One of these mornings by the river he shot a wild hen, so common here in their squawking, low-flying flocks that they provided his staple meat. He had only winged the hen and it was not dead when he picked it up. It beat its wings and cried in its piercing bird-voice, “Take—life—take—life—take—” Then he wrung its neck.
The words rang in his mind and would not be silenced. Last time a beast had spoken to him he had been on the threshold of the house of Fear. Somewhere in these lonesome gray hills there were, or had been, men: a group in hiding like Argerd’s household, or savage Wanderers who would kill him when they saw his alien eyes, or toolmen who would take him to their Lords as a prisoner or slave. Though at the end of it all he might have to face those Lords, he would find his own way to them, in his own time, and alone. Trust no one, avoid men! He knew his lesson now. Very warily he went that day, alert, so quiet that often the waterbirds that thronged the shores of the river rose up startled almost under his feet.
He crossed no path and saw no sign at all that any human beings dwelt or ever came near the river. But towards the end of the short afternoon a flock of the bronze-green wild fowl rose up ahead of him and flew out over the water clucking and calling together in a gabble of human words.
A little farther on he stopped, thinking he had scented wood-smoke on the wind.
The wind was blowing upriver to him, from the northwest. He went with double caution. Then as the night rose up among the tree-trunks and blurred the dark reaches of the river, far ahead of him along the brushy, willow-tangled shore a light glimmered, and vanished, and shone again.
It was not fear or even caution that stopped him now, standing in his tracks to stare at that distant glimmer. Aside from his own solitary campfire this was the first light he had seen lit in the wilderness since he had left the Clearing. It moved him very strangely, shining far off there across the dusk.
Patient in his fascination as any forest animal, he waited till full night had come and then made his way slowly and noiselessly along the riverbank, keeping in the shelter of the willows, until he was close enough to see the square of a window yellow with firelight and the peak of the roof above it, snow-rimmed, pine-overhung. Huge over black forest and river Orion stood. The winter night was very cold and silent. Now and then a fleck of dry snow dislodged from a branch drifted down towards the black water and caught the sparkle of the firelight as it fell.
Falk stood gazing at the light in the cabin. He moved a little closer, then stood motionless for a long time.
The door of the cabin creaked open, laying down a fan of gold on the dark ground, stirring up powdery snow in puffs and spangles. “Come on into the light,” said a man standing, vulnerable, in the golden oblong of the doorway.
Falk in the darkness of the thickets put his hand on his laser, and made no other movement.
“I mindheard you. I’m a Listener. Come on. Nothing to fear here. Do you speak this tongue?”
Silence.
“I hope you do, because I’m not going to use mindspeech. There’s nobody here but me, and you,” said the quiet voice. “I hear without trying, as you hear with your ears, and I still hear you out there in the dark. Come and knock if you want to get under a roof for a while.”
The door closed.
Falk stood still for some while. Then he crossed the few dark yards to the door of the little cabin, and knocked.
“Come in!”
He opened the door and entered into warmth and light.
An old man, gray hair braided long down his back, knelt at the hearth building up the fire. He did not turn to look at the stranger, but laid his firewood methodically. After a while he said aloud in a slow chant,
“I alone am confused
confused
desolate
Oh, like the sea
adrift
Oh, with no harbor
to anchor in.. . .”
The gray head turned at last. The old man was smiling; his narrow, bright eyes looked sidelong at Falk.
In a voice that was hoarse and hesitant because he had not spoken any words for a long time, Falk replied with the next verse of the Old Canon:
“Everyone is useful
only I alone
am inept
outlandish.
I alone differ from others
but I seek
the milk of the Mother
the Way. . . .”
“Ha ha ha!” said the old man. “Do you, Yellow Eyes? Come on, sit down, here by the hearth. Outlandish, yes yes, yes indeed. You are outlandish. How far out the land?—who knows? How long since you washed in hot water? Who knows? Where’s the damned kettle? Cold tonight in the wide world, isn’t it, cold as a traitor’s kiss. Here we are; fill that from the pail there by the door, will you, then I’ll put it on the fire, so. I’m a Thurro-dowist, you know what that is I see, so you won’t get much comfort here. But a hot bath’s hot, whether the kettle’s boiled with hydrogen fusion or pine-knots, eh? Yes, you really are outlandish, lad, and your clothes could use a bath too, weatherproof though they may be. What’s that?—rabbits? Good. We’ll stew ’em tomorrow with a vegetable or two. Vegetables are one thing you can’t hunt down with a laser-gun. And you can’t store cabbages in a backpack. I live alone here, my lad, alone and all alonio. Because I am a great, a very great, the greatest Listener, I live alone, and talk too much. I wasn’t born here, like a mushroom in the woods; but with other men I never could shut out the minds, all the buzz and grief and babble and worry and all the different ways they went, as if I had to find my way through forty different forests all at once. So I came to live alone in the real forest with only the beasts around me, whose minds are brief and still. No death lies in their thoughts. And no lies lie in their thoughts. Sit down; you’ve been a long time coming here and your legs are tired.”
Falk sat down on the wooden hearth-bench. “I thank you for your hospitality,” he said, and was about to name himself when the old man spoke: “Never mind. I can give you plenty of good names, good enough for this part of the world. Yellow Eyes, Outlander, Guest, anything will do. Remember I’m a Listener, not a paraverbalist. I get no words or names. I don’t want them. That there was a lonely soul out there in the dark, I knew, and I know how my lighted window shone into your eyes. Isn’t that enough, more than enough? I don’t need names. And my name is All-Alonio. Right? Now pull up to the fire, get warm.”
“I’m getting warm,” Falk said.
The old man’s gray braid flipped across his shoulders as he moved about, quick and frail, his soft voice running on; he never asked a real question, never paused for an answer. He was fearless and it was impossible to fear him.
Now all the days and nights of journeying through the forest drew together and were behind Falk. He was not camping: he had come to a place. He need not think at all about the weather, the dark, the stars and beasts and trees. He could sit stretching out his legs to a bright hearth, could eat in company with another, could bathe in front of the fire in a wooden tub of hot water. He did not know which was the greatest pleasure, the warmth of that water washing dirt and weariness away, or the warmth that washed his spirit here, the absurd elusive vivid talk of the old man, the miraculous complexity of human conversation after the long silence of the wilderness.
He took as true what the old man told him, that he was able to sense Falk’s emotions and perceptions, that he was a mindhearer, an empath. Empathy was to telepathy somewhat as touch to sight, a vaguer, more primitive, and more intimate sense. It was not subject to fine learned control to the degree that telepathic communication was; conversely, involuntary empathy was not uncommon even among the untrained. Blind Kretyan had trained herself to mindhear, having the gift by nature. But it was no such gift as this. It did not take Falk long to make sure that the old man was in fact constantly aware to some degree of what his visitor was feeling and sensing. For some reason this did not bother Falk, whereas the knowledge that Argerd’s drug had opened his mind to te
lepathic search had enraged him. It was the difference in intent; and more.
“This morning I killed a hen,” he said, when for a little the old man was silent, warming a rough towel for him by the leaping fire. “It spoke, in this speech. Some words of . . . of the Law. Does that mean anyone is near here, who teaches language to the beasts and fowls?” He was not so relaxed, even getting out of the hot bath, as to say the Enemy’s name—not after his lesson in the house of Fear.
By way of answer the old man merely asked a question for the first time: “Did you eat the hen?”
“No,” said Falk, toweling himself dry in the firelight that reddened his skin to the color of new bronze. “Not after it talked. I shot the rabbits instead.”
“Killed it and didn’t eat it? Shameful, shameful.” The old man cackled, then crowed like a wild cock. “Have you no reverence for life? You must understand the Law. It says you mustn’t kill unless you must kill. And hardly even then. Remember that in Es Toch. Are you dry? Clothe your nakedness, Adam of the Yaweh Canon. Here, wrap this around you, it’s no fine artifice like your own clothes, it’s only deerhide tanned in piss, but at least it’s clean.”
“How do you know I’m going to Es Toch?” Falk asked, wrapping the soft leather robe about him like a toga.
“Because you’re not human,” said the old man. “And remember, I am the Listener. I know the compass of your mind, outlandish as it is, whether I will or no. North and south are dim; far back in the east is a lost brightness; to the west there lies darkness, a heavy darkness. I know that darkness. Listen. Listen to me, because I don’t want to listen to you, dear guest and blunderer. If I wanted to listen to men talk I wouldn’t live here among the wild pigs like a wild pig. I have this to say before I go to sleep. Now listen: There are not very many of the Shing. That’s a great piece of news and wisdom and advice. Remember it, when you walk in the awful darkness of the bright lights of Es Toch. Odd scraps of information may always come in handy. Now forget the east and west, and go to sleep. You take the bed. Though as a Thurro-dowist I am opposed to ostentatious luxury, I applaud the simpler pleasures of existence, such as a bed to sleep on. At least, every now and then. And even the company of a fellow man, once a year or so. Though I can’t say I miss them as you do. Alone’s not lonely.. . .” And as he made himself a sort of pallet on the floor he quoted in an affectionate singsong from the Younger Canon of his creed: “‘I am no more lonely than the mill brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house. . . . I am no more lonely than the loon on the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself.. . .’”
Then he said, “Good night!” and said no more. Falk slept that night the first sound, long sleep he had had since his journey had begun.
He stayed two more days and nights in the riverside cabin, for his host made him very welcome and he found it hard to leave the little haven of warmth and company. The old man seldom listened and never answered questions, but in and out of his ever-running talk certain facts and hints glanced and vanished. He knew the way west from here and what lay along it—for how far, Falk could not make sure. Clear to Es Toch, it seemed; perhaps even beyond? What lay beyond Es Toch? Falk himself had no idea, except that one would come eventually to the Western Sea, and on beyond that to the Great Continent, and eventually on around again to the Eastern Sea and the forest. That the world was round, men knew, but there were no maps left. Falk had a notion that the old man might have been able to draw one; but where he got such a notion he scarcely knew, for his host never spoke directly of anything he himself had done or seen beyond this little river-bank clearing.
“Look out for the hens, downriver,” said the old man, apropos of nothing, as they breakfasted in the early morning before Falk set off again. “Some of them can talk. Others can listen. Like us, eh? I talk and you listen. Because, of course, I am the Listener and you are the Messenger. Logic be damned. Remember about the hens, and mistrust those that sing. Roosters are less to be mistrusted; they’re too busy crowing. Go alone. It won’t hurt you. Give my regards to any Princes or Wanderers you may meet, particularly Henstrella. By the way, it occurred to me in between your dreams and my own last night that you’ve walked quite enough for exercise and might like to take my slider. I’d forgotten I had it. I’m not going to use it, since I’m not going anywhere, except to die. I hope someone comes by to bury me, or at least drag me outside for the rats and ants, once I’m dead. I don’t like the prospect of rotting around in here after all the years I’ve kept the place tidy. You can’t use a slider in the forest, of course, now there are no trails left worth the name, but if you want to follow the river it’ll take you along nicely. And across the Inland River too, which isn’t easy to cross in the thaws, unless you’re a catfish. It’s in the lean-to if you want it. I don’t.”
The people of Kathol’s House, the settlement nearest Zove’s, were Thurro-dowists; Falk knew that one of their principles was to get along, as long as they could do so sanely and unfanatically, without mechanical devices and artifices. That this old man, living much more primitively than they, raising poultry and vegetables because he did not even own a gun to hunt with, should possess a bit of fancy technology like a slider, was queer enough to make Falk for the first time look up at him with a shadow of doubt.
The Listener sucked his teeth and cackled. “You never had any reason to trust me, outlandish laddie,” he said. “Nor I you. After all, things can be hidden from even the greatest Listener. Things can be hidden from a man’s own mind, can’t they, so that he can’t lay the hands of thought upon them. Take the slider. My traveling days are done. It carries only one, but you’ll be going alone. And I think you’ve got a longer journey to make than you can ever go by foot. Or by slider, for that matter.”
Falk asked no question, but the old man answered it:
“Maybe you have to go back home,” he said.
Parting from him in the icy, misty dawn under the ice-furred pines, Falk in regret and gratitude offered his hand as to the Master of a House; so he had been taught to do; but as he did so he said, “Tiokioi . . .”
“What name do you call me, Messenger?”
“It means . . . it means father, I think.. . .” The word had come on his lips unbidden, incongruous. He was not sure he knew its meaning, and had no idea what language it was in.
“Goodbye, poor trusting fool! You will speak the truth and the truth will set you free. Or not, as the case may be. Go all alonio, dear fool; it’s much the best way to go. I will miss your dreams. Goodbye, goodbye. Fish and visitors stink after three days. Goodbye!”
Falk knelt on the slider, an elegant little machine, black paristolis inlaid with a three-dimensional arabesque of platinum wire. The ornamentation all but concealed the controls, but he had played with a slider at Zove’s House, and after studying the control-arcs a minute he touched the left arc, moved his finger along it till the slider had silently risen about two feet, and then with the right arc sent the little craft slipping over the yard and the river-bank till it hovered above the scummy ice of the backwater below the cabin. He looked back then to call goodbye, but the old man had already gone into the cabin and shut the door. And as Falk steered his noiseless craft down the broad dark avenue of the river, the enormous silence closed in around him again.
Icy mist gathered on the wide curves of water ahead of him and behind him, and hung among the gray trees on either bank. Ground and trees and sky were all gray with ice and fog. Only the water, sliding along a little slower than he slid airborne above it, was dark. When on the following day snow began to fall the flakes were dark against the sky, white against the water before they vanished, endlessly falling and vanishing in the endless current.
This mode of travel was twice the speed of walking, and safer and easier—too easy indeed, monotonous, hypnotic. Falk was glad to come ashore when he had to hunt or to make camp. Waterbirds all but flew into his hands, and
animals coming down to the shore to drink glanced at him as if he on the slider were a crane or heron skimming past, and offered their defenseless flanks and chests to his hunting gun. Then all he could do was skin, hack up, cook, eat, and build himself a little shelter for the night against snow or rain with boughs or bark and the up-ended slider as a roof; he slept, at dawn ate cold meat left from last night, drank from the river, and went on. And on.
He played games with the slider to beguile the eventless hours: taking her up above fifteen feet where wind and air-layers made the air-cushion unreliable and might tilt the slider right over unless he compensated instantly with the controls and his own weight; or forcing her down into the water in a wild commotion of foam and spray so she slapped and skipped and skittered all over the river, bucking like a colt. A couple of falls did not deter Falk from his amusements. The slider was set to hover at one foot if uncontrolled, and all he had to do was clamber back on, get to shore and make a fire if he had got chilled, or if not, simply go on. His clothes were weatherproof, and in any case the river could get him little wetter than the rain. The wintercloth kept him fairly warm; he was never really warm. His little campfires were strictly cookingfires. There was not enough dry wood in the whole Eastern Forest, probably, for a real fire, after the long days of rain, wet snow, mist, and rain again.
Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions Page 29