A, B, C: Three Short Novels

by Samuel R. Delany

  “Well, jeepers,” said Argo. “Isn’t that enough?” She paused for an instant. “You know, I wrote a poem about all this once, the double impulse and everything.”

  Geo recited:

  “By the dark chamber sits its twin,

  where the body’s floods begin,

  and the two are twinned again,

  turning out and turning in.”

  “How did you know?”

  “The dark chamber is Hama’s Temple,” Geo said. “Am I right?”

  “And its twin is Argo’s,” she went on. “They should be twins, really. And then the twins again are the children. The force of age in each one opposed to the young force. See?”

  “I see.” Geo smiled. “And the body’s floods, turning in and out?”

  “That’s sort of everything man does, his going and coming, his great ideas, his achievements, his little ideas too. It all comes from the interplay of those four forces.”

  “Four?” said Urson. “I thought it was just two.”

  “But it’s thousands!” Argo exclaimed.

  “It’s too complicated for me,” said Urson. “How far do we have to go to the river?”

  “We should be there by evening,” Iimmi calculated.

  “And we’re headed right,” Argo assured them again. “I think.”

  “One more thing,” asked Geo. The ground beneath the fallen leaves was black and spongy now. “How did your grandmother get to Aptor?”

  “By helicopter,” Argo said.

  “By what?” asked Iimmi.

  “It’s like a very small ship that flies in the air, and it goes much faster than a boat in water.”

  “I didn’t mean the method of transportation,” said Geo.

  “When she had decided her daughter was reigning steadily in Leptar, she just went to Aptor permanently. I didn’t even know about it until I was kidnapped. I’ve learned a lot since I came here.”

  “I guess we have too,” said Geo. “But there’s still that one thing more, at the beach.”

  “Then let’s hurry up and get there,” said Urson. “We’re slowing down, and we don’t have much time.”

  The air was almost drenched. The leaves had been shiny before. Now they dripped water on the loose ground. Pale light lapsed through the branches, shimmered from leaf to the wet underside of leaf. The ground became mud.

  Twice they heard a sloshing a few feet away and then the scuttling of an unseen animal. “I hope I don’t step on something that decides to take a chunk out of my foot.”

  “I’m pretty good at first aid,” Argo said. “I’m getting chilly,” she added.

  Urson humphed now as the trees thinned around them. The muddy forest floor for yards at a span was coated with water that became mirrors for the trees stuck in its surface.

  “Start watching out for quicksand,” Geo said. They went more cautiously now. “Just keep within grabbing distance of a tree.”

  “They’re getting sort of far apart,” said Argo.

  Just then Geo, who was a bit ahead of the others, cried out. When they reached him he had already sunk knee-deep. He threw himself to the side and his good arm wrapped around the trunk of a thin black tree. He tried to grab on with his nub too, but he just scraped it on the bark.

  “Hold on!” Urson called. He skirted the pool and grabbed the trunk of the tree with one hand and Geo with the other. Geo came up, coated to the thigh with gray. As Urson helped him to more solid ground, the tree they had grabbed suddenly tilted and then splashed forward in a medusa of roots. A nameless animal slithered from the matted, dripping stalks. Then the whole thing slipped beneath the mud and there were only ripples.

  “You all right?” Urson still supported him. “You sure you’re all right?”

  Geo nodded, rubbing the stump of his arm with his good hand. “I’m all right,” he said. They gathered together and began once more through the mud. The trees gave out.

  Geo suddenly saw the whole swamp shiver in front of him. He splashed a step backward, but Urson caught his shoulder. Ripples appeared over the water, spreading, crossing, webbing the whole surface with a net of tiny waves.

  And they rose: green backs broke the water. They stood now, torrents cascading their green faces, green chests. Three of them, then a fourth. Four more, then many more. Their naked bodies were mottled green.

  Geo felt a tugging in his head, at his mind. Looking around, he saw that the others felt it too.

  “Them…” Urson started.

  “They’re the ones who…carried us….” Geo began. The tug came again, and they stepped forward. He put his hand on his head. “They want…us to go with them….” And suddenly he was going forward, slipping into the familiar state of half consciousness that had come when he had crossed the river, to the City of New Hope, or when he had first fallen into the sea.

  Wet hands fell on their bodies and guided them through the swamp. They were carried through deeper water. Now they were walked over dry land where the vegetation was thicker. Slimy boulders caught shards of sunset on their wet flanks.

  Dripping canopies of moss looped the branches. Water rose to their knees, their stomachs, their necks. A bright wash of pebbles and shells resolved through the water, as if their eyes had been pushed close to the sea bottom, sensitized to new light. The air was white, static, and electric. Then it slipped through blue to black. There were red eyes in the blackness. Through a rip in the arras of vegetation, they saw the moon push between the clouds, staining them silver. A rock rose against the moonlight where a naked man stared at the white disk. As they passed, he howled (or anyway, opened his mouth and threw his head back. But their ears were full of night and could not hear) and dropped to all fours. A breeze blew in the sudden plume of his tail, in the scraggly hair of his underbelly, and light lay on the points of his ears, his lengthened muzzle, his thinned hind legs. He turned his head once and scampered down the rock and into the darkness. A curtain of trees swung across the open sky. Eyes of flame glittered ahead of them. Water swirled their knees once more, then went down. Sand washed from beneath their feet along the dark beach. The beating of the sea, the rush of the river. Wet leaves fingered their cheeks, tickled their shins, and slapped their bellies as they moved forward. All fell away.

  Light flickered on the wet rocks as they entered the largest cave. Their eyes focused once more. Foam washed back and forth over the sandy floor, and black chains of weeds caught in crevices on the stone, twisted on the sand with the inrush of water. Webbed hands released them.

  Brown rocks rose around them in the firelight. They raised their eyes to a rock throne where the Old One sat. His long spines were strung with shrunken membranes. His eyes, gray and clouded, were close to the surface of his broad-nostriled face. Water trickled over the rock where he sat. Others stood about him.

  They glanced at one another. Outside the cave it was raining hard. Argo’s hair, wet to dark auburn, hugged her head, with little streaks down her neck.

  A voice boomed at them, with more than just the natural sonority of the cave: “Carriers of the jewels,” it began. Geo realized that it was the same hollowness that accompanied Snake’s soundless messages. “We have brought you here to give a warning. We are the oldest forms of intelligence on this planet. We have watched from the delta of the Nile the rise of the pyramids; we have seen the murder of Caesar from the banks of the Tiber. We watched the Spanish Armada destroyed by England, and we followed Man’s great metal fish through the ocean before the Great Fire. We have never aligned ourselves with either Argo or Hama, but rise in the sexless swell of the ocean. We come only to touch men when they are bloated with death. You have carried and used the jewels of Aptor, the Eyes of Hama, the Treasure of Argo, the Destroyers of Reason, the playthings of children. Whether you use them to control minds or to make fire, all carriers of the jewels are maimed. But we can warn you, as we have warned Man before. As before, some will listen, some will not. Your minds are your own, that I pledge you. Now I warn you: cast th
e jewels into the sea.

  “Nothing is ever lost in the sea, and when the evil has been washed from them with time and brine, they will be returned to you. For then time and brine will have washed away your imperfections also.

  “No living intelligence is free from their infection, nothing with the double impulse of life. But we are old and can hold them for a million years before we will be so infected as you are. Your young race is too condensed in its living to tolerate such power in its fingers now. Again I say: cast them into the sea.

  “The knowledge man needs to alleviate hunger and pain from the world is contained in two temples on this Island. Both have the science to put the jewels to use, to the good uses possible with them. Both have been infected. In Leptar, however, where you carry these jewels, there is no way at all to utilize them for anything but evil. There will be only the temptation to destroy.”

  “What about me?” Argo piped up. “I can teach them all sorts of things in Leptar.” She took one of Snake’s hands. “We used one for our motor.”

  “You will find something else to make your motor run. You still have to recognize something that you have already seen.”

  “At the beach?” demanded Iimmi.

  “Yes.” The Old One nodded, with something like a sigh. “At the beach. We have a science allowing us to do things that to you seem impossibilities, as when we carried you in the sea for weeks without your body drowning. We can enter your mind as Snake does. And we can do much else. We have a wisdom far surpassing even Argo’s and Hama’s on Aptor. Will you cast the jewels into the sea and trust them with us?”

  “How can we give you the jewels?” Urson demanded. “First of all, how can we be sure you’re not going to use them against Argo and Hama once you get them? You say nobody is impervious to them. And we’ve only got your say-so on how long it would take you to fall victim. You can already influence minds. That’s how you got us here. And according to Hama, that’s what corrupts. And you’ve already done it.”

  “Besides,” Geo said, “there’s something else. We’ve nearly messed this thing up a dozen times trying to figure out motives and countermotives. And it always comes back to the same thing: we’ve got a job to do, and we ought to do it. We’re supposed to return Argo and the jewels to the ship, and that’s what we’re doing.”

  “He’s right,” said Iimmi. “Rule number one again: act on the simplest theory that holds all the information.”

  The Old One sighed a second time. “Once, fifteen hundred years ago, a man who was to maneuver one of the metal birds that was to drop fire from the sky walked and pondered by the sea. He had been given a job to do. We tried to warn him, as we tried to warn you. But he jammed his hands into the pockets of his uniform and uttered to the waves the words you just uttered, and the warning was shut out of his mind. He scrambled up over the dunes on the beach, never taking his hands out of his pockets. He drank one more cup of coffee that night than usual. The next morning, at five o’clock, when the sun slanted red across the airfield, he climbed into his metal bird, took off, flew for some time over the sea, looking down on the water like crinkled foil under the heightening sun, until he reached land again. Then he did his job: he pressed a button that released two shards of fire metal in a housing of cobalt. The land flamed. The sea boiled in the harbors. And two weeks later he was also dead. That which burned your arm away, Poet, burned his whole face away, boiled his lungs in his chest and his brain in his skull.” There was a pause. “Yes, we can control minds. We could have relieved the tiredness, immobilized the fear, the terror, immobilized all his unconscious reasons for doing what he did, just as man can now do with the jewels. But had we, we would have also immobilized the…humanity he clung to. Yes, we can control minds, but we do not.” The voice swelled. “But never, since that day on the shore before the Great Fire, has the temptation to do so been as great as now.” The voice returned to normal. “Perhaps,” and there was almost humor in it now. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps the temptation is too great even for us. Perhaps we have reached the place where the jewels would push us just across the line we have never crossed before, make us do those things that we have never done.” Another pause. “There, you have heard our warning now. The choice, I swear to you, is yours.”

  They stood silent in the high cave, the fire on their faces weaving brightness and shadow. Geo turned to look at the rain-blurred darkness outside the cave.

  “Out there is the sea,” said the voice again. “Your decision quickly. The tide is coming in….”

  It was snatched from their minds before they could articulate it. Two children saw a bright motor turning in the shadow. Geo and Iimmi saw the temples of Argo in Leptar. Then there was something darker, from Urson. And for a moment, they all saw all the pictures at once. And then they were gone.

  “Very well, then,” boomed the voice. “Keep them!”

  A wave splashed across the floor, like twisted glass before the rock on which the fire stood. Then it flopped wetly across the burning driftwood. They were hissed into darkness. Charred sticks turned, glowing in the water, and were extinguished.

  Rain was buffeting them, hands held them once more, pulling them into the warm sea, the darkness, and then nothing….

  Snake was thinking again, and this time through the Captain’s eyes:

  —

  The cabin door burst open in the rain. Her wet veils whipped about the doorframe; lightning made them transparent. Jordde rose from his seat. She closed the door on thunder.

  I have received the signal from the sea, she said. Tomorrow you pilot the ship into the estuary.

  The Captain’s voice: But, Priestess Argo, I cannot take the ship into Aptor. We already have lost ten men; I cannot sacrifice…

  And the storm. Jordde smiled. If it is like this tomorrow, how can I take her through the rocks?

  Her nostrils flared; her lips compressed to a chalky line. She regarded Jordde.

  The Captain’s thoughts: What is between them, this confused tension. It upsets me deeply, and I am tired….

  You will pilot the boat to shore tomorrow, Argo hissed. They have returned with the jewels!

  The Captain’s thoughts: They speak to each other in a code I don’t understand. I am so tired now. I have to protect my ship, my men; that is my job, my responsibility.

  Argo turned to the Captain. Captain, I hired you to obey me. You promised this when you took my commission, and you knew it involved danger in Aptor. You must order your Mate to pilot this ship to Aptor’s shore tomorrow morning.

  The Captain’s thoughts: Yes, yes. The fatigue and the unknowing. But I must fulfill, must complete…Jordde, he began.

  Yes, Captain, answered the Mate, anticipating. If the weather is permitting, sir, I will take the ship as close as I can get. He smiled, a thin curve over his face, and looked back at Argo.

  chapter twelve

  Roughness of sand beneath one of his sides, and the flare of the sun on the other. His eyes were hot and his lids orange over them. He turned over and reached out to dig his hands into the sand. One hand closed.

  He opened his eyes and rolled to his knees. The sand grated under his kneecaps. Looking out toward the water, he saw that the sun hung only inches above the horizon. Then he saw the ship.

  It was heading toward the estuary of the river down the beach. He stood up and looked around. He was alone. The estuary was to his left. He began to run toward where the rocks and vegetation cut off the end of the beach. The sand under his feet was cool.

  A moment later he saw Iimmi’s dark figure run from the jungle, heading for the same place. Geo hailed him. Panting, they joined each other. Together they continued toward the rocks.

  As they broke through the first foliage, they nearly bumped into red-haired Argo, who stood, knuckling her eyes, in the shadow of the broad palm fronds. When she recognized them, she joined them silently. Finally they reached the outcropping of rocks a few hundred feet up the riverbank.

  The rain had sw
elled the river’s mouth to tremendous violence. It vomited brown water into the ocean, frothed against rocks, and boiled opaquely below them. It was nearly half again as wide as Geo remembered it.

  Although the sky was clear, beyond the brown bile of the river, the sea snarled and bared its ivory froth to the early sun. It took another fifteen minutes for the boat to maneuver through granite spikes toward the rocky embankment.

  Staring down into the turbulence, Argo whispered, “So fast…” But that was the only human sound against the roar.

  The boat’s prow bobbed in the swell. At last her plank swung out and bumped unsteadily on the rocks. Figures were gathering on deck.

  “Hey,” Argo said, pointing toward one. “That’s Mom!”

  “Where the hell are Snake and Urson?” Iimmi asked.

  “That’s Snake down there,” Geo said. “Look!” He pointed with his nub.

  Snake crouched near the gangplank itself. He was behind a ledge of rock, hidden from those on the ship, but plain to Geo and his companions.

  Geo said: “I’m going down there. You stay here.” He ducked through the vines, keeping in sight of the rocks’ edge and the heaving foam. He reached a sheltered rise, just ten feet above the nest of rock in which the four-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 a black whip in his hand; the end went to a box strapped to his back. With the lash raised, he stepped onto the shifting plank.

  Geo wondered what the contrivance was. The answer came with the hollow sound of Snake’s thoughts:

  That…is…machine…he…used…to…cut…tongue…with…only…on…whip…not…wire…So Snake knew he was just behind him. As Geo tried to understand exactly the implications of what Snake had said, suddenly, with the speed of a bird’s shadow, Snake leaped from his hiding place and landed on the end of the plank, recovered from his crouch, and rushed out toward Jordde, apparently intending to knock him from the board.