From: hutch@ibeam.intel.com (Steve Hutchison) Subject: [MG] 'Raelf: The Gods Must Be Crazy Date: 28 Feb 93 09:58:38 GMT "Is no my fault. Not am knowing I be where has gone he." The greasy dwarf grunted as he tossed a huge block of peat onto his fire. The sparks flew up, surrounding him in a cloud of smoke as more of his copious black body hair singed off. The blond man standing next to him shrugged, not noticing the heat. "Rad, dude, but I still need to know why he left." "Who be knowing? You ask he wife. Many tellings is, she leave him for kooch boy. One no so old being." "What, Denriqa leave Felchek for a chooch boy? Nah. You don't know what the for-real alchemists do, eh? He had white hair, sure, but he had a better bod than I do, probably outlast any three of your folk in bed-games." "Huh. Not can be true. Much gotta this being magic eh?" "Much gotta this true magic, mes corte ami. That's what Alchemy is about, makes the alchemist into the perfected person. Just has all these useful goodies as side effects." "So you be say. What I telling is being he gone - I rent this place offa he landlord, man say he wife pull out pack up gone, then two day later he self pull out pack up go after." "Well, thanks, Grut. Work hard you, keep beard you out the fire." "Hawr haww haww. You betcha." 'Raelf hunkered down to go through the door out of the forge. So the silver-transmuted body of the thief who had been fool enough to try robbing from the alchemist was gone. And the alchemist was gone too, and his lovely prescient wife with her fine Turkish coffee and her finer grasp of the astral influences and the stars' operations also gone. This is not good. 'Raelf shook his head, trying to clear it. Something was definitely wrong here. He found himself idly looking for excuses to timeloop again - and he finally realized he was doing it. Right now, he was at Luthor's party, not once but twice, and not only that, but he was also spending the same time trying to deal with Dasham, not to mention being dragged off to Ak Ir'neg for an entirely unwanted visit. That made, five contemporaneous instantiations. There was something coming up, something he really didn't want to experience. Well, looping wasn't going to solve anything. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on the thread of menace that he felt. Nothing clear. Incredible turbulence ahead. He walked slowly down the street, twirling his staff absently. He was having a lot of trouble keeping centered. Not bad enough that he had premonition avoidance going worse than since he was a callow offshoot. No, there was also something disturbing his ki focus. He quickly ran through the five wrist stretches, then did the second staff form in tai'ji, and held out the staff at the end, fully extended. It fell to the street with a clatter the instant he let his pulse flicker. So, there was something making strong changes to local archetypes. He shuddered, fighting down the urge to let himself reflux in order to follow the changes. Another impulse he hadn't felt since he was fresh-budded. This was not sS'sch'chKan, and refluxing here could be fatal. Something was really really wrong. He ran through the Traveller mental-rigor ritual twice, then again - yes. Something was insinuating itself into the local reality, only at a very subtle level, very limited range. It encouraged selfishness, sullen anger, indifference, killed empathy and caring, it was Peter Pan away from Neverland with no innocence and all the cruelty of childishness, stand by and watch the boys pull the wings off the Lord of the Flies... <> - the staff returned to his hand. Too many things started to make sense. Denriqa leaving, Felchek following before his Great Work was done. The delicate field-controls of his artificer's foundry all decalibrating, not just once but seven times, in one day, from changes to the Astral fields that weren't part of the pattern of the stellar dance. And the future was a window covered with thick frost, unreadable. Evidence of something profoundly disturbing. He was in over his head. Time to find someone competent and get help. He began walking back to the Mages' Guild building, trying to come up with something to keep Dasham under control long enough to get others involved in this. An idea started forming, but he was stopped short. A crowd had formed, standing, staring, seemingly not doing anything, just watching something. He was reminded of a crowd of people he saw once, gathered below a building where a man stood above, suicidal. They were yelling "Jump, Jump!" He heard a mutter - "again, hit im again" - he shoved past the one who spoke, sending him spinning away, and pushed through. There, in the road, something wet and pink and red lay huddled against the empty pedestal of the least remembered Unforgotten Hero. He went closer. It twitched, whimpered, mewled, "No more, nonono." "Whoa. You okay, kid?" "Nononononoplease" - it was about the size of a four-year-old. There was no real face remaining, and it kept fluttering the swollen purple bags of its hands to shade its lidless eyes from the sun. There was blood leaking around from underneath it. "Damn whoever did this. Kid, can you hear me?" "Nonononono don't lettim get me no no" It started shuddering, coughing, and more blood started flowing, too much blood. A woman, dressed in black and wearing ankh earrings, walked through the crowd and smiled quietly. --Bon apetit-- she walked back through the crowd. 'Raelf reached out gently. <> A whirling spiral of fire and wind and rock and water flickered around the child. The body vanished. The watchers continued staring, muttering from time to time, but not moving, just staring. {Who are you??} <> {am I dead?} <> {Why didn't she stop him?} <> {Mommy just let him hurt me and hurt me.} <> {She said he would be my new daddy and he was really nice but then he came home and he acted all drunk and he gave something to mommy and she got all drunk too and then they made me come out here and I was hungry and when I said I was hungry she hit me and then he hit me and then all the other people hit me and then my new daddy took out a big knife and he ...} <> {You won't let them hurt me?} <> {Oooh. You're magic, aren't you? Can you make me all better?} <> {Can I stay here inside you?} <> The whirlwind spiral went away suddenly - black crystalline shapes trapped in crystal globes, dropping around and vanishing. A copper haired elf in a dark grey cloak crouched where they had fallen, his cold grey eyes scanning the crowd, locking on the figure who wore the eyeless mask. It was a ceramic face, one of those mime things, sneering and cold, with holes for breathing and a tiny slit in the smirking molded mouth, for talking, but the eyes were painted on, and they stared blindly, half-lidded, feeling nothing. <> The elf stood, speaking with elemental words, solid and concrete, battering the ears of the listeners. Its speech was a scornful laugh from a playground, the sneer of someone you thought was your best friend, spurning you for the others. <> The elf strode forward, purposeful, and pressed closer and closer. The figure retreated a step. A sense of uncaring coldness washed over the elf, a fascination with the sight of pain and blood uncaring of the thing that bled and suffered. Silently, he interposed the memory of pain and betrayal, his murder by his own mother and her lover. The cold uncaring flinched away from the heat of the memory. Detachment shattered against the sharp edge of empathy. <> <> The elf reached in a strange direction, and pulled a handful of tiny sparkling dustmotes from the depths of thought. <> The elf gestured, blowing the motes at the masked thing. They sank, and adhered, burning deep into the outline of its body. It didn't care, the pain was as meaningless as that of any other. It became part of him, the motes sparkling in his inner self. <> The elf stroked the amber crystal at its throat and spoke again. << I cast three coins, and six times I cast them. Changes are told. This is the rede: as the gods fall, venomed puppets are placed where they stood.>> With a voice formed without lips, tongue, breath, the answer came from around them. << 28. Ta Kuo / Preponderance of the Great -- -- ----- above Tui The Joyous, Lake ----- ----- ----- below Sun The Gentle, Wind -- -- The Judgement Preponderance of the Great. The ridgepole sags to the breaking point. It furthers one to have somewhere to go. Success. The Image The lake rises above the trees: The image of Preponderance of the Great. Thus the superior man, when he stands alone, Is unconcerned, And if he has to renounce the world, He is undaunted. The Lines Six at the top means: One must go through the water. It goes over one's head. Misfortune. No blame. 44. Kou / Coming to Meet ----- ----- above Ch'ien The Creative, Heaven ----- ----- ----- below Sun The Gentle, Wind -- -- The Judgement Coming to Meet. The maiden is powerful. One should not marry such a maiden. The Image Under heaven, wind: The image of Coming to Meet. Thus does the prince act when disseminating his commands And proclaiming them to the four quarters of heaven. >> The masked figure screamed silently as the oracle was torn from its essence - this was not otherpain, this was diminishment... The sparkling motes showed it the path back to the safe abstractions of Void. It vanished. After a moment, the people looked around, confused. They left, separately. Two of them were familiar, a man in his late thirties, handsome but rather debauched in appearance, and a woman who had the lines of desperation in her face, now slackened by apathy and callousness. The elf reached out, grasped the woman's sleeve. "Rita. What about your son? Where's Kev?" "Who cares? He was just underfoot anyway." She yanked her garment from his grasp and went away with the man. The elf stared, something inside him weeping for a moment, and then he flickered, and the red and green flash of a hummingbird shot northward to the Mage's Guild. From its vantage atop a nearby storefront, a white bird flew down to the base of the statue, observing the clean cobbles where lifeblood had been spilled. -- "I don't care if you won't see me right now. This is an emergency." Urcohea sighed, slipped an arm out from under Rivy, who stirred and woke. "Go back to sleep, love. Minor problem." He dressed quickly, and stepped across the threshold to a completely different room. The man waiting for him was juggling something, glass balls with runes inside, far too volatile for such a cavalier treatment. "What do you want, 'Raelf?" "Something really big is coming up the pike, friend. You better lock this place down pronto." "What _are_ you talking about? This is your big emergency?" "You ever meet a god?" The glass balls vanished. "Once or twice. They're nothing to mess with." "Right. You know about the rules of affinity and domain?" "Huh?" Urcohea snapped his fingers twice, sourly summoning up a cup of freshly brewed coffee. He slurped it quietly, gestured at a tray of day-old pastries, offering them. "No thanks, I just ate. The rule of affinity says that a god is drawn to its worshippers. The rule of domain says that they stay in their own plane of being, that they don't intrude directly into the world." "Yes, any apprentice knows that after attending his first course in Fulminations and Deitribes. What has this got to do with anything?" "You know there is only one real so-called `god' living on this plane." "The sleeping god, under the Great Blue." "And that there's a number of other things that are called gods, but they don't obey the rule of affinity." "Yeah. The thing in the Shun, doesn't have worshippers anymore. The Cerupthon, doesn't pay attention or draw power from worship. The various powerful beings who are aspiring to godhood, but none of them can take the power from worship yet." "I just met a god on the edge of the Low City." "Not an avatar?" "NO, not an avatar, the real thing. Feeding on worship, drawing power from acts supporting its sphere of influence, the whole nine yards." "I take it that this god was not benevolent, or you wouldn't be bringing it to my attention." "Bodaciously malevolent, even. Listen, it was projecting emotion on a very primal level. It got through my wards like they weren't even there." 'Raelf continued, relating the story of his encounter, the crowd, what it had done to the neighborhood. He triggered the replay on the amulet, and the inhuman voice repeated the stolen oracle. Urcohea put down the coffee cup. Maybe this IS an emergency. "Where is it now?" "I sent it to the high astral, to Pantheon - I know, risky and stupid, to confront the thing directly, but it was so freshly created. It might as well have had mold marks on it, the thing had no experience at all, didn't know how to protect itself from me. Something is creating gods, Urcohea. Something has been removing the old forgotten ones and making new ones, and so far I don't like the ones it's creating." "What do you think I can do about it?" "Man, you're Archmage of Security. You decide if it's a threat, I just tell you about it. "_Internal_ Security," Urcohea corrected, massaging his eyes. "Look, I know that this is certainly not good news, but we just don't have the resources to do much about a thing like this. About the most we could do is sponsor a Quest to destroy it. And if you're right about an external force building new gods, that won't really gain us anything." "Dude. I don't expect you can fix it. Immediate hazard, though. When the local gods start going nutso, it's the kind of thing that gets the WorldGate system to abandon a nexus. Remember, you still have an open power tap set with their public access code. You better get that power tap locked off yesterday. If they go shutdown, your building is going to implode - great big building, little tiny space. Trust me." "Right. Once I know you're telling me the truth, I'll put in an emergency override on the paperwork. Come see me in three hours." "Hope so. I'm about to go beard the lioness in her den." Urcohea thought through the mixed image and chuckled wearily at the image it brought to mind. "Dasham again?" "Yeah. I'm tired of her trying to blackmail me into doing things her way, so I've worked out a little surprise." The blond mage smiled with a kind of wide-eyed innocence that made Urcohea nervously remember Rivy's early days at the Guild. ---- The redhaired Archmage sat patiently in the center of her circle, waiting for the vision she had summoned to complete itself. After a time, her spirit and body were again in phase. She stood, slightly stiff, and gestured a dismissal to the protection that had kept her safe in her travel. Her private lab became visible, candles placed around the pentacle, her clothing stacked on her chair where she had discarded it for her journey. This had been a hard journey, her personal reserves were a bit drained. "Dash. Welcome back to the surreal world." The sardonic voice came from behind her. She steeled herself to turn, without flinching or blushing. No hint of weakness to be shown. How had he gotten in here? "'Raelf. How nice of you to come back after all." "I think we need to make something clear between us." "Oh?" "Yeah. You want something from me. You could have used the polite way, the standard human conventions. You could have just asked, told me what you wanted, paid me, even. No, you think other creatures are just for your amusement, or if they're not amusing, for you to use until you have no use for them any more." "Thank you. I'm quite aware of my many character flaws. I don't have the time to waste indulging other people." "Really? But you do have time to waste coercing them. Well, you've been treating me like a conjured demon with a task set to it, and you've been using the equivalent of a wrackspirit to keep me motivated, knowing that I don't like to see other people suffering. Just this morning you tortured two innocent people trying to blackmail me into obedience. Fine. If you want to interact that way, we'll follow those rules." "What do you mean?" The ArchMage cautiously stepped back inside her inscribed circle, raising the first wards - conjured demon, he says? "I bow to your will in this one thing, o daughter of magic. I will accept of you one commandment, under the Stricture of Threes." "You WHAT?" "You heard me. I demand of you, o daughter of magic, that you repeat to me the oaths of the Stricture." "Damn you. This isn't funny." "I demand of you a second time, o daughter of magic, that you repeat to me the oaths of the Stricture." "This really is NOT funny, 'Raelf. That doesn't apply between humans." "I take in your presence my true form, o daughter of magic, and demand for the third and final time that you repeat to me the oaths of the stricture." Dasham cowered back inside her protective circle - outside, there was a sickening tearing devastation of wind and fire, blowing sand and steam, a blackness she couldn't see past. She tried to fade along the dimensional folds, to snap to the safety of her other bolt-hole, but the route was full of the same noisy devastation, strange feline eyes watching her with a predatory gleam. Her communication lines were down - she couldn't even raise the alarm. With a ping, the inscribed circle began to weaken, tiny pits appearing in the metal of its outermost edges. "ALL RIGHT! I swear the oaths of the stricture. I ask of you one service, that you find for me an acceptable way that I might extend my youth and my life as long as I choose to do so." The wind spoke. <> "I accept! Now turn back, you're wrecking my lab!" "Already wrecked, Dash." 'Raelf was standing in the middle of a debris strewn room, finely shattered glassware, metal, wood, all coating the walls and floor. "Oh hell. This is going to ruin my budget for the month." "Hey, I told you so. `This suffering is your fault' I think you said?" She blanched, remembering that he had allowed her to kill two of her own people, then scowled again, regaining her composure. Besides, she'd had them raised again. She spoke through clenched teeth: "I really am desperate. You don't understand. I'm too old." "Tell me about it. You're 235 years old. You look like a very nice 28." "Good of you to notice. I can't let myself get older than 30. If I do, I'll die, horribly and over a very long time. There's a special plant, it grows in the southern swamps, I've been using it as an antiagathic. But it stopped working a few decades ago. I found some tricks for making it last longer but it won't be possible to use much longer - it's become a poison for me. I have a month, maybe two, before the curse hits me." "I see. Not to rub it in or anything, babe, but I would have been happy to help out with this, un-coerced, y'know?" "Just get on with it. What else do you need me to tell you?" "Well, let me see your drug of choice, first." She gestured, summoning a robe from her apartments. It arrived, but stank of paraformaldehyde - Rivy's workmen had woken her this morning insisting that she had an infestation of etherial termites, and she'd been forced to vacate while they fumigated. She pulled the robe tight around her anyway. 'Raelf grinned vapidly. "So you really are a redhead, eh? Or do you henna there too?" She blushed and bit back a retort. Damn that ritual - if she so much as raised her fist to him, he was free to do whatever he wanted. She began to regret her hasty acceptance, and spoke disgustedly. "Just come with me." She started to step out into the devastated room. "Whoa, hold on, Dash. You can't walk in this crap. Glass'll chew your little piggies to sausage." He picked her up, carrying her to the door, then set her down in the hall outside. She glared at the uninvited familiarity, but he didn't try anything funny. Which was also annoying. She could have levitated out. He had to know this. She led him, still grinning that damned blond airhead grin, down the hall past the disapproving old prune that Rivy had assigned to her records section. The little twit seemed to think this was funny, putting haggard old women with chromed-red hair in her departments. Well, Thorn had come down on Rivy's side, this time, so Dasham was going to be ever so nice to the old biddy. She sweetened her voice up for Rivy's monitors. "Ruby, could you be a _love_ and fetch me the dried silyantum seed from the locked cabinet? It's in the second wardbox. Oh, and do _please_ be careful, it's not safe, you'd better wear gloves." There, that ought to keep the little bitch happy - no mistreatment of any kind. "Yesm." The woman shambled back into the storeroom, making Dasham wince with involuntary sympathy as each arthritic hobble ground the old hag's hips. 'Raelf watched her reaction with great interest. That wince was memory. But Dasham had a near-perfect body, no sign of injury. So she used to be old, eh? Might explain some things. File for future. "How do you use this stuff?" "Ingested as a spice, ground is ok but uncooked always." "OK - so it has to be living. Good. You got a spare workspace?" "Yes." She led him to a smaller lab, packed around with boxes and crates, but with a table and an open floorspace for magical summonings. They sat at the table. He reached into a small pocket and drew out a flat circular disk of white ceramic looking material. Two grains of the silyantum seed went onto the disk, then suspended in air above it, he placed the amber-stoned amulet from around his neck. <> - the amulet chimed faintly. Dasham pricked her ears up - she was beginning to recognize some features of that strange noisy language he was speaking. <> A flickering cone of colors washed down from the stone, constrained in some way to hold to the surface of the ceramic disk. "This may take a little time, Dash. Would be easier if you'd let me try a heal-touch on you." "No. Keep your paw to yourself." "Paw?" 'Raelf looked at his hand. "You're pretty good, Dash. I thought I was doing a good job of staying truehuman." "There were exactly three point two one milliseconds during your change to your `true form' where my scanners were able to register you. Before you shredded them. You mass just over 900 kilograms. You have five standard dimensional partitions. You exist along at least eight dimensions, most of which are imaginary. There's no way you can possibly survive in this universe." "Not bad." He leaned back, grinning annoyingly. "And you came apart into pure Platonian elements in a way that is not possible according to all known natural and magical laws." "Right. So far so good." "So are you really a demon?" "No, but I've been called that, and worse. Demons have a particular set of archetypal features that my people try not to embrace." Dasham summoned a more complete set of clothing from her apartments, this time passing them via a filter point to get rid of the fumigant smell. "Why do you bother impersonating a human?" "I resent that slur. I _am_ a human. Parts of me, anyway." "So why do you bother?" "Oh, because I'm bored with living at home, because the cosmos are beautiful places, because I'm curious - part catform, remember? - and because I like people, I like being with new and different people." "How utterly sickeningly naively ordinary." "Dash, why do you want to keep on living with that attitude?" "Mind your own ... All right. Fair trade. I don't want to die, because if I die, I'll either cease existing, which terrifies me, or I'll come under the judgement of the gods, which is worse. I've done some hideous things in my life. I don't want to pay some of the prices for those things." "You know, if you live forever, you'll have to pay the price anyway." "But I can pay it over time, in more bearable chunks." "What a dismal motivation for immortality." "Thank you so much. Your opinion is noted and filed where appropriate." 'Raelf relaxed a bit - if she'd already scanned him they wouldn't be learning much more if he let his element-pulse operate. He pulled off his amber lenses, and looked at her curiously for a while. "What the hell is wrong with your eyes?" "Huh? Oh - that. Sorry. Eyes are window to soul and so on. I just decided to drop one of my defensive modes, since you've already broken past it." He left the protective lenses hanging around his neck in case he might want to change his mind. "It's very annoying. I suppose it's some sort of sensory thing?" "You betcha. Hey, when was the last time you had fun?" "What's that supposed to mean?" "You know fun. Play. En ter tain ment." "I had a lover a few weeks back but he got quite boring. Nearly as pretty as you are but no brains. I found him standing on a pedestal on the Avenue of dead merchants - Sorry. Unforgotten Heroes. He was standing like he'd been turned to stone. I liked his looks, took him home, suppressed the spell, he was appropriately grateful several times. Nasty spell he had on him, kept coming back. You can't imagine, I suppose, how frustrating it feels to have your lover lock up into an imitation stone statue just as you're on the edge? Well, I didn't feel like searching for ingredients for a full counterspell so I put him back where I found him." "You know, you and Alita would get along quite well." "I assume that's not a compliment." "Oh, I dunno. She's not so bad once you get to know her." Dasham gestured circles. "Turn around. I want to dress." "Oh come on - I've seen you naked already." "And I don't intend to repeat the experience. Decorum. Turn." "OK." 'Raelf turned his head. He waited a moment, then deliberately said, "Wow. You know, I can sort of tell where that stuff has been settling in your body. Your thymus is all screwed up." "You can still see me?" "You mass around fifty-six and a quarter kilos, you have traces of bones broken and healed in your left foot and right arm, you have a new set of teeth coming in, probably your fifth, you have a full bladder, you haven't eaten today. Want to know more?" "No. Touche', I suppose. What mechanisms to you use to tell all this?" "Natural senses. I can duplicate just about all of them, though. If you wish to hire me as an artificer, I'm booked right now, but after I solve this one nasty problem, I'm available for the right price." The analysis completed and the amulet chimed cheerily. 'Raelf read off a list of tiny letters from the air above it, then muttered <> and put the amulet back on his neck. "The stuff you have been using has a long-term toxicity. It's killed your thymus, and you developed an immunity to the other components which replaced the function of that gland. There is an archetypal interference which is not part of the drug, which I assume is some sort of curse you are carrying. Without the curse, your body would have adapted, and you would have been able to live indefinitely using your drug. So tell me about the curse." "Not today. Tomorrow, maybe." "All right. Here are my first two suggestions to you. These constitute the first two of my bonded seven methods." "Speak them." "I recommend you take up the art and science of Alchemy, in its true form as the perfection of your essence towards a true unflawed human archetype, immortal and with the full strengths of youth and of age." "I have not the talent, nor the personality, nor the time, for that course. I grant it would be a solution for some, but it is not for me." "Bummer. OK. I recommend that you allow me, or some other person who has sufficient healing or transformational power, to restore your body to a younger state with all parts intact, that you then seek out the agencies of a godcaller or exorcist to remove the curse, and that you then work to make the drug you use, into a more magically refined form." "It would work, but for one thing. The curse you name has been woven into the fabric of my truename. Should I somehow excise the curse, my own power, my identity, my very self would be irrevocably changed, and I cannot risk that kind of crippling." "Rats. OK, so I need to know more about this curse of yours." "Tomorrow." "Right. Hey, take it easy, Dash, we'll figure a way around it." She scowled. "Stop calling me Dash."