by Jack Dann
And all about him—but softly—came a voice in stone, stuttering before it grew clearer, as if it had long known of words but never practiced them.
"Thou . . ." Silence, then a flood of sentence.
"Thou thou art, oh, thou art worm thou art sick, rose invisible rose. In the howling storm thou art in the storm. Worm thou art found out, oh, rose thou art sick and found out flies in the night thy bed thy thy crimson life destroy. Oh—Oh, rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, the invisible worm that flies in the night, in the howling storm, has found out—has found out thy bed of crimson joy . . . and his dark dark secret love, his dark secret love does thy life destroy."
Argustal was already running from that place.
In Pamitar's arms he could find no comfort now. Though he huddled there, up in the encaging branches, the worm that flies worked in him. Finally, he rolled away from her and said, "Who ever heard so terrible a voice? I cannot speak again with the universe."
"You do not know it was the universe." She tried to tease him. "Why should the universe speak to little Tapmar?"
"The old crow said I spoke to nowhere. Nowhere is the universe—where the sun hides at night—where our memories hide, where our thoughts evaporate. I cannot talk with it. I must hunt out the old crow and talk to him."
"Talk no more, ask no more questions! All you discover brings you misery! Look—you will no longer regard me, your poor wife! You turn your eyes away!"
"If I stare at nothing for all succeeding eons, yet I must find out what torments us!"
In the center of Gornilo, where many of the Unclassified lived, bare wood twisted up from the ground like fossilized sack, creating caves and shelters and strange limbs on which and in which old pilgrims, otherwise without a home, might perch. Here at nightfall Argustal sought out the beggar.
The old fellow was stretched painfully beside a broken pot, clasping a woven garment across his body. He turned in his small cell, trying to escape, but Argustal had him by the throat and held him still.
"I want your knowledge, old crow!"
"Get it from the religious men—they know more than I!"
It made Argustal pause, but he slackened his grip on the other by only the smallest margin.
"Because I have you, you must speak to me. I know that knowledge is pain, but so is ignorance once one has sensed its presence. Tell me more about childs and what they did! Tell me of what you call the heart stars!"
As if in a fever, the old crow rolled about under Argustal's grip. He brought himself to say, "What I know is so little, so little, like a blade of grass in a field. And like blades of grass are the distant bygone times. Through all those times come the bundles of bodies now on this Earth. Then as now, no new bodies. But once . . . even before those bygone times . . . you cannot understand . . ."
"I understand well enough."
"You are scientist! Before bygone times was another time, and then . . . then was childs and different things that are not any longer, many animals and birds and smaller things with frail wings unable to carry them over long time . . ."
"What happened? Why was there change, old crow?"
"Men . . . scientists . . . made understanding of the gravy of bodies and turn every person and thing and tree to eternal life. We now continue from that time, a long long time—so long we have forgotten what was then done."
The smell of him was like an old pie. Argustal asked him, "And why now are no childs?"
"Childs are just small adults. We are adults, having become from child. But in that great former time, before scientists were on Yzazys, adults produced childs. Animals and trees likewise. But with eternal life, this cannot be—those child-making parts of the body have less life than stone."
"Don't talk of stone! So we live forever . . . you old ragbag, you remember—ah, you remember me as child?"
But the old ragbag was working himself into a kind of fit, pummeling the ground, slobbering at the mouth.
"Seven shades of lilac, even worse I remember myself a child, running like an arrow, air, everywhere fresh rosy air. So I am mad, for I remember!" He began to scream and cry, and the outcasts round about took up the wail in chorus. "We remember, we remember!"—whether they did or not.
Clapping his hand over the beggar's mouth, Argustal said, "But you were not child on Yzazys—tell me about that!"
Shaking, the other replied, "Earlier I tell you—all humans come from heart stars. Yzazys here is perched on the universe's end! Once were as many worlds as days in eternity, now all burned away as smoke up the chimney. Only this last place was safe."
"What happened? Why?"
"Nothing happened! Life is life is life—only except that change crept in."
And what was this but an echo of the words of the Tree-men of Or who, deep in their sinful glade, had muttered of some unknown element that forced change? Argustal crouched with bowed head while the beggarman shuddered beside him, and outside the holy idiots took up his last words in a chant: "Change crept in! Change crept in! Daylight smoked and change crept in! Change crept in!"
Their dreadful howling worked like spears in Argustal's flank. He had pictures afterward of his panic run through the town, of wall and trunk and ditch and road, but it was all as insubstantial at the time as the pictures afterward. When he finally fell to the ground panting, he was unaware of where he lay, and everything was nothing to him until the religious howling had died into silence.
Then he saw he lay in the middle of his great structure, his cheek against the Or stone where he had dropped it. And as his attention came to it, the great structure around him answered without his having to speak.
He was at a new focal point. The voice that sounded was new, as cool as the previous one had been choked. It blew over him in a cool wind.
"There is no amaranth on this side of the grave, oh Argustal, no name with whatsoever emphasis of passionate love repeated that is not mute at last. Experiment X gave life for eternity to every living thing in the world, but even eternity is punctuated by release and suffers period. The old life had his childhood and its end, the new had no such logic. It found its own after many millennia, and took its cue from individual minds. What a man was, he became; what a tree, it became."
Argustal lifted his tired head from its pillow of stone. Again the voice changed pitch and trend, as if in response to his minute gesture.
"The present is a note in music. That note can no longer be sustained. You find what questions you have found, oh Argustal, because the chord, in dropping to a lower key, rouses you from the long dream of crimson joy that was immortality. What you are finding, others also find, and you can none of you be any longer insensible to change. Even immortality must have an end. Life has passed like a long fire through the galaxy. Now it fast burns out even here, the last refuge of man!"
He stood up then, and hurled the Or stone. It flew, fell, rolled . . . and before it stopped he had awoken a great chorus of universal voice.
All Yzazys roused and a wind blew from the west. As he started again to move, he saw the religious men of the town were on the march, and the great sun-nesting Forces on their midnight wing, and Hrt the flaming stone wheeling overhead, and every majestic object alert as it had never been.
But Argustal walked slowly on his flat simian feet, plodding back to Pamitar. No longer would he be impatient in her arms. There, time would be all too brief.
He knew now the worm that flew and nestled in her cheek, in his cheek, in all things, even in the Tree-men of Or, even in the great impersonal Forces that despoiled the sun, even in the sacred bowels of the universe to which he had lent a temporary tongue. He knew now that back had come that Majesty that previously gave Life its reason, the Majesty that had been away from the world for so long and yet so brief a respite, the Majesty called DEATH.
CHILD OF ALL AGES
P.J. Plauger
Here's an unsettling and surprising look at some of the unexpected consequences of eternal youth—keeping in mind that
"youth" can refer to someone very young indeed . . .
Little has been heard from P.J. Plauger in recent years, but he made a big splash in the SF world of the middle seventies, becoming for a while a frequent contributor to Analog, and winning the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author in 1975. He lives in Concord, Massachusetts. Let's hope we'll be seeing more of his incisive and imaginative work in the decade ahead.
The child sat in the waiting room with her hands folded neatly on her lap. She wore a gay print dress made of one of those materials that would have quickly revealed its cheapness had it not been carefully pressed. Her matching shoes had received the same meticulous care. She sat prim and erect, no fidgeting, no scuffing of shoes against chair legs, exhibiting a patience that legions of nuns have striven, in vain, to instill in other children. This one looked as if she had done a lot of waiting.
May Foster drew back from the two-way mirror through which she had been studying her newest problem. She always felt a little guilty about spying on children like this before an interview, but she readily conceded to herself that it helped her handle cases better. By sizing up an interviewee in advance, she saved precious minutes of sparring and could usually gain the upper hand right at the start. Dealing with "problem" children was a no-holds-barred proposition, if you wanted to survive in the job without ulcers.
That patience could be part of her act, May thought for a moment. But no, that didn't make sense. Superb actors that they were, these kids always reserved their performances for an audience; there was no reason for the girl to suspect the special mirror on this, her first visit to Mrs. Foster's office. One of the best advantages to be gained from the mirror, in fact, was the knowledge of how the child behaved when a social worker wasn't in the room. Jekyll and Hyde looked like twins compared to the personality changes May had witnessed in fifteen years of counseling.
May stepped out of the darkened closet, turned on the room lights, and returned to her desk. She scanned the folder one last time, closed it in front of her, and depressed the intercom button.
"Louise, you can bring the child in now."
There was a slight delay, then the office door opened and the child stepped in. For all her preparation, May was taken aback. The girl was thin, much thinner than she looked sitting down, but not to the point of being unhealthy. Rather, it was the kind of thinness one finds in people who are still active in their nineties. Not wiry, but enduring. And those eyes.
May was one of the first Peace Corps volunteers to go into central Africa. For two years she fought famine and malnutrition with every weapon, save money, that modern technology could bring to bear. In the end it was a losing battle, because politics and tribal hatred dictated that thousands upon thousands must die the slow death of starvation. That was where she had seen eyes like that before.
Children could endure pain and hunger, forced marches, even the loss of their parents, and still recover eventually with the elasticity of youth. But when their flesh melted down to the bone, their bellies distended, then a look came into their eyes that remained ever with them for their few remaining days. It was the lesson learned much too young that the adult world was not worthy of their trust, the realization that death was a real and imminent force in their world. For ten years after, May's nightmares were haunted by children staring at her with those eyes.
Now this one stood before her and stared into her soul with eyes that had looked too intimately upon death.
As quickly as she had been captured, May felt herself freed. The girl glanced about the room, as if checking for fire exits, took in the contents of May's desk with one quick sweep, then marched up to the visitor's chair and planted herself in it with a thump.
"My name is Melissa," she said, adding a nervous grin. "You must be Mrs. Foster." She was all little girl now, squirming the least little bit and kicking one shoe against another. The eyes shone with carefree youth.
May shook herself, slowly recovered. She thought she had seen everything before, until now. The guileless bit was perfect—Melissa looked more like a model eight-year-old than a chronic troublemaker going on, what was it? Fourteen. Fourteen?
"You've been suspended from school for the first time this year, Melissa," she said with professional sternness. May turned on her best Authoritarian Glare, force three.
"Yep," the child said with no trace of contrition. The Glare faded, switched to Sympathetic Understanding.
"Do you want to tell me about it?" May asked softly.
Melissa shrugged.
"What's to say? Old Man M—uh, Mr. Morrisey and I got into an argument again in history class." She giggled. "He had to pull rank on me to win." Straight face.
"Mr. Morrisey has been teaching history for many years," May placated. "Perhaps he felt that he knows more about the subject than you do."
"Morrisey has his head wedged!" May's eyebrows skyrocketed, but the girl ignored the reproach, in her irritation. "Do you know what he was trying to palm off on the class? He was trying to say that the Industrial Revolution in England was a step backward.
"Kids working six, seven days a week in the factories, going fourteen hours at a stretch, all to earn a few pennies a week. That's all he could see! He never thought to ask why they did it if conditions were so bad."
"Well, why did they?" May asked reflexively. She was caught up in the child's enthusiasm.
The girl looked at her pityingly.
"Because it was the best game in town, that's why. If you didn't like the factory, you could try your hand at begging, stealing, or working on a farm. If you got caught begging or stealing in those days, they boiled you in oil. No joke. And farm work." She made a face.
"That was seven days a week of busting your tail from before sunup to after sundown. And what did you have to show for it? In a good year, you got all you could eat; in a bad year you starved. But you worked just as hard on an empty gut as a full one. Harder.
"At least with a factory job you had money to buy what food there was when the crops failed. That's progress, no matter how you look at it."
May thought for a moment.
"But what about all the children maimed by machinery?" she asked. "What about all the kids whose health was destroyed from breathing dust or stoking fires or not getting enough sun?"
"Ever seen a plowboy after a team of horses walked over him? Ever had sunstroke?" She snorted. "Sure those factories were bad, but everything else was worse. Try to tell that to Old Man Morrisey, though."
"You talk as if you were there," May said with a hint of amusement.
Flatly, "I read a lot."
May recalled herself to the business at hand.
"Even if you were right, you still could have been more tactful, you know." The girl simply glowered and hunkered down in her chair. "You've disrupted his class twice, now, and Miss Randolph's class too."
May paused, turned up Sympathetic Understanding another notch.
"I suspect your problem isn't just with school. How are things going at home?"
Melissa shrugged again. It was a very adult gesture.
"Home." Her tone eliminated every good connotation the word possessed. "My fa—my foster father died last year. Heart attack. Bam! Mrs. Stuart still hasn't gotten over it." A pause.
"Have you?"
The girl darted a quick glance.
"Everybody dies, sooner or later." Another pause. "I wish Mr. Stuart had hung around a while longer, though. He was okay."
"And your mother?" May prodded delicately.
"My foster mother can't wait for me to grow up and let her off the hook. Jeez, she'd marry me off next month if the law allowed." She stirred uncomfortably. "She keeps dragging boys home to take me out."
"Do you like going out with boys?"
A calculating glance.
"Some. I mean boys are okay, but I'm not ready to settle down quite yet." A nervous laugh. "I mean I don't hate boys or anything. I mean I've still got lots of time for that sort of stuff when I grow up."<
br />
"You're nearly fourteen."
"I'm small for my age."
Another tack.
"Does Mrs. Stuart feed you well?"
"Sure."
"Do you make sure you eat a balanced diet?"
"Of course. Look, I'm just naturally thin, is all. Mrs. Stuart may be a pain in the neck, but she's not trying to kill me off or anything. It's just that—" A sly smile crossed her face. "Oh, I get it."
Melissa shifted to a pedantic false baritone.
"A frequent syndrome in modern urban society is the apparently nutrition-deficient early-pubescent female. Although in an economic environment that speaks against a lack of financial resources or dietary education, said subject nevertheless exhibits a seeming inability to acquire adequate sustenance for growth.
"Subject is often found in an environment lacking in one or more vital male supportive roles and, on close examination, reveals a morbid preoccupation with functional changes incident to the onset of womanhood. Dietary insufficiency is clearly a tacit vehicle for avoiding responsibilities associated with such changes."
She took an exaggerated deep breath.
"Whew! That Anderson is a long-winded son of a gun. So they stuck you with his book in Behav. Psych, too, huh?" She smiled sweetly.
"Why, yes. That is, we read it. How did you know?"
"Saw it on your bookshelf. Do you have any candy?"
"Uh, no."
"Too bad. The last social worker I dealt with always kept some on hand. You ought to, too. Good for public relations." Melissa looked aimlessly around the room.
May shook herself again. She hadn't felt so out of control in years. Not since they tried her out on the black ghetto kids. She dug in her heels.
"That was a very pretty performance, Melissa. I see you do read a lot. But did it ever occur to you that what Anderson said might still apply to you? Even if you do make a joke out of it."
"You mean, do I watch what I eat, because I'm afraid to grow up?" A nod. "You'd better believe it. But not because of that guff Anderson propagates."
