Scene iii:
The Fate of Tripitaka
And now the remnants of the Terran fleet
Are grappled to the huge hull of the Ark.
Although they’re locked in battle, they must share
Their atmospheres through many charred mouths.
Neither combatant can risk decompression:
The Terran infantry is not equipped
With bulky pressure-suits; the Ark-defenders
Must till all hope is gone preserve the air
That keeps their cargo, and the tree itself
10
That is its vessel, still alive. The sight
That meets the crippled escort might remind
One, so inured to irony, of that
Cruel moment in conception when the egg
Is sieged with feebly-beating sperms, that try
To sink their package of genetic meaning
Into the vast bulk of the Mother’s womb.
Within, through sad woodlands torn and splintered
With explosions, the troops of Tripitaka
Form and reform in desperate defense.
20
The flagship of the escort group, the Dove,
Has for the past half-hour been overwhelmed
By waves of massed attackers. Hilly Sharon
Sees on his screens the toil of all he loves,
The seedpod of the Promised Land, the mother
And her daughter, both his brides, the ark
Of his new covenant, the Shekinah,
Rent by her enemies and violated.
He breaks off contact with the enemy,
Orders the two remaining escort ships
30
To bum all new besiegers of the Ark,
And docks his vessel with the mother ship.
As he does so the Raven, the yard-sister
To Hilly’s Dove, is gutted by explosions.
Meanwhile the bridge of the Kalevala
Is calm and bright; for Tripitaka knows
The clear-eyed Chih of generalship, and holds
The ship’s morale in his still folded hands.
No matter if he knows that presently
Defeat is to relieve him of command,
40
That all his enterprises come to nothing;
That the insufferable debt he owes
To the Van Riebeck clan must go unpaid;
That the true body of the live tradition,
The hearth-gods of the ancient Earth, the scriptures
It is his name and fate to carry back
Across the wastes of space to the new country
Must now be quite consumed and lost. Be calm.
As he gives orders swiftly and quietly,
Ximene beside him works her dying ship.
50
Both know that in attempting a relief
Sharon has breached his orders; Tripitaka
Passes Ximene a brief sad smile. That moment
Marisol appears upon the screen.
“Urgent. A message from the Earth. The twins
Found something called the Lima Codex. Vico
Says it’s important, says Ganesh will know.”
The latter, who’s been working feverishly
At the master board of the ship’s computer,
Pricks up his ears. “No, listen, guys, this is
60
The big end run—if it is what I think.
Patch me on through and let me talk to them.”
In thirty seconds he has heard enough.
“Everything’s changed, OK? New ballgame.
Mars doesn’t need our cargo. It’s just wetware.
Those crazy kids have aced the bunch of us.
Right now the most important thing there is
Is that small rucksack on Irene’s back
With the eight high density disks in it.
That’s all we need. They’ve got the Book of Life.”
70
Tripitaka sees what must be done.
The Codex would take months to send, in code,
At the low baud rates of the twins’ equipment.
Giamba Vico’s under house arrest.
The Codex and the twins must be got out.
The only hope is that in victory,
Or the illusion of it, the UN
Will let them leave the planet with the rest
Of the Van Riebeck personnel. “Ganesh,”
Says Tripitaka, “Tell me the plain truth.
80
Who has the skill to read and use the Codex?”
“I was afraid you’d ask me that,” he says.
“The answer is, nobody, not one person.
The minimum is Charlie, Bea, and me.
That means, I guess, you have to wrap me up
And send me off to Mars.” For the first time
In his life, his friends see a great tear
Roll down the pitted cheek of the wise nerd.
As if it were not there, he grins and says,
“One of the perks of brains, mes camarades.”
90
Now Hilly’s boarding party, blackened with fire,
Reaches the bridge. Outside the control capsule
The battle rages still. “Mr. Sharon,”
Says Tripitaka, “You have disobeyed
My order, and I shall lodge formal charges
When this affair is over. But meanwhile,
I command you to carry Mr. Wills
And the flight staff of the Kalevala
To our agreed-on rendezvous on Phobos.
Their safety, chiefly Mr. Wills’, is now
100
Your paramount responsibility.”
Then, to them all: “We must evacuate
All but the garrison; the conflict, though,
Must be as fiercely waged as if there were
No other hope for our survival as
A viable society and world.
I, therefore, and my troops, must stand and fight.”
Ximene casts one tormented glance at Hilly;
And now she speaks. “Sir, with respect I must
Point out that if the ship that I command
110
Does not fight too, the military goal
Of misdirection lacks a certain color.
I must insist I stay and fight my ship.”
Tripitaka groans in soul but sees
How it would be impossible to refuse.
He knows already that the Terran fleet
Must be disabled here to save the Dove.
This may mean the annihilation of
Kalevala; he knows she knows this too.
He cannot ask her, therefore, to appoint
120
Subordinates to stay here in her place.
“Very well then. Proceed about your duties.”
The three bridge officers now volunteer
To stay with Commodore Vivar; Sharon,
After a moment’s agonized delay,
Salutes the turned back of Ximene his lover
And gathers those who are to fight their way
Back to the airlock and the waiting escort.
Tripitaka now prepares himself
For his last battle. In his private room
130
He ritually dons his battle armor
And binds about his waist the antique swords
That Nishiyama gave him at their parting,
Tying the silken cord in prescribed knots.
He breathes his spirit gently out and in,
And meditates on his unworthiness,
The gulf between his proper duty and
The acts that should have bodied out the form;
He feels too the ancient vigor flow
From the cold navel into thigh and armpit.
140
And if his tree should not have fruited, nor
The saintly promise of his birth be kept,
And if his moth
er’s sacrifice be vain,
And if his first command be but a feint
To draw the enemy from greater prizes;
Yet like those breeds of peony or peach,
Or flowering cherry or the bitter plum,
Those beauties hybridized by cruel arts
To be infertile while they feed the soul,
He will now blossom into deathly spring,
150
The barren glory of a pointless end.
And how indeed are such as he employed
Upon a garden-world, a nest of birth?
What occupation for this ghost of fire?
What makes a country kitchen with a sword?
The warrior-caste, the kshatriya, the knight,
The samurai, are bloody parents for
The sweet republic of the human being.
As warrior he is a criminal.
There is a kind of perfectness in crime,
160
That leads the soul to a renunciation
Of all desire, all pleasure, all decay;
That seeks out pain as the one ground of truth.
But such a perfectness is worth a moment
Only, must abrogate itself into
Eternity, cleansed of the kiss of time.
Such meditations may be based on lies.
How can I say this, follower as I am
Of this strange hero of another past?
How disagree with what is true in being,
170
If false in fact? His seed is planted, growing
In the womb of her whose servant he
Had pledged himself to be; his tree is sprung.
Let us say this: The garden of the spirit
Only lives through infertility.
Grant that the meaning of this hero’s life,
Is, as he knows it, only a dead end.
Grant that his seed is no more but a spot
Of albumen, a brute coincidence.
Grant this, but what would any garden be,
180
Without the flame, the unnatural blanch of flower
That bursts from sterile trees and seedlessness?
Time would be base and tame if only growth,
If only nature should command its flow.
Let there be immolations, sacrifice,
Corpses buried in the walls of worlds;
Let Nature bear the guilt of its extinctions:
Thus only is the spirit brought to flower.
In the evacuation, Marisol
Is hustled by her lover’s troops toward
190
The besieged berth of the Dove. Halfway there
She realizes that Ximene’s not with them,
And feels that panic children know when crowds
Part them from Mother. Fear turns to rage.
She struggles up to Hilly, grabs his shoulder,
Whirls him around. “How could you leave her there?
Brute. Bastard. After all the love she’s given.
Go back and fetch her now, if you’re a man.”
Hilly looks vaguely at her, wipes the blood
Of a young Terran from about his mouth.
200
“You’re right. They were my orders. I’d be dead
If I had any choice. She would not come.”
“Then I’m going back. I hate you, Hilly. Always.
Don’t ever think we might have said goodbye.”
He tries to hold her, but she’s got away;
He sees her hit and spun by a stray bullet,
Pick herself up, and stumble on. She does
Not once look back. Fresh Terran troops appear,
And he must cut his way through to the Dove.
Wolf and Irene have slipped quietly back
210
Into their Oxford digs on Beaumont Street.
They sit up late at night with the TV
Waiting for news of the great space battle
And drinking coffee black to ride the waves
Of nauseous sleepiness, the crawling flesh
Of compound jet fatigue, and grief, and rage.
The disks are in an empty plastic bowl
Which once held margarine, inside the fridge.
Irene’s in a cold blue killing fury.
“The mad old bitch has got to die for this.
220
We swore to kill her after Grandfather.
I want to see her black blood on the floor;
I want to see her gut-fat welling out.
Everyone else is hypnotized by her,
Including you. The bitch deserves to die,
And nobody sees it, they all forgive,
Like little jesuses, like little birds
With the big mammasnake’s stone eyes on them.
Oh Wolf, oh come on brother, we’ve got time.
The shuttle won’t be ready for two days.
230
We can get out to Devereux and pop
Her damned eyes out for her, and get right back,
Nobody wiser, a good job well done,
And hop the shuttle on the Monday morning.”
Like Garrison before his mother, Wolf
Shrinks at the fury of his sister’s face,
And loves her for it terribly, and fears her.
“Grandfather loved her though,” he says. “I’ve read
His letters to her. And if you or I
Believed as she does, we could do no other.
240
According to her guiding principles
She’s good, when it can’t be easy for her…”
“Guiding principles,” she spits, and turns
Away, just as her grandmother might do.
“I’ll do it by myself then. Don’t you worry.
Set your mind at rest. You’ll just wake up
And it will all be done, your conscience clear—”
“That’s it,” says Wolf, and feels a deadly chill
Come over him, the chill of fated action;
“Of course we must be faithful to our vow.
250
It’s not a case of feelings or of hatred.
It is an act of war.” For Wolf is not
His uncle Garrison, and knows the bone
That stiffens human flesh to acts of terror,
That serves our noblest daemon, as our worst.
Now through the stricken Ark the enemy
Pours as a flood will through a beaten city,
The levees down, exhausted volunteers
Still trying to fill the breaches, but in vain;
With their fierce general the Martian troops
260
Form and reform in pockets of defense;
Kalevala becomes a charnel-house
Of burnt and broken men and women; less
Would not be expected from a nation
Whose one great treasure lay exposed to sack.
The access to the bridge is held most dearly:
A clearing in the woods, a great door set
Into a hummock in the inner hull;
The woods around are full of Terran dead.
Three hours have passed now since Sharon, in tears,
270
Only a handful of his party left,
Has fought through to the airlock of the Dove,
Broken off contact with the mother vessel,
And, with the crippled escort, got away,
Pursued by half a dozen Terran cruisers;
He’s blown up two of them, outrun the others,
And now is in the long trajectory to Mars.
General Maghreb of the Terran forces
Orders a full assault upon the bridge.
In waves the Terran youth storm through the trees;
280
They fall in windrows, instantly replaced
By others, with like hope of paradise.
At last it’s noticed that the hostile fire
Has slackened off, and the
defense is broken.
The Terran troops enter the clearing slowly
From all directions; this is what meets their eyes.
Surrounded by a heap of Martian dead,
That strange warrior who had led the charge
So many times against the Terran siege
Is kneeling, and unbuckling his armor.
290
Some of them aim their weapons, but are waved
To lower them by officers in command.
Now he removes his helmet, and they see
The fine dark features still defiled with grey.
Before him is a short sword on a stand.
He takes his long sword, one hand on the hilt,
The other on the blade, wrapped for protection
With a silk cloth, and snaps it effortlessly.
And now he ties his knees with a white sash,
And now he meditates a while, at ease,
300
And now he speaks a few words that the soldiers
Can barely catch and do not understand.
The ring of enemies is stunned and silent.
Now with a certain satisfaction, as of one
Who finishes a task long since begun,
He reverently lifts the shorter sword,
Sword of the spirit of a fighting-man,
And turns it carefully upon himself.
He drives a quick stab inward to the belly;
Then with both hands, the razor edge is drawn,
310
Fighting the tremors of the autonomic
System, which governs nausea and such
Internal, ticklish glides as this, across
The abdomen, then up toward the ribs—
A virtuoso touch—and now he falls.
What were those words he said that few could hear?
The red sun of the last day of the year;
Great and less come to one end. What they meant?
Perhaps the eyes that closed in meditation
Last saw the green bolt of an energy weapon,
320
And burned upon the retina in crimson
Was the soft oval of a phosphene’s mask;
Perhaps the red sun is the Shinto god
Of war, the blood-nativity and aura
Of all the silken worship of Japan;
Or was it that bright disk of purest Tao,
Of non-attachment and the tacit Way?
Genesis: An Epic Poem of the Terraforming of Mars Page 24
