It was a strange place. Even after all this time, and the familiarity of the many hours Adrian Gellert had spent here, the place still seemed . . . foreign.
I never got used to it either, really, came one of the two "spirits" which had created that strangeness. Even after years had passed. And I only had to share my brain with one other, not two.
Adrian shook his head slightly. Then, through the slight haze of the "trance"—as if he were seeing it on another's face rather than feeling it on his own—sensed his lips curling into a little smile. It's not sharing my "brain" that's the problem, Raj. I wasn't using a lot of it anyway. It's that I'm always a little confused whose soul is working at the moment.
i do not have a soul. Center's statement, as always, came so firm and certain that it reminded Adrian of a level plain. A sheet of granite, covered with only the thinnest soil. No hills, no gullies—no mountains, certainly, nor valleys—gave that "voice" any relief at all. Sometimes it was tiring; and it was always a bit annoying.
He sensed Raj Whitehall chuckling. "Sensed" it, only, because in the end Raj was as disembodied as Center himself. But Whitehall, at least, had once been a human being.
He annoyed me a little, too, back in the days long ago when I was alive and he was my adviser. Damn know-it-all. And what's worse is that you can't really trust that knowledge—as he's the first to point out.
of course.
Center's "voice" had no emotional flavor or penumbra. It was always a bit of a shock, that. There was never the little moment of preparation that a human gave another when he was about to speak—a smile, perhaps; or a scowl, or a tilt of the eyebrow. Just . . . that flat, level voice. Blowing in as suddenly as a wind off the plain slams open an unlatched door, startling the occupant of the house within.
stochastic analysis deals with probabilities, not certainties. certainties do not exist, outside the fantasies of philosophers. neither do souls, as an objective reality subject to stochastic analysis. you humans have souls simply as referent points to yourselves.
Adrian wondered, for a moment, what his former teachers at the Grove would have said to that. Many of them, he suspected, would have agreed. With the proposition concerning certainty, at least, if not the rest. Privately, of course. In public, no professional philosopher would admit to any doubts on any subject in creation.
The thought was whimsical, not harsh. Whatever their faults, those teachers had shaped his mind. And, on balance, shaped it well. So, at least, he thought.
And so do we, lad, said Raj softly. Or we wouldn't have selected you for your mission in the first place.
Ah, yes. "The Mission."
Raj Whitehall and Center had come to Adrian two years earlier, manifesting themselves in his mind in a manner which Adrian never really had understood clearly. They were incorporeal "beings." Projections, essentially, from a reality which existed on another planet. Center made reference to something he called "software" to explain it, but Adrian found the explanation too confusing to follow.
On that planet, Raj's home world of Bellevue, Whitehall had stumbled across Center by accident. Center was a battle computer, created by the now-long-gone Federation of Man which had once ruled the stars. It had, miraculously, survived the great wars which destroyed the Federation. Wars, and a Federation, which were now so ancient that they had been completely forgotten on those planets which had not been destroyed outright.
Between them, centuries earlier, Raj and Center had transformed Bellevue and set it back on a track which would, eventually, lead toward the reconstruction of the Federation of Man. Since then, they—or, rather, their recorded mentalities projected onto other worlds—had been attempting to duplicate their success elsewhere. On Hafardine, they had chosen Adrian Gellert as the instrument for that mission. And he had, not without some trepidation, agreed to the project.
Through the slight trance-haze of his vision when he was "communing" with the two intelligences which shared his mind, Adrian's gaze moved slowly across the landscape before him.
The heat and moisture struck him first—even physically, for all that his senses were somewhat shielded by the trance-haze. The southern half of the continent was mostly sub-tropical in climate, verging on full tropics in the southernmost regions. In the summer, as now, hot and humid.
Rain fell almost every day, this time of year, at least for a few hours. It had taken Adrian and his brother Esmond some time to grow accustomed to that. The Southrons seemed to take their semiaquatic existence for granted. But the Gellerts came from the northern half of the continent, whose climate was mild and generally dry. According to Center, much like places on Old Earth called "Greece" and "Italy."
His eyes fell on a woman walking past at the base of the slope on which Adrian had pitched his tent. She was apparently returning to her own tent, somewhere in the sprawling mass of barbarians who had gathered here outside the port city of Marange for their great annual conclave. A clay-covered reed basket was balanced atop her head, presumably carrying water drawn from the nearby Blood River.
Adrian sensed a little smile on his face. No woman of the north, not even a prostitute, would have paraded about publicly in such a costume—bare from the waist up, and with nothing more than a string loincloth elsewhere. Watching her heavy buttocks sway as she waddled past, he sensed the smile widen. Certainly not a woman with such a dumpy figure.
The men wore even less. Nothing more than what Adrian thought of as a codpiece. Not even in battle, often enough. The warriors of most Southron tribes tended to scorn armor, other than whatever protection was provided by the quivers which held their arrows and, of course, the great velocipad-hide shields they favored. They considered armor effeminate and cowardly. Going into battle stark naked, covered only with wild and extravagant paint, was by no means uncommon.
The semi-nudity of the Southrons was natural enough, given the climate. At first, Adrian had assumed it was because of the heat. But after experiencing the constant rainfall, he and his brother had shed most of their own clothing. Skin dried quickly, once the rain stopped. The humidity was bad enough without being covered in soaked garments.
If he hadn't been in the trance-haze, he would have sighed then. In truth, he detested the south—the barbarism of its inhabitants even more than the climate. What made it worse was that Adrian could not simply relegate the Southrons to the status of "barbarians" and then ignore their crudities, much as a man ignores the toiletry of animals.
Adrian could see past the surface, in a way that most civilized people could not. The Southrons were not "barbarians," really. At bottom, they were people not much different from Adrian himself. The same intelligence—capacity for it, at least; the same emotions—mixed slightly differently, perhaps, but the same for all that. Hopes, fears, yearnings—all the same.
They were simply people, mired in centuries of barbarism. But it was still aggravating, for all that he understood the phenomenon.
"The Mission." It had driven him to this place, whether he liked it or not. And, whether he liked it or not, had presented him with the Southrons as the raw material for his next work. Did a blacksmith "like" iron? It was irrelevant whether he did or not. Without iron, he had no work.
You'd have made a good general, came a thought from Raj. Adrian began to shape a witty denial, but let it go. Perhaps Raj was right. Whitehall had been a general himself, after all, when he had been alive. A great one, from what Adrian could tell, who had completed this same "mission" on his own planet extraordinarily well. So perhaps he knew whereof he spoke.
And that, too, was irrelevant. Raj and Center had not chosen Adrian for his martial prowess. There was no shortage of that on Hafardine, for a certainty. His brother Esmond provided enough of that for both of them—and, north of the narrow isthmus where the great Confederacy of Vanbert held sway over half the continent, there was already a man whose grim talents at war had become famous.
The thought of Demansk triggered Center. he will make his first move soon. if he has not already done so. probability 89%, +/-3 for the former; 46%, +/-10 for the latter. the variables there are larger.
The humor which bubbled up within Adrian was great enough to momentarily shatter the trance-haze. He burst into open laughter, even feeling the hammer of wet heat coming down on him.
You're so wrong, you all-knowing damn machine. Demansk has already moved, be sure of it.
He waited for Raj's input, wondering what it might be. It was an odd trio they made. A thinking machine called a "computer," the recorded "spirit" of a long-dead general, and he himself—a living man still in his youth.
As a rule, Raj sided with Center in their little three-way debates and discussions. But, not always.
This time, he simply asked a question.
Why are you so sure of that, lad? I would think he'd wait a bit longer. I would, in his position. Unless he understands what you're about, and he has no way—
The disembodied voice broke off suddenly. A moment later, Adrian sensed a ghostly chuckle echo in his mind.
I'd forgotten. It's been so long since I was a man myself. Adrian caught a momentary glimpse of a beautiful, patrician face, cheek pressed into a pillow and smiling. Raj Whitehall's wife Suzette, he knew. Now long dead herself.
There was no aura of sadness about the memory. Just . . . nostalgia? Hard to say.
Do you miss her? he asked.
Somehow he could sense a wry shrug, though he could not see it. It's hard to explain, Adrian. My own existence has been in what you call the trance-haze for centuries now. I am no longer really human, even in mind much less in body. Not a computer, of course, like Center. Something . . . else. I don't know what to call it. An angel, except that would be ludicrous. A spirit, let's say. My only real emotion left is serenity. The thought hardened, as a general's thoughts could do so easily. Not that I shall ever forget her.
Center interrupted. the two of you are prattling again.
Oh, be still, retorted Raj. There are things you do not understand well, if at all. This is one of them.
There was a momentary pause. Then, in a tone which almost had a tone—irritation, frustration—Center said: that business. love interferes greatly with stochastic analysis. nothing else produces such wide variables. not even religious fanaticism, of which I suspect love is a disguised variant.
The trance-haze was back, so Adrian only sensed himself grinning. It was too bad. He would have enjoyed feeling the strain on his cheek muscles directly. It was a very wide grin.
Sourpuss, what you are. Demansk will have moved already, because he KNOWS there is one envoy he can send whom I will trust.
He too deals with variables, Raj chimed in. And here is one he can ignore. Adrian's right, Center. Demansk will have begun the thing.
Adrian knew that the silence which followed was Center, calculating the probabilities. At moments like this, the computer's incredible speed of logical manipulation was both awe-inspiring and . . . sometimes a bit ridiculous. The computer would factor in everything, matching cause against cause, effect against effect, then rematching them again, over and over, until—within seconds!—it would arrive at a conclusion which, now and then at least, was blindingly obvious to flesh and blood.
you are correct, came the pronouncement. probability is now 94%, +/- 2. which means we must move more quickly ourselves.
It was Adrian's eyes which saw the milling, chaotic mass of Southron warriors teeming in the great encampment below; Raj Whitehall's spirit which put words to the observation.
What a frigging, unholy mess. We've got our work cut out for us.
But Adrian was not really paying attention any longer. The trance-haze was breaking, now, shattering into little slivers. His own thoughts were plunging down through every vein and artery in his body, down into his groin. He felt so warm and wet himself that the surrounding air seemed almost frigid.
Another face was vivid in his mind. Also pressed into a pillow, but facing up not sideways. This face, though beautiful as well, was not patrician in the least. Certainly not at that moment of memory, when the auburn hair was tangled, sweaty at the roots; and the mouth was open, hissing wordless cries of ecstasy.
His breath was coming short. His own mouth was no longer closed.
Your brother's coming, with some chieftains in tow. You'd better get that erection under control, lad, or things'll get awkward. These Southrons, y'know, don't share your decadent Emerald tastes. They're likely to misinterpret your state of mind.
Laughter broke passion's rush. So, when Esmond and the chieftains strode up to the tent, Adrian was able to greet them with nothing more than a hand outstretched. But still, during the time which followed, his mind only followed the conversation at its edges.
There was room, really, for just a single thought at the center of it. A different sort of trance-haze had seized him.
She's coming back to me. I know she is.
For the first time, then, he was finally able to let go that rein of honor which had driven him to return her to her family, long months before. Almost a year, now. Let it go, cast it aside—and, with it, all restraint. He had never loved a woman before, and had never allowed himself—quite—to love this one.
Soon enough, he knew, Center and Raj would be back, pouring caution and cunning strategy into his mind. But on this subject, at least, he would listen no longer. He had satisfied honor once. Once was enough, for a lifetime.