Zollocco: A Novel of Another Universe

by Cynthia Joyce Clay

  I also practiced escaping from my cell. It had a combination lock, and whenever I was taken out, I made sure to set the combination before being put back in. Sometimes the slamming of door jarred the combination and so I wouldn't be able to get out, but usually the door shut on the combination to open it, and all I had to do was open the door. As an animal, no one cared that I played with the dial of the combination. My captors saw it kept me calm and were happy to have a moments' respite from observing me nervously. Whenever I escaped, I located all the closets in the building I was in and spent the nights experimenting with the things I found, dressing in the strange clothes.

  By day I slept. What use was it to go around escorted, wearing a gruesome uniform? My captors were mystified by my daylight sleepiness. Even though my arrival in this world was so inexplicable, I realized that I couldn't let these people define who I was, what I was, or where I was from. If I didn't trust myself, if I let someone else determine the nature of my being, then I would be lost to myself. I was already lost to my world. That was bad enough. How bizarre it was that these people did not accept my common humanity with them, nor did they accept the differences between us while the forest I had lived in had. I was letting my flights of fancy carry me away. A forest could not really perceive personality and consciousness when it did not have these qualities, no matter how much it seemed it did. A scary thought nagged at me. This world was so different from my own; maybe the forest did have self-awareness. Could I be making the same mistaken assumption about the forest that the people were of me?

  I must find out as much as I could about this world I now inhabited, so I covertly kept an eye on my captors' habits. I saw that my captors always ate together in a lovely wood-paneled dining room. The food they ate smelled wonderful. I added raiding the pantry to my nightly rounds. I kept it a secret that I was learning their language. Its syntax was very close to English. I started to sneak out of my cell at riskier times to spy on the people, to learn their customs, and to pick up their language so that some day I could escape.

  After a time I realized I was at a university and was considered a kind of lab animal. Visiting professors would come, and each of them spoke a different language. Yet all of the resident students and faculty understood the visiting professors. New students would come speaking different languages and though they did not understand the others, the others understood them. How could my captors understand so many different languages? By my count they knew thirty-five or thirty-six at least. When a new faculty member arrived at the campus between meals, he was given a fine meal, which he ate alone in the dining room. If someone happened to be free, then they would keep the professor company, and sometimes share the meal. It seemed the etiquette to share food with whomever joined you at the table, so the professor always shared the meal with whoever sat down to keep him company. I came up with a great idea. I saw a new professor arrive when I was being given my daily walk. After I was returned to my cell, I sneaked out of it and raided the clothes closet of the woman whose clothes I liked best, and of course, whose clothes fitted me. Then I entered the dining room where the professor sat. I smiled and took my seat. Sure enough, he asked me to join him.

  "Thank you," I said. So far so good.

  The professor then began to chat, gesturing every so often to a small black case he had set on the table. I ate and smiled. Soon he began to suspect something was amiss. He started asking me questions.

  "Sure," I answered to each and every question. The professor called in my captors, irate at my behavior. The looks on their faces, especially the harridan's, were hilarious. The lab animal was dining with the eminent professor. They were furious and explained to him that I had sneaked out of my cell. The professor was delighted by the trick I had played. This professor saw to it that my language instruction commenced. It turned out he was a music instructor the school had been trying to woo to the campus for a very long time, and so they were at pains to please him. The faculty agreed to the experiment of seeing if I could learn to speak. I was put under the tutelage of a very kind, friendly, able woman named Sunbreeze. She eventually cleared up the mystery of how they could speak so many different languages -- they didn't, they actually spoke only one, which was divided into dialects. Pushing her stiff sun bleached hair back, she set about charting the hierarchy of the language on a sheet of paper.

  "Different planets, different cultures, different occupations, each has its own dialect. These dialects build upon themselves in such a way that they culminate in a language that is universal. The universal dialect is called Leekimbee, and anyone who can speak it can speak all of the other dialects, because Leekimbee is made up of all of the other dialects. Very few people bother to learn Leekimbee because of the vastness of its vocabulary, the confusing abundance of irregularities in its grammar, and the seeming chaotic flexibility of its syntax."

  Well, actually, she didn't put it this way; she put it more simply for me to be able to understand with my struggling Leekimbee. It sounded to me like Leekimbee was going to be a lot like English.

  "Those who speak Leekimbee are the Linguists and the Holy people. The Holy people are the Priests and Priestesses, actors, playwrights, poets, and educators. Oh, politicians also try to learn Leekimbee. The Priests and artists claim to understand yet another language, The Remembered Tongue. They claim The Remembered Tongue is the Forests' language, and it is spoken to them in dreams, trances, visions, and in inspiration. The Priests and Priestesses also speak a dialect of their own."

  "What is your dialect?" I asked. "I grew up speaking a desert dialect, because I am from a desert village called Oasis."

  "I thought this was a planet of forests."

  "How did you know that? You haven't been told that. I'm from another planet, a desert planet, a beautiful planet. When I came here I felt suffocated by the moist air. I didn't know the word moist."

  "Hey, isn't the Harridan's original language the dialect of the Braying Jack Asses?"

  "No, it wasn't. Hers was Standard Industrial."

  "Sounds like a detergent."

  "Now you stop that! You've even got me calling her Harridan. When I bumped into her the other day, I couldn't remember her name. All I could think of was Harridan, and of course, I couldn't call her that. I could tell she was insulted I didn't use her name. Now, as you well know, her name is Raiboothnar."

  I fell off my chair laughing. Since I couldn't get these people to believe there was any language other than Leekimbee, they couldn't understand what I found so funny in her name. I remembered my Junior High Spanish class when I learned the sound Spanish donkeys make.

  I continued my nocturnal forays. Sneaking through one of the dormitories, I found the largest bathroom I had ever seen. It was in the building's basement. It was cold and dank. It must have had fifty toilet stalls and half as many sinks. I wandered into another building and almost immediately stumbled into another bathroom. This one was all marble--floors, walls and ceiling. Many large potted plants were set about. This bathroom was exclusively a `bathroom'. It had ten sunken tubs with gilt faucets in the shape of fish. Leaving this room, an image came to mind of snakes swimming out of the drains. I explored the building some more, opening another door at random. It too was a bathroom, with one tub, one toilet, and one sink, decorated with a theme of blue snakes. The faucets were shaped like snakes. The tiles had entwined snakes as emblems. The shower nozzle was shaped like a snake with an open fanged mouth for a spout. I shut the door and hurried up some stairs. This whole experience was weird. Why was every door I opened the door to a bathroom? I decided to go up on the roof to survey the campus. If I ever were to escape, I would need to know the lay of the land. I found a stairwell and climbed. The elaborate hardwood staircase came to an end on the top floor. Surely there would be some stairs to get to the roof? There was a door on the final landing, probably this would be a rickety attic stairway hidden by the door. I opened the door. It was too dim to see, and since no one was about, I turned on the light, the
switch being to the left of the door. It wasn't a stairway at all. It was a shower. A simple, clean, unadorned shower. Now I really had the creeps. I ran down the stairs imagining that a snake with a tuft of hair on its head had slithered out of the drain, reared and grinned at me.

  "Soon," it hissed.

  I ran all the way to my cell, leaped into my bed, and cursed that I had neither sheets nor blankets to pull over my head.

  As the days went by, my language learning progressed. I was taught the accouterments of civilized behavior--table manners, how various objects were used, gestures in greeting, how to wear the different kinds of dress, and the intricacies of social formalities regarding gender and age.

  One morning I awoke from a bizarre dream. I dreamed the snake with a tuft of hair on its head, as I had imagined before, had showed me a bathroom, and as I watched,hundreds of snakes curled out of the drains. A huge snake slithered out of a toilet.

  "Prepare to leave," the snake with the hair on its head said.

  "When we swarm through the halls, you may then escape. Find the metal snake which chariots between worlds."

  The next morning, as I was putting on my socks, Raiboothnar came into my cell.

  "Come with me," she said in her dour way.

  We went down the red hallway, and then the blue, the green, through the window-sided yellow hallway, and into a room of stone. Three men were seated at a table with papers before them. Two other men stood behind them. These two wore the gray uniforms the people of the spaceship had worn. This made me very anxious. As Raiboothnar and I entered, her favorite teaching assistant nodded at her and stepped outside the door. Raiboothnar sat down in a chair facing the table and the men. There was no chair for me.

  The one young man on the panel spoke up, "This is no Zitam. This is a human being!" The two men behind him stirred with menace in their movements. The man on the other side of the table was much older, wore more formal, expensive clothing. His white hair was carefully coiffed. This white haired man sat carefully hunched over his paunch as though movement were a commodity that only wrinkled clothes and jarred schemes. He sat with his profile to Raiboothnar and me, facing his two associates at the table. He lifted his chin ever so slightly to speak, but his eyes flashed, shrewdly surveying the room.

  "It was found in the woods, in a tree. If it were human it would have sought out civilization."

  Now the central figure at the table spoke. He was fat, had curly brown hair, glasses, and waved one arm listlessly when he talked. His jowls flopped smugly as he spoke. "Can it speak?"

  Not being an `it', I answered, "Raiboothnar can speak, yes."

  "This should be sufficient proof gentlemen that it is not a human, it couldn't understand your simple question," smiled Raiboothnar.

  The young man retorted, "I don't agree, her answer -- "

  "That is irrelevant," cut in the fat man, "What should concern us here is that we have proof that it is from another universe entirely. If she were an infant we could rear her in the matrix of our unified cultures. However, as she is an adult, any language she may learn here, even if she learns Leekimbee, will be Other to her, and so her life must be one of disadvantage, insecurity, and disharmony with her surroundings. We can ease her difficulties significantly by accepting our responsibility to protect her animal rights, and looking after her sentient welfare. This we can only do by entering her on the List."

  The young man on the left argued, "And turn her into a commodity to be bought and sold."

  Lifting his chubby arm, and swaying it to punctuate his oily remarks, the fat man sought to convince the youngest member of the board. "As the Forests have taught, no-one owns any entity. Those who pay the Zitam fee, do so for the privilege of signing the registration forms. The forms that will guarantee this creature the comforts of existence; food, shelter, medical attention, humane treatment. Would that our own children could demand such a guarantee.

  "Also," added the carefully ironed, white-haired bigot, "we need to keep track of this creature. If it is not entered on the List, we will most definitely lose track of it."

  "Why keep track of her? She is not a pedigree beast of--"

  "There are important scientific reasons for keeping track of it," cut in the white-haired demon. "Its language acquisition needs to be studied further; its interactions need to be analyzed; its biological responses to our universe will greatly aid our medical studies."

  "I am beginning to see your point, but still, I'm not sure."

  Again the fat man intervened, "I can understand your problem with Listing her as a Zitam, but consider, people will never consider her a human. And if you refuse the Listing, you will be forcing people to accept her as human and they will resent her, maybe even attack her. As the Forests teach us, force resisted is violence. Give her the protection of the List."

  "Well..."

  "The fat man pressed his point, "She may look human at first glance, but how do we know that for sure? She is from another universe, and she chose to live in a Forest. If she is not a human it would be cruel to deny her the rights of a Zitam."

  "I can not accept that she is not human, but you are correct about her need to be protected," said the young man. The white haired man smiled at his knees.

  "This is the best way," urged the fat man. "Are we agreed then?"

  "Agreed!" the three men chorused. The men standing behind them smiled stiffly at each other.

  The fat man spoke solemnly, "In accordance with Intercultural Zitam Act, the Toelakhan traders have brought a three member board of independent and non-partisan consultants to meet the Being under question of Zitam authenticity, to examine the evidence, and to debate the question. After meeting the Being, examining the evidence presented by the Merchant Spaceship `Star's Limit', and debating the question, we the independent and non-partisan consultants do agree that this Being is from another universe, is of animal form, and has the right to the protection of the Zitam List."

  The fat man then wrote on some papers and passed the papers to the others to do likewise.

  "Professor Raiboothnar," said the fat man, "since you are the one to bring the creature to the Board of List, you are entitled to the presenter's commission. If you accept this payment the original registration will be in your name, but you must sell the registration within ten days. Or -- "

  "Those terms are acceptable to me," said Raiboothnar, smiling sweetly for the first time in her nasty little life. Raiboothnar took the money, and the scroll was handed to her. At that moment, her teaching assistant stuck his head in the door.

  "Here they come," he said.

  Sunbreeze and a handful of professors and students rushed into the room, "We object to the Listing..."

  "I'm sorry, you are too late. The Board has reached its decision. We have concluded that it is within the best interests of the creature for it to be entered on the List, and this has been done," stated the fat man.

  "Professor Raiboothnar," raged a professor, "you are fired!"

  Raiboothnar held up her money. "Yes, professor, I accept your decree." She kissed the bills, stood, and walked serenely out of the room, the scroll in her hand. The board and the two silent men followed her out.

  "She's in shock. We have to get her out of this cold room."

  As the day wore on, I realized that somehow a stone half the size of my fist was sitting in my gut. Cold and hard, it weighed me down. I could feel its slick smooth shape; see its black dull luster. How cold it was, boring into me, sucking the warmth out of my body. But I could function, and I could think, even if I had to carry this stone around forever.

  "You are going to have to get out of here," said Sunbreeze, "This school might as well be a prison as far as you are concerned."

  "Not if you people unlock the doors. Give me a map."

  "There are those willing to help, but the Toelakhan are monitoring the school, looking after their own interests."

  "Sunbreeze, that makes no sense."

  "Look, the Toelakhan is an
interplanetary organization of business folk. They started the Zitam business--selling animals and plants from other universes as pets. They deal in large cargo shipping, and arms. They chafe at the Law of the Forests, and sometimes defy it completely, as they do when they sell arms between planets, and stir up trouble in the innocent zones."

  "Innocent zones?"

  "Peaceful civilizations, or cultures yet incapable of space travel, and places that have for one reason or another chosen to exist in seclusion."

  "So those two guys who looked like thugs, and who just stood there, were they part of this organization?"

  "Oh, yes. Now we have to get you out of here. Let me think. The school owns a transporter, that would be a way you could get out." "A transporter?"

  "Yes, we have an instrument that can send a person through space. Your molecular composition is taken apart and put back together again somewhere else."

  "You've got to be kidding."

  "Why don't I show it to you, before Raiboothnar thinks to refuse you information about it."

  "I thought she was fired. Why is she still around?"

  "Because it's easier to keep you imprisoned here and guarded here, before she sells you. Of course, she says it is to give us an opportunity to continue our studies of you before she sells you. Oh, if you see a chance to escape, don't go without the scroll, the letter of List she has. If you leave without it, the paper can still be sold and you will be tracked down. The holder of the scroll owns you. If you get it away from her, you can in effect own yourself. The Toelakhan will still hunt you, but it will be harder for them to find you, since obviously you won't register yourself with them. And the Forests will be better able to protect you."