The Adventures of Vela

by Albert Wendt

  that heathen balancing of the species

  to their environment’s wishes and logic

  but to me an unforgivable terror:

  the Emptiness was an evil Intelligence that

  demanded the mass aborting of each Mating Season’s

  human harvest Such insane atua don’t

  deserve our worship Long live Tagaloaalagi!

  Into my sleep the Tagata-Nei hooked their admiration

  and pulled me to morning at the Cave’s entrance

  The malae below exploded with their applauding

  so I strutted raising arms skywards in

  the victorious warriors’ salutation: I’d survived

  the Black Night of the Circles and as I descended

  into their linked intelligence I introduced

  the civilised concept of chiefs and commoners

  divinely appointed or earned through heroic action

  I am conqueror of the Circles! I injected

  into their worship and they chanted it back

  I let a few days run on as usual but nightly slept

  in the Caves with their expectation

  of my destruction emerging unscathed to mornings

  that pranced to their awed admiration

  To my Crew I was now special so

  one night I told them they too

  were individual identities with separate

  agaga masalo finagalo and loto

  They were puzzled so I quoted my example:

  I am I am separate I am Vela

  You you are separate You are individuals

  so to Number Nine I gave the name Faitau

  Counter of our Pigs daily Number Eight

  I named Faipese our Pigs’ Songmaker/flutist

  Seven became Taulasea Healer Six became

  Faupapua’a Builder of Pig Fences Five

  Sasavao Grass Cutter and so on until

  my Crew were proudly separate persons

  who dreamt that night of self-fulfilment

  Next evening the other pigherding Crews demanded

  my naming them individual persons

  I remembered their brainlinking allowed

  no secrets or privacy (and power is knowledge

  kept secret from others)

  On my instructions my Crew members took

  one crew each and named them individually

  Disputes were referred to my judgement

  and I ensured no name duplication and

  nightly that week Crew after Crew in Nei

  demanded my naming which my Crew implemented

  Consequently the Tagata-Nei added another title

  to my mana: Supreme Namer and Arbitrator

  and my class of pigherders and Slaughterers

  became the fulltime enforcers of my rulings

  I persuaded with extra titles the pigeon-hunters

  to take over our work as pigherders

  (but insisted on my Slaughterers continuing

  their profession in case we needed to quell

  any rebellions against our leadership)

  Within one Nei month I’d established individual

  selfing a class of chiefs (my House of

  Slaughterers) and eager followers

  To protect that civilised structure I declared

  the primacy of individual private thinking

  Mass brainlinking was an evil invasion

  of that sacred principle so my class formulated

  laws to control the linking: No one

  below Slaughterer was to brainlink with others

  without permission or spy on

  the thinking of Slaughterers who were permitted

  to link with commoners and one another

  but absolutely no one was to invade

  the Supreme Namer’s mind without His permission

  for that would undermine His impartial justice

  The planting crews insisted fertility

  was dependent on instant linking of

  all mind earth sky and Vanimonimo

  My Slaughterers exampled a few of them

  publicly and they obeyed the Law of Linking

  With my privileged access into their thoughts

  I believed their conversion to Tagaloa’s

  Enlightenment would be as simple as dreaming

  but their atua through the plans they’d set

  into Nei’s every fibre frustrated my efforts

  For instance I ordered into their collective unconscious

  my Samoan pattern of rising and sleeping

  but one hour after our evening eating

  even my enforcers the Slaughterers

  were snoring despite threats of flogging

  When asleep I ordered them not to adhere

  to the precribed Nei seasons

  but when the seasons changed they responded

  automatically and when I jailed them

  they howled as though possessed by aitu

  I legislated a 12-month year seven-day week

  four-week month and enforced it with imprison-

  ment and torture but the Nei mathematics

  in their blood countered and even my Slaughterers

  ticked to the Five Nei Seasons

  In anger I imprisoned the men in strong pens

  the night before the Mating Season

  but at the Cliff’s programmed singing next morning

  the women tore the pens apart

  and the Nei immorality raged for another season

  I worked to get them fornicating like us

  civilised humans in private in moderation

  during any season and started with my Slaughterers

  by demonstrating out of season with youths

  I fancied but they accused me of unnatural practices

  Every night in the Cave of Pigherders now

  my headquarters I tried unriddling how their atua

  controlled what They’d programmed into Nei’s sinews

  The answer lay in the Cliff They spoke through

  in language created by wind whispering

  through the empty 100 Circles whose shape

  size and design determined the mathematical

  nature and limits of that speaking But

  how do you explain the Cave’s gift

  for healing resurrection and aborting?

  In that I intuited was the key

  to the nature of Nei behaviour and existence

  Every enlightened leader’s quest is to alter

  human behaviour to suit his vision of the ideal future

  The Nei atua had designed a system

  they considered perfect and immortal

  because it was self-healing self-renewing

  a marvel of total environmental and biological engineering

  though it denied freewill and wisdom acquired

  through aging and suffering

  Revolutionary insights like songs are intuited

  whole out of the river of dreaming so I ditched

  logical thinking and floated in the Cave’s silence

  letting It invent my vision in

  Its image and patient shaping

  but all I saw was my self my every nook

  and cranny mirrored in perfect Emptiness

  that took Its dimensions from the light It sucked

  out of my body and without which It would

  be unintelligible Darkness

  Without me It wouldn’t have seed to nourish

  into whatever promise that seed intended

  Sharkshit! I cried on catching that revelation:

  the Emptiness fulfilled each seed occupier’s

  wishes for instance the women had brought their

  dead and in the Cave had dreamt her back

  into breathing So I occupied the Cave’s centre

  and tried dreaming the Nei Seasons to alter

  to my models but failed blaming my not

  being Tagata-Nei and got Faitau

>   my most loyal Slaughterer to try it

  Though he failed I knew I was coming

  hugely into awesome power (helped by my Atua

  Tagaloaalagi Supreme Creator and Unriddler)

  Faitau faked a fatal accident and I observed

  another woman resurrected from the Dead

  That night I assembled my Crew in our Cave

  and hands linked in our Magic Ten as I’d seen

  the women doing we dreamt for light rain

  at dawn and in the clear Cave walls around

  that miracle tumbled to our dreaming

  At dawn when I heard the rain run the Cliff face

  I rushed out and danced in its predicted truth

  of the mana I now possessed to conquer even

  the determinist Atua Who designed the Nei universe

  Vanity through self-love is a killing talent

  I had to live out to witness its tragic consequences

  (at irretrievable cost to Nei’s inhabitants

  If only I can unwind history and save them

  from my missionary vanity)

  I decided to reprogramme the basics of Nei

  existence in my aristocratic image

  Firstly using the Cave’s dreaming I altered

  my Crew’s pigherding role to fulltime rulers

  nestling in our Circle that

  we conceived to be the centre of the sacred network

  of Circles (we reprogrammed a fishing crew

  of commoners to be the pigherders)

  Once installed in our impregnable fortress

  we programmed our Law of Linking into

  Nei’s fabric so that no one could link

  into my secret of using the Cave’s

  dreaming to rule totally

  and recreate the civilisation

  of my rich Samoan upbringing

  Every one has a price in politics: my Slaughterers’

  price for their loyalty was to be my aristocracy

  and because I alone held the secret

  of the Cave’s creativity I didn’t

  fear the possibility of their treason:

  Linked into their thinking I could anticipate

  any conspiracies and dream the culprits out

  of their ungrateful breathing Into my

  other 9900 subjects I programmed belief

  in a divinely willed class system:

  the Supreme Namer and His Slaughterers were

  the supreme Ali’i and taulaaitu the warriors

  and hunters were their orators and protectors

  the rest were Tautua serving the aristocracy

  with absolute obedience

  I paused in my social engineering and pondered

  the radical implications of introducing natural

  aging death procreation and marriage:

  too many old people would be a burden

  uncontrolled breeding meant hunger and

  squabbling over resources new generations

  could prove unpredictable and attack

  the social order marriage encouraged protection

  of wives and offspring as precious property

  the placing of family ahead of the Supreme Namer and Society

  So though I deemed their seasonal pattern artificial

  their aging unnatural and abhorred

  their annual orgy and aborting I decided

  to introduce only one modification: all fornicating

  was to be private with consenting partners modestly

  After my renovations I thought Nei perfect

  and I had total power to protect my creation

  to see even future enemies and destroy them –

  no need for a surveillance network So I rested

  like Tagaloaalagi and enjoyed my handiwork

  (forgetting Lulu’s maxim that power is

  the elixir that turns even atua into crazies)

  My 99 Ali’i toured to see no citizen deviated

  and reported daily for my flattery but I didn’t

  notice they were competing for higher status

  until my Nine crew members named themselves

  ‘The Namer’s Sacred Guardians’ and the others objected

  They were all my equal guardians I ruled mistakenly

  for once you have privileged classes and ambitious

  individuals the power struggle is for

  chiefly titles and finally conquest of the Source

  of those honorifics the Supreme Namer in this instance

  Alone that night Faitau my trusted lieutenant

  begged to be appointed Number One Guardian

  (he was still rooted in Nei’s ridiculous mathematics)

  Near midnight Faipese my secret preference slid

  into my loving and wanted the title of Guardian

  of Guardians – at least he was poetic At dawn

  I awoke erectly to Taulasea’s expert mouth

  shaping the title The Namer’s Shadow

  Alarmed I decided to erase avaricious ambition

  from my Crew’s personalities but failed at our

  nightly linking because for our joint

  dreaming to work all Nine had

  to agree to my particular wishes

  I tried other tactics: Got Faitau Faipese

  and taulaaitu to report publicly that many lower

  crews were plotting to overthrow us

  and I declared the erasure of ambition from all

  Warriors Hunters and Commoners

  Next I talked (secretly and individually) with

  each Guardian promised each the Number One

  position if he supported ambition’s erasure

  from the others: each agreed believing

  only he would end up ruling with the Namer

  Woke the next glorious morning to a Crew

  without megalomaniac ambitions and Nei castes

  content with their prescribed conditions and

  thanked Tagaloa for immunizing me from

  power’s self-destructive poisons

  Better the enlightened rule of a single Ali’i Sili

  than the bloody squabbling among power-hungry

  warlords and aiga the innocent had suffered

  in my own country Better for Nei to worship

  the one true Atua the Merciful Tagaloaalagi

  I expected no more threats to my creation

  and realizing I was free of the yearning to

  return to my homeland anticipated long years

  of enjoying my just supremacy (I even

  programmed aging out of my sinews)

  Those years I recall seemed an unending happiness

  even my reforming their Mating Season worked

  and putting doors on the females’ Caves during

  the aborting saved my eyes my nostrils and hearing

  from their immodest loving and menstruation

  I ruled a country free of greed and any other

  ulcer-inducing problem In my leisure I taught them

  my homeland’s music in return for theirs (which

  I now admit was too complex for my mastery

  but on my return home made me songmaker unbeatable)

  I also composed hundreds of songs and solo

  (which I prefer forgetting) and fed them to

  my obedient subjects who I now realize

  ate them sycophantically as ‘masterpieces’ because

  I was their Atuahead with powers of erasing

  You want examples of those awful compositions

  born of luxury and deadly comfort smug self-love

  and masturbating the ego’s megalomania?

  Man I’m an artist ashamed of that sharkshit

  so I’ll just sing one of my betrayals:

  My homeland Samoa is where the palmtrees

  sway to the loving caress of the sea breeze

  The air is sweet with the scent of pua blossoms

  and young lovers stroll in the mo
onlight

  fondling etc etc to the utterly forgettable

  Boredom edged into my marrow like an in-

  audible whisper and before I knew it I was

  obeying its peculiar fancies: as Supreme

  Namer I commanded the best of everything

  which bored me to fancying esoteric dishes

  For food the feeding crews had to provide

  rare pigeon’s feet cooked in charcoal and then

  souped in dolphin’s bleeding tava’e eyes

  marinated in ginger and so on down

  my imagination’s crazy cravings

  For sex tired with single partners I orchestrated

  various sets and forced my Guardians to witness

  the unnatural out-of-season multibacking

  and while they were vomiting their abhorrence

  I fiddled to a viciously novel bursting

  Into the Mating Season’s sap I injected a streak

  of S & M and in my lucid Cave walls enjoyed

  its performance: Tagata-Nei who once wouldn’t hurt

  an insect were now driven beasts inflicting

  or receiving the lingering pleasures of flogging

  Inspired I instituted the Tournament of Champions

  not between individual gladiators – that might

  again foster deviant individualism – but single crews

  representing their professions (I exempted my aristocracy

  because I wanted them fat spectators easy

  to control and defeat if necessary) My Nine Guardians

  were charged with organizing it but prohibited

  from using their privileged linking to promote

  their favoured champions: there was to be

  fair and equal opportunity for winning

  Each profession could select their rep by

  any method: the hunters fought out

  to a winner others voted democratically

  but all were madly enthusiastic because