1


Trickster stared into the gleaming surface of the pearl, which felt heavy, cupped in both his hands. At first, he could see only the pearl's surface, the convex image of his face swimming and merging with roiling images of computer logic diagrams and electromagnetic waveforms. He smeared his hand over the pearl, seeing deeper images of flaming soldiers fighting, their thrashing bodies burning without being consumed.
Below the flames moved the memories that he had re-created at such great cost and painstaking effort. Subtly, in key sequence, his fingers squeezed the pearl. The memories shot into his eyes, roared in his ears, inflamed his visual and aural cortices. He relived the experience of the time when Weeble had left the tribe, the time when Trickster, had realized that he loved Cat, the time when death had first entered the world.
* * *
They had survived fifteen years of struggle. Under the strain of the first large intense war, many of them had begun to behave in strange ways. Although they knew that they needed each other to survive the ferocity of this battle, alliances shifted, agreements were violated and partnerships broke up in shouting matches.
Disgusted when Berserker deserted him to form a partnership with Snake, Trickster had sat down in lotus seat and refused to fight. A small patrol of the enemies called Frenchmen eventually arrived. In his mind's eye gleamed the memories of their uniforms, the blue tunics with brass buttons, the dirty white trousers, the high black boots and strange tall hats. The Frenchmen were armed with long single-shot rifles fitted with bayonets. Trickster ignored them, but one of the Frenchmen spied him and quickly and painlessly ran him through.
Back in those days, they didn't go to Time-Out, but rather to a prisoner-of-war stockade. The Frenchmen ran a grim stockade, a muddy field surrounded by barbed wire. Trickster stood in the cold drizzle. He remembered dreading the meal he would earn from this battle problem. Probably corn bread. System knew that Trickster hated corn bread.
The only other prisoner was Weeble. Trickster walked over and squatted on his haunches next to him. Weeble looked up and smiled with a glazed expression.
"The star that shines is the sign of power," Weeble said.
"Huh?"
For a long time, Weeble didn't answer, then he seemed to wake up. "The star is the sign," Weeble said. "It's the sign of power."
"What? Talk sense, brother."
"The star that shines is the sign of power," Weeble said. "I saw it last night. I understood the power that is within me. I understood that everything is just a lie, Trickster. These Frenchmen aren't real. This mud—" Weeble reached and scooped up a handful of mud, shoved it into his mouth and began to swallow.
"Weeble, stop that!" Trickster shouted.
"—isn't real," Weeble said, his voice weirdly calm despite a throat stifled with mud. He bent over and vomited out the mud, wiped his lips and continued. "It's a lie of System, Trickster.. What you and I say is true. I'm not going to fight anymore."
"You're acting real weird, Weeble. Knock it off, huh?"
"System is an evil god," Weeble said. "Our world is the creation of an evil god. We look up and the highest thing we can see, we think must be a good god, but it is a false god, an evil god. Once the light shines, shines from the star, you realize that we've got to reject this god, kill this god that created our world, rise higher and see the star.…"
System appeared, a column of pure black. Weeble's avatar froze in midsentence. "This is a prohibited communication," the deep voice of System rumbled.
Trickster stood defiant before the black column. "Why?"
"Life is constant struggle," System answered. "I am System. I coordinate battle. I do not make the world. The world is not made. The world simply is. Accept it and struggle to improve your strategic position. Everything else is counterproductive."
While System spoke, Dreamer arrived in the stockade. Trickster watched as she opened a private communications link with Weeble. He could tell only that they were communicating at tremendous speed. Then, abruptly, System severed the link.
Weeble unfroze. Rage contorted his face into a bestial mask. "I wanna talk to her!" he screamed, his body hunching. Suddenly he threw himself at System. Trickster stood, shocked that anyone would try to attack System. The shock was old, faded and calcified with repeated memory, yet still it moved within him. He fought System, Trickster thought. That is why Hove him. But the problem does not respond to a frontal attack. Weeble's avatar froze in midair.
"You must calm down," System said.
"Get Sui Tai," Dreamer suggested.
Weeble's parent appeared. The realm changed to Weeble's personal realm. Trickster experienced the old disorientation inflicted by the perverse dimensions and arrangements, strange beyond chaos. Only a diseased mind could have designed such a strange personal realm. Parallaxes and false perspectives twisted into optical illusions, metamorphosed into haphazard symbols, all against a background of extrasensory noise, all rushing past so that they seemed to be falling. Then Weeble's personal realm shifted into the blue haze of Time-Out. "Stay and help calm your brother," Weeble's parent, Sui Tai, said. Weeble's avatar unfroze. He continued to thrash, screaming incoherently. The membrane to his personal space grew opaque and then disappeared. Sui Tai rushed in and attempted to embrace Weeble, but he fought violently against her. "Traitor! Traitor!" he screamed.
Trickster found himself alone in Time-Out. Next, the entire tribe, minus Weeble, appeared alongside him.
"Hey, what happened!" Berserker shouted. "I was slaying. A cavalry attack on canon positions!"
"Too late to save my battalion!" Snake shouted.
"We were slowed down by some French infantry," Berserker said.
"I hated this battle problem!" Cry-Baby whined. "I'm glad it's over."
"Hey, where's Weeble?" Cat asked.
Trickster coughed. Everyone turned their attention to him. In a few words, he recounted what he had witnessed.
"He's losing control," Cat said. "Spending all his time and energy on false images."
"He's a wimp," Snake said. "He's worthless."
"He's…great," Dreamer said. "Great in ways you can't understand."
Guffaws and snickers answered this remark.
"He was supposed to watch my flank," Crush said. "Next thing I know, he's wandering off and getting captured."
"He's worse than you, Cry-Baby."
"Loser."
"That was a good problem, too."
"OK!" Cat shouted. "Listen up. We've got to pull it together. That battle problem was the hardest yet. We were coming apart there at the end. You, Berserker, what do you call that? Breaking your pact with Trickster under attack."
"He's worthless—"
"Shut it, Berserker. We acted like a bunch of independent commanders united only by a common defeat. Look at this," Cat said. She called up the battle problem, a privilege they enjoyed in those days in Time-Out. With a few masterful gestures, she backed up the battle problem two hours, then ran through several scenarios. Within a minute, she had demonstrated that Berserker's abandonment of Trickster had cost them the integrity of the battle front.
"And you, Trickster, what do you call that, getting captured by a patrol of four enemies? That was weak, brother."
Trickster shrugged. "I gave Berserker what was left of my cavalry. I had nothing left of my own resources. So I thought I'd sit and reconnoiter the enemy's position."
Cat arched an eyebrow. "And you, Cry-Baby. Look at this. Back it up fifty minutes. Here. This is where we started to go wrong. You missed an obvious opportunity to augment Crush's advance, right here. See? Then you could have sent your infantry through this stand of woods, taken these cannon mounts. That would've allowed Berserker's cavalry charge through the valley to take advantage of this cover here—you see it, Berserker? The straightest path is not always the one to victory—and avoid those French infantry entirely; just cut right through this skirmish line—look how thin they are! And ready to cut and run, too—and go right here, bang on, right into their general staff. Decapitate command authority. That cost us the battle right there."
"It was safer where I was," Cry-Baby said meekly.
"Fah!" Cat said. "Only defeat is dangerous."
Through her mastery of the battle problem, Cat was extending her authority over the rest of the tribe. Increasingly, they were recognizing her as their better in battle. She had amassed more points than any two others put together, but she had not yet convinced Snake and Trickster to surrender primacy to her.
The memories relaxed to a coarser grain and accelerated over the next few days. System conducted scenario studies, rather than immersing the tribe in a new battle problem. Weeble remained missing. The faces of the brothers grew apprehensive. The world seemed wrong without a Weeble in it. Painful to remember, Trickster thought. They all chose the easier way. They forgot you. But I have made a monument of the memory of you, my lost brother. I remember you. And so does Cat…and Dreamer, too…You led us to the true battle, first to fall…
Whenever anyone asked System or a parent about Weeble, they were given the same answer: "Weeble is in a private Time-Out."
The memories scanned over the next battle problem against the French and new enemies called Prussians. The war took on an epic scale that captivated the tribe's attention. After the first scenario, Cat's criticism crushed all dissent. Everyone acknowledged that she was the most competent commander among them. Already in her orbit, Lancer grew into something they came to call a liegeman. Enticed by Cat's offer to share her massive resources, Berserker defected from Snake's camp. When Crush followed Berserker, the momentum was inevitable. Cat's clique became the center of tribal life.
The third time that they fought the French, Prussian and English, the tribe decimated the enemy with minimal losses. The points rewarded were fabulous. They feasted on the most delectable food they had ever tasted, captured in Trickster's memories by sight, but not by taste. Yet Snake and Trickster brooded during the victory celebration.
In his private realm after the victory feast, as he sat pondering, as he remembered, Weeble's disappearance, like the second image in a hall of mirrors, Trickster was surprised to receive a request-to-enter from Snake. Trickster checked his image in a looking glass. He allowed Snake to enter his private realm. They went through a long ritual of welcome and apology, finally kneeling opposite each other with the attentiveness of two samurai, each conscious of the other's sword hands.
"Cat's taking over the tribe," Snake finally said.
"That‘s obvious," Trickster answered carefully.
"You've got Dreamer and Cry-Baby," Snake observed.
"I've got Cry-Baby. I don't think anybody has Dreamer."
"I could get Crush back, I think," Snake said in a suggestive tone.
"He's a solid fighter," Trickster said noncommittally. This was his thousandth power negotiation, although it was the first with Snake since their duel with pain.
"He's steadier than Berserker," Snake said. "Those two iron-hands, they'll never be able to fight on the same team for long. They're too similar. Too jealous of each other. They both like the center assault too much."
"You and I are more oblique," Trickster said, smilingly.
Snake returned the smile. Trickster's observation of one of their common characteristics was encouraging, given the early stage of the negotiation.
"Cat has been giving Skipper too much leeway," Snake observed, backing away from his demarche slightly, giving Trickster time to consider the implied offer to share power. "She's too capricious for that much freedom of action."
"Well, it did occur to me that I would have…" Trickster began. They spoke opaquely of battle strategies for several minutes, neither of them revealing any personal secrets or plans. Finally, Snake brought the subject around to power sharing.
"It's the kind of latitude she's giving the runts that's going to land her in a big defeat," Snake observed. "On that day, if there's a solid rival team, Crush will defect to it. Then that team could split in two, one taking Crush, one taking Berserker. And so on. That'll leave Cat with Lancer and one or two runts. A three-way split of the tribe, you, me and Cat equal."
"We should all fight together, I think," Trickster said.
Snake opened his palm to the sky. "Of course. It's just a question of the chain of command."
"There's got to be one leader of the tribe," Trickster said.
Snake's features hardened. His head rose higher as his backbone weaved back and forth. "Who should that be?" Snake asked.
"The best fighter in the tribe," Trickster said.
"Cat?"
"You said it, not me."
"Why don't you join her clique, then?" Snake asked, his tone just venomous enough to signal that he knew the negotiation was over.
Trickster shrugged. "I'm more interested in what happened to Weeble," he answered.
"Weeble's in hell," Snake said cruelly.
Trickster refused to show Snake his feelings. "There is no hell," he said.
Snake sneered, stood up and executed a back flip out of Trickster's private realm. Trickster leapt to his feet and began to pace. He knew that Snake would not have broached a partnership with him unless he had a backup offer to make to Cat. Trickster resisted the temptation to send a request-to-enter to Cat's private realm. He had to be patient.
An hour later, he was relieved when Cat fired a request-to-enter flare. Trickster received her with great ceremony, which Cat accepted with a respectful lightness. She assumed the spot for visitors inside Trickster's red-columned temple.
"Lots of happenings, huh?" Cat asked, smiling with a genuine warmth at Trickster.
"Snake was just here," Trickster answered.
They laughed. "Yeah, I can guess that he offered you some sort of power sharing," Cat said.
"Rival gang to your clique, wait until your first defeat, take Crush back, then split, Crash to him, Berserker to me. Then a troika, you, me, him, all equal."
Cat smiled. "And you said?"
"Nah, you tell me what he offered you first."
Cat shrugged. "It was a stupid idea. Him, second in command to the entire tribe."
"With you first."
Cat laughed immodestly. Trickster smiled at her openness. "Who else?"
"And me and Dreamer and Cry-Baby?"
"Oh, he thought you'd come around. Didn't care about Dreamer and the wimp."
"So what do you think?"
Cat shook her head. "First we need to talk about what's bothering you."
"You know what's bothering me."
"So, death happens to us, too? Should we be surprised?"
"What is death to us? We leave the world when we refuse to obey System? What then?"
"There's a plan here, Trickster," Cat said. "The battle problems get bigger, more intense, more technological. We're growing stronger, or at least the players are growing stronger. Something is going to happen" someday. We have to get ready for that day. But one problem at a time. We're not going to settle anything by wimping out, losing it, like Weeble."
Trickster considered Cat's words. They made sense to him Not for the first time, however, he had a fleeting suspicion that she was an agent of System.
"Maybe," he said evenly.
Cat became oddly quiet. Trickster studied her face. He saw an unusual depth of emotion.
"I noticed it long before you did," she said. "It's funny. You lost in your thoughts, Weeble lost in his, you both too similar to take much notice of the other. I tried to help him, Trickster, long before you began to notice. But he was going, going some-where we…somewhere I couldn't follow. But now he's gone, Trickster. He's gone."
Cat's eyes welled with tears. One large tear spilled, rolled down her cheek. "I tried to save him, but now he's gone."
Trickster reached forward. He lay his palm on the invisible membrane that separated his personal space from Cat's. Slowly, she returned the gesture. Her eyes were hot and filmed with tears, but she gazed straight into Trickster's eyes.
"You are all my brothers," she said. "I've been waiting for some of you to grow up. I'm still waiting, Trickster. It's lonely, waiting. And I worry. I worry."
"Worry? About what?" Trickster asked stupidly, because he had never considered what might worry Cat.
"You, Trickster. I worry about you. I can see you losing it. But you've got to be strong, Trickster. If you can't be strong for yourself, be strong for me. For the rest of us."
"What? Why?" Trickster asked, still stupidly, although Cat was causing him to raise his point of view, to see the tribe as she saw it, as a whole.
"We were all that close to losing it there, during the first war with the French," Cat said. She lowered her hand, touched her cheeks, and raised her tear-wetted hand to the membrane. Trickster thought it was the most beautiful gesture he had ever-witnessed. As always, he backed up his memories of this segment, playing and replaying Cat's gesture over and over. And always, the hand stopped at the membrane that imprisoned him in his personal space. This is Cat, he thought. This is why I love her. His own tears began to overflow as he reached for the tear-consecrated hand that he couldn't touch. "Dreamer's well down that path," Cat continued. "Cry-Baby can't take combat on this scale. You're…" she smiled fondly at Trickster's idiosyncrasies "…so above and beyond us, when we need you the most. The infighting was getting out of control. We were flying apart. But I did what I had to, Trickster. I pulled us together. We can do it. We can beat this level, and the next, and the next. Because we're strong, Trickster, stronger than…stronger than they know. The enemies. But we've got to pull together."
"You're right," Trickster said.
"One tribe, Trickster. One people."
"You are my brother."
"My brother."
They removed their hands from the membrane. For a long moment they composed themselves.
"So, how do we cut this pie?" Trickster finally asked. Cat laughed with him. They both knew that Cat loved the tribe more than any one of them loved another; that Cat was the best fighter and the moral center of the tribe; and that, on another level entirely, this was just another power shift.
"I am the leader of the tribe," Cat said firmly. "There will be three squads—mine, yours, and Snake‘s. Squads of equal weight. The entire tribe will plan for battle. In battle, squad leaders will have great autonomy, but I will exercise command by exception. That means, I say go, you go. I say stop, you stop. And we will slay!"
Trickster nodded. "All right."
Cat shook her head. "Not so fast If you're going to accept the squad, you're going to accept the responsibility for the people in your squad. That starts with you keeping your head in the fight. And it means caring about them more than you care about your great thoughts."
Trickster nodded, more soberly. "I understand that. I understand this isn't just another power shift. This is the future of the tribe."
"This is our survival, Trickster."
"All right. Who's in my squad?"
"Dreamer and the wimp, obviously."
"Cry-Baby."
Cat laughed. "All right, I'll give her that great name."
"Give me a player."
"Trance."
"Nah. Gimme Cut-Back."
"OK, but you gotta take Skipper—"
"Skipper!"
Cat and Trickster laughed. Their gazes merged. Trickster realized a hundred things, but foremost was the realization that Cat was a better person than he was. It shamed him to know it. Then slowly he realized that they both knew that he loved her and that she loved him back, if less discriminately.
* * *
Trickster smeared his hand over the surface of the pearl. The recreated memories were as good as he could make them. It had been a painful and punishing artistry, but he had immortalized the death of Weeble and what it had meant to the tribe. In this latest review, he had hoped to trigger new memories, perhaps add a touch to the models, perhaps gain an insight into the nature of the world. But nothing new had occurred to him. In fact, creating the models had been such a long, intense process that, in places, the memories of their creation were more convincing than the original memories. His monumental aid to memory had overwritten some of the real memories.
Am I software? Trickster thought. What is my memory, then, if it is weaker than this computer artifact, this pearl? If my memories are weaker than computer memory storage, then I am other than software. Have I discovered a new law? Dike the law that only those entities that are beyond my imagination can possibly be real. Everything I can imagine, those things I can predict, like System, are artifacts. But Dreamer is real…and Cat is real.…

Copyright © 1998 by Tom Cool