by Sam Smith
I thought some more on the dream, memorized it for my next session with the notepad; and, calmer, I turned over, closed my two eyes and went back to sleep.
48
I waited with Sririsl by the stores tree for the arrival of the transporter.
The visit promised a break in our routines. I was to help Sririsl carry some of our domestic provisions back to our two houses. I wanted also to watch the transporter load our hard-won collections.
Apparently a machine, towing its own conveyor belt, descended into the stores and selected all the full containers. I say 'apparently' because I didn't see it happen.
No sooner had the transporter touched down in the glade than little Leon Reduct had emerged from underneath. He, smiling, looked over my nakedness: he was wearing a tunic. Calling a greeting to Sririsl he held me by the arm and took me aside.
"I gather congratulations are in order," he said.
Expecting some lewd comment about Rufena — certain men, no matter what their intelligence or profession, react to sex with sniggers — I became immediately defensive,
"They are?"
"The darkness has gone from Sririsl."
"It has?"
"Our first success."
I looked over to Sririsl, who was standing now beside the transporter driver. They weren't talking, were just standing together watching the machine as it came trundling out of the belly of the craft.
"What made it go?"
"Your hand has become famous in the Knowledge."
"My hand?"
"The day you placed your hand on hers? You broke her physical isolation. I've been telling them — ever since I started this — that they need, living so far apart as they do, not just communication, but contact. Loneliness, I told them," Leon was pleased with himself, pleased with me, "loneliness, real and imagined, is the main cause of suicide in humans. But how, they asked me, can any hybrid be lonely?"
I thought of the man in his valley, on his island, on his rock in the desert. I thought of Meffo in her jungle, how pleased she had been to see me, at first.
"It has to be different for them."
"No," he quivering shook his bald head. "Their assumption, like yours, was that, because of the Knowledge, they didn't require physical contact. Your hand on Sririsl's hand showed them that they did. Your hand on her hand," he placed one of his hands under the other, "demonstrated to them that the human psyche, even if diluted, is unable to cope with such prolonged estrangement from the human herd."
Not knowing what to think, I was silent, watched the machine noisily towing its conveyor belt. Leon wanted me to share his excitement.
"They never disputed," he said, "that they needed contact, had simply been of the belief that they had enough already. Belief is one thing, experience another. Your hand provided the shock of experience."
I had difficulty recalling the actual day of the hand, decided that the change in Sririsl couldn't have come about solely through that one physical contact, rather my hand upon hers had been the culmination of many small acts of companionship.
Into my mind, instead of that day, came a picture of Meffo, face blank, asking if I wanted to share her bed. I wondered, with a quick sense of guilt, what would have happened if I'd accepted her offer. Priggish 19 year old that I was, however, I had declined. That one night might have saved her life.
The machine had started down the storehouse steps.
"I've prepared a report," I said. "If you've got time?"
"For you I'll make time," he nodded earnestly at me. "When we're done I'll borrow your craft, send it back later." He hurried across to speak to the driver of the transporter.
In my house I walked in and out and around the room while Leon listened to my notepad recounting my dreams, my theories on communication based on my sociable noises/non-communication with the hens. And more dreams, repeated with variations.
Leon didn't once make eye contact, his only reactions being to occasionally rub at his bald head — could have been the lakeside midges — at other times to scratch his chin.
I walked in and out of the room, looked at him.
Did he know about Rufena?
"Anyone else had dreams like this?" I asked when the report had finished.
"If they have," another rub at his head, "then no-one's thought to mention them. You say it's the clarity of the dreams, the power of the images, rather than the story content?"
"These dreams don't fade during the course of the day. I've had those. Have them. And I might remember the subject matter of those, but little else; and less as the day goes on. But I can bring to mind these other dreams, these new dreams, as if they are memories of actual events. I think the Hybrids are trying to get to me through these dreams."
"Telepathically?"
"Yes."
Leon turned the focus of his mind on that, spoke,
“We don't know how, physically, telepathy works. Which parts of the brain transmit, which receive..." A shrug. "We don't know. Best guess is frontal lobe cortex dysfunction, similar to that causing epilepsy. According to your medical records, though, there's no hint of any fits. Nevertheless, yes, your dreams could've been caused by the Knowledge. My gut feeling, however, is that these dreams have come out of your own experience. Both new and old."
He makes eye contact,
"You are an educated man. Add to that all the books you've read for entertainment, all the screen images you've ever seen — and you can't now consciously remember — you, Okinwe Orbison, are the sum of all human history. I wouldn't, if I were you, read too much into these dreams."
I turned disappointed from him, walked the room. He made notes to himself.
"I'll ask the others if they've had any unusual dreams. The danger is in putting ideas into their heads. I don't know..." Leon studied me, put a smile onto his face, "You're breaking ground in so many ways. I find myself loath to offer advice."
He knew about Rufena. Was bound to. Rynnl would have told him.
"What do you mean?" I had to hear him say it.
"First the hand. And I'm not sure how that's connected to your relationship with Sririsl's daughter."
"Rufena," I said her name, my heart hammering within.
"It was her idea apparently," Leon was watching me.
"If it was anyone's." Was I being used by Rufena? "Am I the first then to have had a relationship here?"
"Yes. Though that's hardly surprising. The youngest of the others is in her late thirties. And, she'll admit it herself, is not what one would call comely. On top of that all the others, hearing themselves called research assistants, have brought here concepts of professionalism, of objectivity. They pride themselves on keeping at a distance, on being dispassionate... You, in the full flush of youth, were always a risk. They, though, were getting nowhere with their mature observations."
"Which were?"
Leon pulled a face at that, didn't want to tell me, pollute me with their prejudices:
"What they all agreed, based on statistical evidence, was that there appears to be a lingering resentment among the Hybrids at the Nautili having made use of the hybrids' dry senses. It has been water aversives mostly who have killed themselves."
"Mostly?"
"56%"
"Was Meffo an aversive?"
Leon taps his notepad keys.
"No."
One touch would have saved her. Had I slept that night in her bed, even had sex with her... What would one night of my life have mattered if she had continued to live? Was that why, now, Meffo was so accusing in my dreams?
Would Rufena, though, knowing already through Meffo — what sex with me was like — would she then have wanted to have sex with me? Rufena had even said that I'd been kind to Meffo. I hadn't, I'd been priggishly selfish.
I couldn't, though — commonsense came to my rescue — save all the suicidal women on the planet by having sex with them.
"What next is to happen?" Leon asked me.
"How should I know?"
"It's you who's made the breakthrough."
"I haven't."
From the chair Leon studied me walking past him, back again. His expression wondered how else I was going to surprise him.
His appraisal of my 'achievements' hadn't flattered me, rather those ‘achievements’ had lowered my estimation of myself: I was being blindly led by both the Knowledge and by Leon. 'I always was a risk...'
"Who else made the breakthrough?" Leon prompted me.
"There's been no 'breakthrough'."
"The darkness has left Sririsl."
"You're confusing cure with cause. Companionship might well cure the wish to kill oneself. That doesn't mean that it's a lack of companionship that makes someone want to kill themself."
Leon thought on that.
I too thought on it, having just heard myself say it — that being the first time I'd considered it. Another thought — who was putting these words in my mouth? Thoughts in my head?
"I came here," Leon said, "prepared to pour cold water on your jubilation. Lots more work needed, etcetera. But you're the only one on the planet not overjoyed by Sririsl's change of heart..."
"I am pleased."
"...But not satisfied by it. I'll report that to Rynnl. Because they're already considering ways of offering contact, insisting on people taking vacations from their places of work. Massage holidays, they've designated them. Formalized touch..."
Leon listened in his head again to what I'd said:
"What then do you think is causing it?"
"It is partly loneliness," I listened to myself. "No, not loneliness. People are getting stuck here. Stuck in ways of life that they can't get out of. The Knowledge won't let them. We human beings can take our identity and invent ourselves anew at every meeting, every circumstance. They can't. They're stuck. And their only escape is death."
Leon made more notes as I made us drinks.
"Some of this compares with what others have reported," Leon scrolled through his notepad. "Which is exactly what we're here for — to point out the cultural blind spots, the accepted wisdoms that aren't the least wise..."
"I've got the sneaking suspicion that it's all somehow connected with the children."
"The children?" Leon was surprised.
"I don't know what," I blushed. "Something about the way they behave... There's an unnaturalness about it."
"Remember, Okinwe, that not only are they Hybrids, but theirs is a radically different culture. You are a stranger here."
He appeared to be contradicting himself, annoyed me. But I had no ready response.
"More than that."
"You want me to arrange for you to stay with Rynnl again? Or would you prefer another children's village?"
"Children's village?"
"You didn't know there were children's villages?"
He was making the point of my ignorance of their culture and therefore that my suspicions regarding the children were unfounded.
"Because of the far-flung nature of their parents' professions," he informed me, "children are cared for from age 2 in special villages. By those best able to care for them."
"Add that to your causes for suicide."
Leon seemed about to argue, thought better of it, dutifully made a note.
"There must though," I said, "be parent-child bonds. Rufena visits Sririsl regularly."
"Rufena by all accounts," (Did I detect a leer?), "is a very unusual young woman."
"And still Sririsl wanted to kill herself."
I had made my usual circle.
"So discount the children?" a professional prompt from Leon.
"No. There is something odd about them. An indifference not present in the adults. Not interested in the new." None had come to see me in Rynnl's village. "And they are," I chose my words carefully, "the latest manifestation of the Knowledge. A Knowledge that has now taken against its own people."
"First argument comes to mind against that is that it was the Knowledge which brought you in to diagnose itself."
"Maybe it exists on many levels, misleads itself. You're the one with psychiatric experience."
Leon thought on that, looked up out of his thoughts at me watching him,
"I thought you were going to paint these walls?"
* * * * *
Rufena knew through Sririsl that Leon was with me and so didn't come that day. Despite Leon being there I missed her, decided to punish her by going to Rynnl's village with Leon. Punish her? I thought, when it was I who already felt her absence like an ache.
My craft could as easily have been returned on its own. Yet still I went.
49
We landed inside the settlement this time, not outside it. We also arrived unannounced, came out of the parking bay into a deserted village. No-one had known we two humans were coming.
With Leon I walked through the village looking for Rynnl.
Some residue of Space modesty had made me put on a tunic for this trip. (Pointless modesty — the whole planet knew what I looked like naked, knew even what I looked like aroused.)
Leon too wore a tunic. I hadn't yet seen him without a tunic.
He had told me, on our journey over, that he had checked dates and times of all suicides against my dreams. All but 3 were at or about the time of the deaths.
"So my dreams presage a death?"
"Statistically the evidence is inconclusive. Go on keeping a record of them. Don't, though, attach too much importance to them."
"You're not the one being frightened awake by them."
"True."
Three boy children, naked, looked up in this silent village of children to watch these two men in tunics, talking, pass.
I, glancing, studied these Hybrid boys.
Not only were they different to human children in their complete lack of facial expression, there was something different about them again this day. None of the boisterous games that I had seen on my previous visits to the village.
I was aware, however, that rain was threatening, dark clouds gathering over the yellow tracts; so it could have been the weather lowering their spirits. I sensed behind their faces, though, a hatred of me.
They couldn't have known what I'd said about them to Leon. Unless my house was wired. Or Leon was a hybrid.
I looked him over. Short of stature anyway, wearing a tunic the shortness of his legs wouldn't have been that remarkable. While his 'conversations' with Rynnl could have been so much window-dressing for my benefit. Leon, the hybrid, had probably already known through the Knowledge.
"Where were you born?" I asked him, just as we came upon Rynnl emerging from the forest.
"Bebuke." He glanced a smile at me, then advanced on old Rynnl hand outstretched.
Rynnl, through the eyes of other hybrids, would have known where we were, in which direction we were heading. How, though, had Leon known where Rynnl was? We'd asked no-one. Unless, before Leon had left with the transporter this morning, Rynnl had mentioned where he'd be working this afternoon.
Watching Leon talk, not convinced by his ready response of Bebuke, noticing the many subtle gesticulations that made him different from impassive Rynnl, I told myself that there was nothing to stop Leon the Hybrid having learnt how to animate his face and body. I'd seen Rufena laugh, close her eyes in sensual delight.
Or, another thought, were none of these Hybrids? Was all this a fiction instigated by Leon? Was Leon Reduct leading a research project into his 28 assistants' reactions? Were my suspicions, paranoia, being fueled by arranged events? Was my love affair with Rufena to be the basis of a learned paper?
Leon came back to me in thoughtful pose,
"I've asked Rynnl. And I'll ask a couple of the others who're more expressive; but, so far, Rynnl has no recollection of any dreams telling the suicides to kill themselves."
Rynnl was staring across at me out of his old man's wrinkled anxious eyes.
Yea I bet, I thought.
50
Over a landscape of
forest and lakes I watched for my lake; recognized it from far off by its swum shape; and there, at its end, the large conifer, the small conifer and the big maple.
I found myself smiling, then sighing. Would Rufena be waiting for me? What if she wasn't? How would I act towards Sririsl now that I knew my hand had saved her life? Or had it?
Coming down over the lake I warned myself that I mustn't let them suspect that I knew. Knew what? That I suspected them.
I had been recruited for my imagination. My imagination had gone into hyperdrive.
I hadn't got to the bottom of the steps before Rufena threw herself at me, wrapped herself around me, planted a long kiss on me.
"You were lost to me," she hugged me hard. "One moment you were watching the loader, then you'd gone."
"I'm here now," I said, immediately wondering if I should stop living next door to Sririsl, set up house somewhere on my own, where — to know where I was — Rufena would have to live with me. How, though, would I investigate suicides living solely with Rufena?
"The children saw you," she kissed me again. We were by now indoors and she was lifting off my tunic, "You looked so serious. So far away from me. I was afraid. Is this what it's like to be you?"
I looked at her searching my face with such concern,
"To not know. To guess. Yes, that's what it's like to be me."
She made noises of sympathy and lost herself in busily making love to me.
* * * * *
Hands behind my head I was lying in bed, her head on my chest, leg curled over mine.
"What did you and Leon Reduct talk about?"
Was this double-bluff? Pretending that Leon wasn't a hybrid and that she didn't already know?
In case I was being tested I went along with it, telling her what she already knew.
But, in case Leon Reduct wasn't a hybrid and she didn't know, I kept my suspicions about the children to myself.
My talking also kept her there into the evening and on into the night. Rufena paid close attention to all that I said, someone having to tell her their news being new to her. I so much wanted her to be real, tearfully looked up to the bare walls.
