A, B, C

by Samuel R. Delany

  Should be just over here, if I remember right. Dig, dig, dig. Damp earth feels good in your hands. Ow! my finger. There it is: a brown paper bag under the black earth. Lift it out. Is it all there? Open it up; peer in. At the bottom in the folds of paper: tiny scraps of copper, a few long pieces of iron, a piece of board, some brads. To this my grubby little hand adds the spool of copper wire and the U-shaped scrap of metal. Now slip it into my robe and…once you get up here, how the hell do you get down? I always forget. Turn around, climb over the edge, like this, and let yourself…Damn, my robe’s caught on the handle.

  And drop.

  Skinned my shin again. Someday I’ll learn. Uh-oh, Dunderhead is going to blow a condenser when he sees my robe torn. Oh, well, sic vita est.

  Now let’s see if we can figure this thing out. Gotta crouch down and get to work. Here we go. Open the bag and turn the contents out in the lap of my robe, grubby hands poking.

  The U-shaped metal, the copper wire, fine. Hold the end of the wire to the metal and maneuver the spool around the end of the rod. Around and around and around. Here we go round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush. Here we go round the mulberry bush; I’ll have me a coil by the morning.

  A harsh voice: And what do you think you’re doing?

  Dunderhead rides again. Nothing, sir, as metal and scraps and wires fly frantically into the paper bag.

  The voice: All novices under twenty must report to afternoon services without fail!

  Yes, sir. Coming right along, sir. Paper bag jammed equally frantically into the folds of my robe. Not a moment’s peace. Not a moment’s! Through the garden with lowered eyes, past dour priest with small paunch. There are mirrors along the vestibule, reflecting the blue and yellow from the colored panes. In the mirror I see pass: a dour priest, preceded by a smaller figure with short red hair and a spray of freckles over a flattish nose. As we pass into prayer, there is the maddening, not quite inaudible jingle of metal, muffled by the dark robe—

  —

  Geo woke up, and almost everything was white.

  chapter eight

  The pale woman with the tiny eyes rose from over him. Her hair slipped like white silk threads over her shoulders. “You are awake?” she asked. “Do you understand me?”

  “Am I at Hama’s Temple?” he asked, the remnants of the dream still blowing in at the edges of his mind, like shredding cloth. “My friends…where are they?”

  The woman laughed. “Your friends are all right. You came out the worst.” Another laugh. “You ask if this is Hama’s Temple? But you can see. You have eyes. Don’t you recognize the color of the White Goddess Argo?”

  Geo looked around the room. It was white marble, and there was no direct source of light. The walls simply glowed.

  “My friends…” Geo said again.

  “They are fine. We were able to completely restore their flesh to health. They must have exposed their hands to the direct beams of the radiation only a few seconds. But the whole first half of your arm must have lain in the rays for some minutes. You were not as lucky as they.”

  Another thought rushed Geo’s mind now. The jewels…he wanted to say, but instead of sounding the words, he reached to his throat with both hands. One fell on his naked chest. And there was something very wrong with the other. He sat up in the bed quickly and looked down. “My arm…” he said.

  Swathed in white bandages, the limb ended some foot and a half short of where it should have.

  “My arm—?” he asked again, with a child’s bewilderment. “What happened to my arm?”

  “I tried to tell you,” the woman said softly. “We had to amputate your forearm and most of your biceps. If we had not, you would have died.”

  “My arm…” Geo said again. He lay back on the bed.

  “It is difficult,” the woman said. “It is only a little consolation, I know, but we are blind here. What burned your arm away took our sight from us when it was much stronger, generations ago. We learned how to battle many of its effects, and had we not rescued you from the river, all of you would have died. You are men who know the religion of Argo and adhere to it. Be thankful then that you have come under the wing of the Mother Goddess again. This is hostile country.” She paused. “Do you wish to talk?”

  Geo shook his head.

  “I hear the sheets rustle,” the woman said, smiling, “which means you either shook or nodded your head. I know from my study of the old customs that one means yes and the other no. But you must have patience with us who cannot see. We are not used to your people. Do you wish to talk?” she repeated.

  “Oh,” said Geo. “No. No, I don’t.”

  “Very well.” She rose, still smiling. “I will return later.” She walked to a wall. A door slipped open, and then it closed behind her.

  He lay still for a long time. Then he turned over on his stomach. Once he brought the stump under his chest and held the clean bandages in his other hand. Very quickly he let go and stretched the limb sideways, as far as possible away from him. That didn’t work either, so he moved it back down to his side and let it lay by him under the white sheet.

  After a long while, he got up, sat on the edge of the bed, and looked around the room. It was completely bare, with neither windows nor visible doors. He went to the spot through which she had exited, but could find no seam or crack. His tunic, he saw, had been washed, pressed, and laid at the foot of the bed. He slipped it over his head, fumbling with only one arm. Getting the belt together started out a problem, but he hooked the buckle around one finger and maneuvered the strap through with the others. He adjusted his leather purse, now empty, at his side.

  His sword was gone.

  An unreal feeling, white like the walls of the room, filled him like a pale mixture of milk and water. He walked around the edge of the room once more, looking for some break.

  There was a sound behind him and the tiny-eyed woman in her white robe stood in a triangular doorway. “You’re dressed.” She smiled. “Good. Are you too tired to come with me? You will eat and see your friends if you feel well enough. Or I can have the food brought—”

  “I’ll come,” Geo said.

  He followed her into a hall of the same luminous substance. Her heels touched the back of her white robe with each step. His own bare feet on the cool stones seemed louder than those of the blind woman before him. Suddenly he was in a larger room, with benches. It was a chapel of Argo. But the altar at the far end, its detail was strange. Everything was arranged with the simplicity one would expect of a people to whom visual adornment meant nothing. He sat down on a bench.

  “Wait here.” She disappeared down another hall.

  She returned, followed by Snake. Geo and the four-armed boy looked at each other silently as the woman disappeared again. A wish, like a living thing, suddenly writhed into a knot in Geo’s stomach, that the boy would say something. He himself could not.

  Again she returned, this time with Urson. The big sailor stepped into the chapel, saw Geo, and exclaimed, “Friend…what…” He came to Geo quickly and placed his warm hands on Geo’s shoulders. “How…” he began, and shook his head.

  Geo grinned suddenly and patted his stump with his good hand. “I guess Jelly-belly got something from me, after all.”

  Urson took up Geo’s good hand and examined it. It seemed pale. Urson held his own forearm next to Geo’s and compared them. The paleness was in both. “I guess none of us got out completely all right. I woke up once while they were taking the scabs off. It was pretty bad, and I went to sleep again fast.”

  Iimmi came in now. “Well, I was wondering…” He stopped and let out a low whistle. “I guess it really got you, brother.” His own arms looked as though they had been dipped in bleach up to the mid-forearms, leaving them pinkish until they turned their normal purple-brown at the elbows.

  “How did this happen?” Urson asked.

  “When we were back doing our tightrope act on those damn girders,” explained Iimmi, �
��our bodies were in the shadow of the girders and the rays only got to our arms. It’s apparently a highly directional form of radiation, stopped by anything like steel, but—”

  “A highly who of what?” Urson asked.

  “I’ve been getting quite a course.” Iimmi grinned. “And I’ve got something you’ll be interested in too, Geo.”

  “Just tell me where the hell we are,” Urson said.

  “We’re in a convent sacred to Argo,” Iimmi told him. “It’s across the river from the City of New Hope, which is where we were.”

  “That name sounds familiar; in the—” began Urson. Snake gave him a quick glance; and Urson stopped and then frowned.

  “We knew of your presence in the City of New Hope,” explained the blind Priestess, “and we found you by the riverside after you managed to swim across. We thought you would die, but apparently you have a stronger constitution than the inhabitants of Aptor do. After crossing the river, you managed to cling to life long enough for us to get you back to the convent and apply what art we could to soothe the burns from the deadly fire.”

  There was no jewel around Iimmi’s neck either. Geo could feel the hands ripping it from his neck in the water again. Iimmi must have just made the same discovery when he looked at Geo, because his pale hand rose to his own chest.

  “If you gentlemen will come with me,” said the blind Priestess of Argo. “None of you have had more than intravenous feeding for the past two days. You may eat now.” She turned down another hall; again they followed.

  They arrived at an even larger room, this one set with white marble benches and long white tables. “This is the main dining room of the convent,” their guide explained. “One table has been set up for you. You will not eat with the other priestesses, of course.”

  “Why not?” asked Iimmi.

  Surprise flowed across the blind face. “You are men,” she told them matter-of-factly. Then she led them to a table with wine, meat, and bowls piled with strange fruit. As they sat, she disappeared once more.

  Geo reached for a knife. For a moment there was silence as the nub of his arm jutted over the table. “I guess I just have to learn,” he said after the pause. He picked up the knife with the other hand.

  Halfway through the meal, Urson asked, “What about the jewels? Did the Priestess take them from you?”

  “They came off in the water,” said Iimmi.

  Geo nodded corroboration.

  “Well, now we really have a problem,” said Urson. “Here we are, at a Temple of Argo, where we could return the jewels and maybe even get back to the Priestess on the ship and out of the silly mess; but the jewels are gone.”

  “That also means our river friends are working for Hama,” said Geo.

  “And we are just being used to carry the jewels back to Hama’s Temple,” added Urson. “Probably, when they found we were almost dead after that thing in the city, they just took the jewels from us and abandoned us on the shore.”

  “I guess so,” said Iimmi.

  “Well,” Geo said, “Hama’s got his jewels then, and we’re out of the way. Perhaps he delivered us into Argo’s hands as a reward for bringing them this far.”

  “Since we would have died anyway,” said Iimmi, “I guess he was doing us a favor.”

  “And you know what that means,” Geo said, looking at Snake now.

  “Huh?” asked Urson. Then he said, “Oh, let the boy speak for himself. All right, Four Arms, are you or are you not a spy for Hama?”

  Geo could not read the expression that came over Snake’s face. The boy shook his head not in denial but bewilderment. Suddenly he got up from the table and ran from the room. Urson looked at the others. “Now don’t tell me I hurt his feelings by asking.”

  “You didn’t,” said Geo, “but I may have. I keep on forgetting that he can read minds.”

  “What do you mean?” Urson asked.

  “Just when you asked him that, a lot of things came together in my mind that would be pretty vicious for him if any of them were true.”

  “Huh?” asked Urson.

  “I think I know what you mean,” said Iimmi.

  “I still—”

  “It means that he is a spy,” exclaimed Geo, “and among other things, he was probably lying about the radio back at the city. And that cost me my arm.”

  “Why, the…” began Urson, and then looked down the hall where Snake had disappeared.

  They didn’t eat much more. When they got up, Urson felt sleepy and was shown back to his room.

  “May I show my friend what you showed me?” Iimmi asked the Priestess when she returned. “He is also a student of rituals.”

  “Of course you may.” The Priestess smiled. “However, as students of the rituals of Argo you show surprising ignorance.”

  “As I tried to explain,” said Iimmi, “we come from a land where the rituals have changed a great deal with time.”

  “Surely not that much,” said the Priestess, smiling. “But you make such a fuss. These are only our commonest prayers. They do not even touch the subjects of magic.” She led them down the hall. “And your amazement quite amazes me. Yours must be a young and enthusiastic people.”

  A door opened and they entered another room similar to the one in which Geo had awakened. As she was about to leave, Iimmi said, “Wait. Can you tell us how to leave the room ourselves?”

  “Why would you want to leave?” she asked.

  “For exercise,” offered Geo, “and to observe the working of the convent. Believe us; we are true students of Argo’s religion.”

  “Simply press the wall with your hand, level at your waist, and the door will open. But you must not wander about the convent. Rites that are not for your eyes are being carried out….Not for your eyes,” she repeated. “Strange, this phrase has never left our language. Suddenly, confronted by people who can see, it makes me feel somehow…” She paused. “Well, that is how to leave the room.”

  She stepped out. The door closed.

  “Here,” said Iimmi, “this is what I wanted to show you.” On his bed was a pile of books, old but legible. Geo flipped through a few pages. Suddenly he looked up at Iimmi.

  “Hey, what are they doing with printed books?”

  “Question number one,” said Iimmi. “Now, for question number two. Look here.” He reached over Geo’s shoulder and hastened him to one page.

  “Why, it’s the…” began Geo.

  “You’re damn right it is,” said Iimmi.

  “Hymn to the Goddess Argo,” Geo read aloud. And then:

  “Forked in the eye of the bright ash

  there the heart of Argo broke

  and the hand of the goddess would dash

  through the head of flame and smoke.

  Burn the grain speck in the hand

  and batter the stars with singing.

  Hail the height of a man,

  also the height of a woman.

  Take from the tip of the sea

  salt and sea kelp and gold.

  Vision, a shaft through the brain,

  and the terror of time is old.

  Salt to scour the tongue,

  salt on the temple floor,

  sea kelp to bind up my hair

  and set forth for gold once more.

  The eyes have imprisoned a vision,

  the ash tree dribbles with blood.

  Thrust from the gates of the prison,

  smear the yew tree with mud.

  “That must be the full version of the poem I found the missing stanza to back in the library at Leptar.”

  “As I was saying,” said Iimmi. “Question number two: what is the relation between the rituals of Hama and the old rituals of Argo? Apparently this particular branch of the religion of the Goddess underwent no purge.”

  “If the librarian at Olcse Ohlwn could see these,” breathed Geo, “he’d probably pick them up with long tongs, put his hand over his eyes, and carry them to the nearest fire.”

  Iim
mi looked puzzled. “Why?”

  “Don’t you remember? These are forbidden. One of the reasons they were destroyed was because nobody was supposed to know about them.”

  “I wonder why?” Iimmi asked.

  “That’s question number three. How did you get hold of them?”

  “Well,” said Iimmi, “I sort of suspected they might be here. So I just asked for them.”

  “And I think I’ve got some answers to those questions.”

  “Fine. Go ahead.”

  “We’ll start from three, go back to one, and then on to two. Nice and orderly. Why wasn’t anybody supposed to know about the rituals? Simply because they were so similar to the rituals of Hama. You remember some of the others we found in the abandoned temple? If you don’t, you can refresh your memory right here. The two sets of rituals run almost parallel, except for a name changed here, a color switched from black to white, a variation in the vegetative symbolism. I guess what happened was that when Hama’s forces invaded Leptar five hundred years ago, it didn’t take Leptar long to discover the similarity. From the looks of the City of New Hope, I think it’s safe to assume that at one time or another—say, five hundred years ago—Aptor’s civilization was far higher than Leptar’s, and probably wouldn’t have had too hard a time beating her in an invasion. So when Leptar captured the first jewel and somehow did manage to repel Aptor, the priests of Leptar assumed that the safest way to avoid infiltration by Hama and Aptor again would be to make the rituals of Argo as different as possible from the ones of their enemy, Hama. There may have been a small following of Hama in Leptar before the invasion, but all traces of it were destroyed with the rituals.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, there’s apparently a small peaceful following of Argo here in Aptor. There may have even been trade between the two, which is why the stories of Aptor survive among sailors. The ghouls, the flying things, they parallel the stories the sailors tell too closely to be accidents. How many men do you think have been shipwrecked on Aptor and gotten far enough into the place to see what we’ve seen, and then gotten off again to tell about it?”