XXVI

—AS YOU PERCEIVE, said the “voice” of the Gorf, I stayed.

—The hand of the born interférer, said Virgil, can never resist a superfluous gesture or two.

—Pot and kettle, replied the voice. Mote and beam.

—The acquisition of rudimentary idiom, said Virgil, confers no freedoms. Any intellect which confines itself to mere structuralism is bound to rest trapped in its own webs. Your words serve only to spin cocoons around your own irrelevance.

A thing that happened to Virgil Jones when he was angry: his speech became involuted and obscure. It came of a horror of displaying his loss of self-control. When he was angry, he felt weakest, most easily outwitted; so his speech wound around itself those very cocoons he ascribed to the Gorf.

He was more angry than he could remember. Much of it, he told himself, was reaction. He had put himself through a rigorous physical and mental examination; his very survival had been at risk; it was reasonable, he argued inwardly, for any human being to react overmuch to provocation after all that.

He knew, also, of another thorn. He had felt good on his recent travels; he had felt as he had once felt. Then. Ago. Before. To he plunged from that high confidence into his present weakening choler was intolerable. Which thought only served to make him more angry. The circle was vicious.

The overlarge tongue played about his mouth; a bead of saliva worked its way down to the cleft in his chin; his hands, in the pockets of his crumpled coat, worked feverishly. He sat on a fallen branch of an unknown conifer; it felt rough beneath him. He kicked morosely at a cone, glaring at the invisible creature, as if to scald him with a look.

Silently, crouched behind a clump of trees, Flapping Eagle listened to his guide talking into the void and apparently receiving answers. (The “voice” of the Gorf is only audible to the being it addresses.) He thought: Virgil Jones, there is more to you than meets the eye. And since there was a large quantity of Virgil for any eye to meet, that was a compliment.

The third protagonist sat equably, ten yards or so from Virgil, resting against a tree, his sensory aura quivering slightly. He had had no fears of this confrontation; it had amused him to meet Mr Jones again, and had given him a clue to the final Ordering he was now anxious to discover; but Virgil’s last words rankled, as they were meant to. Irrelevance, indeed.

—Are you aware, Mr Jones, he said haughtily, of my status as an Orderer?

Mr Jones said nothing.

—I see you are, continued the peevish voice. In which case you will no doubt recall the Prime Rule of that noble calling.

Mr Jones looked innocent. Now that he had penetrated the Gorf’s (thick) hide, he felt his own anger cooling.

—Possibly I should remind you, snapped the Gorf. Possibly it will induce you to refrain from these allusions.

—If memory serves, interposed Virgil Jones, the Prime Rule of Order is to eschew all irrelevance. Please correct me if wrong.

There was a brief pause. Then: —You are not wrong, came the reply.

—So, said Virgil Jones, may I be permitted to accuse the Master of a cardinal infringement of his own rules?

This time the silence was aghast.

—Grounds, said the Gorf tersely. Your grounds, please.

—First: that by your intrusion into the personal dimensions of another being, inviolable except in dire emergency, you committed an act not merely irrelevant to those dimensions, but actually dangerous. Even the most skilled of the Masters cannot toy with another’s dimensions without risk. In this case the risk was enormous.

The Gorf said: —If you believe I meant him harm, you underestimate my skill. Having intuited his role, as a participant in the Final Ordering, it would be grossly bad play to distort that Ordering by a wilful act. I merely set him a puzzle to deepen his knowledge of the dimensions. Consider: if I had not done so, if he had fought off the fever instantly, he would never have conquered his monsters. How can this be irrelevance?

Virgil considered.

—There’s some truth in that, he said. But we don’t know if he needed to overcome those monsters. Now that it has happened as it happened, even he will say he did. But he might not have, had it been otherwise. Your defence rests on an unproveable first principle.

—The onus of proof rests with you, came the answer.

Virgil returned to the attack.

—Second: that, having no place whatsoever in the Final Ordering of the Island, you have been irrelevant ever since you perceived that fact, and stayed. There is no reason for you being here; the Island did not include you in its conception, so by your own rules it would be a distortion if it were to use you in any Ordering process. Nor do we have any need of observers. What do you say to that?

The silence lasted for several minutes. (Flapping Eagle, eavesdropping on half the eerie debate, half-thought it was over). Then the Gorfs voice sounded, slow and heavy.

—That was the correct move, Mr Jones. You should not have let your irritation get the better of your judgement at first. The first was a wasted move, which deprives you of perfection. Nevertheless, a score is a score. A score is a score. A score is a score. A score is a score. A score is a score.

The phrase, monotonously repeated, was burdened with a world of defeat. Virgil, suddenly sympathetic, asked:

—Master, if you knew, why did you stay?

—You must not call me Master. A Master would not have done it.

—A Master did, said Virgil. I should like to know his reasons.

Simply, the Gorf replied:

—I liked it here.

Virgil thought of the planet Thera. Bleak. Empty. He understood how this hugely intelligent being would prefer the complex order of Calf Island.

—Master, he said finally, I must ask you to leave now.

The Gorfs voice was fierce. Defiant.

—I will not leave. I will stay.

—Then, said Virgil tiredly, his body aching with fatigue, I shall have to Order you away.

Something like a hollow laugh came from the void. —I am not that far gone, said the Gorf. You scored only because of my perverse infringement of the rules. You could not win an Ordering contest.

Flapping Eagle saw Virgil stand up. He covered his face with his hands, and an extraordinary thing happened: he seemed to grow. Not in height. Not in width.

In depth.

The only phrase that seemed to fit had a curious second meaning.

He added several dimensions to himself.

Flapping Eagle thought: it seems we each must fight a battle; but I was ready and Virgil is weak. And his opponent has chosen the ground.

Virgil was thinking along similar lines; but was very pleased at his continuing reawakening. The dimensions seemed his to visit again, after all this time, after all. That. Pain.

He turned to face the Gorf.

—Mr Jones, said the Gorf. A word of warning before the contest. In case you should win.

—Yes? said Virgil. (Was this a delaying tactic?)

—I am not the only irrelevance on the island, Mr Jones. I fear you are another.

Virgil said nothing, but he knew the Gorf had succeeded in wounding him. This renaissance of his was a fragile thing. Doubts assailed it easily.

—Just an intuition, Mr Jones, said the disembodied voice. I rather fancy you will take little part in the final Ordering. Truly. It gives a certain symmetry to this contest, wouldn’t you say?

—Let’s get on with it, barked Virgil Jones.

To the watching Flapping Eagle, it appeared that there followed a period of complete inactivity. Not being versed in the Outer Dimensions, he could not enter the battlefield. Virgil Jones stood frozenly, head bowed, arms outstretched, hands splayed, like a man pushing against a very heavy door. Then, without warning, he collapsed. Inert matter in a heap on the forest floor.

Flapping Eagle rushed forward.

Virgil Jones came round slowly.

—Shouldn’t have bothered, he said. No contest, really. Not a hope. Flea trying to rape an elephant. Couldn’t Order him back. Not in a million years. It’s his game.

—Where is he? asked Flapping Eagle, looking around.

—Who knows, said Virgil. Doesn’t matter. Won’t trouble us again. I won that point, anyway. And then, in a brave attempt at lightheartedness, he said: —Who will rid me of this meddlesome Gorf?

Something had gone out of Virgil Jones’ face. His defeat had drained him of a great deal more than energy. He seemed to Flapping Eagle now as he had first seemed: shambling, bumbling, ineffectual. The decisive figure of the Inner Dimensions had gone, nursed once more behind a skin of failure.

—Virgil, said Flapping Eagle. Virgil. Thank you.

Virgil Jones snorted.

And fainted.

The roles of nurse and patient were reversed.