by John Brunner
“Ah, yes! That’s one of the things I’ve come to see you about.” The captain adopted a soothing tone. “Don’t you think it would be better for your baby to be born in a /hospital/, in /sterile/ conditions with trained staff on hand, rather than in your cave? What about /amniocentesis/? What about your /rhesus incompatibility/? You were told you’re /rhesus opposites/; you can’t have forgotten that! Of course, you’ll be a /primapara/, so your system hasn’t been sensitized, but even so you’re running a terrible risk, let alone the danger of /Down’s syndrome/ if you have your first child at such an advanced age… Oh, hell! It’s no use, is it? I’m not getting through.”
He turned away despondently. After a pause Bony suggested, “What about something on a more basic level? They seem to be afraid that we’re here to rob them, don’t they? But we can easily disabuse them of that idea.”
“Yes, of course!” Scarface agreed. “We can bring a load of provisions, the sort of stuff they can’t have seen in months, and gain their attention that way. How about it?”
Bewildered, Evgenos and Anastasia looked from one to the other of the intruders, striving to make sense of what was being said, and failing.
“It’s worth trying,” the captain agreed. “Go ahead!”
At once Bony and Scarface relaunched the dinghy and made haste toward the galley, whose crew were now fully awake and going about their normal business of checking the rigging and washing down the decks.
“Gene! Stacy! Shall we sit down?” the captain proposed, and suited action to word by lowering his rump gingerly on to a flattish rock.
“How does he know our private names?” Anastasia whispered, making no move to copy him.
“I don’t know,” Evgenos answered grimly, still fighting the impulse to see and hear two, or twenty, where there was only one. “Saints and angels, hmm? I could better believe them devils! Fetch the icon!”
They had one hanging over their pallet, the only gift at their wedding—about which most of the islanders had been furious—that might last a while beyond the birth of their first child; the rest of the presents had been scraps of cloth, pickled vegetables and salted fish, jars of oil and the like, the smallest tokens the givers thought they could get away with. It was painted in cheap colors on a slab of badly warped wood, but it had been properly dedicated in the church and carried the power of the image on it, the Virgin and Child in blue, red, white and gold.
Thanks to Anastasia’s habit of kissing it night and morning, though, much of the paint in the center had already worn away.
She made haste to unhook the string on which it hung from the natural peg afforded by a branch stump on the tree trunk Evgenos had set up as the hovel’s center post (and there had been a row about its felling, for some declared it had stood beyond the border of the unclaimed ground where they had made their home—but it had yielded nothing, it wasn’t an olive and it didn’t bear nuts, so it was no great loss).
Rushing back, she held the icon before her like a shield, affected by Evgenos’s mention of devils to the point where it seemed she expected the captain to scream and disappear.
But the latter’s only reaction was to take it from her for inspection. “I take it you’re very proud of this,” he remarked, smiling as he handed it back. “So you should be. It must be very old. I’m no expert, of course, but to me it looks like a splendid example of traditional folk art. It could well fetch thousands at an auction in @@@@@.”
Where?
Once again a name slithered past their ears. Baffled, on the verge of crying, Anastasia clutched the icon to her breast and hurried to restore it to its usual place.
By this time, however, Evgenos had accepted that they were in no immediate danger. Laying by his intended means of defense, he cautiously sat down on another level rock, facing the captain. He said, “How is it you seem to know us? I don’t recognize you at all.”
He made no mention of the countless others he could see whenever he looked at him.
“Are you sure? Don’t you think it might come back to you in a little while?”
“But where did we meet? I don’t remember!”
Gravely, the captain leaned forward, elbow on knee and chin in hand.
“That’s fairly obvious,” he said with a frown. “The question remains: why not? How what you’ve been through could have affected you so deeply on the mental level, even though physically both you and Stacy seemed perfectly normal on your return: that’s what we don’t understand.”
“Return from where?” Evgenos cried. “Where did I go?”
“If I could tell you that,” said the captain soberly “we wouldn’t be talking in riddles, would we? But you and Stacy have been there, and I haven’t. Don’t you realize how much we admire you both? You must be among the bravest people in history. Knowing how poor your chances were, you went ahead and volunteered because you cared more about your species than yourselves. If only—”
Evgenos sat dumb, letting the incomprehensible words flow on. He had never done anything more admirable than run away to this island in search of sanctuary. His memory assured him that was the truth.
Though, of course, meeting and winning Anastasia…
But these people hadn’t come here after women, or anything else. In fact, they seemed to be bringing rather than taking away. In the distance the dinghy had been loaded with a cargo he could not clearly discern, and Bony and Scarface were bending to their oars again. Meantime, as Anastasia hastened back and dropped on her knees at his side, as though into protective shelter, he forced out, “You didn’t finish what you were saying.”
“Oh, yes. I was about to say: if only there were some way we could get reports without sending live observers! Or if only we could devise some sort of training program to prepare people for what they’re going to encounter! But we simply can’t conceive /machines/ that will react along the same lines. Our brains don’t work the way /computers/ do. You know, for years we’ve had a prize on offer, worth ten million plus the assurance of worldwide fame, for anyone who can design a /machine/ capable of passing the /interface/ and returning with decipherable data. Frankly, I don’t think anyone is going to win it who hasn’t already made the trip—Ah! I see breakfast coming. I hope you’re hungry.”
When had either of them been otherwise?
But Evgenos held his tongue, and allowed himself to be persuaded into helping to unload the dinghy. Its cargo proved to consist of foodstuffs as strange and fascinating as the scent he and Anastasia had awoken to.
Friendly and generous, the captain passed squat goblets of a substance that was warmer to the touch than glass or pottery, tinted throughout with bright intrinsic colors and every one different. These were then filled by Bony with a steaming dark brown liquid which, when sipped, made them alert and lively. Bread followed; though cool, it was as moist and spongy as if it had come fresh from the oven. To go with it there were pinkish brown cylinders of chopped meat, spicy and delicious, preserves sweeter than any Evgenos could remember tasting, strange bright red fruit with yellow pips, and more, and more, and more…
“This is a /tomato/,” the captain explained. “What you are drinking is /coffee/ and—well, you obviously recognize bread, but those are /frankfurters/ and the pickle is /mango chutney/ and this is a /bell pepper/ and this is…”
No use. The blank wall remained between them. Evgenos was aware that he and Anastasia were expected to respond in some way to these unfamiliar, though welcome, foods, whose names he heard and instantly forgot, but when he strove to think of any connection they might have with his past, he failed. Glancing at Anastasia, he saw that she was equally at a loss, though she ate greedily. Contrariwise Scarface, Bony, and the captain, all three, displayed small appetite, concerned only to produce more and more of what they had brought in the hope of—what? What could they be looking for on Oragalia, this island forgotten by the rest of the world? They couldn’t be hoping to open up a new market for their exotic imports! Who on this poverty-stricken hum
mock of rock and sand could afford to pay their prices?
Replete, burping, Evgenos waved aside the latest offering. Never had he dreamed of such a banquet, least of all one conjured up without warning on his own patch of salt-sour ground! The finest feasts held at the island’s single village, where people vied with one another to have their neighbors admire their skill in drying fish, preparing oil and wine, or pickling onions, paled into insignificance beside this repast… whose hosts apparently regarded it as trivial, judging by the way they were tossing the leftovers into the sea. For a second he was angered: why, he and Anastasia could have made two more meals off what was being wasted!
Then he recovered himself. He owed the visitors something, in the way of courtesy if no other. He turned to the captain, relieved at seeing only one of him by now.
“Sir, will you not tell me when and where you think I met you?”
“Not just you,” the other answered. “Stacy as well.”
“That’s impossible!” Anastasia burst out. “I’ve spent my whole life on this island! The only people I’ve ever met were born here, same as me, or came like you across the sea. And I never saw a ship like yours before, and most of all I never saw you! Unless—”
A horrifying idea struck her. She rounded on Evgenos.
“Unless you had another woman before you came here who was so like me that this man has mixed us up!”
“Now you’re being silly!” the captain began, rising to his feet. But Anastasia did the same, more swiftly.
“I don’t know you!” she cried. “I don’t want to know you or the world you come from! I didn’t invite you here and all I want is for you to go away!”
Bursting into tears, she spun on her heel and fled to the shelter of the cave above their hovel.
Instantly angry on her behalf, Evgenos lifted his pole, prepared to strike the captain down, but Scarface laid a hand on his arm and warned him to desist. Bony said, “We’re wasting our time, you know. It’s just as I’ve been predicting all along: this sort of direct approach can only drive them deeper into /fugue/.”
“But we can’t just leave them to rot!” the captain exclaimed. “Especially now she’s pregnant!”
“There’s time yet,” Bony countered. “And if nothing breaks before her waters—sorry: bad joke—we’ll simply have to intervene on the grandest possible scale. Meantime there’s no special hurry.”
“No hurry? Are you crazy?” The captain took half a pace back.
“There are some cases,” Scarface said grayly, “where haste is self-defeating. We literally do not know what’s going on. It could even be that this is the penalty the cosmos imposes on creatures as hubristic as ourselves.”
“Stuff your /mystical/ nonsense!” the captain flared.
“When we’re dealing not just with the frontiers of reality, but something way beyond them, there isn’t a divide between /science/ and /mysticism/ anymore.” With a smile of apology Scarface let go Evgenos’s arm.
“Well said,” approved the boy he had privately nicknamed Bony, and turned away. “So long, Gene. Apologize to Stacy on our behalf. We didn’t mean to make her so upset.”
Evgenos was on the verge of demanding that they stay and explain themselves properly, when in sudden amazement he thought: boy? And realized Bony wasn’t one, but a woman, for all her masculine disguise.
Confused beyond measure, he was glad to see them go.
As always, a couple of hours after noon, the heat of the land began to draw cooler air off the sea. That, plus the beating of the water by the galley’s oars, dispersed the dense and aromatic vapor from her cargo. When it had faded completely, Anastasia and Evgenos were left with a vague feeling of regret, or unfulfillment.
But at least they had a respite from hunger. The scraps the visitors had left would suffice them for days, even though some had had to be retrieved from the shallows and were soaked with salt water.
“Those people…” Gene muttered as darkness fell.
“Yes?”
“Wasn’t it strange how they thought we used to know them?”
“Hah!” she retorted caustically. “Some people are vain enough to believe they ought to be recognized anywhere!”
He gave a dry chuckle. “Yes, that’s part of it, I guess. And yet…”
“What?” Undressing amid yawns, ready to stretch out on their crude bed, she added, “Aren’t you tired?”
“Yes—yes, very tired.” Not rising, he started to peel off his shirt, but with it still spread across his knees he spoke again.
“Nonetheless that can’t be the whole story. It’s obvious enough that people can be lured to make long voyages by the hope of profit, and who would not prize a cargo of spices like the one that scented our whole island today?”
“It could have bought and sold our land a hundred times over!” she exclaimed as she lay down.
“Yes, even perhaps a thousand times.” But such enormous numbers felt foreign to them both. He plowed ahead.
“What, though, is one to make of people who travel for the sake of traveling—of finding themselves tomorrow, or next year, in a land no one they ever met or even heard of has set foot upon before? People who are prepared to take the risk of being cast away because they are so greedy for places where everything is different from at home!”
“I suppose they’re out of their minds,” Stacy replied around another yawn.
“No! No!” Warming to his theme, Gene twisted his calloused hands back and forth, back and forth, on the coarse and tattered fabric of his shirt. “Was Giacomo crazy, for example?”
“Maybe.”
“Are you? Am I?”
“Maybe.”
“But I don’t feel crazy!”
“What does being crazy feel like? My guess is that it must feel normal.”
He considered that awhile, wondering why a woman should dress up as a boy. Eventually he said, “If not, I suppose one could recognize it… But that still doesn’t take care of people like Giacomo.”
“Tell me why not.”
“Because he was chronically discontented. He maintained that the only kind of world to suit his restless spirit was one where nothing was ever the same from one day to the next. He declared himself heartily sick of those who, like his father, strove in cobwebbed libraries and gray museums to reduce the cosmos to entries in a catalogue. He dreamed of a universe where there would always be new challenges, new realms to be explored; where people like himself could forever be setting out on journeys into the unknown, and be the bane of those who stayed at home in a boring, dull, predictable environment, occupying themselves with study and analysis. He used to say, ‘So you’ve dissected lots of frogs! Did you ever wind up knowing how to build a frog that did frog things, or were there just more piles of rotten meat to throw away?’
“For him, therefore, the journey was his life’s ambition. He set out joyfully and found his goal. In the place he came to, it was axiomatic that tomorrow should be different from today. On learning that he was an explorer by profession, the people eagerly financed his team. So off he went, with comrades of like mind, and found a jungle no one had traversed, replete with the most amazing novelties: relics and tribes, and animals, that none had seen before! He endured privations worse than any he’d imagined; sometimes starving, sometimes half-dead of thirst, losing his companions one by one, he achieved the most epic exploration of all time, and when he staggered back to the coast, leech-weakened, staring-eyed, nearly naked, but clutching to him precious records he’d compiled, he was at long last glad of a chance to return to the city he’d set out from, which lately he’d condemned as dull and smug. He’d been away a year or two at most, so he looked forward to a splendid welcome.
“Yet even at the docks he felt betrayed. The city was certainly the one he had booked passage to, only… Here were old, known names, but the signs indicated unfamiliar streets; there were different instructions in the phone booth from which he tried to call a number that turned out not to exi
st. The cars and trucks were wrongly shaped and made an alien noise, and he did not recognize the coding of their registration plates; the meal he ordered in a café stemmed from a cuisine he did not know, and when he tried to pay for it the money in his pocket was dismissed as a crude forgery. Worst of all, the policemen called by the proprietor arrived in uniforms the like of which he’d never seen before. Only when he was dragged away to jail did he realize the truth.”
“I don’t understand,” Stacy murmured out of shadow.
“Why, that on this world which matched his heart’s desire nothing was stable, nothing remained the same. Had he only stayed where he found himself at first, he could have enjoyed all the benefits of change without the shock of coming home to a city where he and his mission were doomed to be forgotten… or derided.”
For a while there was silence. Then:
“I still don’t see what you mean, but it was a pretty tale anyhow. Before tomorrow, please, let us forget the strangers.” Rolling over, Stacy spread wide her arms.
“With the best will in the world,” said Gene as he embraced her. “Only—”
“Only what?”
“I think maybe they won’t so easily forget us.”
“What do you mean?” she exclaimed in alarm, for she had felt him shiver.
A cold and distant fear had touched him. With an effort he dismissed it, and shortly persuaded her that, tonight at least, there was no more need for speech.
PART SIX
THE EXHIBIT
is the hilt of a rusty sword, its blade a stub.
It marks the failure of an age of certainty
THE MONTH
is September
THE NAME
is Hedwig
Except for the very young, the sick, and the very old, and those who were obliged to stay at home and tend them, the entire population of Oragalia had assembled in the island’s single church to mark the festival of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. They included some whose presence was resented, but the papas had ordered slandermongers to bridle their tongues, since it was unbefitting to speak evil of one’s fellows at this sacred time.
