A, B, C

by Samuel R. Delany

  “I can think of two,” said Iimmi.

  “Huh?”

  “Snake and Jordde,” answered Iimmi. “Remember that Argo said there had been spies from Aptor before. Jordde is definitely one, and I guess so is Snake.”

  “That fits with rule number one.” He got up from the bed. “Come on. Let’s take a walk. I want to see some sunlight.” They went to the wall. Geo pressed it and the triangular panel slipped back.

  When they had rounded four or five turns of hallway, Geo said, “I hope you can remember where we’ve been.”

  “I’ve got a more or less eidetic memory for directions,” Iimmi said.

  Suddenly the passage opened onto steps, and they were looking out upon a huge white concourse. Down a set of thirty marble steps priestesses filed below, their heads fixed blindly forward. Each woman’s hand rested on the shoulder of the one ahead of her. There were over a hundred, but the lines never collided. One row would merely pause for another to pass, and then begin to glide forward again. The silence and the whiteness were dreamlike.

  At the far end was a raised dais with a mammoth statue of a kneeling woman, sculptured of the same effulgent, argic stone. “Where do these women come from?” whispered Iimmi. “And where do they keep the men?”

  Geo shrugged.

  A priestess came across the temple floor now, alone. She reached the bottom steps, and as she began to ascend, Geo recognized her as the one in charge. She climbed directly toward them, stopped in front of them, and said almost inaudibly, “Gentlemen, you are disturbing the hour of meditation. I asked you not to wander indiscriminately about the convent. Please return with me.”

  As she glided past, Geo and Iimmi frowned at each other. After they had rounded a few corners, Geo said, “Excuse me, ma’am, we didn’t mean to be disrespectful, but we are used to natural day and night. We need fresh air, green things. This underground whiteness is oppressive and makes us restless. Could you show us a way into the open?”

  “No,” returned the blind Priestess quietly. “Besides, night is coming on and you are not creatures who relish darkness.”

  “The night air and the quiet of evening are refreshing to us,” countered Iimmi.

  “What do you know of the night?” answered the Priestess with faint cynicism in her low voice. Now they reached the chapel where the friends had first met after their rescue.

  “Perhaps,” suggested Geo, “you could talk to us awhile, then. There are many things we would like to know.”

  The Priestess turned, sighed softly, and said, “Very well. What would you like to talk about?”

  “For instance,” said Geo, “what can you tell us about the Dark God Hama?”

  The blind Priestess shrugged, and sat on one of the benches. “There is little to say. Today he is a fiction; he does not exist. There is only Argo, the One White Goddess.”

  “But we’ve heard—”

  “You were at his abandoned temple,” said the Priestess. “You saw yourselves. That is all that is left of Hama. Ghouls prey on the dust of his dead saints.”

  Iimmi and Geo looked at each other again, puzzled. “Are you sure?” Geo asked.

  “Perhaps,” mused the Priestess, “somewhere behind the burning mountain a few of his disciples are left. But Hama is dead in Aptor. You have seen the remains of his city, the City of New Hope. You have also been the first ones to enter it and return in nearly five hundred years.”

  “Is that how long the city has been in ruin?” asked Geo.

  “It is.”

  “What can you tell us about the city?”

  The Priestess sighed again. “There was a time,” she began, “generations ago, when Hama was a high god in Aptor. He had many temples, monasteries, and convents devoted to him. We had few. Except for these religious sanctuaries, the land was barbaric, wild, uninhabitable for the most part. There had once been cities in Aptor, but these had been destroyed even earlier by the Great Fire. All that we had was a fantastic record of an unbelievable time before the rain of flame, of tremendous power, vast science, and a towering, though degenerate, civilization. These records were extensive and almost entirely housed within the monasteries. Outside, there was only chaos; half the children were born dead and the other half deformed. Because of the monstrous races that sprang up over the Island now as a reminder to us, we decided the magic contained in these chronicles was evil, and must never be released to the world again. But the priests of Hama did not come to the same decision. They decided to use the information in these chronicles, spread it to the people; they were sure they would not commit the same mistakes that had brought the Great Fire. They opened the books, and a dream materialized from their pages, and that dream was the City of New Hope, which sits in ruin now on the far shore. They made giant machines that flew. They constructed immense boats that could sink into the sea and emerge hundreds of miles away in another harbor in another land. They even harnessed for beneficial use the fire metal, uranium, which had brought such terror to the world before, and had brought down the flames.”

  “But they made the same mistake as the people before the Great Fire made?” suggested Iimmi.

  “Not exactly,” said the Priestess. “That is, they were not so stupid as to misuse the fire metal that ravaged the world so harshly before. History is cyclic, not repetitive. A new power was discovered that dwarfed the significance of the fire metal. It could do all that the fire metal could do, and more efficiently—destroy cities or warm chill huts in winter—but it could also work on men’s minds. They say that before the Great Fire, men wandered the streets of the cities terrified that flames might descend on them any moment and destroy them. They panicked, brought flimsy, useless contraptions to guard themselves from the fire.

  “Geo, Iimmi, have you any idea how terrifying it would be to know that while you are walking the streets, at any moment, your mind might be snatched from you, raped, violated, and left broken in your own skull? Only three of these instruments were constructed. But the moment their existence was made known by a few fantastic demonstrations, the City of New Hope began the swerve down the arc of self-destruction. It lasted for a year and ended with the wreck you escaped from. During that year invasions were launched on the backward nations across the sea with whom, months before, there had been friendly trade. Civil wars broke out and internal struggles caused the invasions to fall back to the homeland. The instruments were lost, but not before the bird machines had even destroyed the City of New Hope itself. The house of the fire metal was broken open to release its death once more. For a hundred years after the end, say our records, the city flamed with light from the destroyed powerhouse. And mechanically, to this day, our instruments tell us, the lights along its elevated highways flare at sunset, as if dead hands were there to operate them. During the first hundred years more and more of our number were born blind because of the sinking fire in the city. At last we moved underground, but it was too late.” She rose from her seat. “And so you see, Hama destroyed himself. Today, loyal to Argo, are all the beasts of the air, of the land…”

  “And of the waters,” concluded Iimmi.

  She smiled again. “Again, not exactly. We have had some trouble with a certain race of aquatic creatures, as well as the ignorant ghouls. Right after the Great Fire, evolutionary processes were tremendously turned awry, and we believe this is how these creatures developed. For some reason we cannot control them. Perhaps their intelligence is too elemental even to respond to pain. But all the rest are loyal,” she said. “All.”

  “What about the…the three instruments?” Geo asked. “What happened to them?”

  The blind Priestess turned to him. “Your guess,” she said, smiling, “is as good as mine.” She turned and glided from the room.

  When she left, Geo said, “Something is fishy.”

  “But what is it?” asked Iimmi.

  “For one thing,” said Geo, “we know there is a Temple of Hama. From the dream I would say that it’s just about the size and org
anization of this place.”

  “Just how big is this place anyway?”

  “Want to do some more exploring?”

  “Sure. Do you think she does know about Hama but was just pretending?”

  “Could be,” said Geo. They started off down another corridor. “That bit about going into men’s minds with the jewels…”

  “It gives me the creeps.”

  “It’s a creepy thing to watch,” said Geo. “Argo used it on Snake the first time we saw her. It just turns you into an automaton.”

  “Then it really is our jewels she was talking about.”

  Stairs cut a white tunnel in the wall before them, and they mounted, coming finally to another corridor. For the first time they saw doors in the wall. “Hey,” said Geo, “maybe one of these goes outside.”

  “Fine,” said Iimmi. “This place is beginning to get to me.” He pushed open a door and stepped in. Except for the flowing white walls, it duplicated in miniature the basement of the New Edison building. Twin dynamos whirred and the walls were laced with pipes.

  “Nothing in here,” said Iimmi.

  They tried a door across the hall. In this room sat a white porcelain table and floor-to-ceiling cases of glittering instruments. “I bet this is the room your arm came off in,” Iimmi said.

  “Probably.”

  The next room was different. The glow was dimmer, and there was dust on the walls. Geo ran his finger over it and looked at the gray crescent left on the bleached flesh. “This looks a little more homey.”

  “This is what you call homey?” Iimmi gestured toward the opposite wall. Two screens leaned from the face of a metal machine. A few dials and meters were set beneath each rounded rectangle of opaque glass. In front was a stand that held something like a set of binoculars and what looked like a pair of earmuffs.

  “I bet this place hasn’t been used since before these girls went blind.”

  “It looks it,” Iimmi said.

  Geo stepped up to one of the screens, the one with the fewer dials on it, and turned a switch.

  “What did you do that for?”

  “Why not?” Suddenly a flickering of colored lights ran over the screen: swellings of blue, green, scarlets. They blinked. “That’s the first color I’ve seen since I’ve been here.”

  The colors grayed, dimmed, congealed into forms, and in a moment they were looking at a bare white room in which stood two barefoot young men. One was a dark Negro with pale hands. The other had an unruly shock of black hair and one arm.

  Iimmi gestured: the figure on the screen gestured too. “That’s us!” Geo walked forward and the corresponding figure advanced on the screen. He flicked a dial and the figures exploded into colors and then focused again into complete whiteness. “What’s that?” asked Iimmi.

  “We must be looking at a room with no people in it.” Geo flicked the dial again. When the screen focused, they were looking at the dining room. Now a hundred or more women sat at the long tables, each bending and raising her blind face over bowls of red soup. In one corner, empty, was the table at which they had eaten. “I bet we could look into every room in the place.” He switched the dial again. “Maybe we can find Urson and Snake.” Two more rooms, then the great temple hall formed on the screen, empty save for the statue of Argo kneeling. As the next room passed, Geo called out, “Wait a minute!”

  “What is it?”

  In this room stood three of the blind women. On one wall was a smaller screen similar to the one in their own room. The women, of course, were oblivious to the picture, but the face on the screen had stopped Geo.

  One of the women had on an earmuff apparatus and was talking into a small metal rod that she carried with her as she paced.

  But the face! “Don’t you recognize him?” demanded Geo.

  “It’s Jordde!” exclaimed Iimmi.

  “They must have gotten in contact with our ship and are arranging to send us back.”

  “I wish I could hear what they’re saying,” said Iimmi.

  Geo looked around and then picked up the metal earmuffs from the stand in front of the screen. “That’s what she seems to be listening through,” Geo said, referring to the Priestess in the picture. He fit them over his ears.

  “Hear anything?” Iimmi asked.

  Geo listened.

  “Yes, of course,” the Priestess was saying.

  “She is set upon staying in the harbor for three more days, to wait out the week,” reported Jordde. “I am sure she will not stay any longer. She is still bewildered by me, and the men have become uneasy and may well mutiny if she stays longer.”

  “We will dispose of the prisoners this evening. There is no chance of their returning,” stated the Priestess.

  “Detain them for three days, and I do not care what you do with them,” said Jordde. “She does not have the jewels; she does not know my…our power; she will be sure to leave at the end of the week.”

  “It’s a pity we have no jewels for all our trouble,” said the Priestess. “But at least all three are back in Aptor and potentially within our grasp.”

  Jordde laughed. “And Hama never seems to be able to keep hold of them for more than ten minutes before they slip from him again.”

  “Yours is not to judge either Hama or Argo,” stated the Priestess. “You are kept on by us only to do your job. Do it, report, and do not trouble either us or yourself with opinions. They are not appreciated.”

  “Yes, Mistress,” returned Jordde.

  “Then farewell until next report.” She flipped a switch and the picture on the little screen went gray.

  Geo turned from the big screen and was just about to remove the hearing apparatus when he heard the Priestess say, “Go; prepare the prisoners for the sacrifice of the rising moon. They have seen too much.” The woman left the room, Geo removed the phones, and Iimmi looked at him.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Geo turned the switch that darkened the screen.

  “When are they coming to get us?” Iimmi asked excitedly.

  “Right now, probably,” Geo said. Then, as best he could, he repeated the conversation he had overheard to Iimmi, whose expression grew more and more bewildered as Geo went on.

  At the end the bewilderment suddenly flared into frayed indignation. “Why?” demanded Iimmi. “Why should we be sacrificed? What is it we’ve seen, what is it we know? This is the second time it’s come close to getting me killed, and I wish to hell I knew what I was supposed to know!”

  “We’ve got to find Urson and get out of here!”

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  Indignation had turned into something else. Geo stood with his eyes shut tight and his face screwed up. Suddenly he relaxed. “I just thought out a message as loud as I could for Snake to get up here and to bring Urson if he’s anywhere around.”

  “But Snake’s a spy for—”

  “—for Hama,” said Geo. “And you know something? I don’t care.” He closed his eyes again. After a few moments, he opened them. “Well, if he’s coming, he’s coming. Let’s get going.”

  “But why?” began Iimmi, following Geo out the door.

  “Because I have a poet’s feeling his mind reading may come in handy.”

  They hurried down the hall, found the stairs, ducked down, and ran along the lower hall. Rounding a second corner, they emerged into the little chapel simultaneously with Urson and Snake.

  “I guess I got through,” said Geo. “Which way do we go?”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” came a voice behind them.

  Snake took off down one of the passages; they followed, Urson looking particularly bewildered.

  The Priestess glided behind, calling softly, “Please, my friends, come back. Return with me.”

  “Find out from her how the hell to get out of this place!” Geo bawled to Snake. The four-armed boy darted up a sudden flight of stairs, turned, and ran up another. They came out in a hall, behind Snake.

  The boy’s four han
ds flew at the door handle, turning it carefully this way and back.

  Two, three seconds.

  Geo glanced back and saw the Priestess mount the head of the stairs and start toward them. Her white robes floated from her, brushing the walls.

  The door came open; they broke through leaves and were momentarily in a huge field surrounded by woods. The sky was pale with moonlight.

  A hundred fifty yards across the field was a white statue of Argo. As they ran through the silver grass, doors opened in the base and a group of priestesses emerged and began to hurry toward them. Geo turned to look behind him. The blind Priestess had slowed, her face turned to the moon. Her hands went to her throat, she unclasped her robe, and the first layer fell behind her. As she continued forward, the second layer began to unfold, wet, leprously white, spreading from her arms, articulating along the white spines; then, with a horribly familiar shriek, she leaped from the ground and soared upward, white wings hammering the air.

  They fled.

  Dark forms shadowed the moon. The priestesses across the field joined her aloft in the moon-bleached night. She overtook the running figures, turned above them, and swooped down. The moon lanced white on bared teeth. The breeze touched pale furry breasts, filled the bellying wings. Only the tiny, darting, blind eyes were red, rubies in a whirl of white.

  Snake changed direction and fled toward the trees.

  With only one arm, Geo found himself off balance. He nearly fell twice before he crashed into the bushes where the winged things could not follow. Branches raked his face as he followed the sound the others made. Once he thought he had lost them, but a second later he bumped against Iimmi, who had stopped behind Snake and Urson. Above the trees was a sound like beaten cloth, diminishing, growing, but constant as once more they began to tread through the tangled darkness.

  “Damn…” sighed Iimmi after a minute of walking.

  “It’s beginning to make sense,” Geo said, his hand on Iimmi’s shoulder. “Remember that man-wolf we met, and that thing in the city? The only thing we’ve met on this place that hasn’t changed shape is the ghouls. I think most creatures on this Island undergo some sort of metamorphosis.”