The paint is old and cracked now, but the design is unmistakable and has brought comfort down the centuries to legions of sufferers. I hope you can picture her. I am, as I say, an autoscribe. I came to consciousness and had my first circuits inscribed before the War of Knowledge. We antique autoscribes are a diminishing number for obvious reasons. Certainly, when the day comes that my etched silica plates and fine bio-crystalline tendrils can no longer cope with the complex of signals that keep me viable and I transform rogue, there will be no question of finding spare parts.
The planet where I was made has been ash for many years. However, let us hope that that day is not close. At present I work in the same monastery as Lily. Francis Dionysos, and it is one of the four monasteries located on the planet Juniper. We are a centre of learning and healing.
Juniper is a small temperate world with shallow seas, many thousands of islands and few large landmasses. I am told that in shape I resemble a helmet of the type used by the Greek warriors at the battle of Troy. If that helps you visualize me, all well and good. But you must also realize that I am four and a half feet high from my base to the tip of my crest.
I have also been described as looking like a grey church bell cast from iron and even the evacuation nozzle from a satellite shuttle. So take your pick. There are slits on my surface which, if we are thinking of helmets, would have allowed a warrior to see out. In my case these slits are the protected orifices through which I hear and speak. Firmly attached to my domed top is a crescent blade and this contains and protects my bio-crystalline brain and my multitude of scanning devices. Omega gravity cells look like bronze studs hammered round my base.
These enable me to lift, fly and swoop. They are very strong and should my gravity cells ever fail, these dexetels can carry my weight. In movement I would then look like a common, albeit giant, garden snail. I have a tuneable voice ranging from soprano and tenor through contralto to basso. In addition I have full printing capability in my rear compartment and massive powers of reference. I can translate all widely used languages and can read many that are no longer spoken. As befits an autoscribe, I provide secretarial assistance to the Magister of the monastery.
When the Magister is sleeping, I can usually be found dangling in the library where I translate, correlate and investigate records. My great interest is History. For the time being, these descriptions of Lily and myself must suffice. Please be aware that in ascribing gender to either of us I am merely following convention for Lily is no more a she than I am a he.
You will discover more about us later for I have come to realize that no human, no matter how wise, can possibly understand how Lily and I saved Jon Wilberfoss and brought him back to his right mind, without first appreciating the influences that have shaped our bio-crystalline brains and the forces that make us tick. I knew Jon Wilberfoss in a general way from the time he first joined the monastery and came for a training period to Juniper.
In those early days he was just another young pilot filled with battle yearning and I did not pay him much attention. There are many such. For most of them the sojourn at the Pacifico Monastery is a quiet and possibly boring prelude to the more hectic life at Assisi Central. Few of the young pilots find their way to the archive section of the library, fewer still take a real interest in history. Jon Wilberfoss was no exception though I can recall that there was a seriousness and a wistfulness about him. He served his time here and then departed for Assisi.
He saw active service on a variety of worlds and distinguished himself in alien contact work only to be reassigned to duty here. This was most unusual. Successful contact operatives are highly prized. They are protected and trained and their missions are carefully graded. I now know that this was a period during which Wilberfoss was being tested by the Senior Confreres of Assisi.
Wilberfoss however saw his downgrading from deep space Contact Pilot to local Ferryman as an act of Fate and as such something to be pondered on but not resisted. Wilberfoss returned to the Pacifico Monastery on Juniper. If he was saddened by this turn of events he did not show it. Yet in retrospect I can say that there was always something bated about him, an air of suspension, a tranquillity that yet was not quite peace.
I believe that in his heart he hungered for the excitement and responsibility of contact work. But he accepted his lot. Then he fell in love with and married one of the native Talline women of Juniper named Medoc. Wilberfoss quickly settled down to the quiet, domestic occupation of being a husband, then a father.
He became the ferryman for the local transit and cargo system. His life became as predictable as the ticking of a clock. Love conquered ambition, or seemed to. He found satisfaction in love. I know nothing of such satisfaction naturally though I know a great deal about human love from observation. I know for example that love and vanity can have a close relationship in the human psyche though superficially they are frequently seen as opposed.
Let me admit that in writing this biography I have taken some liberties. I have never written a biography before and so have had to learn how to do it as I went along. You will notice digressions, abrupt changes of direction, the occasional cul-de-sac and sections where I find it necessary to pause and reflect and gather daisies.
Sometimes facts have been hard to come by. I have learned more about being human from working with Jon Wilberfoss than is, perhaps, good for a simple bio-crystalline entity such as myself. I am aware as I write this preface that I do not know quite how this biography will end for there are several endings possible and many of them unrealized as of this moment. Finally, I suppose biography is a sub-species of fiction. No one ever tells the truth, simply because truth is an attribute of reality and reality is beyond the scope of art. All of this is an elaborate way of warning you that I have made up things when I have needed to, as when describing events which happened but at which I was not present.
I have tried to be fair. I showed this manuscript to Senior Confrere Wilberfoss during the later period of his convalescence and he asked me to change nothing. I am a machine, and I have approached the human as closely as I can.
Being a machine I have perhaps been able to stare fixedly at those things which make a human blench. I do not for example suffer from moral guilt or despair and hence can look at the temptation to suicide and see it for what it is. Despair is the dark unreality that humans so frequently live with. Lily and I look on and try to help. Being machines we offer no threat and I find it interesting that Wilberfoss mentioned so many times that he found it easier to talk to us because we were machines than to a fellow human being. I think that was meant as a compliment.
Let me turn it on its head. Let me tell you: What I am saying is that it is not difficult to sound like a human. But being a human is not easy. I have watched the struggle. I have heard humans affirming lies and denying truths. I have seen people choose hell over heaven and rejoice in the fact. As I say, I have watched the struggle, and if I knew what envy was I would say with great certainty that I, Wulf, the autoscribe, do not envy any of you, not a one.
I have already mentioned that I love History. What more you need to know is that like all historians, I seek to discover patterns of cause and effect. Whether it be the fall of sparrows and princes or the rise of Superpowers or the effect of disease, famine and drugs on the vitality of populations, there are always patterns, and these can be discovered by the patient historian. LIFE, as it is being lived, seems to be Chaos. And Chaos is an enemy to both man and machine. In the course of his life a man moves from hurdle to hurdle, from crisis to crisis and counts himself lucky if, at the end of the day, when the light begins to fade he can enjoy peace and a quiet death.
Life by its very nature does not allow or encourage contemplation. I am not subject to life or death and so can contemplate even when I am burning. The soaring eagle sees patterns which are denied to the running mouse, and I like to think that historians, at least in their art if not in their life, are eagles. And of course, a mosaic for such I call this book is a pattern which requires the eye of distance for it to make good sense.
In the case of Senior Confrere Jon Wilberfoss, we have a life which I can not deny has something of tragic inevitability about it.
A happy man, brought to ruin… or near ruin. His ending, however, is not tragic. It is the near tragedy which concerns me, for we can all learn from that. Jon Wilberfoss was a gifted man who had found some happiness. Then Fate stepped in and took hold of his life and shook it like a dog that is killing a rat. I do not know that I believe in Fate. As a machine I am detached from the rhythms and patterns that human beings detect in their lives, which is not to say that I can not detect patterns in my own period of consciousness.
I am, after all, a trained pattern detector. The difference is that I do not ascribe metaphysical significance to my patterns of experience while Jon Wilberfoss does, or did. He saw his whole life as shaped by Fate from the day he stumbled into an outpost of the Gentle Order of St Francis Dionysos and took his first vows. However, since I can not explain the first cause of things better, I must defer to him. We will let Fate stand.
The sound of stone tapping on wood. It is an urgent sound and at the same time it is discrete. It is not a sound for all ears… a lover trying to wake his sleeping mistress might knock in this way. Then the tapping begins again, slightly harder. It reaches into the sleeping mind of Jon Wilberfoss and chivvies him, raising him to consciousness from a strange dream in which he was standing on a road and a brown eyed cow was in front of him, blocking his path over a narrow bridge across a swiftly flowing stream.
Definitely louder this time. For be certain, the one that is knocking will not go away unanswered. Jon Wilberfoss rolled away from his wife, turning his head from the musky tousle of her hair and releasing his arm from the warmth under her breasts. She, Medoc by name, an alien woman of the indigenous people called the Tallines, murmured like the sea uttering words of her own language and turned on her back, moist lips open. For a brief moment her fingers touched and caressed his naked body touching his chest and then gliding down to his thighs.
Reassured she relaxed and released him and slid from a dream of horses to a dream of houses and so back down into the bottomless deep of sleep. Jon Wilberfoss was waking up. He drew the covers back slowly and blinked in the shadowy room. Already his dreams were fleeing into oblivion and he knew who he was and where he was. A man such as Wilberfoss, a trained combatant, did not wake with a lot of ballyhoo. His early training reached deep into his subconscious. He lay still for several moments, aware that his awaking had an external cause and strained to catch the slightest irregular sound.
Consciously he breathed silently and deeply to quieten his pulse. When he was confident that there was nothing unexpected in the chamber, he rose from the bed, a shadow among shadows, and moved across the room to find his gown. He dragged it over his shoulders with barely a rustle and then crossed to the door. The door squeaked when he opened it and the sound seemed loud in his ears: But the wife did not wake. Outside in the stone flagged corridor, the passage lights, sensing his presence, began to glow softly. That they were not already glowing gave him confidence that there was no intruder and he smiled at himself, at his own apprehension.
Indeed, what intruder could there be here in the heart of the Pacifico Monastery and in a house where the alien goddesses of Juniper held equal sway with St. Francis Dionysos of old mother Earth?
Still, defensive habits once learned, die hard and without realizing it, Wilberfoss moved on down the corridor, walking softly on the sides of his feet, alert for anything untoward. Let us pause and gain some physical impression of this man. Some men are like lions, some men are like horses. Jon Wilberfoss is huge like a bear. He has a loose-limbed gait, somewhat amplified as he now walks down the corridor by his need to remain quiet. It is the careful walk of a large man who is all the time aware that there are others in the world smaller than him and whom he might crush.
There is no pride of strength in his walk, no arrogant stepping forth, and yet there is an impression of great strength. He pauses at a door, arms raised and touching the frame and again we are reminded of the bear, standing up in the forest, head cocked, listening. The man who would challenge Jon Wilberfoss would need to be very confident of his prowess. He turns and looks back up the corridor towards the room where his wife is sleeping.
The face is mild, with deep-set blue-grey eyes which, surprisingly, look somewhat timid. The hair of his beard and on his head is short, coarse and blond. The face is tanned and healthy but deeply lined and looks older than one might expect. A seaman who has looked into flying salt spray or stood watch above the coldness of a midnight sea might have such a face. Weather-beaten is the phrase. The hands too are worthy of comment. The fingers are stubby. For those who do not know Jon Wilberfoss, I have observed there is both surprise and delight when they discover the sensitivity with which he plays the guitar or the delicacy of his touch as he mends a fine and fragile beaker made by the potters of old Tallin.
He did not know exactly what had wakened him. A knocking of some kind… a sound at least… but he knew that he did not want to hear that sound again. His wife would surely wake and perhaps the sleeping children. Besides, only trouble could come with such insistence in the night and he preferred to face trouble alone.
No need to wake everyone up. Quickly he entered and crossed the dining room where the remains of the evening meal were still on the table. This house was managed in accordance with Tallin ways and the food of the evening was never cleared from the table until the morning as a mark of respect to the guardians of the house. A mouse, disturbed while enjoying Talline hospitality scampered in a panic for its hole. The fire still glowed a dull red under its patina of grey ash. Then Wilberfoss was out in the hall. Facing him was the massive front door made from planks of ironwood.
He felt a sudden anger at being disturbed in his privacy. With one sweep of his arm, Wilberfoss drew back the heavy curtains which stopped the draught. He lifted the hasp with a bang and heaved the door open. He did not know what to expect. Facing him was one of the small blind servants who satisfy the many practical needs of the Pacifico monastery.
It was a woman, as was revealed by the bulky dark blue gown she was wearing. In her hands she held a pair of smoothed balls of granite One of these she had used to tap at the door. Her eyes were closed and the dim light from the hall revealed that she was nodding dreamily to herself as though listening to some inner music. Her face was waxen and unhealthy and it was impossible to tell her age.
Her size was little more than that of a nine year old human child. Wilberfoss felt his anger evaporate. Yis told to use special pitch so only you would wake. There is a secret.
Wulfsyarn has 44 ratings and 5 reviews. Scott said: I first read this book when I was fourteen. Any memories of its plot or resolution had since complete. Phillip Mann (born ) is a British-born, science fiction author resident in New Zealand since . Families have been issued by Radio New Zealand in , Radio New Zealand broadcast a serialised version of Wulfsyarn – A Mosaic.
Magister Tancredi sounded worried… mmm… yes, worried and excited too. Yo no think it is a bad worry. But youm to come immediately. She was one of the Children of the War as they were called: Congenitally blind, stunted in their growth and yet miraculously still able to breed, the Children of the War survived only in the benign, albeit unnatural, environment of the monastery. They were all that were left of an entire race and had been rescued from a dying world at the height of the War of Ignorance. That war ended over four hundred years earlier. The small figure bowed.
The sheer amount of detail which Mann has inlaid in his masterpiece is rarely matched in the genre of science fiction. This is a quietly written space exploration novel told from the perspective of an explorer whose ship came home.
Nomad by Alan Partridge. I can not explain this, but I believe that all the aborted openings for the book, found their true place in the narrative as I wrote it. That war ended over four hundred years earlier. Tower Of Glass Details. Flandry of Terra Details. Jon Wilberfoss was waking up. He lay still for several moments, aware that his awaking had an external cause and strained to catch the slightest irregular sound.
I was afraid that I wouldn't enjoy this after-the-fact story. But Mann makes this surprising approach work, for he's more interested in the spiritual change that such journeys are bound to cause. As such, I found myself drawn into the mysteries of motivation and action shown by Mann's antihero. Wulfsyarn is a staggering work of oddball psychology and spirit. One person found this helpful. Phillip Mann ha described a future society that not only may be possible, but also begs the human mind for it's incarnation. In a rich melding of ecology, technology, psychology, sweat, and factors I am sure elude me; Wulfsyarn, although a tragedy, draws the human spirit to the nature of life and liveliness.
Taste for yourself of a religious order that somehow avoids dogma and stodge, backbones Wulf, and offers his yarn as its paradigm tale. I picked up this book on a whim a few years ago, and its remained a treasured part of my collection ever since. I will admit it is a slow pace at times, but the author hits emotional paydirt over and over again: There are many different intriuiging and challening themes: I did not expect such a rich experience from a science fiction novel, but it has continued to reward me after nearly a decade of re-reading.
See all 4 reviews. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations. View or edit your browsing history. Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs.
Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web. AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally. Amazon Inspire Digital Educational Resources.