Noman

by William Nicholson

  "We can't just leave them here," said Echo. "Who's to look after them?"

  Seeker saw the miserable faces of the crying children, and the anger in him turned to bitterness. However he used his power, no good came of it. All he wanted now was to be far away and on his own.

  The workers from the Haven reached the barn. It was at once clear that they were the parents of the chained children. Voices cried out on all sides, as fathers and mothers found their children and clasped them in their arms, sobbing and weeping with joy. Even now the children clung to their training.

  "At your service, ma'am. What's your pleasure?"

  "No, no, you don't have to serve me. I'm your mother."

  "Please don't beat me."

  Echo watched the pitiful reunions with tears in her eyes. When she turned to Seeker, he was gone.

  He was outside in the sun, surrounded by a small crowd. In the forefront of the crowd a red-faced man wearing a heavy coat was shouting and waving his fist at Seeker.

  "Go on!" he cried. "Smash me! Smash my wife! Smash my sons! You've smashed everything else I have. Why stop there? Why not just kill us all and put us out of our misery?"

  Others were calling out to Seeker too, but theirs were cries of admiration and reverence.

  "Tell us what to do! Lead us and we'll follow you!"

  Seeker put his hands to his ears and shook his head and tried to move past them.

  "I don't know what to tell you," he said.

  But they followed after him, tugging at his clothing and pleading with him. The mothers and fathers with their newfound children came out of the barn and joined in the procession.

  "He's the one with the power," they told each other. "He'll make our lives good again."

  Seeker began to walk faster.

  "Don't follow me," he said. "I've got nothing for you."

  But still they jostled to be close to him; so he broke into a run. His long loping strides carried him at a speed none of them could match. The shouts of the crowd now turned to grumbles of discontent.

  "What does he expect us to do now?"

  "That's nice, isn't it? Off he goes without a word."

  "All that power and he keeps it for himself."

  Echo watched Seeker out of sight. Then she called to Kell, and the Caspian trotted to her side.

  "We'll go after him, won't we, Kell?" she said, rubbing his neck. "He has to stop to rest sometime."

  Kell pushed gently at her shoulder with his soft nose. She whispered to him.

  "He's our future, Kell. No going back now."

  Then she swung herself up onto the Caspian's back and set off down the road south after Seeker.

  The bucket boomed as he lowered it down the well, bouncing from side to side against the walls of the old shaft. He let it fall all the way to the end of the rope, but it did not hit water.

  Slowly, wearily, Seeker drew the rope up again and looped it by the well's side. The sun was hot and the air was dry and he was tormented by thirst. His lips were so dry they were cracking.

  Why not? Nothing to be gained by dying of thirst.

  He gathered his lir and sent it streaming down the well shaft. There came a series of small explosions from far below, then a rising hiss, then a deep gurgle. Shortly water came brimming up to the lip of the well.

  Seeker stooped and drank from his cupped hands, gulping and gulping till he could drink no more. He splashed cool water over his face and neck. Then he shook himself all over and drew a long deep breath.

  All that power and all I can do is get myself a drink of water.

  He longed to be a novice once more, standing in line with the others, learning the skills of the Nomana; or even a schoolboy, sitting alone in the classroom, hearing the cries of his fellows as they played in the yard. Then he wished Morning Star were with him again, so that he could tell her of his unhappiness and know that she understood. Then he wished for the Wildman, with his bold cry and his beauty. The three of them had been happy together, it seemed to him, not so long ago.

  Now what?

  Follow the road. Find the ruined wall. Go back through the door. Lie in the dirt before the Garden and confess his failure to the All and Only. Pray for guidance.

  He felt a sudden giddiness in his head and heard a sound, a thin, high distant scream, that seemed to come from behind him. He turned round, but there was no one.

  It's because I'm hungry, he thought. I must find food.

  He looked down the empty road south. On either side lay neglected farmland, a featureless region of spiky grasses bleached gray by the sun. A shimmer of hot air hung over the land, melting the horizon.

  Water was still gushing out of the well. It was finding its way down ditches into dry streambeds, away towards some distant unseen river, and so to the sea. He thought then of the ocean and the fishing boats he had watched from the overlook on Anacrea. He thought of the quiet evenings he had spent with his brother Blaze, skimming stones over the waves.

  The old life was gone and would never return.

  Then through the heathaze he saw a figure walking, far down the road. He rubbed at his eyes and squinted. The figure was distorted by the shimmering horizon, where the land itself seemed to ripple, but he could see that it was a man and that he was walking away. Something in his outline, a hint of head-covering, a glimmer of a stick, made him think it was the strange old man called Jango.

  He set off at once, striding down the road. He moved much faster than the hazy figure ahead and was confident he would soon catch him up; but after a little time, he found he had not got nearer. He broke into a run.

  As far as he could tell, the figure ahead was not hurrying, but still he could not catch him up. If anything, the gap between them was widening. He heard the far-off scream again, and the giddiness returned. The ripple of the land ahead was like the waves on the sea. He shut his eyes, thinking he might be affected by the glare, and at once felt a lurch of vertigo that forced him to slow to a stop. He opened his eyes again.

  The distant figure was gone.

  He stood still, one hand to his mouth, and slowly the sickness passed. Before him he saw a fork in the road he had not registered before. He had kept his eyes fixed on the lone walker, but he had no idea which road he had taken. To the left and to the right the horizon was the same. Worse still, he had no idea which fork led to the ruined wall.

  A second wave of nausea swept through him. Afraid he would fall, he sat himself down on the ground and rested his head on his knees.

  "I must be ill," he said.

  But it didn't feel like an illness. It felt like an intense inner disgust. He wanted to be sick, but not from his stomach. He wanted to be sick from his mind.

  Then he remembered. He was not sick. He was possessed.

  "Don't fight me," he said, speaking to the alien life within him. "I'm stronger than you can ever be."

  He heard the thin faraway cry once more. Now it sounded from deep within his mind.

  "You'll live with me," he said, "and you'll die with me."

  Slowly the nausea passed.

  The sun burned down from a cloudless sky. He couldn't stay here by the fork, where there was neither food nor shelter. So he rose to his feet and set off once more, taking the way to the left for no good reason, and walked on down the road. Now as he covered the ground, he found the open scrub and weed on either side giving way to stubby sun-dried grasses that stood up stiffly in clumps. A little farther and the grasses grew closer and taller, until he was passing down a road between high and shivering walls. The dry summer grass clicked and rustled in the breeze. This must have been the cause of the rippling of the land he had seen ahead of him earlier. He had entered a land sea and was sailing in billows of amber grass that reached as high as his shoulders.

  The road narrowed steadily until it was little more than a path running on straight before him, his only guide in this shivering world. All he could think to do was keep walking, knowing that in time he must come to a river or a coas
t. Then, over the fringes of the grass, not far to one side, he saw the shingled roof of a house. He parted the stalks before him and looked. He saw white clapboard walls, a blue door. His hunger returned with full force. Where there was a house there must be people. Where there were people there was food.

  He left the path and pushed through the tall grass directly towards the house. It was not far, and he expected to shortly emerge from the golden sea into a clearing. But there was no clearing. He stamped and beat his way to the very doorstep of the house, to its soft lavender-blue door. The house was one story only, and small, its board walls painted a chalky white, its roof bleached gray by the sun. The grasses grew right up against its window, the higher fronds touching the eaves. No path to the door, no tracks of wagon wheels. No one had been this way for many years. And yet the door looked as if it had been painted not so long ago. Its color charmed him. He touched the paintwork, finding in it the promise of a kindly welcome.

  The door handle turned. The door opened. He stepped directly into the principal room of the house, which was lit by two windows, one on either side. The tall grass pressing against the windows acted as natural blinds, softening the glare of the sun. The wooden interior walls were whitewashed the same chalky white as outside. The floor was plain worn boards, on which lay a rug woven in stripes of faded colors. There was a table, two chairs, an iron stove, a set of shelves on which stood dishes and kitchen implements. And on the table, in a water glass, there was a single long-stemmed blue cornflower.

  Seeker stared at this flower. He had seen it before. Jango had stood in a doorway with his wife by his side, and behind them there had been this whitewashed room, this table, this glass, this blue flower. Was this therefore Jango's house? But that house had been entered through a door in a ruined wall. This house stood in a sea of grass.

  He moved round the room, looking and touching, and as he did so he found a new mood was taking possession of his troubled spirit. The house was peaceful. In its simple way it was beautiful. He didn't understand many things: how it could have been unoccupied so long that grasses grew up to the door and yet have on its table a flower that had not withered; how there could be no dust on the white plates ranged along its shelves. But the calm space resisted questions.

  Why should I understand everything?

  Two further doors opened off the main room. One led to a small washroom, where clothes hung from an overhead rack to drip into a brick trough below. There were two white undershirts, both stiff and dry. The other door opened into a bedroom barely big enough to contain a high box bed. The bed was made up, ready for use, with a plump white quilt, lying in hummocks over a sailcloth mattress, and two sturdy white pillows.

  He returned to the main room and looked in the cupboard by the stove. There he found a jar of pickled eggs and a jar of honey. He ate three of the pickled eggs, and then opened the honey and put in his finger, dipping and licking it again and again. His hunger satisfied, he remained sitting on the wooden chair by the stove, gazing at the blue cornflower and the plain white walls and the flicker of sunlight coming through the windows.

  Whoever lives here, he thought to himself, has a good life.

  Sunlight on the blue petals of the cornflower, on the crushed, crumpled burst of pure color that sprang like a new day from the stiff green stem. He looked more closely, and as he looked he saw that the blue of the bunched petals was not uniform after all, there were flashes of a darker purple, where shadows fell, and the palest blue, almost white, in the direct light of the sun. How had such a joyful extravagance of summer sky exploded from the green stalk? He drew the glass nearer, and with his face now at the level of the flower, he searched for the join, for the point at which green turned to blue, as if somewhere within the stem he would find blue veins that ran down in the growing flower to the source of the blueness, some hidden shaft of sapphire buried deep in the ground. But there was no join. The petals grew from the stem as the narrow green leaves grew from the stem, sharing the same substance and yet transformed. He felt that he had never properly looked at a flower, had never before appreciated the miracle of the colored world. This plain white sun-dappled room made him this gift. In the midst of simplicity, a thing of wonder.

  Why does this place make me feel so happy?

  He heard the echo of a laugh. The savanter within him was mocking his pleasure. The laugh brought in its wake a taste of bitterness; and after the bitterness, anger.

  Am I poisoned? Am I never to be happy again?

  He no longer wanted to stay. He rose and replaced the two jars in the cupboard and moved the chair back into the position in which he had found it. Then he left the little house and drew the blue door shut behind him.

  Once back in the tall grass, he pushed his way towards the road, knowing it was no great distance away; but the road did not appear. He realized he must have mistaken the direction. He tried again, tramping on through the grass for a longer time, but had no better luck.

  He decided he had better return to the house with the blue door, but looking round in all directions, he could see no sign of it. The little house had disappeared. So, it seemed, had the road.

  He was lost in the sea of grass.

  THE SECOND STAGE OF THE EXPERIMENT

  Hypothesis

  In the heart of the violence and superstition of the world, I will place a new breed of men and women. They will seek no riches, no dominion, no glory. They will be warriors but not conquerors. They will have power but they will never rule. By the example of their lives they will lead others to act justly and to love peace.

  Can such noble warriors endure through the years? Can they remain strong but uncorrupted? Can they renew themselves generation after generation? Can they fall sick and heal themselves? Can they die and be reborn?

  If all this can be done, then I will know there is more good than evil in men's hearts, and I will go to my rest content.

  9 Yes, Beloved

  MORNING STAR WAS WOKEN BY HEM. HE HELD OUT A tin plate on which there was a piece of bread smeared with honey.

  "Breakfast," he said.

  "Oh, Hem. You are sweet."

  "Share the joy," he said.

  "Hem! Have you joined them?"

  "Why not?" said Hem. "There's food. There's fun. Who wants to go back to being hungry and sad? Not me."

  "Nor me."

  Hem squatted down beside her as she ate her bread and honey.

  "How old are you?" he said.

  "I'm seventeen."

  "I don't know how old I am. How old would you say I am? Fifteen?"

  "Maybe a bit less than that."

  "If you'll wait for me, I'll get older quite soon."

  "Wait for you, Hem?"

  "Then you can marry me."

  "Oh, I see."

  "Unless there's someone else you want to marry more." He avoided her eyes. "Which I expect there is."

  "No," said Morning Star. "There's no one else at present. But even so, I think it's too soon, don't you?"

  "I knew you'd say that. That's why I said to wait. I hate being young. It's not fair."

  He got up and stomped crossly away.

  Morning Star found this little exchange put her in a good mood. She took her tin plate back to the food tables, where everything was in the process of being packed away into the wagons. The Joyous was preparing to move on.

  "Where are you going?" she asked the ox handlers.

  "Just moving on," they said.

  "But there must be somewhere you're going, or why move at all?"

  "So people can find us."

  This was the way the Joyous grew in numbers. For days now, the followers of the Joy Boy had been slowly crossing the land, drawing in their wake the people of villages and towns. This was a time of uncertainty, following the collapse of the old ruling power of Radiance. The army of the Orlans had broken up into rival bands, and no village was safe from their horse-borne raids. The roads were full of refugees driven from their homes by feuding bandits.
At such a time, the vast throng that was the Joyous proved an irresistible draw to the rootless frightened people of the hills and the plains; and so it grew larger with every passing day.

  Morning Star now found herself unsure what to do. She had left Spikertown thinking she could return home, but home for her meant her father and mother. Did she therefore propose to stay with them here in the Joyous?

  At this point, she was approached by a smiling young woman who bowed politely to her and said, "The Beloved would like to see you."

  Morning Star realized at once that she wanted this very much. She followed the young woman through the crowd, past people putting out fires and packing up belongings into kit bags, to the circle of favored devotees that had formed round the Joy Boy. He was kneeling on the ground, his head bent, while an older man poured water over him from a bucket.

  Morning Star waited and watched. She supposed the water was to wash him clean, but the manner in which he knelt there, so humble and unresisting, made it look like a ritual of greater significance. As before, Morning Star felt both irritated and impressed.

  He looked up now, face dripping, and smiled to see her before him.

  "You came. I'm so glad."

  The washerman stepped forward with a cloth and patted the Joy Boy's face dry as if he were helpless. Then, when the ablutions were all done, the Joy Boy rose and came to Morning Star. Once more she saw that he had no aura. This frightened her and excited her.

  He looked at her with his smiling eyes but didn't speak. The silence was only awkward for a moment. Then she found herself held by those eyes. They seemed to draw her in and calm her thoughts. Then, still without speaking, something passed from him into her that caused a sweet melting sensation all through her body. Startled by it, she looked away and found that everything round the Joy Boy, the other people, the distant hills, the small clouds in the blue sky, had all become more intense, their colors more vivid.