(urth) Short Story 82: The God and His Man

[Marc Aramini]

The God and His Man


 “The God and His Man” first appeared in *Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction
Magazine* in 1980.


 SUMMARY:


 “Once long, long ago, when the Universe was old, the .. god Isid 1000
1000E … came to the world of Zed.” He orbits the planet and sees men and
women upon it, and calls a man of Urth to him, a summons which “cannot be
disobeyed.” He instructs Man to go down to Zed and look at the men, who
herd and farm, and the women, who live in idleness or in toil, just like on
Urth.

 Man says he will go, but that he will never see his family again without
special help, “For the men of Zed are men ... And therefore crueler than
any beast.” The god says he seeks to end that cruelty, and gives him a
cloak of invisibility called Tarnung and a Maser, against which not even
stone can stand.

He is transported to a grove of trees with scarlet flowers, and wanders in
“the high, hot lands where men have few laws and many slaves.” After he
grows ashamed of killing with Maser, he picks up the local weapon, a
crooked sword.


 He gathers a group around him and establishes a citadel in the mountains
after winning wars. Spears and spells protect it. Here he is surrounded by
white domes and fountains, as well as dancers, preoccupied telling stories
of war and victory before tiring of them and disappearing.


 In the steaming lands, he finds trees taller than his towers and men who
fought with stealth and poisoned arrows. He casts his sword into the river,
but keeps Maser. He learns the ways of the trees “of which each is an
island, with its own dwellers thereon” and the ways of the beasts, who are
less clever than men but wiser. He tames a panther and smotes an idol, then
vanishes, and a year later returns to rule, and enjoys the life of a
chieftain, with war canoes, wives kept pale and beautiful, riding an
elephant. He would have stayed there if not for a dream sent by Isid 1000
1000E to seek the cold lands.


 There, “the people of the cold lands keep no slaves and have many laws,
and their justice is the wonder of strangers; and so he found the bread of
the cold lands hard and scant, and for a long time he cleaned boots for it,
and for a long time dug ditches to drain their fields.” In order to free
himself from this low class and toilsome life, he gets rid of his shovel,
cuts a staff, and begins to teach, always beneath a green tree, where he
talked of honor, and how it is higher than law, and freedom. “Beside city
gates he told stories of the forgotten cities that were and of the
forgotten cities that might be, if only men would forget them.” He vanishes
from justice, and “many among the youth of the cold lands heard him, and
many feigned to follow his teachings, and a few did follow them and lived
strange lives.”


 Then Isid 1000 1000E drew him up “as the puppeteer lifts his doll” when
the snow starts, and he finds himself young again before the god, though
his cunning is gone.


 The god asked which of the three peoples loved him and why Man loved them.
He says that the people of the hot lands are unjust without falsity,
helping friends and crushing foes, living without trust. The cold lands
people are just but somewhat unlovable, and the steaming lands are innocent
of the concept of justice, following their hearts, and he loved them best
of all.


 The god claims that the people of the cold lands are the closest to his
heart, and that in time the steaming land must fall to one or the other.
Man pictures the people of the cold lands subjugating the natural world,
and “though they took no slaves [driving] the people of the steaming lands
behind certain fences and walls, where they sat in the dust until they
died.”


 Here the Man thinks that in the hot lands, even though the people of the
steaming lands would have suffered and worked as slaves, some could be
happy.


 Isid says, “It is better a man should die than be a slave.” The Man kills
the god with Maser, and the end questions what happened to man, and who
guards his citadel or sends the arrows of the steaming land.


 “But it may be that all these things now are passed, or they are things of
long ago, when the Universe was old and there were more gods.”


 COMMENTARY: Each of the lands, the hot, steamy, and cold, corresponds to a
type of society. Man experiences each type starting from the bottom and
ascending to the top. (He follows this pattern on the ship of Isid 1000
1000E as well – starting as servant and ending as master).


 The hot lands involved a rigid system that was primitive in its attitudes,
with both slaves and rulers, and his prowess at war allowed him to build an
opulent retreat like a pleasure palace, perhaps reminiscent of ancient
Greece or Rome, where there is definite class separation and slaves as well
as some civilization. Man calls them unjust without falsity. The people
here seem devoid of religious sentiment, so it does not quite fit with an
Aztec or Mayan structure, though the class structure might resemble those
civilizations at times.


 The steamy lands involve a population reminiscent of some of the more
nomadic Native Americans or pygmy forest populations, and rather than
ascend to power through killing, he puts aside his heavy sword and destroys
an idol, setting himself up in its place, where he enjoys a primitive but
free existence as something like a tribal chief – here, his power is gained
through more mystical ends and he can do what he wants to do – there is
freedom.


 In the cold lands, he becomes trapped in a story of low mimesis – an
ordinary man doing ordinary things. His only escape is to do use
philosophy, religion, and mysticism to talk of things beyond the laws.
Here, this spiritual devotion to higher ideals like freedom and honor allow
him to escape a life of labor, but he is at odds with the society, even
though he is “on top” of his followers. Only those mystical eccentricities
grant him escape, and he sees that if the people of the cold land win they
will destroy the freedom of seeking the hearts desire – the images Wolfe
employs are fairly similar to the subjugation of the Native American tribes
in the United States, shunted and penned in to small areas while “no slaves
are taken”.


 The best system for Man was one where he could follow his heart, a natural
one where mysticism rather than war could triumph, but one where honor and
freedom where not curtailed by excessive laws and burdensome jobs – the
story rejects the modern world in favor of a much more primitive one.


 The mixture of hot (passionate and alive but not free) and cold (governed
by laws and “justice” but still somehow not free) creates the steam (the
people follow their hearts free of the concerns of true civilization).


 Since the god Isid 1000 1000E here represents extreme order and justice,
he also comes to represent an almost ironic impediment to freedom and
individuality. Man destroys him and completes his ascension from bottom to
top, though clearly Isid 1000 000E is another man made construct which has
assumed the power of a “god”, even though it pays lip service to justice
and to eliminating cruelty.


 The death of Isid is surprising from the pen of the Catholic Gene Wolfe,
but perhaps more inherent in the rebellion of Man is the rejection of the
modern world, with its overarching rules and spirit killing jobs – freedom
is destroyed. Isid is more like a future outgrowth of society, a man made
computer God, than a mystical one who cherishes true free will to follow
the heart.


 It has been claimed that this is one of the stories from the brown
book in *The
Book of the New Sun*.


 Urth is named after the goddess of fate who personified the past, and the
ending substantiates this naming system – these events happened long ago,
and since then artificial gods have been cast down.


 In his comments in *The Best of Gene Wolfe*, Wolfe states:


 This is a story of which I cannot say anything of real substance. On its
first publication, the word *maser* was changed by the proof-reader (I was
told, at least, that it was by the proofreader) to *master*. Not all the
time, only sometimes The stories of other writers have suffered worse
things, but when I read this one … I can focus on nothing else. Most of you
will already know what a maser is: a microwave amplifier. Let us say you
have this microwave, one that will scarcely hold a sixteen-inch frozen
pizza. With a maser, you could make it a great big house-sized thing you
might induce a proofreader to walk into …


 It is likely Tarnung was capable of affecting light waves. It is German
for camouflage or disguise.


 LITERARY ALLUSIONS:


 “The God and His Man” resembles the short fantasy fables of Lord Dunsany,
and never seems to reach the level of allegory.


 I do feel that Northrop Frye's nomenclature would be useful in looking at
the cultures present on Zed, such that we could see high mimesis in the hot
lands where people can forge their own destiny, possibly mythic strains in
the steaming lands, and low mimesis in the cold lands were ordinary people
are trapped in mundane and banal tasks with little chance of escape except
rejecting the system and becoming outcasts.



 UNANSWERED QUESTIONS:


 While Zed is the French for the letter Z, implying a kind of finality, is
there any significance to Isid 1000 1000E besides resembling a serial
number? It is said that he has other names.


 CONNECTION TO OTHER WORKS:


 Wolfe's critique of the modern world continues in “Four Wolves” and
“Redwood Coast Roamer”, but the attitude of a ruler who understands his
subjects needs poorly will be repeated in the gods of the Whorl. This story
is slightly more didactic than some of Wolfe's other literary myths, like
“Love Among the Corridors” or “At the Point of Capricorn.”
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