Becalmed. A fierce sun rages above the slackened sails. The decks are spread with brightly woven carpets; hammocks hang between the shrouds; a drum-taut tarpaulin rigged to an idle spar shadows the six crew members. Itubi carves a bit of hardwood salvaged from the northern forest. The keen cutting blade is Gregor’s gift. One of the Nords studies a painted scroll; the other strums a drone harp. Skiri works with his charts spread out on the patterned rug. Beside him, a Tropique hums the holy AUM.
The master mariner stands at the rail, his cobweb gown spilling like smoke from his shoulders. Spider silk provides the finest test for a weaver’s fingers. It is the only fabric an Amphíbios can wear. Even the loose-fitting cotton tunic favored by Tropiques and Nords alike in hot weather will foul in the gill vents. Beneath the surface, there is no need for the constricting garments which shield his sensitive skin from the sun.
A form appears in the opalescent water. And another. Two bottle-nosed dolphins rise toward the hull and veer away, a single fluke slicing into the air. For a brief moment of recognition, the master mariner looks into a squinting eye. A cluster of froth marks their swift turn.
The master mariner loosens a clasp and his ephemeral garment slips to his feet. He climbs to the taffrail, the clefts of his gill intake showing under his arm as he reaches for the ratlines. His dive cuts the water with a soundless splash. A trail of bubbles marks his descent as he voids the terminal air in his lungs. Rising from the depths, he hears the silver oscillation of the dolphin’s song.
Y41-AK9 ends an audit session with these words of advice for a lower-level subject:
You must relax. Without withdrawal from tension there can be no concentration. Tomorrow, during the meditation exercise, tune your mind to the alpha-wave broadcast; hear the sacred AUM, the shining sun of suns, Just as you have shed your physical body, be aware of the subtle nature of your astral body. Remember the nineteen elements which compose it: ten organs of action and knowledge, the five vital airs, plus the four mental principles, mind, intellect, subconscious, and ego. These all are shed at the moment of Liberation; the Great At-Oneness.
Find the Divine Power within you. Activate this manifestation of the universe; it is Serpent Power. Let the power uncoil, moving upward toward the seat of the thousand-petaled lotus in the brain. This is the union with pure consciousness.
End transmission.
AUM.
“Why go back?”
“The more serious question,” Quarrels says, his eyes fixed on the sunset, “is why do I want to stay?”
“It’s a good thing you’re so sexy, you certainly win no points for flattery.”
“Stop playing games, Vera. I’m not talking about passion, or that fascinating diary which keeps you so busy between my visits. I do like your pout, but that’s not what’s bringing me back. Each time I set the controls for a longer stay.”
“Fuck the controls. This is as good as life has been in a long time and you know it. Admit it. Even for a fancy Level II Auditor, or whatever the hell you are, this is the best you can remember.”
“How did you know I was from Level II?”
“Because you sound like a young abbé who once gave me music lessons, full of zeal and chastity. Quite good-looking, too. When were you cerebrectomized?”
“August 19, 1972.” An easy date for Quarrels to invent. His thirty-second birthday, the day he stepped from the LMV to the surface of the moon.
“Seventy-two. That was early. You must have really been some kind of nut.”
“No, it …” Quarrels gropes for another lie, “it was in Southeast Asia. I caught some junk on a strike. The navy picked up the pieces.”
“Then you don’t remember the pollution or the war? How life used to be, the air-conditioning and the gas masks? Oh, I had a charming mask from Gucci, all in python with a lot of style, but most people looked like insects on the street. The radiation suits were worse! Much too bulky to have any chic.”
“I was spared that, thank God.” This is true. From the orbiting space platform, the earth was a shining blue disk, only slightly smudged around the continents; and when the Thirty-minute War consumed half the globe, Endurance II was out beyond Pluto, seventy years deep into space.
“Well, my sheltered innocent, the world wasn’t the pretty place you remember from before the middle war. By the time I went into the box, there were quite a few changes. Nothing as nice as this was left. You ought to stick around; there isn’t a file in the Depository that can compare with life here. Who knows, if you stay you might find another airplane hiding someplace.”
The Sentinel stands in a clearing shaded by mango trees circled by a dozen seated members of the only tribe on Antilles Nine, the Qaf. Because the tribe is symbiotic—Tropiques on the island and Amphíbios in the coral reef surrounding it—there are two Law Speakers. They stand on either side of the tall tripodal cylinder, listening with folded arms to the communicator voice of Y41-AK9:
You must understand that Level I is a refuse heap. No resident of Level I has ever been Elevated, nor is there a likely candidate among their numbers. They are thousands of years from even the beginnings of spiritual awakening. This runaway must be returned to the Depository. He has not earned the right to live among you.
“It is in his karma to be with us,” the Amphíbios Law Speaker says.
True, Enlightened One, but his presence is a danger to your society. His unstable behavior makes harmonious life impossible. I am more convinced of this than ever after he deserted his shipmates and managed to elude observation for such a long time. Remember the destruction he caused in the Surface Installation.
“Only machines were destroyed,” says the Tropique.
And the brain of a Level I resident.
“A brain is an organic machine, as replaceable as any other. Are the resident’s files intact?”
To my knowledge, they are.
“Then, don’t worry about the hardware. Develop some priorities.”
“Perhaps,” the Amphíbios says, covering his gleaming skull-bald head with a fold of his gown, “our worthy Auditor should not trouble himself with such refuse. Perhaps such matters do not concern his exalted attentions.”
My words were ill chosen, Seer of Truth. Devotion to my subjects on Level I is my sacred duty.
“Just so.”
Exactly why I must plead for the return of Obu Itubi.
The Tropique shakes his head. “It would be better if you examined your own motives. You might find your eagerness is caused by the demands of Ego. Obu is content here. Give him time to sort out his thoughts. He lives alone in a simple shelter built with his own hands. He’s planted a garden. Such is the foundation of a full life.”
A foundation built upon the sand will topple. I have had Itubi under continual surveillance since yesterday morning. Are the Law Speakers aware that it’s not a garden he tends, but a crock of fermenting guavas! Does the brewing of intoxicants yield a full life?
“A man’s life is his own if he causes no harm to others.”
With the Speaker’s permission, I have preserved his words on memo file. There may be a time when he will want to hear them once again. Until then, I maintain Sentinel surveillance as authorized by Center Control.
“Peace be unto you and all living creatures.”
Oona the Weaver wanders far into the backcountry each afternoon, hunting insects, plants, and other dye-stuffs under the arching canopy of trees. She carries a fiber basket for her cuttings and a pair of drawstring pouches to hold her more elusive discoveries. A dry streambed provides an easy pathway through the liana vines.
It is a warm flower-scented afternoon; slanting shafts of sunlight pierce the leaves and branches overhead; the only sound is a murmuring call of doves. Oona moves silently over the water-smooth stones. She feels the life energies of other creatures around her in the dense forest: young deer in velvet, sly mongooses on the prowl, lizards with their throbbing orange throats. She is aware, too, of another presence, vaguely dang
erous like a sleeping snake. But, unlike the serpent’s lethal torpor, the vibrations she senses from the hermit hidden in the underbrush are alive and desperate.
Obu Itubi watches the graceful hips and slender brown ankles; he notes the firm swell of her breasts under the white cotton shirt. This woman balancing a basket is a daily enticement, her invasion of his numb retreat a painful reminder of an old dream gone sour. Itubi takes a slobbering drink from his calabash. Belching bittersweet, he wipes his mouth on his forearm and smiles. Drunkenness helps to erase memory for a time. The pious hospitality of the Qaf Tropiques supplies his brewpot with honey as well as the bread he uses to start the mash working. Pure spring water and acres of fruit come free in the forest. He wallows in the sunshine, sodden and heavy with beer, indifferent to his misery until the woman comes every afternoon and makes him think of how it might have been.
She remains a stranger. He has never spoken or shown himself to her. He knows all too well the distant sound of her voice, the placid smile. Tropiques, Nords, men or women, they are all stamped from the same mold. Center Control adjusts the light that burns in the clear unwavering eyes. The outside world is only another level in the Depository System.
Still, it’s fun to imagine stripping those floppy pajamas from her perfect shoulders, seizing breasts, hips, a fold of thigh, before plunging his face into the syrupy mussel-colored maw of her, to drink and taste, uncoiling his long tongue like a butterfly sipping nectar from a flower.
Nothing ever changes. Years seem to pass between Philip Quarrels’ visits, and yet Vera detects no aging in her mirror. Time slips by, one day exactly like the next, yesterday the twin of tomorrow, and her only real memories are of the hours she spends with Philip. Even the house stays the same. When she returns for supplies this week (or was it last week, or last month?), the familiar sun-filled rooms seem as fresh and new as the day of her first visit.
She hurries through the pantry, filling her hamper with cheeses and tinned delicacies. Freshly baked bread and a tantalizing assortment of glacéd cakes wait in the kitchen. A trip to the wine cellar yields a half dozen dusty bottles. Vera dumps the trash she brings from her tent into a barrel in the yard outside the kitchen door. The barrel is empty as it will be next time, as it was the time before. And ever shall be, Vera thinks. Except when he’s here. Then, it’s almost real.
She lives in the shelter of his parachute, safe to borrow only those memories which are pleasant. Quarrels can never come to the house, she knows that too. Still, she wishes she could share some particle of her past with him. He is apathetic to the fine food and drink, sleeping as easily in the sand as in the nested pillows on her tigerskin. The treasures of her lifetime hold no interest for him. She wants something to please a man, something like Raoul’s shotgun upstairs in the trunk.
The woman is on her knees in front of him, pulling tubers from the moist earth and placing them in her basket. At the sound of Itubi’s lurching stumble she turns her head and starts to rise, but he catches her sleeve and pulls her down beside him in the leaves. He is a naked devil, tearing at her clothes, his florid face leering and wild. She lies inert, curious and detached as he parts her legs with a savage thrust of his knee.
Itubi sways, panting above her, his hands pinning her shoulders to the ground. “Too pure, aren’t you?” he snarls as her eyes calmly meet his hate-filled stare. “Too pure and holy to fight back?” He slides his hands down to her breasts, cruelly pinching her nipples. “But you can’t stop these from wrinkling and hurting and growing hard, can you?” She doesn’t move. “What’s the matter? Is your cunt so saintly? Is that what’s the matter? The precious sepulcher is about to be defiled. Isn’t that worth fighting for? Isn’t it!”
“Your need is so great,” Oona says, opening her thighs for him. “You must suffer.” She slips her ankles behind his knees.
Itubi recoils, his hands lifting from her breasts as if the flesh has suddenly putrefied beneath his touch. “Oh no, I don’t want that.” He rises to his feet. “I’ll do better with my fist, milking my dreams.”
“But it’s not for pity.” Oona lifts her hand, fingers gently drifting along the silken shaft, tracing the swollen blood vessels like a blind woman. “I’ve seen does mounted in the forest and the copulation of whales, and every day in the barnyard the cock runs the hens to earth and I watch him cover them with his strong wings.” She is standing beside him. “I am different from the others, like you are.” She directs his fingers up between her legs. “The sight of a stag in rut never made me open in such a manner.”
They cling together, moaning and swaying like trees in the wind. Uprooted, they fall back into the leaves. Itubi enters her with slow deep strokes and the spasms of release are immediate, all his tensions flooding helplessly into the soft enveloping warmth. For Oona it is something different. His passion is the threshold of an all-consuming universe, ever expanding into particles of light, the very atoms of her being disintegrate, electrons collide. She is lost in the electric fire of creation.
Spent, Itubi gamely endeavors to match Oona’s voracious rhythm. He remains erect, but his mind is elsewhere. He is thinking of the drone bee mating in midair with the Queen, chosen out of a legion of pursuing bachelors. The nuptial flight ends in tragedy. The drone falls back to earth, disembowled, while the Queen flies off with his sexual apparatus and a portion of trailing abdomen still obediently pumping.
“Throw!”
Vera skims a flat-sided seashell up into the air, launching it with a flick of her wrist like a tiny discus. Quarrels swings the shotgun in a sweeping arc, taking an extra second to gauge the lead. He fires and the seashell powders. Vera jumps up and down in the sand, applauding.
“You try,” he says, slipping two red plastic cartridges into the smoking cylinders.
“No, it hurts my shoulder. I like throwing better.”
“Can you throw two at once?”
“Why not?” She hunts along the surfline for shells the proper size. “Philip,” she remembers to call him Philip, “isn’t this fun, Philip?”
“Terrific.” He grins.
“I hope it never ends.”
“I’m going back to the Depository, if that’s what you mean.”
“Oh?” Vera tries for nonchalance as she picks up a second seashell. “Soon?”
“Not for a while. But the alarm is already set for a disconnection, so talking about it won’t help. Are you ready?”
She nods.
“Throw!” Quarrels swings with the spinning shells and fires twice, splintering the first into five pieces, missing the double. No applause. Vera’s smile remains but her eyes are glinting and cruel. “There’s work I must do,” he says. “I have a schedule to follow. Maybe I can arrange something next time so the Commission won’t miss me. I know how to adjust the coordinates.”
“Next time, no alarm?”
“I promise.”
“And we’ll be together forever?”
“I promise, my darling.”
Y41-AK9 complains to his Auditor: If the System is just, why does it permit injustice?
What would you suggest?
Authorization by Center Control for the immediate apprehension of the subject. The necessary equipment could be delivered by Sentinel.
It is not the duty of the Depository to police the world.
But who else is to do it? The Law Speakers take no action. Itubi is given shelter wherever he goes. A female is housing him now. He has a life of ease ahead. Is that just? If the residents of Level I ever guess his fate, there will be complete chaos.
Center Control Regulations specify that the goal of Level I is acceptance of the Depository as their only world. Residents must learn to have faith in the System. Knowledge of truth is a precious responsibility, Y41-AK9. Perhaps continued exposure to the outside is weakening your trust. Temptations are strongest when Intellect and Ego cloud the mind.
I strive for patience and wisdom.
We suggest it. Without those qualities delu
sions arise, rash recommendations not congruent with order are seriously offered, the oblique workings of the subconscious revealed. To propose using machines against man is absurd; to imply that an Auditor might break his vows and pass along forbidden information to a lower-level resident is unimaginable. If performance of duty is proving too heavy a burden for Y41-AK9, then perhaps another Auditor can be assigned to the Subject.
My endeavors will be doubled with the wise assistance of those who see farther and guide me when I go astray.
The Weaver’s palm-thatched house stands on the crest of a hill overlooking the sea. Gaudy jungle fowl scratch in the yard in front of the open door. Itubi sits on the step, mending a wooden stool, surrounded by the geometric patterns boldly painted on the whitewashed cut-coral walls. Skeins of newly dyed yarn hang in brilliant loops from the drying racks above his head, an awning as bright and ever changing as a rainbow. Everywhere he looks, he is confronted by color. Even the vegetable plots are divided by opulent rows of flowers.
He closes his eyes and listens to the sounds of the shuttle as Oona works at her loom inside. While he is prone to sit and dream, Oona is never idle—tending the dyeing vats, sweeping, drawing water from the cistern, spinning cotton fiber into yarn at her wheel, working in the garden. Her chores begin at sunrise and end in the smoky flickering light of a beeswax candle. She never asks his help, and except for two days a week when he leads the horse along the coastal path to the broad central valley and returns with a bale of cotton strapped to the pack saddle, Itubi is forced to invent work, finding simple tasks like the wobbling stool to fill his day. Aside from some desultory whittling, he has made no attempt to sculpt. The urge is no longer in him.
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