He was in his middle years, and bore a long flaxen beard and leonine mane of hair; his eyes were large, and of a piercing but softly reassuring green. He sat, still and lordly, and surveyed his captive.
At length: “Arise!”
He obeyed, and stood calmly.
The leader continued, “Thou art doubtless but lately from the City, of abhorred name. Thou art but little acquainted with the usages of life. Do not speak! I know ’tis true.”
* * * *
He paused for a while, then went on with ruminative authority.
“Know that thou hast come into the hands of the Knights of Eld,” he said. “As our name implies, and indeed our visible delimitations proclaim, we are no cut-throats, or vulgar brawlers. Thou art safe here.
“But thou art not one of us. Though thou art healthy and strong, and might well prove a formidable adversary, thou takest no delight in combat. Do I speak sooth? Proclaim!”
He proclaimed that it was sooth indeed; with the silent reservation that, if the combat were sufficiently noble, and profound, and really, fundamentally necessary—but his thoughts were cut short.
“Then thou hast no place here, unless perchance thou comest for succour, or for sanctuary.”
His answer being negative, the leader continued:
“Know that our life is combat. There be many bands, against whom we strive. We have made good escape from the emasculate life of yon City, and we have vowed not to let the spirit of gentle manhood perish. The elements strive together, and yet the strife is co-operative: and so should it be with men.
“I like thee,” he continued, with a smile. “Say if thou wilt stay with us, and learn our ways. There is much that we can rede thee, and the benefit will be mutual, and I trust great.”
He was briefly tempted, but still, clearly and promptly, he declined. The leader frowned slightly, and was silent. Then the imperious tones rang out:
“Thou art strong! And thou shalt be stronger, if ought of ours can aid to the achievement of this result, so much to be desired.
“Then hearken well. Thy food shall be taken from thee.”
His knapsack was ripped rudely from his back.
“Thou shalt wander without guide, and no one of us shall take, in any case, further heed of thee. Go with our respect. And may it be that thou fallest not into the hands of those ruder and less magnanimous, like as the Snakes, perdie, or the Mountain Lions. Thou hast been honorably received, and thou art warned. Begone!”
* * * *
He left with as much alacrity as he thought became him, and continued on his way. For the remainder of the day he wandered, without attempting to fix a course, or to avoid anything that might come to him. He was lost in thought, with a great sense of well-being that he felt that nothing could overcome.
As the shadows of evening began to lengthen, and the first stars to shine, he found himself ascending the side of a small but respectably rugged mountain. By the time of total darkness, he had reached the top, and seated himself beneath a redwood tree. He began to feel hungry, but not faint, and with a slight effort of his will the hunger passed away. He sank into a revery, he sat still and thought and contemplated through the long night hours. The cool dews came upon him, and the light winds were whispering in the pale first light, and he was undisturbed.
He remained on the mountain for three days, eating nothing, and not thinking of food. He felt the opposing forces of life within, through and around him. The harmonious, continually pulsing tension of existence became in a manner clear to him, its great necessity indubitable. He knew that the battle of opposites, the co-operative strife of elements, abilities, tendencies, must be fought within himself; he foresaw no gain from the struggle’s objectification, or its transferral to his associations with others. He would have peaceful, profoundly and highly aspiring, adequate companions, or he would remain alone.
During the fourth night, just before the dawn, he saw a shimmering light over a higher crest in the distance. For an instant it seemed to become a finger, pointing; and then it faded. He arose, light but unfaint from fasting, and set out for the indicated mountain. He encountered no other person along the way.
* * * *
It was in the late afternoon that he arrived. It was a large and beautiful valley, into which he slowly descended. It was thickly populated, and filled with a seething, a tremendous activity. Waves of immense, ardent energy enveloped him, compound of great joy and great despair; heart-ravishing music, barely audible, came to him, spasmodically, on the faint breezes. And the weariness and the weakness came to him also, strongly, the exhaustion of his great efforts of the past several days. He lost consciousness, and sank in a seemingly almost boneless heap to the side of the mountain.
He awoke the following morning in a small hut, secluded, in the shade of a large tree and beside a stream. A spare old man, with a slight beard and twinkling eyes, nodded to him.
“Smells good, does it?” he asked.
It smelled very good, and it looked better when the old man brought him an ample breakfast, well prepared. He ate slowly, savoring each mouthful.
“If you don’t know where you are,” said the old man, “this is a community of artists. We don’t always get along very well together,” he smiled, “but usually we’re minding our own business anyway; and it’s good to exchange ideas and insights now and then, and see each other’s work. And we co-operate too, especially on the stage productions, like Noh plays, or Wagner, or something contemporary. I can introduce you to a young man who has written some very powerful and apt music for the Aeschylean choruses.
“I’m a poet myself,” he continued, “and a dramatist now and then. I’m pretty modest and easy-going, compared to most of the people here, but I have my moments, and I’ve done some pretty good things in my life. I’ll probably show you some later on. It’s a good thing for you I’m in a silent period just now: if the old touch had been on my lyre, I’d never have noticed you; or if I had, I’d not have attended to you. But come on, you look healthy enough: let me show you around.”
He arose to dress, and the old man looked him over with frank admiration.
“You’re a fine figure,” he said. “And the beard does you justice: or you do justice to the beard. You’re like one of the old Biblical patriarchs. Or like my idea of them, anyway; which may be far enough from the truth.”
They left the hut, and walked beside the stream into the main valley.
* * * *
They passed an occasional distracted figure, who paid them no heed. Painters were numerous: one of them, burly and covered with paint, had ostentatiously affixed his canvas to a rock wall, and was facing away from all the beauties of the scenery: with furious strokes he was nearing the completion of his vivid abstraction. One sat cross-legged, quite self-contained, and with a few strokes of the brush, black on white, achieved a bird that seemed almost ready to fly from the paper. Another was painting a meltingly beautiful portrait of his mistress, with flowers in her hair.
“When we get back, I’ll show you a real picture,” the old poet said. “It’s called Vasuki. He’s the king of the snakes, according to the Hindus. I don’t know much about the man who did it, except that he’s got the most wonderful eyes I ever saw. I tried to do him justice in a sonnet once, but I failed. He just appeared one day, and then disappeared one day, and that’s all anyone seems to know. Two of our best young painters went out to look for him over a year ago, and they haven’t returned.”
There were musical concerts, operas and plays. There were potters at their wheels, and sculptors with their chisels and their clay. Every art seemed represented.
“In that hut over there,” said the poet, “lives one of the greatest musical geniuses the world has ever known. Better even than Beethoven, I think. Maybe you’ll have a chance to meet him, if he turns sociable while you’re here. I trust you’ll be here for a long time. Maybe you’ll stay for good? You seem to have the mark in your forehead.”
He stay
ed for several months. He luxuriated in the splendor and the beauty of this dedicated life. Great artistry of sound and word, color and form, filled him: but never to overflowing, and never, fully, to satisfaction. He grew weary of the continual reaching out, the perpetual feeding upon dreams. He shared the raptures and the torments of the artists, he felt powerfully and saw deeply, more than ever before: but something was lacking. The occasional flashes of insight were not enough, and the labor, the aspiration, was heart-breaking. What he sought was still beyond, beyond art itself, beyond all possible creation. And yet, it must be attainable.
* * * *
He aspired to poetry, he tried to give a voice to his aspiration and his need. But it was not in him. And what if it had been? Why should he write verses to complain that he was not Lit with the Sun? He thought briefly of the Twentieth Century poetry that he had read, the poetry of the Dark Ages, and shuddered at the thought of adding to that store. He would never attempt expression again, until he knew something to express. But when the time came, perhaps it would flow from him in such a golden stream as he remembered from the great masters. Perhaps the poet had not read too mistakenly the sign in his forehead.
He noticed that some of the artists, and those he considered the profoundest and the surest, were not permanent residents here. They came and went, with a light as of far peaks in their eyes. Like the painter of Vasuki, which was truly a marvelous picture, instinct with a spirit that made most other productions seem like mere daubs of paint. He felt that that man knew something, and that he did not learn it here, that he did not learn it as a painter at all. There must be other places, or another place, in which art and the artists were mature. He had had enough of this unquiet, the greatest ecstasies of which obviously fell below the peace and the assurance that called to him. He was weary of this perpetual straining with materials and methods inadequate to the task.
And so, reluctantly, he left the artists, and continued his pilgrimage. As he departed, a symphony orchestra was performing Mozart’s Requiem, and this perfect artistry, serene and soaring, dedicated to the very Source, and, it seemed, instinct with something of its light, comprised a fitting and a reassuring farewell.
As the dying strains played upon him, he was filled again with the ravishing verses of Sidney Lanier. Out of the high beauty, these words mingled clearly with his consciousness:
O long ago the billow-flow of sense
Aroused by passion’s windy vehemence
Upbore me out of depths to heights intense,
But not to thee, Nirvana.
It was so true, and so much beyond him! The meaning was never clear, and yet, against it, all else was a deeper darkness. But it called him, and that was sufficient. He must continue, patiently, on the way.
* * * *
The walk was pleasant, and the evergreens were soughing gently, as he passed. Midway in the afternoon he sat down by a convenient spring, and ate quickly a light meal. As he was resting, a man came through the trees before him: balding and rather stout, and apparently approaching the end of middle age. He did not know whether he cared to talk with this man. But he had little choice, for he hailed him with a sort of good-natured camaraderie, and came and sat beside him.
“You may consider me a philosopher,” the man announced; “that is, in the fine old sense, a lover of wisdom. I don’t think that will frighten you away,” he chuckled. “I think I can see that you agree with Socrates: that you consider an unexamined life to be a life that is not worth living. Is this correct?”
He replied that it was, and that he was a seeker of wisdom, and hoped one day to prove to be a lover of it—after he had found it.
The philosopher smiled, and continued, “Perhaps it is best to be a lover of the search; perhaps, indeed, the search itself is the greatest wisdom. This used to be considered a platitude,” he laughed, “when education was more wide-spread in the world. But I have never found anything bright and brand new that matches it. I do not want to be one of those who ‘give to dust that is a little gilt more laud than gilt o’erdusted’. How about you?”
He smiled agreement. He was beginning somewhat to like this man: but still he could not respect him, either as an embodiment of wisdom or as a seeker of it. His mind seemed only clever, and rather lazy and complacent with its cleverness: it seemed quite incapable of any really deep probing, or high flight. This was not his idea of a philosopher.
The object of this scrutiny seemed somewhat to sense its import, and to shrug it off.
“I could tell it at a glance,” he said. “You’re one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever seen escape from that monstrosity of a City. Let me congratulate you! It’s a terrible thing to live like that.
“One immense mechanized mass! One big idiot’s delight, full of nothing but idiots, or morons at best. Everybody “happy”: food, shelter and sex all taken care of, and real human contact at a minimum: a true earthly paradise. A paradise for morons, that is, for people who really prefer to live worse than hogs. God bless the dear technologists, who keep it going: they as stupid as the majority, of course, just morons with a little mechanical know-how, as the phrase was. And bless whatever powers there are, for the library, and the chance to escape!
“I don’t know how it came about, but there’s something behind it. Just before the poor little fools could blow themselves up, the Disasters hit them: and while they were still traumatized, this system began to take care of them. It’s a fine thing, I guess, for those that aren’t capable of a life worth living. And for those that are, too: it seems to take hold of them at just the right time. It seems that it gives everyone just what he is best fitted for, and then lets him go.
* * * *
“It never really let go of me—or got rid of me. I alternate, from city to country: read myself to a standstill, and then travel awhile. It’s always pleasant, up here. It’s like the coast: the seasons don’t change anymore. That is, there aren’t any seasons—just hints of them. But maybe you know that by now. Ah—yes. I guessed as much. You look like a man that has been out long enough to—well, to look like a man.
“I wonder how it will end? The birth-rate’s way down, and seems to continue decreasing, even in the country. Maybe the race is gradually dying out: evolution getting rid of an unfit species. But I wouldn’t expect it to be so gentle about it.
“The more I think about it, the better I see what an infinite amount I’ve got to learn. Another platitude: Newton picking up pebbles on the sea-shore. Maybe the craze for sheer novelty is one of the things that made this mess. I don’t know. But I think that there is such a thing as truth, and that it doesn’t adapt itself to conditions: conditions have to adapt themselves to it. Do you agree? Yes, I thought so. I think I’ll have to be heading back to the library in a few days. I’ve seen enough this trek.
“There seems to be a guardian angel, somehow, if you believe in that. The explanation’s probably a purely natural one. But people come out and live as they like to, with no hindrance, and they prosper. They do a little simple farming, and always have bumper crops. The weather and the wild animals never hurt them, and they never hurt each other. The ones that like to fight do it, but only with swords and knives, and nobody ever seems to get killed. All the literature and art of the world is preserved, for those that want it: as many copies as demanded. Sometimes I bring copies of books with me. It helps, to read them out here. Nature’s a lot vaster and more wonderful than we know.
“Everything seems to be taken care of. Nobody lives in want or fear anymore. Except,” he smiled ruefully, “want of understanding, and fear of death. But we can take things philosophically, to use an old popular expression.”
The philosopher paused awhile, thinking, observing his perplexing companion. He could not make him out. Presently he returned to his long-standing provisional solution for all problems.
“Well, why don’t you come back to the library with me? Tramping around out here is all right for a while, it relaxes you and keeps you in to
uch with things; but meanwhile, time flies. Shall we go?”
“I think not,” the bearded patriarch replied. “The usefulness of books is all but exhausted for me. And even the greatest and fullest truth, set down in a book, I think must be inadequate. It’s not an intellectual thing I seek.”
* * * *
The philosopher smiled tolerantly.
“You have found that the physical is deadly,” he replied. “And you do not appear to be a man who enjoys emotional drunkenness. What is it you want?”
“Perhaps if I knew, I would have it. I suppose it might be called the spiritual, if there is a word for it. But I know that it is calling me. If you care to come with me, perhaps I can begin to explain.”
The philosopher almost laughed outright.
“No thank you,” he said. “I do not care to take refuge in any vague mysticism. What I know I want really to know, intelligibly and clearly. I am no dreamer.”
“Are they irresponsible dreamers, who are behind these historically unparalleled phenomena? Surely there must be someone there. You have seemed to think so yourself.”
The philosopher smiled wryly, a little sheepishly.
“Sages in the mountains, eh? Yes, I’ll admit having sought them. But they do not seem to want me to find them, and I am going back to the library to follow some leads that I have thought up for myself.
“I do not care to let my mind abdicate its high position,” he concluded, with a slight sneer.
“Goodbye, then. I wish you well.”
“And so do I wish you,” rejoined the philosopher, with an attempt at mocking irony, as he arose. “Goodbye, my friend.”
He began briskly down the path, stopped, and called back, “I hear that there is an island rising, in the Pacific: maybe you can find some wise mermaids out there!”
The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack Page 71
