The Lovers * Dark Is the Sun * Riders of the Purple Wage

by Philip José Farmer

  ‘Never mind! Give it to me!’

  While she removed the cord from her neck, he took his off. He dangled the eggs high so that all could see them, but he had to wait until the tribes had ceased their uproar before he spoke.

  ‘The ancestors told me many things before they went on their journey! One was that we really do not need our eggs! They had their use in this world, but they’re not needed in the next!’

  Vana cried, ‘No, oh, no! Don’t!’

  ‘You know they’re not necessary,’ Deyv said fiercely to Vana. ‘We’ve both known that for a long time but didn’t want to admit it to ourselves. We must throw them away! Then the tribes won’t be so angry when they find that there are no soul-egg trees there.’

  Then he shouted, ‘Look! I leave these here!’

  He cast the eggs out into the air, and they fell to the base of the tree. Despite his brave words, he felt a pang of loss.

  ‘A very good idea,’ The Shemibob said. She removed her Emerald and, after Deyv had called everybody’s attention to the act, she dropped it onto the ground.

  ‘Now, Archkerri, your prism!’

  ‘But it might be useful there! I may be able to speak to the plants there! It’s true that they might not have the capability that the plants have here, but I won’t know until -!’

  ‘It’s necessary, Archkerri! Do it!’

  After Sloosh had reluctantly thrown the prism, Deyv cried, ‘See! The Shemibob and the Archkerri have discarded their magical devices, too! Your ancestors required this as a token of their friendship and good faith!’

  ‘I hope they don’t look into the logic of that,’ Sloosh buzzed.

  ‘They won’t,’ the snake-centaur said. ‘They’re too upset to think straight.’

  Deyv flung his hands straight up.

  ‘Now! I go to follow your ancestors to a better world!’

  He turned with his eyes shut. Following Vana’s instructions, which she gave quaveringly, he advanced to the edge of the bridge, stopped, and bent his knees. Though he wanted desperately to turn and walk away, he leaped.

  47

  He fell into a bright light, was aware of trees around him and long grass below him, and he landed. His knees bent, he fell, rolled and was up on his feet. They hurt but not so much that he could not walk.

  Beyond were the statue and their weapons. Sloosh had cast them as far as he could so the jumpers would not land on them.

  He was near the edge of a cliff. If the gateway had been ten feet farther to one side, it would have admitted him to a fatal drop to the rocks at the base. Beyond that was a belt of trees and a beach of white sand and a blue sea that sent its rollers thundering onto the land.

  In the other direction was a forest populated mostly by tall trees unlike any he had ever seen. They were conical and, instead of leaves, the branches had a heavy needle-like growth.

  The sky was blue. Near its zenith was a yellow blaze that was impossible to look at long. It was that that gave the light and the heat.

  If what Sloosh and The Shemibob had said a young Earth would look like was correct, he was on a young Earth.

  He had been counting while observing. At one thousand, he stood beneath the gateway and forced himself to look almost directly at it. But it was a dark spot in the air, a strange but undreadful phenomenon, like the gateway in the tunnel. Then Vana shot through, and he jumped to avoid being hit but ready to aid her if she was hurt. She rolled and, like him, came up on her feet.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. Are you?’

  The Shemibob, holding the screaming baby, came through next. Her forty feet flattened out under the impact, and her legs bent far under her weight. But she was unhurt.

  She handed Keem to Vana, saying, ‘Here. She knows the difference between my nipple and yours.’

  Sloosh shot through and landed squarely but still fell forward. He got up complaining that he must have sprained his upper spine.

  ‘We Archkerri are unusually subject to backaches, anyway/

  Though he was to move around slowly and carefully for some time, he was not by any means totally incapacitated.

  Tsi’kzheep was set up where the next to come through, if there were any, could see it at once. It had been decided that the statue should be kept as a focal point, a rallying and sustaining symbol for the tribes. Though it was not the direct ancestor of any but the Chaufi’ng, it was the brother of the five other founders. They would tell the tribes that Tsi’kzheep had sent the others ahead to look for a home for their children. In the meantime, it would shepherd the six tribes. The Chaufi’ng dialect would become the common speech of all. And Deyv would be the chief of all.

  The people were going to be shocked by the idea that a non-shaman would lead them. And the shamans were going to make trouble; there would be a power struggle. This, however, was only one of many problems in the merging of the six groups into one.

  Deyv wanted to go exploring at once. Instead, he had to pitch in to help make a great pile of grass. Otherwise, there would be many hurt or even killed. They pulled the long grass and threw it down beneath the gateway and then cut off branches to make a barrier along the sides of the mass. Once these were placed, they formed a simple but effective windbreak.

  The yellow glaring light in the sky, the sun, crossed the heavens. Deyv saw his first sunset, a frightening but beautiful sight. They ate some nuts and berries they had collected around a fire. The sound of the surf came faintly to them, interspersed by calls of night birds and, twice, a coughing roar. The air became chilly, causing them to regret the loss of the vessel. They took turns feeding the fire while the others slept.

  The sun rose, draped in many colours. Deyv went hunting and returned when the sky-light had just dropped down from the zenith. He carried the back leg of a large animal. The rest was too much for me or even you, Sloosh, to carry. And it’s too far away for us to go and fetch it. It would be eaten by then by some beasts that look like wolves. I’d have liked to bring back the head, but it would’ve been too much. It has six knobs on top of its head and two long curving tusks sticking down from the upper jaw. Yet it eats plants. I saw some beasts which resembled some we know and some which are very different.’

  Vana started to cut up the leg while Deyv made forked uprights and trimmed down a thick branch to make a spit. The Shemibob came running then and told them to go with her to the edge of the cliff.

  Below, walking on the beach, were a dozen bipeds.

  ‘Hairy, bent-necked, slanting foreheads, heavy brows, out-thrust jaws, chins not well developed,’ Sloosh said. ‘They are precursors of the fully human or something like the fully human. Poor devils! If our tribespeople do come through, those half-humans are doomed.’

  ‘Their kind would be doomed anyway when a higher type evolved,’ The Shemibob said.

  ‘I wonder,’ Sloosh said, ‘if something similar happened when our Earth was young. That is, did full humans come through a gateway from an older and perishing universe? And did they wipe out their lesser ancestors? Or perhaps I should say, cousins?

  ‘I speculate this because there is nothing in the memory of the plants about intermediates in the evolution of the prehuman to human. Full man appeared suddenly, and he ousted the pre-man. Through violence, of course.’

  ‘If that is a fact rather than a theory,’ The Shemibob said, ‘then human-kind is far older than we thought.’

  The bipeds stopped now and then to dig up shellfish in the shallows. They also did not refuse to eat a large dead fish that floated in.

  When they had disappeared around the bend of the beach, the watchers went back to their meal. The sun sank; the stars came out. Then black clouds came up, bearing thunder and lightning. Soon a cold rain fell, forcing them to take cover under the trees. They spent a miserable sleepless night and had difficulty starting the fire in the morning.

  Though he was tired, Deyv had to hunt again. It was close to dusk before he returned with a half-grown pig-like beast.
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br />   ‘There just isn’t enough cover for me to get near enough to use the blowgun.’

  ‘It’s time we made a new weapon,’ The Shemibob said. ’This will be a simple but effective one, and it will have a far greater range than your blowgun or your spear. When we find a wood that is springy enough, I’ll show you how to fashion part of it. It will be able to propel a short slim spear with great force. But it takes much practice to learn how to use it well.’

  Morning came again, bringing with it discouragement.

  ‘How long do we wait here?’ Deyv asked The Shemibob.

  ‘We’ll set up a camp, make lean-tos, and wait for thirty days. If they haven’t come through by then, we look for a better place. We should go south, since I suspect we’re in an area that gets snow and ice. You wouldn’t like them.’

  Both humans were downcast and worried. Would their daughters have to bear children by their sons? Eventually, according to Sloosh, their descendants would be inbred and would degenerate. The human species would die. The minimum number needed to perpetuate a healthy race was five hundred.

  Another day passed. Before they went to sleep in the little hut they had built, Deyv said, ‘This waiting is making me nervous.’

  ‘You always were impatient,’ Vana said. She kissed him. ‘At least, we’ll have each other and our children. And The Shemibob and Sloosh will be with us, and our children and our grandchildren and perhaps their children. The Shemibob and Sloosh will be a big comfort. They’re very wise and will teach us many things that it would take us many generations to learn.’

  Deyv was not consoled. It was a long time before he could get to sleep. Suddenly, shockingly, he was being shaken by the shoulder.

  ‘Get up! Get up!’ Vana was saying.

  ‘It can’t be time for me to stand guard yet,’ he said sourly.

  ‘No, no! They’re starting to come through! Can’t you hear them?’

  He got up quickly. Sloosh was throwing more wood on the fire so that the big blaze would render the area more visible. Men were crawling out from the pile of grass. One by one, at a count of twenty seconds between, men were falling through, yelling or screaming.

  The first of the men to carry a struggling shrilling child dropped through.

  The shaman of the Chaufi’ng staggered towards Deyv. He looked dazed.

  ‘The sky was bright when we decided to enter the demon’s mouth,’ he said.

  He looked upward. ‘That is a strange Dark Beast.’

  There is no Dark Beast here,’ Deyv said. ‘And when the light comes, you will see such a sight as you never dreamed of.’

  The shaman spoke slurringly, and his eyes looked strange. Deyv did not know whether the tribes had taken drugs again to nerve themselves for the leap or whether they were suffering from shock. Entering this world was like being born. The psyche reeled under this strange birth and thus the body was stricken. All the leapers-forth would be in a trauma.

  Tomorrow – a word Deyv had learned from The Shemibob – tomorrow there would be trouble when the six tribes discovered that their ancestors were not there. But they would be in shock, and they would follow those who were in full possession of their faculties.

  Deyv and Vana and Sloosh and The Shemibob were so much more experienced. They had gone through many shocks. They had, in a sense, been born many times. They would be adults leading little children.

  Sloosh came to Deyv from the bonfire.

  He said, ‘You are smiling; you look as if you are about to start dancing. Why?’

  ‘We were there, and now we’re here! We live! Our children will live! Joy!’

  Riders of the Purple Wage

  Riders of the Purple Wage

  or

  The Great Gavage

  If Jules Verne could really have looked into the future, say 1966 A.D., he would have crapped in his pants. And 2166, oh, my!

  —from Grandpa Winnegan’s unpublished Ms., How I Screwed Uncle Sam & Other Private Ejaculations

  THE COCK THAT CROWED BACKWARDS

  Un and Sub, the giants, are grinding him for bread.

  Broken pieces float up through the wine of sleep. Vast treadings crush abysmal grapes for the incubus sacrament.

  He as Simple Simon fishes in his soul as pail for the leviathan.

  He groans, half-wakes, turns over, sweating dark oceans, and groans again. Un and Sub, putting their backs to their work, turn the stone wheels of the sunken mill, muttering Fie, fye, fo, fum. Eyes glittering orange-red as a cat’s in a cubbyhole, teeth dull white digits in the murky arithmetic.

  Un and Sub, Simple Simons themselves, busily mix metaphors non-self-consciously.

  Dunghill and cock’s egg: up rises the cockatrice and gives first crow, two more to come, in the flushrush of blood of dawn of I-am-the-erection-and-the-strife.

  It grows out and out until weight and length merge to curve it over, a not-yet weeping willow or broken reed. The one-eyed red head peeks over the edge of bed. It rests its chinless jaw, then, as body swells, slides over and down. Looking monocularly this way and those, it sniffs archaically across the floor and heads for the door, left open by the lapsus linguae of malingering sentinels.

  A loud braying from the center of the room makes it turn back. The three-legged ass, Baalim’s easel, is hee-hawing. On the easel is the “canvas,” an oval shallow pan of irradiated plastic, specially treated. The canvas is two meters high and forty-four centimeters deep. Within the painting is a scene that must be finished by tomorrow.

  As much sculpture as painting, the figures are in alto-relief, rounded, some nearer the back of the pan than others. They glow with light from outside and also from the self-luminous plastic of the “canvas.” The light seems to enter the figures, soak awhile, then break loose. The light is pale red, the red of dawn, of blood watered with tears, of anger, of ink on the debit side of the ledger.

  This is one of his Dog Series: Dogmas from a Dog, The Aerial Dogfight, Dog Days, The Sundog, Dog Reversed, The Dog of Flinders, Dog Berries, Dog Catcher, Lying Doggo, The Dog of the Right Angle and Improvisations on a Dog.

  Socrates, Ben Jonson, Cellini, Swedenborg, Li Po, and Hiawatha are roistering in the Mermaid Tavern. Through a window, Daedalus is seen on top of the battlements of Cnossus, shoving a rocket up the ass of his son, Icarus, to give him a jet-assisted takeoff for his famous flight. In one corner crouches Og, Son of Fire. He gnaws on a sabertooth bone and paints bison and mammoths on the mildewed plaster. The barmaid, Athena, is bending over the table where she is serving nectar and pretzels to her distinguished customers. Aristotle, wearing goat’s horns, is behind her. He has lifted her skirt and is tupping her from behind. The ashes from the cigarette dangling from his smirking lips have fallen onto her skirt, which is beginning to smoke. In the doorway of the men’s room, a drunken Batman succumbs to a long-pressed desire and attempts to bugger the Boy Wonder. Through another window is a lake on the surface of which a man is walking, a green-tarnished halo hovering over his head. Behind him a periscope sticks out of the water.

  Prehensile, the penisnake wraps itself around the brush and begins to pain. The brush is a small cylinder attached at one end to a hose which runs to a dome-shaped machine. From the other end of the cylinder extends a nozzle. The aperture of this can be decreased or increased by rotation of a thumb-dial on the cylinder. The paint which the nozzle deposits in a fine spray or in a thick stream or in whatever color or hue desired is controlled by several dials on the cylinder.

  Furiously, proboscisean, it builds up another figure layer by layer. Then, it sniffs a musty odor of must and drops the brush and slides out the door and down the bend of wall of oval hall, describing the scrawl of legless creatures, a writing in the sand which all may read but few understand. Blood pumppumps in rhythm with the mills of Un and Sub to feed and swill the hot-blooded reptile. But the walls, detecting intrusive mass and extrusive desire, glow.

  He groans, and the glandular cobra rises and sways to the fluting of his wish for cuntcealment.
Let there not be light! The lights must be his cloaka. Speed past mother’s room, nearest the exit. Ah! Sighs softly in relief but air whistles through the vertical and tight mouth, announcing the departure of the exsupress for Desideratum.

  The door has become archaic; it has a keyhole. Quick! Up the ramp and out of the house through the keyhole and out onto the street. One person abroad a broad, a young woman with phosphorescent silver hair and snatch to match.

  Out and down the street and coiling around her ankle. She looks down with surprise and then fear. He likes this; too willing were too many. He’s found a diamond in the ruff.

  Up around her kitten-ear-soft leg, around and around, and sliding across the dale of groin. Nuzzling the tender corkscrewed hairs and then, self-Tantalus, detouring up the slight convex of belly, saying hello to the bellybutton, pressing on it to ring upstairs, around and around the narrow waist and shyly and quickly snatching a kiss from each nipple. Then back down to form an expedition for climbing the mons veneris and planting the flag thereon.

  Oh, delectation tabu and sickersacrosanct! There’s a baby in there, ectoplasm beginning to form in eager preanticipation of actuality. Drop, egg, and shoot the chuty-chutes of flesh, hastening to gulp the lucky Micromoby Dick, outwriggling its million million brothers, survival of the fightingest.

  A vast croaking fills the hall. The hot breath chills the skin. He sweats. Icicles coat the tumorous fuselage, and it sags under the weight of ice, and fog rolls around, whistling past the struts, and the ailerons and elevators are locked in ice, and he’s losing altitude fast. Get up, get up! Venusberg somewhere ahead in the mists; Tannhäuser, blow your strumpets, send up your flares, I’m in a nosedive.

  Mother’s door has opened. A toad squatfills the ovoid doorway. Its dewlap rises and falls bellows-like; its toothless mouth gawps. Ginungagap. Forked tongue shoots out and curls around the boar cunstrictor. He cries out with both mouths and jerks this way and those. The waves of denial run through. Two webbed paws bend and tie the flopping body into a knot—a runny shapeshank, of course.