uranian throne - episode nine

the last card

by
robert gibson


[For the story so far, see: 1: Dynoom; 2: Hyala; 3: the nebulee; 4: Exception;  5: the lever of power; 6: the infrastructure throbs;  7: the claw extends; 8: the brain-mist writhes]

[ + links to:  Glossary - Timeline - Survey of Ooranye - Plan of Olhoav -
guide to published stories ]

diners ignoring the cmem

Dynoom felt no qualms about his dismal advice to the Noad.

It had been right to counsel meek acceptance of a diminished life that was better than no life at all... 

For it's not as though I were any better off than he.  We shall both have to accept a waning of our selves, and, arguably, I come off worse as a Ghepion than I would as a man.

Reduced rations of power; sensory extremities benumbed; awareness smudged by mind-ache - amid the cowed darkness of Olhoav, the life of the city's artificial intelligence was at least as shrunken as that of its rightful human ruler.

Dynoom's wits nevertheless remained sharp enough to identify the salient fact from the confrontation at the Zedmaiol Vorratch:

The usurping tyrant had retreated without losing face - had actually tightened his hold on power. 

The pattern became still more evident during the ensuing days.  The city-brain kept as good a watch on events as nen could, switching from sensor to sensor in order to keep as close a track as possible on the movements of Dempelath.  Thus the mobile viewpoint of Dynoom shadowed the tyrant's writhing cmem as that cellular mist glided up and down ramps, along walkways, across bridges and through bedimmed streets. 

By means of this pursuit and surveillance, a picture was built up, district by district, to gauge the smear of influence of Dempelath's luminescent patrol.

Even those bystanders (perhaps a majority) who managed to retreat out of close range at the first glimpse of the vermillion glow were unable to evade the ideological perfume which lingered in the air after the cmem had passed by - and which Dynoom could "sniff" from comments overheard: a heightened sense of "backgrounders to the fore"; a squeal of triumph that everyone, or else no one, was central to a story-line.  Such, now, was the fashionable tinge to thought: a muzzy belief that the age-old inequality between bit-players and protagonists had somehow been erased.  And as for the practical objection, that there is simply not enough room in any story for more than a few protagonists - the point was not even considered.

Another sign of the enemy's success was that, for the time being, the Revolution became less bloody.  No further corpses were added to the object lessons currently dangling on the Vorratch.  The ones that already swung there were left to continue their slow gyrations in the breeze (the dead bodies of Nenns do not decompose unless they are buried in the gralm), but the Weigher evidently considered the present number to be sufficient.

All in all, thought Dynoom, the regime's record was impressive.  Of course that didn't make it likeable, and its slogans were apt to give one a mind-ache; yet at times the city-brain was tempted to settle for the easiest option, of accepting the Revolution in its own terms.

Drowsily, the Brain relaxed its hold on its sub-centres, and began to murmur excuses.

"A right of revolution," the argument ran, "must always exist.  The good of the majority comes before allegiance to tradition.  Of course this is only true if we're talking about something greater than a mere brief-season majority; the grand, all-time mass-verdict of humanity is the only credible 'weigher'.  But that is precisely the case with backgrounders; viewed across history's entire sweep, they are bound by definition to outnumber forgs.  Hence if the interests of those two groups ever clash, as regrettably they may, one ought then to be on the wirrip side.  It's admittedly peculiar that the present revolt is headed by a foregrounder, but so what?  Leadership has to be a foregrounder thing; so it's no use carping when you get a revolutionary boss from the overthrown class."

Aglow with that inner peace which comes from resignation of responsibility, Dynoom "stretched" and asked nenself:  Now what? 

All active options were unappealing.  Amid the quiet darkness, there seemed nothing left to do.  There'd certainly be no point at all in trying to foment counter-revolution against the majority mood.  On the other hand, to support Dempelath would be distasteful.

Wearied by human politics, Dynoom felt tempted to mimic the enviable human ability to sleep. 

I'm not a man; I can't really sleep, of course, but -

Some analogous retreat to low-functionality, equivalent to a lengthy coma, would be a handy way to miss out on the Dark Age.  Set the inner clock's alarm to ring after a few million days, in a future, one might hope, in which Dempelath and his tiresome Revolution would be forgotten.  Only, would it work?  Dynoom was not sure of being able to re-awaken after such mental self-surgery.  Besides, suppose, in that future world, Dempelath were somehow still around?  The creature was no longer merely human, after all. 

All of a sudden it was born in upon Dynoom, that he did not really mean any of this.  He did not seriously intend to "sleep".  And when he - nen - it - asked himself/nenself/itself why the idea was a morally impossible fantasy, the answer came.

What kept him loyal to the present age was concern for Hyala.  Knowing who she really was, the Brain had not the heart to abandon her.  Rather, she must be watched over - protected - as history's most treasured human personality.  Her random reappearance at this particular time was a unique, unrepeatable boon, which to lose would be madness; so at the helm of the Brain's thoughts now wheeled the idea, I must stay awake for the sake of the reincarnated soul of the First Sunnoad; must keep my eyes open for her, must continually ask, How might she be defended...

The wheel of awareness turned further: its pointer swivelled past stay awake for the sake of Hyala Movoun, all the way to the yet more emphatic pin your hopes on Hyala Movoun. 

Terran readers note: the currents of fate are real here.  Whatever may be the case on other planets, we Uranians are not blown from behind by causation, we are sucked from ahead by destiny.  It might be interesting to ask the same question about Earth; we are open-minded about Earth.  Different worlds may have different weather systems, in aetiology as well as in meteorology, and we can only say that conditions on our world leave no room for doubt.  Uranian destiny-force is a power which Dynoom knew from nen's own experience.  Just as the highest stalks in a field are most bent by the wind, so the most salient foregrounders are those most buffeted by fate's breezes; and Dynoom was thoroughly, unashamedly, a "forg". 

*

Safety in numbers?  The trouble is, she stands out too much.  She could never blend into a background.  Then how about safety in matrimony?  Entwined in a safe enough weave...

By stages, Dynoom developed the hope of a marriage between Hyala Movoun and Barlayn Lamiroth, a hope based at first upon the dramatic way in which circumstances had recently thrown them together, doubtless bonding them emotionally, and mantling them with an exceptional combined aura.  We who tell this story to Terrans may as well add that the couple's age difference (in your terms, the Noad was in his mid-forties, Hyala about eighteen) would hardly have mattered even on Earth among two such exceptional individuals; on our far wiser world it mattered not at all. 

The advantage of their union would be, that each would become both stronger and safer: stronger as a twined double cable is stronger than either single component; safer as binary stars so absorbed in mutual orbit, that they'd pose no exterior threat to out-flare the Glomb.

The idea grew more attractive, the more the Brain pictured it.  Hyala and Barlayn, together, safe and sound!  As for believing that it would actually happen - it was, at first, a matter of wishful thinking.  Dishonest?  Not necessarily!  Selective picking of the evidence can, by powering one's fancies, bring worthwhile results!  Even a human, thought Dynoom, can to some extent choose nen's thoughts, and I ought to do better in that line.

So, although Noad Barlayn Lamiroth continued to meet many citizens in the course of his duties, and did not appear to spend more hours with Hyala than he had before, yet those hours which he did spend with her were festooned with significance in the multiple eyes of Dynoom.

Then on 10,538,542 Ac, the Brain's spadework in the soil of gossip turned up a more solid chunk.

Of all the occasions on whilch we Uranians eat, the best-loved is the sanungi stillig ost, the "meld-cheer marriage meal".  It is not usually announced as such beforehand: prior notification, by anticipating its burst of joy, would mar the spontaneity of romance.  Yet in most cases one can make a reasonable guess.  Thus when the word went out at three days' notice, that a social gathering would take place at Gstatt's top-ranking zoalsh [restaurant/hotel/social centre] on 10,538,545 Ac., and that among those present would be the Noad himself, the city-brain metaphorically pricked up its ears.  A prestigious zoalsh is precisely the sort of scene where one would expect a noteworthy sanungi stillig ost to take place.

The proprietor, Gstatt, was a friend of the Noad and had acted as host for him before.  This time, to judge from the deliveries of supplies and the arrangement of decor and furnishings, the preparations were more meticulous than ever.  From linkpoints across the street and inside the zoalsh itself, Dynoom kept watch, drawing hopeful conclusions.

The day came, and guests arrived from various districts: from Occoz, still loyal to the Noad; from Jihom and Arar, which had gone over to the Weigher; from Flettrim, a region divided, its darkness yet streaked with laser-fire.  One cultural memory remained common to all: the reputation of a zoalsh as a haven for free speech during periods of despotic rule.  Not even Dempelath had shown any sign of violating this custom so far.  Trusting that today would not see the tradition destroyed, the clientele strode to the venue. 

As they crossed the threshold their gaiety was quantified by Dynoom, whose rapid flicks of behavioural measurement calibrated each guest's brightness of eye and gustiness of lung, to gauge their elation as they pushed through the welcoming swing doors.  Understandably they were cheerful upon arrival: this place was supposed to be a surviving niche from a happier past.  But also (the city-brain judged from their body-language) they were hoping for news, or maybe more than hoping, maybe expecting news to lighten the gloom of the future.

Once they were all in, Dynoom next cast the invisible net of nen's perceptions from linkpoints on the walls and chandeliers of the main dining room, from which vantages it was possible to survey, overhear, and attempt to imbibe the mood of the gathering. 

Among the chattering groups, and the staff carrying trays bearing drinks and starter-snacks, it was possible but not always easy to track Barlayn Lamiroth as he circulated among the guests during the minutes before they all took their places at table.  This first phase - the Noad weaving among his people with a word or a nod here, a sentence there, continually the Focus, as always - had somewhat of a "working-lunch" aspect to it whenever the grey cloak was tailed by advisors.  Dynoom tried to follow what was said at these encounters but it was not possible to overhear or lip-read more than the occasional word.

A man with a particularly harried expression muttered a report to Barlayn Lamiroth, "Noad B-L...  vault... results," whereupon Dynoom underwent a paleontological urge to reconstruct the full skeleton of the conversation from its scattered verbal bones. 

"You wanted the vault-survey results, but..."

"Give," said the Noad. 

[Yes, thought Dynoom, give the latest - update us on the pressures fingering up from the ice beneath us... pressures which can threaten the city's foundations.] 

"Lights down fifty per cent.  Otherwise normal."

"Cracks?"

"No larger - yet."

Barlayn Lamiroth gave a slow nod, and sighed inaudibly.  "We'll keep our eyes on it, Surveyor N-G." 

The watching brain, reconstructing this damage-report from "Give... Lights... fifty... Cracks... yet... eyes...", found cause for sombre reflection.  Oh those lowest vaults... regretted Dynoom... further down than I can now reach... down all the way to the metal bottom, deprived of light and heat after the power-drainage caused by the Revolution, and thus left without means to lubricate the crucial interface with the sub-surface ice: abandoned therefore to the mercy of the slow, slow stryegn-strokes, the blind churn of creatures who 'swim' through our planet's frozen crust.  We're now without means to 'slip the grip'.  The grid no longer contains enough power to melt the ice's wrenching hold upon the foundations.  Hence one day we shall find that Olhoav's structural strength has snapped, over-stressed by the mindless enemy. 

"But, what can we do, Noad B-L?" fretted the Surveyor.

"Do?" smiled Barlayn.  "Tell the Weigher to undo the Revolution, to re-institute the work-trance, to restore our economy, to resume light and heat at their former capacity..." - and with a touch on the arm took his leave of Surveyor Nuth Geven and proceeded to the next encounter...

...Dynoom meanwhile, comprehending the Noad's sardonic response, considered:  Even if we subtract the irony, and suppose we'd gain a hearing, would it be worth the effort even to try to explain all this foundational stuff to Dempelath?  I say not.  I say, let the day come, when the city splits beneath us like neglected paving is broken by an upward-forcing tree.  Chaos is a leveller of odds.  I would suffer damage, true; nevertheless I might ride it out, while the Revolution paid the bill for its folly.  In the meantime, I direct my thoughts elsewhere. 

The general chatter was lively, much of it political, and Dynoom's early impression was that the guests, snugly relaxed in the sociable warmth of a zoalsh, appeared unafraid to say what they thought about the Revolution, so long as the line was never crossed between mere grumbling and actual resistance.

"...You hear some stupid rumours," said one young woman sipping from her first glass.  "I've even heard it whispered that a new Daon will be named.  As if the Noad hadn't learned the lesson, that no Daon is allowed to live nowadays.  As if he'd condemn another poor flunnd to death."

"Some grutts talk trash because they have nothing better to do," shrugged her male companion, before reaching for his first refill... 

Mention a hot topic, call it trash, thus make it safe?  A dismissive ploy.  And yet that first speaker was right, judged Dynoom: Barlayn Lamorith surely cannot intend to announce another heir... the Noad could not possibly be so irresponsible as to ignore the terrible lesson of what happened to Dari Clsar and Sunwa Nerren. 

After a few minutes the Noad turned to head for the top table, and this was the signal for a general drift by all the rest towards their places.  Servers brought dishes heaped with klasts, the crusty meat-confections of Ooranye.  Others came with bottles of myyix, the thick glowing cordial.  Uranian cuisine lacks the bewildering range of Terran, and the ingenuity of our cooks is devoted to minuter variations on fewer themes...

However, the significance of our meals is far greater than yours.  Your world, it is true up to a point, does know the joys of conviviality.  What you will never know is the immense and shining importance which the simple act of eating together in fellowship holds for us, on our huger, dimmer, more vastly mysterious globe.  Our get-togethers (which are rarer than yours, our metabolism being so much more efficient, that we only need to eat one third as often as you do) inevitably symbolize the hearth-glow of civilization surrounded by the darkness of the unknown.  Our faculty of apparng never allows us to forget: our home is an untameable giant planet, and so the word bejeh, shared by our three main languages and which translates to your term "cheer", warms our hearts the most.

Dynoom watched and listened, privately admitting to an envy of the diners. 

If anyone had asked the Brain, "Do you wish you were human?", it would have answered, "At moments like this, I do".  Wistful emotion had crept into its value-circuits during aeons of Ghepion evolution, and some frank jealousy was the result, but, since empathy had developed alongside it, generous hopes survived for the welfare of Hyala and Barlayn. 

If only they would get on with it! 

They did seem slow, this pair.  Disappointingly, no overtly romantic or archly knowing looks, no winking pleasantries were yet in evidence...  Still, at least the Noad and Hyala were seated close to each other at the top table, and that was a good sign.  Also, significantly, the props of a Uranian wedding were close at hand.  That tall mirror would do nicely.  And one of the guests seemed neatly prepared to fulfil the traditional role of Staunch Woman [kaparinvonv]. 

We have never evolved the Terran-style custom of a Best Man - our grooms have to look after themselves - but our brides are supported in speech-making and ceremonial by a kaparinvonv.   That willowy, straw-haired girl, named Gevuldree, seated to Barlayn's left: she must be the one.  She would "start the thing rolling", as you Terrans might say. 

Was the young woman about to speak?  A leaning, a whisper... things were looking hopeful.  But wait - no - this arrangement appeared a bit unusual - it was Hyala Movoun herself, seated directly opposite the Noad, who now scraped her chair backwards...

She was standing up.  This looked like it.

...Except that custom was being flouted.  No question, the main speech ought to be given not by the bride but by the Staunch Woman.    Still, thought Dynoom, perhaps the person placed for the role, namely that Gevuldree who looks like she'd snap in a breeze, isn't really up to it; in which case I expect her duties will be limited to thanking the staff and leading the applause.  Kind of the Noad to give the honour to an obvious backgrounder.  Merely unfortunate that Hyala is consequently going to have to do most of the work.

"Bejeh-kveff!" Hyala began.  "Partakers of cheer!"

Boots stamped and hands clapped (except those of Nyav Yuhlm the nebulee who sat in his perpetual dreamy inertia, happy and quiet, beside his protector).  Lungs around every table bellowed enthusiasm. 

Hyala stretched out her arms.  Attentive silence fell. 

"How do we do it so perfectly?" she continued.  "How do we forget all our worries within these walls?  Well, not quite forget, but - float above them.  How, then, is that trick performed?  I am about to tell you.  Only, as I'm sure you'll appreciate, there's a price to pay.  After all, decency is hard to define, and so you don't expect the wisdom of decency to be easily communicable, do you?  Luckily the Noad has given me a one-off permission to be rude enough to say the words out loud: backgrounder and foregrounder!"

Even the listening Brain was shocked, and many faces blanched, but only for a moment.  Then the kind of laughter broke out, that meant they were letting her get away with it.  She, standing there radiantly, she was Hyala, and she held the throng under her spell. 

"Yes, it's a job," she went on, "especially nowadays it's a job to put over the message that humble participation is valuable; that in fact it's so essential, that there was never any need to belabour the obvious, that a backgrounder is every bit as important as any foregrounder.  Backgrounders don't need fame to make them great in the records of eternity: their soul-stuff is already etched as deep as any foregrounder's.  And none of you should need me to tell you," her tone plummeted warningly, "that it is better to be obscure and decent than to be famous for the wrong things."

An intense, awed silence held sway as Hyala paused.  Dynoom, panning his secret view across spellbound faces, totted up the reckoning: that quantity of respect for the wisdom of the bride, plus so much for the daring content of the speech, so much for the importance of the occasion, and so much for the solace of hearing the truth in the context of the times... the truth spooned out in a heavier-than-expected dose!  But isn't it time that silly wirrip Gevuldree did her bit... and not leave Hyala the whole time in the firing line?  Come on, Staunch Woman, be traditional, take over and do your bit.

The city-brain had become, in nen's own fashion, "jumpy". 

Not that there was any official reason to be anxious, just because the air beyond the glass of the window had begun to brighten with a splash of vermillion...

A few of the diners noticed the tinge almost as promptly as Dynoom did, and they weren't outwardly fazed.  It was known that Dempelath did not interfere with what went on in a zoalsh.  Certainly, up till now, he has never interfered with people at a zoalsh meal, nor given any sign that he ever will.  Many a time during the past fifty days I've seen diners here ignoring the cmem as it passes on patrol.  Presumably they're right.  Presumably the Weigher must weigh the value of this last safety-valve for dissent.  Presumably, either he dares not shut it off, or, more likely, he actually enjoys the thought of dissent so long as it is confined to a sanctuary, especially a traditional one - if he prefers, wherever possible, to bestride rather than to erase a tradition -

Yet, as round the adjacent street-corner the glowing mist of the cmem edged further into view, Dynoom was irrationally glad at the thought that Hyala and Barlayn were about to fortify each other with the marriage-meld.  For Skies' sake, get on with it, nen silently implored, as impatient, by this time, as any red-blooded human.

Hyala's lips, however, were quivering.  She also had noticed the reddish mist.  Had it caused hesitation in her?  Well, thought Dynoom, I dare say if I were human, and a woman, I wouldn't care for that sight out there interrupting my wedding announcement.

Tension thrummed in the dining hall... and then, from one of the other tables, braying out a witticism that cut across the mood, a brash woman's voice:

"Hey, Noad B-L, let's invite Dempelath in to sit down with us!"

In that instant Barlayn Lamiroth, and possibly quite a few others, revised their low opinion of Bizzid Folomm.  If that brassy alapatea did nothing more during the rest of her life, she would not have lived in vain.  Her insensitive, flippant remark was just what the gathering required.  To suggest that they invite the spectre to join them at table, was to spray ridicule upon their paralysis of foreboding.

Resuming the occasion's merry business, Hyala spoke on, delighting everyone except the city Brain: for to Dynoom alone her words came as a pile-driven shock. 

With lifted brows, she archly cried, "Let us propel, in the best Revolutionary style, a backgrounder to the fore!  Come, this is the long-awaited moment, let us witness the meld of our Noad, Barlayn Lamiroth, with... Gevuldree!"

Everyone but Dynoom was expecting it.  In unison the guests shot up from their chairs to peer for the best view of the couple, who were making their way to the zoalsh's main wall-mirror.  In front of the glass, Gevuldree and Barlayn, bride and groom, took their place in accordance with immemorial custom to utter their marriage vows; for though we Uranians do not need mirrors for vanity we do require them for ceremony.  What, though, of poor Dynoom, the giant Brain who had never felt so stupid in its aeonian life?

During all the time I spent assuming that Hyala was the bride and Gevuldree the Staunch Woman, the converse was true, so what kind of idiot does that make me?  A new-fledged idiot, that's what - for in the old days I would not have made such a laughable blunder.  Concern for individuals has made me stupid..

Ah, well.  Enough.  Move on.  Swivel!  The giant Ghepion's brain was capable of a much faster mental gear-change than that of any human.  Such was now required, because an emergency "smelled" imminent: the cmem roiling in the street outside had squirmed closer to the window, sidling obliquely towards the swing doors, as though Bizzid Folomm's bad-taste joke about Dempelath coming in and sitting down with the other guests were about to become hideous fact. 

The scale tips further against us, thought Dynoom.  Now that Barlayn is committed to a nobody, we lose the prospect of the combined strength which we would have had if we had been led by Barlayn-plus-Hyala.  Forfeiting that, we lose a vital restraining influence upon the Glomb.  Barlayn and Gevuldree: what a waste.  I see now, they love each other - but what a waste!

The cmem flowed right up to the swing doors, which began to creak inwards under its soft, ghostly pressure.  The guests who were sitting in that corner were scared to get up and equally scared to stay where they were.  The sickness of indecision, thought Dynoom, who just then felt close to human styles of nightmaring.  It was not a physical fear.  This was something even harder on the stomach, than the executions of recent days.  The poor old stomach, an organ I too possess, it seems, in a figurative sense.  How else am I able to match these people's feelings so closely?  Just like they, I am watching Barlayn Lamiroth with a desperate hope as he returns to the table.  Unlike they, I am angry with him for letting us down, for putting his private happiness before the good of Olhoav; but like they, I look to his leadership longingly, and will continue to do so.  But what can he do?  Nothing that I can imagine.  So why not despair?  One reason: I have just been fooled.  Now please, Barlayn, fool me once more!    

The Noad was standing with head bent and a puzzled frown puckering his brow.  "Bit breezy in here," he murmured, staring at the front entrance.  "No matter."  Suddenly he turned to Hyala and boomed out, "Many, many thanks to my kaparinvonv for her splendid speech, which I won't try to match..!"

You'd better match it, thought Dynoom.  With an out.  The cmem is blowing in faster.  Covering one table already.  And the Weigher's body isn't inside the brain-mist, which means it's entirely projected, an invulnerable, roving limb of his monstrous mind.  Do something, Noad.

"I'm a happy man," Barlayn Lamiroth rambled on, "and a more private man than I was before.  Times change, don't they, people?  I shan't need to tread the spotlit path.  Far from it.  I intend to join my wife in her obscurity." 

Some of the guests laughed at this as though it were an example of wit.  Some did not laugh.  As for you Terran readers, you may picture a tennis audience with its to-and-fro of heads as folk tried to keep watch on both the Noad and the region of the door.  The mood of brittle cheer had so far ignored the nightmare which was rapping for admittance, yet what would happen when the red mist pervaded the zoalsh?  It must not be, it must not be; but every Nenn present sensed that Barlayn Lamiroth was running out of moments. 

"Of course," he went on, "I'll still be your Noad, but, well, titles aren't so important now, are they?  Except one, of course.  This is a good moment to acknowledge that History has given its verdict.  'Glomb' has overtaken and superseded 'Noad'.  My rank diminishes, his mounts, with every passing day.  Let it be so.  I am happy," he emphasized to the widening mist.  "Happy as a more private man.  'Noad' is now a historical curiosity, heritage only, trailing far behind 'Weigher'.  I repeat: let it be so.  And to make that heritage-picture complete, don't you agree, now, that Olhoav might as well have a faded Daon in addition to a faded Noad?  I am of that opinion; so, exercising one of my remaining privileges, I now appoint - Daon Nyav Yuhlm of Olhoav!"

After a stunned silence which lasted a couple of seconds, the audience lurched up, some tipping back their chairs with a crash, others stumbling over those same chairs as they charged at the vermillion-clouded entrance and through it, out into the street.  Their one idea was to spread the news: a Daon! a Daon!  Olhoav has a Daon once more!  Within a minute the dining hall had two-thirds emptied of people and had entirely emptied of fear.  A game-change in life's deadly tournament had favoured this sanungi-stillig-ost.   

The only figure unmoved by the commotion was the new Daon himself.  With the same vague, dreamy expression on his countenance that he had worn ever since he became a nebulee, Nyav Yuhlm remained seated on the chair next to Hyala's.  In his realm of dilute cosmic consciousness, no particular issue could ever impinge.  He vaguely comprehended some basic words, but he had certainly lost all grasp of social ideas, and so could not be moved by the powerful positivity of traditions, nor by any cultural hunger for the return of an institution in abeyance, nor could he therefore share the elation of ordinary folk galvanized by the dayonnad’s crackling resurrection -    

Meanwhile the Noad’s eyes met Hyala’s.  Their mutual glance said: here’s as good a moment as any. 

Barlayn then thumbed a sign to Gstatt. 

The restaurateur nodded, slipped out of sight through a service door and re-appeared almost immediately with a cloth package draped over his arm.  This he handed to the Noad, who opened it and shook out a cloak of bright blue stuff. 

It was indeed a perfect moment for the first of the returning guests to catch Barlayn Lamiroth in the act of fitting that bright blueness around the new Daon’s shoulders.  The sight inspired some folk to dart gleefully outside again, to hail passers-by, to repeat and embellish the news with more shouts and gestures, before again rattling the swing doors to barge enthusiastically back into the zoalsh.

They were even more cheered to find that the red mist had utterly departed.  Its convincells must have fully absorbed the meaning of the event.  Wish I could do the same, thought Dynoom, crushingly aware of nen’s own dullness.  But everyone else gets it, so I suppose I also eventually shall…

Barlayn Lamiroth, perhaps, had an inkling of the great machine-brain’s glum sense of inadequacy.  While the dining hall was filling up again, the Noad made use of a moment when he was not widely observed: he tilted his face up to the chandelier which dangled closest to his position, and he gave it the slightest nodding glance, together with a palms-up gesture.

His new wife, noticing this by-play, said:  “Does that mean your promise stands, Barlayn?”

“My love, it does mean that.”

“So then, I won’t ever hear, on some awful day, you asking me to release you…”

“…From the simple life?  No, dear.  That’s what you saw me signal just now: ‘I’ve done all I can; now it’s up to you, Dynoom.’”

*

The unforgettable sanungi stillig ost at Gstatt’s Zoalsh had been a joyful wedding-banquet for the participants and the guests, but for Dynoom it had been a day of getting things wrong, with two great blows dealt to nen’s confidence: failure to guess the identity of the bride; slowness in grasping the import of the new Daon.

But although able to suffer humiliation, Dynoom was more adept than any human at damming that mental stream.  Self-command allowed the giant Brain to re-route feelings in accordance with what nen wished to feel. 

It was time to roll up one’s metaphorical sleeves and get on with it.  To learn from, and compensate for, past failures, and fend off a glowering future, Dynoom ordered up a day of getting things right.

First move: forgive oneself.  Not too surprising, after all, that a computer who had spent all nen’s eon-long life caring for a city in the mass, should be slow on the uptake with regard to human relationships.  

So, to have mistaken the women, getting their roles mixed up, was not too bad. 

The other slowness, which regarded the Daon, was less easy to forgive. 

It boiled down to historical dynamics.  Supposedly my special field!  Still, who could have foreseen the appointment of a nebulee as Daon?  An astonishing coup by Noad Barlayn Lamiroth. 

Albeit tardily, having now caught up with the rationale of that move,  in the days that followed the City-Brain was able to grasp the situation better than anyone.

On the simplest level the wisdom of the Noad's promotion of an imbecilic successor was obvious enough.  Such an heir could not possibly rouse the envy and malice of the Glomb.  In that respect Nyav Yuhlm - the least credible rival to anyone's ambition - was the safest possible choice.

Harmless but not pointless; for in a more subtle sense the appointment was a master-stroke.  Profoundly popular, it filled an instinctive need.  Right from the first moment of the announcement, the crowd who heard it knew deep down that here was a safe, structural backstop, which could prevent or at least retard any further decay of the polity of Olhoav. 

A totemic place-filling, salvaging what could be saved but at the same time admitting that nothing further could be dared, the appointment of Daon Nyav Yuhlm gave society a breathing-space in which to adjust to its lowered level of existence.

A breathing space, no more. 

Dynoom reflected with cold realism:

The latest manoeuvre by the Noad had halted Olhoav's institutional decay for the duration of the Noad's own lifetime.  This was a considerable achievement.  However, it would not outlast him.  Upon the demise of Barlayn Lamiroth, Daon Nyav Yuhlm would succeed to the noadex.  Think of that: Noad Nyav Yuhlm.  An imbecile agrash nebulee, incapable not only of the focal role itself, but of appointing an heir to it.  Under normal circumstances there would be ways round that problem, but to a culture already weakened by tyranny the noadex of Nyav would deal the death blow.

Dynoom pursued the thought along an uncanny line.  Something must be done and since no chance existed of available help from Syoom, umpteen thousand miles away, help must be sought from closer; that is... from closer in one sense - but in another sense from further...

The coldest realism, a numbing whiff of the last resort, drew Dynoom into a wary mental crouch, a folding of cerebral wings allowing his intelligence to swoop at the dilemma's utterly fantastic solution.

The terrain of possibility expanded as his awareness plummetted towards it until, like an underground river finally breaking surface, the plan spurted into open view: no belief now remained in any other option.

Yet it took Dynoom four more days to screw up nen's courage.

Being (among other things) a powerful computer, nen could have completed all necessary preparation within microseconds.  Nevertheless, nen judged it best to do it the hard way.  The Ghepion equivalent of tears and sweat occupied four days.

During that time, as if carrying out a farewell tour, the urban brain's sensory awareness seeped through the fabric of the city.  It listened and gazed from every point of surveillance.  With a mounting fervour of mixed emotions, and in a blaze of apparng, of context-awareness, of "look at it this way while you can", Dynoom fixed it all in a shapshot of memory.

Did this include a pretense of being forced? - of "Now look what you're about to make me do"?  Quite a question, that, and the ruthlessly honest Ghepion mind proceded to confront it.  "Why all this last-look tour?  Physically immoveable, I'm a permanent fixture, I'm not going anywhere; so what's all this farewell mood?" 

The reply came, it's not that sort of good-bye.

What, then, was it?

Just my psychic run-up to the chasm ahead of me, with its rims of Before and After.  I don't really dread the jump. I actually savour it.  It's what I've been wanting ever since the humans' refurbishment of the Pnurrm demonstrated that I am redundant as an urban maintenance utility.  But still, what I'm about to engage in is tough on the soul.  Learning by doing, and being pulled by so doing, in order to explore that bulge up ahead: it's a business as solemn as death. 

The streets and towers of Olhoav had disappeared from Dynoom's sight.  In response to some effortful strain for which no word existed, another vision replaced the ordinary.  You can't ever analyze how you approach the Snaddy-Galomm but once more the bulging, spinning, half-flattened spheroid floated and loomed in colourless no-space before the Ghepion. 

Its presence is a terrifying joke.  Dynoom's soul quailed before the bloated fabric of tornado-tubes, the roiling currents of fate, which made up the "Spinning Top". 

Though it is neither spatial nor temporal in itself, the dimension of meaning must somehow encode distance and duration.  Its diagrammatic apparition does this by means of twistings, shadings and mutually inclining pairs of separated pointers, all coruscating in flux.

Dynoom was not confused; understanding came of itself, because you can't keep out of the game!  To see it is to get sucked in, to become a committed part.

Most relevantly of all, he (he felt himself to be a "he" today, the more he gazed at the vision) recognized the pairings of the flame-hats worn by all the human figures riding the tubes.  The two incarnations of each Uranian must always nod towards each other, their flame-caps inclining across separations of history.  Scale is no object - you see what pertains to you and immediately you zoom to it.  For example, in no time he saw the 'first-lifer' Barlayn Lamiroth's flame's tilt towards the second life he will later live.  Likewise he spotted the 'second-lifer' Hyala Movoun's backward tilt at her earlier life.

He also saw what he had come most urgently to seek -

The two lives of Nyav Yuhlm. 

He had so peculiarly relied on the hunch that there would be something special about them - and now he saw hope turn into proof!  The impetus behind his whole action in coming here looked like paying off. Those two Nyav-flames were so close to each other, they partially overlapped.  How could that be?  It was impossible that the world could contain two incarnations of the same person simultaneously.  Underneath his bewilderment, Dynoom exulted.  This was it, this was the triumph of a hunter closing in on his prey.  Far, far ahead of his own conscious understanding, the Ghepion projected his plea:

World Spirit, may I reach out and pinch those flames into one?

You may, came the eerie, voiceless reply.

How? cried Dynoom in abrupt terror at his own idea, inwardly shivering like a beast.  How can you grant my outrageous request?  Reach out?  How can I?  I do not even possess any arms or hands with which to reach out...

That's right, you don't have hands.  Reach with them anyway.  Your own deeper self, not I, is doing all the talking.  The permission to do the impossible comes from you.  But - once only, mind!  You'll get away with it once.

You say I am doing all the talking, but why am I given such prominence?  Why the permission...?

Already a low laughter had crept into the code of the twistings.  Now the mirth of the Galomm's fate-tornadoes twinkled into visibility.  You're being co-opted, the flashes said.  Just the once.

And are reasons not needed?

Reasons?  Shrinking from your own resolve, are you?  Go on, go on, obey your braver self.  Reach out and pinch.  Science's rules can never be broken, but destiny, ah, destiny is a living thing; you can take it by surprise; not often, not never, but once.

Reach? cried Dynoom.  Reach?   But -  But - (he could hope that he was merely arguing with himself, and not, in fact, really, actually talking back to the Snaddy Galomm) - all this is metaphor-speak, is it not?  Or do you seriously, LITERALLY mean I can stretch out and touch YOU?

Do it, Dynoom.  Because of a fluke, a sport, an odds-defying overlap, a cosmic lottery-win creating circumstances you won't rationally believe, you CAN reach and contemporaneously crush together and fuse two lives of sponndar N-Y across a void between worlds in order to bring help to Olhoav.

Now.

This.

ONCE.

CONTINUED IN

Uranian Throne Episode 10:   

The Londoner