Of a Note in a Cosmic Song; Part Five

by Nōnen Títi

  “Go home and look inside yourselves because there is no excuse for cheering over the pain of another, whether justified or not. And let me warn you: if I say this community has changed then I mean that in every sense. When I say penance is going to be a private affair, I don’t mean that it will be a matter for individuals to choose. We, as a council, may decide it is an appropriate request for any future conflict whether it involves a member of the Society or not. That means that each of you could be in that situation the next time around. Mistakes are easily made.”

  He finished by ordering all but those who lived around this hearth to leave and watched as the impact of his words took effect. Astonishment might be the best way to describe it. He kept scanning faces, making sure they felt watched. Most lowered their eyes, drifting apart, the way they would have after a ball game when their team had lost. Disillusioned, surely. Insulted, maybe. Self-conscious, hopefully. None were eager enough to be seen going near Leni’s home, in front of which he was still standing. He stayed there until the last people were gone.

  The fire was dying down. They really ought to build a shelter around it or they’d be cooking in the rain. Beside it stood a bench made from stones and mud. All was quiet when Benjamar sat down there. If nothing else came from this then at least the masses would be a bit more careful from now on. They’d remember Frimon; all of them would, every single day when going to the baths, the latrines, and when collecting drink water.

  Would the council survive if these kinds of decisions were made more than once, if they became options? Even now, most people had obeyed him. People needed hierarchy. Not many wanted to be at the top as long as they were confident what their place was, and as long as they were listened to when the need came. That was what Frimon had done. He’d offered them spiritual and cultural shelter when many felt lost. As Harmon had put it, Frimon had been like a father to many of them. Like the kollen of Jaji’s kennin was. Now that role was to be Benjamar’s.

  The council members were okay. None of them would let him take charge alone. They may wait, but in the end they’d stand up and kick him out, the way it should be. He leaned back into the cold stone and watched the embers, feeling incredibly tired suddenly, now that all had been said.

  He had no idea how long this would take. He would not ask or go in. If he did that he’d be no better than the rest of them; no better than the mob that preached morality while secretly enjoying what they said wasn’t allowed, no better than the readers of a print who hoped to get all the gruesome details spelled out for them.

  MEMORIAL

  6/5/2/2/2

  Kun was mid-sky above the crater, awaiting, like Jema, the assembly of the people of Kun DJar – more people together than she’d seen in one place for a long time. Kunag, next to her, was busy sketching the scene with his new pencil made of blue rock. So sensitive and yet so strong, he could say with his drawings what others had tried with words, and failed. His was the voice of the ken if there ever was one. He’d nearly given his life for them.

  With him were his mother, sister, Jos, Kalim, Laytji and Hani, all equally excited to be back together. The girls had carried hollow reeds across the continent. Hani wanted to ask Kalim about making a pair of binoculars and Laytji had used hers to make a mouth organ. She’d be like her mother, caring and enthusiastic. Hani, as always quieter but just as happy, would one day be a competent Kunjari scientist. Daili had allowed her children to become what they were meant to be. It had been the right thing to do.

  At the front, facing them, Benjamar winked at Jema when she smiled at him. Next to him, looking tired – old, even – stood Frantag. He’d lost too much: first his comate and then his position to Roilan. He had it back now, but having to pick up the pieces after somebody else wasn’t the same. At the far side of the crater, just as tired-looking, were the remnants of the landers that had brought them down here; a memory of SJilai, still in orbit far above them.

  On Benjamar’s other side, tall as a home, the boulder which had marked this crater from the start was now inscribed with the names of those they would never forget; chiselled in carefully by craftsmen: Each name a memory, the boulder a monument. Perhaps one day the names would erode, but the people would live on.

  Frimon’s name had been hastily added this morning; Jitsi’s was at the very top, the first to be lost for the colony. She’d never even made it into orbit. Benjamar’s other grandchildren would remain Bijari, but one day his wisdom might live on in a child that would be Kunjari. Age was no longer a barrier, at least not in the social sense. The rest, in his own words, remained to be seen. Today he might cry his water over Jitsi, but tomorrow, like Jema, he’d start over to give Nini what she deserved – a child born of love; a child of both OT and SJari.

  Leni had made them the proposal. The survival of the colony depended on procreation and on peace. Too many Kunjari people were at risk of being hungry – hungry for a child, which could result in acts of revenge to those who had been lucky on DJar. To prevent that they would change the social construct that surrounded conception: Instead of a product of a commitment between two people of opposite gender, from now on children would be conceived from the merging of the vital essences: body, heart, mind and soul, each of which was prominent in different people. Jema would be the vessel for Nini’s gift from Benjamar; a gift Nini would be present at conceiving, so it was truly shared from the start. And if that didn’t work, Anoyak would help out.

  Who could say no to that? It wasn’t the idea Jema had trouble with. It wasn’t Benjamar either. It was herself: she wasn’t sure if she could do it. It was like penance, easier when imposed, yet she had run from easy as well… more than once.

  She glanced at Aryan, who stood near her. She had approached him during their walk over the mountains. “Aryan… about that time, you know… They want me to learn… only… I know you’re with Maike, but it wouldn’t need to mean anything…”

  Thank Bue, Aryan didn’t need words to either understand or express. “But you prefer it straight?” At the next opportunity he had taken her, away from the others. “The only thing you need to learn is to let go,” was all he’d said.

  But words were also important. True to his honour and with the power of only one word, Aryan had won back the woman he loved; that word was now painted on the side of his kabin, the one that would make the oceans his home: Kelot.

  And with words Jema had challenged Benjamar to reconsider a lifetime of beliefs. He’d mastered it beyond both their expectations. She had apologized for not supporting him during the trial after having pushed him into that role. He had retaliated with a typical Benjamar statement: “You made this possible and I’m sure that if it doesn’t work you’ll be the first to stop it again, and with the same spewing tongue. Only this time we’ll make sure we have Leni standing by to stop you burning down the whole village in the process.”

  Jema had no problem with that. Leni would see to it that things didn’t get out of hand. She’d step in before people got hurt, because, as Nini put it, some of them were OT and some were SJari; some were parents, others children, some love, others passion. But where all of them were but vibrations of a note in a cosmic song, Nini was the note itself, the whole; she had connected DJar and Kun DJar, the old and the new, the pain and the joy, and even birth and death in one day.

  Nini considered herself lucky. Miya had instilled in her a deep sense of love and self-worth, strong enough to combat the system when it turned against her, similar to what Maike’s parents had given their children despite living in a tyranny; unlike so many Geveler parents, who had accepted the cold, law-abiding and emotionally empty society for its material comfort and rational moral views – don’t touch, don’t spoil, don’t punish, and, thus, don’t care. Those children, like Nori, Anoyak and Tarin, had found themselves lost, as Jema would have been had it not been for Kaspi. Geveler had been a dictatorial otacy, kept in power by the same people who took their bits of rock and believed them to be gold without checking. Those wh
o counted numbers rather than meaning, unable to comprehend that the majority opinion, by its very nature, would always be mediocre. Could Jema blame her mother for blindly accepting the fables of the state?

  Exactly that what DJar’s believers praised so highly had been the cause of nearly every war, hurt, aggression and death, both for their colony and throughout DJar history – condoned by the state, it had killed Kaspi and Sotyar, while fear of moral judgment had been the cause of Nori’s death, that of both Frimon and Emi’s father, and all those the disease had taken – all except Jitsi’s and those lost in the storm. Leni herself, now the mother of the kennin, the kunot, was sorry that Rorag had been afraid to tell her who he really was. It would have saved him a lot of pain.

  Having stood alone at the start of the trial, Leni had not given in. With the council’s approval, it was now official: If all evil was caused because some people believed they knew what was best for others, a presumed right to express, unasked, what had evolved only as a need for survival, then it would no longer be tolerated as a right, no more than the need for water gave one the right to deprive others of theirs. From now on, the ideal, if expressed, had to be worth being humble for.

  And it had been. Jema had given up her composure and her dignity to protect her honour, but in the end she’d felt as clean as a newborn baby must; all issues resolved, because the emotions had been allowed to ignite rather than being kept on embers. She’d asked Rorag – as the required phrase was – to let her feel how he had felt… how Nori must have, to share the pain; it had brought relief. All the anger she had bottled up since Kityag and which had prevented her from trusting anybody had evanesced in one night. The stone of guilt that had resided where her heart should have been, had dissolved the moment she realized that holding Nori was still the best thing she could have done for the child.

  Yako had described it to Benjamar afterwards, when they’d asked him in for a drink to close the bond: “That reed soaked up feelings better than the mosses could liquid, both Rorag’s and Jema’s, and when squeezed what came out was true sadness they could share.” The reed she had been given to keep, to symbolize that she was part of Leni’s family.

  She had sat down with Rorag, Kunag, and Leyon after, to make sure Kunag was aware of what had been said, not only in the trial, but at Leni’s home; to make sure that they all understood that theirs had been a communication problem with Rorag and Leyon each interpreting the other’s words and actions based on their own experiences.

  Together with Yako she’d talked to all the young people, to lay to rest the idea of right or wrong nests once and for all, because it was no longer okay to make such judgments and no longer wrong to love somebody no matter how that was expressed.

  Maybe they were all changing. The colour of their skin certainly was. Jaret, child of DJar, was a little orange boy, yet absolutely healthy, with a smile like Styna’s and Wilam’s eyes. Marya and Yako were also preparing to be parents, having been blessed with a small miracle.

  Or maybe Kun DJar herself guided life and death here. The ‘black cloud’, for lack of a better term, that had descended in the midst of Frimon’s farewell ceremony had taken only his body; it had simply dissolved. Those who had not run for cover had watched in amazement. Leni and Rorag were not too upset about it. After talking with Remag, who had explained the beached animals to them, Rorag even believed it to be better this way. His dad would be part of all that lived on the planet.

  There was no reasoning with nature. It was what it was. Even the kollen of their kennin now spoke of Kun DJar using personal pronouns. “You may consider it her ruling, Jema, for if I have learned anything, it’s that people are not all equal. You can see far into the past and the future, which may be why you’re so much trouble. If I made my council up of only calm and rational people, I’d be doing what DJar did: closing doors to possibilities.”

  Thus, Jema was to guard culture and history, to remember and help others do so. Memories would have to last, to be repeated over and over in stories and chants until they were as engraved in their minds as the names were in the boulder.

  How did you do that? How did you begin to mention those left behind in a far-away star system? How did she remember Kaspi and Nori but through a stone like this one? How could these tiny Bijari brains learn to remember Kunjari life forever? How had the ancients done it?

  While their own library of knowledge had blown into the sea, Nini had held on to her single sheet of paper, which, with a few pictures, had told the story of a people more advanced than anybody had ever thought possible; a people who had memorized their entire physical and mental heritage, a people able to communicate with their environment, and who had understood the values of life and recorded them in a script that was still recognizable today.

  How great had the disaster been that had destroyed such a powerful people? What had happened so long ago that it not only wiped out their culture, but also the evidence of their civilization, all but a chart in stone in a cave deep in a Freberer forest?

  What was left were people like them; accomplished in flying through space but incapable of living together without destroying their planet or each other, holding on to prints for knowledge but unable to save them from wind or water – or fire, for that matter; technicians of modern equipment but defenceless against a lowly bacterium. Masters, most of all, of writing dictionaries filled with meaningful words but unable to say even a simple “sorry” to a loved one.

  They would have to start over, to re-learn what was truly important. The chart, which Kunag had carefully painted on the wall of their Hearth in black and yellow dye, would have to guide them from now on. It wasn’t important whether or not they understood it exactly the way the ancient Bijari had, as long as the values were important for them now. It didn’t matter if the facts were right as long as the people were happy.

  All that pondering and she’d concluded that everything in the universe was riding on the pulse of procreation, that even the so-called higher evolved societies were just a ritualistic get-together to satisfy the one and only basic need, whether dressed in religious or philosophical explanations. Each person fighting the other over the right to the details while missing the point, each dividing the flowers into good and evil but failing to see that they belong to one and the same plant. Poisonous only if taken in parts, but healing once whole. That was the message Jema had to make sure would never again be forgotten.

  Frantag raised his hands to silence the crowd, to welcome back to town the people of the plains and the village, and to once more give the word to Benjamar for a speech of memories. Benjamar thanked Frantag and the craftsmen for the wonderful job they had done and addressed the assembly.

  “Kunjari people, welcome to our memorial rock; the anchor to our past before we sail into the future. The honour of speaking here today fell upon me, since I am still the oldest person around. Whether that is a compliment I leave for you to decide. I’m planning to make this a long speech, since it suits the occasion. I didn’t walk Memorial Road for three moons to say only a few words and we have a lot to remember.

  “We have taken a huge step forward. We have travelled further than any living being we know of has done before, and yet we ended up living the simplest of lives once again. It was unavoidable. As a people of DJar we believed we had a right to ask for anything and have it; a right we should have considered a privilege, not only with regards our technology and material possessions, but happiness, health, children, justice, a voice, a young and healthy body, a perfect relationship and a long life; you name it, we wanted it. Nature doesn’t work that way. Kun DJar will not let us.

  “We are aliens to this planet, which is still very much a mystery to us, yet I’ve been told by Remag that we are dealing with a very intricate net of life here. What we assumed were different species turn out to be one and the same, each a stage in a metamorphic sequence transported from one ecosystem to the next by the fog.

  “That same fog appears to be as much an inc
ubator for new life as it is a defence mechanism. As such we have learned to fear it. None know this better than the farmers of the plains, who were witness to the entire colony of DJar bees being eradicated by the fog after having turned into an aggressive mob of hunters. How exactly this is possible we have no idea, but it is clear that it needs to be protected. As the people of this town have found out on more than one occasion, the fog can also be a destroyer of that which is not life. It destroys what can harm the planet and I have no doubt that if we don’t care for Kun DJar, she will have no option but to destroy us.

  “We came here full of dreams of freedom and equality, words that used to go hand-in-hand with otacy, words so ingrained into the Bijari mind that nobody ever thought twice about them, words we were brought up to believe we should give our lives to defend, as OT did. – Words without substance.

  “In retrospect I must have been foolish to believe in them. I had to come here for a lesson which was not impossible to learn on DJar had I been willing to listen. No doubt, you’ve been informed about the changes in the village. We cannot yet tell if it will work. As Wolt pointed out to me, it’s a lot harder to run any kind of society with more people than you can remember the names of. Nevertheless, I have confidence that it will succeed.

  “And as with otacy, so the justice of DJar is now mythology. Until recently, every trial on our journey was conducted in the manner I had learned to be correct: impartial, factual and rational. Yet all were failures because, though the laws may have been obeyed, some people were left dissatisfied, their individual sense of justice not honoured, and that resulted in anger and vengeance. It took an entire council to convince me that my last attempt, which existed of everything I had learned to be wrong for justice, had been successful due to the simple fact that it honoured the individual ethics of all those involved. Therefore, true justice does not consist of retribution used as a threat, but the search for a compromise. Only a judicator who cares for each party equally, a partial judge, can do that. Only if it matters to you personally whether your final call can ruin somebody’s life for good can you be an honest judge. This is why parents know justice better than anybody else: they have to live on with the decision. And that is why I now concede to the notion that a quick punishment or none at all with the chance to repent and start over is preferable over a permanently ruined life and does not increase the risk of crime. And if I, as a DJar judge, can say that, then I trust that all of you will at least consider that idea.