The Silk Code

by Paul Levinson

  “Can we talk to them?” Gwellyn asked Mitxeleta. “Can we ask them questions?”

  “They have no language,” she answered. “They have song.”

  “Then how—” Gwellyn began.

  “Could you sing to them that we intend them no harm,” Jakob interrupted.

  “They already know that,” Mitxeleta replied. “If we were their enemy, I would not have approached them with song.”

  “A dangerous proposition,” Gwellyn said. “What would prevent their enemies from learning their greeting song, as you have?”

  “Their enemies never bother with that—they just kill them.”

  “Could you ask them to sing the song they have to describe people like us—people who look like us, but are not their enemies?” Gwellyn smiled at the singers. Their eyes seemed to smile at him, but not their lips. But their eyes seemed to smile continuously…

  Mitxeleta sang a wordless song that sounded indistinguishable from the greeting, at least to Gwellyn. It sounded one-third flute, one-third bird, one-third human voice. Then he realized there would be no difference between flute and voice in this conversation—her voice was the flute.

  As were the voices of the singers. They were the many flutes. They responded with deep fluid tones which began in unison, but branched in and out of harmony, sometimes so quickly that it sounded to Gwellyn like three-way harmony, as tones lingered over others, even though only two voices were singing…

  Or perhaps that fleeting third line was coming from Mitxeleta, who occasionally made a low musical note in the bottom of her throat. Or perhaps from Jakob, who Gwellyn realized was humming an harmonic line of some sort too, reminding Gwellyn of a Jewish prayer session he had once attended on some Jewish holiday years ago in the Tarim Basin with his father and his brother Allyn. Gwellyn had joined in the singing prayers then…and realized he was singing with the singers now too…

  And each time a chord was achieved, for a trembling instant or longer, it called forth some meaning, tapped on some nerve or well of understanding, already deep in Gwellyn’s mind. He remembered Plato’s Meno paradox—everyone is already born with some knowledge, for how else would we know knowledge when we encountered it?—but soon the knowledge evoked by the chords was the only thing in his head…

  The singing-knowing continued, in part the musical equivalent of the restless light Gwellyn had noticed darting among the leaves, similar to the flickering light in the cave…and also the same, every tiny once in a while, as the music he had heard on the singing pottery back in Barbaricon. But there were no images here, no lines in clay that a comb in a sure hand could coax back into life. This was life itself…

  It seemed to go on for hours, days, but it could not have, for it was not yet dark when it ended, and Gwellyn was sure it had been late in the day already when they first had entered this clearing.

  And it was over.

  And Gwellyn knew many things.

  He knew that he and Jakob, not only Mitxeleta, were somehow connected to these singers, for how else could they have all been part of the same song, and how else could this song have communicated any meaning to them?

  “I harmonize with birds sometimes,” Jakob said, whispering softly for once in his life. “But I never learned so much from that.”

  Gwellyn nodded—exhausted, satiated…yet troubled.

  For he also knew other things now, from the singing.

  He knew that the harmony between the singers and human beings like Jakob and Mitxeleta and Gwellyn was only natural, because the singers were to them as pulsating caterpillars were to butterflies. Or maybe Gwellyn was the caterpillar and the singers the butterflies—he wasn’t sure. But he also knew—felt, more than knew, for this was only hinted at in undertones, in the merest sketches of minor chords not fully formed—that some of the butterflies, or maybe the caterpillars, were poisonous, bent on destruction. And he also knew that the singers—and Gwellyn and Jakob and Mitxeleta too—were losing in this…

  “Could you ask them to sing of the conflict?” Gwellyn asked Mitxeleta.

  “No, not today,” she said. “None of us could survive a song like that again on such a long day. Maybe tomorrow.”

  GWELLYN AWOKE EARLY the next morning, and saw the problem immediately: whereas Jakob was snoring a few feet away, Mitxeleta and the singers were gone.

  He roused Jakob. They walked out of the clearing, through the shrubbery, and looked upward on the narrow path, beyond the place they had stopped at yesterday. Not a footprint, not a broken twig, not a thing that could be attributed to a human being treading could be seen.

  “If they went this way, they flew,” Gwellyn said.

  He turned to the path below, the one they had walked upon the preceding afternoon. He stretched out on his belly, and examined the ground. Gwellyn was good at this. He got to his feet, cursing. “Nothing I can see here that wasn’t made by two men and a woman—meaning, you, me, and Mitxeleta—yesterday. I can’t be as sure of that as I am that no one travelled the upward path, but I’m pretty sure.”

  “They must be in the cave, then,” Jakob said.

  “My thought as well,” Gwellyn said.

  “Mitxeleta said they didn’t want us going into the cave,” Jakob said. “Suppose they just went into the cave to fetch us something for breakfast—no point in infuriating them by going in after them.”

  “OK,” Gwellyn said. “Let’s go back to the cave and see if they bring us breakfast.”

  Eventually they ate the last of the ibex and some of the tubers in Jakob’s sack, supplemented by the sweet black berries they found on several of the shrubs. But their disposition was anything but sweet.

  “Are you satisfied that they’re not bringing us breakfast now?” Gwellyn jibed.

  “Yes.”

  “Should we see if we can find them in the cave now?” Gwellyn continued.

  “I suppose so,” Jakob said, with no enthusiasm.

  Gwellyn thrust his head in the cave. “Mitxeleta,” he called out. “Mitxeleta!” He called out several more times, ever more loudly.

  He received no reply, not even an echo in return.

  They entered the cave, and immediately saw that they had another problem—which was, they couldn’t see more than a foot or two ahead.

  “Did you notice any starfly lamps at the mouth of the cave?” Jakob whispered, still softly.

  “No need for you to whisper,” Gwellyn said. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone here to hear us. And no, I didn’t see any lamps.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Jakob said.

  They pawed their way around the wall of the cave—looking for an opening to another cave, or perhaps a picture or carving on the wall, anything—but did not get very far. Jakob cried out as he gashed his finger on some sharpness on the wall.

  “Are you hurt?” Gwellyn asked.

  “It’s just a cut,” Jakob replied.

  “This is useless, not being able to see what we’re doing,” Gwellyn said. “Let’s at least wait a bit, until our eyes adjust to the darkness.”

  Gradually, the walls and the dimensions of the cave resolved into a bit more clarity. There were no pictures on the walls near them, and the cave looked enormous—so big, that the middle was jet black, more than an hour after their eyes had made the most of whatever little light had leaked into as far as they had progressed.

  “Let’s go back outside, and consider our choices,” Gwellyn said.

  They blinked in the admonishing sunlight.

  “It must have rained while we were inside.” Gwellyn knelt on the ground, and ran his hand over wet grass. “It’s too damp to make a torch out of anything we could find here. I was thinking we might make one, and see a little more in the cave.”

  They realized they had no choices other than walking back down the hill, retrieving the horses, and riding back to the Vascone village. They began walking.

  “We have learned a lot from the singers,” Jakob said. “We should communicate that to the others.
”

  “Last night was just a prelude,” Gwellyn said. “I learned next to nothing—I want more.”

  “You’re just angry now,” Jakob said. “I saw your face last night—I saw what you felt. I felt it too. We learned a lot already.”

  “Is that so? And what, exactly, did we learn?”

  “We learned that the singers are real, are alive, and are aptly named,” Jakob said.

  “How can we know for sure that they were singers, how can we know for sure we were not dreaming?” Gwellyn persisted.

  “Don’t start that solipsistic Greek insanity again,” Jakob replied. “You’ve gone over and over this with Paschos. How can we know anything, everything, is not a dream? How can we know this very conversation is not a dream? The answer is: we cannot. We have to start with faith in something—so it might as well be, faith that the world is real. It cannot be proven logically—because that very proof could still be part of the dream; that’s why it’s faith.”

  “It cannot be proven as an absolute fact, but the more times we see it, the more confidence we can have that it’s real,” Gwellyn said. “That’s why I need to talk—sing—again with the singers.”

  “If you see a million white clouds, should that give you any more confidence that the next cloud you see will be white? Maybe there’s a grey or black one lurking just over the next treetop.”

  “You’re giving me a headache with your clouds,” Gwellyn replied.

  “Good, let’s stop talking about this, then,” Jakob said.

  They trudged on.

  “I admit that we now know the singers are real,” Gwellyn said a few minutes later. “I believe what happened yesterday was not a dream. But who else will believe us? Will Paschos and Ibrim? Why should they?”

  “What would you have done? Taken the singers back as evidence they exist? Perhaps that is why they left.”

  Gwellyn shook his head. “We need to know more about that conflict. I need to know why my father ordered me to burn their bones! That’s why I started this journey in the first place!”

  “We know why your father so ordered you,” Jakob replied. “It has to do with an illness that comes from the singers.”

  “That’s no more than we knew before yesterday,” Gwellyn said. “We have seen bits and pieces of that for years now.”

  “No,” Jakob said. “I learned something about it in the singing yesterday—it struck something in me, some kind of memory.”

  Gwellyn looked at him. “I’m not sure anymore what I learned. I thought I understood some things yesterday…”

  Jakob closed his eyes. “Perhaps it has to do with my people—the Jewish people. In the series of events that led to the Passover—when my people were slaves in Aegypt—the Lord our God Almighty, Adonai, struck out at our oppressors, and slew their first born. But His angels passed over all the homes with Jewish first-born sons, because our doors were marked with blood—with the blood of the Paschal lamb. That’s the story that has come down to us. But my father always believed—and I agreed with him—in a different interpretation. He thought our ancestors, fighting for their freedom from the Pharaohs, unleashed a fearsome plague upon them—a plague to which my people, the Jews, were immune.”

  “A plague that only took first-born males? What kind of plague could that be?”

  “Well, I didn’t say there were no problems with my father’s interpretation,” Jakob said. “But perhaps there was a time when illnesses were more specifically attuned than they are today—when they killed not just people, but only certain kinds of people. Even today, we know of illnesses that fell just children. But I think my father was on the right track, anyway. And I saw something about a plague, an illness, in the singing yesterday.”

  “Then how come I did not see that?”

  “Perhaps because what the singing conveys to you is based on what is already in your mind,” Jakob replied. “Or perhaps you did see—perhaps the chords did evoke that in your mind—but for some reason you no longer remember.”

  GWELLYN COULD SEE that Jakob had been right about the trip downward being more painful for him than the climb up. He saw the strain growing almost hourly in the older man’s face.

  “Maybe we should have a waited a little longer,” Gwellyn said, “in case the singers returned.”

  “Not on my account,” Jakob replied. “I’m just as happy to get this march over with—waiting a few more days would have helped me in no way, and we have no reason to think the singers will return.”

  Gwellyn insisted that they stop and rest often anyway. In one spot, they flushed out a few plump voles to complement the tubers. The ibex meat was gone. “My grandmother would have vomited to see me eating this stuff, but the Scriptures say we have to keep up our strength,” Jakob said.

  “You’re becoming more religious by the minute, Jakob. You never used to care about following your Kashruth laws.”

  “It’s the singing…” Jakob replied. “I still hear some of it.”

  They finally reached the place where they had dismounted on their journey upward.

  “Well, I see no sign of the horses,” Gwellyn said after a brief foray. “No surprise.”

  Jakob had dropped his body down next to a tree. His back and neck were against its bark. His face looked tired, so tired, and grateful for the tree’s support.

  “How will we be able to recall them, without Mitxeleta?” Gwellyn asked, softly.

  Jakob just sighed.

  “Surely she knew that we on our own might not be able to find the horses—she knew that when she disappeared with the singers,” Gwellyn said.

  “Perhaps she knew that there were more important things to attend to, perhaps she knew we would be provided for otherwise,” Jakob replied.

  “You won’t be able to make the distance down by foot,” Gwellyn said, with tears suddenly welling up into his voice. “It’s far too long to walk.”

  “I know,” Jakob said.

  “I can’t just leave you here,” Gwellyn said. “The tubers will be gone in a few days—it will take me far longer than that to return with horses from the village.”

  “I can dig up more tubers.”

  Gwellyn looked at his best friend, his father in many ways now too, and was unable to speak.

  “We have only two choices,” Jakob said, marshaling his bit of strength. “If I go with you down the hill, we have the same lack of food problem, and we have no certainty when our paths will intersect with anyone else’s—we came across no one on our journey up here. If I stay here, I can rest, rekindle some of my energy, and look for food here, in a limited area. There are streams all over, and the dew is thick in the morning, so water will be in good supply for me. And, of course, you’ll be able to move far more quickly on foot without me.”

  “There’s no harm in our waiting here at least a few days,” Gwellyn said. “Perhaps Mitxeleta will come down after us, perhaps those horses will sense our presence and return. At very least, I can hunt around here, and provide some supplies of food for you.”

  OF THE THREE possibilities, only the last came to pass—Gwellyn was successful in his hunting, and two ibex were cooked. Jakob insisted that Gwellyn take a least a quarter of the meat along with him. “If you don’t survive the trip back, then I have no chance up here either, so it’s in my selfish interest that you take some of the meat, please,” Jakob said. And then he was sorry that he had, for Gwellyn again vowed he would never leave.

  But four days and an additional ibex later, Gwellyn did, for Jakob’s logic was inexorable.

  Gwellyn walked down the path, sick to his stomach with sadness—sick of logic, sick of the singers, sick of this world.

  He walked and walked. Sometimes he remembered to stop and eat and hunt, sometimes he did not. The air was warm and moist, but the nights were cold, and he found himself shivering even during the day…

  His feet felt so heavy, he could hardly command them to move. But the very earth seemed on his side, and he staggered downward and downwa
rd, and his legs seemed to work of their own accord…

  Somewhere along the way he began feeling hot, too hot, yet he was shivering more too. Sweat soaked his clothes. He dreamt of illness, plague, when he slept. Paschos spoke of plague in Constantinople. He dreamed of it when he was awake, too… He was coughing…

  He heard the singing again, and began to understand more. He understood that the singers had but one song—that all of their songs were the same—that each piece of the song contained all the other songs, as an egg contains all the other chickens and eggs and chickens to be born from it over the aeons…

  So he had heard their full song, their only song, that night—there were no other songs to sing. That’s what Mitxeleta had been trying to tell him. Maybe that’s why the singers had left…

  And he saw his father smiling, or maybe it was Jakob. And he saw Daralyn and Lilee and that woman with the fiery eyes he had slept with in this strange land, and he yearned to be with all of them, all at once, once again…

  And he thought again about chickens and eggs, and wondered if he had produced any children with any of the women he had loved or made love to… He thought he had… He hoped he had… Because he wanted at least something of his to survive…

  And he thought again about the plague. That was the key—that’s what the singers and Jakob and his father and everyone had been trying to tell him. It somehow infected not living beings, but life itself, and changed it. Maybe it was life now—was that what the singers were trying to say? Life to whom? To the singers? No, they didn’t have much life now—who knew how many of them were even still alive…

  Who knows how much longer I’ll be alive, Gwellyn thought, in his fever, and coughing, and shivering…

  And one morning, when he was sure he either was dying, or already dead, he awoke…drooling on a fragrant moss beneath a tree…

  And he dreamed he was Alexander, dying in his prime of the same illness…after he’d conquered the world, but before he’d had the chance to tell the world what he’d really learned. “Don’t be angry with me,” he pleaded with his mentor, Aristotle, the student of Plato, the student of Socrates, who hated writing… And Socrates said to his great-grandstudent, Alexander/Gwellyn, “the books in the great city that bears your name will burn…” And Gwellyn replied, “I cannot hear you. You are no longer alive. I could read words by you, if only you had written them.”