The manuscript, unfinished though it was, became terribly precious to him. He came to see it now as his claim on immortality. It troubled him that only one copy of it existed, and that one kept in a room that could only be locked from outside. Fearful now that something might happen to it, that it might be blotted into illegibility by the accidental overturning of his ink-stand, or stolen by some prying malicious denizen of the fortress jealous of the attention paid to Furvain by Master Kasinibon, or even taken out of his room as trash by some illiterate servant and destroyed, he copied it out several times over, carefully hiding the copies in different rooms of his little suite. The main draft he buried each night in the lowest drawer of the cupboard in which he kept his clothing; and, a few days later, without really knowing why, he fell into the habit of painstakingly arranging three of his pens in a star-shaped pattern on top of the pile of finished sheets so that he would know at once if anyone had been prowling in that drawer.
Three days after that he saw that the pens had been disturbed. Furvain had taken care to lay them out with meticulous care, the central pen aligned each time at the same precise angle to the other two. This day he saw that the angle was slightly off, as though someone had understood that the purpose of the arrangement was the detection of an intrusion and had replaced the pens after examining the manuscript, but had not employed the greatest possible degree of accuracy in attempting to mimic Furvain’s own grouping of the pens. That night he chose a new pattern for the pens, and the next afternoon he saw that once again they had been put back almost as he had left them, but not quite. The same thing happened over the succeeding two days.
It could only have been the doing of Kasinibon himself, Furvain decided. No member of Kasinibon’s outlaw band, and certainly not any servant, would have taken half so much trouble over the pens. He is sneaking in while I am elsewhere, Furvain thought. He is secretly reading my poem.
Furious, Furvain sought Kasinibon out and assailed him for violating the privacy of his quarters.
To his surprise, Kasinibon made no attempt to deny the accusation. “Ah, so you know? Well, of course. I couldn’t resist.” His eyes were shining with excitement. “It’s marvelous, Furvain. Magnificent. I was so profoundly moved by it I can hardly begin to tell you. The episode of Lord Stiamot and the Metamorph priestess—when she comes before him, when she weeps for her people, and Stiamot weeps also—”
“You had no right to go rummaging around in my cupboard,” said Furvain icily.
“Why not? I’m the master here. I do as I please. All you said was that you didn’t want to have a discussion of an unfinished work. I respected that, didn’t I? Did I say a word? A single word? For days, now, I’ve been reading what you were writing, almost since the beginning, following your daily progress, practically participating in the creation of a great poem myself, and tears came to my eyes over the beauty of it, and yet not ever once did I give you a hint—never once—”
Furvain felt mounting outrage. “You’ve been going into my room all along?” he sputtered, astounded.
“Every day. Since long before you started the thing with the pens. Look, Furvain, a classic poem, one of the great masterpieces of literature, is being born under my own roof by a man I feed and shelter. Am I to be denied the pleasure of watching it grow and evolve?”
“I’ll burn it,” Furvain said. “Rather than let you spy on me any more.”
“Don’t talk idiocy. Just go on writing. I’ll leave it alone from now on. But you mustn’t stop, if that’s what you have in mind. That would be a monstrous crime against art. Finish the Melikand scene. Do the Dvorn story. And continue on to all the rest.” He laughed wickedly. “You can’t stop, anyway. The poem has you in its spell. It possesses you.”
Glaring, Furvain said, “How would you know that?”
“I’m not as stupid as you want to think I am,” said Kasinibon. But then he softened, asked for forgiveness, promised again to control his overpowering curiosity about the poem. He seemed genuinely repentant: afraid, even, that by intruding on Furvain’s privacy this way he might have jeopardized the completion of the poem. He would never cease blaming himself, he said, if Furvain took this as a pretext for abandoning the project. But also he would always hold it against Furvain. And then, once more with force: “You will go on with it. You will. You could not possibly stop.”
Furvain was unable to maintain his anger in the face of so shrewd an assessment of his character. It was clear that Kasinibon perceived Furvain’s innate slothfulness, his fundamental desire not to involve himself in anything as ambitious and strenuous as a work on this scale. But also Kasinibon saw that the poem held him in thrall, clasping him in a grip so powerful that even an idler such as he could not shrug off the imperative command that each day was willing the poem into being. That command came from somewhere within, from a place beyond Furvain’s own comprehension; but also, Furvain knew, it was reinforced by Kasinibon’s fierce desire to have him bring the work to completion. Furvain could not withstand the whiplash force of Kasinibon’s eagerness atop that other, interior command. There was no way to abandon the work.
Grudgingly he said, “Yes, I’ll continue. You can be sure of that. But keep out of my room.”
“Agreed.”
As Kasinibon began to leave Furvain called him back and said, “One more thing. Has there been any news yet from Dundilmir about my ransom?”
“No. Nothing. Nothing,” replied Kasinibon, and went swiftly from the room.
No news. About what I expected, Furvain thought. Tanigel has thrown the note away. Or they are laughing about it at court: can you believe it, poor silly Furvain, captured by bandits!
He felt certain that Kasinibon was never going to hear from Tanigel. It seemed appropriate, then, to draft new ransom requests—one to his father at the Labyrinth, one to Lord Hunzimar at the Castle, perhaps others to other people, if he could think of anyone who was even remotely likely to be willing to help—and have Kasinibon send his messengers forth with them.
Meanwhile Furvain continued his daily work. The trance state came ever more easily; the mysterious figure of Lord Valentine appeared whenever summoned, and gladly led him back through time into the dawn of the world. The manuscript grew. The pens were not disturbed again. After a little while Furvain ceased taking the trouble to lay them out.
Furvain saw the overall shape of the poem clearly, now.
There would be nine great sections, which in his mind had the form of an arch, with the Stiamot sequences at the highest part of the curve. The first canto would deal with the arrival of the original human settlers on Majipoor, full of the hope of leaving the sorrows of Old Earth behind and creating a paradise on this most wonderful of all worlds. He would depict their tentative early explorations of the planet and their awe at its size and beauty, and the founding of the first tiny outposts. In the second, Furvain would portray the growth of those outposts into towns and cities, the strife between the cities that arose in the next few hundred years, the spreading conflicts that caused in time the breakdown of all order, the coming of turbulence and general nihilism.