“Your commentaries are more honest than the man behind them,” my opponent alleged, by way of retaliation. “They speak clearly of the self-dissatisfaction that you cannot now admit. They tell the truth that you cannot yet admit to yourself: that your life, like the life of so many of your fellow emortals, is already derelict and desolate, already decayed into routine and repetition, and that it stands in desperate need of redemption. Imagine a world composed of Mortimer Grays! Imagine a world that had no Hellward Nyxsons to disturb and disturb it, to display the faces of fear and terror, to play the part of dreams and darkness. What are people like you, without people like us, but the living dead? Why are you so ungrateful for the gift that we offer, when every word that you have written proclaims your own fascination for every intricate detail of lost mortality and all its torments?”

“An unwanted gift is not a gift at all,” I told her, reverting to defensive mode. “An unnecessary gift that causes offense is an insult. We have the past to inform us of the awful reality of death, in far more detail than your efforts could ever contrive. Your hollow mockery of that past, which transforms its tragedy into play, is an insult to every mortal who ever lived and ever emortal who ever will. I study death in order to discover how best to live, and if I have not yet succeeded it is because my studies are incomplete, not because they require an abrupt perversion into nightmare.”

I think I did tolerably well in that first debate, considering that I never realized that it was merely a preliminary bout. EdEnt must have thought so too, because they didn’t wait long before setting me up for a tilt at the top man: the man many considered to be the New Human Race’s first significant devil’s advocate.

Yes, the casters declared, there wasa Hellward Lucifer Nyxson. Moreover, he was now prepared to emerge from obscurity to defend the principles of his crusade against the belated objections of the man who had done so much to inspire the movement: that unlikely Judas of Thanaticism, Mortimer Gray.

FORTY-FOUR

Somewhat to my surprise, the pseudonymous Hellward Nyxson was rather less strident than Emmanuelle Standress had been. His name was by far the most flamboyant thing about him; his sim’s face was tailored to a conservative model of handsomeness, and the VE from which he spoke was blandly staid, without the slightest hint of the pornography of death in its decor. His mild tone was presumably intended to upset whatever strategy I had prepared, as was the unexpected angle of his attack.

“I like your work very much,” he said, softly, “not merely because it is so wonderfully comprehensive, but because I admire your defiant justification of what some would consider a flawed method. Like you, I am adamant that we cannot understand history unless we can use our imagination as cleverly as is humanly possible, to put ourselves in the shoes of the people of the past. If we are to understand them, we must try with all our might to see the world as they saw it, and I think you have come as close as any man alive to an understanding of the mortal condition, save for one tiny flaw.”

He left it to me to say, “What flaw?” Having been wrong-footed by his tone and manner, I was foolish enough to walk straight into the trap, handing the tempo of the contest to him.

“You reveal the limitations of your own imagination when you refuse to give mortals full credit for their faith. You insist in regarding faith as a kind of self-delusion: a confidence trick calculated to exercise a psychological placebo effect. Because you cannot believe in heaven, or in reincarnation, or in personal redemption through suffering, you refuse to accept that the beliefs of the men of the past could be anything but self-deception—and you insult them further by proclaiming that they were heroes for having successfully lied to themselves. What do you think theirresponse to your analysis would be?”

By this time, I had realized my earlier mistake. I was ready for the second trap and casually ignored his question.

“Are you arguing that there isa heaven,” I asked him, scornfully, “or are you merely speaking in favor of reincarnation? Perhaps you really do believe in the redemptive value of suffering?”

“I am content to admit that I do not know what, if anything, lies beyond death,” Nyxson relied, suavely, “but I respect the right of every human being not to be told what he or she should or should not believe or what possibilities he or she should or should not explore. Why do you think that you have the authority to deny your fellows that right?”

“It’s not for either of us to tell people whether or not they should submit themselves to torture, or even to commit suicide,” I admitted, “but you seem to be mistaken as to which of us is dishonestly overreaching his duty. You’re the one who exhorts others to take their own lives, while remaining stubbornly alive yourself. My main concern is to stop you pretending that my work lends any support to your monstrous crusade.”

“But it does,” Nyxson replied, very mildly. “You may say that it was not intended to do so, but now that the work has been committed to the Labyrinth any reader who cares to do so may come to his or her own conclusions as to its implications. The simple and undeniable fact is that many of those recently embarked on what you choose to call a ‘monstrous crusade’ have taken considerable inspiration from your history. Your work has assisted them in the work of imagining the mortal condition, and it has helped to persuade them that there might be something desirable in that condition. You do not agree, as is certainly your right, but readers of your work do not need your assent in order to take their own inferences from it. You are, after all, a historian, not a writer of fiction. Your task is to provide a true account of what happened in the past and why, not to prescribe what attitude others should adopt to that account.”

“The account is incomplete,” I pointed out. “When it is whole, I doubt that anyone will be able to misconstrue it as a hymn of praise for the mortal condition.”

As parries go, that one was fatally weak.

“Perhaps, in that case, you should not have begun to publish before the work was complete,” Nyxson observed, “and I look forward to seeing future chapters—including, of course, your account of Thanaticism, which will doubtless be as scrupulous as your account of early Christianity. But all histories are incomplete, and all truths too. No matter how long we might live, we are all hemmed in by time and by the insufficiency of our wisdom. You might be content to regard all questions as settled, and to pretend that all mystery has been banished from the human world, but others are not. There will always be people in the world who are not content to live within prescribed limits or to limit their experiences to the narrow range that others consider good for them. There will always be people in the world who will want to think the supposedly unthinkable and do the supposedly impossible. Most will fail, but those who succeed are the true custodians of progress.”

“That sounds very pretty,” I countered, with an overt sneer that probably lost me far more sympathy than it won, “but what we’re actually talking about is people maiming and killing themselves. That’s not progress—it’s madness.”

“Perhaps it is,” said Nyxson, casually, “but there’s method in the madness, and a message too. If Thanatic martyrdom were merely a matter of unhappy individuals testing the limits of existence to eventual destruction you might be right to accuse me of hypocrisy, but I intend to remain alive because the martyrs to come will require someone to speak for them. My part in their adventure will be to explain what they’re doing and to spell out the message constituted by their deaths for the benefit of those who lack the wit to read it.”