Compleat collected sff w.., p.350
COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 350
Coriole laughed very softly. My mind went blank with dismay. Why had I done it? The answer was slow in coming, but when I realized what it was I felt my jaw drop and I gaped stupidly at the dim outlines of my companion. I'd had a good reason for speaking in English, after all. Coriole had spoken in English too. When he said "Look out!" he'd said exactly that, no "Se-garde," which is the Malescan equivalent.
Coriole was still laughing, still almost silently. Now he said, "Name of Burton, by any chance?" and this time he spoke Malescan again.
There wasn't any use in trying to keep up the game any longer. I said, "That's good. How did you know?"
"Falvi talked to Clia. And not all the priests idolize Hierarch."
"Do I know Clia?"
"You knew her as Lorna Maxwell."
"Oh," I said. "Did—who taught you English? Falvi?"
"No, my father taught me that. I don't know much of it—he went away when I was only ten. Here, come on in where we can look at each other."
He groped forward, guiding me by the arm.
"My Falvi wasn't so good, eh?" I inquired, rather hurt, as I followed him.
"On the contrary, my friend. You took me in until I touched your arm." He slapped me gently on the shoulder. "If you'd ever taken Falvi by the arm you'd know the difference. Falvi worries too much. Your arm would make two of his. I didn't know you weren't a spy from the Hierarch, of course, but I had a strong conviction and it's proved itself. Here we are. Come along."
The room was small. Coriole shut the door behind us and locked it while I glanced at the furnishings of the place. There was no fog here though the air tingled as it had done outside. There were two low couches with the same slick warmish padding on them.
There was a table between them. Above it on the wall was a large blank screen with dials set in a row across the bottom, each stamped in gilt with Roman numerals. I think I realized then for the first time that I hadn't seen Arabic numbers anywhere in Malesco, only the angular and, to me, confusing Roman numerals.
Then I turned around and saw Coriole's face. For a second or so the bottom dropped out of my stomach and I could only stare. After a while I heard myself murmuring tentatively, "Uncle Jim? Uncle Jim?"
Coriole grinned blankly at me. He didn't understand. And of course he wasn't really Uncle Jim. But the likeness was so strong it couldn't be coincidence. Most red-headed men with freckles look alike—it's a familiar mold of countenance that seldom varies'much. But this was a closer likeness than you could explain that way.
Coriole had the same long-jawed, raw-boned face, the same heavy freckling, the same pale blue eyes, the same bristle of red hair growing to the same line on the forehead. He was younger than I by a few years, I thought. I counted back rapidly and the idea that struck me then has probably been obvious for some time now in this narrative. But at the moment it rocked me back on my heels.
"What was your father's name?" I demanded.
"Jimmerton," he said promptly. "He came from Paradise."
I sat down heavily on the nearer couch. "His name," I said, "was Jim Burton, and he came from New York."
"I said he came from Paradise," Coriole nodded agreeably. "Jim Burton? Burton? But you—"
"That's right," I said numbly. "He was my uncle."
Coriole sat down heavily too and we stared at each other in silence. After a while he shook his head dubiously. He had more reason than I for doubts. After all, I had the likeness to go on and Uncle Jim's tales. Coriole had nothing but my word. I offered what facts I could.
"Jim Burton looked just like you. He disappeared about thirty years ago and was gone for ten years. When he came back he lived with us for a while, quite a few years, in fact. He taught me Malescan, when I was a kid. How else could I be speaking it?
"He never had much to say about where he'd been, but he was ill for a long time and I think he'd had a lot of trouble during the time he'd been away. He died three years ago. He left me his apartment. That was how—"
"Of course!" Coriole said suddenly. "Jimmerton came through the Earth-Gates from his own library in New York. I remember that much. It was how you came too and Clia. What a fool I am! I never connected her with Jimmerton at all. She didn't know the name and I supposed the entry between the worlds—the nexus—had shifted since my father's day. But it didn't! And you—we're cousins, aren't we?"
"I guess so," I agreed, looking at him in a dazed way. Malesco was real, of course. I couldn't doubt that any more. But somehow this finding of relatives in the place brought it a lot closer than I'd been able to realize before. It was like finding cousins in Graustark or through the looking glass. Coriole was staring at me with the same dazed wonder.
"Think of that!" he murmured, scanning my face. "Think of it! A cousin from Paradise!"
"Look," I said firmly, "let's get this straight right now. What makes you people think New York is Paradise? Believe me, I know better!"
Coriole grinned crookedly. He glanced at the locked door.
"Yes, I know better too. But if anybody else hears you saying so you'll find your head off your shoulders before you finish speaking. The Hierarch doesn't encourage heresy, you know."
I leaned back on the couch, settled the blue towel comfortably around me, and crossed my legs. "I don't know anything," I said. "You've got a long session of explaining before you. But first—I'm hungry. Have I got enough money here to buy myself a meal?"
I held out the handful of coins Dio had given me. Coriole smiled and punched a button in the wall without rising.
"Refreshments go with the admission fee," he said. "I want to know a few things, too, such as where you got that grain and how you found your way here to start with. I ought to warn you—" He gave me a pale blue stare, quite coldly.
"I'm not taking you entirely at your word. I think you're telling me the truth, but if you are you can't prove it. You fooled me back there in the steam-hall into saying enough to hang me if you're a spy, so I've got to go on the assumption you aren't. We'll pretend we believe each other, shall we?"
"Play it from there," I said. "Maybe something will come out that will convince you. I can't blame you for suspecting the worst, I suppose. My speaking the language ought to be the best convincer I can offer."
"It is. I'll admit that had me puzzled for a moment. But—"
A tap at the door interrupted him. He gave me a wary glance.
"You answer it," he said.
"I can't work the lock."
He reached out to slip the handle of the door sidewise, then sank back. I opened the door. Fog drifted in. There was a man in pink shorts outside, pushing a three-tiered cart that jingled.
"Refreshments, sir," he said. "You rang?"
"Oh yes," I said and accepted the tray he handed me. Coriole silently shut and locked the door as I set down the tray.
There was a basket of rolls that looked very much like the bread I was accustomed to. There was a dish of boiled eggs differing from Earthly eggs only in the bluish pattern on the shells. There was a pot of cheese and a pot of something steaming that smelled like tea and a big bowl of some chopped-up stuff that smelled pungent.
There was a tray of apples, peaches, some bunches of bright red grapes and two other fruits I didn't recognize. It was not what I'd have ordered, but it looked good and I was hungry. We helped ourselves, munching away from opposite couches, glancing warily at each other from time to time, talking as we ate.
And I found out at last under what circumstances New York could be Paradise.
-
Chapter VIII
Before the wall opened to pitch me through into another world, Malesco had in my mind been one with Graustark, Ruritania, Oz, Islandia, Gormenghast, Erewhon, the Utopias of Plato, Aristotle and Sir Thomas More, all the other imaginary worlds I had assumed existed only in human minds. Now—I wonder.
It may be that every one of them is as real as Malesco or only a little less real, in the plane of what Coriole called the mundi mutabili. He also referred to the same theory under the name of orbis inconstans and probabilitas-universitas-rerum. But with Malescans it was no theory—it was fact.
I'd read enough about the alternative futures theory to understand him without much trouble, though he took it for granted that I knew somewhat more than I did. I had to pull him up now and then and get a fuller explanation. But briefly, this is what happened at the point of split-off between Earth and Malesco, away back in the Claudian times of first-century Rome.
Up to the end of the reign of Caligula there was no Malesco. As a world it had never existed, never even been thought of. Our past and its were identical. But when Caligula died something definitive happened and there was a split between Malesco and Earth. Instead of Claudius a man named Rufus Agricola mounted the Roman throne. After that men with unfamiliar names ruled Rome until it fell to the barbarian invaders and its own inept policies.
In our world a religion which Caligula had persecuted spread until it controlled all of Europe. In Malesco a religion Caligula had encouraged spread instead like wildfire until it submerged every other faith. It was an extremely practical religion, originating in Egypt, and it had ruled all Malesco ever since until the present day.
Its name was Alchemy.
Alchemy had made a Utopia of Malesco and there is nothing worse than a Utopia, though very few people seem to realize it. Only in Butler's Erewhon and Huxley's Brave New World is it suggested that the standard Utopia can be a version of hell itself.
For in most Utopias it's taken as a matter of course that the stability of the community is the goal of mankind. Private happiness is unimportant, rigid caste systems are enforced and total paralysis of society is the prime condition without which the Utopia wouldn't last half an hour.
Maybe Alchemy's coming out of Egypt had some connection with what happened to Malesco because Egypt for two thousand years was the most rigid "utopia" in history. Like Egypt, Malesco reached a peak of growth early in its career. And like Egypt its priesthood got so firm a hold upon the government that though all growth ceased long before, the society continued in a sort of deathless rigor mortis far beyond the normal life-span of a civilization.
Malesco for the past five hundred years had stood dead still, a society frozen into stasis and operated solely for the benefit of the priesthood and that of whatever conqueror briefly seized control. The priests let the tides of rebellion wash over the country, carry a conqueror to a throne and maintain him there until somebody else pushed him off—but it was the priests who manipulated all the wires and collected all the benefits.
There was conflict between church and state, of course. But in Malesco the powers of science were with the church, for Alchemy was based on practical science. In Malesco, Galileo would have been a priest, not a heretic. Gunpowder once conquered vast countries. In Malesco, only priests of Alchemy could possibly have discovered the uses of gunpowder; the only textbooks on chemistry were in the temples.
As in Egypt, for a long, long time there was no promise of relief even in the hereafter for the hoi polloi. Only the priests and the kings could expect to survive and enjoy the benefits of heaven.
About three hundred years ago, while in our world America was being colonized and Shakespeare was getting drunk at the Mermaid Tavern and Eastern Europe was falling piece by piece into the hands of the Turks, Malesco had a worldwide revolution. The priests for the first time found themselves face to face with a real problem.
Malesco is a smaller world than ours. A lot of it is ocean and a lot more unexplored wilderness. But on every inhabited continent there were tremendous waves of terrorism as the common man got mad enough to let himself go. They weren't very wise or intelligent men because they'd never been allowed to be.
They had no more knowledge of self-control than so many angry children because they'd never been trusted with self-control. When they ran wild they instituted a reign of terror all over Malesco, taking out their anger and frustration on each other when no priests were handy.
It was just what you'd expect—look at the French Revolution—and it made a very ugly blot in Malescan history. The blame was all the priests' and they easily managed to shift it right back on the revolutionists.
And the priests, as usual, found a clever way to pacify the people and still get their own way. The same thing happened in Egypt. A profound social revolution was neatly transferred to the plane of religion and solved there without making a ripple in the course of real human living. If it hadn't actually happened in Egypt, you'd find it hard to believe it could happen anywhere outside the pages of romance.
The priests simply promised the people that if they would be good and go home they could look forward to seeing Paradise, too, some day after they were dead. It worked. The Egyptians accepted the Osiris cult without a murmur and went on building pyramids. The Malescans went right on under the heavy yoke of the Alchemic priesthood and accepted the promise of New York as their future Paradise.
At that point in the story I choked over my supper and Coriole had to pound me on the back. He also showed symptoms of telling me another joke which my contretemps reminded him of, but I shut him off quickly.
"Go on," I urged. "I want to hear more about Paradise."
Coriole went back to the egg he'd been eating. The blue patterns on the shell gave it a festive Easter-egg look and apparently the shell was edible too. He was crunching it between his teeth in a way that gave me gooseflesh.
"You're sure," he inquired, crunching, "that nobody in your world knows about Malesco? Because from the very first we've known about Earth. The split wasn't very sharp at first. The priests, the clairvoyants and oracles and people like that made contact very easily.
"We figured out about what happened long ago. From then on the priests kept telling us that Earth had taken the right path and we'd taken the wrong one and were going to be punished for our sins."
He dipped the egg in sugar and tossed what remained of it in his mouth with a flourish.
"The letter A," he said, "is the symbol of the mundi mutabili, the variable worlds. You've noticed it in the city, I expect. The priests make an A with their fingers and thumbs when they talk about New York. The apex of the letter represents the point where Malesco and Earth divided.
"The two shanks are the separate, diverging paths as the worlds draw apart. The crossbar, of course, represents the bridge by which the virtuous go to their reward in Paradise. It's also the bridge by which you and Clia and Jimmerton came to Malesco."
He grinned at me suddenly. "Would you like to see Paradise?" he asked.
"I would."
Coriole got up, shaking crumbs from his orange towel and fiddled with one of the gilt-numbered dials under the screen.
A large glowing A dawned slowly on the wall. Then it faded, music swelled impressively in the little room and a priest's voice began to chant some solemn words I couldn't understand very well. I imagine it was archaic Malescan, but I caught the name of New York repeated several times. j
Then the clouds which had been rolling luminously over the screen cleared and a shining city took place. I leaned forward. We were looking down at an angle from several thousand feet up and, sure enough, we were looking at New York.
I could see the Battery and the fringe of wharves lying out in the rivers all around the lower edges of the city. I could see Central Park making a flat rectangle of green in the distance and the tall midtown buildings stuck up like monoliths above the patterned streets.
I could even see the angle Broadway makes out of the welter of the Village, and down at the tip of the island a magnificent cluster of dazzling white skyscrapers shot out continuous streamers of gold light.
It seemed a little odd that the Eiffel Tower should be standing in the vicinity of Chatham Square and something like the Pyramid of Cheops cast a huge triangular shadow across the approaches to the Brooklyn Bridge. But otherwise the city was unmistakable.
"I don't seem to remember," I told my cousin dubiously, "that the City Hall has a halo like that. And the Empire State isn't really gold-plated, you know. And—"
"I believe you," Coriole said. "This isn't a real reflection of New York. It's something the priests worked up for public release."
"But how did the Eiffel Tower get there?" I asked. "That's in Paris."
"Don't quibble. It's sacrilege to question the Alchemic version of Paradise."
"As a matter of fact," I said, eying the streets of Paradise with fascinated attention, "I've been wondering why they picked New York at all. It's such a young city, historically speaking. Why, three hundred years ago when you had your uprising it wasn't even called New York."
"Oh, Paradise used to be London," Coriole explained. "Then there was a shake-up in the priesthood and after that all the best people went to New York when they died. Only the priests are reincarnated in Paradise, you know. Did I tell you that?
