His reality, imposed on a forming world.
His self, extended over all the globe of Freedom, because there was talk now of going into the other hemisphere and the continent of Hesse. His work would go there, as well.
It was a thriving city, with vehicles coming in from all the Camus River plain, and going out again with raw materials converted into needed goods. It held thousands upon thousands of residents, who passed—afoot—in its streets. But Herrin did not form associations with the folk who came and went in the streets of Kierkegaard. The important ones he met at social gatherings at the University and the Residency; the unimportant went their ways in their own and limited realities, reminding him much of those he had associated with back in Camus Province. He brushed past them on his trips through the city, noticing with simple aesthetic satisfaction that the run of people in Kierkegaard were better dressed than those in Camus. That there was prosperity here, fit his sense of what Kierkegaard should become.
There were more Others, too, which one might expect: a great city was like a magnet for drawing things to it, and like a great machine for producing debris of broken parts. There were those who were mad, or defective. It was debated in University what to do with them. It was early in the history of Freedom, so it was deemed enough until the ethical dilemma was resolved, to allow the defectives to resolve their existence in their own reality, which existed principally at the shuttleport, at night, and rarely in the city. They were the Unemployed, the invisibles; they were excluded and in abeyance. They were inconvenient, but not greatly so. They were not greatly . . . anything.
And more than these—the primary Others, midnight-robed, who stalked through the streets of Kierkegaard mostly by night, with their own purposes, in their separate reality. Herrin was almost trapped into staring, for they were a sight he had never seen; they avoided Camus. But he recovered himself and pretended he had not seen, which was the only courtesy that passed between human and ahnit. It was their modus vivendi, mutually practiced, separate realities, neither contaminating the other. Presumably the ahnit gained something in Kierkegaard, but a sane man did not speculate on something that was not human, not in aspect, not in manners, not in art or logic or in any other respect. They left humans alone. It would have better pleased humanity had the ahnit stayed out of human places altogether, but there had been ahnit on the lower course of the Camus obviously for a longer time than there had been humans, and it was a question of prior occupancy. Realities in Kierkegaard overlapped, perhaps, but a little schooling in the courtesies of the city made it possible to walk a street without remarking on the dark-robes. They had nothing at all to do with man, or man with them.
V
Master: What is man?
Herrin: Man is irrelevant. My own possibilities are as infinite as the possibilities of all other beings.
Herrin enjoyed Kierkegaard.
"Living here," breathed Keye Lynn, who was one of Herrin's pleasant associations in the University, "living here is Art in itself. Imagine the effect. We're shaping ten thousand years."
He thought of this, lying in Keye's bed with Keye's body delightfully filling his arms, and experienced a cold moment when he thought that Keye was an influence on him. From that moment on he abandoned trust of anyone, suspecting that Keye, who knew herself less talented than he (they were both artists, Keye in ethics, a more abstract field than his), meant to use her art to warp him from his absolute course. It set him to thinking much more widely, analyzing all his associations past and present for possible taint, suddenly aware that there were people whose motivation might be to use him, knowing his brilliance; that they might, robbed of their own hope of consciously warping the future—lacking the personal scope or talent for that—yet might seek that effect by using him, who did have such scope and talent.
It set him back for a time. He lay staring at the ceiling in the determination to have that matter sorted out, and resumed his relations with Keye in a new understanding which he kept entirely to himself, that now that he was aware of the possibility, he could do that to others—seize them, warp them to suit himself, that he could sculpt more than stone.
He could widen his effect on the future by being quite selective in his relationships with others at the University. He could gain vast power in many fields by seeking out talents of great acuity but less scope.
Like Keye.
He was grateful to her for that thought. Like Perrin, Keye did not understand him, simply because his reach was wider. Keye would see only a part of Reality, and yet she was brilliant in ethics.
He sought others, became far more confident and outgoing than before.
But the loneliness was there, which Keye could not fill. He experimented with others, who might, by providing him new situations, confront him with new ethics, but his own Reality still encompassed them all, and his own ethic belittled theirs.
There remained Waden Jenks.
VI
Master: Does the end justify the means?
Herrin: What is justice?
"I should feel myself threatened," Waden Jenks said to him. Waden was an acquaintance of Herrin's twentieth year, when some of the graduates of the University were separated out and returned to provincial tasks, out in Camus and some of the remoter areas; or to preparatory work on the expedition which should set them on the way to planetary domination— but Herrin was not one of those so condemned. He was entering on the second phase of his University existence, not as instructor but as working artist. He had an apartment-studio in the University itself, and Keye was there as well, holding seminars in ethics, and Waden Jenks . . . remained. "I'm obviously of moderate talent," Waden proposed to Herrin over a beer in the Fellows' Hall. "I'm obviously here because I'm Cade Jenks's son, and it's my father's wish that I become First Citizen after him. I should properly feel threatened by all you brilliant students. No instructor would dare set me down; that's why I've gone on and poor Equeth, for instance, has been shipped out."
Waden was drunk, but cheerful in his self-estimate.
"Evidently you're exercising a subtler talent," Herrin judged. "Strength is a talent."
Waden chuckled. "So is flattery."
Herrin flushed. "By no means. I simply state a fact: strength and possession are primary talents, not necessarily creative but of great importance. If you were weak your father wouldn't throw you into the den of so many predators, would he? Or if he had, you'd have been pulled one way or the other by one of us and swallowed alive. After three years others have left and Waden Jenks remains at moral liberty with all his former strength; ergo, he has not been swallowed or diverted. That evidences a talent sufficient for survival. What matter whether you get marks by skill or by intimidation? Intimidation is the manifestation of your talent."
" 'Not necessarily creative.' "
"Perhaps your father intends, by thrusting you into this medium, to inspire you to creativity."
"You're remarkable. I say that freely." Waden leaned across the mug-circled table and jabbed his arm with a forefinger. "Do you know, Herrin, I am strong, stronger than my father, strong enough to say that and to know that he daren't take exception to it. I am intelligent, more than he, and again, I can say that. Frankly, most of University is beneath my abilities. You know. I think you do. You know what it is to live with wings cramped, knowing that you'll break all that's around you if you really extend them. You have few friends, and you dominate them. I am the same. I always have been. There's not an instructor you haven't terrified with your talent, not a student here who doesn't resent you—truth, even Keye—who doesn't subconsciously recognize what you're doing to him and yet find himself powerless to stop you. You're the rock against which most of the University sea crashes. Truth."