JULIEN

II

Chapter 86
 

Changes

“Yes, Aldegard, you heard right: I have no intention of going on and on, migrating from one body to another in order to maintain the Sacred Tradition for the rest of time. You might think that's scandalous, but that's the way it is. And I'm inviting you, you and the other Mirrors, to help me prepare for the future. You can either waste your time by trying to persuade me to change my mind about a decision I took long before you were born, or by fighting me – although I can't see what good that would do you – or you can do what I would expect you to do, knowing you as I do, and use your best endeavours to help me to do what is best for the R'hinz you once swore to serve.”

“Your Lordship, nobody here would dream of rebelling against you. I once told Julien that my life belonged to him, and obviously that oath applies to you too. It's just that I need some time to assimilate the idea of a R'hinz without a Protector. And perhaps I can remind you, My Lord, of what happened during your last long absence eighteen hundred cycles ago: it was complete and utter chaos.”

“But the same history will have told you that I only left on that occasion because I was asked to do so most persistently – in fact someone even tried to poison me. Of course, that's how things were done back then. The Wars of the Three Empires and of the Hegemony of the Guides were ridiculous events which I could not possibly be held responsible for. What I'm talking about now is nothing like that: instead it's a complete change to the system – one that will be peaceful and properly explained – of the way the worlds interact with each other, with each people and each species becoming responsible for their own destiny. I know it isn't going to be easy, but I am convinced that it has to be done.

“As for you, Honourable Dennkar and Honourable Tannder, I hope you'll be willing to continue to offer me the same service that you offered Julien.”

Both Master Warriors nodded their agreement.

“Dillik will of course maintain his position with Xarax and as the Emperor's Pupil. The Ambar-Yülien Nyingtchik is invited to stay with me in the Palace, and I will continue to fulfil my responsibilities as Yülien's akou nyipa. Lord Niil of the Ksantiris, I hope that you'll be prepared to transfer at least a part of your friendship for Julien to me and do me the favour of visiting as often as your duties as First Lord will allow.”

Niil nodded too, as much to hide his confusion as to mark his agreement.

“As for you, Lord Tahlil,” continued the Emperor, “I can only congratulate you for your performance as Mirror and as mentor to Lord Niil. I hope that you too will be able to support me through the difficult changes I'm proposing.”

“Of course I will support you, Your Lordship. However, I do have a question, and it's one that I imagine that all the other friends of Julien in this room would also like answered.”

“If you want to know if I'm doing everything I can to restore Julien to consciousness and give him his rightful place among us, then I can assure you that it is my first priority, and if anyone has any suggestions as to how I can achieve that I'd be only too willing to listen to them.”

Nobody spoke, and so he went on: “I'm well aware that the changes I intend to implement will meet with fierce opposition from every guild, circle and company in the Nine Worlds. The same goes for the nobility, since their legitimacy comes from me. They will accuse me of failing in my mission, of betraying the empire and of wanting to destroy civilisation itself. They will also say that the only reason I'm doing it is to free myself from a burden that I chose to take up in the first place, and to be honest that's a perfectly fair comment. But nobody should be sentenced to immortality, and I've wanted to die throughout my most recent incarnations. And I mean real death, not just a transfer between bodies. I admit that there have been periods when I couldn't have cared less about what happened to the Nine Worlds just as long as I was able to cease existing. It's true that I hadn't quite taken that final step, but I was working towards it: I'd been trying to bring about conditions under which I could, so to speak, make a clean break. I hadn't quite got there when events brought us to where we are today, but I can assure you that now that I am finally in a position to be able to achieve my goal I have every intention of doing so.”

This statement drew nothing but an expectant silence, and so Yulmir waited a few seconds more and then went on, “What I intend to do, with your help, is not simply designed to free me. The R'hinz too must break free from the stagnation in which it is unwittingly bound. In fact, the fanatics who take up arms from time to time in order to 'break the yoke of an omnipotent autocrat' are actually not all the dangerous lunatics people take them for. Some of them are people who have recognised that the whole world is caught in a deadly trap designed by people who thought they were doing the right thing. I was one of those people who thought he was doing the right thing, and I think I've paid the cost of that error many times over. Now I need your help to put things right. I want you all to help me send the Nine Worlds on a new journey along unexplored paths. Those paths may well lead into danger, but they will also lead to unexpected wonders.”

He pointed to Ambar and Yülien, who were listening in amazement.

“This nyingtchik,” he said, “has already taken the first steps along that path and between them this child of the Guides and this child of Men can show us the way. They have already broken the old rules and gone beyond the limit of what we thought defined the Known Universe. They have allowed us access to a new future, as if they had thrown open the shutters in a sick-room and allowed the light to flood in and help to heal the patient. And now, my friends, we all have to start working too.”

oo0oo

“What's going on, Ambar?” asked Subadar. “Why did you ask to speak to me in private? You're acting like someone plotting something underhand.”

“Don't be angry, Master Subadar, please. Me and Yülien, we need to talk to you.”

“I'm listening.”

“Well... I mean... look, we heard what the Emperor said, and...”

“Ambar, if you and your chenn-da have something to say, please say it instead of shilly-shallying around.”

“Well, we was just wondering if... Do you think he was telling the truth?”

“Ah – yes, clearly we do need to talk. What makes you think the Emperor is lying?”

“It's just that he said his first priority was to bring back Julien. And then right after that he started talking about the changes he wants to make to the way the R'hinz is run, only that sort of change is going to take ages, and so... well, where is he going to put Julien while he's working on it? Are they going to have to share the body? Will Yulmir sort of pull back a bit to give Julien some control over his life? I mean, how's it supposed to work?”

“I think you're entitled to ask that question,” said Subadar. “I imagine you've already got some idea of what the answer might be.”

“Well, kind of. I don't know quite what he's going to do, but we reckon that Julien would sort of get in his way, and so we don't think he'll be all that keen to bring Julien back. And he said that Julien is unconscious, like he was asleep. Maybe he's right, but what if he's wrong?”

“Yes, I can see that those are serious concerns. What makes you think I'll be able to set your mind at rest?”

“We reckon that you're the person who knows him best – apart from Xarax, of course.”

“It's certainly true that I was his disciple, but that doesn't mean that Yulmir was in the habit of confiding in me or telling me his secrets. However, I know – or at least, I think I know – that he's honest. That said, it's true that you can't wield power without lying sometimes, or at least without not telling the whole truth. If we were talking about any First Lord, or even a Mirror, I'd advise taking what they say with a pinch of salt. But with Yulmir I have to say that I am inclined to trust him. In any case, I don't see what your alternative might be.”

“Nor do I, but I wanted to ask your opinion before talking to him.”

“You want to talk to Yulmir?”

“Yes, we do.”

“Might I ask why, if it's not prying?”

“Well, we might have an idea about how to get Julien back.”

“That's great news! You should tell him straight away!”

“Yes, that's what we thought first of all. But then we thought about it for a bit and... see, I don't know about you, but when we see the Emperor we sort of think it's Julien even though we know it isn't, and it's like a thief has stolen his body... So telling him that we've thought of a way to get Julien back might be a bit like telling him we want him to go away and give the body back to its proper owner. Like we were saying 'All right, maybe you are the Emperor, but we'd rather it was our friend looking out from behind your eyes.' And what are we going to do if he says he needs time to change the R'hinz? Am I supposed to just stand there and say 'Of course, Your Lordship, take as long as you want'?”

Ambar hadn't intended to cry, but the big sobs that followed this statement went a long way towards helping Subadar understand Ambar's tragedy. He liked Julien a lot himself, but it was clear that the kid who was standing there trying to get himself under control while his companion whimpered against his leg was going through hell.

“Very well,” he said. “This is what we're going to do: you're going to pull yourself together and go and wash your face, and then we'll go together to talk to Yulmir.”

oo0oo

“So you want to take me to visit your famous 'non-dual auto-conscious being'?” asked Yulmir. “But I thought you said he wasn't able to help you last time? If he refuses to get involved in the affairs of our world, what makes you think this time might be different?”

“I just think this is different,” said Ambar. “I think that he'll do something if he possibly can. After all, it wouldn't be doing something in our world, we'd just be asking him for a small personal favour.”

“All right, but – as you said to Master Subadar – if it does work it's likely to make my job a whole lot harder. You have to admit that it would be easier to let things get properly under way before we complicate things further.”

Ambar said nothing, because he was trying to keep his face expressionless.

“But,” Yulmir went on, “I've suffered enough because of 'reasons of state' that I can understand why we should perhaps ignore them this time. I said that getting Julien back was my first priority, so we'll do what you propose. I'm sure that if they knew about it my Mirrors would find lots of perfectly good reasons why we shouldn't do that, and so we're not going to tell them. We'll go on our own, just the three of us. Xarax says he's willing to stay here, although I suspect that if anything goes wrong even Dillik won't be able to feed him, and if we don't come back dear Aldegard will have the unpleasant duty of telling the world all about it...”

oo0oo

> Entity Nyingtchik Yülien-Ambar. Entity Yülmir-Julien. What you ask is assuredly possible. However the probabilities of incompatibility between the imbricated elements Yulmir and Julien remain dangerously high and threaten to compromise an acceptable level of efficiency within a delay of twenty-three axial rotations of the planet designated ''Nüngen'', plus or minus four temporal divisions designated as tchoutsö.

“Does that mean that we can't make Julien come back?” asked Ambar. “That the Emperor and him can't live in the same body?”

> No. It only implies that their coexistence in the same organism is quickly bound to fail.

“Does it mean that Julien – or Yulmir – would die, then?”

> No, his self-consciousness would be reabsorbed into a basic-potential state which is not equivalent to what you call sleep. It could rather be compared to the minimum level of energy of a complex system.

“So there's nothing we can do?”

> Yes, but the consequences would be as I stated them.

“We can't make Julien come back without things turning out badly?”

> Indeed. However, it is possible to consider another way to bring back the entity Julien to auto-consciousness.”

oo0oo

“Ambar! I knew you'd come for me! Where are we – and what about the sorcerers?”

“We're guests of the non-dual auto-conscious being.”

“Who? Ah, yes, I remember – the conscious universe, I think you called it. But where's Yulmir? He was here – you know, in my body, I mean. But he isn't here now.”

“Don't worry, he's just next door. Yulien is with him.”

“It was really horrible, Ambar. If he hadn't been there... you mean he has a body now??”

“That's right. Apparently you and him can't live in the same body, at least not if you're both awake. And I have to say I like it better like it is now.”

“Can we go and see him?”

“If you like. You'll get a bit of a shock, though.”

“Why? Is he as ugly as all that?”

“Oh, no, not at all. He's actually rather... well, you'll see.”

The wall of the spherical room they were in seemed to dissolve on one side to connect to another space, rather like two bubbles merging into one on the surface of a liquid. Yülien and Yulmir were there. Julien had been partly expecting what he saw, but it still came as a bit of shock to find himself looking at himself, not as a mirror image but in the flesh. The Julien he was looking at, the one who wasn't himself, was smiling. He looked exactly like himself, and somehow Julien found the other boy's nudity a bit disturbing. It was the Emperor who broke the silence.

“Welcome back, Julien,” he said. “Yes... I'm sorry, but this was the only model available in this universe unless I wanted to look like Ambar instead, and while Ambar is certainly very... decorative, I'm not sure that I want to have to start puberty from scratch all over again. At least you're well into it... In any case, the people who matter, politically speaking, are used to an Emperor who looks like you.”

“I want to thank you,” said Julien.

“You want to thank me? What for? I should be saying thank you to you for hosting me for so many years.”

“I want to thank you for shielding me from the Dre tchenn. And for bringing me back, of course.”

“That was just me being selfish. I'm used to your company now. And I really want to know what I look like from the back. Could you turn round, please?”

Julien couldn't help laughing as he turned round.

“Not bad!” commented Yulmir. “But I really look like a girl with that mane of hair. It's obviously time for me to come back before you have an irreversibly dreadful influence over our young people.”

“My parents are going to love you,” said Julien.

But the flippancy of the remark couldn't block out the magnitude of the situation and Julien was soon overwhelmed by his emotions. Images suddenly came back to him, appalling and obscene, together with the feeling that something within himself had been irredeemably defiled. A voice was heard in the neutral space of the bubble.

> Separate entity Julien. If the references to past experiences risk hindering the optimum functioning of your continuum of consciousness, they can still be suppressed without damage.

“Do you mean that you can erase my memories?” asked Julien.

> That formulation does not exactly conform to reality, but it is a sufficient approximation for a superficial understanding.

“You mean, I won't remember what the Dre tchenn did to me?”

> That is true.

The mere thought of being cleansed of that heap of filth filled him with a joy similar to the relief he had felt when Yulmir had put a stop to the torture inflicted by the Dre tchenn. He certainly had no wish that he should ever again have to face those scenes, so horrible and unbearable and yet so dreadfully lifelike.

“Then I...” he began.

“Wait!” cut in his double. “I really wouldn't do that, Julien. Our host only wants to help you, I'm sure, but I should warn you that you'd do better not to willingly amputate an essential part of your life, rather than curing the problem.”

“But I don't want to remember any of it – it was disgusting!”

“I understand that, but to suppress it could be even more harmful. If you like I will help you to do whatever it takes to come to terms with it. Trust me – I'm a lot older than you and I know what I'm talking about here.”

> These references can be conditioned to be accessed only through a particular voluntary mental action. A kind of... The closest example in your system of thought would be the use of a kind of coded key to access a particular compartment in your data storage, your... memory.

It was Yulmir who answered:

“That sounds perfect, Julien. I advise you to accept.”

oo0oo

Chapter 87

A new start

Once they were back in the calm atmosphere of the Palace Julien hoped that he would be able to return to a normal existence. Yulmir decreed that he would take up residence himself in another section of the Palace not far away, leaving Julien the use of the apartments in which he and his friends had been living. Those friends were now reunited with him and happy to celebrate his return.

“So you're not the Emperor any more?” asked Dillik, incredulously.

“No, I'm not.”

“But you've still got the Marks!”

“I don't think I'll get to keep them for very long. Actually I won't mind that at all, because I don't want people mistaking me for someone else all the time. I'm not a Guide any more, either, because the Gift is Yulmir's and I'm not Yulmir any longer.”

“Well, I don't care,” said Dillik. “You're still my friend. If you want to be, of course. And I'm sure Xarax feels the same way, even if he does have to work with the Emperor too.”

The haptir wasn't with them – no doubt he was bringing his relationship with his master up to date.

“I'm sure you're right,” agreed Julien.

“So what are you going to do now, then?”

“Give him a chance!” interrupted Niil. “He's only been back for two tchoutsö.”

“It's all right,” said Julien. “It's nice to be able to talk about something other than the affairs of the Empire for a change. I think I'll start with a little holiday. I hope Yulmir won't mind lending us the house by Lake Gyamtso. Niil, do you think Tahlil will mind if you leave your trankenn for a bit?”

“He'd better not unless he wants to have to deal with an abdication.”

“What about you, Karik? Will Tannder give you some leave for a bit of rest and recreation?”

“He didn't wait for me to ask – he just said I have to stay with you for as long as you like.”

“And you, Ugo? Do you want to come with us?”

“Of course, I'd be delighted. So when do you intend telling your parents what has happened?”

“I don't know. I don't think it'll make a lot of difference to them anyway.”

“Don't you think they'll be happy to find out that you're no longer the target of plots and assassins?”

“Of course, but they might also decide that now they have to hold themselves responsible for my upbringing and education, and I'm not sure I'm all that keen about that. I'd much sooner have a clear idea of what I want to do with my life before I explain things to them. All right, then, if everyone agrees and we can get Yulmir's permission we can leave tomorrow morning.”

oo0oo

“Don't you miss being able to go wherever you want without having to ask anyone?” asked Ambar.

“Not really. I don't miss the Gift and I certainly don't miss the power. The only thing I could miss now would be you.”

“Me?!”

“Yes, you. You're an important person now, a recognised mathematical genius and an explorer of unknown universes. Maybe you won't want to hang about with a mere nobody any more.”

“You're teasing, aren't you?”

“Well, yes. But I meant what I said about the Gift – I really don't miss that. In any case I'm pretty sure that the little so-and-so who is lying at the bottom of the bed and pretending to be asleep will take me wherever I like, whenever I like.”

Yülien rolled close enough to be able to put a paw on Julien's ankle.

You're my akou nyipa, he said. I don't care what anyone says, and I don't care that you're not the Emperor any longer either. His Lordship, I'm sure he's really nice, but I don't know him. With you it's different. You're just you, see, and... well, I like you. And you're right: I'll always take you wherever you want, whenever you want. And so will every Guide in the Katak Clan, because you're still part of our Clan: it's your family as well as mine.

Thank you, Yülien. Do you want to come and sleep between us?

Well, er... I wouldn't want to disturb you, or anything. But if that's what you want...”

I said to sleep. To sleep, and perhaps to dream. Nothing more.

I've no idea what you might be talking about!

oo0oo

“Julien?”

“Mmmmnn?”

“I need a pee. Will you come with me? I'm scared of the dark!”

“Dillik!”

oo0oo

End of Volume Two