Interstellar Anthropologist, Part 10: Home Unknown

Fortis noticed George used the small electronic display sheet for navigation, mounting it near the steering controls. “George, you don’t have the common navigational beacons around this planet, for obvious reasons. How does your navigation system work?”

“Every planet — every celestial body — has a magnetic polarity. The instrument reads it and reports direction, but as you noted, can’t tell us much about latitude, since that’s not a matter of polarity.”

Fortis asked, “Does electromagnetism work here on Misty?”

“It does. You may recall that technology was deprecated during the period on Terra just before the discovery of hyperspace. There was a craze with wireless power transmissions and devices proliferated. The fields around most people were so numerous and intense, it caused all sorts of medical problems. Once the scientists realized the connection, and the information got out, popular pressured demanded alternatives. The use of electromagnetic fields became one of those unwritten cultural taboos, though we know very weak ones aren’t really so harmful. The problem here is the fields generated are weaker than on most other planets. And the hardware required is an expensive import for us.”

So the spooler Fortis carried was not necessarily useless baggage. He tested it and found if he held the device against his head, he could read from it. The technology worked both ways, of course, so Fortis spent some hours that first full day of sailing dumping all the anthropological data George had given him. Between the chip in his head and spooler’s own artificial intelligence, the information was reduced algorithmically to take up comparatively little memory space on the device, fully indexed and searchable.

He showed the spooler to George. “In the case something should happen to me, I would ask you try to return this thing to my ship. There’s a slot near the ladder where you can insert this. The ship’s computer will read it automatically. It contains instructions for the ship to return to my home planet unpiloted with the data.”

George turned it over in his hand. “Not a bad idea. I would surely be willing to try, and will inform others as necessary. So far there is little we’ve discussed which could return to haunt us here on Misty.”

He handed it back and Fortis poked it into the pocket made for it. He announced gravely to George, “I’m not recording anything else. It seems I am forced by circumstances to cross the line, now.”

“I could take you back to your ship, if you wish,” George offered.

Fortis sat down. “No. Whatever it is I came to do officially is finished, but my own personal mission has just begun.”

“You know you can’t go back, then. You may be able to return physically, but you will be an alien to your own past.” George was quite serious, but his expression held its normal subtle exuberance.

Fortis accepted that without further discussion. “Something tells me mysticism isn’t really about predicting the future, as everyone assumed it was for the emperors.”

George’s smile twisted on one side. “It was never about future, past or present, really. Mysticism is focused on the ultimate reality of things regardless of time and events. The imperial mystical tutors were responding to things science can neither grasp nor explain. Human intellect is rather confined to what can be measured. For all the wonders of advancements in materials, artificial intelligence, medicine, psychology, exploration of celestial phenomena, particles, fields, and such, they still can’t reach a grand unified theory of the universe. That answer lies outside the universe.”

Fortis gazed off at the fuzzy horizon. “The old paradox of anthropology is you can’t really study it from the outside, but once inside, you can’t be truly objective.”

Fiddling with the steering controls, George noted, “It’s almost the reverse image for mysticism. You don’t go into mysticism; you come out of the object realm. So called ‘objective reality’ is the confined space, a prison you escape.”

Fortis cocked his head to one side. “I thought the only way to get outside of reality was to die.”

George sat down again. “There is more than one kind of death.”

A lot of things died in Fortis, but some rather slowly. It was his life long exposure to planets with distinct polar climates which made him expect a long dreary voyage northward, but Misty’s climate was virtually the same every place. In less than a week they sailed past inhabited islands and spotted other boats sailing the sea. There were no storms, just sometimes a little more wind. It never rained, but it was always somewhat dampish, especially during the relative darkness of night. He became comfortable sleeping in the open air with a blanket, and under a small awning to ward off the heavy mists of night.

Eventually he forced himself to eat the repulsive little fish necessary to supplement the lack of sunlight. The complete lack of direct sunlight would have been oppressive, depressive even, had he not been so utterly absorbed in the questions brought to life by his embrace of mysticism. Thus, while he felt as a bird leaving its cage, he found the cloudy embrace of Misty rather comforting in removing distractions of extreme variability in his surroundings.

Still, even after some three weeks, his eyes fully adjusted, he didn’t see as well as George.

“There,” George was pointing off into the hazy horizon. “I can see the spire on the hilltop of the southern approach to the largest city in this region. It bears the flag of Clan Johnston.”

Fortis strained to see it, but detected nothing through the intervening mist. “You told me there were precious few permanent buildings on Misty. I take it there are some here?”

“Yes. But most of them are simply static frames with the same tent fabric for covering. That’s always been enough here on Misty, and we have compelling reasons for clinging to semi-nomadic living. That’s not so much a part of mysticism itself, but a peculiarity of our religion.”

So far, Fortis had gained only a bare, intellectual view of the dominant religion on Misty. He knew that it was based in a very primitive version of Christianity, but there were a plethora of religions in the galaxy claiming that. Yet they were all incredibly varied in ritual and intellectual content of teaching. Most were hardly more than a cultural variation with similar terminology and key phrases. Most still made some reference to the ancient Book, but that seemed about all they had in common. George had not yet said much about doctrine.

Turning back to Fortis, George said, “This city has one of the best academies for our religion, and you’ll learn more from them than you would me. It will be perplexing, to be sure, at first. Still, you’ve already passed the greatest barrier. Without the mystical approach, you’ll never really understand any part of it, except perhaps a confusing array of external manifestations. We still have a great many people among us who can’t get that far, but we do our best not to alienate them. They have their place. Misty is their home, too, and mysticism isn’t required for full participation in life. You could, given time, grasp what our religion is like for them, but you wouldn’t really understand it.”

In the silence, George stepped back over to the steering station and idly checked the controls. Fortis turned back from the horizon with a half-smile. “So the name of your planet is more a pun.”

George threw back his head in full laughter. Still chuckling, “Now I can say to you truly, welcome to Mystical Misty.”

(The first book ends here. The story continues in the sequel, of course.)