Robert Silverberg: Majipoor Chronicles

For Kirby w ho may not have been driven all the way to despair by this one, but who certainly got as far as the outlying suburbs.

In the fourth year of the restoration of the Coronal Lord Valentine a great mischief has come over the soul of the boy Hissune, a clerk in the House of Records of the Labyrinth of Majipoor. For the past six months it has been Hissune's task to prepare an inventory of the archives of the tax-collectors — an interminable list of documents that no one is ever going to need to consult — and it looks as though the job will keep him occupied for the next year or two or three. To no purpose, so far as Hissune can understand, since who could possibly care about the reports of provincial tax-collectors who lived in the reign of Lord Dekkeret or Lord Calintane or even the ancient Lord Stiamot? These documents had been allowed to fall into disarray, no doubt for good reason, and now some malevolent destiny has chosen Hissune to put them to rights, and so far as he can see it is useless work, except that he will have a fine geography lesson, a vivid experience of the hugeness of Majipoor. So many provinces! So many cities! The three giant continents are divided and subdivided and further divided into thousands of municipal units, each with its millions of people, and as he toils, Hissune's mind overflows with names, the Fifty Cities of Castle Mount, the great urban districts of Zimroel, the mysterious desert settlements of Suvrael, a torrent of metropolises, a lunatic tribute to the fourteen thousand years of Majipoor's unceasing fertility: Pidruid, Narabal, Ni-moya, Alaisor, Stoien, Piliplok, Pendiwane, Amblemorn, Minimool, Tolaghai, Kangheez, Natu Gorvinu — so much, so much, so much! A million names of places! But when one is fourteen years old one can tolerate only a certain amount of geography, and then one begins to grow restless.

Restlessness invades Hissune now. The mischievousness that is never far from the surface in him wells up and overflows.

Close by the dusty little office in the House of Records where Hissune sifts and classifies his mounds of tax reports is a far more interesting place, the Register of Souls, which is closed to all but authorized personnel, and there are said to be not many authorized personnel. Hissune knows a good deal about that place. He knows a good deal about every part of the Labyrinth, even the forbidden places, especially the forbidden places — for has he not, since the age of eight, earned his living in the streets of the great underground capital by guiding bewildered tourists through the maze, using his wits to pick up a crown here and a crown there? "House of Records," he would tell the tourists. "There's a room in there where millions of people of Majipoor have left memory-readings. You pick up a capsule and put it in a special slot, and suddenly it's as if you were the person who made the reading, and you find yourself living in Lord Confalume's time, or Lord Siminave's, or out there fighting the Metamorph Wars with Lord Stiamot — but of course hardly anyone is allowed to consult the memory-reading room." Of course. But how hard would it be, Hissune wonders, to insinuate himself into that room on the pretext of needing data for his research into the tax archives? And then to live in a million other minds at a million other times, in all the greatest and most glorious eras of Majipoor's history — yes!

Yes, it would certainly make this job more tolerable if he could divert himself with an occasional peek into the Register of Souls.

From that realization it is but a short journey to the actual attempting of it. He equips himself with the appropriate passes — he knows where all the document-stampers are kept in the House of Records — and makes his way through the brightly lit curving corridors late one afternoon, dry-throated, apprehensive, tingling with excitement.

It has been a long time since he has known any excitement. Living by his wits in the streets was exciting, but he no longer does that; they have civilized him, they have housebroken him, they have given him a job. A job! They! And who are they? The Coronal himself, that's who! Hissune has not overcome his amazement over that. During the time when Lord Valentine was wandering in exile, displaced from his body and his throne by the usurper Barjazid, the Coronal had come to the Labyrinth, and Hissune had guided him, recognizing him somehow for what he truly was; and that had been the beginning of Hissune's downfall. For the next thing Hissune knew, Lord Valentine was on his way from the Labyrinth to Castle Mount to regain his crown, and then the usurper was overthrown, and then at the time of the second coronation Hissune found himself summoned, the Divine only knew why, to attend the ceremonies at Lord Valentine's Castle. What a time that was! Never before had he so much as been out of the Labyrinth to see the light of day, and now he was journeying in an official floater, up the valley of the Glayge past cities he had known only in dreams, and there was Castle Mount's thirty-mile-high bulk rising like another planet in the sky, and at last he was at the Castle, a grimy ten-year-old boy standing next to the Coronal and trading jokes with him — yes, that had been splendid, but Hissune was caught by surprise by what followed. The Coronal believed that Hissune had promise. The Coronal wished him to be trained for a government post. The Coronal admired the boy's energy and wit and enterprise. Fine. Hissune would become a protege of the Coronal. Fine. Fine. Back to the Labyrinth, then — and into the House of Records! Not so fine. Hissune has always detested the bureaucrats, those mask-faced idiots who pushed papers about in the bowels of the Labyrinth, and now, by special favor of Lord Valentine, he has become such a person himself. Well, he supposes he has to do something by way of earning a living besides take tourists around — but he never imagined it would be this! Report of the Collector of Revenue for the Eleventh District of the Province of Chorg, Prefecture of Bibiroon, 11th Pont. Kinniken Cor. Lord Ossier — oh, no, no, not a lifetime of that! A month, six months, a year of doing his nice little job in the nice little House of Records, Hissune hopes, and then Lord Valentine might send for him and install him in the Castle as an aide-de-camp, and then at last life would have some value! But the Coronal seems to have forgotten him, as one might expect. He has an entire world of twenty or thirty billion people to govern, and what does one little boy of the Labyrinth matter? Hissune suspects that his life has already passed its most glorious peak, in his brief time on Castle Mount, and now by some miserable irony he has been metamorphosed into a clerk of the Pontificate, doomed to shuffle documents forever — But there is the Register of Souls to explore. Even though he may never leave the Labyrinth again, he might — if no one caught him — roam the minds of millions of folk long dead, explorers, pioneers, warriors, even Coronals and Pontifexes. That's some consolation, is it not?

He enters a small antechamber and presents his pass to the dull-eyed Hjort on duty.

Hissune is ready with a flow of explanations: special assignment from the Coronal, important historical research, need to correlate demographic details, necessary corroboration of data profile — oh, he's good at such talk, and it lies coiled waiting back of his tongue. But the Hjort says only, "You know how to use the equipment?"

"It's been a while. Perhaps you should show me again."

The ugly warty-faced fellow, many-chinned and flabby, gets slowly to his feet and leads Hissune to a sealed enclosure, which he opens by some deft maneuver of a thumb-lock. The Hjort indicates a screen and a row of buttons. "Your control console. Send for the capsules you want. They plug in here. Sign for everything. Remember to turn out the lights when you're done."