by Larry Niven
Younger and leaner than Nagai, Olo was not yet so knowledgeable, but his vision was clearer…
There were no children in the Amphitheater, only the gathered Mothers and Fathers, sitting quietly on the ground in concentric rings. Wamala sat across the ring from Ashan, with the Mothers. She was pale, and sat wrapped in blankets, but would not be dissuaded: she had come to see her son.
There was one other within the ring: Weena. Her hair had been braided finely, in tight rows and swirls, proclaiming her preparedness for Motherhood.
Nagai tried not to think of her, to think only of the contest to come. Was it truly only three months since the three of them had run, playing as children play, through the streets and groves? Only three months since the Fathers had prepared her for Motherhood. She had ceased playing with the children after that night, and had begun her wait for the first eligible Father.
Today. It would be either Nagai or Olo.
Through half-lowered lids Nagai measured the sweet curves of her naked body, and the strength of her eyes. Even at this distance he felt her, and knew that he had to have her.
Olo stood, Nagai unfolding from his crouch in the same moment.
Slowly, as if a drum were beating in a distant corner of the village, their feet began to move in unison, tamping down the hard-packed dirt of the Amphitheater.
They approached each other, and Nagai felt Olo’s mana and knew his opponent, younger, to be the more powerful. But this was not a contest of strength, and Nagai was unconcerned.
The two of them were close now, and both turned sideways, their shoulders almost grazing before each slipped to a side and slid by the other without touching.
A sound began, deep in their throats. It echoed their breathing, deep and organic to the movement. Not singing, not speaking, but something that blended with the rhythms of feet and swaying bodies until it became impossible to say which throat made what sound.
Nagai swirled and capered, the contortions of his waist squeezing the air from his chest, the backward arcs expanding his lungs again. For an instant he grew dizzy, then he found the balance between himself and Olo, and the two of them moved in the Body as sound filled the Amphitheater.
At last there was a disturbance above them, a fluttering of wings, and both dancers paused, their torsos halting in mid-twist. On each, the light oil of exertion reflected the afternoon’s waning light, highlighting the tautly-muscled planes and valleys of their bodies.
Nagai stood with his arms splayed out to the sides, directly behind him the frozen figure of Olo. Nagai could feel his rival’s heat, smell his sweat. His stomach burned, and he slowed his breathing to a crawl, relaxing, relaxing…
The fluttering grew closer, but still neither looked up. Once there was a quick flash of a tiny white figure, then nothing but fluttering.
Olo trembled a bit, then relaxed. Nagai felt it, and visualized as he did when a child: Spiderwebs. Silken strands of life. One to the other. Living things, sacred things. All interlocked by the strands. Every living thing…
Sound, very close, of settling wings, then the weight of a small body on his shoulder. Nagai turned his head, smiling to the tiny white bird that sat there, cocking its head as if mystified with its own actions.
A sigh of release, echoed by the Coordinators, and Olo stepped away from Nagai. As he left the Amphitheater, he was biting his lower lip savagely. There would be blood.
Nagai stood alone, facing Weena. She rose to her feet in a floating spiral and glided to him, searching his face and body with her eyes.
She was perhaps two inches shorter than he, and stood very straight, her body covered only with a tiny woven breech cloth. When she became a Mother, she would cover her breasts as well, but not until then.
Their eyes met, and he felt himself being drawn to her, as if he could lose himself in the depths of swirling brown. He stayed very still.
She took his hand. “Come.” Again, the Coordinators sighed.
The second trial was conducted in a small unadorned hut behind the groves, near the fence. Weena walked ahead of him. He felt lightheaded, and tried to center his thoughts. What would this be…?
She brushed aside the bead curtain and beckoned him inside. Brushing past her nearly burned his skin. They sat across from each other in the darkening room and savored the tension. The moistness and heat, the sweet sight and smell of her made him feel giddy.
“I lost my Childhood three moons ago.” Weena said simply. “But I must have a mate to become a Mother.”
“As must I to become a Father.” Again Nagai thought of Olo’s bitten lip. “Olo will wait until the next moon, and again contest. I hope he attains…” Nagai smiled mischievously. “But I am glad that he will not attain with you.”
Only the barest flicker of her expression showed joy. “Olo will win Fatherhood one day. Today, we must deal with what is. I am a woman, and with you, could be Mother. If you pass your third trial, I can make you Father. Will you open yourself to me? Will you let me know you, that I might choose?”
Perspiration had blossomed on her cheeks, tiny beads slighter than dewdrops. Her expression was still, only the rise and fall of her shoulders, the gentle swell of full young breasts, spoke of life.
He had to trust. This was not the Weena he had played games and skinned knees with. The nights she had spent with the Fathers had changed her. His body knew the difference, and it tightened his stomach to dwell on it.
“Yes,” he said finally. A trickle of sweat worked its way out of his armpit to slide down his side.
She reached out and touched his thigh just above the knee. Her fingertips warmed him.
Touch me, she said without speaking. Not in words, not in images but with the sudden creation of a void. He stretched out to touch, conscious of her hand sliding gradually up his thigh, the heat increasing until it became almost, but not quite, unpleasant.
Their eyes met across a space of a few inches, and they breathed each other’s breath and formed the Body as they sat, crosslegged. She felt the tenseness of his body, the locked muscles and emotional scars that made him retreat from her.
She spoke softly as she touched him. “We are born in perfection. As we learn fear we lose vision, we lose suppleness, we lose contact with the Body. This is a consequence of understanding, of growing older. Fear is the destroyer. Only Love can give us back our perfection, for a few precious moments we are pure beings again, in the Oneness of the Body. If I join with you I will take your fear and pain, and let you see what once you saw as an infant. For that instant, you will have both knowledge and understanding, and you will become a Coordinator, reborn and renewed.”
Nagai felt the tension leaving his body with the gentleness of her touch, and he could see, could feel the mana about him as he hadn’t felt it for more years than he cared to remember. He felt it warm and cleanse him, clinging without pressure and guiding without judgment. The heat within him flared, the light clouding his vision.
She drew back. “No. Not until the third trial.” Her voice was heavy and slurred, with a heaviness that balanced the lightness he felt in his own body. He wanted to beg her to continue, but sensed that it would be wrong.
For long moments she seemed burdened, then she straightened her back and exhaled sharply. Her smile relieved him.
“Yes.” she said softly. “We need each other. You and I can understand each other.” She sighed deeply. “Here is the next piece of knowledge that you need, Nagai. All things, especially living things, are like the mushroom. Mushrooms live in clumps, but are apparently separate entities. Only looking to their roots can one see that such a clump, with a dozen flowerings, is actually one creature.
“So are we all. All things that exist are forms of the same thing, only Pain and Fear prevent us from seeing the roots, or the invisible seeds that spread life. We perceive things as being different—in sizes, colors, locations and times. These are but the flowerings. The roots are in the Body.
“We understand this as children
, as infants, as small clumps of life in the womb. Pain and Fear prevent the energy of life from flowing freely through us, and we lose what once we understood, replacing Understanding with its shadow, Knowledge.
“Nagai, we are the only ones who know that children brought into the world without violence, in an atmosphere rich in love and mana are open, and free, and can feel the connective energies. They are protected from the world, that they might stay within the Body totally, for in becoming a Coordinator you gain perspective, and lose the natural acceptance of things.
“Love gives it back to us. When we lie together, you and I, I will take you into my body and you will take me into yours. I will show you things that you have long forgotten, and give you peace.”
“And I will see…” He left the question hanging. Nagai felt his limbs tremble with anticipation.
“What I see. You need me, and I need you. Together, we will make a child. You, and I, and our child will make up one small Oneness in the Body.”
She stood, bending to trace her finger along his jawline. “Do not try to understand. You cannot. It must be shown.” Her tone dropped, and she lowered her eyes shyly. “We belong to each other now, Nagai. For Always.” They touched, and Nagai wanted only to stay with her, to learn the secrets hidden behind the warm brown eyes.
Torchlight flickered and popped in the Amphitheater. Only the Fathers were there. Their faces were heavily lined with stains, and together, in perfect harmony, they swayed to and fro in the gloom.
Nagai stood before them, silent, as the Eldest stepped slowly to the center of the Amphitheater. Age had eaten Pulolu’s face into a ruined hollow. He walked in a rhythm of threes; foot, foot and the probing tip of a gnarled cane.
“Young Nagai, you seek Fatherhood. A woman has chosen you, so your final test lies with us—” his voice was a hissing sound. “The Fathers.”
“I am ready.”
“So you believe. If you would win the scars of Fatherhood, you must show that you can Coordinate the mana.”
Nagai repeated the ritual words that his father had prepared him to say. “I have shown this, with the first test.
“You must show that you are ready to be absorbed into the Body.”
Nagai stood tall, tasting the power and the victory that would soon be his. “I have shown this also, by the second test.”
The old man shook his head. “It may be better for you to refuse your Fatherhood, young one.”
Nagai’s hands clenched in shock. This was not part of the ceremony! He searched the faces of the men ringing the fire, and learned nothing. Even Ashan’s face seemed a stranger’s.
“N-no,” he stammered. “I am ready.”
Pulolu clucked, deep in his throat. “We pray you are.”
“Give me my task,” he said firmly, reassured to hear his voice ringing clear and strong.
“Your task is to bring the children of the village—every one of them—here to the Amphitheater. Here, you will join with them, Coordinate them—and slay the Dinga.”
The sound of the last words rang in Nagai’s ears, burning like drops of flaming oil. His tongue seemed clumsily thick. “But-but why? They are our friends—they protect us—”
“From themselves, Nagai. You were spared the truth, as are all the children. Today you learn.”
There was a murmur of agreement from the assembled Fathers.
“Three hundred years ago the Dinga came to our land, seeking the power in the earth. They are a wicked people who had renewed their own powers by ritual murder when the mana grew short. Only the cleverness of our forefathers spared us a bloody fate, for they were more powerful than we. But they could not grow food as we grow it, or fish or hunt as we. So we have supplied them with food, half of our crops and catches, in exchange for peace to live our lives.”
Nagai tried to find words that expressed the empty confusion in his gut. “But we—we can continue, can we not? Surely we need not spill blood.” Thoughts tumbled from mind to mouth in a torrent. “And—and if they are more powerful than we, how can I destroy them?”
“The were-people,” Pulolu said with certainty. “They changed everything here. They warred with the Dinga for months.”
The young man’s mouth hung open numbly. “I never knew.”
“We have paid a heavy price to insulate you from such knowledge, such pain. Your task now is to repay what we have given you. The Dinga defeated the were-people, but now their strongest wizards lie in exhaustion. The mana in the ground is gone. Tomorrow, or the day after, they will hunger, and they will look to the closest source of life-energy at hand—the Ibandi. This time, fruits and fishes will not dissuade them. This time,” and his voice was a cold and unyielding wind. “We must strike first.”
Nagai was silent. Reds and blacks crowded the edges of his sight, and he smelled his own fear.
Fear the destroyer, his mind echoed, and he shut it down desperately. “Time. I need time to think.”
“No!” Pulolu shrieked now, corded throat stretching as he lifted his face to Nagai. “It must be done now! Now! Tonight! Or we lose everything!”
“But—”
“No arguments. Accept or decline, that is all.”
Nagai felt his legs buckling, and smelled a now-familiar aroma from the men of the circle, something that he had never smelled from them before. Sour. Heavy.
They can fear. Coordinators can fear. The ground seemed to drop from beneath his feet. Knowledge did not protect from Fear. Vision continued to deteriorate…
In that moment he understood—he was the most powerful member of the Ibandi. For that day, that moment, no other Ibandi had as much Vision and Knowledge simultaneously.
Only he could do it. Only he could save the Ibandi. Their eyes stretched out to him in hunger. You will lead.
There could be only one answer, but his voice still cracked.
“I accept.”
* * * *
The children of the Ibandi were eighty in number, and they sat, child by dark child, in concentric rings, dotting the Amphitheater.
Even to the very young ones, they sat in total silence, bodies still and waiting. No sleepiness, no wandering of attention, although the sun had disappeared beneath the horizon five hours earlier. Even Nagai’s sister was among them, cradled in the arms of Olo. Bolu the man-child was there, quiet, waitful, an infant’s eyes peering out of his stubbled face.
Nagai crouched in the center of the rings, balanced on the balls of his feet.
The children fed him mana. He felt the lines appear, invisibly thin things that connected one infant to another, to child, to adolescent. The lines radiating from the youngest children were hottest, purest. Nagai gathered them with his mind. Forgotten totally was the great mass of the Coordinators who stood back from the circle. Watching. Hoping.
He spun and tightened with his mind until the strands became visible light, ropy luminescent bands that crisscrossed about them until it became a net, then a solid cocoon of light that surrounded the children in a glowing hemisphere.
One with the Body, he imaged with every deepening breath. Until the flesh seemed to melt from his bones, and a cool cleansing wind whistled in his mind. And he soared, seeing…
The torches and lights of the Dinga flickered, casting wraiths of darkness on the walls of their adobe homes. The fat cattle mulling in the pens sniffed the air, and even the guards pacing the edge of the city hunched their shoulders and peered into the darkness.
There is a void here…
Men and women of the Dinga turned in their beds. A few awoke and strained with tired ears for sounds that never came.
There is sickness here…
The Dinga priest awoke, staring blindly into the darkness. His tongue slid dryly over the points of his teeth, and he roused himself to a sitting position. There was nothing to be heard in his small, bare room, and no light to see. He knelt up from the thin mat he slept on, and groped out for his robe.
Come, creatures of the earth, creatures of the
air. There is death, and wickedness, and disease here. It is a corruption of the Body.
The temples of the Dinga were silent and still, except for one where a single robed priest genuflected, then prostrated himself before a swollen-bellied idol. A brazier nearby cast a dull glow, scenting of burnt herbs and blood.
And from the forests they came. From the ground. From the skies.
There is corruption here. On the morrow it rises to slay.
A single scream split the Night, and a naked figure dashed from a hut and rolled in the street, clawing at face and body. Tiny biting things, stinging things, scrabbled on his skin, and the man writhed in the gutter, groans of pain and fear babbling in his throat.
He was not alone. From every corner of the city there came cries, screams as all of the vermin that dwelled in chimney and larder and sewer, all of the flying things that should have slept in bunches within paper nests, and the terrible red ants that bit so fiercely and relentlessly, poured into the homes and onto the bodies of the Dinga people.
In the temple, the priest staggered, slamming into curtains and tables, screaming as he staggered toward the altar. He clawed at his eyes, but the crushed bodies of dozens of their kin did nothing to dissuade the winged demons that plucked and darted.
He stumbled into the brazier, knocking it to the ground and falling atop it. His body jerked spastically.
At last he twitched more gently, as the screams and sobs of the Dinga died away into the night, and finally there was silence.
* * * *
The sounds of screaming were lifted in the wind, carried to the Ibandi. They stood, the Coordinators, Mothers and Fathers, outside the dome of light Nagai had spun on the Amphitheater grounds. When the whispering screams faded away, no man or woman there could mistake the message in the silence.
The stars glared pinpoint-bright and cold. The light from the cocoon cast twisted, dim shadows.
Only the sound of tense breathing, and the distant cough of a wild dog filled the still air of the village.
Then the hemisphere began to waver, and it appeared that tiny balls of light were peeling back from the surface. The hole formed looked like a wound ripped in living flesh.