There, the band performs a ritual whose meaning eludes the man completely.
The leader quickly descends to a lower cave he has explored and soon returns with soft shards of blue- and red-colored stone. He presents the red stone to one hunter and the blue stone to the other.
Taking each member of the band in hand, one-by-one, the leader and his two hunters proceed to a series of recesses at the back of the cave. They mark each niche with a red-slash symbol, as that follower claims the space.
They then draw a blue slash on three of the remaining recesses, which the leader and his hunters claim as their own.
Finally, the leader guides the man to the open niche farthest removed from the others, marks it with two parallel slashes—one red, one blue—and signals this is his sleeping berth.
For his part, the man interprets the markings as hierarchical symbols: the blue assigning precedence to the leader and his hunters, the red signifying the lesser status of the others. What he cannot quite understand is where he stands in the pecking order. Does the presence of both colors above his recess indicate a status subordinate to the three leaders but superior to the rest of the band?
As he will discover in time, these presumptions could not be farther from the mark!
The man remains with his furry hosts for many, many sleeps as the band settles into the routine of their reclaimed existence.
Following his apportionment of sleeping berths, the leader gathers all the members of the band and assigns an equal number of those with red slashes to each of the two hunters and himself. The man now sees a pattern he did not detect before, as the red-slashed berths are in closest proximity to the blue-slashed recesses of those to whom they are now assigned.
The odd ritual profoundly transforms the chemistry of the band.
In lieu of the uniformity and anonymity that have characterized its members on the journey across a world, the band now functions as three distinct entities. All continue to work in harmony. All continue to defer to the leader’s directions. But personal bonds, allegiances and empathy are palpably greater within each subgroup.
It is an interesting dichotomy. While the band’s loyalty to their leader remains strong, they accord greater loyalty to those in their own group than to others in the band as a whole.
The altered chemistry of the band permeates every aspect of daily living.
Although the three hunters go together to the cove and return together with their fresh catch, the meat is divided equally among the three. Each group, in turn, assumes responsibility for storing and stewarding its portion of the harvest from the sea.
Although the leader and the two hunters work as one building the strong stone steps from the valley’s floor to the entrance of their common cave, each group takes ownership of its area of sleeping-berths--clearing, cleaning and tending them.
The hunting expeditions take on greater urgency and the feedings greater frequency as sleep follows sleep in this land of eternal twilight.
For his part, the man is scarcely aware of these changes—overt and subtle—as he spends his waking hours wandering into the frozen wasteland on excursions far and wide.
The ageless descent of glacial ice has carved out a deep ravine rising from the ocean’s shore up to the heights of the lower mountain range. The sheer face of its towering walls is ice-covered rock scraped smooth by glacial friction. The valley’s floor is wide and smooth, itself covered by the river of ice that constantly seeks the sea.
Rounding the foothill that fronts the ocean, the man follows a narrow trail of shore each time he sets out to explore the landscape beyond. And each time, he wills the sea to constrain its latent fury as he watchfully wends his way along that thin path suspended between the ocean’s depths and the sheer talus walling him off on the landward side.
Using fatigue as his guide, the man limits each trip to no more than a waking day. Having observed the geology and topography of the shore on the journey to the band’s valley home, the man turns his attention inland to the unexplored domain of mountains near and far.
Leaving the shoreline path, he discovers a frozen world of soft white, sapphire blue, emerald green and pure colorless clarity.
The terrain is diverse and dangerous, slick with surface ice and dotted with deep crevasses of crystal blue and green and many false footings of caked snow cloaking open, bottomless pits. But the man is cautious and watchful and succeeds in crossing these treacherous stretches and reaching the middle heights of the lower mountain range.
Careful to retrace his steps of the days before, the man travels farther into the lower mountains in every successive trip.
There, he discovers great natural caverns, carved out of the mountains’ bedrock, leading deep into their heart. Through winding tunnels filled with towering stalactites and stalagmites, many forming unbroken columns as if holding up the caverns’ roofs. In their variegated and radiant colors, the earth scientist can read the signatures of many of the minerals that enrich the geology of his own world.
In his continual absences, exploring the near mountains, and his obsession with their geology, he is clueless to the important events unfolding among his erstwhile companions. Eventually, even he cannot remain blind to the differences in their appearance and behavior toward one another.
Nearly two months have passed since they arrived at his companions’ valley home, and the man begins to see a subtle change in appearance. Two of the red-slashed occupants have slightly distended stomachs. In his current state of mental distraction, he reads their symptom as the sign of an outbreak of a community health crisis. Perhaps, he speculates, they have been sickened by something they have eaten.
It is when he approaches the leader in a heightened state of anxiety and concern that the truth suddenly dawns on the man. As he pantomimes a swelling stomach with motions of eating distasteful objects through an open mouth, the leader stops him in mid-charade and leads him to one of the red-slashed berths in his area. There, he performs some charades of his own—letting the man know, in the most certain terms, two of the red-slashed occupants are with child.
The veil is lifted from the man’s eyes as things that once were cloaked in mystery are now fully revealed.
The rite of sorting band members into three groups was not for purposes of food distribution and division of labor; it was the mating selection writ large.
The red and blue symbols signify a greater force than the mere artificial construct of authority, of one creature over another; they mark the gender distinctions that signify the creation of life itself.
And the designation of both red and blue slashes over the man’s berth identify him as some freakish hermaphrodite in whom both genders reside!
What he cannot know is the vital meaning of this promise: that the depleted band will be made whole again.
As soon as they arrived in this sheltered place, the leader had designated the two who would deliver new life to replace the Old One, who perished in their old valley home, and the fellow who was consumed by the mud-lurkers in their treacherous journey to this new home. The leader has carried this heavy responsibility for replenishing the band’s numbers. He is now relieved of that burden.
After the initial embarrassment and humiliation wear off, the man’s esteem for these furry bipeds ticks up yet another notch. As he acknowledges the generous, tolerant and non-judgmental nature they have displayed in welcoming such an alien and sexually-indefinable creature as himself into their community.
But he has been two months living with their primitive culture. While their hospitality appears endless, his interest and patience are wearing thin.
He longs for a life that can never be. He longs for the companionship of his own.
Chapter 27. Forsaken Shore
At first, he was content and grateful for the band’s inclusiveness and for the shelter of their valley home from the hazards of this harsh and savage land. But as he has ranged ever farther afield, discovering more of the wondrous nature of th
is frozen world, he has grown increasingly restless and discontented.
His growing disaffection is grounded on a reality that transcends both his boredom with the mind-numbing monotony of the band’s routines and his awe of the natural beauty and bounty surrounding them.
Their world is not his world.
While his flight suit keeps out the harshest cold, he does not have his companions’ natural protection against the polar elements.
While they have a singular affinity for the finned beasts that are their prey, he is an omnivore and, so, not constrained to remain in this hostile climate by an exclusive food source.
Most important, as the sole survivor of his species in this world, he does not have their ability to breed new generations of his own.
The man resolves to return to the temperate latitudes and make his new life there.
It is when he begins his journey back that the man truly discovers a world of his own!
Immersed in thoughts of his poor adaptability to this frozen land and consumed by a passion to strike out on his own, the man retires to his sleeping-berth full of conviction and hope.
Deep in his own reflections, he is wakened abruptly by a thunderous clap and violent trembling of the earth. But the thunder ceases as suddenly as it began, and the ground beneath him quickly comes to rest, as the man returns to his dreams.
Early next morning, he decides to follow his resolve by hazarding an extended exploratory trip of several days. Always limiting his wanderings to a single day, between sleeps, this will be the first solo journey he has made beyond the same day. Provisioning himself accordingly, he strikes out through the valley with high hopes of new discoveries and undreamed-of adventures.
He does not know this is the last time he will leave the shelter and companionship of the band’s valley home.
Setting out along the familiar shoreline path, the man senses a change as he nears the far edge of the sheer talus that will open to the path inland. Emerging from its edge, he encounters a dramatically different landscape.
Gone is the open ground running up to the waist of near foothills.
Gone are the crevasses and thinly layered smooth false surfaces.
Gone are the mouths of deep, barely explored caverns.
The entire landscape is buried in a seamless bank of impassable snow.
This, the man realizes, accounts for the noise and earthquake during the night. It was an avalanche, and it has cut him off from the inland path.
Determined to press on, he returns to the edge of the ocean and continues to follow its shore. The wall of snow is so high it shields the inland terrain from view. So vast is the avalanche’s breadth, it requires a journey of several days before he is able to see anything beyond it on the shore’s landward side.
The shoreline is stark and bleak, and the man is deeply depressed by its monotone sameness. He curses the avalanche that has shackled him to this drear path.
By the seventh day, he decides to abandon this pointless pursuit and return to the valley. Once again, he curls up by the side of the sea and sleeps soundly in the sure knowledge he will be starting back toward the open world in the morning.
But that is when everything will change once again!
Rising with fresh resolve, the man is about to turn back when he discerns a faint brightening in the distance. It appears the cloaking wall of snow is emitting greater light ahead, and he decides to explore this mystery before going back.
Approaching the brightness, he can see it is coming from the far edge of a wall that appears to reach a fissure or to end altogether. As he draws nigh, he discovers it is, indeed, the end of the wall.
What, he wonders, lies beyond?
Rounding the far end of a bank of snow that has kept him blind to everything but ocean for more than seven days, the man beholds . . .
A wide and impassable intracoastal waterway separating the shoreline path from a prominence of near foothills abutting a high continuous ridge of moraine. Together, they form an impenetrable barrier walling off the inland world beyond.
He has stumbled from one blind alley into another and remains prisoner to the still-open seashore. Discouraged, the man wonders whether he should turn back or forge ahead. Having gone this far, he decides to risk the unknown before him rather than the daunting distance to the valley he left behind those many days ago.
He plods on in the lee of the moraine ridge until weariness overcomes him. As he slips into sleep, he finds renewed hope he will discover a way to bridge the inland waterway and pass through the high rocky ridge.
He awakens with renewed optimism, which seems confirmed by the good progress he makes this day.
That is when fate and geography consign him to a final dead-end where even the seashore abandons him!
It is an unscalable barrier of stone extending from the moraine ridge across the sea-shore path and into the ocean itself.
It is late in an exhausting day, and the man surrenders to despair at the foot of the high rocky ridge. As he falls into troubled sleep, he mourns the end of his journey across a strange world as he dreads his return to an alien existence in the valley of the furry bipeds.
His salvation lies displayed before him as he awakens the next day. It is the entrance to a sizable cave which, in his weariness of the day before, he had not noticed. Now it beckons him.
The cave leads to a spacious tunnel which, while pitch-dark, has a solid, even floor. He follows it for most of the morning. At last, there is light: a narrow, vertical shaft of oddly dim, reflected light ahead. It is a narrow aperture, and the man must squeeze between the edge of the tunnel and a wide lip of stone to emerge onto the shoreline path once more.
As he glances back, he is struck by how completely the lip of stone hides the opening from view at this far end. But he does not linger. He is intent on covering as much ground as he can while he can.
Later that day, the shoreline path meanders into a stretch bordered by a rocky escarpment and, once again, the inland vista is blocked from view. The escarpment is too sheer to scale, and the man continues plodding along the ocean’s edge. Gradually, as day follows day, the world takes on a harsher aspect.
The cold deepens.
The light dims.
The ocean becomes angry.
And ice covers every solid surface.
It is a more hostile environment, and the man wonders where it will lead.
Several days into his journey through this harsh land, the man begins to question whether he can survive it. The ice becomes fresh, drinkable water in his cupped hands, and the sea continues to provide an abundance of the fish he eats.
But it is becoming more and more violent, crashing in high, angry waves upon the shoreline. Still there is no escape from the escarpment that imprisons him on the landward side.
He is weighing a decision to turn back when, finally, he sees the end of the escarpment in the near distance. That is when a strange foreboding invades his thoughts.
The scene ahead is familiar to him. He has seen it before.
But when?
Then it hits him!
He has visited this place before, that first night in the ancient stone forest when this self-same image invaded his dreams.
It is the same hostile, forsaken shore.
It is the same high stone embankment, dusted with snow.
As he gazes at this incarnation of his dream, he is distracted by a subtle movement at the end of the escarpment and, as in his dream, it takes his breath away!
Stepping squarely into view is a white-clad vision, a womanly figure of grace and beauty. There is something alluring and sensual in the breathy way she exhales her warmth into the frigid air. She carries nothing but a long, reed-thin pole which sways in unison with her long, assertive stride.
They are quite alone in this desolate wilderness of ice and sea.
Spotting him, the figure does not hesitate but steps boldly toward him. She seems to be reading his thoughts, and he can feel her pr
esence in his mind—probing, questioning, seeking to learn all that is there. Standing before him, eye to eye, the figure accosts the astonished man in the language of his own thoughts.
“You wear the full beard of our men, yet you are not of our people!”
Stroking his chin, the man is embarrassed by his unkempt appearance before this lovely creature. When she speaks, he is reminded of the disembodied voice in the tower.
But there is nothing disembodied about this voice!
She is the very perfection of womanhood in his world but, at 6 feet or more, taller than women of his former acquaintance. Sleek of torso and lithe of limb, she carries herself with an ease and elegance he has not witnessed in his own world.
Her complexion is snow-white, and the ambient light reflects radiantly off the oily texture of her satin skin.
It is not the repellant pallor of leprosy instinctively feared by the people of his world. It is not the albino paleness of the whale reflected in Melville’s sinister tale of pride and vengeance.
No, it is the white of purity, innocence, light and goodness—all embodied in the figure of this lovely vision of grace and beauty. It is the white of rebirth and new beginnings, a sheet of blank vellum waiting to be written upon and made whole.
Beauty of figure and grace of carriage are not this creature’s most alluring feature.
That distinction belongs to the intensity of her spectacular, wide, ice-blue eyes, which stand out in startling contrast to the white of her garb and skin and the snow-bound world around her. Long, lush, upward curving lashes shade the enormous ice-blue eyes beside a pert, sculpted nose perched above full, petulant lips brushed purple by the gelid air.
So dilated are her pupils the man is drawn to drown in their dream-like depth. It is like looking back at a Margaret Keane portrait from his childhood.
So enchanted is he long moments pass before he realizes he is gawping awkwardly, open-mouthed, and a crimson tide of embarrassment floods over his bearded face.
“Has the cold struck you deaf? Or are you of some low order that lacks the gift of speech?” the woman cheekily demands. “I know you have language; that I can read in your thoughts. Do you possess also the power of utterance?”
Paradox Moon: The First Book of Regenesis Page 16