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communication and library database charges. Some were offworld calls.
"It shouldn't be hard to break into his files," Abrovid said thoughtfully.
"I didn't know you had such dark talents."
"I'm a programmer, that's all. And what of your criminal tendencies? I don't
hear you refusing my offer.
But I have a price."
"Oh? What?"
"Only that you explain to me what you think Saphooth's doing that concerns you
so."
"Of course. But not until I see if I'm right. It wouldn't be the first time
the old monkey has made me look foolish."
CHAPTER TEN,
how Teress the Earth-bond and the demon Achibol betray Benadek and steal his
treasure.
The Scholarium of Ummsu contends that Benadek is the divinely inspired
apposition to the evil Achibol.
But who, in this presentation, is good, who evil, who merely uninformed?
Clearly at odds with the classical version, it only exacerbates the disputes.
This pared-down, cybernetically reconciled Achibol story is no myth.
Repetition, variation, and elaboration upon themes and subthemes (themselves
elements of other cycles, in other cultures) is entirely missing. Appositions,
moral lessons, and supernatural elements are gone, leaving a simple (no pun
intended) narrative of events in the lives of odd human beings.
Past mythic reconciliations yielded "cultural blueprints" underlying
principles that provided insight into the cultures that created them.
Invariably, fragmentary "historic" memories were discarded as bastardized by
generations of faulty remembrance, transmission, and translation.
Suspicions that this narrative was artifactual were laid to rest when the
processing of the raw data was reviewed. Gathered not from one cultural
tradition but from many, no one set of values could apply, so the biocybes
removed such "taints." Freed of culture-specific references, the
reconciliation could not but proceed along an entirely different path: a
"historic" narrative whose cultural attributes required only internal
consistency.
Truth is elusive. This rendering is consistent to the limits of cybernetic
error checking. But is it real
? Was
Achibol in fact an old brown-skinned biped? Was he immortal, as he seems to
claim? Was Sylfie really so good-natured and Benadek so quick-witted,
insensitive, and abysmally ignorant?
Perhaps future reconciliations will yield a map of Achibol's heavens or the
coordinates of his forgotten homeworld. The neuro-credits you have spent to
purchase this volume will be applied to the distilling of just such
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information. Additional financial aid is urgently needed. Gauge your
contribution not by your credit balance but by the depth of your curiosity. At
this point you have read perhaps half the translation.
Whether more follows is entirely up to you.
(Kaledrin, Senior Editor)
Unlike the last swamp, this one was almost all water instead of soggy ground.
Great, stubby trees lined interwoven channels, their roots covered with water
from a few inches to twenty feet in depth. Reptilian creatures shyly retired
as the sailboat approached.
Breezes upon the topmost portion of the large triangular sail seldom filled it
completely. Benadek fidgeted and fumed, but Achibol assured him the honches
could not gain the swamp's far terminus ahead of them by land or boat, so he
relaxed into the slow pace of their travel.
Sylfie was the least content, though not obtrusive about it. She found a spot
on the pulpit atop the bowsprit, wide enough to sit with her legs dangling. No
one could come alongside her, or see her face.
When she came aft for a drink, Teress attributed the redness of her eyes to
the glare off the water.
"There are eyeshades below," she said. "You've been staring into the sun all
afternoon."
"I don't need anything." Sylfie gulped water, then went forward again.
Achibol kept his hand on the tiller, having eyes only for their course.
"Something's wrong," Teress said, forcing him to notice her. "Sylfie's been
crying."
"I suspect so," the sorcerer replied without expression. "She didn't want to
be here."
"I know. She had it all planned, and then that stupid . . ." She cut herself
short. Benadek was stretched on the bunk below, his cracked ribs tightly
bound. Achibol had dosed him with a nostrum. He seemed to be dozing, but she
was not sure, and did not want him to overhear, to resume their quarrel in
such close quarters. "What's wrong with her?"
"She's a poot. She has fewer options than you, and rage isn't one of them. Her
creators considered only mild pettishness feminine and desirable. Some of her
melancholia could be assuaged by any simple male who'd bed her, but none are
here. That, too, is innate."
"That's disgusting! She needs a good fuck
? Doesn't she have any self-respect?"
"She isn't suffering from a dearth of sexual activity," Achibol replied with a
sad shake of his head.
"You mean Benadek's no good that way? I should have known . . ."
"Lay your peevishness aside, girl!" Achibol snapped. "Sylfie is a poot, and
Benadek is pure-human.
That is the root of their pain. She cannot conceive by him. Were you taught
nothing of the world in your village?"
Chastened, Teress bowed her head. Achibol, satisfied by her contrition, leaned
forward to speak in low, confidential tones, his face a wrinkled, tragic mask.
"There is one more thing, which you must not repeat.
She may die before we quit these waterways. She knows, but the lad does not.
She will soon become ill.
Once that happens, death is inevitable."
"Why protect him
? He should suffer right along with her, because if it weren't for him . . ."
"No! It must not be." The mage's eyes narrowed and the dark skin of his face
darkened further. "He's foolish and selfish, impetuous, shortsighted, an
egoist, and immature much as was I at his age. He's a child of what passes for
a ghetto and a slum in this age. Did your village teacher include those words
in your lessons?" Without waiting for her nod, he went on. "He's the best tool
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I have. I don't want him ruined by guilt. Will you honor my confidences?"
"There's no one better than him?"
"Not on this continent, in this generation. None I could smoke out in this
decade or the next. A century ago, there was another, who failed me, and
others before that . . ."
"I won't tell him anything, then. But you must explain it to me."
Achibol nodded. "Come closer. He must not overhear." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]