The Jewels of Aptor

by Samuel R. Delany

  CHAPTER XII

  Roughness of sand beneath one of his sides, and the flare of the sun onthe other. His eyes were hot and his lids were orange over them. Heturned over, and reached out to dig his fingers into the sand. Only onehand closed; then he remembered. Opening his eyes, he rolled to hisknees. The sand grated under his knee caps. Looking out toward thewater, he saw that the sun hung only seeming inches above the horizon.Then he saw the ship.

  From its course, he gathered it was heading toward the estuary of theriver down the beach. He began to run toward where the rocks andvegetation cut off the end of the beach. The sand under his feet wascool.

  A moment later he saw Iimmi's dark figure come from the jungle. He washeading for the same place. Geo hailed him, and panting, they joinedeach other. Then, together they continued toward the rocks.

  As they broke through the first sheet of foliage, they bumped into thered-haired girl who stood, knuckling her eyes in the shadow of the broadpalm fronds. When she recognized them, she joined them silently. Finallythey reached the outcropping of rock a few hundred feet up the riverbank.

  The rain had swelled the river's mouth to tremendous violence. Itvomited surges of brown water into the ocean, frothed against rocks, andboiled opaquely below them. It was nearly half again as wide as Georemembered it.

  Although the sky was clear, beyond the brown bile of the river, the seasnarled viciously and bared white teeth in the sun. It took anotherfifteen minutes for the boat to maneuver through the granite spikestoward the rocky embankment a hundred yards away.

  Glancing down into the turbulence, Argo breathed, "Gee." But that wasthe only human sound against the water's roaring.

  The boat's prow doffed in the swell, and then at last her plank swungout and bumped unsteadily on the rocky bank. Figures were gathering ondeck.

  "Hey," Argo said, pointing toward one. "That's Sis!"

  "Where the hell are Snake and Urson?" Iimmi asked.

  "That's Snake down there," Geo said. "Look!" He pointed with his nub.

  They could see Snake crouched near the gangplank itself. He was behind aledge of rock, invisible to the people on the ship, apparently, butplain to Geo and his companions.

  "Watch it," Geo said. "I'm going down there. You stay here." He duckedoff through the vines, keeping in sight of the rocks' edge and theboiling foam. The ship grew before him, and at last he reached asheltered rise, just ten feet above the nest of rock in which thefour-armed boy was crouching.

  Geo looked out at the boat. Jordde stood at the head of the gangplank.The eighteen feet of board was unsteady with the roll of the ship.Jordde held something like a black whip in his hand, only the end wentto a box-like contraption strapped to his back. With the lash raised, hestepped onto the shifting plank.

  Geo wondered what the whip contrivance was. The answer came with thehollow sound of Snake's thoughts. _That ... is ... machine ... he ...use ... to ... cut ... tongue ... with ... only ... on ... whip ...now ... not ... wire ..._ So Snake knew he was just behind him. As hewas trying to figure exactly the implications of what Snake had said,suddenly, with the speed of a bird's shadow, Snake leaped from hishiding place and landed on the shore end of the plank. He recovered fromhis crouch, and rushed down the plank toward Jordde, apparentlyintending to knock him from the board.

  Jordde raised the lash and it fell across the boy's shoulder. It didn'tland hard; it just dropped. But Snake suddenly reeled, and went down onone knee, grabbing the sides of the plank. Geo was close enough to hearthe boy scream.

  "I cut your tongue out once with this thing," Jordde said, matter offactly. "Now I'm going to cut the rest of you to pieces." He adjusted acontrol at his belt and raised the lash again.

  Geo leapt for the plank. He faced Jordde over the crouching boy, hewondered how wise it had been. Then he had to stop wondering and try toduck the falling lash. He couldn't.

  It landed with only the weight of gravity, brushing his cheek, thendropping across his shoulder and down his back. He screamed; the wholeside of his face seemed seared away, and an inch crevice burned into hisshoulder and back the length it touched him. He bit into white fire,trying not to leap aside into the foaming chasm between rocks and boat.As the lash rasped over his shoulder, sweat flooded his eyes. His goodarm, which held the edge of the plank, was shaking like a plucked stringon a loose guitar. Snake lunged back against him, almost knocking himover. When Geo blinked the tears out of his eyes, he saw two brightwelts over Snake's shoulder. He also saw that Jordde had stepped outupon the plank and was smiling.

  When the line fell again, he wasn't sure just what happened. He leanedin one direction, and suddenly Snake was a dive of legs in the other.Now Snake was just four sets of fingers on the edge of the plank. Geoscreamed again and shook.

  Two sets of fingers disappeared from one side of the board andreappeared on the other. As Jordde raised the lash a fourth time to ridthe plank of this last one-armed nuisance, the fingers worked rapidlyforward toward Jordde's feet, until suddenly an arm raised from beneaththe plank, grabbed Jordde's foot, and tugged. The lash fell far from Geowho was still trembling, trying to move backwards off the unsteadyplank, and keep from vomiting at the same time.

  Jordde tripped, but turned in time to grab the edge of the ship's gateand steady himself. At the same time, one leg, and then another, came upthe other side of the plank, and then Snake rolled to a crouchingposition on the board's top.

  Geo got his feet under him now, and stumbled backwards, off the plank,and then sat down hard a few feet back on the rocks. He clutched hisgood arm across his stomach, and without lowering his eyes, leanedforward to cool his back.

  Jordde, half-seated on the board now, lashed the whip sideways. Snakeleaped a foot from the plank as the line swung beneath his feet. Allfour arms went spidering out to regain equilibrium. The whip struck theside of the boat, left a burn along the hull, and came swinging backagain. Snake leapt once more and made it.

  Suddenly there was a shadow over him, and Geo saw Urson stride up to theend of the plank. His back to Geo, he crouched bear-like at the plank'shead. "All right, now try someone a little bigger than you. Come on,kid, get off there. I want my turn." Urson's sword was drawn.

  Snake turned, grabbed at something on Urson, but the big man knocked himaway as he leapt diagonally onto the shore. Urson laughed over hisshoulder. "You don't want the ones around my neck," he called back."Here, keep these for me." He tossed the leather purse from his beltback to the shore. Snake landed just as Jordde flung the lash out again.Urson must have caught the line across his chest, because they saw hisback suddenly stiffen. Then he leapt forward and came down with hissword so hard that had Jordde still been there, his leg would have comeoff. Jordde leapt back onto the edge of the ship, and the sword slicedthree inches into the plank. As Urson tried to pull the blade out oncemore, Jordde sent his whip singing again. It wrapped Urson's mid-sectionlike a black serpent, and it didn't come loose.

  Urson howled. He flung his sword forward, which probably only byaccident thwunked seventeen inches through Jordde's abdomen. He bentforward, grabbed the line with both hands, and tugged backwards,screaming.

  Jordde took two steps onto the plank, his mouth open, his eyes closed,and fell over the side.

  Urson heaved backwards, and toppled from the other side. For a momentthey hung with the whip between them over the board. The ship heaved,rolled to. The plank swiveled, came loose; and with the board on top ofthem, they crashed into the water.

  Geo and Snake were at the rocks' edge. Iimmi and Argo were coming upbehind them.

  Below them, limbs and board bobbed through the foam once. The line hadsomehow looped around Urson's neck, and the plank had turned up almoston end. Then they went under again.

  With nothing between it and the rock wall of shore, the boat began toroll in. With each swell, it came in six feet, and then leaned outthree. Then it came back another six. It took four swells, the time offour very deep breaths, until the side of the boat was grating upagainst the
rocks. Geo could hear the plank splintering down in thewater. But the sound of the water blanketed anything else that wasbreaking down there.

  Geo took two steps backwards, clutched at his stubbed arm, and threw up.

  Somebody, the captain, was calling, "Get her away from the rocks. Awayfrom the rocks, before she goes to pieces!"

  Iimmi took Geo's arm. "Come on, boy," he said, and managed to haul himonto the ship. Argo and Snake leapt on behind them, as the boatfloundered away from the shore.

  Geo leaned against the rail. Below him the water turned on itself in therocks, thrashed along the river's side, and then, as he raised his eyes,stretched out along the bright blade of the beach. The long sand thatrimmed the island dropped away from them, a stately and austere arcgathering in its curve all the sun's glare, and throwing it back onwave, and on wave. His back hurt, his stomach was shriveled and shakenlike an old man's palsied fist, his arm was gone, and Urson....

  And then Argo said, "Look at the beach!"

  Geo flung his eyes up and tried in one moment to envelop whatever hesaw, whatever it would be. Beneath the roar was a tide of quiet. Thesand along the naked crescent was dull at depressions, mirror bright atrises. At the jungle's edge, leaves and fronds sped multi-texturedrippling along the foliage. Each single fragment in that green carpethung up in the sun was one leaf, he reflected, with two sides, and anentire system of skeleton and veins, as his hand and arm had been. Andmaybe one day would drop off, too. He looked from rock to rock now. Eachwas different, shaped and lined distinctly, but losing detail as theship floated out, as the memory of his entire adventure was losingdetail. That one there was like a bull's head half submerged; those twoflat ones together on the sand looked like the stretched wings ofeagles. The waves, measured and magnificent, followed one another ontothe sand, like the varying, never duplicated rhythm of a good poem,peaceful, ordered, and calm. He tried to pour the chaos of Ursondrowning from his mind onto the water. It flowed into each glass-greenwave's trough in which it rode, suddenly quiet, up to the beach. Hespread the pain in his own body over the web of foam and greenshimmering, and was surprised because it fit easily, hung there well,quieted, very much quieted. Somewhere at the foot of his brain, anunderstanding was beginning to effloresce with the sea's water, underthe sun.

  Geo turned away from the rail, and with the wet deck slipping under hisbare feet, he walked toward the forecastle. He released his broken limb,and his hand hung at his side.

  * * * * *

  When Snake came down that evening, Geo was lying on his back in thebunk, following the grain of the wood on the bottom of the bed abovehis. He had his good arm behind his neck now. Snake touched hisshoulder.

  "What is it?" Geo asked, turning on his side and sitting out from underthe bunk.

  Snake held out the leather purse to Geo.

  "Huh?" Geo asked. "Didn't you give them to Argo yet?"

  Snake nodded.

  "Well, why didn't she take them. Look, I don't want to see them again."

  Snake pushed the purse toward him again, and added, _Look_ ...

  Geo took the purse, opened the draw string, and turned the contents outin his hand: there were three chains, on each of which was a gold coinfastened by a hole near the edge. Geo frowned. "How come these are inhere?" he asked. "I thought--where are the jewels?"

  _In ... ocean_, Snake said. _Urson ... switched ... them._

  "What are you talking about?" demanded Geo. "What is it?"

  _Don't ... want ... tell ... you ..._

  "I don't care what you want, you little thief." Geo grabbed him by theshoulder. "Tell me!"

  _Know ... from ... back ... with ... blind ... priestesses_, Snakeexplained rapidly. _He ... ask ... me ... how ... to ... use ...jewels.. when ... you ... and ... Iimmi ... exploring ... and ...after ... that ... no ... listen ... to ... thoughts ... bad ...thoughts ... bad ..._

  "But he--" Geo started. "He saved your life!"

  _But ... what ... is ... reason_, Snake said. _At ... end ..._

  "You saw his thoughts at the end?" asked Geo. "What did he think?"

  _You ... sleep ... please_, Snake said. _Lot ... of ... hate ... lot ...of ... bad ... hate ..._ There was a pause in the voice in his head ..._and ... love ..._

  Geo began to cry. A bubble of sound in the back of his throat burst, andhe turned onto the pillow and tried to bite through the sound with histeeth, the tiredness, the fear, for Urson, for his arm, and the changewhich hurt. His whole body ached, his back hurt in two sharp lines, andhe couldn't stop crying.

  * * * * *

  Iimmi, who had now decided to take the bunk above Geo, came back a fewminutes after mess. Geo had just awakened.

  Geo laughed. "I found out what it was we saw on the beach that made usso dangerous."

  "How?" asked Iimmi. "When? What was it?"

  "Same time you did," Geo said. "I just looked. And then Snake explainedthe details of it to me later."

  "When?" Iimmi repeated.

  "I just took a nap, and he went through the whole thing with me."

  "Then what was it you saw, we saw?"

  "Well, first of all; do you remember what Jordde was before he wasshipwrecked on Aptor?"

  "Didn't Argo say he was studying to be a priest. Old Argo, I mean."

  "Right," said Geo. "Now, do you remember what my theory was about whatwe saw?"

  "Did you have a theory?" Iimmi asked.

  "About horror and pain making you receptive to whatever it was."

  "Oh, that," Iimmi said. "I remember. Yes."

  "I was also right about that. Now add to all this some theory fromHama's lecture on the double impulse of life. It wasn't a thing we saw,it was a situation, or rather an experience we had. Also, it didn't haveto be on the beach. It could have happened anywhere. Man, and hisconstantly diametric motivations, is always trying to reconcileopposites. In fact, you can say that an action _is_ a reconciliation ofthe duality of his motivation. Now, take all that we've been through,the confusion, the pain, the disorder; then reconcile that with thegreat order obvious in something like the sea, with its rhythm, itstides and waves, its overpowering calm, or the ordering of cells in aleaf, or a constellation of stars. If you can do it, something happensto you: you grow. You become a bigger person, able to understand, orreconcile, more."

  "All right," said Iimmi.

  "And that's what we saw, or the experience we had when we looked at thebeach from the ship this morning; chaos caught in order, the orderdefining chaos."

  "All right again," Iimmi said. "And I'll even assume that Jordde knewthat the two impulses of this experience were one--something terribleand confused, like seeing ten men hacked to pieces by vampires, orseeing a film of a little boy getting his tongue pulled out, or comingthrough what we came through since we landed on Aptor; andtwo--something calm and ordered, like the beach and the sea. Now, whywould he want to kill someone simply because they might have gonethrough what amounts, I guess, to the basic religious experience?"

  "You picked just the right word," Geo smiled. "Now, Jordde was a novicein the not too liberal religion of Argo. Jordde and Snake had beenthrough nearly as much on Aptor as we had. And they survived. And theyalso emerged from that jungle of horror onto that great arcing rhythm ofwaves and sand. And they went through just what you and I and Argo wentthrough. Little Argo, I mean. And it was just at that point when theblind priestesses of Argo made contact with Jordde. They did so by meansof those vision screens we saw them with, which can receive sound andpictures from just about any place, but can also project, at leastsound, to just about anywhere too. In other words, right in the middleof this religious, or mystic, or whatever you want to call it,experience, a voice materialized out of thin air that claimed to thevoice of The Goddess. Have you any idea what this did to his mind?"

  "I imagine it took all the real significance out of the whole thing,"Iimmi said. "It would for me."

  "It did," said Geo. "Jordde wasn't what
you'd call stable before that.If anything, this made him more so. It also stopped his mentalfunctioning from working in the normal way. And Snake who was readinghis mind at the time, suddenly saw himself watching the terrifyingsealing up process of an active and competent, if not healthy, mind. Hesaw it again in Urson. It's apparently a pretty stiff thing to watch.That's why he stopped reading Urson's thoughts. The idea of stealing thejewels for himself was slowly eating away Urson's balance, theunderstanding, the ability to reconcile disparities, like the incidentwith the blue lizard, things like that, all of which were signs wedidn't get. Snake contacted Hama by telepathy, almost accidentally. AndHama was something to hold onto for the boy."

  "Still, why did Jordde want to kill anybody who had experienced this,voice of God and all?"

  "Because Jordde had by now managed to do what a static mind always does.The situation, the beach, the whole thing suddenly meant for him therevelation of a concrete God. Now, he knew that Snake had contactedsomething also, something which the blind priestesses told him wasthoroughly evil, an enemy, a devil. On the raft, on the boat, hereligiously tried to 'convert' Snake, till at last, in evangelical fury,he cut the boy's tongue out with the electric generator and the hot wirewhich the blind priestesses had given him before he left. Why did hewant to get rid of anybody who had seen his beach, a sacred place to himby now? One, because the devils were too strong and he didn't wantanybody else possessed by them; Snake had been too much troubleresisting conversion. And two, because he was jealous that someone elsemight have that moment of exaltation and hear the voice of The Goddessalso."

  "In other words," summarized Iimmi, "he thought what happened to him andSnake was something supernatural, actually connected with the beachitself, and didn't want it to happen to anybody else."

  "That's right," said Geo, lying back in his bunk. "Which is sort ofunderstandable. They didn't come in contact with any of the technologyof Aptor, and so it might well have seemed that way."

  Iimmi leaned back also. "Yeah," he said. "I can see how the same thingalmost--almost might have happened to me. If everything had been thesame."

  Geo closed his eyes. Snake came down and took the top bunk; and when heslept, Snake told him of Urson, of his last thoughts, and surprisingly,things he mostly knew.

  * * * * *

  Emerging from the forecastle the next morning, he felt bright sunlightslice across his face. He had to squint, and when he did so, he saw hersitting cross-legged on the stretched canvas topping of a suspendedlifeboat.

  "Hi, up there," he called.

  "Hello," she called down. "How are you feeling?"

  Geo shrugged.

  Argo slipped her feet over the gunwale and with paper bag in hand,dropped to the deck. She bobbed up next to his shoulder, grinned, andsaid, "Hey, come on back with me. I want to show you something."

  "Sure." He followed her.

  Suddenly she looked serious. "Your arm is worrying you. Why?"

  Geo shrugged. "You don't feel like a whole person. I guess you're notreally a whole person."

  "Don't be silly," said Argo. "Besides, maybe Snake will let you have oneof his. How are the medical facilities in Leptar?"

  "I don't think they're up to anything like that."

  "We did grafting of limbs back in Aptor," Argo said. "A most interestingway we got around the antibody problem, too. You see--"

  "But that was back in Aptor," Geo said. "This is the real world we'regoing into now."

  "Maybe I can get a doctor from the temple to come over," she shrugged."And then, maybe I won't be able to."

  "It's a pleasant thought," Geo said.

  When they reached the back of the ship, Argo took out a contraption fromthe paper bag. "I salvaged this in my tunic. Hope I dried it off wellenough last night."

  "It's your motor," Geo said.

  "Um-hm," said Argo. She put it on a low set of lockers by the cabin'sback wall.

  "How are you going to work it?" he asked. "It's got to have that stuff,electricity."

  "There is more than one way to shoe a centipede," Argo assured him. Shereached behind the locker and pulled up a strange gizmo of glass andwire. "I got the lens from Sis," she explained. "She's awfully nice,really. She says I can have my own laboratory all to myself. And I saidshe could have all the politics, which I think was wise of me,considering. Don't you?" She bent over the contraption. "Now, this lenshere focuses the sunlight--isn't it a beautiful day--on thesethermocouples. I got the extra metal from the ship's smith. He's sweet.Hey, we're going to have to compare poems from now on. I mean I'm sureyou're going to write a whole handful about all of this. I certainly am.Anyway, you connect it up here."

  She fastened two wires to two other wires, adjusted the lens, and thetips of the thermocouple glowed red. The armature tugged once around itspivot, and then tugged around once more. Geo glanced up and saw Snakeand Iimmi standing above them, looking over the rail on the cabin'sroof. They grinned at each other, and then Geo looked back at the motor.It whipped around steadily, gaining speed until it whirred into aninvisible copper haze. "Look at that thing go," breathed Argo. "Will youjust look at that thing go!"

  * * * * *

  QUEST AMID FUTURITY'S RUINS

  What was the strange impetus that drove a group of four widely differenthumans to embark on a fear-filled journey across a forbidden sea to alegendary land?

  This was Earth still, but the Earth of a future terribly changed after aplanet-searing disaster, a planet of weird cults, mutated beasts, andpeople who were not always entirely human. As for the four who made upthat questing party, they included a woman who was either a goddess, awitch, or both, a four-armed boy whose humanity was open to question,and two more men with equally "wild" talents.

  The story of their voyage, of the power-wielding "jewels" they sought,of the atomic and post-atomic terrors they encountered, is a remarkablescience-fiction Odyssey of the days to come.

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