Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (2 page)

All of this is an elaborate way of warning you that I have made up things when I have needed to, as when describing events which happened but at which I was not present. I have tried to be fair. I showed this manuscript to Senior Confrere Wilberfoss during the later period of his convalescence and he asked me to change nothing. Needless to say, perhaps, but those sections in which I quote Wilberfoss directly, as when he spoke frankly to me during his wanderings in Lily’s Garden, are completely accurate and only the syntax has been changed to allow the meaning to shine out more clearly.

I am a machine, and I have approached the human as closely as I can. Being a machine I have perhaps been able to stare fixedly at those things which make a human blench. I do not for example suffer from moral guilt or despair and hence can look at the temptation to suicide and see it for what it is. Despair is the dark unreality that humans so frequently live with. Lily and I look on and try to help. Being machines we offer no threat and I find it interesting that Wilberfoss mentioned so many times that he found it easier to talk to us than to a fellow human being because we were machines.

Wilberfoss’s only comment when he read my manuscript was that he was surprised at how human I sounded. I think that was meant as a compliment. Let me turn it on its head. Let me tell you: linguistics is easy, recording is easy, adding two and two and getting four is easy, noting references and allusions is easy, using verbs like “to feel” and “to sense” is easy. What I am saying is that it is not difficult to sound like a human. But being a human is not easy. I know. I have watched the struggle. I have heard humans affirming lies and denying truths. I have seen people choose hell over heaven and rejoice in the fact. As I say, I have watched the struggle, and if I knew what envy was I would say with great certainty that I, Wulf, the autoscribe, do not envy any of you, not a one.

1 have already mentioned that I love History. What more you need to know is that like all historians, I seek to discover patterns of cause and effect. Whether it be the fall of sparrows and princes or the rise of Superpowers or the effect of disease, famine and drugs on the vitality of populations, there are always patterns, and these can be discovered by the patient historian.

LIFE, as it is being lived, seems to be Chaos. And Chaos is an enemy to both man and machine. In the course of his life a man moves from hurdle to hurdle, from crisis to crisis, and counts himself lucky if, at the end of the day, when the light begins to fade, he can enjoy peace and a quiet death. Life by its very nature does not allow or encourage contemplation. I am not subject to life or death and so can contemplate even when I am burning.

The soaring eagle sees patterns which are denied to the running mouse, and I like to think that historians, at least in their art if not in their life, are eagles. And of course, a mosaic (for such I call this book) is a pattern which requires the eye of distance for it to make good sense.

In the case of Senior Confrere Jon Wilberfoss, we have a life which I cannot deny has something of tragic inevitability about it. A happy man, brought to ruin . . . or near ruin. His ending, however, is not tragic. It is the near tragedy which concerns me, for we can all learn from that. Jon Wilberfoss was a gifted man who had found some happiness. Then Fate stepped in and took hold of his life and shook it like a dog that is killing a rat.

Fate. I do not know that I believe in Fate. As a machine I am detached from the rhythms and patterns that human beings detect in their lives, which is not to say that I cannot detect patterns in my own period of consciousness. I am, after all, a trained pattern detector. The difference is that I do not ascribe metaphysical significance to my patterns of experience while Jon Wilberfoss does, or did. He saw his whole life as shaped by Fate from the day he stumbled into an outpost of the Gentle Order and took his first vows.

However, since I cannot explain the first cause of things better, I must defer to him. We will let Fate stand.

We begin at the moment when Fate comes a-knocking...

It begins in the darkness and the silence of night.

The sound of stone tapping on wood. It is an urgent sound and at the same time it is discreet. It is not a sound for all ears... a lover trying to wake his sleeping mistress might knock in this way.

After each pattern of taps there is an echo which dies in the silence and then a soft voice calls, “Wake up, Senior Confrere Wilberfoss. Wake up, sir.” The caller waits while the sleeper adjusts and begins to respond. Then the tapping begins again, slightly harder.

It reaches into the sleeping mind of Jon Wilberfoss and chivvies him, raising him to consciousness from a strange dream in which he was standing on a road and a brown-eyed cow was in front of him, blocking his path over a narrow bridge across a swiftly flowing stream.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Definitely louder this time. More demanding. Soon a latch will be raised if the summons is not answered and a stealthy figure will enter. For be certain, the one that is knocking will not go away unanswered.

Jon Wilberfoss rolled away from his wife, turning his head from the musky tousle of her hair and releasing his arm from the warmth under her breasts. She, Medoc by name, an alien woman of the indigenous people called the Tallines, murmured like the sea, uttering words of her own language and turned on her back, moist lips open. For a brief moment her fingers touched and caressed his naked body touching his chest and then gliding down to his thighs. Reassured she relaxed and released him and slid from a dream of horses to a dream of houses and so back down into the bottomless deep of sleep.

Not so Wilberfoss. Jon Wilberfoss was waking up. He drew the covers back slowly and blinked in the shadowy room. Already his dreams were fleeing into oblivion and he knew who he was and where he was. A man such as Wilberfoss, a trained combatant, did not wake with a lot of ballyhoo. His early training reached deep into his subconscious. He lay still for several moments, aware that his awaking had an external cause, and strained to catch the slightest irregular sound. Consciously he breathed silently and deeply to quieten his pulse.

When he was confident that there was nothing unexpected in the chamber, he rose from the bed, a shadow among shadows, and moved across the room to find his gown. He dragged it over his shoulders with barely a rustle and then crossed to the door. The door squeaked when he opened it and the sound seemed loud in his ears: likewise the click when it closed. But his wife did not wake.

Outside in the stone-flagged corridor, the passage lights, sensing his presence, began to glow softly. That they were not already glowing gave him confidence that there was no intruder and he smiled at himself, at his own apprehension.

Indeed, what intruder could there be here in the heart of the Pacifico Monastery and in a house where the alien goddesses of Juniper held equal sway with St. Francis Dionysos of old Mother Earth? Still, defensive habits once learned, die hard and without realizing it, Wilberfoss moved on down the corridor, walking softly on the sides of his feet, alert for anything untoward.

Let us pause and gain some physical impression of this man. Some men are like lions, some men are like horses. Jon Wilberfoss is huge like a bear. He has a loose-limbed gait, somewhat amplified as he now walks down the corridor by his need to remain quiet. It is the careful walk of a large man who is all the time aware that there are others in the world smaller than him and whom he might crush. There is no pride of strength in his walk, no arrogant stepping forth, and yet there is an impression of great strength. He pauses at a door, arms raised and touching the frame and again we are reminded of the bear, standing up in the forest, head cocked, listening. The man who would challenge Jon Wilberfoss would need to be very confident of his prowess.

He turns and looks back up the corridor toward the room where his wife is sleeping. The face is mild, with deep-set blue-gray eyes which, surprisingly, look somewhat timid. The hair of his beard and on his head is short, coarse and blond. The face is tanned and healthy but deeply lined and looks older than one might expect. A seaman who has looked into flying salt spray or stood watch above the coldness of a midnight sea might have such a face. Weather-beaten is the phrase.

The hands too are worthy of comment. Jon Wilberfoss’s hands are large and square and freckled on the back. The fingers are stubby. They are farmer’s hands, fisherman’s hands, hands for hard labor. For those who only know Jon Wilberfoss as a burly pilot, there is both surprise and delight when they discover the sensitivity with which he plays the guitar or the delicacy of his touch as he mends a fine and fragile beaker made by the potters of old Talline.

There was no sound from the children’s rooms and Wilberfoss moved on.

He did not know exactly what had wakened him. A knocking of some kind ... a sound at least... but he knew that he did not want to hear that sound again. His wife would surely wake and perhaps the three children. Besides, only trouble could come with such insistence in the night and he preferred to face trouble alone. KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

“All right,” growled Wilberfoss, “I’m coming. No need to wake everyone up.” Then he heard his own name whispered, like a voice from a well, and it made him shiver.

Quickly he entered and crossed the dining-room where the remains of the evening meal were still on the table. This house was managed in accordance with Talline ways and the food of the evening was never cleared from the table until the morning as a mark of respect to the guardians of the house. A mouse, disturbed while enjoying Talline hospitality, scampered in a panic for its hole. The fire still glowed a dull red under its patina of gray ash.

Then Wilberfoss was out in the hall. Facing him was the massive front door made from planks of ironwood. He felt a sudden anger at being disturbed in his privacy. “If this is—” he began to say.

KNOCK . . .

With one sweep of his arm, Wilberfoss drew back the heavy curtains which stopped the draft. He lifted the hasp with a bang and heaved the door open.

Note this about the man’s character, he opened the door to his secure home without knowing what was waiting on the other side. He did not know what to expect.

Facing him was one of the small blind servants who satisfy the many practical needs of the Pacifico Monastery. It was a woman, as was revealed by the bulky dark blue gown she was wearing. In her hands she held a pair of smoothed balls of granite. One of these she had used to tap at the door. Her eyes were closed and the dim light from the hall revealed that she was nodding dreamily to herself as though listening to some inner music. Her face was waxen and unhealthy and it was impossible to tell her age. Her size was little more than that of a nine-year-old human child.

Wilberfoss felt his anger evaporate. “What do you want?” he asked, and then added foolishly, “Do you know what time it is?” As though in answer the monastery clock tolled twice.

“Yom sorry to waken you, Senior Confrere Wilberfoss,” said the woman in her thick accent and never speaking to him directly but aiming her voice to the side of his face. “Yis asked to call you urgently. Yis told to use special pitch so only you would wake. There is a secret. You're to come to Magister Tancredi’s rooms immediately.”

“Why? What is this secret?”

“Yo no know.”

“Trouble?”

“Yo no know. Yis just asked ...”

“Tancredi just told you to come and get me?”

“Yes. Magister Tancredi sounded worried. . . mmm . . . yes, worried and excited too. Yo no think it is a bad worry. But you're to come immediately.”

The big maxi peered down into the diminutive woman’s bland unquestioning face. She was one of the Children of the War as they were called: a tribe of several hundred humanoid beings who worked and lived at the Pacifico Monastery of St. Francis Dionysos. Congenitally blind, stunted in their growth and yet miraculously still able to breed, the Children of the War survived only in the benign, albeit unnatural, environment of the monastery. They were all that were left of an entire race and had been rescued from a dying world at the height of the War of Ignorance. That war ended over four hundred years ago.

“What is your name?” asked Wilberfoss.

“Miranda.” The voice which breathed the name was little more than a whisper.

“Thank you for your message, Miranda. Please return to Magister Tancredi and tell him I’m on my way. Tell him I’m just getting some clothes on.”

The small figure bowed. “Yom doing that now.” She whispered and turned and hurried away. Jon Wilberfoss watched her go. She joined the shadows under the dark fused arches. She moved with complete confidence in the permanent night of her blindness. She glided rather than walked with her arms outstretched and her fingers brushing the columns. Her gown billowed. She could almost have been flying.

Before she disappeared from view into the stacked honeycomb of cells that made up this lower part of the monastery, Miranda paused and brought her hands together in three quick gestures. Wilberfoss heard the hard click of stone on stone.

Wilberfoss shivered, but not with the cold. He experienced one of those strange moments of
frisson
and, as the ancients would have said, he felt as though someone had walked over his grave. He laughed at himself. “Reading the echoes,” he thought. “She’s just reading the echoes. I’ve seen them do this a thousand times. Everything seems strange at two o’clock in the morning.”

And with that he closed his door and hurried inside to get dressed.

And so, while Jon Wilberfoss tiptoes about in the sleeping house, making himself a drink and gathering his clothes, I will tell you about the Gentle Order of St. Francis Dionysos.

There are many official histories of the Order of St. Francis Dionysos and all of them are equally bad. They either offer mechanical history which gives a date and a fact and no analysis or they disappear up the dark tunnel of mysticism at just the point at which they should be clear and skeptical. While this is sad, it is not surprising. Ours is, in the main, a practical order devoted to the saving of life and there remains within it, I suspect, more than a tinge of the anti-intellectualism which characterized its founders. Theory follows practice with us, and only those with time on their hands can afford the luxury of an historical perspective. Besides, historians, rightly considered, are both the greatest radicals and the greatest revolutionaries since they show the causes and consequences of ideas. Such types can be an encumbrance to men of action.