The Usurper

11

In order to clarify certain events, soon to be recounted, it seems to me germane to deal briefly with certain issues, scientific, historical, and institutional.

There is no doubt that the Telnarian empire existed, or exists. Which is not clear. Is it still with us, somewhere? Much depends on the rooms of space and the mansions of time. Surely evidence abounds in its many dimensions, archaic words, place names, linguistic affinities, customs, day names and month names, holidays, folk tales, legends, a thousand annals, and chronicles, coins, artifacts, the remains of fountains, now run dry for centuries, fallen statues, perhaps of unknown heroes or gods, half-effaced inscriptions, perhaps recounting glories, scraped into unintelligibility by zealots, the watchers or guardians, crumbled walls, damp, worn, overgrown with moss, the ruins of aqueducts, such things. One does not know if the Telnarian empire was founded here, or if it intersected with our world for a time, perhaps in some form of transit. Perhaps it was here, while it passed through. It is hard to know about these things. Are there worlds, and tangled histories of worlds, diverse lines of reality, which might, for a time, touch one another, and intertwine, however briefly? Could it disappear, and reemerge? Is there a circuit in such things, as some believe, as in the routes of comets?

Sometimes one fears the sky, dark with ships.

The orthodoxy on this point is clear, an orthodoxy which I, of course, celebrate and unhesitantly affirm. Make no mistake in this. I, as all good and wise men, subscribe to the correct view. Who would be so unwise as to do otherwise? The countless forms of evidence, so abundant, so seemingly incontrovertible, of so many kinds, scattered over its thousands of latimeasures, is fraudulent, primarily contrived, however inexplicably, or pointlessly, by heretics. Perhaps there was, for a time, a Telnarian empire, but it was a small, untoward sort of thing, a matter of villages, or isolated towns, at best a temporary step, soon left behind, on the path to our contemporary world of simplicity and pastoral perfection. One need only go to the casement, to see the peasants contentedly toiling with their hoes in the field, see the smoke emerging from the chimneys of the tiny, happy cottages in the distance, hear the hourly, monitory chimes of the bells in the watch tower.

We know the stories told of the Telnarian empire, of its galactic tentacles, its thousands of worlds, and such, must then, at least for the most part, be mythical. What a strange way they had of thinking about the pleasant lamps in the sky! It is quite possible they did not even grasp the fact that the universe was created for us, a fact which becomes clear when it is recognized that our world is the single, only world, and that it lies at the exact center of the universe, where there is room for only one world, of course, just one, ours, this indisputably demonstrating our special and privileged position in the cosmos.

How fortunate for our vanity!

How humble we must be, finding ourselves so situated, despite our unworthiness, our lacks and faults, at the very pinnacle and center of all time, truth, and reality!

So reads the orthodoxy.

Who can believe such nonsense?

Almost all who have been so instructed.

Fruitful and abundant are the comforting joys of abject ignorance!

Why bleed on the blade of truth?

I shall pause for a time.

The watcher has been announced.

I do not think I need fear him, at least overmuch.

He is a good man, and, happily, cannot read. I shall reiterate the declarations which he requires, and share some kana with him. He looks forward to that. I must not disappoint him. There is some protection, of course, in being a recluse, an eccentric inquirer into obscure things, presumably innocent, antique things. Too, my needs are simple, and I have little to do with others. I have little to fear. I am harmless. I threaten no one. I am safe.

What is an empire, what is an institution?

An empire, clearly, though it may extend in space and endure through time, is not a thing in any usual sense; for example, it is not like a tree or rock. Some empires may perish before a tree might bear its fruit and others might challenge the longevity of a rock. But they are not rocks and trees. One can see soldiers and ships, and walls and roads, but one cannot see an empire. Standards and flags, perhaps, but not empires. Yet not all empires wear the garments of power openly; as did, or does, the Telnarian empire; not all march with legions, and ship with fleets. Institutions, in their various sorts, are invisible, but sometimes real with a terribleness which would trivialize the splittings of worlds and the explosions of stars. Institutions differ. Some redeem and profit a species; others sink poisoned fangs into the mind; some transform and ennoble lives; others sicken quadrants, infecting them with the most virulent of plagues, those which prey on the innocence and vulnerability of the soul, particularly that of the young. How cunningly, cruelly, and arrogantly they groom the young to do their bidding and carry their burdens!

Science has become a secret thing, a thing of stealth and sorcerers. I have known men who believed that light was not simply there or not there, but that it moved, even as a horse or dog, and very rapidly. I suspect this is true. I have known men, too, who believed that the lights in the sky were not lamps, but distant orbs of flaming gas, some far away. Others, you see, besides myself, have read old books, sometimes hidden books, sometimes encoded long ago. Our science is the last word in all science, and the correct word, of course, for science is ended in our time, as we know all there is to know, or, at least, all that is worth knowing, but I know, too, there are a thousand sciences which differ from ours, doubtless therefore being incorrect, but I wonder sometimes if our science is correct, and I wonder, too, sometimes, if all these thousand sciences might not be incorrect. The world, even a small world, may be a difficult thing to understand. Fixed worlds, like tables, and borne lamps, are easier to fathom. We know about tables, and lamps, and candles. The annals hint at untold worlds, separated by almost inconceivable distances, of systems, and a galaxy, and of galaxies beyond galaxies. They suggest, too, routes, openings, crevices, passages, foldings, involutions, tunnels, and such, which, in some cases, would make far worlds neighbors. Two points on a map might be a yard from one another, but, if the map were folded in a certain manner, the yard might prove an illusion, and the width of a ribbon, two juxtaposed surfaces of the same map, pressed together, might bespeak reality.

I insist on my orthodoxy. What sane man would not? But in the inside, in the secret place, where there are no frames and ropes, and burning irons, one wonders. I do not fear thought, secret thought. It does not frighten me. It neither threatens nor jeopardizes my prestige, my position in society, my wealth, my power, or my livelihood.

So what is one to make of the Telnarian empire?

I think it existed, or exists.

Once my sleeve, long ago, briefly, brushed a golden column.

The watcher is gone.

I shall return to the accounts.