But some who remembered made the great circuit and found their home in a power-place of bare desert lands, where all their strength of the open door was needed for the evocation of rain. And through the centuries they waited there for the return of their brothers.
So, now it comes to pass that I stand on a mesa-top and I dance, for I know the time is due, and past due, yet my dance is full of foreboding, for White Brother in particular is late in returning, having got himself into all sorts of trouble along the way.
Yet I dance, feathered staff in hand, I dance to the wind and the earth, the fire and the rain, but still the horizon’s empty.
No, look!
Clouds of dust arising from the four quarters!
I hear a rumbling that is not a sound I ever wanted to hear, and now I see great hosts approaching, converging, appearing out of the dust in all their flashing might and pride, with marching bands and millions in rank, their weapons gleaming and their generals prancing in front, and behind them a great sea of sweating weary enslaved hordes who carry piles of broken things, their eyes blank and fearful, and I see some so mad at their imprisonment that they break out completely, setting up other poor states in which nobody must be any different from anyone else, By Order! And my dance grows more despondent still, for the forgetting of the Few is a curse on the Many, and the slaves who are left are herded against possible breakout by ranting preachers and dog police and flying machines that spray black poison behind them, forcing them ever onwards, nullifying every effort to create and remember, for even amid the madness of these hosts there are brave attempts to open up the door again.
In accordance with the plan I go down and lay out the sacred cornmeal in welcome.
I stand and await their leader with my hand held out. The one they call leader comes forward, and his face seems young but his eyes have night of death in them and his door is completely shut; and he has forgotten everything but the mirror in which he admires himself, for he does not shake my hand at all but, with guns pointed at me by his guards behind, he gives me a trinket!
Chaos! Bloodlust! The red haze throbs! Machines digging up the land! My dance is grown frantic! We dance to strange songs! I see lightning-visions of falling forests, broken hoops, deformed children, blue men striding the flashing thunder-sky—turbulence, confusion, again that terrible invisible white light; the tremendous dance of energy as things are returned to their matrix for remoulding.
Darkness overwhelms everything.
Amid the night in the wake of this my vision I undertake a journey far to the east, to another sea; I paddle out through mud-choked waters to a sea of weed where I await what dream has showed me, and it comes and seizes me in its whirlpool, into a madness—
Now the dust clears, slowly, and as it lifts I find myself here in an indeterminate place, my soul a coiling redness, but all around me the forms of folk approaching—I see Utak, Azurara, Herbie, Tari, all of us, without our suits, as we are already if only we’d look up; and I see light flowing up the axis of five whirling spheres, from crimson to emerald, gold, violet and beyond into incandescence: I see Utak and Azurara meeting again, this time shaking hands; losing moronface and monkeyface and becoming fully human, bright and light with open doors, and hear a voice: “Falling fools may arise wise!”
And now a long journey, to learn how to dance all this.
Later I return to Humf, at Horsfield, amazed.
We had no more argument that night. Next day Director Piggot called us all into the chapel and gave us a lecture on how we must behave or all be shut up in solitude. The sheepish meekness of our conduct in the next few days no doubt persuaded him that we were impressed by his threat. In fact we were in a kind of shock. After Masanva’s vision those of us in Circle were like dazed children partly awoken from a squabble. The rest, who did not directly share in the image-making, picked the new mood up from us. But our distemper was not automatically banished. Still we had no idea what Masanva was doing, nor Tari; there was lingering resentment at Big Daddy’s blast, particularly among our Moderns; and it was almost a week before Utak and Azurara actually did shake hands, the peace-formula being that Utak admitted he’d expected too much and Azurara admitted he’d seen too little.
It was Othoon and his fate that completed the process of binding us. For, with daily degradation of suits and untouchability continuing, even as Hyperia fell sick and we remained low with no ulterior purpose for Circle yet introduced, the Irishman decided to join us—and just in time. Masanva’s vision was potent but hardly optimistic.
But Othoon found our situation laughable.
Came the night his mad humour burst brilliantly through us, as if out of nowhere. Yes, there’d been that ghost of a laugh at Masanva’s high vision, and once or twice, when casting about at the edge of Circle, I’d felt a… tickle of… someone slyly watching and laughing, and others had felt the same, and we had wondered about the Gael.
I had asked Ernstein, and he had frankly said:
“I’m afraid you won’t meet him. He’s in no fit state.”
So, we met him in Circle. At first I found his images incomprehensible. They were an endless interplay that tumbled grotesquely with each other, making no apparent sense at all. But soon, finding his rhythm, as it were, we began to realise the deliberate nature of his tomfoolery and madcap poetry. I cannot hope to represent it well, but here’s something of what it summoned up in me:
I am Othoon of the Dobharan Folk
Child of Danu, warrior of my people
Poet and fool, I have seen everything
The invisible ones were on my side
I had free entry to the faery-mounds
I have seen ages in the glass
I have been with Abraham and Cuchulain
I have been born many times in many lands
I have been a boar, a buck, a bird, a fish
I have been a boy, I have been a girl,
I have been black and white and both together
And I have been up and down and in between
There is no where or shape I have not been
There is no taste I have not tasted
No weariness I have not known
No passing stone I left unturned
No passing wench I left untupped
No passing coin I did not spin
No skill I could not master
For Mighty Lugh gave me a hundred hands
Great Manannan gave me many shapes of mist
Beautiful Brigit gave me charm and beauty
For I am Othoon the Poet, the Bard
I have joked a million jokes
I have riddled a million riddles
I have cast a million spells of words
And turned a million sober tables
When the King of Munster insulted me
I raised foul boils upon his face
When Ulster’s Queen refused to pay me
Her lovers’ staffs all crumpled
When rogues of Leinster scorned me
They lost their wits and babbled
And laughed until they cried instead
And begged me, let them die for peace!
And called me bard without compare!
But their crawling did not please me
I stole a cheese and a sweet young girl
When the Hawthorn month was done
I took to sea to find new jokes
Being bored with what I knew
I cast a spell of words before me
To set a wind upon my sail
To take us fair and far away
To the Isles of Earthly Paradise
To the Isles that stand on legs
To the Isles where nothing dies
Where all is music, mirth and mead
Ah!—I knew I’d find them,
Manannan helped!
For first the fog and then the storm
Then the fire that burned the sea
Then the abyss of burning nothing
In which I raved and
flamed and roared
And laughed and heard the Gods all laugh
Then sea again, I was laughing still
The monster took me, I joked its jaws
The Americans have me, I laugh—haha!
They want me to speak, I laugh—haha!
I sit in this room and laugh at myself
And I laugh at your arguments every night
For your fears are foolish
And your ferment is flat
And every day I see you stumbling Outside
Like fish out of water, gasping and goggling
I giggle and gobble
At your gasping and goggling
And I gaggle and gasp
When the doctors come in
I roll my eyes and grunt and groan—haha!
I gibble and gobble and gaggle and gasp!
I can do no justice to the wildness of his laughing, which grew wilder as the doctors tried ever more desperately to get some of old Ireland out of him and into their dissertations. He would not help. On and on he laughed and gabbled in some unknown Goidelic dialect; they could make no more sense of him than they could of Masanva. They tried to persuade Diarmaid to speak with him, but Diarmaid would not. They tried to hypnotise him, but he raved on—I don’t know what they didn’t try: they regarded the poor man as a “challenge,” and would not leave him alone. The pressure was increased: the mad luxuriance of his imagery increased likewise as his condition became ever more desperate. We tried to help, to send him our images, but he thought us as absurd as the doctors and himself and all the world, he gabbled on ever more wildly until he gabbled his way into a fatal fit, and though at the end his raving seemed to be but raving, some of his final images struck and have lain in my mind ever since—
…there’s no way from misery if you’re in a fuddybluddyblackymuddy. They’ve got you by the bawls all gut-tied and trouncied! Life’s a short abort but we blackbrain buoys bob up, bob up, bob up! Even if Mymannan with his Big Mac Leer pineals us all to his whatevery bedlocks in the fourgatten cities fool fathom deep on the tyresome sidon the mind, we bob up, bob up, bob up and keep on laughing—hahahahaha! Morriganmorrigan! Brrrrrr! Why fear the Dark Queen? She’ll help me break walls! I’ll go to her laughing while you fools groan and I’ll bob up, bob up, for I’m her child and I’ll be born again!
So suddenly he died amid a fit they could not stop or treat, and next day Hyperia went too, wasted away. We were all utterly low, and dared not mention Othoon’s name aloud, nor that we knew he was dead—for they did not tell us. We moped aimlessly. But then the day that Hyperia died Masanva broke silence and announced his purpose to some of us on the volleyball-court. Without preamble he came and said:
“I am the Dancer. I have come to dance the Unmasking. When the Brightness shines too bright, the Dance will be danced and the Mask removed and the Gourd will be filled with ashes. When the world is quiet again, the ashes will be spread on the ruined fields and barren deserts. There will be a new fertility, for Life cannot be stopped!”
Only hours later, that night, having pondered all this without understanding any of it, I was in my room reading in Time magazine about what had happened at Damascus, Arkansas, when Tari, who’d been unobtrusive for weeks, surprised all Circle with a new image:
ESCAPE! ESCAPE! ESCAPE!
21. How Common Ground Planned Escape
Yes, and we so decided, and wove spells over the minds of our captors, and nine of us left Horsfield during the early minutes of Christmas Day, 1984. Four of us left on a flying carpet, and the other five on the back of a giant bird.
No, not quite.
The scheme we developed was utterly prosaic, though it did involve persuading the Institute staff that we were deeply and laudably immersed in the creation of a new religion appropriate to our situation. Principally we depended on planning, deception, precise timing and coordination, and a large measure of that essential quality which, in Common Ground terminology, we coded as Seven—though I preferred then, and still in many ways prefer now, to call it Luck.
We were in September by this time. The entire business took us three months. On the surface life went on during these months much as it had before, with our daily routines of eating and sleeping and being tested, treated, and questioned continually, with cameras on us and microphones to hear what we said to each other in our suits—but from here on I speak of Institute life only where it touches on our escape, for there’s much still to tell, and in my thinking now I’m anxious to be out of Horsfield as quick as possible, to marry past with present and bring it through the best I can.
ESCAPE? I hadn’t even thought of it. The image startled me when it came. It was of bars being bent, a wall bulging out and collapsing, dim figures running off unseen on a dark and moonless night—and it was signed by the raven-haired face of Mery-Isis.
Yes, a sad day, with Hyperia and Othoon both gone—but odd, too, with Masanva speaking his piece as casually as another might speak of the weather. His unfathomable eyes had gleamed on each of us, then he’d turned away, leaving us staring, not knowing what to think or say. In fact none of us spoke: what could you say? What did he mean by the Brightness shining too bright, by the Mask being removed and the Gourd being filled with ashes? Ernstein wondered too: as I ate supper in my room he’d entered and asked what Masanva had said. I shrugged. “He told us he’s a dancer,” I said through a mouthful of half-cooked potato, “and that there’s going to be a new world.”
“Oh. Is that all?”
“I didn’t understand what he meant.”
Ernstein gave me a suspicious look, but said no more. After he left I had a bath, then sat down to read Time magazine. We were encouraged to read Time, Newsweek, and the rest of them, which I did infrequently, for they made little sense to me. On the cover of this Time was a lurid mushroom-cloud, and below it, in bold black letters, the legend: DAMASCUS, ARKANSAS. I scanned the articles within. They were all about the recent “Broken Arrow” nuclear disaster in Damascus, Arkansas. Many people were dead and more were expected to die. It made no sense: I put the magazine aside as the sleep-voice began its evening drone, telling me how Russian interventionism in the western hemisphere had to be… when suddenly, this image of ESCAPE!
It surprised all of us, except Mery-Isis and Masanva.
I breathed deep, turned down the light, composed myself as if for sleep in bed. My heart beat hard. Escape? How? To what? Damascus, Arkansas? The entire Circle was similarly excited. Question-images swirled so raggedly I couldn’t tell which were mine and which came from others. Then out of the confusion came a detailed, sarcastic image, evidently from a Modern, for it had a clear picture of the Outside world. It showed three obvious DTI fugitives—shaven, in jumpsuits and immunity-suits, blundering in flight along a city street past people ignoring them, policemen looking the other way, soldiers shooting each other instead. Then a (???)—and Duck-in-a-Pond.
Tari replied with this even more startling proposition:
Three DTIs take off their immunity-suits and jumpsuits. They don Modern clothes and breathe unsterilised air.
This caused some consternation.
I sent image of these unprotected DTIs Outside; reeling, choking, collapsing. I added signature: my hand on gleaming brass astrolabe.
Reaction came from several people at once:
Scales, a Balance, a Weighing-of-Risks: Coningham.
Running naked and free on a moonlit beach: ***LUCIE***
Disdainful wave of a hand: a So-What from Utak.
A (???) followed by ass-ears listening.
Conspiratorial image of Tari studying unrolled PLAN OF ESCAPE with other DTIs all gathered round.
(???) again, followed by Duck-in-a-Pond.
That was the start. Coningham came up with an idea involving the midnight shift of Institute workers; Masanva pictured his scheme for Common Ground and its code. It became clear that he and Tari had worked on this for some time. I found it hard to sleep that night. For how was it possibl
e? Even if we could develop the code and all else that Masanva suggested, even if some of us could escape, what was the point? How long could we live Outside, and to what purpose?
In fact for some nights I and others thought it no more than a ploy produced by Tari and the Dancer to persuade our minds out of depression, and I could hardly take it seriously. But then, about a week later, I caught pneumonia, and nearly died.
I would have died if not for Circle. I was in a coma. The doctors tried to plant something in me. A THING. I don’t know what it was, but I have strange and horrid dream-memories. The Circle drove this THING away even as I was about to give in to it. I seemed to be drowning. They took me on a boat to an isle with a garden and a well. They gave me pure water to drink. I slept, and awoke recovered… and after that I was very ardent for escape! Where there’s life there’s hope, in any sort of world… and a slim chance is better than none.
Ernstein was diffident with me after my recovery.
As soon as we knew that some of us were in earnest, the problems began. Circle was in ferment for the next two months.
Who wanted to go? Who dared go? Should Moderns get precedence because of greater immunity? Who outside Circle should be told of it via code? Who should be told nothing at all? How to be sure of each other and ourselves, that we were truly ready to risk it, and unlikely to panic at the critical moment? If anyone talked because of drugs, hypnosis, sickness or force, how should the others react? What about clothes, money, accents, baldness, medical supplies, information about Outside? Time and television didn’t tell us what lay immediately beyond the gates. Checkpoints? Electronic scanners? Searches of the outgoing bus? Details of the surrounding countryside?
Little by little we learned what we needed to know, mostly by asking innocent questions. Much of what we learned did not cheer us, and some who had at first been enthusiastic grew depressed as the realities of the situation became apparent.
Yet by the end of October it was clear that at least six were set on it, with another half-dozen willing to try it. The spirit grew, and would not be stopped. The specific plan developed. The pie was put in the oven. And on Christmas Eve we brought it out. And this is how it tasted:
Fire in the Abyss Page 22