The Enigma Score

the pot. These have grown from a seed crystal in the soil, drawing their substance from the dissolved minerals in water. In some crystals with large periods (as many as a thousand atoms), it has been discovered that in order for growth to occur, the seed crystal must contain a dislocation, usually a screw dislocation. The growth of the crystal proceeds in a spiral, reproducing the dislocation. One is confronted by a paradox: Is it the dislocation that is growing or is it the crystal? The answer depends on the reference point. To us, it is the atoms of the crystal that have reality and so, to us, it appears that the crystal is growing. However, from within the crystal, it is the dislocation that is real. After all, dislocations exert forces on each other and arrays of dislocations store energy, whereas the uniform structure of the crystal might seem to be no more than an ‘ether’ through which the dislocations move. Crystalline life would probably see the dislocation as growing and reproducing itself in the next generation. Regardless of how one sees the answer to this paradox, this mechanism for crystal growth serves as an analogy for DNA replication. Over many eons, those dislocations that are the most efficient at reproducing themselves will be the ones that dominate. Thus, it is possible that there could be crystalline life forms that feed on mechanical energy, store that energy in the form of dislocation arrays, and then release that energy slowly as sonic energy or more rapidly as violent, perhaps explosive, fracture.

The Presences, because the greater part of their bulk is far underground, undoubtedly store energy from earth movement. It is not mentioned that there are any Jubal-quakes. Could the Presences be surface extensions of large or small tectonic plates, storing vast quantities of potentially destructive energy rather than using it up in earthquakes and vulcanism?

The Enigma, the ‘Mad One,’ is described as being twinned, two tines of a monstrous fork. Some crystals grow as ‘twins,’ that is, as mirror images of one another, and the plane between them is called the ‘twin boundary.’ Dislocations cannot move across surfaces, and so cannot be transmitted from one crystal to another unless they are in contact. Even when in contact the transmission of dislocations would be very poor unless certain geometric considerations are met. Thus, the Black Tower could presumably speak to the Jammers without sharing their minds. However, dislocation transmission or movement does occur across the twin boundary, and we can imagine the Enigma as a being that is actually of two minds, with each of these minds interfering with or perturbing the other.

As for the Tripsingers, what is it they do? Each Frank-Reed source has a frequency at which it vibrates, its own harmonic frequency, which may be multiple. If one were to bombard a Frank-Reed source with any other frequency, it could generate more dislocations, that is, the Frank-Reed source will operate. However, the Frank-Reed source would be absolutely transparent to its natural frequency.

If the Tripsingers simply sang in accord with the natural frequencies that were the ‘mind,’ conscious or unconscious, of the Presences, they would leave no information behind them, that is, they would not wake the Presences up. If certain sounds were ‘alertive,’ wagon wheels for example, then it would have been the Tripsinger’s job to produce complementary sounds, which, when superimposed on the wagon wheels, yielded exactly those frequencies that were transparent to the Presences. This was, obviously, quite complicated enough.

A subject of some interest might be whether talking to them when they were awake would be an easier or a more complicated matter.

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Also By Sheri S. Tepper

Land of The True Game

1.

King's Blood Four

(1983)

2.

Necromancer Nine

(1983)

3.

Wizard's Eleven

(1984)

Marianne

1.

Marianne, the Magus and the Manticore

(1985)

2.

Marianne, the Madame and the Momentary Gods

(1988)

3.

Marianne, the Matchbox and the Malachite Mouse

(1989)

Mavin Manyshaped

1.

The Song of Mavin Manyshaped

(1985)

2.

The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped

(1985)

3.

The Search of Mavin Manyshaped

(1985)

Jinian

1.

Jinian Footseer

(1985)

2.

Dervish Daughter

(1986)

3.

Jinian Star-Eye

(1986)

Ettison

1.

Blood Heritage

(1986)

2.

The Bones

(1987)

Awakeners

1.

Northshore

(1987)

2.

Southshore

(1987)

Other Novels

The Revenants

(1984)

After Long Silence

(1987)

The Gate to Women's Country

(1988)

The Enigma Score

(1989)

Grass

(1989)

Beauty

(1991)

Sideshow

(1992)

A Plague of Angels

(1993)

Shadow's End

(1994)

Gibbon's Decline and Fall

(1996)

The Family Tree

(1997)

Six Moon Dance

(1998)

Singer from the Sea

(1999)

Raising the Stones

(1990)

The Fresco

(2000)

The Visitor

(2002)

The Companions

(2003)

The Margarets

(2007)

Sheri S. Tepper (1929 – )

Sheri Stewart Tepper was born in Colorado in 1929 and is the author of a larger number of novels in the areas of science fiction, fantasy, horror and mystery, and is particularly respected for her works of feminist science fiction. Her many acclaimed novels include The Margarets and Gibbon's Decline And Fall, both shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, A Plague Of Angels, Sideshow and Beauty, which was voted Best Fantasy Novel Of The Year by readers of Locus magazine. Her versatility is illustrated by the fact that she is one of very few writers to have titles in both the Gollancz SF and Fantasy Masterworks lists. Sheri S. Tepper lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Copyright

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © Sheri S Tepper 1989

All rights reserved.

The right of Sheri S Tepper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by

Gollancz

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House

5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 11623 8

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real