A, B, C

by Samuel R. Delany

  “I cut your tongue out once with this thing,” Jordde said matter-of-factly. “Now I’m going to cut the rest of you to pieces.” He adjusted a control at his belt and raised the lash again—

  Geo leaped for the plank. The sudden swell of anger and fear defined the action, but once on the end of the plank, facing Jordde over crouching Snake, he wondered how wise it had been. Then he had to stop wondering and try to duck the falling lash. He couldn’t.

  It landed with only the weight of gravity, brushing his cheek, then dropping across his shoulder and down his back. He screamed: it felt as if the whole side of his face had been seared away, and an inch-deep crevice burned into his shoulder and back the whole length it touched him. He bit white fire, trying not to leap aside into the foaming chasm between rocks and boat. As the lash rasped away, sweat flooded into his eyes. His good arm, which held the edge of the plank as he crouched, was shaking like a plucked string on a loose guitar. Snake staggered back against him, almost knocking him over. When Geo blinked the tears out of his eyes, he saw two bright welts on Snake’s shoulder. Jordde stepped out on the plank, smiling.

  When the line fell again, he wasn’t sure just what happened. He leaned in one direction. Snake was a dive of legs in the other, then only four sets of fingers over the edge of the plank. Geo screamed again and shook.

  Two sets of fingers disappeared from one side of the board and reappeared on the other. As Jordde raised the lash a fourth time to rid the plank of this one-armed nuisance, the fingers worked rapidly forward toward Jordde’s feet. An arm rose from beneath the plank, grabbed Jordde’s ankle, and the lash fell far of Geo. He was still trembling, trying to move back off the unsteady plank and keep from vomiting at the same time.

  Jordde lost his balance, but turned in time to grab the rail of the ship’s gate. At the same time, one leg, then the other, came over the side of the plank. Snake rolled to a crouch on top of the board.

  Geo got his feet under him and stumbled off the plank. Back on the rocks, he sat down hard. He clutched his good arm across his stomach, and without lowering his eyes, leaned forward to cool his back.

  Jordde, half seated on the board, lashed the whip sideways. Snake leaped a foot as the line swung beneath his feet. All four arms went spidering out to regain equilibrium. The whip struck the side of the boat, left a burn on the hull, and came swinging back again. Snake leaped once more and made it.

  Suddenly there was a shadow over Geo, and he saw Urson stride up to the end of the plank. His back to Geo, the big sailor crouched bearlike at the plank’s head. “All right, now try someone a little bigger than you. Come on, boy; get off there. I want my chance.” Urson’s sword was drawn.

  Snake turned, grabbed at something on Urson, but the big man knocked him away as Snake leaped diagonally onto the shore. Urson laughed over his shoulder. “You don’t want the ones around my neck,” he called back. “Here, keep these for me.” He tossed Geo’s leather purse from his belt back to the bank. Snake landed just as Jordde flung the lash out again. Urson must have caught the line across his chest, because his back suddenly stiffened. Then he leaped forward and came down with his sword so hard that had Jordde still been there, his leg would have been severed. Jordde leaped back onto the edge of the ship, and the sword sliced three inches into the wood. As Urson tried to pull the blade free, Jordde sent his whip singing again. It wrapped Urson’s midsection like a black serpent; and it didn’t come loose.

  Urson howled. He flung his sword forward. The blade sank inches through Jordde’s abdomen. The Mate bent forward with a totally amazed expression, grabbed the line with both hands, and tugged backward, screaming.

  Jordde took two steps onto the plank, mouth open, eyes closed, and fell over the side.

  Urson, without stopping his own howl or letting go of the line, heaved backward, and toppled from the other side. For a moment they hung with the whip between them, over the board. The ship heaved back and then rolled to. The plank swiveled, came loose; and, with the board on top of them, they crashed into the water.

  Geo and Snake scrambled to the rocks’ edge. Iimmi and Argo were coming up behind them.

  Below them, the tangle of limbs and board bobbed in the foam once. The line had somehow looped around Urson’s neck, and the plank had turned up almost on end. They went under again.

  With nothing between it and the rocky shore, the boat began to roll in. With each swell, it came in six feet and then leaned out three. Then it came back another six. It took four swells, the time of four very deep breaths, until the side of the boat was grating up against the rocks. Geo could hear the plank splintering in the water.

  But the river’s rush blanketed anything else that was breaking.

  Geo took two steps backward, clutched at his stubbed arm, and threw up from pain and terror.

  Somebody, the Captain, was calling. “Get her away from the rocks! Away from the rocks, before she goes to pieces!”

  Iimmi took Geo’s arm. “Come on, Geo!” He managed to haul him onto the ship. Argo and Snake leaped on behind them. The boat floundered away from the shore.

  Geo leaned against the rail. Below him the water turned on itself in the rocks, thrashed along the river’s side, and then, as he raised his eyes, stretched out along the bright blade of the beach. The long sand that rimmed the Island dropped away from them, a stately and austere arc gathering in its curve all the sun’s glare, and throwing it back in wave and on wave.

  His back hurt, his stomach was shriveled and shaken like an old man’s palsied fist, his arm was gone, and Urson…“Captain,” Geo said. He turned from the rail, his good hand going to his nub. Then he bawled, “Captain!”

  The little redhead caught his shoulder. “It…it won’t do any good!”

  “Captain!” he called again.

  The elderly, gray-eyed man approached him. “What is it?”

  He looks tired, Geo thought. I’m tired.

  Iimmi was by his shoulder now. Geo was quiet until Iimmi said, “Never mind, sir. I don’t think you can do anything now.”

  “Are you sure?” the Captain asked, looking at the shocked black hair, the bruised face, the deep eyes. “Are you…”

  “Never mind,” Geo said. He turned back to the rail. Below them, splinters of the plank were still washing up to the boat’s hull and falling back into the white froth. Only splinters. Only…

  Then Argo said, “Look at the beach!”

  Geo flung his eyes up and tried in one moment to envelop whatever he saw, whatever it would be. Beneath the water’s roar was a still tide, a tide of quiet. Sand along the naked crescent was dull at some depressions, mirror bright at certain rises. At the jungle, multitextured ripplings sped over the leaves and fronds covering the foliage-thick limbs. Each fragment in that green tapestry hung there in the sun was one leaf, he reflected, with two sides, a system of skeleton and veins, as his arm had been. And one day would drop off too.

  Now he looked from rock to rock. Each one was different, differently shaped, distinctly lined, losing detail as the ship floated farther, like the memory of his entire adventure was losing detail. That boulder there was like a bull’s head half submerged. Those two flat ones together on the sand looked like an eagle’s opened wings. And the waves, measured and magnificent, followed one another onto the sand, like the varying, never duplicating rhythm of a fine poem: peaceful, ordered, and calm. He tried to pour the chaos of Urson’s drowning from his mind onto the water. It flowed into each glass-green trough that rode up to the still beach. He tried to spread the pain in his own body over the foam and shimmering green. And was surprised because it fit so easily, hung there so well in the sea’s web. Somewhere, understanding was beginning to effloresce with the water, under the heightening sun.

  Geo turned away from the rail. The wet deck slipped under his bare feet. He walked back toward the forecastle. He had released his broken limb, and his hand hung at his side while he walked.

  —

  Later in the evening, he c
ame on deck again. The veiled Priestess stood by the railing. When he approached, she turned to him and said quietly, “I did not want to disturb you for a report until you had rested some.”

  “I’ve rested,” he said. “We’ve returned your daughter to you. You can get the jewels from Snake. He’ll give them to you now. You can get your daughter to explain everything about Hama.”

  “She has already,” answered the Priestess, smiling. “You’ve done very well, Poet, and bravely.”

  “Thank you,” Geo said. Then he turned back to the forecastle.

  —

  When Snake came down that evening, Geo was lying on his back in the bunk, following the grain of the wood on the bottom of the bed above his. His good arm was behind his neck now. Snake touched Geo’s shoulder.

  “What is it?” Geo asked, turning on his side and looking from under the bunk.

  Snake held out the leather purse to Geo.

  “Huh?” Geo asked. “Didn’t you give them to Argo yet?”

  Snake nodded.

  “Well, why didn’t she take them? Look, I don’t want to see them again.”

  Snake pushed the purse toward him again and added: look…

  Geo took the purse, opened the drawstring, and turned the contents out in his hand: there were three chains. On each, a gold coin was fastened by a hole near the edge. Geo frowned. “How come these are in here?” he asked. “I thought…where are the jewels?”

  In…ocean…Snake said. Urson…switched…them…

  “What are you talking about?” demanded Geo. “What is it?”

  Don’t…want…tell…you…

  “I don’t care what you want, you little bastard!” Geo grabbed him by the shoulder. “Tell me!”

  Know…from…back…with…blind…priestesses…Snake explained rapidly. he…ask…me…how…to…use…jewels…when…you…and…Iimmi…exploring…and…after…that…no…listen…to…thoughts…bad…thoughts…bad…

  “But he…” Geo started. “He saved your life!”

  But…what…is…reason…Snake said. at…end…

  “You saw his thoughts at the end?” asked Geo. “What did he think?”

  You…sleep…please…Snake said. Lot…of…hate…lot of…bad…hate…There was a pause in the voice in his head. And…love…

  Geo began to cry. A bubble of sound in the back of his throat burst, and he turned onto the pillow and tried to bite through the sound with his teeth and tried to know why he was crying; for the tiredness, for the fear, for Urson, for his arm, and for the inevitable growth, which hurt so much…his body ached; his back hurt in two sharp lines, and he couldn’t stop crying.

  —

  Iimmi, who had taken the bunk above Geo’s, came back a few minutes after mess. Geo had not felt like eating.

  “How’s your stomach?” Iimmi asked.

  “Funny,” Geo said. “But better, I guess.”

  “Good,” said Iimmi. “Food sort of weights you down, once it gets inside; sort of holds you down to earth.”

  “I’ll eat something soon,” Geo said. He paused. “Now I guess you’ll never find out what you saw on the beach that made you dangerous.” The slosh of water on the hull outside was just audible; they were veering toward Leptar now.

  Then Iimmi laughed. “I found what it was.”

  “How?” asked Geo. “When? What was it?”

  “Same time you did,” Iimmi said. “I just looked. And then Snake explained the details of it to me later.”

  “When?” Geo repeated.

  “I took a nap just before dinner and he went through the whole thing with me.”

  “Then what was it you saw, we saw?”

  “Well, first of all, do you remember what Jordde was before he was shipwrecked on Aptor?”

  “Didn’t Argo say he was studying to be a priest? Old Argo, I mean.”

  “Right,” said Iimmi. “Now, do you remember what your theory was about what we saw?”

  “Did I have a theory?” Geo asked.

  “About horror and pain making you receptive to whatever it was.”

  “Oh, that,” Geo said. “I remember. Yes.”

  “You were also right about that. Now add to all this some theory from Hama’s lecture on the double impulse of life: sift together; mix well. It wasn’t a thing we saw; it was a situation, or rather an experience we had. Also, it didn’t have to be on the beach. It could have happened anywhere. Man, with his constantly diametric motivations, is always trying to reconcile opposites. Take Hama’s theory one step further: each action is a reconciliation of the duality of his motivation. Now, take all we’ve been through—the confusion, the pain, the disorder; reconcile that with the great order obvious in something like the sea, with its rhythm, its tides and waves, its overpowering calm, or the ordering of cells in a leaf, or a constellation of stars. If you can do it, something happens to you: you grow. You become a bigger person, able to understand, or reconcile, more.”

  “All right,” said Geo.

  “And that’s what we saw, or the experience we had when we looked at the beach from the ship this morning: chaos caught in order, the order defining chaos.”

  “All right again,” Geo said. “And I’ll even assume that Jordde knew that the two impulses of this experience were something terrible and confused, like seeing ten men hacked to pieces by vampires, or seeing a film of a little boy getting his tongue pulled out, or coming through what we came through since we landed on Aptor, as well as something calm and ordered, like the beach and the sea. Now, why would he want to kill someone simply because he might have gone through what amounts, I guess, to the basic religious experience?”

  “You picked just the right word.” Iimmi smiled. “Jordde was a novice in the not-too-liberal religion of Argo. Jordde and Snake had probably been through nearly as much on Aptor as we had. And they survived. And they also emerged from that jungle of horror onto that great arching rhythm of waves and sand. And they went through just what you and I and Argo went through. Little Argo, I mean. And it was just at that point when the blind priestesses of Argo made contact with Jordde. They did so by means of those vision screens we saw them with, which can receive sound and pictures from just about anyplace, but can also project at least sound to just about anywhere too. In other words, right in the middle of this religious or mystic or whatever you want to call it experience, a voice materialized out of thin air that claimed to be the voice of the Goddess. Have you any idea what this did to his mind?”

  “I imagine it took all the real significance out of the whole thing,” Geo said. “It would for me.”

  “It did,” said Iimmi. “Jordde wasn’t what you’d call stable before that. If anything, this made him worse. It also stopped his mental functioning from working in the normal way. And Snake, who was reading his mind at the time, suddenly saw himself watching the terrifying sealing-up process of a more or less active and competent, if not healthy, mind. He saw it again in Urson, slower this time. But the same thing. It’s apparently a pretty stiff thing to watch from the inside. That’s why he stopped reading Urson’s thoughts. The idea of stealing the jewels for himself was slowly eating away the balance, the understanding, the ability to reconcile disparities, like the incident with the blue lizard; things like that, all of which were signs we didn’t see. Snake contacted Hama by telepathy, almost accidentally. But Hama’s information about the aims of the blind priestesses, to get the jewels for themselves, was something to hold on to for the boy: the second part of his impulse to serve Hama, the first part being the awful thing that had happened to Jordde’s mind at contact with the blind priestesses.”

  “Still, why did Jordde want to kill anybody who had experienced this, voice of God and all?”

  “Because Jordde had by now managed to do what a static mind always does. Everything became equivocated with everything else. The situation, the beach, the whole thing suddenly meant for him the revelation of a concrete God. He knew that Snake had contacted something also, something wh
ich the blind priestesses told him was thoroughly evil, an enemy, a devil. On the raft, on the boat, he religiously tried to ‘convert’ Snake, till at last, in evangelical fury, he cut the boy’s tongue out with the electric generator and the hot wire the blind Priestess had given him before he left. Why did he want to get rid of anybody who had seen his beach, a place sacred to him by now? One, because the devils were too strong and he didn’t want anybody else possessed by them; Snake had been too much trouble resisting conversion. And two, because he was jealous that someone else might have that moment of exaltation and hear the voice of the Goddess also.”

  “In other words, he thought what happened to him and Snake was something supernatural, actually connected with the beach itself, and didn’t want it to happen to anybody else.”

  “That’s right.” Iimmi sat on the bunk’s edge. “Which is sort of understandable. They didn’t come in contact with any of the technology of Aptor, and so it might well have seemed that way.”

  Geo leaned back. “I can see how the same thing almost…almost might have happened to me. If everything had been the same.”

  Geo closed his eyes. Snake came down and took the top bunk; and when Geo slept, Snake told him of Urson, of his last thoughts, and surprisingly, things he mostly knew, about hate, a lot of hate, and about love.

  —

  Emerging from the forecastle the next morning, bright sunlight fell across his face. He had to squint. When he did so, he saw her sitting cross-legged on the stretched canvas tarpaulin in one of the suspended lifeboats.

  “Hi up there,” he called.

  “Hi down there. How are you feeling?”

  Geo shrugged.

  Argo slipped her feet over the gunwale and, with paper bag in hand, dropped to the deck. She bobbed up next to his shoulder, grinned, and said, “Hey, come on back with me. I want to show you something.”

  “Sure.” He followed her.

  “I bet you must be looking forward to school,” she said as they walked. “You and Iimmi might turn up in some of the same classes, now that you know each other.”