The Pillars of Eternity

Hyton paused again. ‘That is why you must be introduced gradually to the effects of these functions. They are designed to be used in a condition of high ataraxy, or your mind could be blown. For that reason fail-safe fuses are installed, but just the same … we estimate that your functions should be switched on gradually over a period of years.’

‘Years?’ the young Boaz said. He sounded alarmed. ‘How many years am I supposed to stay here?’

There was nothing they could do to hold him, short of unethical imprisonment. All his early years his true character, cowed and beaten, had been given no chance to express itself. Now he was freed of the harshness of Corsair; his true nature was beginning to show, and it turned out that his character was an impetuous one. He yearned to roam, and his restlessness became a knot of frustration that could not tolerate any restraint.

He stuck it out for two months, during which time he learned to handle the felicity function up to setting four. Then he announced that he was going.

Hyton tried to persuade him against it; Madrigo made no attempt to do so. Boaz was adamant. He was eager to experience life; the remaining control syllables could wait until he was ready. He promised only that while he was away he would strive at all times for ataraxy, and that he would return so that the experiment could continue.

He went. And he did the bonemakers a great service.

He found out their basic mistake.

To own his own ship was still his goal, but for that he would need extensive financial credit. Meantime he entered the cargo trade as a hired hand, serving first on a cheap tatty scow with her tubes half rotted, then working his way up to the larger lines. He did gain experience of life, on a score of worlds, and the galaxy was as colorful as anything he could have imagined…. Sometimes he would feel sorry for his tormentors back on Corsair. They, like him, would be grown men and women now, but it was unlikely that many of them would have got offplanet. To imagine their no doubt dreary lives gave him a feeling of vengeful satisfaction that only his philosophical training prevented him from revelling in….

He kept his promise. As the years passed, he did go back to Aurelius, several times, and spent months at a time there. Mostly, though, it was Madrigo who gave him his attention. The bonemakers, disappointed at not finding him permanently at their disposal, had located new, more co-operative subjects. Hyton himself, in fact, had been installed with silicon bones, and the number of bonemen and bonewomen was increasing. Still, Boaz could boast of being the first. They checked him out, debriefed him, gave him a few more syllables, the first settings of other functions. Meantime, Boaz saved as hard as he could….

No longer so young, he grew mature….

… day 29, month 3, year 716 standard time….

H819 was an anomalous planet. It was lifeless, but it had a breathable atmosphere, if you didn’t mind breathing in sulphides along with it or else wore an air filter. The oxygen was belched out by numerous volcanoes whose intense heat apparently split some underground oxide such as water. Boaz arrived there as a crewman on a ship bringing equipment to an alchemical research station. The company he worked for had decided to switch him to another ship, so he was left onplanet to wait for his new berth to pick him up.

He remembered craggy cliffs and burning cones, nothing moving except the constant movement of rocks dislodged by frequent ground tremors….

Alchemy was not a popular sect. Colonnader cosmology was the one most universally respected in man-inhabited space; the most scientific, the most proven. And while it had its variants and deviations, alchemy was not one of them. Alchemists were famous for spreading noxious and dangerous gases, dusts and radiations through their ill-considered experiments, and were forbidden to practice their art on more worlds than not; hence this station on a dead world where they could harm no one but themselves. In place of the stoical calm of the colonnaders, they had a reputation for mental aberration and reckless improvisation, for being unable to restrain their burning zeal for chemical discovery.

By now sufficiently schooled in philosophy to be able to call himself a colonnader, Boaz felt curious about doctrines that were rivals of his own. Alchemical work was exotic enough for him to feel attracted to the alchemists despite their dour and over-intense manner. He became friendly with Dorsuse, the chief artifex at the station, and this individual indulged him to the extent of using him as an untrained assistant in the main laboratory.