echoes. By now you're at four removes from reality. Count them: image, echo,
aspect, reflection. What I do is reverse this process. I imagine that I'm
seeing something quite different, something I wish to see. I send out echoes of
stronger, more potent aspects. Other folk in the neighbourhood reflect those
echoes—and they dream that they see what I'm imagining."

 
          
With that mischievous grin of his, he
adds, "Leastways, that's what I
feel
that I'm doing, my dearest. That's the way I have to feel to accomplish
illusions. Yet mayhap I'm really doing something entirely different! Mayhap
what I've described is only the emblem which I show to myself, wherewith to
unlock my magic." He stabs a demonstrative finger at various symbols on
the stone flags. "An emblem such as those ones; though my own emblem is
inscribed inside my head, out of sight. Of course, while doing all this I need
to bless the name of Lordevil who empowers me."

 
          
You confer with your hostess.

 
          
Pod says, "Master Aldino, I've
decided which world I wish to see spread across this vale."

 
          
"Dino to you,
dearest girl."
He pats and tweaks Pod's shoulder, where some flesh
is exposed. "Would you care to give me a teasing glimpse?"

 
          
Wedding hour.
Homesun beams down. Blindspot bums through Redfog. Bigmoon is a faint white
bone aloft.

 
          
Below in the living quarters a feast
awaits: of spit-roast fowl, gingerworms baked in sweetcrust, pickled cumber,
decapod claws, wrack cake, rasperry pud,
ricewine
.

 
          
Up atop the tower here, Lotja plays
airs on her xithar whilst midwife Polloo chats to Master Airshoe who did
indeed float over. He arrived on a fluffy little cloud of his own conjuring.
When Airshoe walks on air, he prefers not to see too much empty space yawning
beneath. He's a well-built fellow with a neatly jutting beard and a big
tuberous nose. His lips are fat and juicy. Studiously ignoring Lotja for the
nonce, he occupies himself with Polloo.

 
          
Plus several more guests; no doubt
including some uninvited ones who aren't present in person, only in the mind's
eye. However, the guest list shall shortly include every soul in
Tomf,
and in Omphalos valley too. Hand in hand with Pod,
Aldino poses at the parapet. He looks outward. He breathes deeply. He looks
inward.

 
          
Now,
Pod! Farsee!

 
          
And shift!

 
          
Shift back.

 
          
Appears
Verrino. .
. .

 
          
You're high atop the Spire (of
course). Below in the vale is Verrino town, just as it was before the Sons
trashed the place. No ash heaps or rubble. No broken windows; no smashed
terracotta urns.

 
          
You can see all these details
clearly, for Verrino town is magnified, enlarged. Verrino fills up half of
Omphalos valley—surely Aldino got things out of proportion! Verrino isn't
superimposed on Tomf, one to one. Tomf is totally submerged by the visionary
city. Maybe a single Verrino plaza or wine-arbour holds the real Tomf hidden
within. Far from having to blunder through the alien alleys of another world,
the good folk of Tomf can only stare amazed at this city of giants which has
suddenly sprung up, swallowing and dwarfing their mini-ville.

 
          
Where are the giant inhabitants? No
one is about in Verrino. It must be very early morning.

 
          
Beyond Verrino, bends the river.

 
          
Ah, now you understand the workings
of this vision. The whole vista is as if seen through the eye of a fish.
Consequently the heart of Verrino town is enlarged, and fills up the
foreground. At the outskirts it bends away, shrinking fast. The river also
bends away, curving beside increasingly distorted shores. The whole illusion
seems wrapped around a globe of air, or a balloon, which nestles in Omphalos
vale.

 
          
The vision is how you imagine one of
those goose eggs which Dario's brother said he painted; if instead of men's
nude bodies curving around the shell you had a whole town and river, with the
vale as the eggcup.

 
          
It's a circle of Ka-space, wrapped
compactly around itself—writ large. It's an electon, hugely magnified.

 
          
The electon encloses a whole town. It
could easily enclose an entire world. It's only a conjured illusion.
Or is it?

 
          
"Bravo!" applauds Master
Airshoe. Lotja riffs her xithar, repeating the same phrase a dozen times over.

 
          
"Your wedding gift, my
dear," puffs the proud conjuror.