Macroscope

Gorolot brought out a scroll of stripped camel hide together with several clay tablets. “Do not expect too much,” he warned. “The meanings of the motions of the planets are not yet well known to us, and many times have I made mistakes. Often the Babylonian interpretations differ from the Egyptian, and I do not know the truth of it. I offer only the portents; I do not vouch for their authenticity.”

Ivo nodded. An honest man, yes, and a humble one. How many potentially well-paying customers did he alienate by his candor?

For almost an hour the astrologer pored over his records and assessed the imperatives of the seven planets — Uranus, Neptune and Pluto being unknown to Phoenician astronomy — questioning Ivo occasionally, while Aia showed her mounting impatience. “Others give instant readings,” she whispered.

“Others are charlatans,” Ivo replied. Gorolot labored on, unheeding.

At last he looked up. “Is there some event in your life that—”

Ivo gave him the same event he had given Groton, modified slightly in detail.

Still the astrologer was not satisfied. He mumbled and shook his head and rechecked his texts and runes fretfully. “I ca

Aia started to object, but Ivo gestured her to silence. “You have already helped me considerably,” he said. “I know you see something. What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“You have spent all this time contemplating nothing?” Aia demanded.

“The signs are contradictory, as I warned you they might be,” Gorolot said to Ivo. “But more than that, and it disturbs me deeply, some aspects are sure, yet they are the least credible of all. Either you have never been born, or you come from so far away that you are not truly under any of the signs I know.” He shrugged. “You must have been born, for I see you here, and I do not credit genii. Yet the signs are all-inclusive. So there is error — but not one it is in me to fathom. I am old and tired, and perhaps my brain is weakening. Take your servant-girl and go.”

“You admit you are a charlatan!” Aia exclaimed.

“No,” Ivo said firmly. “He is right. I have never been born — but I will be born thousands of years hence. And in my time the constellations have moved, and there are newly discovered planets; some of their meanings have — er, developed with the march of time.”

Gorolot peered at him over the flickering pewter lamp. “My charts suggest that this is so, but still it is a thing beyond my experience. I deem myself a sensible man, and all my life I have denied the supposed impact of the supernatural on the affairs of men. Yet here you are, real but inexplicable. Surely you mock me?”

Aia was silent now, looking at Ivo intently. The red in her hair was stronger, her features almost familiar in a non-Phoenician sense. She was extremely lovely.

“Do you speak other languages?” Ivo asked the astrologer. The man nodded. “I will show you that I am not of this world. I have the gift of tongues.”

“Are you familiar with this one?” Gorolot said in a foreign language, smiling.

“Egyptian, southern dialect,” Ivo said in the same language.

“And this?”

“Phrygian — as a Lydian tribesman would speak it.”

“No one in Tyre knows this one but me, and I know it only from my texts,” Gorolot said carefully.

“No wonder. It is parent-stock Etruscan. If I may — here is a correction on your phrasing.” He gave it.

Gorolot stared at him. “You are right. I remember now. You speak it far better than I.” He had lapsed into Phoenician. “You do have the gift of tongues, and you are far too young to have mastered it here. You are—”

“I don’t believe it,” Aia said, half believing it.

“So you come from Ugarit — peasant stock,” Ivo told her. She looked dismayed, and he turned back to Gorolot.

The man’s features changed. The white beard faded, leaving him clean-shaven. His face filled out. Behind him the mud-plaster wall metamorphosed into metal.

Groton was opposite him, a look of incredulous hope on his face. To the side stood Afra, weeping silently.

“I’m back,” Ivo said.

“It was Schön’s doing,” Ivo explained. Afra obviously had caught on to his secret, so no further pretense was in order. “It took me a long time to catch on to that, possibly because he tried to hide the evidence from me, more likely because I didn’t really want to believe it. But even a genius can’t convince an ordinary person that white is purple. Not always. Not when the purple stinks.” But he hadn’t told them about the dye yet. “And that gift of tongues was the unmistakable key. Schön has it, and he had to make it available to me in order to have me participate properly in that world; otherwise I would have popped out again quickly. When I realized that, I was on the way to victory, because I knew he was behind it all.”

“Why?” Groton wanted to know.

“Why did he do it? Easy. Because he wants to take over, and he can’t do it unless I abdicate. He tried to drive me into a situation that only he could save me from, hoping that I would capitulate. Maybe he forgot how stubborn I was.”

“But the destroyer—”

“Either he doesn’t know about that, or he isn’t afraid of it.”

“Why didn’t he give you just one language — Phoenician?”

“It doesn’t work that way. He can’t give me part of a talent. Only so many speech centers in the brain, as I make it.”

“But that would mean that English takes up one,” Afra said, “and all the other languages of the world, the other. That isn’t reasonable.”

“Schön isn’t reasonable, by our definition. Maybe he has some other setup. Anyway, it’s everything, or it’s nothing.”

“Do you have it now?” Afra asked, mopping her face. She looked so much like Aia that it set him back. Obviously one girl had been modeled from the other, just as one astrologer had emulated the other.

“No.”

“He took it away when you broke out?” Groton asked.

“No. I left it there. I didn’t want it.”

The two looked at him.

“It’s hard to explain. This arrangement between us — it isn’t absolutely set. He can give me things, like the intuitive computations, and I can accept them. But I can’t take anything he doesn’t make available and he can’t force anything on me that I refuse to accept. This episode was a special case; I was off-balance and tired, and I accepted more than I should have. Then I had to fight my way out by his rules, the hard way. But I stopped it there; I didn’t take the gift with me.”

“But why?” Afra cried. “The gift of tongues! Every language anyone ever spoke!”

“Because each trait I accept from him brings me that much closer to him. I started with two, and that’s the way I like it. I don’t need tongues.”

“But if you can have all that and remain yourself—”

This was like arguing with Aia. “I can’t. As I stand, I have two parts out of, say, twenty that make up Schön. Tongues would be a third part, and then I might be tempted to gamble on artistic ability or eidetic recollection. And after that I might get a craving for physical dexterity — you know, be a champion at sports, be able to do sleight-of-hand, control the roll of dice — and at some point Schön would achieve controlling interest. It’s more subtle than the destroyer, but the effect is the same, for me.” And suddenly another reason he had been able to avoid the destroyer popped up: he had had a lifetime of practice protecting his individuality from oblivion.

“That’s how you — turn into Schön?”

“That’s one way. There are others.” He decided to change the subject. “Of course, I’ll never know whether I really had tongues. It could all have been American English, with the suggestion of translation. Just enough for verisimilitude in the dream.”

“Dream?” Afra said.

“The Phoenician episode I summarized for you. It seemed like several days, and it was real for me, but—”