Barnes, John - A Million Open Doors

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MILLION

OPEN

DOORS

JOHN BARNES

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that

this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the

publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for

this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book

are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

thereof, in any form.

Cover art by John Harris

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

Tor Books on the World Wide Web: http://www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

ISBN: 0-812-51633-8

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-24132

First edition: October 1992

First mass market printing: November 1993

Printed in the United States of America 098765 43

A MILLION OPEN DOORS

PART ONE

CANSO DE FIS

DE JOVENT

ONE

We were in Pertz's Tavern, up in the hills above Noupeitau, with the usual

people, ostensibly planning to go backpacking in Terraust and actually drinking

on Aimeric's tab. With fires due in a few weeks, we thought we might see the

first herds of auroc-de-mer migrating to the banks of the Great Polar River,

beginning their 1700 km swim to the sea. Aimeric had never seen it and was wild

to go. For the rest of us, the pleasure was in watching his excitement—like his

bald spot, it was always there to be made fun of—and in the red wine that

flowed freely while he bought.

"Perhaps on the last day we can spring to Bo Merce Bay and see the first ones

head out to sea. They say that's really a sight. Last chance for twelve stanyears,

we shouldn't miss it, m'es vis, companho." Aimeric laughed, looking down into his

wine. The bald spot was bigger than ever. I enjoyed pitying him.

Aimeric slid his arm around Bieris, his entendedora of the time, and pulled her

closer to him. She raised an eyebrow at me, asking me not to encourage him.

Garsenda, who was my entendedora, squeezed my arm and whispered in my

ear, "I think he really means to go. Are you going to?"

"If you wish, midons. My father took me when I was nine. I wouldn't mind

seeing it again."

"Giraut's seen it," Garsenda said, very loudly. "Giraut can tell you all about it."

Everyone stopped talking and looked at us. If Garsenda had not had long,

thick blue-black hair, bright blue eyes, and big heavy soft breasts over a taut

belly, she'd never have been my entendedora—I surely hadn't chosen her on her

personality. Sometimes I thought of getting rid of her, but she so impressed my

companho that it was worth tolerating her many lapses. I only wished that the

laws of finamor did not demand that I think of her as perfect.

She giggled when she realized they were staring, and rubbed my thigh in a

long stroke under the table. "I thought we were talking about going backpacking

to the South Pole," she said. "You know, to see the aurocs-de-mer turn their legs

to flippers or whatever it is they do."

"Yes, we were," Raimbaut said. He was grinning, enjoying watching my

entendedora embarrass me.

I grinned back. Since he had none of his own, if he wanted to get insulting, I

held trump.

"Have you actually seen it?" Aimeric asked.

Bieris hit him on the shoulder, giving him her don't-en-courage-Garsenda

glare.

"Ja, my father took me the year before you got here, Aimeric." I took the carafe

and helped myself to another glass of wine; Aimeric flagged old Pertz, behind

the bar, who started to pour another. I had lost count of glasses, and didn't care.

"And what actually happens is that they have these pockets that their legs and

flippers fold into. They just disjoint whatever they're not using and tuck it up

into the pocket is all. The toszet who designed them must have been a real

genius—not just having the organs, but having the instinct to do that, is really

something." I sipped the wine again, and noticed I had everyone's attention—

maybe they really did want to go. "But let's just go and see them get into the

river. The going out to sea doesn't look like much—just a lot of big gray-brown

backs in the water. Not nearly as impressive as the levithi you can see from

Bisbat Head."

Aimeric said, "Giraut, you could make a dance on the clouds on gossamer

wings sound like going down the hall to spring your laundry to the cleaners."

Raimbaut and Marcabru both laughed a lot more than it was worth—they were

as drunk as I was.

Marcabru, who rarely went out of the city if he could help it, said "But I'd like

to see the whole thing—as Aimeric says, not for another twelve stanyears..."

Raimbaut nodded vigorously and refilled his glass.

Aimeric beamed at them. "Consensus is against you, Olde Woodes Hande,"

That was the nickname he had given me when I was twelve and he was new to

the planet, on the many family trips my father had taken him on. "I think we

should stay the extra days."

I shrugged. "It's a little more dangerous. While we're there, I'll show you some

of the graveyards. The auroc-de-mer only usually beat the fires to the river. Each

year some of them—sometimes a lot of them—burn to death, piled up in box

canyons or at the foot of bluffs. Then after the snowfields form and melt, the

charred aurocs-de-mer get swept into streams and piled up along some of the

river beaches in meters-thick banks of white bone and black carbon. You

shouldn't miss the sight—but I don't want any of us to become a permanent part

of it."

Marcabru smiled at me. "Very prudent of you, Giraut. You're getting old. Hey,

Garsenda, you want a fresh young toszet when Grandpa Giraut gets tired?"

It was nothing of course—mere banter between old friends —but then a big

brawny Interstellar, sixteen or seventeen and far-gone drunk, bellowed from the

next table, "You're a coward."

Every table in Pertz's went instantly quiet.

Ragging among friends is one thing, but in Nou Occitan enseingnamen is

everything. I slid sideways away from Garsenda. "This won't take long, midons."

"You're a coward, Redsleeves," the young lout repeated. From his voice, I

guessed he had stood up. I glanced at Marcabru to make sure the young turd

wasn't about to rabbit-punch me as I stood, a trick that was very popular among

the Interstellars, as anything low, dirty, or ne gens tended to be.

Marcabru raised and slowly lowered an index finger, so I kicked the bench

backward hard and spun into the space where it had been. Beside me,

Marcabru's epee uncoiled into rigidity with a sharp pop, its neuroducer tip

almost in the face of that young clown. Between the flickering glow of the

neuroducer in his face, and the slam of the bench against his shins, he took a big

leap back, giving us a moment to assess the situation.

It didn't look good. Five young Interstellars, all dressed in the navy-and-black

style patterned on Earth bureaucratic uniforms, sneered at the four of us. All of

them were big and muscular, and none were hanging back. Probably they were

all dosed on a berserker drug.

The smart thing, if possible, would be to avoid a fight.

On the other hand, I detested Interstellars—traitors to their culture, imitators

of the worst that came out from the Inner Worlds, bad copies of Earth throwing

away all the wealth of their Occitan heritage; their art was sadoporn, their music

raw noise, and their courtesy nonexistent—and spirit and style were everything.

Anyone could be graceful with nothing at stake. Here was a real test of

enseingnamen.

Everyone speaks Terstad everywhere you go in the Thousand Cultures, but it

doesn't offer the powerful, compressed imagery of Occitan, so it was that in

which I insulted him; a few musical, rolling syllables sufficed to point out that

his father had dribbled the best part of him onto the bathroom floor and he

needed to wash his face of the stench of his cheap-whore sister. It was a fine

calling-out for spur of the moment and half-drunk.

Aimeric and Raimbaut rose to their feet, applauding with harsh, ugly laughs

to make it clear that it was everyone's fight.

"Talk Terstad. I don't understand school talk."

He was not telling the truth, since all instruction is in Occitan after the fourth

year, but it was a point of pride with Interstellars to speak only Terstad, because

they were determined to reject everything about their own culture and tradition.

"I should have expected that," I said. "You look stupid. All right, I'll translate—

please let me know if I'm going too fast. Your father (that's one of those drunks

your mother called 'customers,' though god only knows which one) dribbled the

best part of you—"

"I don't give a shit what the Octalk meant. I just want to fight you."

His epee banged out into a straight line pointed at me. Mine replied. There

was a fast flurry of pops as all those involved extended epees, and crashing and

scrambling sounds as everyone else in Pertz's tried to get out of the way.

He grinned at me and glanced at Garsenda. "After we get done with all of you,

me and my underboys will share your slut."

It was a dumb adolescent trick, which probably worked pretty well on dumb

adolescents. I drew a sharp breath and dropped my point a hairsbreadth, as if he

had actually broken my focus. He lunged—straight onto the point of my epee,

which tapped his exposed larynx, bending like a flyrod under the force of the

collision.

He fell to the floor, bubbling and grasping his throat. The neuroducer had

made solid contact, and it would require sedation and several days' slow revival

to convince him that he did not have blood gushing from a hole in his throat. We

all stood watching him as he quickly hallucinated himself dead and went into a

coma.

I sort of hoped I had actually bruised him with the force of the blow, but

they'd be able to fix that too. On the other hand, a really good zap with a

neuroducer is almost impossible to erase with anything but time, so probably a

decade from now his throat would spasm hard enough to choke him every now

and then.

The situation was satisfactory as far as I was concerned. "An apology, on

behalf of your friend, would settle this," I said.

"I wish we could," the biggest of them said, "but then we'd all have to fight

him as soon as he got out of the hospital—with fists, too. Gwim is strict with his

underboys."

Two more things I hated about Interstellars—they liked to give and take

orders from each other, and they contracted fine old Occitan names like Guilhem

down to ugly grunts like Gwim. "Then let's get on with it," I said. "The odds are

honorable now."

The two in, the back gulped hard, but to give them credit, they all nodded.

Maybe there was a little enseingnamen left in them despite the clothes.

"Let's do this in the street," I added. "Pertz doesn't need any more furniture

broken up, and a stray hit with a neuroducer can wipe a vu."

I glanced at the Wall of Honor, memorializing Pertz's dead patrons, and all the

vus were smiling and nodding as if they'd heard me. It was an eerie effect, but in

a moment they were all out of unison again.

When I looked back, the Interstellars were nodding, and so were my seconds.

Aimeric had that lazy, bored look he got just before some intense pleasure.

Marcabru, best of our fighters after me, was solidly ready and balanced, his face

almost blank—he was already in that state where thought and action are

identical, a state I could feel myself settling comfortably into with each breath.

Raimbaut had a crazy gleam in his eye and was rocking back and forth on his

feet, almost bouncing—I never knew anyone who loved a brawl or a wild

adventure better. His face was distorted in a dozen places, and his left shoulder

and right ankle were stiff, where muscles could not be convinced they weren't

scarred, and there must have been internal effects as well.

If I had been thinking I might not have let things go the way they did, but of

course he and I were both twenty-two stanyears old. Everyone seems immortal

then. Besides, Raimbaut would tell me later that he wasn't unhappy about how

he died, only about when.

With a fierce little nod, he signaled for me to get on with it. I said, "Well, then,

gentlemen, the street. Will it be to first yield, to first death, or without limit?"

"First death?" one of the ones behind squeaked, and the brawny blond boy

who now seemed to be their leader nodded.

"I think we'll have to, to satisfy Gwim."

"All right then, to the street, atz dos," I said.

We walked out to the street in side-by-side pairs, one of them with each of

us—it's the position for honorable people, and given that they were Interstellars

it might have been some risk, but they had shown real enseingnamen since their

vulgarian leader's dispatch, and so I extended them the courtesy.

The street was empty—everyone was down at Festival Night in Noupeitau.

From far below, we could hear the clash of a dozen brass bands playing in

different parts of the city, mixed together by distance.

The redbrick villas up here were the color of heartsblood in the warm glow of

the sunset; the little red dot of Arcturus, a bloody period, was sinking into

Totzmare in the west, and the surf was running fast and big. The skimmers

riding them in (on the western coast of Nou Occitan, waves are rideable as much

as two hundred km out to sea) were just putting on running lights, and a few

were tacking and putting on sail to work their way back out to sea so that they

could start another run next morning. Those last few weeks before a Dark, when

the sky was still deep purple and the long evenings still warm, always seemed to

hurry by too fast.

It was a good night to be alive, and a fine setting for a brawl.

"Let's get on with it." It was my responsibility to say that, for though I had

challenged originally, the boys' taking up their friend's quarrel had made me the

challenged, so timing and protocol were mine to decide. I might have chosen the

issue fought to as well, but, under an imputation of cowardice, I preferred to

defy them by letting them choose. When I saw how young and scared their faces

looked in the sharp black-edged shadows of the red street, I thought of softening

it to first yield—but no, their ne gens behavior had begun it.

Let them bear the consequences.

I spoke the traditional words then: "Atz fis prim. Non que malvolensa, que per ilh

tensa sola." It meant "to the first death"—that to remind everyone when we were

to stop—and "not from rancor, but merely for the sake of the quarrel"—to remind

us that this was not a blood feud and would not become one, that this fight

would settle whatever question there was for good and forever.

Then I flicked my epee upward in salute, the boy facing me did the same, and

all the seconds saluted in unison. Their epees had barely returned to ready when

the boy was on me.

Our epees had clashed no more than ten times—I had not yet formed any

impression of him—when Aimeric cried "Patz marves!" to end the fight.

All the safety locks clicked, and the epees coiled back into their hilts, the

guards folding in last. I dropped mine unconsciously into my pocket, looking to

see who had died. Raimbaut was on the ground, not moving.

At first it was nothing we hadn't seen before—we were getting ready to move

him to the back room at Pertz's with the young clown who had started all the

trouble, for pickup the next morning. And it even made sense that it was

Raimbaut; much as he loved a fight, he was slow and easily fooled. I had seen

him dead three times before, and there had been other times as well, when I

hadn't been there.

Then the banshee cry of the ambulance froze our blood. Raimbaut's

medsponder had triggered.

We set him down in the street, backed away, and got no more than a dozen

paces before the ambulance dove in from directly overhead in a thunder of

reversed impellers, lowered the springer box over him, and sprang him to the

emergency room. The impellers flipped to forward with a click and a whine, and

the little robot, for all the world like a cylindrical tank on top of a coffin, lifted

slowly and flew away. In the pavement where it had been there was a

rectangular depression, two meters long by one wide, a centimeter deep.

By the time we got inside and commed the hospital's infocess, they knew. At

the bottom of the report, beneath all the aintellect's terse notes about liver and

kidney damage, and hysterical distortion of the heart, someone human had

noted "one shock too many."

The burial took forever. His parents didn't show for it, and that was the best

thing that happened.

Raimbaut babbled all the way through his funeral, too. His will named me as

recipient, so I had struggled through carrying his body up the mountain, along

with Marcabru, Aimeric, David, Johanne, and Rufeu, with the added difficulty of

pain from the fresh scar where his psypyx had been implanted in the back of my

neck.

Raimbaut watched through my eyes as we lowered his naked corpse onto its

bed of roses at the bottom of the grave the nanos had shaped in the raw granite

of Montanha Valor.

Each donzelha present climbed down and kissed the corpse, rubbing her face

on his to anoint him with their tears. There were a lot of donzelhas—which

surprised Raimbaut so much that he couldn't stop talking about it in my head.

Garsenda made a truly spectacular show of her grief, though she'd known

Raimbaut only through me, and not well. Raimbaut appreciated it, but I was

embarrassed.

Bieris, who had known him longest of any donzelha, was oddly quiet and

restrained in the grave, but when she climbed out her face was drenched with

weeping.

Then, as each of the jovents nicked a thumb to drop blood on Raimbaut's

body, Aimeric sang the Canso de Fis de Jovent, perhaps the great masterpiece of

Nou Occitan verse. Written by Guilhem-Arnaud Montanier in 2611, first sung at

his funeral a year later, for two centuries it has been what we buried our young,

brave, and beautiful to—under normal circumstances it brought tears to my eyes,

and now it tore my heart like a claw.

Guilhem-Arnaut himself had said that all four possible meanings (fis means

either death or end, and jovent either a young man or the time of first manhood)

were equally intended, and there is nothing in the song to make one choose

between them; my mind skipped wildly from one idea to the next, while

Raimbaut marveled at the quantities of roses and girls.

At last, when it was over, we walked the six kilometers back in silence. Even

Raimbaut was quiet.

It had been hard and heavy going up with the body, but this was worse.

"Are you still there?" I subvoked to Raimbaut.

"Still here." His voice was more tired and mechanical than it had been, and my

heart sank with what that portended, but he did say, "Burial was nice. You're all

very kind. Thank you."

"Raimbaut thanks you all," I said. Everyone turned and bowed gravely toward

me, so he could see through my eyes.

"Where am I? I must be dead!" his voice cried in my head. "Deu, deu, this is

Montanha Valor, but I can't remember the funeral! Giraut, were we there?"

"Ja, ja, yes, Raimbaut, we were there." I subvoked so hard that Garsenda,

beside me, heard the grunts in my throat and stared at me until Bieris drew her

away. "Reach for the emblok, try to feel it through me," I told him. "Your

memory will be in the emblok."

It was no use, then or any time later. Only a rare mind can continue after

losing its body. Like most, he could not maintain contact with the emblok that

would give him short-term memory, or the geeblok that would allow him his

emotions, though each was a scant centimeter away from where he crouched in

his psypyx at the base of my skull.

Days passed and he forgot his death, and then that we had ever been at Pertz's

Tavern, for he could not recover what he downloaded.

And as my emotions separated again from his, and he was increasingly unable

to reach his geeblok, he felt colder and colder in my mind. His liquid helium

whisper raved on endlessly, trying to remember itself, trying to wake up from

the bad dream it thought it was in.

After two more weeks—about eleven and a half standays— they said there

was no hope, and took the psypyx, emblok, and geeblok off me. Raimbaut sleeps

now in Eternity Hall in Nou Occitan, like so many others, waiting for some

advance of technology to bring his consciousness, memories, and emotions

together again.

The good-bye had taken so long, and so little of him was left at the end of it,

that I felt nothing when they removed him.

TWO

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AMILLIONOPENDOORSJOHNBARNESATOMDOHERTYASSOCIATESBOOKNEWYORKNOTE:Ifyoupurchasedthisbookwithoutacoveryoushouldbeawarethatthisbookisstolenproperty.Itwasreportedas"unsoldanddestroyed" othepublisher,andneithertheauthornorthepublisherhasreceivedanypaymentforthis"strippedbook."Thisisaworkoffiction.Allthec...

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