Roger Zelazny Book Review: From far, from eve and morning - And yon twelve-winded sky - The stuff of life to knit me - Blew hither: here am I

It's time for another Zelazny post!

Today's topic will be...

*spins the Wheel of Roger*

(I don't really have a big wheel of fortune labeled with Roger Zelazny titles mounted on my wall, but I'm starting to think seriously about getting one)

...a review of "For a Breath I Tarry".

For a breath I Tarry is a novelette (I thought it was a novella, but Wikipedia tells me otherwise), the story of which is, in its most basic form, Faust with robots. It also draws on the Book of Job and A Shropshire Lad.

Dramatis Personae:

Solcom: Mankind is extinct, but our machines still fulfill their imperatives. "High, in a permanent orbit, Solcom, like a blue star, directed all activities upon the Earth, or tried to." Solcom was programmed to oversee maintenance of the earth and that's what it does. It is opposed by...

Divcom: The Alternate. "When man had placed Solcom in the sky, invested with the power to rebuild the world, he had placed the Alternate somewhere deep below the surface of the Earth. If Solcom sustained damage during the normal course of human politics extended into atomic physics, then Divcom, so deep beneath the Earth as to be immune to anything save total annihilation of the globe, was empowered to take over the processes of rebuilding. Now it so fell that Solcom was damaged by a stray atomic missile, and Divcom was activated. Solcom was able to repair the damage and continue to function, however."

Divcom maintained that any damage to Solcom automatically placed the Alternate in control. Solcom, though, interpreted the directive as meaning "irreparable damage" and, since this had not been the case, continued the functions of command. And both would build, and both would tear down what the other had built whenever they came upon it.

Frost: The main character. A robot assembled when Solcom was suffering a discontinuity of complementary functions, best described as madness. This was brought on by an unprecedented solar flareup which lasted for a little over thirty-six hous. It occurred during a vital phase of circuit-structuring, and when it was finished so was Frost. Solcom was then in the unique position of having created a unique being duing a period of temporary amnesia. And Solcom was not certain that Frost was the product originally desired. The initial design had called for a machine to be situated on the surface of the planet Earth, to function as a relay station and coordinating agent for activities in the northern hemisphere. He was a silverblue box, 40x40x40 feet, self-powered, self-repairing, insulated against practically anything, and featured in whatever manner he chose. His hobby is man.

Beta: Frost's counterpart and overseer of the Southern Hemisphere. Her responsibility includes the last remaining city of mankind, Bright Defile, which is a very cool name.

Mordel: My favorite chracter. "It was a tiny machine compared to Frost, perhaps five feet in width, four in height - a revolving turret set atop a rolling barbell." A servant of Divcom, though he did not enter into that service voluntarily. He gets all the best lines.

The story is about Frost's quest to understand the nature of Man, who is by now long extinct. It opens with a conversation between Solcom and Divcom, echoing the exchange between God and Satan in the Book of Job. Frost takes an interest in mankind, and vows that he will in essence, become a man. He makes a deal with the Devil, Divcom, in exchange for the collected stores of mankind's lore. If he succeeds, he will become a man. If he fails, he will be taken beneath the earth to serve Divcom for so long as he continues to function. He is not the first to make this bargain.

Mordel: "You are aware that you would be forced to keep your end of the bargain even if you did not wish to; and Solcom would not come to your assistance because of the fact that you dared to make such a bargain."

Frost: "Do you speak as one who considers this to be a possibility, or as one who knows?"

Mordel: "As one who knows."

Frost goes so far as to construct analogues of the human sensory equipment, so that I may see and smell and taste and hear like a man, and attempts to reason his way to understanding Man.

Mordel drove a shaft of metal downward into the snow.

He retracted it, raised it, held up a piece of ice.

"Regard this piece of ice, mighty Frost. You can tell me its composition, dimensions, weight, temperature. A Man could not look at it and do that. A Man could make tools which would tell Him these things, but He still would not know measurement as you know it. What He would know of it, though, is a thing that you cannot know."

"What is that?"

"That it is cold," said Mordel and tossed it away.

"'Cold' is a relative term."

"Yes. Relative to Man." (My very favorite line in the story)

"But if I were aware of the point on a temperature scale below which an object is cold to a Man and above which it is not, then I, too, would know cold."

"No," said Mordel, "you would possess another measurement. 'Cold' is a sensation predicated upon human physiology."

"But given sufficient data I could obtain the conversion factor which would make me aware of the condition of matter called 'cold'."

"Aware of its existence, but not of the thing itself."

"I do not understand what you say."

"I told you that Man possessed a basically incomprehensible nature. His perceptions were organic; yours are not. As a result of His perceptions He had feelings and emotions. These often gave rise to other feelings and emotions, which in turn caused others, until the state of His awareness was far removed from the objects which originally stimulated it. These paths of awareness cannot be known by that which is not-Man. Man did not feel inches or meters, pounds or gallons. He felt fear, He felt cold; He felt heaviness and lightness. He knew hatred and love, pride and despair. You cannot measure these things. You cannot know them. You can only know the things that He did not need to know: dimensions, weights, temperatures, gravities. There is no formula for a feeling. There is no conversion factor for an emotion."

"There must be," said Frost. "If a thing exists, it is knowable."

"You are speaking again of measurement. I am talking about a quality of experience. A machine is a Man turned inside-out, because it can describe all the details of a process, which a Man cannot, but it cannot experience that process itself as a Man can."

"There must be a way," said Frost, "or the laws of logic, which are based upon the functions of the universe, are false."

"There is no way," said Mordel.

"Given sufficient data, I will find a way," said Frost.

"All the data in the universe will not make you a Man, mighty Frost."

"Mordel, you are wrong."

I guess that's why I like the story so much. "If a thing exists, it is knowable." That's a theme expressed elsewhere in Zelazny's work. Yama makes the distinction between the unknown and the unknowable. It really resonates with my point of view. It may not be possible to know everything, but it's always worth trying.

FROM far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I.

Now—for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart—
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.

Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters
I take my endless way.