Orbit 16 - [Anthology]
Page 14
I went on and on. “What you say smacks of genocide, and I’m educated on the subject. It doesn’t matter if the Valenians don’t care whether or not the eggs hatch.”
“So long as they do hatch?” said Mattu, an intolerable light in his huge pink eyes.
“Somebody has to care. Valene cares.”
“She does not,” said the D.A. (Dumb Ass.) “The members of the Ruling Council bring me reports of the humans who dominate this planet. Every ten millennia, the Valenians come up and destroy billions. This life span has showed us humanity beyond his pubescence. Man has cities, a struggling culture, and he reaches for the stars. Man cares about life and death. He wishes to continue. The Valenians don’t care. There, Beloved Friends, is the situation.”
Valene made a few short comments. “Surely there is more, Mattu. Your argument is rational to a point. I seek to see beyond it.”
“Then hear my next words,” said Mattu in sonorous tones. “The life span of the Valenians is twelve Earth months. The life span of mankind is seventy Earth years.”
“I fail—” said Valene.
“The love of life is a thing,” said Mattu.
“It exists?”
“Beloved Queen and Lover, it does, outside of us.”
“Uncanny.”
“Think deeply.”
“I’m trying.”
“Mama, Mama, see me, love me,” I cried. “All groups are minorities. Integration is possible only for Valenians. I don’t want to die.”
“What is this?” The peaceful eyes of Valene rested on Mattu.
“The Devil’s Advocate isn’t wishy-washy.” Mattu’s throat might have been rusty, so creaky were the noises it created.
“That’s me, that’s me, a Devil’s Advocate,” I said. “Mama, do you love Blacky and me?”
“Valene loves you.”
“Shut up, Wasp,” said Blacky.
“Tell her, Mama,” I said. Walking on my hands to Valene, I paused and allowed my bare soles to rest on the Fur of her breast. “She’s trying to kill me with conscience, Mama. Once and for all, put her in her place. She is a curiosity, only that. Remember the day you and your slave squadron first flew in the sky during this life span? On that day, you spied a curiosity down below on the ground. The Valenians love brilliant curiosities. The brain of the Valenian inspires the body to know pleasure. Tell this black nigger why your slaves didn’t spear her along with the other humans on the street below.”
“Shut up,” screeched Blacky.
“Tell her, please, Mama.”
“Very well.” Valene looked sleek and peaceful and satiated. “I am attracted to vividness. That day I soared above man’s city. My slaves dropped spears wherever I commanded. My favorite color is a combination of blue and black, or rather, I love that which is in contrast to my own pristine colorlessness. On that day, I saw a stunning sight. My beloved color could not be hidden. It was down there on the street.”
Blacky was blubbering. “Don’t say it, don’t, don’t.”
“She spared you because you’re a nigger,” I yelled.
“The sun glistened on your body,” said Valene.
Said I, “You were mother-naked and sweating up a storm in the hot sun. Remember how the crowd hollered for you to spread your legs so they could feed you peanuts. You’re nothing but a peanut-grabbing little nigger.”
Blacky screamed, leaped, spat. She hunched on her ass and cried. “It ain’t justice, Mama. All my life, my being a nigger was the Reason.”
“Amen,” I said.
I held Blacky close and talked.
“You ever had a boy?”
She said no.
“Me either. You think we missed anything?”
She said yes.
“My mama loved me even though I had two incurable deficiencies,” she added, after a while. “I was black and I was a girl.”
“Aw, that doesn’t matter,” I said. “Everybody is a girl.”
“Funny, but you’re right. Underneath, we’re all girls. Except I never made love and I never made sex.”
“You were too little.”
“Which reminds me of the third deficiency.”
“You mean your being a midget?” I said.
Shoving her back against me, she whispered, “Did you ever in all your born days meet up with anybody freakier?”
“Old Mattu would say none of those three things are deficiencies.”
“That’s why I like him,” she said. “He’s tolerant.”
“No, he isn’t. He starts from a whole new premise. Tolerance is a dirty word, and he knows it.”
Blacky took my hand and kissed it. “I want you to do me a favor. I’d do it myself if I wasn’t scared to ride one of the bugs. What I want you to do is take Dalia on a crusade. I want you to kill every white person you see.”
“God!”
“I wish I was a Valenian. In a few months they’ll all be dead, except for Mattu, and he’ll be gone, too. Only the eggs will be left. Wish I could go with them eggs. This world is shit. I want you to kill Whitey and then the nest life span will be easy for the new Valene and her people. Nigger won’t build anything up. In ten millenniums, Nigger will still be eating bananas for dessert after he’s had his cousin as a first course.”
“I have no objections to slaughtering anyone who eats with ten fingers. I’m hard, I guess.”
Dalia and I cleaned out NYC. Whitey lay everywhere. Boats in the harbors left daily, but that made it easier to pick off those mothers.
We extended our reach and cleared the continent in a few weeks. Blacky had unleashed a tiger. The first day out, Dalia and I took along a squadron of slaves. We thought we would need that many spears. We were overestimating the enemy. It made me wonder if all victims of a genocidal ploy became so demoralized that they turned into lame-brained sheep. Perhaps simply knowing someone loathed your meat so much that he wanted to stuff every atom of it into the grinder created a psychic shock that traveled from limb to limb, or person to person, and numbed the entire carcass or race.
I wondered what the human reaction would have been had they known the Valenians didn’t hate them, or, in fact, seldom thought of them. One good lawyer, bending Valene’s ear for a while, could have saved homo sap a deal of agony.
Dalia had a few hundred spears in her arsenal. They were stiff feathers that grew on her stomach. A feather could grow back in a few days. The smaller ones were about five feet in length, hollow toward their base, but very tough and pointed at the tips. Their lethalness lay in the force and accuracy of Dalia’s toss. Her big eyes could spot a snake from a quarter-mile up, and so in control of her body was she that she could erect a pore and pop a spear into the snake’s head before it crawled twelve inches.
Did I love Blacky, after all? Why else would I do such a thing for her? More likely, doing her bidding satisfied an inner craving of my own. Man of my flesh, you were such a sniveling sinner. Your thievery caused starvation and pain. There was more than enough money to conquer all our enemies, but you siphoned it away before it could be used for that. Pollution, poverty, disease and the stars were what we wanted, needed, to conquer, and we could have succeeded if you thieves hadn’t stolen our blood. You, I mean you, who ripped off the box of pencils, the tractor, or ten percent of the till you were supposed to protect. Every little bit hurt.
The men of my flesh ran like rats as the squadron shadowed the sun, those days. But they were bigger than rats and easier to stab. I was merciful and directed my pilots to aim for the head. Besides, it made the slaves more enthusiastic. Going for a target made better sport than just dumping a load.
* * * *
“Did you do it?” said Blacky.
“I did.”
“Do you feel guilty?”
“Why should I?”
“Well, considering that you put down every Whitey in the country—”
“Nobody will ever do that,” I said. “Some personalities are basically slime and spread out over the woodwork l
ike a coat of paint. You can’t spot them and they survive. They’ll always continue. There are plenty of them left.”
“I told you to kill them all.”
“I did.”
“But you just said—”
“Let’s keep illogic logical, okay? I’m not omnipotent. I killed everybody who lost his head. Hey. Ha ha ha! Anyhow, you can’t expect me to personally rout them from their holes. They might catch me. And then they’d do me like Mussolini.”
“They’re too desperate to think of revenge.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” I said. “Homo sap is never that desperate.”
* * * *
Mattu: “I ask the question, my queen. Why shall the Valenians continue?”
Valene: “The question is important?”
Blacky: “It is.”
Valene: “Elaborate, Mattu.”
Mattu: “It is all in desire. Man wants to live. The horse, the cow, the creature that moves on his belly, the one who lurks in his lair desires to remain living. Every living thing on Earth desires this, save for the Valenians.”
Blacky: “Does Mattu want to live?”
Mattu: “What price glory? I am not pure Valenian, which is why the ancient queen preserved me. I provide the piece of soul found lacking in Valene. I have a conscience. For this reason, my life needs a reason.”
Blacky: “Queen Valene, Mattu is like man. Long ago he suckled his young. Maybe this is the creator of conscience in all creatures who possess it.”
Valene: “How so?”
Blacky: “The sharing of self is always by choice. Once made and done with, it is irrevocable. Do we automatically love that which takes a portion of us with our blessing? And if we love, doesn’t that put our feet on the dual road of morality? If we never love, the question of good or evil doesn’t concern us.”
Mattu: “The Valenians love, but the question of good is not in their heads.”
Blacky: “The Valenians don’t love. They want. There is a difference. Any hedonist is well acquainted with it.”
Valene: “Hedonism, then, is the epitome of evil?”
Blacky: “The epitome of evil is heedlessness.”
Mattu: “We digress. The option for the Valenians can be death, for we don’t care. Everyone cares but us.”
Valene: “Care is the epitome of good?”
Blacky: “You will sacrifice me on an altar if I say yes. If care is the highest good and the Valenians don’t care, then the Valenians represent the lowest evil.”
Mattu: “You forget that they don’t care.”
Blacky: “I could go mad with this conversation. It isn’t sensible that an insult isn’t always an insult. I can call the Valenians bastards and they take no offense and lick my beautiful black body because the sight of my blackness gives them a charge. Mattu, what do you feel when you look at my opaque hide?”
Mattu: “I am half and half. I like in many ways. First, my teeth itch. Long ago I was pure carnivore. Second, my id stirs. Your brilliance is in contrast to my whiteness. You are so black. Come, let me lick your face.”
Blacky: “Watch the teeth.”
Mattu: “Why stand on your hands in our presence? It is not the way of your kind.”
Blacky: “Yes, it is. It’s called rationalization. You can’t possibly love me for my goddamn color, therefore you love me for my acrobatic ability.”
Mattu: “Having a conscience, I know a smell when I smell one. You are on the road to insanity, mad with a great madness.”
Blacky: “Hell, honey, I’ve been on that road since the day my mama dropped me among the boll weevils.”
The Great I: “On your pointy head.”
* * * *
A thought came and went in my mind, came and went, came and flew, came and crawled away, came and reeled before me, staggered, fell. I made it mine. It was evil and treacherous and absolutely essential for my survival.
Dalia and I went to Africa and chased jungle bunnies. That tribe we had watched a few weeks ago, they were fresh out of girls. Being a girl myself, it teed me off. Why the hell do men hunger for the taste of woman? You frail mice, you just want somebody you can take advantage of. That way you don’t have to apologize for your poor performance.
I once knew a woman who was so scared of getting pregnant that she spent years running from her old man. Finally he got sick and tired of it and had a vasectomy. After about a year of puzzling it all out, the wife got it into her head that she didn’t have to be afraid of anything anymore. She went after that man of hers with a vengeance. You know what? He went limp as custard. Permanently.
Now that the women were gone, the tribe of natives were using up each other. They drew straws that day, and the loser of the duel furnished dinner to the rest.
I waited until they were all fed and then I killed them and I cried as I did it.
* * * *
Mattu: “The Valenians existed before man. Perhaps this means we have rights above man. Yes. Squatters’ rights. But rights mean nothing to us, which places us back where I started. Desire is the purpose.”
Blacky: “Listen to him, Queen Valene. Mattu is good and sensible and full of peace.”
* * * *
The Council Chamber was empty when I killed her. I had brought a rock with me from my last trip with Dalia, and I took it and held it behind me and sneaked up on her. She turned and saw me.
“Mama mama mama mama—”
“Why call her?” I cried. “She can’t help you. She’s been dead for years.”
“You remember her.”
“So?”
“She’d look at you with her fierce eyes and you’d go hide in a corner.”
“I’m sorry I have to do this,” I said. “Lay down and don’t fight. Make it easy for me.”
“I’ll come back to haunt you. I’ll never let you rest.”
“Like hell.”
I brained her. I knocked Blacky with that rock. It was because of her big mouth. She should have been on my side.
* * * *
There were about two million people still alive, was my guess. I wouldn’t kill any more, as there was a need for them to build up their numbers again. In ten thousand years, the children of Valene would need food. Man would make his old societies new, he’d commit self-rape, and when Valene came she would win again. I hoped I did it right. All my teachers had told me the blacks were intellectually inferior, so I left mostly blacks alive. The brains were all gone. I hoped those niggers wouldn’t be waiting for Valene with a pack of superweapons, come the resurrection.
I couldn’t find Blacky. I hunted for her.
“Nigger, where are you?”
Everyone who has ever lived leaves a footprint somewhere.
“Nigger, you’re around, I know.”
Maybe her mealy mouth had deposited an echo in a crevice.
“I can’t hear you, nigger.
“Are you good and dead?
“Did I really get rid of you?
“Hey, collard greens, I cut the mustard this time, didn’t I?”
A mattress sinks and stays sunk alter a body lies on it for a time. Blacky didn’t weigh much and had left no indentation. Clothes? She wore none, but I hunted anyway. No jewelry of Blacky’s lay in the shack. No shred of her body was stuck on the furniture. No hair was caught in the nest; I know because I crawled through every one of the holes. Talk about getting sucked! That sucking was finally taking hold. My skin was a fraction of an inch thicker. The nest was prepping me, coating me for the big trip halfway to yonder.
“Have you seen Blacky?” I said to Mattu. “And I just want a simple answer without a lot of philosophy wrapped around it.”
“How can I have seen her when you murdered her?”
“I’m glad Valenians don’t care. If they saw her, they’d want her, but they can’t see her and they won’t hold it against me.”
“I’m a Valenian and I care.”
“Don’t kid me. You couldn’t care less what I did to Blacky.”
“Do you love me, Mattu?”
“Do you care one way or the other?”