And now I am being initiated into the science of all things (you will receive three new fragments from two of my forthcoming books), having reconquered all perception, which consists in duration and size. I understand that the weight of my brass wheel, which I clasp between the hebetude of the abstract fingers of my astral body, is the fourth power of eight meters per hour; I hope, deprived of my senses, to recognize color, temperature, taste, and various qualities other than the six, in the actual number of revolutions per second . . .
Farewelclass="underline" I can glimpse already, perpendicularly to the sun, the cross with a blue center, the red brushes toward the nadir and the zenith, and the horizontal gold of foxes’ tails.
After which, the astral doctor goes on to a mathematical analysis of the “surface of God,” with the conclusion that “God is the tangential point between zero and infinity—” a concept which might be of use to some learned doctors currently embroiled in an effort to determine God’s viability.
Of course, all that (except the physics lessons and conclusions about God) is just the plot. The book is built out of forty-one “chapters,” some containing a eulogy, critique, polemic, or outright backstab, aimed at Jarry’s associates and enemies, and other prominent figures of the time; and each is a separate entity, containing a discourse or comment or allegory on art, science, politics, religion, metaphysics, literature . . . and, of course, ‘Pataphysics (which is the science).
Leaving Dr. Faustroll (and possibly his creator) to further examinations of infinity and The Infinite, we discern a mote on the space horizon, which grows and—no, it is not a bird, not a man, not Superman—but the spaceliner coming in from New Earth . . .
WARRIOR
GORDON R. DICKSON
The spaceliner coming in from New Earth and Freiland, worlds under the Sirian sun, was delayed in its landing by traffic at the spaceport in Long Island Sound. The two police lieutenants, waiting on the bare concrete beyond the shelter of the Terminal buildings, turned up the collars of their cloaks against the hissing sleet, in this unweather-proofed area. The sleet was turning into tiny hailstones that bit and stung all exposed areas of skin. The gray November sky poured them down without pause or mercy, the vast, reaching surface of concrete seemed to dance with their white multitudes.
“Here it comes now,” said Tyburn, the Manhattan Complex police lieutenant, risking a glance up into the hailstorm. “Let me do the talking when we take him in.”
“Fine by me,” answered Breagan, the spaceport officer, “I’m only here to introduce you—and because it’s my bailiwick. You can have Kenebuck, with his hood connections, and his millions. If it were up to me, I’d let the soldier get him.”
“It’s him,” said Tyburn, “who’s likely to get the soldier —and that’s why I’m here. You ought to know that.”
The great mass of the interstellar ship settled like a cautious mountain to the concrete two hundred yards off. It protruded a landing stair near its base like a metal leg, and the passengers began to disembark. The two policemen spotted their man immediately in the crowd.
“He’s big,” said Breagan, with the judicious appraisal of someone safely on the sidelines, as the two of them moved forward.
“They’re all big, these professional military men off the Dorsai world,” answered Tyburn, a little irritably, shrugging his shoulders against the cold, under his cloak. “They breed themselves that way.”
“I know they’re big,” said Breagan. “This one’s bigger.”
The first wave of passengers was rolling toward them now, their quarry among the mass. Tyburn and Breagan moved forward to meet him. When they got close they could see, even through the hissing sleet, every line of his dark, unchanging face looming above the lesser heights of the people around him, his military erectness molding the civilian clothes he wore until they might as well have been a uniform. Tyburn found himself staring fixedly at the tall figure as it came toward him. He had met such professional soldiers from the Dorsai before, and the stamp of their breeding had always been plain on them. But this man was somehow more so, even than the others Tyburn had seen. In some way he seemed to be the spirit of the Dorsai, incarnate.
He was one of twin brothers, Tyburn remembered now from the dossier back at his office. Ian and Kensie were their names, of the Graeme family at Foralie, on the Dorsai. And the report was that Kensie had two men’s likability, while his brother Ian, now approaching Tyburn, had a double portion of grim shadow and solitary darkness.
Staring at the man coming toward him, Tyburn could believe the dossier now. For a moment, even, with the sleet and the cold taking possession of him, he found himself believing in the old saying that, if the born soldiers of the Dorsai ever cared to pull back to their own small, rocky world, and challenge the rest of humanity, not all the thirteen other inhabited planets could stand against them. Once, Tyburn had laughed at that idea. Now, watching Ian approach, he could not laugh. A man like this would live for different reasons from those of ordinary men— and die for different reasons.
Tyburn shook off the wild notion. The figure coming toward him, he reminded himself sharply, was a professional military man—nothing more.
Ian was almost to them now. The two policemen moved in through the crowd and intercepted him.
“Commandant Ian Graeme?” said Breagan. “I’m Kaj Breagan of the spaceport police. This is Lieutenant Walter Tyburn of the Manhattan Complex Force. I wonder if you could give us a few minutes of your time?”
Ian Graeme nodded, almost indifferently. He turned and paced along with them, his longer stride making more leisurely work of their brisk walking, as they led him away from the route of the disembarking passengers and in through a blank metal door at one end of the Terminal, marked Unauthorized Entry Prohibited. Inside, they took an elevator tube up to the offices on the Terminal’s top floor, and ended up in chairs around a desk in one of the offices.
All the way in, Ian had said nothing. He sat in his chair now with the same indifferent patience, gazing at Tyburn, behind the desk, and at Breagan, seated back against the wall at the desk’s right side. Tyburn found himself staring back in fascination. Not at the granite face, but at the massive, powerful hands of the man, hanging idly between the chair arms that supported his forearms. Tyburn, with an effort, wrenched his gaze from those hands.
“Well, Commandant,” he said, forcing himself at last to look up into the dark, unchanging features, “you’re here on Earth for a visit, we understand.”
“To see the next-of-kin of an officer of mine.” Ian’s voice, when he spoke at last, was almost mild compared to the rest of his appearance. It was a deep, calm voice, but lightless—like a voice that had long forgotten the need to be angry or threatening. Only . . . there was something sad about it, Tyburn thought.
“A James Kenebuck?” said Tyburn.