(urth) Short Story 5: Mountains Like Mice

[Craig Brewer]

Perhaps the missing mesquite beans point to the marmots he considers hunting right after? Or, on the other hand, that they never fell and the the tree is barren? (This could go with the virus/vaccines in the mountains bit.)



________________________________
 From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com>
To: urth at lists.urth.net 
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 9:32 PM
Subject: (urth) Short Story 5: Mountains Like Mice
 
Mountains like Mice
This is Gene’s first “SF” sale to Worlds of If in 1966.  It is extremely unlike the previous stories in that it is much longer and there is an “adventure” element to it.

SUMMARY:  The story opens with Dirk being colored head to toe in a dark purple dye (like wild grapes) for his “Retreat” into the desert wilderness of his world outside the safe confines of his school.  It appears as though it is something like a closed monastery or college environment, or perhaps like the Guild in the New Sun books.  It is fairly clear that if he fails in Retreat, he will become a “Captive .  Avoiding capture for a set time seems to be the path to becoming a Master – yet it does not seem that it is the small gyrda which Dirk must avoid, but the larger people with whom he has safely lived his life so far.  Those who fail are left as Captives, like the fat, sly man dying him, Otho.  The title comes into play in the first page when Dirk thinks of his Master Theophilus talking about “the mountains like mice” … but Dirk thinks that Theophilus is thinking of stealth and disease and other things when he says it.  

His education at the school seems to be mostly cause and effect rather than “facts” which are reserved for the masters.  This quote is extremely important:  “From the wall, a raven which had been perched with its back arrogantly toward them as it stared out over the desert suddenly launched itself thrashing into the air.  Outlined for a moment like a heraldic figure, black against the blaze of the afternoon sky, it brought to the young man a sudden personal realization of the frighteningly complex linkage between cause and effect, stimulus and response, which guides every living creature.  Above all others this was the concept his instructors had droned at him daily until he had almost learned to ignore it.”  Yet the raven lands on the buffoonish Otho.  Masters can “control all sorts of animals; summon the hawks from the sky.”  He sees Master Aleksandr enter the courtyard on a horse.  Dirk vows to head right for the mountains during
 his
retreat, primarily because the mountains harbor “the original owners of the ground”.  

In the morning he is taken to begin his retreat, and Otho offers him a bottle that will supposedly counteract the dye so he can simply avoid being taken and associate with normal people before returning to the school after a few months, basically taking the easy way out.  Otho disappears rather dexterously, but Dirk hears a commotion and sees a larger human in the distance being hustled off by four smaller gyrda (they may be the poor or pretty people mentioned in the text, like fairies).  He thinks Otho has been taken, so he gives pursuit, following their trail up a mountain.

He comes across a man chained on a large rock on a plateau, where the man can contemplate the blue star in the sky.  It turns out to be Master Aleksandr instead of Otho, and he warns him to avoid the left side of the rock, for a hamadrayad/cobra de capello lurks there to “guard” Aleksandr.  They try to free him, but Dirk’s knife will not suffice, so they use the trick of Hannibal recorded in Livy: placing a bit of tree in a small hole in the rock, wetting it with crude wine or vinegar to make it expand, shattering the rock.  Here Aleksandr reveals that they are on Mars – perhaps partially terraformed, but mostly inhabitable.  The gyrda are the humans who have been genetically altered to acclimate and survive on Mars – poor people would volunteer to have their reproductive cells “changed” in such a fashion.  It appears as though the Gyrda have captured Master Aleksandr to force him to contemplate that blue star of the Motherworld –
 Earth,
so that he will be impelled to work hard to return there.  Earth has cut off Mars, so the super educated great-grandparents of this generation have descended into a mostly illiterate “survivor’s” culture – the gyrda seem to be roguish, but can still perform scientific feats like creating the hamadryad.  Only the biological sciences have survived while the hard sciences have died out, and Aleksandr, as a master, can control the beast to some degree.

Hannibal’s moisturized tree branch in the rock works, and Dirk rescues Aleksandr, who allows an unconventional meeting with Master Theophilus before the end of the Retreat.  There, Theophilus reveals that the “mountains as mice” saying meant that the mice are experimental animals, and the mountains have been injected with all the viruses and vaccines to see which one will result in the dominant survivor on Mars (so the Gyrda, the retreatants, and even Dirk are like those viruses and vaccines).  Only the gyrda were meant to stay there forever, but the scientists and their offspring have been abandoned by Earth, so they must adapt.  A second wave of altered humans that have more heart and racial affinity for the customs of Earth will be attempted, and it is revealed that if Dirk had used the dye remover Otho gave him, he would have died, as they cannot afford cheaters in positions of power, where the true knowledge of their position in the universe
is revealed.

COMMENTARY:  The concluding commentary makes it clear that Dirk is the next attempt at “colonizing” Mars – “’The wise men who composed the gyrda left out the heart,’ Theophilus said slowly.  ‘They are quick and clever with tools and more fit for Mars than men are, but they have no hearts.  Did you know, Dirk, that Aleksander’s name means “defender of men?”  And mine is “dear to God” we are descended from the Russia and the Greek contingents originally, I suppose.  That was the sort of thing that was forgotten THE FIRST TIME.’”

The conclusion makes it clear that THIS retreat has been Dirk's trial run, or an experiment: “’Would you accept it if the changed men were to be no less human than you are, Dirk?’As the two of them were walking back to the academy, Otho chuckled.  ‘No less human than he is himself!’ Master Theophilus reminded him tartly that a fool should not speak.”
So judging from that exchange, Dirk is the second wave of altered “humanity” engineered to live on Mars, and his trial two-fold: not to put the dye dissolver on his skin and honestly pass the “retreat” – and to have compassion on a fellow and act to save him.  Whether the gyrda are being controlled by a master like Theophilus or not is unclear, but Aleksander can clearly control the hamadryad/cobra de capello with his thoughts.  The allusion to mountain like mice is from a biologist’s perspective – to make a true surviving race on Mars that will still have some affinity for its human origin.  Dirk is that experimental factor inserted into the system of the mountains.

What about those “original owners” mentioned living in the Mountains?  Why are the Mountains “safe” for a retreatant?  

ALLUSIONS:  I suppose I must list Burroughs Barsoom/Mars books as an influence, with that purple fellow running around on Mars instead of green or red ones , but I don’t think it is a particularly revealing or important distinction to make.  Perhaps Vance works like the Planet of Adventure are similiar, but they are pretty continguous in time so I think that was just the zeitgeist of scifi at a time when stories like "Rose for Ecclesiastes" kind of became the "seal of the prophets" on the habitable Mars obsession of sci fi.

Livy and Hannibal are directly mentioned, as are the meanings of names.  As a result, it behooves us to look up the meanings of the names we have: Dirk, Otho, and the gyrda.  The story claims the name gyrda comes from a measure of distance half the height of a man – the yard, 3 feet, or the latin gradus, 2.5 feet?  Dirk means leader of the people (or it could be a dagger). Otho seems to mean wealthy.  Gyrda – feminine plural for gods in Scandinavian.  With their fairy-like comportment it seems that this may be an appropriate name for them.  They are 1/3 the weight of Aleksandr and much shorter.  They are referred to as the pretty or poor people, and this later makes sense when it is revealed that poor people volunteer their progeny and ovum for these experimental changes.

POSSIBLE AMBIGUITIES: Where there Martians before the gyrda?  Is Otho really “in the know” as a master pretending to be a captive with his power over that Raven and his knowledge of Dirk’s real “humanity”?  Why did the Gyrda want Aleksandr to look at Earth – simply to spur him to want to go back there and make scientific effort towards that goal?  What does it tell Dirk when there are no Mesquite beans under the Mesquite tree?  That a flying animal has taken them?

RELIGIOUS CONNOTATION: Almost non-existent, though perhaps Aleksander chained on the rock to look up at the blue star of earth by the gyrda is a mythic resonance with either Prometheus or Loki.  The cobra, called a hamadryad, guarding him there does seem to also resonate with the Loki myths where the serpent guards him, but this serpent is kind of ineffectual.  It does kill a wolf, though, to display its ferocity.  The gyrda as scandinavian gods or fairies without a heart is perhaps interesting to think of, as if all this scientific meddling has brough back nature spirits that have little humanity.

FUTURE ECHOES: I hate to say it, but calling a cobra de capello a hamadrayd/tree spirit certainly seems to evoke the snakelike liana vine inhumi.  Also, the “right” species for a planet seems to hearken to Fifth Head of Cerberus … and a tense Mars/Earth relationship does seem to presage Operation Ares.  Once again, our main character does not know that he is different from everyone else in the story, as a test run for the “new” altered human fit to live on Mars permanently.  Also, the idea of looking for cause and effect as an obsessive drill seems extremely Wolfean.

Also, the wolf is pretty prevalent in this, “the high pitched howl of one of the little desert wolves, a sound he had heard often while stretched on his cot in the dormitory, seemed friendly and familiar” when he is ready to start his retreat, and later the hamadrayad eats a wolf to intimidate the prisoner of the Gyrdas.

_______________________________________________
Urth Mailing List
To post, write urth at urth.net
Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20120329/8e5617fc/attachment-0004.htm>