Brunner, John - The Crucible of Time

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THE CRUCIBLE OF TIME

JOHN BRUNNER

A DEL REY BOOK

BALLANTINE BOOKS · NEW YORK

NORTH OAKS

A Del Rey Book

Published by Ballantine Books

in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,

and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Parts I and II of The Crucible of Time have previously appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science

Fiction Magazine.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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First Edition: September 1983

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Brunner, John, 1934-

The crucible of time.

"A Del Rey book."

I. Title.

PR6052.R8C78 1983

823' .914

83-2750

To Christopher Evans

In memoriam

CONTENTS

Foreword

Prologue

The Fire Is Lit

Fusing and Refusing

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The Outpouring

Breaking the Mold

Bloom

Hammer and Anvil

Well and Fitly Shaped

Epilogue

FOREWORD

It is becoming more and more widely accepted that

with the passage of the Solar System through the spiral:

It therefore occurred to me to wonder what would be

that evolved intelligence just before their planet's tral

far denser than the one in Orion which the Earth has re

terms--traversed.

In my attempt to invent its history I have frequently

of Mr. lan Ridpath, whose prompt and generous aid I

ledge.

Ice Ages coincide

wtns of our galaxy.

'come of a species

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asit of a gas-cloud

',cently--in cosmic

elied on the advice

gratefully acknow-

--JKHB

PROLOGUE

In the center of the huge rotating artificial globe the folk assembled to

await retelling of an age-old story.

Before them swam a blur of light. Around them was a waft of pheromones.

Then sound began, and images took form.

A sun bloomed, with its retinue of planets, moons and comets. One was

the budworld. Slowly--yet how much more swiftly than in the real past.t-

a wild planet curved out of space towards what had once been their race's

home.

"If only they had known....t,, somebody murmured.

"But they did not.t'' the instructor stressed. "Remember that, throughout

the whole of what you are to watch,t You are not here to pity them, but to

admire.t ,,

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PART ONE

THE FIRE

IS LIT

Now the sun was down, the barq was growing tired. The current opposing

her was swift, and there was a real risk she might be driven against

the rocks that beset the channel and puncture her gas-bladders. After

countless attempts to sting her into more vigorous activity, the steersman

laid by his goad and grumpily tipped into her maw the last barrelful of

the fermented fish and seaweed which served to nourish boat, crew and

passengers alike. Waiting for the belch that would signal its digestion, he

noticed Jing watching from her saddle of lashed planks, as anxious as

though his weather-sense were predicting storms, and laughed.

"You won't be a-dream before we get where we're bound!" he promised

in the coarse northern speech which the foreigner had scarcely yet attuned

his hearing to.

It was hard to realize there was anywhere worth traveling to in this

barren landscape. Most of the time the shore was veiled with rags of fog,

because the water was so much warmer than the air. What a place to choose

for studying the sky! Even though, with the sun setting so much earlier

every day, it was possible to believe in the legend which had lured him

hither: a night that lasted almost half a year. Not that there could ever be

total darkness; here, as everywhere, the Bridge of Heaven--what these

northerners called the Maker's Sling--curved in its gleaming arc across

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the welkin. And, near the horizon, less familiar and altogether awe-in-spiring,

the New Star was framed in its irregular square of utter black like

a jewel on a pad of swart-fur.

But neither that celestial mystery, nor the prospect of going hungry,

was what preyed most on the mind of Ayi-Huat Jing, court astrologer and

envoy plenipotentiary of His Most Puissant Majesty Waw-Yint, Lord of

the Five-Score Islands of Ntah. Compelled by his sworn oath, a whole

miserable year ago he had set forth in state, riding the finest mount in his

master's herd and accompanied by forty prongsmen and ten banners inscribed

with his rank and status. His mission was to seek out wise folk

beyond the mountains that ringed the Lake of Ntah and inquire of them

the meaning of the New Star. His countrymen had long imagined that they

understood the reason why the heavens changed--for change they definitely

did. He carded with him a fat roll of parchment sheets on which

had been copied star-maps depicting the sky on the accession-dates of the

last score rulers of Ntah, and on the date of every eclipse during their

reigns. Sixteen stars were shown on the most recent which in olden times

had not been there, and marks recorded others which had appeared and

faded in a matter of days. But there had never been one so brilliant, or so

long-lasting, or in so black a patch of sky. According to the philosophers

THE CRUCIBLE OF TIME

of Ntah, right action was reflected in heaven, and sufficient of it earned

a diminution of the darkness. Eventually, they promised, the time would

come when the heavens would be as bright by night as by day.

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And it had happened, and it had ceased, and everyone was grievously

disturbed, for blight and plague had followed what should have been a

sign of unprecedented good fortune...

Jing's journey had been fruitless so far, but it was not yet doomed to

failure. His store of pearlseeds from the Lake was less than half-exhausted,

for they grew stranger and more precious as he traveled, exchangeable for

more food and longer lodging, and he had clung to his roll of maps even

though in all the lands and cities he had visited he had met only one person

who appeared to grasp their significance. He had expected students of

heaven-lore as dedicated as himself, libraries too--albeit in alien script

on unfamiliar materials--because tradition told of merchants from Geys

and Yown and Elgwim who had brought amazing horns, hides, seeds and

spices along with boastful tales about the riches of their homelands. What

he had actually found...

Half-starved mud-scrabblers incapable of distinguishing dream from

reality, ascribing crop-failure, blight and murrain to supernatural beings,

imagining they could protect themselves by sacrificing most of what rea

mained to them--whereupon, of course, weakness and fatigue allowed

dreams to invade their minds ever further. Madness, madness! Why did

not everybody know that the heavens bodied forth an impersonal record

of the world below, neither more nor less? How could anybody, in these

modern times, credit a god prepared to launch missiles at random with a

view to killing people? The welkin shed messages, not murder!

His whole course since leaving Ntah had been a succession of horrid

shocks. Geys, one of the first cities he had planned to visit, stood abandoned

and overgrown, for--so he was told--a flaming prong from the sky had

struck a nearby hill and everyone had fled in panic. Moreover, of the

escorts and banners who had set out with him (any other of the court

officers would have had concubines as well, but Jing was obliged by his

calling to accept celibacy) most had deserted on finding how squalid was

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the world beyond the mountains, while not a few had succumbed, as had

his mount, to bad food or foul water.

One alone had survived to accompany him into the branchways of the

great city Forb, where first he had encountered learned men as he regarded

learning. Yet they were parasites, Jing felt, upon their city's past, disdainful

of sky-shown truths, able only to expound concerning inscriptions and

petty relics which they claimed to be older than anything elsewhere. Jing

was reticently doubtful, but it was impolitic to speak his mind, partly

because he was unfluent in the speech of that region, partly because its

masters exercised very real power which he had no wish to see turned

against Ntah, and chiefly because of the nature of that power.

His tallness, and the fact that his companion was taller yet, made him

remarkable. The nobility bade him to banquets and festivities as a curiosity.

It was a time of dearth, as he had discovered on his way; nonetheless, the

fare at such events was lavish. It followed that the lords of Forb must

control vast domains--not, however, vast enough to satisfy them, as was

apparent from the way they spent all their time maneuvering for advantage

THE FIRE IS LIT

over one another, and instructed their interpreters to ply Jing with questions

concerning weaponry. They were. prepared to descend as far as spreading

disease among a rival's crops, than which only the use of wildfire could

be baser. Were such monsters to be let loose in the peaceful region of

Ntah... I

Shuddering, yet determined to pursue his quest, Jing eventually discovered

the secret of their dominance. It lay not in their armies, nor their

treasuries. It consisted in the deliberate and systematic exploitation of the

dreams of those less well-to-do than themselves, a possibility which had

never occurred to him, and which the language barrier prevented him from

comprehending until a lordling he had disappointed in his hope of brand-new

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armaments set sacerdotes upon him at his lodgings.

He had frequently seen their like bringing up the tail-end of a noble's

retinue, always gaunt in a manner that contrasted greatly with the glistening

plumpness of their masters, and initially he had assumed them to be nothing

more than servants: scribes, perhaps, or accountants, though it was hard

to conceive how such dream-prone starvelings could be relied on.

Acting, however, more like persons of authority than underlings, these

visitors interrogated him concerning Ntah. Pleased to meet anyone prepared

to discuss what he thought of as serious subjects, Jing answered honestly,

hoping to show that the. relationship between Ntah and its satrapies, being

sustained by trade in inform/tion concerning what the heavens portended,

was more civilized than rule by force.

Did he not--they responded in shocked tones--acknowledge the example

of the Maker of All, who daily surveyed the world with His all-seeing

eye, the sun, and nightly dispatched fiery bolts by way of warning

that His way must be adhered to on pain of uttermost destruction? Was

he not aware that the arc in the sky was Brunner, John -- THE CRUCIBLE OF TIME

the Maker's sling, that the Maker's

mantle was what lighted the heavens with the glimmer of marvelous draped

colors? Then he was in peril of imminent disaster, and were he still to be

in Forb when it overtook him, scores-of-scores of innocent people would

be caught up in the catastrophe! He must leave the city at once, or they

would execute the Maker's will upon him themselves!

Jing's lifelong faith in the beneficence of the universe had been shaken,

but he was not about to enter someone else's fever-dream. He did his best

to scorn the warning--until the day when his sole surviving escort, Drakh,

was set On by an unknown gang and attacked with weapons such as would

never have been permitted in Ntah: prongs steeped in the ichor from a

rotting carcass, warranted to poison the slightest cut even though it was

not deep enough to let out life.

Now Drakh lay delirious beside him, as for days past, shivering less

at the bitter air than the racking of his sickness. He would have been dead

but that Jing's treelord--a Shreeban, well accustomed to being shunned

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by his Forbish neighbors and mocked by their children when he went

abroad--had called a doctor, said to breed the best cleanlickers in the city.

And the doctor had saved not only Drakh's life (so far, Jing amended

wryly, for the licker was weakening and the sorbers it passed repeatedly

over his wound were turning yellow) but also the mission they had been

sent on. Forgetful of his other clients, he had sat for days greedily studying

THE CRUCIBLE OF TIME

Jing's star-maps, mentioning now and then that such-and-such a one of

his forebears had claimed to be older than this or that star: heretical information

in Forb where the Creation was supposed to have been perfect

from the Beginning.

How could such dream-spawned nonsense survive the appearance of

the New Star, which for a score of nights had outshone the Bridge of

Heaven, and still after four years loomed brighter than anything except

the sun and moon?

It might well not, explained the doctor. As people became more prosperous

and better fed, so they naturally grew more capable of telling dream

from fact. This led them to mock the sacerdotes, whose power had been

decreasing from generation to generation despite their deliberate self-pri-vation.

Now they were reduced to claiming that the New Star was a delusion

due to the forces of evil, which--they said--dwelt in that bleak zone

from which the Maker had banned all stars as a reminder of the lightless

eternity to which He could condemn transgressors. But there were those

who maintained that one supremely righteous person was to be bom--now: must have been--who could

hold up a lamp where the Maker had

decreed darkness, and lead folk out of mental enslavement.

Looking at the glowplants that draped the walls of his rented home,

Jing prompted him to more revelations. Were there none here in the north

who studied star-lore?

The chief of them, the doctor said, had taken refuge with the Count of Thorn . Branded by the

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