The Gist Hunter (19 page)

The chant was called a thran, one of several dozen specific combinations of sounds which enabled scholars of the Institute for Historical Inquiry, where Bandar was apprenticed, to sojourn among the multitude of archetypal Events, Landscapes and Situations, which constituted the human noösphere—what the laity called the collective unconscious—of Old Earth.

Still chanting, Bandar climbed the stinking heap at the end of the alley. At its apex would lie a large amphora with a fractured handle. He would seize the amphora, prop it against the wall, then mount and scramble atop the barrier. There he would chant a new thran, opening the gate to the next-to-last stage of the test: a Landscape preserving an antique time when the world was mostly forest.

The apprentice had already made his way by rocket-tube and teeming public slideways across the world-girdling City of a hyperindustrialized global state that flourished and faded eons before, taken a short detour through an insidious alien invasion—it had failed—and traversed a rift valley where early human variants competed to determine whose gene pools would dry to dust in the evolutionary sun. Now a walk in the forest and a segue into one of the Blessed Isles would see his quest completed.

But when he reached the top of the refuse heap, instead of the great urn he found it smashed to fragments. That ought to have been impossible, Bandar knew; nothing changed in the noösphere. Events and Situations repeated themselves exactly and eternally.

There was only one possible explanation: Didrick Gabbris had already passed this way, climbed on the amphora and departed. But before doing so he had contrived to destroy the vital stepping stone.

Frantic, Bandar scoured the area, digging through the rubbish in hope of finding something of sufficient size and sturdiness to take his weight. But if there had been anything useful, Gabbris had removed it.

Bandar was left with three choices. His first option was to search the city and bring back something else to climb on. But his insulation from the idiomats' perceptions would not extend to a substantial object that was inherent to the Location. And the longer he interacted closely with the substance of the Location, the more risk that the thran's effect would weaken and he might be perceived.

Suppose some brutal soldier, startled as a chair was borne along by a vague, misty figure, thrust his spear into the mist. Bandar's corpse would thence forward be a permanent feature of the Sack of the City. His tutors had warned of the risks of "dying" in an Event. The sojourner's consciousness became bound to the Location, reforming as one of the idiomatic entities and forever "living" and "dying" as the cycle played out endlessly.

His corporeal body, seated cross-legged on a pad in the examinations room at the Institute, would remain comatose. It would be transferred to the infirmary, bedded and intubated, and consigned to a slow decline.

Bandar's second option was to find an out-of-the-way corner and remain there until the Event concluded and began anew. Then, when he came back to the rubbish heap, the amphora would be waiting for him. But that would take time—too much time, even though durations in the noösphere did not run at the same speed as in the phenomenal world.

Different sites had their own internal clocks. This Event ran far slower than reality; the few hours in which he waited out the cycle would be almost a day in the examination room. Bandar would be the last apprentice to complete the quest; he could abandon all hope of winning the Colquhoon Bursary and being admitted to the advanced collegia.

Which was exactly why Didrick Gabbris had smashed the urn. Gabbris would win the bursary. Gabbris would scale the academic heights, while Guth Bandar slunk back to his family's commerciant firm, to spend his life buying and selling and fretting over the margins between the two.

His third option was no help: He could intone a specific thran and a ripple would appear in the virtual air. He would step through the emergency exit and instantly plunge back into his own seated body. He might complain to the Institute's provost about Gabbris's perfidy, but by the time a board could be convened to investigate, the Event would have recycled and all evidence of the crime would have disappeared.

Glumly, Bandar weighed his options and decided to risk searching for a step-up. But as he started down the pile of refuse there was a commotion at the mouth of the alley and three soldiers appeared, pushing the merchant before them. They watched as he knelt and dug up the box, amid coarse jokes and pokes with a sword at the man's plump buttocks.

There was nothing Bandar could do. The way was too narrow for him to pass, even unseen. He must sit on the rubbish heap and sing the thran, waiting while the soldiers gloated over the treasure, argued over its division, then cut the merchant's throat and finally departed.

There would be no time to find something to step on. Sadly Bandar waited for the blood to spurt and the soldiers to leave. He would open a gate and return to the examination room. Perhaps his story would be believed and he would be given a make-up exam. But that was a faint hope; he could imagine the conversation.

Bandar would say, "I accuse Didrick Gabbris of malfeasance in the matter of the amphora."

Gabbris would not deign to sully a glance by directing it at Bandar. He would elevate his nose and say, "Words without substance fleetly fly but seldom stick. Bring forth your evidence."

"I have none but my character."

"Your character is a subjective quality. You perhaps measure it as large and splendorous, while others might call it mean and marred by envy."

"This is injustice!"

"Again, a subjective concept, while blunt facts resist manipulation. Failure must find no favor."

Senior Tutor Eldred would tug at his sparse side whiskers and make his disposition. He would be swayed by the force of Gabbris's views. Bandar's would seem the squeakings of some timorous creature.

The pathetic scene at the foot of the refuse heap was nearing its conclusion. The merchant said, as always, "There, you have taken all that I valued."

One of the soldiers drew a dirk. "Not quite all."

The merchant trembled. "My life is of no worth to you. Though you take it from me you cannot carry it away with you."

"Yet we are inclined to be thorough," said the invader.

Bandar waited. He thought of some of the Locations he had visited during his years at the Institute, the places he would miss. It was then, as he said goodbye to some of his favorites, that it occurred to him that he had a fourth option.

The Institute had issued the examination candidates a partial map of the noösphere, showing only the Locations they would need to navigate the test course. The full chart of humanity's collective unconscious was an intricately convoluted sphere, complexity upon complexity. It was the work of thousands of years of exploration by noönauts, many of whom had been absorbed by perils lurking in dark corners of the Commons.

Bandar did not have such a map. A noönaut could take on his journey only what he could hold in his memory, and to encompass the schematic representation of an organic realm that had been evolving for eons was itself a work of years.

But there was a physical representation of the full map in the communal study chamber and Bandar had spent many hours gazing into its labyrinthine depths. He could not reify it fully like a master, so that it would appear to hang in the air before him, twisting and rotating to display its maze of lines and spheres. But he could recall large parts of it, all of the major Landscapes, most of the First-Order Situations and more than a few of the significant Events.

The more he thought of it, the clearer grew his recollection of the map. He saw connections and linkages from this Event to a Landscape and from there to a Location from which he knew three paths radiated. In his mind's eye he could plot a route that would let him navigate to the test's final Location, a prototypical island paradise, where Eldred waited for the candidates to arrive.

It was just possible that Bandar could indeed find his way home. Better yet, he was fairly sure that some of the sites through which he would travel had advantageous temporal dimensions: the alternate route, though it required more steps, might actually be traversed in less objective time than the course the tutors had set.

The merchant had gurgled out his last bloody breath. The alley lay empty. Bandar made up his mind to try the long way home. Perhaps his resourcefulness would so impress the examiners that they would overlook his failure to follow the prescribed course. At the worst, if hopelessly stuck, he could exit through an emergency gate.

He risks nothing who has lost all
, he told himself. Singing the thran, he returned to the processional way and followed it past the burning royal palace to the city's shattered gates. Dead defenders were piled high and he had to climb a rampart of bodies to reach the wooden bridge that spanned the canal.

A little beyond was a stand of date trees. A single attacker, pinned to a trunk by an arrow through his shoulder, weakly struggled to work the head free of the wood. His eyes widened when Bandar ceased intoning the insulating thran and suddenly appeared before him.

"Have you come to help me?" the soldier said, indicating the shaft through his flesh. "You do not resemble the god I prayed to."

"No," said Bandar. It was unwise to feel emotions, critical or supportive, in response to the idiomatic entities. They were not, after all, real people; they were more like characters in stories, no more than a collection of necessary attributes. The wounded soldier was probably a version of Unrequited Faith; to pull the arrow free would contradict his role in the Event and could cause the entity to act disharmoniously.

Bandar faced the space between two of the date palms and sang five notes. A wavering vertical fissure divided the air. He stepped through.

A gust of wind threw stinging sleet into his face. He was in a world of black and white and gray, standing on glacial scree that sloped down from a bare ridge above and behind him. The closest thing to color was the dark blue of mountains whose lower slopes were visible beyond the ridge until they rose to disappear above the leaden overcast from which the sleet was flying. If the wet clouds dispersed they would reveal no peaks; the tops of the mountains were buried in unbroken ice all the way to the pole.

Downslope, a cold, wet plain of lichen and coarse grass extended to a line of horizon that was largely invisible behind the showers of freezing rain. Far out he saw a mass of reindeer and the humped shapes of mammoths, identifiable by their peculiar bobbing gait. Closer, a ring of musk oxen turned curved horns toward a short-muzzled bear that circled the herd on long legs.

Good
, thought Bandar. He recognized the scene. He had visited this Location before though not at these precise coordinates. Still, the connecting node that would admit him to the next site was near, in a narrow cave set back from a ledge that must be farther up the ridge. He strove to remember how the view before him had looked from that previous vantage. He had definitely been higher up and somewhere off to his right.

The experienced noönaut developed a feel for these things. Though he could not call himself experienced, Bandar could perform the exercise that enhanced his sense of direction. After a moment, he experienced a tiny inclination to go to his right. He let his will yield to it and the predilection grew stronger.

That's that
, he told himself and turned in the direction. A motion from the corner of his eye caught his attention. The snub-faced bear was loping toward him across the flatland, broad paws flicking up spray from the wet lichen. It was almost to the bottom of the slope.

Bandar swiftly sang the thran of nine and three notes which had sequestered him in the sacked city. The bear's pace did not slacken and its small black eyes remained fixed upon him. Quickly, the noönaut intoned the seven-and-four, the second most common insulating thran.

The bear reached the base of the scree and began to climb. He could see its condensed breath smoking from its gaping mouth, its lolling tongue bright pink against its brown fur.

There were three other thrans Bandar could try. He suspected now that the oldest and simplest of them, the four-and-two, would insulate him from the idiomatic bear's perceptions. But if he was wrong, there would not be time to determine which of the other two would work. The bear had increased its speed, ears flattened against its broad head. It would be on him in seconds.

Bandar sang five tones and the air rippled behind him. He flung himself through the gap and tumbled to the ground in the date grove. The Event was still unwinding and the wounded soldier remained pinned to his tree. The man blinked at him but Bandar counted slowly to ten then sang the five tones once more. He stepped through the fissure.

As he had expected, much more time had passed in the ice world and it had recycled. The Landscape was as it had been the first time he had stood on the slope, the bear stalking the musk oxen out on the plain. Bandar saw it become aware of him, saw it turn toward him and take its first step. He sang the four-and-two; instantly the predator turned back to the herd.

Chanting the tones, the noönaut faced about and began to climb. The loose gravel rattled out from under each footstep, so that he slid back half a step for each one he took. The icy rain assaulted the weather side of his face and neck and his extremities were numb. Bandar paused and, continuing the thran, applied another of the adept's exercises: thick garments grew to replace the nondescript garb in which he had imagined himself when he entered the noösphere. Warm mittens and heavy boots covered his hands and feet and a fur-lined hood encased his head. For good measure, he imagined himself a staff. The climbing went better after that.

The top of the ridge was broad and only slightly curved. He made good time with the wind at his back and within a few minutes he saw the ledge jutting out of the scree. But when he scrabbled down from the ridgetop he was surprised to find several fissures and cracks in the rock.