She woke abruptly. She brought her arms up outside his, wedged her stiffened fingers against his cheeks, and shoved back his head. “Get away from me!” she exclaimed angrily.
Ivo released her with guilty haste. She had not chosen him!
Then he realized with shivering relief that she thought he was Schön. She had no way to know about the contest result and changeover. He opened his mouth to explain.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Ivo,” she snapped. “I can tell you two apart easily. Aside from that, I knew Schön couldn’t get me out of there. It had to be you — or nothing.”
His feeling of stupidity was back in full force. He tried to speak again.
“You thought if only Schön were gone, everything would be just fine. Boy gets girl, curtain lowers on happy sunset. Sorry — when I want a lapdog, I’ll whistle.”
What had happened? Her dialogue with Schön had suggested that she was in love with Ivo, but now she was treating him with greater contempt than ever before.
“Schön was right about one thing,” she remarked, adjusting her clothing. “You certainly aren’t very bright — and I do dislike stupidity.”
Was she saying she wanted Schön back? That made no sense to him. But if she didn’t want Schön and didn’t want Ivo—
Afra faced about and began to walk away, back toward the chamber where the visions had started. Somehow he knew that if he let her go, he would never recover her — yet he could not act. He had lost her without ever speaking a word.
Jumps of thousands of light-years, until they stood outside the great disk of the galaxy itself, and returned — that he remembered clearly, yet he could not bridge the gap of a few paces between two people now. A history of the Solar System, billions of years strong — yet seconds were undoing him. Where had he gone wrong?
Approach to the destroyer complex: “It’s tracking us!” His foolish jealousy of Harold Groton, returning his concept of the man to the impersonal surname. Afra’s excitement at the element display. The final chamber. S′. Wheels on wheels, symbols meshing in “The Symphony.” Simultaneous yet chronological adventures of galactic history. Schön: “That means our daughters get dinked.” Beatryx: “You were not wrong, Dolora.” Harold: “I had thought it was an insult to serve under Drone command.” Where had he gone wrong?
Now Schön had been nullified, Beatryx was dead, Harold was seeking the Traveler, and Afra disliked stupidity. Yet he remained, and so did his responsibilities. Where had he heard that? Promises to keep, and miles to go before… He had to do something for the gallant Groton couple, sundered so unfairly; then—
But I love you! he cried subvocally at Afra. Imperious she might be, problems she might have — but underneath that surface beauty was an extraordinary woman. She had fought Schön…
She continued walking, culottes shaping a trim derriere, bright hair flouncing loose.
Afra, whose Capricorn history segment had slipped somehow, throwing her instead into a savage personal conflict. Yet that program error had saved her — and him — from a dream-state that might have endured until their bodies disintegrated. The normal person did not emerge from that slumber, as Harold and Beatryx had shown. That, apparently, was the final test: only a mind that could survive and finally break the stasis was fit to go free again. The human mind lacked that capability. Even Schön had been trapped.
Strange, fortunate coincidence, that Afra should have been evicted from that clinging mold. And that she alone, subsequently, should establish a momentary rapport with the supercreature, the Traveler. The Traveler: nerve impulse between galactic cells, whose capabilities spanned from macrocosmic to microcosmic with equal finesse.
Coincidence? Perhaps the Traveler had touched her intentionally! This was easily within its compass. To nudge her just enough to break the trance, and then again to win a vital point from Schön… and it could not touch Schön himself — or Ivo! — because of the mind-block against the destroyer-concept Schön had so carefully arranged. Afra had been the only one available with an open yet sharp enough mind…
Why? Why interfere at all, this creature with a galaxy to supervise? Could it have seen some hope in her, in humanity? Did it want them to return to Earth with their message of galactic and intergalactic culture? Yet Afra could not return to Earth by herself, and she had turned her back on him.
At least, he thought with transitory irony, he didn’t have to worry about Schön interfering. Geis apart, Schön could not take over again, since Afra wouldn’t cooperate with him and the destroyer fields suffused all the galaxy. Schön was barred from space. He, Ivo, could now draw freely on any or all of Schön’s talents as required without risking his identity. He could get home. He had only to reduce his personality when actually dealing with the destroyer, protecting his immunity; at other times he could, literally, be a genius.
Fat consolation, he thought, watching Afra’s dainty feet moving. You can use it to fathom why you lost her.
Yes — the genius of Schön would clarify that, at least. Ivo reached… sunburst! He understood exactly what Afra was doing.
“Girl,” he said clearly.
She halted. She had not been walking rapidly and had not yet entered the adjacent chamber. She was still, in the imagery of the recent contest, in Pluto or Neptune. Obsession, obligation — yet so much more, positive as well as negative.
“What the cloud doeth,” he said, “the Lord knoweth; the cloud knoweth not.”
She turned slowly. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a quote from Sidney Lanier. The course of the cloud may be predestined, but Man possesses free will.” He had spoken in Russian.
Her capitulation was as sudden as her awakening. She skipped across the room and threw herself into his arms. “I knew you weren’t a cloud, Ivo!” she murmured before she kissed him.
Further explanation was unnecessary, yet the hard-core Ivo in him ran it through during their extended embrace. Afra had wanted neither the omniscient supercilious Schön nor the stodgy ignorant Ivo. She required compromise: Ivo’s personality with Schön’s abilities. For neither identity alone represented the complete man. Schön had never grown up, while Ivo had shied away from the exercise of his rightful talents. How could a woman really love half of a schizoid personality?
But the destroyer had shifted the balance and broken the stalemate, making Ivo the artist. He could unify and control — and time and experience had made his identity the more fit of the two for human intercourse. A child normally grew into an adult — and to abolish the adult Ivo in favor of the child Schön would be a foolhardy inequity.
Thus the personal equation. Boy had not won girl; man had won woman.
What, now, of Earth? Mankind was a child-culture with adolescent technology; were they to present it with devastating adult technology? Or would it be better to stay clear and allow natural selection to function, as it did elsewhere in the galaxy?
“What the artist doeth,” he murmured, “the Lord knoweth; knoweth the artist not?”
Copyright © 1969 by Piers Anthony.
Certain astrological passages used in the text are quoted and/or adapted from ASTROLOGY, How and Why It Works by Marc Edmund Jones, copyright 1945, and The Sabian Symbols by Marc Edmund Jones, copyright 1966, both published by the Sabian Publishing Society. Reference is also made to Astrology and Its Practiced Application by E. Parker, translated from the Dutch by Coba Goedhart: P. Dz. Veen, Publisher, Amersfoort, Holland, 1927.
ISBN: 0-380-00209-4