Our state of love has altered, of course; how could it not? Now we are in riothis—asexual caring—and poor Lanea is ashamed to face her friends.
I am unable to feel much sympathy for her, though I would like to. When one is in one of the higher states of desire, it becomes almost impossible to achieve empathy with someone in a lower state. I do not wish to be callous; but I do have my doroman, which presently occupies my feelings.
I suppose doroman would be called a homosexual practice on Earth and would be scorned by the great preponderance of heterosexuals. But here no judgmental distinction is made. The race has a heterosexual bias (as biologically it must), but that has never become a behavioral mandate.
I wish I could describe the quality of doroman, for it is unlike anything else. But it is also like everything else, since it does not carry the weight of centuries of societal disapproval.
Sometimes I still wonder how I, an Earthman, could adapt so easily to these various practices. I suppose it is because it is all so normal here, and one tends to accept the standards of the society one lives with.
Whatever the reason, it is all good fun. I shall regret the ritual proscription of all sexuality except the religious variety which characterizes the Feast of Passage.
This is easy country to cross—gently rolling hills, short grass, scattered trees. Even the sun is good to us, shining with moderation and never allowing the nights to get too cold. Doerniche tells me that the character of the land will soon change for the worse, and the life-giving sun of this region will give way to a fiercer deity.
But we grow stronger as we continue our march. My feet are calloused now, and my shoulders have grown accustomed to the pack.
I continue to write this record, not out of desire but out of compulsion. It feels so futile: I can’t remember any of the important things that should be noted. The Feast of Passage, for example, which I thought so memorable at the time. Now it is gone from my memory except for disconnected flashes that are more disturbing than enlightening.
I have asked the others for assistance in reconstructing that event. But they laugh at me rudely and tell me that only practical things are worth remembering.
At first they did not like to see me writing this journal. They feared that I was interfering with supernatural forces. Grandinang especially was upset. Once he tried to burn this journal—halfheartedly, though, as he does everything. But Doerniche saved the day by declaring that I was obviously the God-struck scribe of the group, that I was writing a heroic account of our journey, and that this account would be sung aloud at the In-gathering and bring all of us prestige.
I do not know whether he believed it or not. But it brought about a change of attitude. Now they urge me to write, and they make sure I hear of their puny daily exploits.
I have only a few disconnected fragments of memory concerning the Festival; but I am haunted by the feeling that something important happened at that time. My feeling is that something bad happened at that time. Or perhaps I don’t mean bad, perhaps I mean monstrous.
We all took some drug, I remember that much. It was part of the Festival, had been so from time immemorial. I think it was a root that we washed, sliced and chewed, and we had special silk bags in which to spit the tough strands. We laughed a good deal about the ridiculousness of taking a drug. But Eliaming became serious and said that the drug was not necessary to the Festival; it was used simply to ease the participants and spare them anxiety. And he explained that the drug’s effects were confined to about forty hours and that mild hallucinations had been known to occur at the peak of the drug’s action but that the experience was controllable, and disorientation rarely occurred.
Eliaming usually made it his business to find out things like that. And he had also discussed with a doctor the advisability of me, an alien, taking the drug. The doctor told him that since I had no apparent difficulty with any of the other foods of Kaldor, I presumably would not with this one. But if I had any anxiety, he added, I should desist.
I had no anxiety. I took the drug with the others.
Then there is a gap in my memory. The next thing I remember is being in a place with many bright colors flashing. The colors were making my head hurt, the reds especially. After a while they began to take shape. They coalesced first into clouds, then into pillars, and finally into naked, faceless human shapes. Their scorching colors continued to burn my eyes until I, in self-defense, also began to pulse and glow with color.
That, I suppose, was a hallucination.
Next there was darkness and a man’s voice—Doerniche’s, I think (although he denies it), saying to me, “Of course, you couldn’t have known, and of course, we couldn’t have told you.”
“But you’re telling me now,” I said.
“No, not really; I am merely substantiating what your being has just learned by becoming.”
“I should have been able to guess it earlier,” I said bitterly. “The evidence was there, if I had only looked.”
“It would not have helped you.”
“I know that,” I said, and now I was weeping. “But I still wish I had known.”
That entire conversation, which seems to have taken place in limbo, remains word for word in my memory. But I haven’t the slightest idea what it was I should have known. Doerniche insists that the conversation never took place, and the others avoid speaking of the Festival or of anything except their present life and its difficulties.
I remember a crowd of people screaming, running in blind panic through the streets of Morei. Some of the old ones and the smaller children couldn’t keep pace. They fell and were trampled by the others. And when the crowd had finally passed, they were unrecognizable as people.
I felt panic too (although I can’t remember why) and raw terror. I saw that the crowd was dangerous, and I pulled myself up to a window ledge. I waited until they had passed, thinking them more of an immediate risk than anything else. But I paid a price for my independence. When I was ready to go the terror struck me most sharply. I thought it was after me alone, and I thought I would die from fright. I ran with the unthinking exertion of a madman, and when I reached my group I thought my heart would give out.
Earlier I remember being in a room. The walls were stone, and they were covered with inscriptions that I couldn’t read. An oil lamp flickered in one corner.
Then I looked up and saw standing before me a naked man with the head of a fox. In one hand he held a flint knife, in the other hand a pine cone. The fox-head was a mask, of course. It had to be a mask.
He said to me, “Now you know.”
“What do I know?” I asked him.
“You know the face of the future.”
I hesitated for a long time. Then I asked, “What are you?”
He replied, “A mirror.”
I reached out to touch him, and my hand struck a smooth surface. I put my hand to my face, and my fingers touched a long hairy snout.
I think I screamed then. But I can’t remember anything past that.
There are a few more fragments which I can’t put into any particular order. They are not scenes; only a face, a landscape, and a few disconnected sentences.
The face was a man’s face framed in shaggy hair. He was smiling, and his face was smeared with blood.
The landscape was desolate rocks almost hidden in mists on a mountaintop. There was a pile of gray ashes on one side. The mists parted momentarily and I saw innumerable pinpoints of light far below me on the valley floor. Then the mists closed in again.
There was a woman’s voice saying, “All of our fine dreams, and now we have come to this!”
And then another woman said, “This, too, is part of the dream!”
And that is all.
I have been unable to make sense out of all this. I need time to sort out hallucination from reality. But each day we trek, and late in the afternoon we make camp and do all of the things necessary to sustain life. And when that is finished I write in my journal, and
then I sleep.
I am always in a state of fatigue these days. I cannot think straight. I know that events have taken a very strange turn—several strange turns. But I am too tired to respond to them. I will sort them out when we reach the middle ground, which Doerniche says is only a few days’ march from here.
There will be plenty of food and plenty of sleep at the middle ground. If we stay there long enough, perhaps I will dare reread the earlier parts of my journal and try to reconcile the contradictions which have become the substance of my life.
Our supply of food has been inadequate for some time. Most edible plants seem to grow in the lowlands. We are several thousand feet above sea level, I would estimate, and still climbing. Vegetation of any kind is growing scarce. We use up a lot of energy on the trek, and we are not replacing it.
We are undergoing changes in behavior. All of us have become prone to irritation, depression, sudden inexplicable rages. I do not know if our situation can account for all of this. I think we have undergone changes in personality dating from the Festival. We simply are not who we had been.
Good luck this evening! Just at dusk Wolfing spotted a deer. We all threw rocks at it, and through great fortune we broke its right foreleg and then pounded it to death with sticks. We built a fire, barely able to contain ourselves, for we had not realized how starved we were. We roasted the meat over an open fire, though this is a wasteful method, and devoured it half raw.
I had not expected to come across a city at this altitude. Nevertheless, we have come to the outskirts of one. We have lain for hours on a high outcropping, watching. There has been no stir of human movement, no vehicles on the streets, nothing at all. Or almost nothing. Wolfing says he can see packs of rats in the streets. All of us can see flocks of crows and the occasional buzzard searching the housetops for food.
We have had serious arguments over this city. Grandinang and all of the women want to loot the place; for cities always have storehouses of prepared food, to say nothing of gold and jewels. I would like to go into the place also, out of curiosity. But Doerniche and Wolfing are in agreement for once opposing this. Doerniche argues that all cities are accursed and that we will take nothing but disease. Wolfing says that we couldn’t carry much now and that we will come back and loot this place anyhow after the In-gathering.
It doesn’t really matter who has the best of the argument. With Doerniche and Wolfing in agreement, the rest of us will do as they say.
Four sleeps later. We wish that we had looted the city when we had the chance, for now the country we pass through is truly barren. We are very high up now. We are beyond the tree line and still climbing. There are shrubs here but very few animals of any description.
Lanea no longer speaks to me, and she sleeps apart. She scorns me because I am a scribe and because her desire is to be mate to a warrior. She watches Doerniche constantly, and her eyes tell everything. Doerniche pretends not to see, for that would be beneath his dignity as clan leader. But the others see, and they laugh at me. I don’t know what to do about this.
Why deny it any longer? We all detest each other. But it is family hatred that we share, not comparable to the hatred we have for other clans. It makes no sense at all when you consider how we had been before the Festival. But perhaps it should be viewed the other way: Our life before makes no sense in terms of our present condition.
Something truly miraculous. We were reaching the end of our strength, and Doerniche called a halt and prepared a fire. Eliaming began to chant to the ancestors and we all clapped in time. The holy light was in Eliaming’s eyes, and he danced around the fire with a strength and grace that went beyond anything physical we had ever witnessed.
We are very lucky. Doerniche tells us that not all clans have a natural priest among them.
Eliaming’s song went on and on and we danced to it, feeling no fatigue. Sometime before dawn the strength of the god touched Sara and she fell to the ground and tried to bite her tongue, but we put a stick in her mouth. And still we danced, for our faith was strong.
Then the god relented and sent us a bear. At first we thought it was a ghost because bears have no business so high in the mountains. But Eliaming knew it for what it was, and he directed us to kill it.
That was no easy task! The god permitted us to trap the bear in a little gully; it had to be the work of the god, for bears do not permit themselves to be trapped so easily. We showered the bear with stones, but this had no effect, and our courage began to grow larger than our hunger.
We looked to our strong men, Doerniche and Wolfing, and they looked at each other. There has been bad blood between them, for they both have the blood of leaders, although only one can lead here. But now they composed their differences for the good of the clan and because god was watching to see what we did with his favor. They took their spears and went forward.
The rest of us continued to throw stones to distract the bear. The spearmen went to the other side. (We didn’t really have spears, only long shafts of wood with fire-hardened points.) The bear rose up on his hind legs and his little eyes flashed red. His head swung to and fro, and then he swung around and attacked Doerniche.
Then things happened fast. Eliaming let loose the god-scream, and that froze the bear in his tracks. Doerniche wedged the spear against a rock. Wolfing, who some of us expected to turn traitor at that moment, attacked the bear from the side, driving his spear deep just below the ribs.
The bear lunged at Doerniche but without his full impetus, which had been interrupted by the god-scream. Doerniche stayed cool and positioned his spear, taking the bear in the center of the throat. And then Doerniche rolled quickly out of the way of the slashing claws, suffering no more than a deep scratch from his shoulder to his hip. And even that was good, for the scar will win him much prestige.
Then the passion went out of us, and we stood silently and watched the bear kick and twitch and bleed to death.
Eliaming collapsed. He had paid a fearful price for saving us, and that will not be forgotten.
We feasted that night and drew strength from bear meat and bear fat. We sang the old songs that have been handed down from the dawn of time, led by Mariska, whose voice is as clear as running water. And then they all called upon me to tell them of the slaying of the bear, because that is the custom.
I made a show of reluctance, not entirely feigned, for my role sat uneasily upon me. But at last I stood up, and Grandinang put a rag around my head as substitute for the poet’s chaplet. I stood in front of the fire and declaimed to them of what they had done, making their brave exploits even more heroic, for that is the way of retelling. After a while I was able to overcome my self-consciousness and act out the parts with my body. I did not think highly of my performance, but the others were satisfied. And Doerniche himself told me that I had done well, and that was an intoxicating moment.
That night Lanea slept with me, the first time in many nights. And afterward she put my head in her lap, traced the lines of my face with her fingers, combed my hair, and said that she would always love me.
It was a time to dream on. But in the morning we resumed our trek, laden down with bear meat, and Lanea was cold and distant again and seemed to regret the affection she had shown me.
We have had to lose an entire day. Grandinang twisted his ankle, and we cannot carry him and the bear meat. Grandinang is such a fool! But he is a very good fool, he amuses us all, and that is necessary.
This day of rest is welcome to me, for my thoughts and memories press heavily in my head, and I need to know the causes of things.
I am an alien, a man who came here from a planet called Earth. That much is certain, that much I always know despite whatever else happens.
I came to this planet and isolated myself for a long time. Then I began to live the life of the others. It was a civilized life as we know it on Earth. It was a peaceful life, devoted to love and the arts.
There was talk of danger, but the danger never came. Or did it?
/> Everything changed, and I changed along with it. There was a Festival. And then I was with my clan, marching to some far destination, leading a brutal life that somehow seems as natural to me as the other lives I have lived here.
What is the explanation for all this? Why have we turned our backs on civilization?
I cannot find the answers yet. But it steadies me to know what has gone before. I think that I am the only one who remembers.
Perhaps that is why I am the scribe.
I cannot record all of the quarrels we have had. But I must speak of the most recent one between Lanea and me.
It was dusk, a quiet moment. Our bellies were full, and we were in good humor because of that. It was a good time, and I reached out to take Lanea’s hand.
She pulled away from me abruptly. I have never seen her face so contorted with rage. (Later I realized that she had been watching Wolfing and Elesse make love, and that had enraged her with jealousy.)
She said, “I do not want you to touch me again.”
“You are my mate,” I said, my voice reasonable. “Of course I may touch you.”
“No!” she said. “Never again! I will be your mate no longer.”
“How have I failed you?”
The scorn in her voice was indescribable. “How? In countless ways! But mainly because you are a scribe, and I was born to be mate to a warrior!”
“I work at an honorable profession,” I told her. “I am satisfied with it, and so are the others.”
“But I am not satisfied,” Lanea said. “I will not sleep with you again.”
“The nights will get cold,” I said.
“For you, not for me. I am going to be Wolfing’s woman.”
“He has a woman.”
“Then he will have two.”
I looked around. The others were listening, waiting to see how it would come out. Wolfing had a grin on his face. Elesse, his mate, shuddered but said nothing. (She is a frightened little thing, and Wolfing dominates her completely.)
Various Fiction Page 274