Night Lamp (21 page)

“Love affairs are both intense and highly romantic though of short duration. Children are nurtured in crèches with little parental attention.

“As individuals, the folk of Dimplewater are polite, though the off-worlder often finds them a bit cool. Their most distinctive trait is not at all obvious. This is the fact that each lives psychologically alone, as if he himself were an island.

“Very odd,” said Jaro. “It seems something of an affectation.”

Hilyer shrugged. “It is more serious than mere social panache. Everyone is rich; everyone is proud; no one feels a need for social support, so each person lives his life and celebrates his tamsour alone.”

“ ‘Tamsour’?” Jaro was again puzzled. “What is ‘tamsour’?”

Hilyer leaned back in his chair, looked toward the ceiling and spoke in the ponderous voice he reserved for important topics. “If I could answer that question, I’d rank as the foremost xenologist of the Gaean Reach. It is an idea which baffles off-worlders, tourists and sociologists alike. Still, I can describe ‘tamsour’ and some of its effects. It seems to mean the totality of one’s life, condensed into a single drop of essence, a single profound symbol, a single moment of total enlightenment. But these are words and tamsour can’t be put into words.”

“It sounds like a spasm of hysterical revelation,” said Jaro.

“To a certain extent. But the tamsour has extraordinary power, so that society at large acts like a mass of radioactive material. At random intervals one of its components becomes unaccountably overstressed and explodes in a great gout of energy. This person always provides a dramatic peroration; it is expected of him and he seldom disappoints. Tamsour is the theme; and the substance is usually personal aggrandizement, sometimes a bit of self-pity, but never apologies for past misdeeds, real or imaginary.”

Hilyer took up a cartridge from the table. “I have here the record of one such peroration.” Hilyer dropped the cartridge into his sound reproducer. “You will hear a man speaking to an attentive audience. The man is abnormally excited; he is overstressed and beyond reason. Presently he self-destructs, as dramatically and poetically as possible. The episode arouses wide critical interest and is discussed in murmurs of knowledgeable analysis.”

“Odd.”

“Ha!” said Hilyer. “You haven’t heard the worst of it. Sometimes the death-seeker gathers quantities of beautiful goods: rugs, porcelains, rare wood filigrees, bibelots, ancient curious. Often he heartlessly confiscates such precious objects from his friends and neighbors, taking care to seize their most treasured possessions. He heaps these priceless objects around a central pylon and sets them ablaze, dancing a jig on a high platform, singing out his own requiem. Listen: this is the declamation.”

Hilyer touched a button on his instrument. A sonorous voice cried out: “Here I stand, the darling of time, the king of light, the soul of love, the blissful, precious and beloved core of all being! I am the preeminent one, who was destined for great things! I knew it; everyone knew it; it was self-evident. Now, where is the golden promise? I cry out against injustice; it is rampant in the cosmos and at last it has tricked me, so that I see no choice except to end the entire sorry mess. But if I die not in victory, at least I stand resplendent in the glory of my tamsour! If the cosmos thinks to play this tragic joke upon me, the cosmos shall suffer more than I, since I go out in a suffusion of beauty! This smoke I breathe, it is like incense; I am intoxicated with the beauty of my going! Let the cosmos beware! The future is blank, but I shall glory in my sunset colors of death! I will be famed for my great tamsour! Now behold: I soar from my place on high; I fly in utter brave and parabolic elegance to the end of all!”

The voice ended. Another voice said without emphasis: “The gentleman Varvis Malapan has just plunged a hundred feet to his death, and so has consummated his tamsour. He is no more. The cosmos he ruled has disappeared, and is less than a void. It is gone, beyond memory.”

Hilyer retrieved the sound cartridge. “An occasion like this is uncommon. Perhaps one person in a hundred feels strongly enough about his tamsour to so dedicate his being.”

“I find it a bit eery,” said Jaro.

Jaro accompanied the Faths to the space terminal and saw them aboard the majestic
Francil Ambar
, then waited while the ports slid shut and warning lights shone from the start-off pods. The great shape rose into the air. Jaro, standing by the rail of the observation terrace, watched until the ship was lost to sight behind high clouds. For another five minutes he stood by the rail, gazing aimlessly across the field, into the sky and over the forest beyond; then turned and went to the machine shop.

“The Faths are gone,” he told Gaing. “I feel useless and dull. Perhaps I’m more dependent upon them than I like to think.”

Gaing poured him a cup of tea. “So what’s on your schedule?”

Jaro sipped the tea and seemed to derive energy from the bitter brew. “The usual: work, workouts with Bernal. I’m just starting to get the hang of what he calls the ‘low trapezoid.’ ”

“Learn well! The trick may save your life some day.”

Jaro flexed his arms. “I feel better already. Have you had your lunch?”

“Not yet.”

“Then let’s step over to Sad Henry’s; it’s my turn to buy.”

Over lunch Jaro told Gaing of Skirl and her problems. Gaing was impressed. “She sounds like a girl with spirit.”

“Worse than that; she’s a Clam Muffin.”

“You have Merriehew to yourself; why not invite her in to keep house for you?”

“The thought has occurred to me,” Jaro admitted. “It’s an impractical daydream at best. At worst, I’d be doing all the cooking and the washing-up as well.”

Gaing nodded soberly, but made no comment. Jaro went on. “I’m not sure how it would work out. She might distract me from what I really want to do, which is to find out where the Faths first came upon me.”

“That should not be too hard.”

“Hah! The Faths have carefully muddled their records: they know I’ll be searching, and I’ve looked everywhere I could think of already. One day I found a note from Hilyer: ‘Jaro, please don’t make a mess of the papers in this drawer. Sometimes you are not too neat.’ ”

“What did you do?”

“I started to write below the message: ‘There would be less mess if I knew where to look.’ But I decided that this was undignified, so I put the note back the way it was.”

“This reminds me,” said Gaing. “I have some news for you. Do you remember Tawn Maihac?”

“Of course! He left without saying goodbye; I was afraid that something bad had happened to him.”

Gaing, intending a winsome smile, showed Jaro a twisted leer. “You were more right than wrong.”

“What happened to him?”

“I’ll let him tell you himself. He’ll be back in Thanet before long.”

The Faths were gone. Jaro was alone at Merriehew. The house seemed full of whispers, and Jaro’s footsteps rang hollow through the empty rooms. At night when he lay in his bed, he sometimes thought to hear echoes of Hilyer’s stately periods, or a whisper of Althea’s gurgling laugh, but more often the mutters and grumbles and twitters came, so it seemed, from the house itself.

Jaro telephoned Sassoon Ayry. He heard only a recorded message to the effect that the house was closed for an indefinite period, but that important inquiries might be directed to the secretary of the Clam Muffin Committee. Jaro placed such a call and asked for Skirl’s address. As he had expected, the information was coldly denied him. Jaro gave his name and asked that Skirl Hutsenreiter be notified that he had called. The voice said that his request would be duly processed, which Jaro took to mean a quick trip to the wastebasket. However, halfway through the evening Skirl reached him at Merriehew. Her voice was chilly and she came directly to the point: why had he called?

Jaro explained that he wanted to make sure that all was well with her, and he hoped that she had found accommodations to her taste.

Skirl said that at the moment conditions were satisfactory; in fact she was occupying her old quarters at Sassoon Ayry.

Jaro expressed surprise. He thought the house had been closed.

Correct, said Skirl. She had entered by a secret route and planned to maintain a covert residence until her father returned. There were disadvantages; for instance, she dared not use the telephone, nor otherwise advertise her presence for fear of alerting the guard who patrolled the grounds, nor could she gracefully receive visitors.

Jaro asked what she had learned at the library. Nothing encouraging, said Skirl. In her opinion, the requirements for an effectuator’s license—even a beginner’s permit—were far too rigid. She was not nearly old enough; she had not taken a degree in criminal law, nor yet had she trained with the IPCC. The “General Instructions” also noted that a substantial working capital was of the greatest importance. She had also been discouraged by the statement: “A competent effectuator must be able to mix unobtrusively into any and every social milieu, from the most squalid back-country brothels to the salons of beautiful and cultured artists. Danger frequently is rife.”

Jaro tried to lift her spirits. “There are bound to be challenges, but you are well equipped to cope with them.”

“In a back-country brothel?” snapped Skirl. “I am a Clam Muffin, after all!”

Jaro said thoughtfully: “You must select your cases with care.”

“Sometimes that is not possible,” said Skirl. She continued to read from the “General Instructions”:

“The skillful effectuator is a special sort of person. He combines high intellectual capacity, a protean social presence, ruthless executive skills. He is clever, creative, expert in the use of weapons. He must be immune to pain and adaptable to any cuisine, no matter how bizarre it may seem initially. MOST IMPORTANT! He must have at his disposal a working fund which—’ ”

Skirl threw the “General Instructions” aside. “In effect they deny me my learner’s permit, which would serve me as well as a license. I still have the certificate Myrl Sunder gave me; it will suffice.”

“What about the financial reserves and a legal degree? If you studied a term or two at the Institute, you’d have better qualifications.”

“Yes, so it might be, but the prospect does not appeal to me.”

Skirl broke the connection before Jaro could suggest a picnic in the country or a visit to Blue Mountain Lodge, or some other such outing. Jaro leaned back in his chair, and sat drinking beer from Hilyer’s favorite mug, which Althea never allowed him to use, on grounds of lese majeste. He considered his own plans for the summer. They could be divided into three categories. First, he would work at the space terminal as many hours as convenient. Second, he would continue his training in the ever more complicated study of hand-to-hand combat. Thirdly, he would take advantage of the Faths’ absence to search for records which would help him discover his origins.

The Faths arrived at the Ushant spaceport early in the day. Entry formalities were minimal and by mid-morning they were on their way to Dimplewater, twenty miles north, aboard a train of open-sided observation cars which took them at a leisurely pace through the flamboyant jungle known as the Gages of Lyrhidion. Clusters of pink, black and orange featherferns shuddered in the breeze, emitting puffs of sweet-scented spores which, when collected and compressed, yielded a confection much enjoyed by local folk. At intervals maddercap spines rose two-hundred feet, to stand stiff and rigid as poles. Each spine terminated in a ten-foot knob, from which spurted a corona of orange flames, regular as flower petals. The flames burned perpetually, and by night, from an altitude, the Gages of Lyrhidion seemed a field of flameflowers.

For much of the distance, the train followed the course of a slow river, in and out of the shade of green weeping willows and lantern jasmines. Wooded islands appeared at intervals, each with a rustic cottage, its porch overlooking the water.

Arriving in Dimplewater, the Faths went to their hotel and were shown into quarters of more than adequate comfort. Wide windows opened on a typical scene: a bridge of carved age-darkened wood, the waterway below, a strip of ebony trees with salmon-pink heart-shaped leaves; then beyond, at a distance of two hundred yards, the rotunda of the Hotel Tia-Taio, the venue of the conclave; and a marvel of architecture in its own right. The hemisphere of the rotunda, blocks of colored glass six inches thick fused into an integral shell, rose two hundred feet above ground level. Sunlight, refracting through the glass, illuminated the interior with a coruscation of color. By night, light of a similar quality issued from a massive globe suspended on an iron chain. Construction of this globe was simple but elegant. To a matrix of iron web, faceted jewels had been fixed: rubies, emeralds, sapphires, topazes, jacynths, a dozen others. Light from an internal source, passing through the jewels, illuminated the chamber with colored light richer and deeper than the light from the daytime rotunda.

The Faths presently left their hotel, crossed the bridge and walked under the ebony trees to the rotunda adjoining the Hotel Tia-Taio. In the lobby they chanced upon Laurz Mur, the chairman of the arrangements committee. Laurz Mur was quietly handsome, if somewhat stately and impersonal. Althea found him both fascinating and amusing; Hilyer was not at all amused, and considered Mur little more than an elegant dilettante.

Mur invited them to lunch, where he exerted himself to be a pleasant companion, so that even Hilyer’s suspicions were lulled. Mur was much interested in the Faths’ special field: artistic symbolism, with an emphasis upon musical forms.

“I myself take a rather more perceptive view of the subject than does the ordinary amateur; indeed, I confess to a few trifles of original research, and a document or two relevant to my conclusions. No, no!” he demurred as Althea asked to look over his papers. “First I must put them into their final form.”

Mur refused to speak further of his work. He addressed Hilyer, “Have you seen the schedule?”

“Not yet.”

Mur produced a pair of pamphlets which he gave to Hilyer and Althea. “You will find that you are to take the podium tomorrow morning. I hope that this is convenient?”

“Very much so! I’ll be happy to give my talk, then relax for the rest of the conclave.”

“As I recall,” mused Laurz Mur, “there’s another speaker from Thanet scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.”

Althea glanced at her copy of the schedule. “That will be Dean Hutsenreiter. His paper deals with the permutations of language and is said to be very profound.”

Mur consulted his notes. “I’ll miss him, since I have a meeting I must attend.” He gave his head a sad shake. “But then—I will never undertake such a task again.”

Althea inquired, “I’ve been looking down the list, and I don’t see any local names save your own. Are there no scholars on Ushant?”

“Not many. For one reason or another our most notable savants go off-world to study, where they take their honors and seldom return. Again, we are not particularly apt at abstract research. We have many outstanding musicians, but few musicologists.”

“Interesting,” said Hilyer. “May I ask a personal question?”

Laurz Mur smiled politely. “Of course.”

“You are wearing on the epaulet of your jacket a set of small devices, which look like recording equipment. What is their purpose?”

Laurz Mur’s smile became a trifle thin. “The explanation is rather complex; with me, the devices are no more than a habit, since I do not take their purpose seriously.”

“And as for that purpose?”

Laurz Mur shrugged. “Folk since time immemorial have kept journals and diaries for themselves. These devices assist in that purpose. They record the events of one’s life, and for a fact become an excellent reference should someone forget an important fact or an appointment.”

“How do you deal with such a volume of information?”

“We set aside a few moments of each day to organize the material. What is important, we save. The rest we discard. It is an obsessive habit, but for some reason we cannot break it. Now you must excuse me. I have enjoyed our meeting and will certainly cherish it among my mementos.”

The Faths looked after his retreating back. “Amazing folk,” said Hilyer. “Do you know what I think?”

“Probably,” said Althea. “Tell me anyway.”

“These folk live in near-ideal circumstances; still, they are morose. Why? Because the wheel of time is grinding away at their lives, and they have no place to go. They collect pretty trinkets and write in their diaries. Every day it’s the same. The moments of their lives fleet past, along with their hopes for a glorious tamsour. I may or may not be using the word correctly.”

“Hmf,” sniffed Althea. “No one cares whether I have a nice tamsour or not.”

“You won’t get much sympathy on Ushant. They are worried about themselves only.”

“You may be right.”

“Laurz Mur wasted very little time with us. He finished his lunch, then took off like a flushed grouse,” noted Hilyer.

“We did not exhilarate him,” said Althea. “Hilyer, tell me the truth: do I exhilarate you?”

“No,” said Hilyer. “But you’re comfortable.”

On the following day Laurz Mur called the conclave of xenologists to order. Standing on the speaker’s podium, he swept the audience with an appraising eye. Five hundred xenologists came under his purview: every sort of philosopher, explorer, biologist, anthropologist, historian, cultural psychologist, linguist, analytical aesthetician, philologer, dendrologist, lexicographer, cartologist, and a dozen other more recondite professions. Some were scheduled speakers; others would listen and engage in the important work of intellectual cross-fertilization. Still others had brought papers they intended to read, if the opportunity offered, or even if not: somehow, by hook or by crook, the precious paper with its carefully honed phrases and engaging new ideas must be heard!

Laurz Mur completed his survey and, apparently satisfied, raised a satinwood baton and with a graceful gesture struck a small bronze gong. The audience quieted. Laurz Mur spoke. “Ladies and gentlemen! Needless to say, it is an honor of the highest degree to address so many famous savants. It shall be a notable passage in my mementos! But there is no time to indulge in mutual benedictions. We run on a strictly regulated schedule and will adjourn this morning’s session promptly at noon. Without further ado, I introduce to you the first speaker: the distinguished Sir Wilfred Voskovy.”

Sir Wilfred stepped forward, a sturdy gentleman with a high brush of coarse black hair and rather surly features. His flamboyant garments offered a host of sartorial decorative niceties distinctly at odds with his melancholy countenance. In a burst of insight, Althea told Hilyer that Sir Wilfred had been forced to wear the overly striking garments at the behest of his wife, which also explained his dour expression.

Sir Wilfred’s message was also cheerless. “The societies of the Gaean Reach are now so complex, disparate, and scattered so far, deep, and wide that we can no longer think in terms of comprehensive scholarship, sublime though that notion might have seemed to our forebears. To express my thesis more broadly, the volume of knowledge has grown ten times faster than our ability to classify, much less understand it.

“This is a bleak prospect for the future, as well everyone in this august audience recognizes. The basic purport is that our careers are demonstrably exercises in futility, and the conscientious among us will henceforth accept our salaries with a pang of guilt. The time has come for us to alter our perspectives and to become realists, rather than academic fossils, dreaming of a past age of innocence.

“So—what now? Is all lost? Not necessarily. Our field of expertise, as redefined, becomes simply taxonomic. No longer will we collate, analyze, synthesize, and search for felicitous correspondences. Our cherished and delightful laws of social dynamics must be relegated to the same box as the theory of phlogiston. Now we are realists! Even so, we will be hard-put even to keep abreast of new information, much less analyze it. Why delude ourselves?”

A florid man in the front row jumped to his feet. In a sneering pugnacious voice he called out a reply to what Sir Wilfred had intended as a purely rhetorical question. “Obviously, to keep our jobs!”

Sir Wilfred turned a haughty glance down at the man and continued.

“There are at least two routes past the seeming impasse. First, we can arbitrarily nominate a number of settled worlds—let us say, thirty or forty, or even fifty—and declare these worlds the only suitable arena for serious study. In so doing, we ignore all other human activity, no matter how astounding. What if these new inklings are tragic, or sensational? Or rife with human drama? We care nothing; we elbow the unwelcome information to the side! After all, we are the authorities, so we tell our students, and we know best. The so-called ‘control group’ of worlds, with their readily accessible cultures, will provide a manageable range of data, and each of us may vote for the inclusion of his favorite world. By this means, we maintain the dignity and repute of the profession. Our studies are as profound as we like and we are all eminently comfortable. Meanwhile, our students learn the rudiments of cultural anthropology, which they can apply as they see fit. If mavericks or mad geniuses among our group choose to study other societies, let them do so; it is all one to us. We simply laugh them to the side, and as we control the grants, tenures and salaries, they will quickly come to heel.”

“Preposterous!” called the florid man in the front row. “What an imbecilic notion!”

As before. Sir Wilfred paid the gentleman no heed. “The second concept is more complicated. We assemble a gigantic information bank—a data-processing apparatus of unprecedented scope. Our task then alters; we merely collect information and feed it into this mechanism without piddling or doodling with the details, as if we knew what we were doing. The machine accepts the information in a raw state, unclassified, undigested, unanalyzed. That is all there is to it. The machine has been programmed to collate and rationalize. Our lives have become tranquil. As we sit chatting in our clubs, drinking beverages of choice, a subject might arise in which we take a casual interest, or perhaps we wish to settle a bet. In the bad old times—by that, I mean now—we would be forced to exert ourselves. By the new system, we merely reach out a hand, touch a button, and the relevant information is provided on the instant. We are no longer paltry underpaid low 77 status academics; we have started to live the good life. We no longer distinguish ourselves by our former constricted field; now we are Doctors of Erudition! It is, I am assured, a glorious prospect.

“Now then: a final word. Certain smug boffins whose names I will not mention, though I can see their hangdog grins from where I stand, would boom and huffaw to their tenure committees as slavishly as ever. But, aha! Here is the great joke! We are the committee!”

“Bah!” sneered the florid gentleman in the front row. “If your idiotic scheme were in force, what else would we be good for?”

“You can sell your corpse for pet food,” said Sir Wilfred. “Also, that of your wife should she predecease you, and she need never learn of your intentions. Guard her well and cherish her; she is like money in the bank.”

Laurz Mur said, “Thank you. Sir Wilfred, for your provocative concepts; I am sure that they will linger with us. Next is the eminent Professor Sonotra Soukhail, a Grand Tantricist of the Antimates, and a Ninth Degree Putra. She will offer us excerpts from her paper on the mountain villages of Ladaque-Royale. I believe that she has something interesting to tell us regarding the human kites and the wind wizards of the Pittispasian Cliffs, which as we all know limit the Central Massif of the Second Continent, where it abuts on the Groaning Ocean.”

The florid man rose ponderously to his feet. “You are evidently referring to the planet Ladaque-Royale, Sagittarius FFC 32-DE-2930?”

Laurz Mur said, “I do not have immediate access to the Final Functional Catalog, but I suspect that you have supplied the proper nomenclature, for which we owe you our gratitude.”

“And Professor Soukhail is a Putra?”

“Exactly so; to the Ninth Degree.”

“In that case I am more than gratified. We may listen to this lady with confidence.”

Laurz Mur nodded politely. “Now then, here is Professor Soukhail. Madame, you may proceed with your address.”

The Putra, a squat broad-faced woman with a shock of stiff auburn hair, spoke to the man in the front row. “You are correct in your designation, sir. Are you familiar with Ladaque-Royale?”

“I have studied the White Wizards in depth! In fact, I can perform the Floncing River Miracle, and I have gained access to the Tantric of the Pellucid Way.”

“Aha!” said Sonotra Soukhail. “I see that I cannot take liberties with the truth! But no matter; I will bridle my imagination and make do with a recitation of fact.”

Sonotra Soukhail need not have concerned herself; her unadorned facts were fascinating and she embellished them with photographs of her swooping gliding subjects, and she declared the abilities of the white wizards to be explained only in terms of thought transference. She looked down to the florid man in the front row. “Am I right in this belief, sir?”