Thus the illuminations, like the Childe Cycle they complement, turn on the question of balance. Though the demands of integrity and responsibility can clash, they should unite to reinforce each other. As the second Amanda concludes: “ ‘In the end the only way is to be what you are and do what you must. If you do that, everything works.’ “ Balance through union is a universal imperative for the race as well as the individual. The conscious and unconscious aspects of human nature must come together. Then evolved mankind— intuitive, empathic, creative—can win the future without losing the past.
To dramatize these principles, Dickson has in effect assembled his own set of secular-historical archetypes. The Cycle and the illuminations function like an orig-
inal system of mythology that correlates with nearly every area of human experience. It has shaped the author as much as he has shaped it: life anticipates art; art elucidates life. Dickson could apply Hopkins’ definition to himself: “What I do is me: for that I came.” His twenty-year quest to complete the Childe Cycle has become a kind of initiation for him, both as an artist and as a man. He tried to live the unity he preaches by combining fluffy and intense traits within himself. He knows that separately, the plume is frivolous and the sword ruthless. But together they are gallant.
The plume waves. The sword flashes. The proud chevalier has pledged himself to see the journey through and will not count the cost of keeping faith.
Editor’s note: As a special bonus for readers o/Lost Dorsai, the author has consented to the publication of an extensive excerpt from his great work-in-progress, The Final Encyclopedia. Penultimate novel in the Childe Cycle, Mr. Dickson feels that The Final Encyclopedia is his most significant work to date. It commences on the following page.
THE FINAL ENCYCLOPEDIA: AN EXCERPT
The story up to this point:
Hal Mayne, an orphan found in a small, otherwise empty interstellar ship drifting near Earth orbit, is raised on Earth by three tutors, who are his guardians: one Dorsai, one Exotic, and one Friendly.
When he is fifteen years old his guardians are murdered by the Others, the ambitious and charismatic crossbreeds of the Splinter Cultures, who are rapidly gaining control of human societies throughout all the inhabited worlds. The historical time is approximately 100 years after the time of Dorsai! and Soldier, Ask Not.
Such a contingency had been foreseen by the tutors. Hal, grown, will be the natural opponent of the crossbreeds, but until grown he is no match for them. He flees, first to Coby, the mining world where he spends nearly two years, until he is located there by the Others—although the Others still do not realize his potential. Still, their second in command, Nigel Bias, has become interested enough to want to see Hal face to face.
Hal escapes from Coby and lands on Harmony, under the alias of a dead Friendly known as Howard Immanuelson. Recalcitrants are opposing the Others and their controlled governments on both Harmony and Association. As Immanuelson, Hal is befriended by a recalcitrant named Jason Rowe, whom Hal meets in the detention center where both Jason and he are being held by the local authorities under the suspicion of their being what Jason actually is.
THE FINAL ENCYCLOPEDIA:
An Excerpt
The cell door clashed open, waking them. Instinctively, Hal Mayne was on his feet by the time the guard came through the open door and he saw out of the corner of his eye that Jason Rowe was also.
“All right,” said the guard. He was thin and tall— though not as tall as Hal—with a starved angry face. “Outside!”
They obeyed. Hal’s tall body was still numb from sleep, but his mind, triggered into immediate overdrive, was whirring. He avoided looking at Jason in the interests of keeping up the pretense that they had not talked and still did not know each other, and he noticed that Jason avoided looking at him. Once in the corridor they were herded back the way Hal remembered being brought in.
“Where are we going?” Jason asked.
“Silence!” said the guard softly, without looking at him and without changing the expression of his gaunt, set features, “or I will hang thee by thy wrists for an hour or so after this is over, apostate whelp.”
Jason said no more. His thin face was expressionless. His slight frame was held erect. They were moved along down several corridors, up a freight lift shaft, to what was again very obviously the office section of this establishment. Their guard brought them to join a gathering of what seemed to be twenty or more prisoners like themselves, waiting outside the open doors of a room with a raised platform at one end, a desk upon it and an open space before it. The flag of the
United Sects, a white cross on a black field, hung from a flagpole set upright on the stage.
Their guard left them with the other prisoners and stepped a few steps aside to stand with the five other guards present. They stood, guards and prisoners alike, and time went by.
Finally, there was the sound of footwear on polished corridor floor, echoing around the bend in the further corridor, and three figures turned the corner and came into sight. Hal’s breath caught in his chest. Two were men in ordinary business suits—almost certainly local officials. But the man between them, tall above them, was Nigel Bias.
Nigel ran his glance over all the prisoners as he approached; and his eye paused for a second on Hal, but not for longer than might have been expected from the fact that Hal was noticeably the tallest of the group. Nigel came on and turned into the doorway, shaking his head at the two men accompanying him as he did so.
“Foolish,” he was saying to them as he passed within arm’s length of Hal, “Foolish, foolish! Did you think I was the sort to be impressed by what you could sweep off the streets, that I was to be amused like some primitive ruler by state executions or public torture-spectacles? This sort of thing only wastes energy. I’ll show you how to do things. Bring them in here.”
The guards were already moving in response before one of the men with Nigel turned and gestured at the prisoners. Hal and the others were herded into the room and lined up in three ranks facing the platform on which the two men now stood behind the desk and Nigel himself half-sat, half-lounged, with his weight on the further edge of that piece of furniture. To even this casual pose he lent an impression of elegant authority.
The sick coldness had returned to the pit of Hal’s stomach with Nigel’s appearance; and now that feeling was growing, spreading all through him. Sheltered and protected as he had been all his life, he had grown up without ever knowing the kind of fear that compresses the chest and takes the strength from the limbs. Then, all at once, he had encountered death and that kind of fear for the first time, all in one moment; and now the reflex set up by that moment had been triggered by a second encounter of the tall, commanding figure on the platform before him
He was not afraid of the Friendly authorities who were holding him captive. His mind recognized the fact that they were only human, and he had deeply absorbed the principle that for any problem involving human interaction there should be a practical solution. But the sight of Nigel faced him with something that had destroyed the very pillars of his universe. He felt the paralysis of his fear staining all through him; and the rational part of him recognized that once it had taken him over completely he would throw himself upon the fate that would follow Nigel’s identification of him—just to get it over with.
He reached for help, and the ghosts of three old men came out of his memory in response.
“He is no more than a weed that flourishes for a single summer’s day, this man you face,” said the harsh voice of Obadiah in his mind. “No more than the rain on the mountainside, blowing for a moment past the rock. God is that rock, and eternal. The rain passes and is as if it never was. Hold to the rock and ignore the rain.”
“He can do nothing,” said the soft voice of Walter Inteacher, “that I’ve not shown you at one time or another. He is only a user of skills developed by other
men and women, many of whom could use them far better than he. Remember that no one’s mind and body are ever more than human. Forget the fact that he is older and more experienced than you; concentrate only on a true image of what he is, and what his limits are.”