by John Brunner
Moreover, few communities—and that included all the neighboring islands—enjoyed the luxury of their own seeress. There were oracles aplenty on the mainland, but they were a long and dangerous journey distant. In any case, what attention could those alien gods be expected to pay to somewhere this remote and insignificant? Let all rejoice in their good fortune, then, inasmuch as they benefited from one woman’s contact with the divine.
So great, indeed, was the confidence the folk reposed in her that they now neglected many antique shrines, and had let former ceremonies fall into disuse, to the vast annoyance of the royal family, for they provided the hereditary priests or priestesses of the cults concerned.
The king himself had ruled harshly in the past, thereby earning the detestation of his subjects. Now, though, he was old and ill, and unwilling to waste his failing strength in a fruitless struggle against one chosen of the gods. However, seeking what they regarded as their rightful share of the people’s offerings, his kinfolk tried repeatedly to persuade her to take the king’s last unwed son in marriage—a beardless boy!—or at least accept one of his daughters as a pupil and companion.
All such proposals she rejected with fine scorn, and the folk came reluctantly to believe she was resolved to die a virgin.
Unpredictable as ever, last spring she had proved them wrong.
Where he had come from, the black stranger, no one knew. None of the fisherfolk had reported finding so much as the wreckage of a raft after the storm that presaged his advent. Some claimed he was not human, but conjured up by magic arts from the infernal realm of Hephaistos the lame smith. At all events, one morning of a sudden he was there: starvation-gaunt, yet exceptionally tall, black as midnight and naked apart from a spotted animal hide wrapped around his loins, a figure of indescribable menace.
The children bringing the pythoness’s daily offering encountered him in twilight, dropped their burdens and fled in terror. When they reached home, at first their parents accused them of telling lies, but when they themselves ventured near, nervous, after sunrise, there he was squatting on a rocky outcrop, gnawing twigs off a tree bough—for food, they thought at first, mistaking him for an animal.
Then they realized he was stripping the branch to use it as a club, like Heracles, and ran away as swiftly as the children.
By noon almost the entire population of Oragalia had assembled to stare at the dark-skinned apparition. Some, urged on by the king’s eldest son who craved action because he was growing weary of waiting to enter into his birthright, were brandishing weapons and declaring that this monster should be put to death at once. Others, however, were not so sure it would prove vulnerable to swords and spears.
While they were still arguing, the pythoness appeared bearing a bowl of broth. To their amazement, she was even more naked than the black man, for she wore nothing but a charm on a thong around her neck—though her nudity was already a powerful magic.
Approaching the stranger, who desisted from his task and watched her warily, she set the dish just out of reach at a spot where the breeze would blow the savory aroma toward him. Then she stepped back and waited.
Suspicious, but leaving his club behind, he was lured toward the bait. Having dipped and sucked his finger, he approved the taste, and after gulping down the broth greedily scooped up the remaining scraps.
The pythoness held out her hand for the bowl. He relinquished it and said something in a language no one—not even she, apparently—could understand. She smiled, and offered her other hand to take his. Uncertain, he shied away and snatched up his club. But she stood her ground, and only moments later he made up his mind to go with her. Together they disappeared in the direction of the cave, leaving the king’s son and his cronies to disperse discomfited.
Next morning, when the offerings were brought—not by children for once, but by burly armed men—he was there, watching from a nearby crag, leaning on his club. And so it had been every day since. The only difference was that now the islanders had grown almost proud of having such a wonder in their midst, and even the children called greetings to him, which he had learned to answer, in a gruff tone but comprehensibly. Also, since the weather had turned cool, he had donned a coarse woolen cloak.
The change in the pythoness herself was far greater, for now she went with child.
At first the islanders had refused to believe it, being so convinced she was committed to perpetual chastity. Then those who maintained that the black stranger was not human, but forged by the smith of the gods, pointed out that this would mean a line of succession was to be established. No doubt such a child would be possessed of powers even more amazing than its mother’s. Fortune would smile on Oragalia forever!
Apart—as usual—from the king’s kinsmen, the populace were delighted to fall in with this reasoning. After much debate, they even decided to act in accordance with it.
Today dawn broke on a figure waiting at the usual spot on the hill above the bay, but there had been no special offering, nor was there one now. The common sort of food had been sent, only it had been brought by an uncommon carrier: an old woman, nearly toothless, her skin like wrinkled leather, but her hands still strong and her eyes still keen. Shivering perhaps less from the chill than at the sight of the black man, whom few had dared approach so closely, she remained where she was when he emerged to collect the food.
He challenged her—or greeted her; it was hard to know which—and she replied in a steady voice, but he did not have enough words to grasp what she meant. Satisfied, however, that she posed no sort of threat, he returned to the cave.
A while passed. The sun broached the horizon.
Then, moving slowly, for her time could be at most a fortnight away and her belly was so big that the child might well be born early, the pythoness left her cave and mounted the steep path which snaked past it, upward to the ridge, down to the beach. She spoke in irritable tones. The crone explained her presence. On being curtly told to go away, she glanced nervously at the black man, but remained where she was.
Sensing, if not following, the meaning of the exchange, the man pantomimed picking her up and throwing her over the cliff. They pythoness seemed to consider the idea, but eventually signed no, and let herself be led back to the cave. Lying on a heap of skins and fleeces, she managed to convey despite many false starts and misunderstandings the fact that the woman was a skilled midwife. The folk had decided that those with such knowledge must keep guard here by day and night from now until the birth-time, for fear of any delay in being sent for when labor started. The life of a pythoness’s child was too precious to be risked.
Abruptly catching on, he grinned, his teeth amazingly white in his dark face. Seizing a piece of meal cake, he dipped it in oil and returned to the hillside.
The old woman cringed when he advanced on her, but he took her hand gently and folded her fingers around the cake, then pointed at his mouth. For a moment she seemed to think she was supposed to feed him. Perhaps imagining this was some sort of sacred ritual, she made to do so, but he burst into a rich deep laugh and indicated more clearly that the food was for her. Surprised, but willing enough, she mumbled it with a word of thanks. Later, he brought her water in one of the pythoness’s fine glazed pots, before setting out to check the fishing lines he had laid along the beach.
At sundown the watch changed. A younger and stronger woman arrived and sent the crone hobbling homeward. Before departure the latter handed over a ball of twine and a knife, its blade honed to flashing keenness, which she had hitherto kept concealed under her cloak. The black man thought at first it might be meant for self-defense, as though even at her age the old woman feared assault from this ferocious-looking stranger. Hah! In the case of the new arrival, on the other hand…
Seeing him stare at the knife, however, she demonstrated its use, pantomiming the emergence of something between her legs, then gesturing with the string and sawing at the air. Light dawned, and he shook his head vigorously. In the land he hailed from, wom
en brought similar instruments to attend a birth, though generally of bone or polished stone. There, too, they would have reacted in just the same way as this one did when he held out his hand and mutely requested a chance to inspect the symbols engraved on the haft. She thrust the knife behind her instantly.
Well, it was women’s magic anyhow. He turned away into the gathering dark.
“Olga!” he said suddenly.
It was very late. Stacy was only drowsing, though, not fully asleep; the child was kicking at her furiously as though eager to be born. So far, however, she had not warned him of the onset of labor pains. According to her best estimates, they ought not to begin for several days.
Shifting in search of a comfortable position, failing to find one, she snapped, “I’m not called Olga! Who’s Olga?”
Recently she had reverted to her former abrupt changes of mood. Wanting to calm her, he laid a soothing hand on her cheek, and withdrew it instantly, sitting up.
“You’re sweating, but it’s chill tonight!”
“Don’t worry—” she began, but he was already reaching for a rag to dip in water and wring out. Having laid it across her forehead, he rested on one elbow, gazing down at her dim outline.
“That’s nice,” she sighed. “Thank you… Gene, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. Of course I know which Olga you mean. Tell me her story. Maybe it’ll help to send me to sleep.”
“That’s a backhanded compliment if ever I heard one,” he muttered. But he lay down again, cradling her head against his shoulder, and stared at the invisible roof of rock as he marshaled his words. At length:
“Maybe it was her background… though how can one ever be sure what’s outside influence and what’s innate? At all events she grew disillusioned with intellect and reason. She spent her life searching for experiences which would transcend reality, and when she was offered the chance to do so in the literal sense, she seized it with avidity.”
“What was the proper world for Olga, then?”
“Not in any real sense a world. At best a place. A place where rationality no longer ruled. The frame of logic was strained there, coming apart as it were to offer glimpses of something else beyond, insusceptible to reason.
“First of all she noticed that certain of the events which happened to her resisted explanation. The people she had come among were happy to accept them, seeking no underlying cause, and after a little she realized that this was precisely what she’d always claimed to want.
“Habit, however, was too strong. A meeting she desired took place when it should have been impossible, the other person being much too far away. An object she chanced across, but could not find again, seemed to have been of a color not belonging to the spectrum. A phrase she overheard in someone else’s conversation rang with subtle meaning, but she could neither grasp that meaning nor repeat the words. Strive as she would to enjoy these experiences, she found them dreadfully disquieting.
“Growing desperate, she was ultimately driven to the conclusion that the fault must be in herself, and set about rectifying it, by laying herself open to more and ever more extreme stimuli. At first she made the error of rushing to locations where events she regarded as improbable had been reported; after a while, however, she realized they would never be repeated and hence one spot was as good as any other. It was pointless to go anywhere, or do anything, when one did not understand the logic beyond logic. By definition, though, it could not possibly be understood.
“Yet everything seemed possible where she was, at least in the sense that impossible things were happening every day.
“This insight offered a degree of comfort. She made the most of it. Forcing herself to concentrate, she set about demolishing within her mind the assumptions she had regarded as commonsensical throughout her life. In this way she hoped to attune herself better to this new reality—if reality it could be called.”
Gene paused. Stirring at his side, eyes closed, Stacy prompted, “Did she succeed?”
“You can’t say ‘she’ about her anymore. There was success, that’s all. The identity which had been Olga’s melted like a snowflake falling in the ocean. At the last—the very last—moment, she realized that even if she did achieve her goal, there would no longer be an Olga to rejoice.”
“It was too late.”
“For her, it was too late before she started out.”
PART TEN
THE EXHIBIT
is a world ateem with life.
It revolves around a variable star
THE MONTH
is December
THE NAME
is Anastasia
In pitch darkness Stacy stirred uneasily, aware of a dull cramp in her abdomen. At first, muzzily, she took it for a touch of colic; she felt bloated and flatulent, as though she had eaten something which disagreed with her.
She strove to remain asleep in spite of her discomfort, for she had been having an elaborate and fascinating dream. Indeed, she was still partly lost in it, for her mind was aswarm with images and sensations, all of them astonishingly vivid. Normally she recalled her dreams as mainly visual, with perhaps a phrase or two of conversation, or a snatch of something that might, for the right person, have turned into a fragment of a poem. Never before had she experienced any which extended to involve the totality of herself, both mental and physical. Heat and cold were there, bodily posture, sounds and smells, hunger and fullness, happiness and despair, the feel of clothing on her body, wind on her cheek, sunshine and rain…
Oh, this dream was extraordinary, and seemed to have no limits. It was as complex and detailed as reality, and moreover it was populated with a countless horde of people. She could literally see and hear them with her eyes tight shut—or even open, for in the utter blackness it made no difference. She felt as though she were drifting past them, carried by an invisible river of air, so light she could not sense her weight on her heels. As she drew near to each individual or group, she could hear talking, sometimes shouting, sometimes laughing, now and then discussions in low tones concerning confidential matters which she could not make out, no matter how hard she strained her ears. But that was of small account, for at her approach they invariably broke off their conversation and turned to gaze at her, their expressions varying from hostility to puzzlement. She looked in vain for sympathy, and could not work out why she should be seeking it.
Was it in fact at her that they were staring… or someone at her back? She was aware of a presence behind her, but she could not turn around, no matter how she tried.
The effort of recollection itself was making her more and more wakeful. Still she fought to retain the dream’s images and sequence of events, determined to impress them on her memory despite renewed pangs.
To some extent she succeeded. Clear as life, she saw an old woman in a greasy cloak of undyed wool hunched on a low flat rock, her hands concealed but clutching objects of enormous purport…
(Images of separation and binding; they presaged a monstrous tearing apart, as though the cosmos itself were to be riven into shards.)
And a line of grim-faced men, their arms and legs bare but their bodies encased by harness of tough leather with studs and plates of bronze; they carried spears, and oblong shields hung at their backs on leather thongs…
(Images of division and compulsion; they had the power to snatch husband from wife, mother from child, and ordain that they belong henceforth to other people.)
And a noisy mob of soldiers, clad in rusty mail and with daggers at their sides, who had not yet drawn the latter and were brawling more in fun than in earnest…
(Images of terror and superstition; they had been told throughout their lives that their cause was just, and in spite of all the wickedness it had brought into the world they were prepared to entertain no alternative.)
And men and women traveling in carriages from stately home to stately home, their clothes a triumph of the tailor’s skill, scorning beggars as they held out talon hands and showed off oozing so
res…
(Images of isolation and antipathy; they literally could not accept the poor as people like themselves, and felt more pity for a foundered horse than for a human.)
And a gang of rowdy merrymakers shouting and drinking around a table and cursing the attendants for their slowness to obey orders in a foreign language…
(Images of debauchery and shamefaced lust; they wanted to deny quotidian reality, break loose into a temporary otherworld where they might rule unhampered, yet kept encountering obstacles they could not disregard.)
And any army drilling in impeccable order, every movement as precise as a machine’s, rehearsing to unleash a hell of horror on their fellow creatures, but disguising it behind the trappings of an artificial art…
(Images of exultation and destruction; they held themselves superior to nature herself, but knew no way to prove it save by humiliating and debasing other people.)
And the crew of a vessel tossing in mid-ocean, cursing salt meat, weevily flour and water foul enough to make them vomit even without aid from the waves, reviling the captain who had lured them on a voyage to far continents…
(Images of misery and greed; they had signed on as much because their lives at home had grown unbearable as because they truly hoped for riches on return.)
And a shifting crowd of persons garbed in silk and satin and brocade, standing on a quayside among bales and bundles and barrels; beyond them, a hedgehog’s back of spiky masts that rocked and tilted like a dancing forest…
(Images of bargaining and distribution; they could coax and wheedle the ignorant into parting with what they needed most and sell it on to those who already had too much.)
