why he grimaced and answered so roughly:
“Let’s leave them the honor they’ve earned! They fought to save the
world they’d always known from that”-he made a chopping gesture at
the city-“and just possibly we’d be better off ourselves with less of it.”
He sagged a trifle and sighed, “However, I suppose if Elfland had won,
man on Roland would at last-peacefully, even happily -have died away.
We live with our archetypes, but can we live in them?”
Barbro shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t understand.”
“What’?” He looked at her in a surprise that drove out melancholy.
After a laugh: “Stupid of me. I’ve explained this to so many politicians
and scientists and commissioners and Lord knows what, these past
days, I forgot I’d never explained to you. It was a rather vague idea of
mine, most of the time we were traveling, and I don’t like to discuss
ideas prematurely. Now that we’ve met the Outlings and watched how
they work, I do feel sure.”
He tamped down his tobacco. “In limited measure,” he said, “I’ve used
an archetype throughout my own working life. The
rational detective. It hasn’t been a conscious pose-much-it’s simply
been an image which fitted my personality and professional style. But
it draws an appropriate response from most people, whether or not
they’ve ever heard of the original. The phenomenon is not
uncommon. We meet persons who, in varying degrees, suggest Christ
or Buddha or the Earth Mother, or, say, on a less exalted plane,
Hamlet or d’Artagnan. Historical, fictional and mythical, such figures
crystallize basic aspects of the human psyche, and when we meet them
in our real experience, our reaction goes deeper than consciousness.”
He grew grave again. “Man also creates archetypes that are not
individuals. The Anima, the Shadow-and, it seems, the Outworld. The
world of magic, of glamour-which originally meant enchantment-of
half-human beings, some like Ariel and some like Caliban, but each
free of mortal frailties and sorrows-therefore, perhaps, a little
carelessly cruel, more than a little tricksy; dwellers, in dusk and
moonlight, not truly gods but obedient to rulers who are enigmatic and
powerful enough to be- Yes, our Queen of Air and Darkness knew well
what sights to let lonely people see, what illusions to spin around them
from time to time, what songs and legends to set going among them. I
wonder how much she and her underlings gleaned from human fairy
tales, how much they made up themselves, and how much men created
all over again, all unwittingly, as the sense of living on the edge of the
world entered them.”
Shadows stole across the room. It grew cooler and the traffic noises
dwindled. Barbro asked mutedly, “But what could this do?”
“In many ways,” Sherrinford answered, “the outwayer is back in the
Dark Ages. He has few neighbors, hears scanty news from beyond his
horizon, toils to survive in a land he only partly understands, that may
any night raise unforeseeable disasters against him and is bounded by
enormous wildernesses. The machine civilization which brought his
ancestors here is frail at best. He could lose it as the Dark Ages nations
had lost Greece and Rome, as the whole of Earth seems to have lost it.
Let him be worked on, long,
strongly, cunningly, by the archetypical Outworld, until he has
-come to believe in his bones that the magic of the Queen of Air
and Darkness is greater than the energy of engines; and first his
faith, finally his deeds will follow her. Oh, it wouldn’t happen fast.
Ideally, it would happen too slowly to be noticed, especially by
self-satisfied city people. But when in the end a hinterland gone
back to the ancient way turned from them, how could they keep
alive?”
Barbro breathed, “She said to me, when their banners flew in
the last of our cities, we would rejoice.”
“I think we would have, by then,” Sherrinford admitted. “Nev-
ertheless, I believe in choosing one’s destiny.”
He shook himself, as if casting off a burden. He knocked the
dottle from his pipe and stretched, muscle by muscle. “Well,” he
said, “it isn’t going to happen.”
She looked straight at him. “Thanks to you.”