We were all winging it.
I didn’t send Ranora, and I had not the foggiest notion of what an ilel was supposed to do.
I want to emphasize that point. It’s one thing to be the Great Improviser when you’re playing with a full deck and know what all the cards are and who has them. It’s quite another to be improvising and model fitting with an undetermined part of the deck. It’s also one thing to be a storyteller when you have reasonable control of your characters, it’s quite another when most of them are out of control and have to be knocked into line by such gimmicks as kicks in the rear end, rocks falling into caves, and experimental cannons exploding.
As both improviser and storyteller, Nathan’s God Game put you at a disadvantage.
The theological issue, which I will raise but not try to answer, is whether that’s what it’s like to be God. In the grace/free will game, is grace always at a disadvantage till the last of the ninth anyway?
Think about it.
I had almost forgotten about the cannon so I instructed the machine, ACCESS CANNON.
Spelled it right that time, you so-and-so.
Sure enough, there they were back up in the mountains, in the melting snow, painfully putting the pieces back together again.
ZAP CANNON.
HOW?
OH, I DON’T KNOW. HOW ABOUT A SNOWSLIDE?
EXECUTING.
A cloud of snow appeared on the mountain above the reconstructed hut and slid towards it, accelerating as it came. The warriors ducked behind walls, like characters in a slapstick comedy. The snowslide swept over them, obliterating most of the hut.
Doggedly, Larry, Curly, and Moe climbed out of the snow and began to shovel it away. Nothing if not persistent.
ACCESS CARDINAL.
The Cardinal, the two witches, and the high priest from Lenrau’s crowd were hiding behind a great rock, bent over what looked like a large kettle.
Eating a missionary?
“This sauce,” the Cardinal said in his sweetest, most pious voice, “should restrain them. Poured over their fruit, it will taste sweet but turn their dispositions sour. The meeting will serve no useful purpose.”
“Maybe they will kill the ilel,” cackled the Mothers Superior.
“Possibly. If that happens, we will of course deny involvement.”
“Excellent,” said the other priest, the man whom I had dubbed “the Admiral,” because he seemed always to be making statements for the TV camera.
“Kill her! Kill her!”
Not my ‘Nora, no way.
ZAP POT.
ERROR. ERROR #39. NO MARIJUANA PERMITTED IN THIS WORLD. DEA ORDER. ERROR ERROR.
KETTLE, YOU IDJIT.
PREFERRED MODE ZAP KETTLE?
DEFAULT.
EXECUTING.
The Admiral, as clumsy as he was mouthy, leaned over to peer into the kettle, which was bubbling away enthusiastically. “I’ll stir the pot up a bit,” he announced.
Before anyone could stop him, he pushed a large ladle abruptly into the kettle and swept it around in a vigorous, military movement.
The kettle tipped dangerously in one direction. A Mother Superior tried to tilt it back. The Admiral swept the ladle around again.
The kettle then tipped the other way, hesitated on the brink, and began to sway back.
I pushed my REPEAT key.
The kettle resumed its sway, tilted beyond the point of no return, crashed with an earth-shaking rumble, and shattered into hundreds of pieces. The liquid darted in all directions, turning the ground around the broken pot brown.
The Cardinal sat down alongside the rock. “Too many witches,” he sobbed, “spoil the brew.”
Now it was time to deliver on my promise of the night before to N’Rasia, a promise about which I was very dubious.
The yard in front of Malvau’s pavilion was bedlam. As the one in charge of the physical preparations for the feast, he apparently felt that he had to organize and instruct all responsible parties, even though their culture seemed to be notably ahead of ours on organizational skills. He was in a vile mood, snapping at servants and family and staff members, and even at a remarkably calm B’Mella who stopped by to chat happily with her councilor and his wife.
“It will go well.” She smiled. “The Lord Our God wills it.”
“With my help,” ’Vau said irritably.
Both women laughed at him. He flushed angrily, and then, realizing without my help that their amusement was based on love, laughed with them.
After the Duchess had left, N’Rasia said timidly, “Noble Lord, I need more instructions about my role.”
“Look beautiful and be silent,” he snapped.
“I believe you mean that,” she snapped back.
“I do…”
CUT THAT OUT, I demanded.
“… not mean it.” He patted her rear end, to the shock and dismay of ’Rasia and all who were watching.
It was, as she had claimed, more than presentable.
“Malvau!” she exclaimed in horror.
“Excuse me, noble lady.” He was not at all sorry. “I am so preoccupied with my responsibilities, I tend to forget myself.”
She took a deep breath. “Perhaps we could walk briefly to the lake and you could explain to me again.”
He glanced at the sundial in the middle of the courtyard. “A few minutes, surely.”
I’m sure love was the farthest thing from his mind. So it always seems. When men want it women don’t, and when women want it men don’t.
I say this on the basis of others’ testimony, not personal experience.
So they walked towards the nearest lake, hand in hand once they slipped out of sight of the pavilion. It was really nothing more than an oversized pond, but private enough on a day when most people were already in their own homes getting roaring drunk.
“Actually,” he began, “we may be the only sober men and women in the land this evening. It has been agreed that we will drink lightly. That means that wit, wisdom, good conversation, and a few crucial agreements, contained in an exchange of nods and silences between our leaders, will be enough. The Lord Kaila and I have agreed in principle to the conclusions. He’s a splendid young man, by the way, even if a bit bookish and over-formal. We only need the right chemistry between Lenrau and B’Mella to accomplish our initial goals. That’s why your wit and charm are so important.”
He swatted her again; this time she chuckled complacently. A time and a place for everything.
“He is not a degenerate?”
“Lenrau? No, of course not. You will be sitting on one side of him and the Lady on the other. I doubt that there is a man in the land who can resist your judicious mixture of charms.”
“The Lady wishes this?”
“It was her suggestion, as I have tried to tell you.”
“Are they planning just as carefully?” She snuggled close to him.
“At least as carefully.” His hand took permanent possession of her rear. “This is a critical time in our history. Fortunately both our leaders want peace, even if they don’t know how to achieve it.”
“What about the demon child?”
“Ranora? Don’t listen to the stupid priests. They envy her because she is clearly from the Lord Our God. She will be outrageous, of course. What else? When our leaders become deadly serious and reach for their weapons, she will blow her silly little pipe and they will make peace. I want you to be nice to her, ’Rasia.”
“As you wish. I really did not believe she is a demon. She’s like our daughters were at that age … only … only…”
“More so?”
“Much more so.” She put her arm tenderly around his waist. “Will they mate, ’Vau? Our leaders, I mean.”
He pondered that. “It is likely. Risky of course—Kaila and I agreed about that—but probably necessary. They are not well matched.”
“That can be overcome.”
He turned her around, so he could face her directly. “That is difficult but not unpleasant work. Pray the Lord Our God that they have time.”
IT’S YOUR IDEA, DUMMY, I told her. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
“We will not have time for an orgy tonight, will we?” she said bluntly.
“I fear the Feast of the Two Moons will be over before we can return to our pavilion.” He touched her face affectionately. “But when did we celebrate it with an orgy?”
What a dolt! He wasn’t receiving any of the signals. We’d have to provide a lot of hormones.
“Indeed never. But now it is different between us.”
“Thank the Lord Our God,” he agreed piously.
“So,” she pulled her gown over her head with a quick, graceful movement, “let’s have an orgy now!”
“N’Rasia,” he protested in dismay, “we can’t; there’s no time.”
ORGY, I told the Compaq.
It hesitated as it scanned its parser.
ONLY TWO CHARACTERS PRESENT.
Hmmn … Nathan’s hobbits had interesting minds.
EXECUTE.
DEFAULT. EXECUTING.
A default orgy? Only in the digital world of computers.
She was smothering him with passionate affection. Wisely he stopped resisting.
I opted out, remembered my promise, and returned to see the poor councilor on the flat of his back as the afternoon of orgy was beginning.
“Sorry,” I said aloud.
HORMONES, LOTS OF THEM, I typed in.
EXECUTING, it responded instantly, as though it were a word it heard all the time.
Very interesting hobbits.
I got out of there in a hurry.
The Two Moon Meal was a complete success, a mellow, pleasant mixture of solemn ritual and delightful conversation, with some deeply moving incidents.
N’Rasia and G’Ranne, as unlikely a team as one can imagine, made the meal work.
There were seven men and three women inside the brilliantly lighted chamber, surrounded by screens with rich abstract paintings. The men wore long robes with short cloaks in contrasting colors like those of nineteenth-century cavalry officers and large jeweled medallions around their necks. The women were clad in what might be tolerable as nightgowns in our world—pastel gowns with thin straps, deep necklines and long slits in the side.
It was a fertility festival, after all.
B’Mella was tense, jumpy; G’Ranne icy cold, the most skeptical as well as the most physically attractive person at the table. (She had found something shimmeringly beautiful to wear despite her protests that she had nothing appropriate for the festival.) You didn’t even want to look at her too long lest she distract you from the purposes of the evening.
Lenrau did not notice her, however; he was tongue-tied at the sight of his enemy in a nearly transparent blue-green gown which made her about as desirable as any woman could possibly be. Kaila and Malvau made awkward small talk.
No Ranora. Where the hell was she?
ACCESS ILEL.
INPUT/OUTPUT ERROR ATTEMPT TO GO BEYOND EOF.
HUH?
It repeated the message, which I took to mean that in this game, the ilel finally did what she damn well pleased.
So N’Rasia, looking gloriously wanton after her orgy with her gold and silver hair falling on splendidly naked shoulders, took charge. She became the woman I had spoken with on the beach the night before—Was it the night before? I couldn’t remember.
Lightly, graciously, with a joke here and a smile there, she assumed the role of hostess and gradually cracked the ice. It was a marvelous performance, as unlike the shallow bitch I had first encountered as I could imagine. The bitch, I told myself, was still there—a frightened, self-hating child, temporarily replaced by the magnificent woman who was presiding over the making of history at this meal. The bitch had dominated for most of her life. At least for these happy moments the other N’Rasia was free.
Even G’Ranne melted and chatted pleasantly about her interest in painting. How the hell N’Rasia had learned that this lovely ice cube painted I didn’t know.
Unless Kaila and ’Vau had briefed one another pretty thoroughly.
Then very tentatively N’Rasia guided the Duchess and G’Ranne into a discussion of their artistic efforts.
“Do you find painting preferable to combat?” the Duchess asked bluntly.
The girl blushed. “Certainly, my lady. One has something at the end to show for one’s efforts.”
For the first time I became aware that there was intelligence lurking behind those scorching blue eyes.
“I quite agree, child.” B’Mella smiled her approval. “The Lord Our God approving, we will soon be able to view each other’s work.”
“May it please His Holy Will.”
I didn’t even know that they were into painting.
’Vau beamed at his wife’s performance, and B’Mella, liberated from her obligation to be the hostess, turned from the warrior maiden to a very close study of the Duke, as though she were studying a battlefield before a campaign began.
He, poor man, was swiveling his head back and forth, like a Ping-Pong watcher, between the dazzling women on either side of him.
“Do I smell particularly foul tonight, Lord Lenrau?” she asked lightly, her jaw tilted upwards, that wonderful little smile playing at either end of her mouth.
“If I were a poet like Kaila, I would think of a better image, my lady. At the moment all I can say is that you smell as sweet as this fruit tastes.”
She laughed and blushed a little. “That will do very nicely as a compliment, my Lord. I wasn’t searching for one, however. I was looking for something to say and, being what I am, started contentiously.”
He was now fascinated by something more than the nearly visible charms under her dress.
“The issue, my lady … may I call you B’Mella…”
“Even ’Ella…’Rau.”
“The issue, ’Ella, is not your physical loveliness, which not even the most foul-minded can deny in their sane moments, nor the wisdom of your rule, nor your courage, but whether you can endure for a little while someone who is so much less endowed with these qualities than you are.”
She put down the broad spoon with which they slurped up their fruit, lifted her wine goblet to him, and offered him a sip from it. “If we are to be friends at all, ’Rau, you must permit me to deny your last statement without any responding argument.”
He sipped the wine and offered her his goblet. “Can I at least say that you have a quicker tongue than I do?”
“You can say it, but it isn’t true.”
“Noble Lord Kaila.” N’Rasia beamed like a proud mother. “It would seem that the day of contesting courtiers is returning.”
Everyone laughed, and two quick political deals were made. Fishing and lumbering problems were solved deftly, with nods from the rulers, who were much more interested in each other than in the casual but deeply serious political conversations that were taking place around them. It was agreed that a commission would be set up to supervise disarmament.
G’Ranne was watching the peace process with eyes that were now searchlights, taking in every nuance, evaluating it, filing it for future reference. How had I missed her intelligence before?
ACCESS G’RANNE, I instructed the 286.
EXECUTING.
She sat up straight as though she were listening for my instructions.
FACILITATE PEACE.
She nodded slightly, quick and responsive agreement.
“If my lady permits,” the ice maiden spoke reverently, “I would serve with you on such a commission.”
“No one I would prefer more,” B’Mella turned on all her personal charm, “if your own Lord does not fear that we two women will connive against him.”
“I do much fear that,” he said. “But I cannot think of more appropriate or effective connivers. Be it done.”
A lot of progress, then a loss of nerve. Even the recklessly engaging N’Rasia couldn’t keep the conversation alive. Enemies of the decades and the centuries could not possibly be this pleasant. The room filled up with the poison gas of second thoughts. The Duke and Duchess turned away from one another, suspicion replacing interest.
CUT IT OUT, I demanded. CONTINUE FRIENDSHIP.
They paid no attention. I held the REPEAT button down. Still nothing.
Bastards. Resisting grace, that’s what they were doing. Poor N’Rasia was close to tears.
The main course was brought in to dead silence—a dish which I can describe only as a monumental soufflé.
And with it arrived one ilel, right on time.
Her time, that is.
She piped her way in, playing a nonsense tune; then she looked up at me, blew a few notes on my theme just to keep me on my toes, and flounced up to the Duke. She bowed to him with elaborate respect and then held her pipe behind her back as though she didn’t want anyone to know she had it.
“My lady,” you could hear Lenrau’s sigh of relief all over the room, “I believe you have on more than one occasion encountered this maiden, but now permit me to formally present her to you. This is Ranora.”
“Good evening, Ranora,” the Duchess said gravely. “It is a very pretty dress you are wearing.”
The ilel sniggered, blushed, and hid her face.
“She regrets,” ’Rau was talking easily and smoothly again, “that we did not accept your offer to become a hostage when these conversations began.”
Ranora nodded vigorously.
“Oh? Why is that? I would have been a very difficult hostage, I fear.”
“She is not mute, you know, ’Ella. It is a game she plays.”
Ranora made a face of displeasure.
“She can be shy if she wishes, ’Rau.” The Duchess was just as smooth. “When she wants to talk to me she will.”
The ilel sniffed saucily at her master. So there, big guy.
“But why,” the Duchess went on, “did she want me as a hostage?”
“Her argument, gracious Lady, is that we could keep you forever and she and you would become great friends.”
More vigorous nods.
Brilliantly executed, my friends. You don’t need me.
“Why should she want to be my friend?”
“Well,” ’Rau grinned broadly, “she thinks you’re beautiful and sweet and good and wonderful.”
Ranora clapped her hands in agreement. Everyone else in the room was leaning forward to see what would happen.
“Gentle ilel,” the Duchess said sadly, “some think I am beautiful and others do not. But I am neither wonderful nor good, nor sweet.”
Poor woman, she meant every word of it.
Ranora threw her arms around the Duchess and held her tightly. “Don’t ever say that again,” she said fiercely. “It’s not true.”
Quite overcome, B’Mella clung to the ilel as fiercely as she herself was held. “You make me weep, imp child.”
“Now I’ll make you laugh.” She broke away from the Duchess, discarded her skirt, which she draped ceremoniously over the head of poor Kaila, and began her dancing, piping, and singing.
The songs were in a language I did not understand—and neither did the other guests, though they were constrained to join in the choruses. I guessed they were mild spring fertility songs—what one would expect and accept from a spritely young virgin.
She made them hold hands as they sang. The Duke and the Duchess hesitated, sensing that they were being shamelessly manipulated. Ranora forced their hands together. She didn’t have to force G’Ranne to take Kaila’s hands. I had beat her to it with my instructions. The ice maiden was certainly obedient.
Kaila didn’t seem to mind a bit.
Then when they were worn out with singing and the wineglasses were refilled, she performed a solo “concerto” in which she blended in pipe music and wordless sound her “Lenrau” and “B’Mella” themes. The piece was just light enough so that she could get away with it and not offend the mildly embarrassed leaders.
“I fear you have rather definite plans for me.” B’Mella shifted awkwardly in her chair when the music and applause stopped.
The ilel held out her hands innocently. Who, me?
“She has rather definite plans for everyone.” Lenrau had not drifted away to his distant world once that evening—just as the Duchess had not lost her temper once. “Welcome to the group.”
“One must listen carefully to the advice of such a wise old woman.” B’Mella held out her hand to the ilel, who kissed it reverently. “Especially since she will give you no choice but to listen.”
More laughter. Then while an ice-cream-like dessert was produced, a couple more commissions were set up. Everything was on track.
Then I remembered my other promise. What the hell should I do? Ah.
I keyed Ranora. DO MELODY FOR N’RASIA.
She spun in my direction with an expression of unabashed astonishment. What the hell are you talking about?
EXECUTE.
EXECUTING.
I doubt that the algorithm could make that one do anything she didn’t want to do. Still, she strolled over to the councilor’s wife and began to peer at her intently, as though probing into the older woman’s soul.
Embarrassed, ’Rasia tried to turn away. The ilel boldly took the other’s face in her hand and turned it back so she could continue to probe. ’Rasia flushed and squirmed, but she was not displeased with the gentle examination.
Ranora nodded wisely, turned in my direction with a “So all right, you were right” expression and lifted the pipe to her lips. She fluted a few high notes, examined N’Rasia’s crimson face again, nodded brightly, and began to play “N’Rasia’s theme.”
I am sad that my musical skills are so inadequate that I can’t play it for you, not even pick it out on the piano in the house at Grand Beach. All I can tell you is that its pure delicacy reminds me of the post horn passages from Mahler’s Third.
Occasionally I imagine even now that I hear it outside my 47th-story window in Chicago.
N’Rasia folded her arms across her breast and bowed her head as the ilel celebrated depths that only the two of them knew. Her husband knelt at her side, his arm around her shoulders. The Duchess, tears streaming down her face, knelt on the other side. Even the ice maiden buried her head in her hands.
Why? It’s hard to say. A human person was portrayed for us in that music, a woman with faults and weaknesses we all knew and with strengths and beauty of which we were more or less aware. But the music cast those superficial traits aside like discarded garments and plunged deeply into the colorful, luxurious, sacred garden of the woman’s soul, exposed for us her deepest and richest beauty as a person, and bade us to celebrate her wonders as we heard them sung. We were introduced into the secret N’Rasia, the one she hardly knew herself, and invited to share in worship of the goodness that was reflected in her most hidden and splendid self.
Sexual love with her would have been, by comparison, only a minor and transient possession of some shallow secrets. All of us, for a few moments, possessed her as fully as we could ever hope to possess anyone in our lives.
Then, just when it all became too unbearably painful, Ranora broke the spell with a nutty, comic ending. Thank God. We were able to end with laughter instead of hysterics.
COMPLIMENT ILEL, I told G’Ranne, mostly to see whether she was unfailingly docile.
She nodded imperceptibly and ruffled Ranora’s hair, big sister to little sister. “When I am older and have as much character as the Lady N’Rasia, small imp, perhaps you will do that for me too.”
For once the ilel was surprised. She threw her hands in front of her face as though blinded by the light of such a possibility. Then she responded by hugging G’Ranne.
Fooled you, kid. You didn’t expect support from that quarter for another hundred years, did you?
She didn’t even seem to mind when G’Ranne and Kaila left the party together, not exactly hand in hand but close to it.
It was a good way to end the Two Moons Meal. The ice of the ages had been broken, everyone set out for home happy. Politics, wisdom, and love had triumphed. The author/player had very little to contribute, besides a whisper into the ear of the ilel. The plot was coming together. The way towards the denouement was open.
And my promise to N’Rasia had been kept. She’d had her orgy, her triumph, her celebration. How could she doubt any more that she was loved or that I—in my role as author/ God to her—loved her?
I was as exhausted as though I had written twenty thousand words in a day—try it for two days in a row and you’ll end up in the hospital. I suspended the game with relief and collapsed into bed.
You may have guessed that I was overinvolved. Later I would scratch a note for Nathan: “Provide author/player warning about overinvolvement.”
There is a note, which I’m sure you’ve seen, on the box of the game which says, “Psychologists recommend that no one play this game for more than two hours a day. Studies have revealed that it exhausts most players after that period of time.”
Actually the research says you can keep at it for four hours without freaking out. But do more than that for a couple of days and you become a blithering basket case.
Like me.
And there was worse to come. Even that night—their time—as I was to find when I returned to the game the next morning.
The next day was Saturday so we left for waterskiing absurdly early, 7:30 A.M., to beat the weekend crowds who create wakes and put your life in jeopardy by mixing boat driving and boat drinking.
The adolescents were in a giggly mood. It had been, I gathered, a wild night among the natives. “Like really excellent, but kind of crazy.”
Fine. You guys should know what kind of party I went to. No ilels in your bash on the beach.
Michele, of course, was humming N’Rasia’s theme.
I didn’t ask her about it.
But I did ask whether she ever blew on any kind of a horn when she was a little girl.
“No way,” she insisted vigorously. “You mean a trumpet or a French horn or a sax or something like that?”
“Well, or a penny whistle?”
“Certainly not … what’s a penny whistle, anyway?”
“Oh, a kind of Irish thing.”
“Is it,” giggle, “made out of pennies?”
“No, they call it that because it’s so inexpensive. The Chieftains and groups like that use it.”
The Chieftains not being a rock group, I’m sure she had no idea who they were.
“Well, if they’re still real cheap, would you get me one the next time you go to Ireland? I’d, you know, kind of like to play something like that.”
I don’t even want to think about that, especially with what happened later. Of course, ‘Chele being ‘Chele I’ll be in a lot of trouble if I don’t return from poor old Erin with a penny whistle next year.
I dropped them off at their various stations after the skiing was finished: Heidi with her whistle at the beach (the secret of the whistle, I was told, to use it as little as possible), John Larkin at the clubhouse “Pav” where he served up the best hamburgers in Grand Beach, Lance and Bobby at their respective homes so they could “cash out” (go back to bed), Michele at the local Nautilus installation because “once you’re awake it’s totally silly to go back to bed.”
I then drove into New Buffalo to buy some salami and to pick up The New York Times (so as to learn what had officially happened in the world yesterday) at the Buffalo drugstore. Coming out, I encountered the States Attorney of the County of Cook and his near-teenaged daughter. (Her name is Nora but I don’t think she fits in the story. If she does, I don’t want to know about it.)
“Strange night in Grand Beach.” Rich Daley withdrew his unlighted cigar and smiled the most dazzling smile in American political life.
“Restless adolescent natives?”
“Restless everyone.”
“A lot of the drink taken?”
“Funny thing,” the cigar back in his mouth. “Less than usual. People were sort of laid back and relaxed, like they should be at a resort, instead of uptight. It should always be that way, shouldn’t it?”
“Sounds almost like a religious festival.”
“Just what I thought, peaceful, and,” big grin, “really sensual.”
“Heaven help us all when the Grand Beach Irish turn sensual.”
“Less work for my people if everyone was that way all the time.”
“My mommy,” Nora piped up with that mixture of affection and disrespect which only a kid that age can blend for a paternal parent, “says my daddy has turned psychic.”
“Really!” Only if several generations of acute political instincts made you psychic. Instinctively he could sniff a restless precinct.
“I don’t know … there was something funny last night … did you hear about the poor Hagans?”
“Only that there was a reconciliation.”
“No.” He shook his head. “They were mugged last night in Michigan City coming out of Maxime and Hymie’s. She’s in St. Joseph’s with a brain concussion. Still unconscious. Wrong time for them, just when things were beginning to straighten out.”
“I’ll stop by and see her.”
“I think they’d appreciate that very much.”
Was the port between our cosmoi opening wide? And if I suggested that to Rich, would he call the men in the white suits?
Probably not. He’d want to find out more about how the port worked.
But it was my game and my secret and up to me to control the influences which might be flowing back and forth. As you can see, I was now acting as if I thought I was God. However, I wasn’t quite ready to admit that to myself yet.
I drove well above the speed limit back to Grand Beach, so worried was I about what might have happened to Malvau and N’Rasia on the other side of Max Planck’s Wall.
On Lake View I discovered the remnants of Diamond (the village’s rock group) acting out for an imaginary video camera another chapter in the John Larkin disappearance. After one of their concerts at the clubhouse, Diamond had staged an imaginary TV interview with John in the midst of which someone set off firecrackers. Paul and Mike had immediately turned it into an assassination attempt and a long-running joke. Millions of dollars of reward were posted to find out who was behind the attempt and then to discover whether John was still alive. Rumors were spread that he had fled to Brazil. Other rumors insisted that his body had been found buried in a beach near São Paulo. John himself visited New Buffalo merchants and raspberry farmers, displaying pictures of himself, asking whether such a young man had been seen. (Almost always he had been seen, but the interviewee could not remember quite when.)
Great if slightly weird fun. But today they seemed to have become quite mad. Paul shoved an imaginary mike in my face. “Do you care to comment on the rumor that John Larkin is returning tonight from Brazil for a triumphant farewell concert?”
“Or,” Mike demanded, notebook in hand, “do you believe that he really is buried in that beach?”
“Not without Heidi’s permission.”
“Does she hold the secret to the John Larkin case?” John himself demanded of me.
“Dux femina facti,” I replied.
“Huh?”
“Cherchez la femme.”
“Heidi!”
“She’s the lifeguard.”
“One last question.” John, it occurred to me, bore a remarkable physical resemblance to Kaila. “Before we cherchez for her. Did you really visit John Larkin in Rio last year?”
“Salvador. He was living at the home of Calisans Neto, the famous artist.”
“Is that on the record?”
“He was alive and well and living in Bahia. That was a year ago of course.”
The camera crew raced off for the beach.
“Beware the whistle,” I yelled after them.
Diamond was a mad crew. They had never, however, been quite this mad. The port was wide open.
Back on the other side, however, the carefully orchestrated peace scenario had mostly fallen apart. I activated the game just as the Two Moon Meal was breaking up and followed ’Rasia and ’Vau through the soft night as they dreamily walked home, hand in hand, quietly proud of their achievement.
No one, I swore, was going to mess up the game plan I and my allies in this land had put together. I’d protect my two friends—friends and lovers they had surely become—from any random muggers.
I failed them completely, despite the fact that I was ready for trouble. It happened too quickly for my reactions to be any help. It was a random event, not even intended by anyone to be a disaster, a bit of the drink taken, an accident, and almost another war. For the first time I understood that random events—built into the algorithm by random numbers, of course—could undo the best laid plans of mice, men, and storytellers.
And possibly of God too.
You’ve probably figured out that their society was rather rigidly ritualistic. They had tried to confine violence to the warrior castes and sex to the elaborate and carefully prescribed day-end ritual. Remember everyone’s shock when Malvau mildly patted his wife’s rear end? Sex is too powerful a human phenomenon to be so completely contained, but retreats into the abundant privacy of the forests and lakes of the sort in which ’Vau and ’Rasia had engaged twice were rare events. Even they were ritual echoes of wedding night and honeymoon behavior, as I was soon to learn.
Under ordinary circumstances, then, the people in the land (I never learned whether it had any other name but “land”) were sober, self-controlled, responsible, even prudish people. Dull bourgeoisie, you might want to call them. On the various festival days they let off steam, eating and drinking and making love as though all three behaviors were going out of fashion.
Not everyone blew their lid. As we saw at the ducal meal, the style was light and festive, made so first by the radiance of N’Rasia (how that was acquired earlier in the day was another matter) and then by the divine zaniness of Ranora. But if you were wandering around the meadows and the woods late in the evening it was not unreasonable to assume that you were interested in the more extreme variety of festival behavior.
So ’Rasia and ’Vau encountered three very drunken warriors on the path from the Duchess’s pavilion to their own. Probably the men did not want rape; rather only some kissing and feeling. But ’Rasia was from the class that did not wander about on festival nights and surely had never been pawed without her consent by anyone but her husband. The men came suddenly out of the dark. One of them laughed cheerfully, grabbed the woman, and tossed her playfully to another. The third immobilized with broad arms the gamely struggling ’Vau.
I reacted as quickly as I could. STOP ASSAULT!
It didn’t have much effect. The big guy with ’Vau tossed him to the ground, the way Richard Dent of the Bears sacks quarterbacks, leaving them dazed and motionless. The three of them then “played” with ’Rasia, as I suppose they had “played” with other, quite willing, women earlier in the evening. They kissed her and caressed her and tore at her gown and passed her back and forth with drunken laughter, all, as far as they were concerned, in the festive spirit of the late night.
She fought back like a tiger, kicking, clawing, biting, screaming. They were too drunk to notice that she wasn’t enjoying the game.
I continued to press the REPEAT key. Nothing happened. I changed the strategy. ZAP ASSAILANTS.
ERROR. ERROR. CANNOT ZAP ASSAILANTS WITHOUT INJURING MAJOR CHARACTER. ERROR ERROR.
Well, she had become a major character anyway, as she had wanted.
’Vau shook off his daze and charged back into the fray. The big man swept him out of the scene with a single blow of his tree-trunk arm. ’Rasia dug her teeth into his shoulder, biting hard.
He screamed like the proverbially stuck pig and tried to shake her loose. She clung to him like a Gila monster, scratching at his face while she continued to bite his shoulder. The other two, confused and tipsy, tore at her already ripped garments, not quite sure what was happening, but doing what seemed to them to be the natural thing on a festival night.
Finally, the big man, bleeding profusely, succeeded in throwing his counterattacker off him. He swung his uninjured arm, really intending nothing more than shoving her away. The furious, and, looking back on it, incredibly brave N’Rasia charged him and collided with that huge swinging tree trunk. She flew back, stumbled over her husband, fell violently to the ground, and lay still, unnaturally still. The three drunks took off as if the hounds of hell were in pursuit.
Which they soon would be.
ACCESS COPS, DUCHESS, I demanded.
The local cops, not much more efficient than the teenager harassers in Grand Beach and Long Beach, showed up quickly and dithered ineffectually. ’Vau regained consciousness sufficiently to mutter “warriors” and then freak out over the body of his prone and barely breathing wife.
Then the Duchess arrived and all hell broke loose. “Take them both to the medical tent. Tell the doctors I insist on their complete recovery.” Then to one of her sleepy-eyed woman staffers, “Assemble the warriors, we march for vengeance at once.”
Clever, you stupid little bitch, real clever.
By sunrise the two armies were assembled in the quondam peace meadow, ready to resume the war. Lenrau had heard at once that the Duchess was assembling her sleepy hungover warriors and he promptly did the same, not sure why the fight was to be resumed but not waiting to find out.
Cooler heads tried to prevail. Kaila and G’Ranne, the latter still instantly responsive to my commands, tried to talk to the Duchess and were summarily dismissed as “rapists,” hardly a fair charge against either of them. Poor old Linco dithered like the cops and tried to argue the perfectly reasonable position that there was no reason to believe that the warriors were on the other side. He was banished as a “senile old man.”
When my B’Mella loses her temper, she really loses it, a fact which would cause even greater trouble later on.
ACCESS ILEL, I cautiously recommended to my Compaq.
Without any difficulty it located Ranora in her tent, draped in a long black gown, pale and angry, kneeling on the floor, praying intensely.
STOP WAR, I told her, unwisely.
She looked up at me, made a terrible face of anger and disgust, and turned away.
HEY, IT’S NOT MY FAULT.
She resolutely refused to listen.
I tried B’Mella. STOP WAR, YOU LITTLE FOOL.
Her look of stony contempt was as bad as the ilel’s. As an author/God I was not having one of my better days.
The two armies were stomping restlessly, eager to be back at what they knew best. If you took a closer look, you would observe that many of them were not all that enthusiastic about resuming the war. They had, perhaps, learned to enjoy the little bit of peace they had.
G’Ranne, again at my suggestion, pleaded with the Duke to restrain his own anger. Larry, Curly, and Moe were dressed up in their fancy red armor plate, but restlessly watched the snow-covered mountains in the distance. They had discovered that it was more fun to play manic games than to actually fight.
I tried the medical pavilion. Malvau, his silver hair still stained with blood, one of his eyes terribly black, was hovering with a doctor over his unconscious wife. Her breathing seemed normal, maybe a little shallow; but the doctor types looked worried.
All we need is a long and lingering coma.
GET OUT THERE AND STOP THE DAMN FOOL WAR, I told him.
He shook his head, not so much declining the command as trying to think.
DO YOU WANT TO BLOW IT ALL? I demanded.
He sighed, straightened up, put his hand reassuringly on the shoulder of one of the doctor types, found a chariot outside the pavilion, and galloped rapidly to the battlefield.
The armies were approaching one another warily when he rode up to B’Mella’s position on the hill.
STOP THIS DAMN FOOL WAR, I told all and sundry.
The Duchess did not want to listen. I was too far away to hear what they were saying. ’Vau grabbed the Duchess and shook her like an unruly and irresponsible little girl, which of course she was.
Her eyes opened in furious surprise, she reached for her sword, and then dropped it back in its sheath.
STOP WAR! I demanded, pushing her function key.
She patted ’Vau’s arm, turned to an aide and whispered, “Signal truce.”
Lenrau was by this time distinctly unamused by the events of the day. “The Lord Our God condemn her truce,” he fumed. “It was her warriors, not ours, who assaulted the councilor and his wife. Continue the attack.”
Kaila and G’Ranne had to shake him back to sense. From the warm and gentle glances with which they favored each other, incidentally, and the occasional lingering touch, I concluded that they were having a love affair. The ice maiden was not, after all, made of ice, but perhaps of fire. And as for her perhaps not being a maiden any longer, that was their business and I proposed to leave them alone. I had more than enough problems as it was. I couldn’t help but notice, however, how radiantly lovely G’Ranne was.
So peace returned. No thanks to the ilel who had opted out of this one.
I was wiped out. Despite my morning exercise with the kids, I could not long survive this kind of tension. It was already three o’clock in the afternoon, Saturday afternoon at that, and all I’d done for hours was play the damn game, with the only effect being to keep my characters from killing one another. It had to stop soon.
Meanwhile something must be done about poor N’Rasia. She would surely blame me for what had happened. In the hospital pavilion I ordered, REVIVE N’RASIA.
EXECUTING.
Nothing happened. I pushed the REPEAT key.
EXECUTING.
She did not stir. The medical types were fretting and stewing. Malvau and the Duchess entered the chamber and appeared profoundly worried.
I leaned on the REPEAT key.
I/O ERROR. ATTEMPT TO GO BEYOND EOF.
In other words, it couldn’t revive her and was blaming me. But it gave me an idea.
ALL RIGHT, I told the truculent little imp in her red-and-white-striped tent, CURE N’RASIA.
“How?” she snarled, still very angry at me. And at that moment looking like Michele did when she was very angry. Boy, I was in real trouble.
PIPE HER BACK TO CONSCIOUSNESS.
She frowned, considering whether this absurdity was worth her notice. She pulled her pipe out from under her discarded prom dress (and I must report that unlike the rest of the people in this land, and very like the teenage women in our land, she maintained her quarters in a constant state of pure chaos) and blew a few notes on it tentatively, as if she were thinking about it.
Then she played the first few bars of the “N’Rasia theme,” nodded her agreement, winked at me, and slipped out of the tent.
For reasons beyond me, she marched solemnly across the meadow and through the outer tents and pavilions in her black dress as though she were a banshee going to a funeral. It was, I suppose, a protest. We would see it again before the story was over.
Inside ’Rasia’s chamber, the whole family, including grandchildren, was assembled. The Duchess, clinging to poor old Linco (no longer presumably a senile fool), stood next to sad-faced ’Vau, whose hair was still stained with blood. Most of the other family members were weeping.
How late in your life they all discovered you, including, sadly, you yourself.
Ranora entered so softly that no one noticed. She slipped through the group, hugging the youngest daughter briefly as she moved her aside, and sat, crosslegged, next to the dying woman’s bed.
The others drew back, not quite sure what was happening, but wary of the supernatural influence which had entered the room.
Candidly, Ranora, grim-faced and clad in black, would be enough to scare the hell out of almost anyone.
She examined N’Rasia carefully, touched her face, lifted her eyelid, nodded, blew a few test notes on the pipe, and then started N’Rasia’s theme, now somehow far more melancholy than it had been only a few hours before.
I decided that the least I could do was help. I pushed the N’Rasia shift/function (still a minor character in that respect anyway) and instructed her, WAKE UP, KID, THERE’S A LOT OF WORK FOR YOU STILL TO DO.
“Sing with me.” The ilel lifted her lips from the pipe. “Wordless song.”
They joined in.
WAKE UP, DAMN YOU, I ordered and pushed the REPEAT button down.
Her eyelids flickered. Ranora leaned even closer and played the pipe next to her ear.
’Rasia’s eyelids flickered again, a little more vigorously.
I SAID WAKE UP. YOU’RE TOO IMPORTANT TO THE STORY NOW TO DIE.
Ranora changed the rhythm of her melody, jazzing it up, making it comic, demanding attention.
The injured woman opened her eyes, glanced around, lost her focus, then looked around again, smiling slightly.
Ranora jumped to her feet and turned the theme into a triumphal march as she sashayed around the bed. N’Rasia, still a classy broad, laughed.
And then so did everyone else.
What a twenty-four hours for the poor woman—orgy, triumph, celebration, fierce fight, knock on the head, and then a recall from the grave.
Well, she wanted to be something more than a minor subplot, didn’t she?
It probably would take her a long time to recover completely. Too many vulnerabilities at one time. For the moment, however, that was her problem. I suspended the game. For a time, at any rate, they didn’t need me.
By the way, and for the record, they never did find out which side the warrior assailants were from. Later B’Mella admitted as much, with what I thought was a notable lack of graciousness.
I drove into Michigan City to visit Joan Hagan. She too was conscious, but dazed and unsmiling. She looked hauntingly lovely, a Violetta in the final scenes of the final act.
Her husband, his usual noisy bluster gone, sat next to her, holding a totally unresponsive hand.
“It was a freak accident, Father. They only wanted her purse. She stumbled and fell as they yanked it away from her. If the police catch them, they will will probably call it attempted murder.”
“I don’t remember a thing,” she said dully. “I don’t think I had that many drinks.”
“Only two. The blow on the head, the doctor told me, will make you forget what happened for a long time.”
Forget consciously, but the terror of the mugging will remain in your unconscious, just as will the terror of the assault on your cognate will remain in her unconscious. Somehow the two of you will have to deal with what you cannot even remember.
Was it two attacks or only one?
I must emphasize that, except for Tom Hagan’s silver hair and Joan’s blond streaked with gray and the fact that they are both handsome people, there is little physical resemblance between them and my friends on the other side of Herr Planck’s Wall. Tom is shorter, less dignified, but more of a lighthearted comic than Malvau. His wife is thinner, more ethereal, and much less earthy than N’Rasia. They have six children instead of three. The strain in their marriage is less created by a blend of pompousness and shallowness than that caused by a little boy who refuses to grow up and a stiff, somber woman who was never a little girl and refuses to become one even when she should, mostly, alas, because she doesn’t know how.
“Things were going so well for us,” she said, “except I can’t remember how or why.”
“It’ll come back, no rush.” He patted the hand tenderly and sympathetically. “We have lots of time.”
“I’m not sure we do.”
I wasn’t sure either. But I insisted that God always gave as much time as we needed.
Does S/He now? As the Irish would say.
I was afraid that the blow on the head might have knocked the emergent little girl out permanently.
One blow on the head or two? Had my port, I wondered, made it possible for the attack on Joan Hagan to cause the attack on N’Rasia? Or vice versa? Did one marriage have to survive if the other was to survive? Or was it all merely coincidence?
At that point I was leaning pretty much to a mechanistic view of the relationship between the two worlds. Since then I have rejected that interpretation in favor of a more elaborate and complex one which sees spiritual influences bouncing back and forth in intricate and unpredictable patterns.
Consider that last sentence: it’s a masterpiece of academic scholarship. What does it really say? Not a hell of a lot.
It says I don’t know how the two cosmoi affect one another; they do, but I haven’t been able to figure out how or why. I don’t know and probably I’ll never know.
But no scholar will ever admit ignorance in quite so candid a fashion, not unless he’s trying to tell an honest story like this one. So we make up sentences about elaborate and complex interpretations of intricate and unpredictable patterns of spiritual influences.
Practically, all I know is that Tom and Joan in our world and Malvau and N’Rasia in the other cosmos were unconsciously linked with each other. Their problems and their possibilities were cognates. Grace and ungrace flowed back and forth, sometimes helping, sometimes hurting. But neither couple, I now firmly believe, determined the outcome of the other couple’s “subplot.”
I was responsible, more or less, for the subplot across the wall; the Other Person, presumably, was responsible for the subplot on this side of the wall.
But that makes it too simple, doesn’t it? Since I’m telling the whole story, I’m cooperating with the Other Person on both sides of the wall, in different ways because on this side Tom and Joan are not really part of Nathan’s God Game—as computer program, anyway.
I said three paragraphs back that neither couple was conscious of the flow of grace and ungrace back and forth. But if I am to be precise I must modify that statement. There were certainly strange things happening in Grand Beach those weeks and especially that weekend.
The folks in the other cosmos, less reflective and self-conscious, didn’t seem to be aware of a reverse flow of influence. But that may not be altogether true either, as I will have occasion to note shortly.
As I drove out of Michigan City on U.S. 12, I noticed for maybe the millionth time a sign that said, “Leaving LaPorte County.”
That hit me kind of hard. LaPorte, a town down by I-90, is very old. The Catholic church was built in 1852 and, alas, covered by stone a couple of decades ago. The town received its name because it was on a strip of prairie between the Great American Forest to the south and the Dune Forest to the north, through which the very early settlers came, and the Indians before them. It was the gate to the prairies and the world beyond.
Presumably it was merely an accidental juxtaposition of names. Two utterly different kinds of gates. If there was a juxtaposed cosmos in our neighborhood, it was there long before the forests came into being and before the name LaPorte was given to the town and the county. Anyway, Grand Beach is not in LaPorte County. Still …
We had Mass as always on Saturday in my parlor. I preached about two of my favorite characters, who appear in a novel about a novel, too, named Finnbar the Fair, Emperor of All the World and Everything Else Besides, and his girlfriend, Countess Deirdre the Dark, who works after school at McDonald’s selling Big Macs. Deirdre was fed up with how dull the colors were in the Empire, so she made Finny—who is also the greatest wizard in all the world—take her on a trip to lands which were in different colors, a red world, a green world, and so forth. I was, of course, stealing from G. K. Chesterton’s colored lands. Finally they come to a world where all the colors are perfect and Deirdre claps her hands for joy. Then they turn the corner and what do they see?
All the little Goggin kids watch with big blue eyes. No, what do they see?
Deirdre’s McDonald’s. The end of all our search is to return to where we started and know it for the first time.
I don’t remember what the gospel was, to tell you the truth, but it’s a good story and kids love it. I figure if you can tell a story the kids like, you’ve talked to everyone else in the congregation too. We prayed, since there were astronauts traveling in space at the time, for those who traveled between worlds. I had other intentions in mind, needless to say.
The point in repeating the homily is to record that, while I was under strain certainly and worried about my characters surely, I was not yet a blithering basket case. I was, rather, carrying on my normal summer-vacation routine with people who didn’t notice any particular change in me or if they did, like Michele and her mother, they figured I was busy with one of my stories again.
Which of course was true, but it was a different kind of story. It was Nathan’s God Game.
The Brennans were staging one of their Saturday night dinners, not only for invited guests, but streams of teenagers related in various ways to the four adolescent Brennans. Even for the usual standard of fun-filled evenings at the Brennans’, it was a magically joyous evening.
The meal had hardly started when, no drink having been taken, I announced that I could create a better Archdiocese of Chicago than God had. In fact, I had already done so. In my fictional Archdiocese, Sean Cronin, a man of courage, honesty, and integrity, was Cardinal Archbishop, and Blackie Ryan, wise, gentle, insightful, was Rector of the Cathedral.
“God,” I said firmly, “hasn’t done nearly so well.”
“Maybe he has more obstacles,” Jeanine Brennan observed.
A point, I suppose, well taken.