The Halcyon Dislocation

by Peter Kazmaier

  “How are we going to get back?”

  “We can lean a small sapling against the fallen tree in a pinch. The vantage point from the heights will also let us look for an easier route back.”

  “Okay, let’s do it!” said Floyd.

  Al slung the crossbow over his shoulder and climbed up onto the large tree trunk. He walked along the trunk without much difficulty until he reached a large vertical branch about two-thirds of the way across. Using his short sword as a machete, he cut some of the smaller branches out of the way and then swung around the larger branch. Not realizing that he’d snagged his crossbow, he was pulled back, teetered for a moment, and then lost his balance. He grabbed at the nearest small branch, but it couldn’t hold his weight and Al pitched twenty feet into the creek. He bobbed back to the surface sputtering but was quickly swept over a small waterfall into the next pool.

  Floyd had been watching intently and reacted as soon as he saw Al’s fall. Moving toward the lower pool, he fought his way through the underbrush and so didn’t arrive until Al was already pulling himself out on the far side. Still carrying his crossbow and short sword, Al gave a thumbs up and a grin to show Floyd he was unhurt. Floyd returned to the fallen tree and crossed to the other side without incident.

  “Are you okay?” Floyd asked when he sat down beside Al.

  “Yes, I’m fine. The pool I fell into was quite deep, and I didn’t hit bottom. The ride over the waterfall was exciting, but the lower pool was also deep. Fortunately, I was able to escape the undertow without too much trouble.”

  “Okay, Tarzan, let’s take a break,” suggested Floyd.

  “I’m really okay. I had a chance to catch my breath while you were crossing over. Let’s keep going. If we sit longer, I’m just going to get cold.”

  They started to climb again. “Floyd!” said Al.

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s keep this mishap our little secret,” said Al sheepishly.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I may save this little tidbit for a rainy day! How the great Al Gleeson, ‘woodsman extraordinaire,’ stumbled over a branch and managed to give himself a dunking!”

  Al rolled his eyes at the good-natured teasing.

  The climb grew steeper, and rock began to protrude through the earth. Finally the trees thinned, and they found themselves climbing over bare rock, exclaiming at the view. They could see the boats below in the small cove. Farther off, there were the jetty and the ruined buildings.

  “Look, there it is!” Al pointed. Floyd looked at the walled city nestled against the steep cliffs of the mountain. This “city” (it still wasn’t clear to Al exactly how large it was) was situated on the same mountain spur on which they stood. “Do you think it’s inhabited?” asked Al.

  “If it is, then why haven’t we had company?” responded Floyd. He took his binoculars out of his knapsack and searched the battlements, as if looking for some sign of life, but evidently saw nothing and handed the binoculars to Al.

  The strange, alien nature of this new world struck Al with overwhelming power as he looked at the ruined, lifeless city. The place seemed haunted. How do I really know the rules that govern this place? What if its inhabitants are invisible, or ghosts, or something worse? How could I really know? Is it rational to extrapolate from what I know in my world?

  Al heard the voices of his teachers, friends, and colleagues scoff at his thoughts and urge him to reject these ideas as outlandish and improbable, but Al was a theist, and he fought that rising tide in his mind with everything he could muster. No I will be free to face the universe as it is. I will not just accept the programming that has drummed into me my whole life. I believe in a universe governed by natural law, but there is room in my understanding of the real for the supernatural and for phenomena beyond the reach of my five senses.

  A quiet voice, in contrast to the chorus of voices from his upbringing, kept prodding him with “what if?” Eventually he had to concede to himself that invisible beings were a possibility. It frightened him, but he remembered that the God who had made his familiar, home world had also made this one, and that thought helped him to feel at home in this strange place despite the uncertainty.

  Floyd and Al drew their eyes away from the eerie mountain city, focusing once again on the task at hand. “I have to believe there’s something dangerous about this place,” said Floyd. “If we read the signs at the abandoned camp right, we’ve had three explorers disappear without a trace. I’ve thought about going directly back to Halcyon, but that would leave a lot of work undone and questions unanswered. I think we should just make camp in a place that’s more defensible than in the open, near the jetty. The rock outcropping I saw this morning from the island may do.”

  The rock Floyd had seen proved to be a mesa, separated from the main spur by a deep chasm. They could hear a creek gurgling at the bottom. “I think this creek joins the one we just crossed near the river,” said Floyd. “If this channel is deep enough, then this may be what I’ve been looking for.”

  “Okay, I see that,” said Al. “We could make a rope bridge to cross the chasm, but what happens if we face trouble? Won’t we be cut off? Won’t our refuge become a trap? Let’s look around first and see what our options are. Maybe there’s a way we could be safe on the mainland and still have a backdoor escape route.”

  They moved along the crevice. After about 300 yards, they came to a small ravine that formed the channel for the creek as it tumbled down the mountain spur and disappeared into the chasm. Beyond the creek, the chasm bent north, and they could see the river. This western section of the crevice was much shallower than the southern leg containing the creek.

  “This might work. The mesa is completely surrounded—cliff and river on one side, chasm on the other,” mused Al.

  “We could climb across here,” said Floyd, pointing at the relatively shallow boulder-choked depression on the west end of the mesa.

  “I wouldn’t want to do it at night, but by daylight it should be easy enough. If an enemy tried to approach the camp by that route, we could stop them if we had warning that they were making the attempt.”

  “What if they cut down one of the trees?” asked Floyd.

  “There are a few that are big enough, but we’d hear them,” said Al. “If they made ladders they could get across quickly, but we can’t stop everything. We don’t have enough people.”

  “What about an escape route?” asked Floyd.

  “Well,” responded Al, “we could make a rope ladder and get into the shallow crevice on the west side, then follow the bottom of the crevice down to the shore. Maybe in a pinch we could even jump into the river and swim for the boats. The water at the edge of the cliff’s very deep.”

  “Okay, let’s do it!” said Floyd.

  A suitable plan now in place, they headed back to the cove to inform the others. After Floyd had explained their plan, six of them returned to the mesa, now dubbed “Fort Linderhof” by the party, while the rest guarded the supplies at the cove.

  Meanwhile, Al and Dave hiked up to the second creek and crossed it farther upstream. Then Al began his descent into the west crevice. Dave guided the safety rope as he went down. When Al reached the bottom, he released the safety rope and began the much more perilous ascent on the other side. It took about fifteen minutes, but he accomplished it with little difficulty.

  While Al was completing the climb, the others began to assemble a rope bridge. When Al had hiked back along the chasm, Floyd threw him a light line, and Al hauled the rope bridge across. It consisted of a heavy foot rope, two lighter hand lines, and rope cross members tied transversely to all three ropes at intervals of about two feet. When they’d hauled the bridge across, they disentangled the ropes and fastened it to supports. Floyd insisted on testing the makeshift bridge first. He crossed safely in seconds, so the other three followed, one at a time.

  The others had already begun exploring Fort Linderhof. The fort was a flat rock mesa about three acres in size with a few sturd
y oaks sparsely spaced along the top. A large shallow bowl at the west end of the mesa collected rainwater in a small, deep pond. In contrast to the rest of the mesa, which was mostly bare rock, the pool supported trees and grass, so this sheltered hollow was ideally suited for a campsite.

  After they had thoroughly explored the mesa, they headed back to the cove. It was now about noon, and the team at the cove had just begun lunch preparations.

  The group spent the afternoon moving supplies up to Fort Linderhof. Initially they lugged them up the newly cut path, but it proved to be much easier to haul supplies directly up from the boats using a pulley salvaged from the abandoned sailboat. They found a small rock shelf, level with the river, on the northern wall of the mesa. This shelf also solved the problem of a backdoor escape route. By dropping a heavy rock as an anchor into the water and fastening the other end of the anchor rope to a tree clinging to the rock face about the shelf, they were able to keep the sailboats accessible without exposing them to attack.

  After they secured the boats and constructed a second, much longer, rope ladder for access to this shelf, they set up camp on the mesa and had supper. Later, talk turned to their situation.

  “I think we did a good day’s work,” said Floyd. “We’ve established a well protected camp here. Tomorrow I’m going to send out two parties to explore the region. I’ve already talked to their leaders, but I wanted everyone to know. Gleeson, Schuster, and Lowental are going to hike cross-country to that city nestled against the mountain. Jackson, Taylor, and Smith are going to follow the road to see where it leads. My guess is that it will also lead to the walled city. Gleeson, when you get to the fortress, signal by Morse code with your mirror so we know you’re safe. Jackson, I don’t know if you’ll get high enough on the mountain to be able to use your mirror, but we’ll keep a lookout for your signal. If you have trouble and it’s safe to do so, send up a flare. If you’re in real trouble and need to be rescued, send up two flares. While you’re gone, the two teams here will take turns making a thorough search of the surrounding area. We’ll always leave one team behind on the rock watching for your sign. Any questions? No? OK then, good luck!”

  Later that evening Pam found Al sitting on a rock at the edge of the cliff, looking north out over the river.

  “Mind if I join you?” she asked.

  “No, not at all,” said Al, shifting over to make room for her.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” said Pam.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Remember back on our second day, when Dave and I had that argument about ‘Mr. Lucy’?”

  “How could I forget,” chuckled Al.

  “Well, remember afterward when Dave leveled his sights on you and asked you that question about God?”

  “Oh, you mean the one about ‘can God make a rock so large he can’t lift it?’”

  “Yeah,” said Pam. “I was wondering, are you a member of the Church of Universal Enlightenment?”

  “No!” said Al vehemently, “I’m a Christian, but I’m most definitely not a member of the CUE.”

  Al paused then went on in a softer tone. “I guess I should explain myself a little bit. I should say that early on, I went to their meetings. Are you a member of the CUE, Pam?”

  “No, I’m not really anything. You were going to tell me about the CUE.”

  “All right,” said Al. “When I first came to Halcyon as a new student, I was really lonely. My older brother, Thomas, encouraged me to join a group on campus called the Dalyites. At first it was wonderful. What the group leader, Professor Dalrymple, said made sense, and he had a way of applying the Bible to everyday life. In retrospect I think Dalrymple meant well, but fear drove him to control the group. It was as if he smothered all joy, freedom, and honesty in his headlong rush to impose biblical behavior on everyone in the group for their own good. Every fun activity and every joy at its root was regarded with suspicion and as a temptation. At first, loyalty to my brother and a respect for authority compelled me to go along, but over time the dreary absence of all joy caused me to slowly wilt and die on the inside.

  “Finally, it was my own Bible reading that freed me. I was praying alone one day when it struck me that God is, first and foremost, a God of freedom. Hell is a monument to the lengths he’s willing to go to let us truly be free and choose for ourselves, even if in choosing we decide we want nothing to do with Him.”

  Al stopped. “I’m sorry, Pam. Very long answers to short questions is a character flaw of mine. You probably just wanted a ‘yes or no’ answer.”

  Pam didn’t contradict him but just laughed gently. “Go on, tell me more; I’m interested,” she said.

  “Well, in the end I dissociated myself from the Dalrymple movement and felt a tremendous sense of relief as I did so. Of course, they warned me of the dire consequences of my apostasy, but I had such a sense of relief and new life that their words did not have much effect on me.”

  “What did you do then?” asked Pam.

  “I left the Dalyites, causing a major rift with Thomas, my brother. I tried going to the Church of Universal Enlightenment. At first it felt like a refuge from the rules and shackles of Dalyism. The CUE talked a great deal about ‘love,’ but I learned pretty quickly that what was really being preached was unconstrained sex. So it seemed to me then that I had run from the frigid, frostbitten Niflheim of Dalyism to the scalding hell of the Church of Universal Enlightenment! I learned that whether you go where everything is forbidden or where everything is allowed, the destinations are very nearly the same. Both leave you in a drab featureless landscape where everything becomes insipid.”

  “But you’re not like that now. What happened?”

  “The Dalyites call themselves Christian, and so do the CUE. Of course the CUE also call themselves enlightened Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and atheists at the same time. They feel they can speak for all these groups.

  “I knew I was a Christian, but I did not seem to fit in anywhere. For a while I simply hung out by myself. I had a few friends who did not make a big point about calling themselves Christians, but, like me, they had this sense that things were not right, that they did not fit in, and that, frankly, they didn’t want to fit in. I kept reading my Bible, and gradually things became clearer, and I began to see the bits in Dalyism and the CUE that were right, and much in both that was wrong!

  “So in the end I do not really fit in anywhere. My brother, Thomas, ended up so broken by the Dalyites that he abandoned all of his beliefs and the university as well. For me the process of being cut off from the institution of the Church became complete with the dislocation. There isn’t a church or Christian group for me to relate to now. I just have a close family of friends, and we look after each other.

  “So how about you, Pam? What’s your story?”

  Pam fidgeted as if uncertain whether she should share the details, then finally said, “After the dislocation, I was desperately lonely. I’d never had a good relationship with my parents, who saw me as a burden, but I missed my sister terribly. When I first came to Halcyon, I used to call her almost every day. The dislocation changed all that. At first I cried myself to sleep every night, but over time, I settled into a routine of classes, work, and survival, and the ache dulled. I think I completely missed the overthrow of O’Reilly, because I was still terribly despondent then.

  “But you know, something curious has happened. This trip has made me feel truly alive. I don’t recall feeling like this since I was a small child and the world was full of wonder and discovery. I’ve begun to realize how drab and insipid life at Halcyon had become! Since we left on this trip and have had to struggle to stay alive, I’ve felt closer to my comrades than I ever did at Halcyon. I feel as if I’m waking from a drugged sleep. I don’t want to go back.

  “I said ‘insipid’ just now, but I think it’s more than that,” she added. Soon words came out in a jumble as Pam obviously warmed to her subject. “What you said about the Dalyites and the CUE
has set me to thinking—I can’t get over the contrast. In Halcyon, nothing is forbidden, but everything is manipulated. From what you said, Al, when you were with Dalrymple, at least everything was black and white. His rules were in your face, and you had to either agree to them or rebel. Under Blackmore, all of our rebellion and independence is being slowly but inexorably educated out of us. Our minds are changed for us little by little by a wearing repetition that grinds down our resistance until we mouth the lesson against our will. On this expedition we have orders and rules, and I’ve never been happier than to obey them, because I know our survival depends on the obedience. I don’t dread the danger tomorrow nearly as much as I dread the fog of Halcyon.”

  They spoke long into the night and Al felt the comfort of friendship and understanding. Much later, he lay awake in his tent. Pam and Dave’s gentle, shallow breathing told him they’d fallen asleep. Pam’s comments about the oppression at Halcyon made Al think back over his time there, before the dislocation. He remembered one afternoon in Professor Kinnerton’s genetics class, just after he’d completed an assignment on the implications arising out of the elucidation of the human genome.

  “Mr. Gleeson, stand up, please.”

  Kinnerton had handed Al his term paper with a large “D” scrawled across the front.

  “In future I will ask you to keep your religious drivel out of our genetics class. I have painstakingly pointed out to you how genetics has incontrovertibly demonstrated the very close relationship between Homo sapiens and our nearest hominid neighbors. Has the fact that we have about 97 percent of our DNA in common with chimpanzees escaped you? How can you still argue that we are special and have a soul when we are so obviously animals?”

  In anger Al had responded, “I accept the 97 percent evidence, even though, of course, I have not been able to verify it.”

  “That’s big of you!”

  “With due respect, sir, the 97 percent is precisely the problem. Are chimpanzees 97 percent of the way to splitting the atom? Are they 97 percent of the way to writing their first sonnet?”