John Dalmas: excerpts of The Helverti Invasion

The excerpts from The Helverti Invasion can benefit from some preliminary comments.

Selecting excerpts has been tricky. The plot interweaves several subplots, and some pieces I’d otherwise have used would have given away too much of the story, while others don’t work out of context. Thus the battle scenes are totally missing here, important though they are. As are the scenes of Master Lemmi among the Dkota. So mostly I'm giving you sketches here, of important characters, and of the Order of Saint Higuchi.

The Helverti Invasion is a sequel to the very successful Lizard War. Both are centered on Luis Raoul DenUyl, a young member of the somewhat Zenish Order of Saint Higuchi, often referred to as "the Pope’s soldiers." But though the two novels are centered on Luis, the sequel is a very different kind of story. Because at the end of The Lizard War, our naive but gutty viewpoint character was being enrolled in a hidden academy staffed by aliens, which would greatly change him.

The prequel (except for the prolog) was written in the first person, as a drug-assisted debrief of Luis, who knew little about his world’s history and geography. The aliens knew, but as a matter of policy, they didn't talk about them. So to give the story some context, the prolog provided glimpses and hints, embedded in myth, metaphor and mystery.

In the present story, however, much has changed. Luis’s five years in the academy have made him very knowledgeable about his world, its geography, history etc., while leaving him close-mouthed about what he’d learned, because (1) that is policy, and (2) those around him who "have clearance" already know, and don’t need to be reminded. For this story, however, the reader needs to know the basic features of what Luis knows, in order to understand what’s going on.

So I've opened this story with a section I’ve called "Roots"—the roots of the story—composed of seven brief, individually titled pieces. I’m excerpting two of them here. The first of the two, neither Luis nor the Academy knows. The second they know intimately.

Vision Quest
(the opening piece)

Trail-worn and half starved, Mazeppa slipped through the undergrowth. His face, body, limbs, recently shaved head, all bore what was left of medicine paint. Its symbols were to help him on his vision quest—a very unusual vision quest—and only incidentally served as camouflage, breaking up his image.

He was pursued by the shrieks of a blue jay in a giant silver maple. "Man! Man! Man!" it shrieked. "Man! Man! Man!" Mazeppa ignored the racket, and settled onto his belly beside a growth of red osier on the riverbank. After a bit, when he failed to move again, the jay’s clamor became erratic, unsure, as if the bird had forgotten what it was shouting about. Finally it stilled, and the youth heard its departing wing beats. Somewhere on the terrace behind and above him, a nest of baby robins renewed their querulous cries for food. A parent began sharp, demanding chirps. A little later there was a sound of wings again—one mate returning to the nest, the other departing.

For a time, the only sound besides the peeping nestlings was the barely perceptible murmur of the Misasip: the soft drag of its current sliding along the bank, the faint internal play of interweaving eddies and subcurrents. The youth’s empty belly no longer distracted him as it had the first days, and at a subliminal level each sound registered. He heard it all, understood it all. Had there been a hint of anything worrisome, that would have drawn his attention. Meanwhile he simply watched the great river.

Upstream on the far side, another sizeable river joined its waters with the Misasip. At their juncture was an area with many structures—a walled town—and slightly separated from it, a great enclosure of stone, with towers. Palace it was called. A wandering storyteller had stopped at his people’s winter camp several years past, and told of it.

Briefly Mazeppa examined it. Then, on the Misasip itself, a great raft came into view, a broad tent near its stern. It rode the current southward, men lying or moving languidly about. On the stern stood a man holding a long pole that trailed in the water, a long paddle, Mazeppa realized, for steering. As the raft passed, some hundred yards out, a great canoe overtook it from behind, driven by about twenty paddlers, their strokes slow and synchronized. As it overtook the raft, men shouted back and forth. Briefly the raft's steersman sculled as if to keep up, but after a few powerful strokes he stopped, his cheerful call belying the fist he shook.

Shortly both craft disappeared downstream. Soon another great canoe appeared, this one from the south, moving slowly upstream, its paddlers digging more quickly but still smoothly and synchronized. It too had a tent, this one amidships. It seemed to Mazeppa a great chief must lie in its shade, perhaps napping. After a bit it landed below the enclosure’s great stone walls, and men disembarked.

That seemed to end the traffic, leaving the hypnotically murmuring river sliding past, sunlight dazzling on its surface.

Eventually, after an indeterminate interval of near trance, a voice spoke to Mazeppa, not in his ears but in his mind. He’d expected a voice, but this one?... It was, he did not doubt, the voice of Jesus. "Mazeppa," it told him, "someday you will rule all this, you and your people. All of it: the great river and the land along it, including the great town and palace, and all they contain. It is what you were born for."

Then Mazeppa slept. When he awoke, the sun was behind him, low, missing the water entirely, glowing golden on the treetops along the distant bank. Where he lay, dusk was settling. Quietly he crept backward, away from the shore, quietly got to his feet, and quietly returned to his tethered pony, which had spent the day browsing the undergrowth within its reach.

Despite days without eating, Mazeppa vaulted onto its back, ready to return home, no longer a boy, a man now, his vision quest completed. He’d ride west as he’d ridden east, mostly by night, paralleling or following the great trail the Sotans had beaten into the earth with their comings and goings.

For in this land, he was the enemy. He would ride watchfully, listening, his nostrils reading the air, and not just for danger. Now his fast was over, and it was time to kill and eat. There'd be something: a porcupine feeding audibly in a treetop, the smell of its evacuations rank in the night air; or a beaver covered by darkness, dragging a branch to a stream bank. Then he'd dismount, string his bow, nock an arrow and wait, letting his eyes find the target, if they could. Wait till dawn if need be. And after he'd killed, thanked his prey and eaten, he'd hole up in a thicket well away from the Sotan trail, and sleep, dreaming whatever dreams might follow Jesus’s message. Lie up till sunset. The moon would be halfway up the eastern sky then, mostly full, and he could travel swiftly.
__________________

And a few pages farther along:

As Saint Higuchi put it, the Tao ensouled a suitable primate species here on Earth "to evolve out of barbarism in the direction of the angels." But "given the nature and range of human variation, it is often necessary to apply force." Which, within the framework of the Church, is the function of our Order. The trick is to choose actions that appear to maximize long-term benefit-to-harm ratios for humankind. With the corollary that we wield no more force than necessary, with no more notice than need be," while being as honest and truthful as the problems permit." Because "to deceive and defeat in a good cause can be addictively gratifying."

That is an explicit part of the rationale behind our vows of temperance in all things—including "temperance in righteousness."

For "what is called ‘righteousness,’" the Saint wrote, "is typically self-righteousness, which poisons decisions while providing a spurious sense of superiority." Furthermore, few humans can comprehend true righteousness, only suppositional righteousness, which the Saint, in his 11th Axiom, calls "a snare and a pitfall. Suppositional righteousness," he elaborated, "was a serious contributor to Armageddon, and no doubt to most earlier debacles in human history."

So said the Saint, whom Senior Operations Director Eskonsami Tahmm has called a truly enlightened being by standards anywhere in the Commonwealth of Homid Worlds. According to Tahmm, it was Higuchi-sama’s 11th Axiom that so impressed the 5th Xiox Survey Team, resulting in the Cultural Oversight Bureau’s adoption and support of the Order. And in the External Security Secretariat’s approval for establishing the Sangre de Cristo Academy, and afterward other academies on Terra.

In theory this is a straightforward partnership, and probably the best we’re likely to have on Terra until we’ve grown a lot, spiritually and philosophically, which means for quite a while. In fact even cursory study clearly suggests that suppositional righteousness afflicts sapient life forms in general.

Meanwhile we in the Order do the best we can, which based on performance is rather good. Perfection is unavailable to human beings (Axiom 5), or to any ensouled life form in the physical universes.

In fact, imperfection seems unavoidable, given the free-will character that accompanies sapience in the known and implied universes. For "sapience [again according to the Saint] carries with it goals and principles that differ among individuals, and cultures, and societies." And looking beyond humankind, among life forms. And these goals and principles inspire and empower conflicts as minor as what to prepare for supper, and as major as whether to destroy a world.

Love and compassion are our saving graces, but (this time according to Tahmm) they are not known to manifest strongly enough, in the physical universes, to eliminate conflict. Nor are they enforceable. Let me repeat that: nor are love and compassion enforceable. Control is often necessary, but it is a mechanism for coping, not for curing. The sole and necessary mechanisms for curing, and for healing, are love and compassion, which are individual virtues that become social forces through the enlightenment that grows from them. And enlightenment requires living our multiform lives, contending, cooperating, erring. Meditation can be useful, but it is no substitute for living in the world as we find it—making decisions and experiencing the results.

Kabibi Christian
Instructor
__________________________________________________________________

Now we move a little further on, with Luis Raoul DenUyl, the first-person narrator in much (but by no means all) of this novel. Unlike the prequel, here he’s no longer simply a brother in the Order, but a master, and has been assigned a potentially dangerous mission in the Kingdom of Sota.

I spent the rest of the day exploring country lanes in the general neighborhood of the brother house, learning my way around. After supper I talked awhile with three of Carlos and Peng’s new novices, ages fourteen and fifteen, local country boys who knew their way around. We were interrupted by the duty lad, who announced that a royal guardsman was there to see Lemmi, and would I talk to him?

Who in Sota, and a guardsman at that, would be looking for Lemmi? Who even knew he'd been here, except those of us at the brother house, the Sugar Grove rectory, and the offices of the archbishop and the king?

I went down to the parlor and recognized the guy at once—the throne guard Lemmi’d thought was Dinneh, one of his own people. What, I wondered, is this about? He was eighteen or twenty years old, I guessed, and tall. Not entirely filled out yet, but looking strong and tough. Physically. His aura, though? That was something else.

"I’m Master Luis," I said. "Who are you?"

"My name is Stephen Nez," he answered, not meeting my eyes. "I’m a royal guardsman. I was with His Majesty when you and Master Lemmi talked with him. That’s how I knew your names, and how to find you."

He looked worse than uncomfortable; judging from his aura, he might run out of the house at any minute. To relax him a little, I offered my hand. He shook it in what Lemmi called "Dinneh fashion"—a soft grip, though his hand was muscular and well-callused. "Master Lemmi’s on a trip," I told him. "How can I help you, Mr. Nez?"

"I don’t think you can," he said apologetically. "You’re not Dinneh."

"Let’s go outside and talk, where no one can overhear us."

It was still twilight, rich in dusk singers—tree frogs, crickets—and somewhere in the hedgerow a hermit thrush trilling "sweetly enough to break your heart," as my mother put it. "All right," I said, "tell me your problem." That worked better than "how can I help you?" He needed an order, not an invitation.

He’d come to confess a sin, he said, a sin he was afraid to confess to the chaplain at the palace. If he did, it would get him in bad trouble, so he’d hoped Lemmi would hear his confession.

Real trouble, his aura told me. "I can hear confessions," I said, and led him back inside to a confessional off the chapel. Higuchians confess face to face with a master, who provides more than an ear. Keying on the aura, he helps the penitent find the root of the problem, or nearly enough to handle whatever grief or guilt is involved.

A few nights earlier, Stephen told me, he’d taken part in a murder. Under orders from a captain, he and a corporal had taken a captive from a dungeon cell to a room apparently used for executions. There, while Stephen held the captive, the corporal had stabbed the man through an eye socket, the dagger mangling the brain. Then they’d wrapped the corpse in a tarp and loaded it into a small horse cart, a sort of cage on wheels used to transport pigs or sheep or poultry to market. After changing into civilian clothes, they’d hauled the body out of town and buried it, then returned to the guard barracks, where Stephen had lain unable to sleep till after dawn.

What got my attention more than anything else was how his aura behaved as he told his story: it shrank, darkened and muddied worse than it had been to start with. No recovery at all.

"So," I said, "what part of all that was the worst?"

He started to shake, and sparks flew out of his aura like grinding an ax on a dry grindstone. He’d handled the corpse, he told me. Then he got hold of himself and thanked me for hearing his confession. Said it had helped a lot. "If you’ll give me my penance now, father, I’ll carry it out, and square myself with God."

There were two things wrong with that. One, he was still caved in. And two, he was blameless in this. If he’d refused to carry out an order like that one, he’d have been buried beside the victim. So I was overlooking something. I shook my head. "Something’s preventing absolution," I said "Tell me what it is."

His brown face paled to something like gray. "I can never be clean," he said, "till I am freed of that one’s chindi."

It turned out that when someone dies and goes to Purgatory, Stephen’s people believe that more than a corpse is left behind. Associated with it are all the evil acts and thoughts, all the fears and hatreds and griefs and rages of the dead person’s life; its chindi. And if someone handles the corpse, it sticks to him. Even to say the dead person’s name is dangerous.

Fortunately, all this is easily corrected by a religious ceremony called a "sing." It’s routine for people who have to handle the dead. But so far as Stephen knew, he couldn’t get a sing except in the township he was from—the only Dinneh community he knew of—because it required not only a skilled shaman who knew the ceremony, it took the participation of the community. And he couldn’t ask for leave to go home, because he’d have to convince the sergeant major, who didn't know about the murder. A certain captain had ordered it directly, and said no one else was to learn of it. In any case the chaplain would have to approve such a request, and Archbishop Clonarty had declared sings to be pagan, and mortal sins. If a guardsman asked for one, he’d be locked in the dungeon.

"Stephen," I told him, "I have the solution. No one, not even guard commanders—not even kings!—can prohibit someone from joining a religious order. That’s Church law. And if you join the Order of Saint Higuchi, I guarantee you can go home for a sing. Afterward you can resign from the Order if you want to, without penalty as long as you haven’t completed your novitiate and been accepted as a brother. Master Carlos is the chief of the brother house and school, and if you want to do it, and he agrees, your problem is solved. It’s up to you."

He brightened a little, and so did his aura, tentatively. But he needed to get used to the idea, so he asked some questions, and I answered them. He brightened a little more and said he’d do it, so we talked to Carlos. Briefly it seemed we might have a problem after all, because Stephen liked the king. Eldred had been friendly to him—a king friendly to a Dinneh from the northern frontier! So Stephen wanted to go in to Hasty and tell the king he was leaving to join the Order. "It’s the honest thing to do," he explained.

And I was afraid if he did, neither I nor anyone else outide the palace would ever see him again. "Stephen," I said, "if you do that, the king will surely ask you why. And you’ll tell him, and who knows what will happen then. You could be put in the dungeon for helping murder someone. You could be! And while you’re in there, still infected with the dead man’s chindi, that captain you were worried about would have you murdered too."

Luckily that was real to Stephen.