by Phillip Mann
So the minutes ricked by and became hours and the hours stretched into days and the Nightingale became frantic.
I stayed outside the ship with my intercom switched off to still its voice. I sat atop the Nightingale, stone-faced like an Indian chief of old Mother Earth, waiting.
The time for our optimum departure passed. When I entered the Nightingale to sleep, that machine screamed at me. Logic without love is a damned conjunction. I recharged the batteries of my small anti-grav unit while the Nightingale demanded that I settle in my couch and prepare for acceleration. I overrode with an act of will for I was still Commander of the Nightingale and I was still a field living entity and the Nightingale could not choose but obey.
But though my authority was absolute, the Nightingale's obedience was only temporary and it began again, telling the minutes as they slipped past and the changes in the probability of our escape.
I placed a limit on my waiting. I told the Nightingale that I would not contemplate attempting to depart until our odds of success had declined to 50:50.
On the sixth day we reached the moment of 51:49 and I heard the Nightingale begin to warm the engines. We had planned our departure as follows. We would lift as far as we could using the anti-gravity system. This system, not being designed to heave a spaceship into space and in any case being damaged, would bum out at a certain point. We could not know exactly when. But when it did, we would feed ad power to our emergency rockets and trust to luck. Our aim was to achieve just sufficient velocity to get us into a safe orbit from which we could begin to negotiate a space/time shift with the STGs.
And still I delayed. The Nightingale became wild.
I sat outside the ship looking toward the sea while the night gathered. I felt the grief of the abandoned.
And in the evening it seemed to me that I saw a stipple on the ocean. The moon sprang up and I saw, unmistakably, the vast creature rise from the sea and begin to drift toward us. I stood on the top of the Nightingale waving.
It arrived swiftly and silently and blood-red. Several eyes bobbed around me. Dramatically I pointed to myself and then up to the sky where the first stars were already twinkling. A tendril lifted and offered to support me. The creature thought I wanted a ride. I made the negative sign quickly and then indicated both myself and the Nightingale and again pointed up to the stars.
It understood. The eyes withdrew and looked at me steadily. Slowly the entire widespread creature gathered and then anchored on the hills. The tendrils gripped the shrubs and rocks. In the dying light of the sunset Chi-da was gathered like a wave, frozen at the point of breaking. It filled half the sky. Ad its hundreds of eyes came to the front and stared at us.
I waved, a gesture which could have no meaning, and I felt my throat hurt when I saw a single tendril rise and imitate my gesture. Then I lowered to the entrance hole which led to my rooms.
The Nightingale was intoning the odds as I stripped off my survival suit in the control room.
“Ad right,” I called. “We’re leaving. Let’s give it our best shot. Perhaps we’d crash. Who cares? We do the best we can. OK?”
For answer the Nightingale began a countdown. The anti-grav units were coming alive, the rocket units were primed. Within the bio-crystalline system, light was flowing. The countdown was as old as space travel itself, perhaps as old as human anticipation. It entered its final phase.
10, 9, 8 . . .
I made myself as comfortable as I could. In the viewscreen I could see the dark shape of Chi-da and the bank of eyes staring at us.
7,6,5...
The Nightingale began to shake. I imagined the anti-grav units flexing their power and asserting their lift, sensing the different structures within the ship and points of pressure. Already the Nightingale would be experiencing torque and compression. Would it hold?
4, 3 2 . . .
There was a shouting in my ears. The dead companions and Medoc whom I had killed, were there outside the ship chanting their farewell and I shouted my goodbye.
1 . . .
I felt sick. As the anti-grav units gripped deep, the entire ship became a force field. I felt us lurch and lift. The acceleration pulled at my hair and beard and I felt the sides of my mouth tear. We were climbing. I saw the nearby hills slide down the screen. I saw Chi-da detach and rise with us. We were ahead of calculation and the anti-grav units were straining to incandescence. The vibration grew. I heard a bumping. We were straining. . .
. . . and suddenly ad movement ceased.
And then we began to fad . . .
WULFNOTE
At this moment Wilberfoss became awake. The hypnotic hold had broken. He stared at me blankly and then began to howl.
25 Savagery
WULFNOTE
I will begin by quoting the exact words from my file notes made on the day of Wilberfoss most violent outburst.
Wilberfoss is become bland. He reminds me of the man who arrived here last year. He is passive but aware. A clam would be more interesting. He has not spoken to either Lily or myself since his last waking up.
I have tried the hypnotic words but they do not work anymore. Lily will have to set more words in his psyche but given his present state, that may take time.
Lily lets him wander. That surprises me, for to my non-medical but pondering mind, he seems in a state of mute distress. I think that now more than ever he may try to do himself harm. I have expressed my fears to Lily and she agrees. But she reasons as follows: Wilberfoss is healthy in body. Medoc and I have brought him self-awareness. If he wishes to cure himself he can. If he does not wish to cure himself, there is now nothing any of us can do. It must be up to Wilberfoss. “Of what avail,” she says in her quaint way, “would it be to keep the healthy animal in a state of coma?” And I suppose I agree. But it is not easy to watch. We have come so far. We are so close. What ads him?
I realize that I have the rationalist's, perhaps the historian’s, desire to find ends and causes, shapes and meanings. But life is not like that, is it, you humans? I realize that tragedy is a human invention, to give shape to your experience: meaning to your chaos. Beyond tragedy there is only the incandescent present, illuminating everything, or the vacancy of death. If I were you I would think that Wilberfoss is a lesson in tragic waste. But no matter.
Spring is come to the garden. Wherever you turn there is blossom. The dartwing are already nesting in the eaves of the hospital and are very noisy. I have seen lizards sunning themselves on the stonework and slowly waking up. Round the Pectanile there is a veritable carpet of flowers. Yesterday the smell of the sea was very strong in the garden.
Wilberfoss wanders like one of the dead. I doubt there will be any more joy from him today than yesterday.
For this afternoon I shad take a chance and depart the Poveredo Garden and visit Tancredi. I want to bring him up to date on what is happening. Though he still rails against Wilberfoss I have managed to show him that that man is largely innocent of wrong-doing. While somewhat premature, my finding is that the Magistri who appointed him must look to their own procedures.
But yet there is more.
Thus ends my file note. Now let me tell you what happened on that special day.
At quarter-past-four in the afternoon, as I was taking dictation, I received a cad from Lily asking me to come back to the garden quickly. Tancredi drained his wine glass hurriedly and sent me on my way.
I swung out wide over the sea as I dived down to the garden. Lily was calling at the time and I was able to pinpoint her position. I dived down through the trees some two hundred yards from the Pectanile and followed the river and came to the place where the formal garden merges into the wild Talline wood. There the river passes over rapids. There are deep hollows and places where the trees, widow and gosstang, hang over and trail in the stream. It was to this place that Wilberfoss had come.
Lily was in the river. She was half-submerged in the tumbling water. She was in no danger. Lily could charge about submerged if she had
to.
She spoke to me as I descended. “Wilberfoss says he’d n’er move, till that th’art here.” And only then, as I moved slowly between the banks and under the branches, did I see him.
He was perched on a rock. He was naked. And yet I hardly recognized him. He was daubed like a savage.
Let me tell it to you simply.
He was streaming with blood. He had a knife. He had sliced his forehead and cheeks. He had cut down the lines of his shoulder muscles and along the backs of his arms. He had cut down his chest and then outward following the lines of the ribs. He had savaged his back into ugly wounds. He had cut his thighs and calves and the tops of his feet. But there is more.
Perched on the rock and crouching, he defecated into his hands. Then he began rubbing his feces into his wounds. He was smearing himself. He mixed shit with blood.
He saw me but did not see me. He looked through me but yet he spoke. “O Wulf,” he howled. “Damn you. Damn you and Medoc. Damn ad of you.”
I spoke to Lily privately. “Why have you not stunned him?”
“He has cut out the cache. Now if I try to reach him he will run away. You must speak to him.”
There was nothing I could say. Nothing I could do but watch. What words can be used before such self-abuse? I waited.
He sat crouched for a long time, staring. He was hunched down on the flats of his feet, his arms thrust forward and resting on his knees as though waiting for pain or punishment.
Of course nothing happened. The river gurgled. Birds sang. Branches creaked. Shadows moved. Ad about us life and time continued. Lily and I waited and watched. What did he expect?
Eventually he stood. The blood had dried and clotted and was indistinguishable from the excrement. He turned and jumped down from the rock on the side of the stream away from Lily. He broke through the screen of bushes and turned to his left and began to run. I rose and followed him.
He was making his way toward the main gate. He broke through a fence and jumped over a small tributary of the main river. He stumbled and fed there and for a moment was on his knees in the mud; but then he clambered up the bank and ran on. He crossed a small vegetable patch that was in the care of the gate warden and came to the carved screen which marked the entry into the garden.
Here he paused, his arms resting against the screen and his head on his arms. The gate warden came out of his hut, saw him and immediately departed inside again. Wilberfoss lifted and ran on. He went around the screen and through the gate and came to the statue of St Francis Dionysos. He sheltered his face from the statue and ran past it and up the hill and turned right. He came to the arcade where he had lived with Medoc and there he paused.
There were many people about and they stared at this naked madman and moved away from him. He must have smelled too. People saw me trailing him and no one interfered.
Wilberfoss ran back down the arcade and turned up the path he had followed so many months earlier, the path that led up to Tancredi’s small house at the height of the Monastery. He was weakening and staggered. I was amazed he lasted so long. Occasionally he stopped and gasped and then plunged on, driving himself up the steep hill. He approached the headland and the balcony called Temptation.
Many of the Children of the War had gathered there and now stood banging their stones, blocking the way. How had they known to gather? There were several junior members of the Gentle Order and the Bursar. I was also surprised to see Tancredi. He must have decided to set out for an exercise walk. It was little more than an hour since I had left him. Perhaps he was hurrying down to the Poverello Garden having gathered that something was wrong.
Everyone drew back as Wilberfoss approached.
Wilberfoss saw Tancredi and with a despairing cry ran toward the narrow raid which guarded the edge of the path and threw himself over. He vanished downward immediately. Everyone clustered to the raid but I flew high and then swooped. I dropped faster than a stone and when Wilberfoss hit the water in a tangle of arms and legs, I was there to support him when he bobbed, open mouthed and gasping, to the surface.
I could not lift him but I could support him. Within minutes a Talline boat rounded the headland and came skimming toward us. Wilberfoss was dragged aboard and by gasping in the swill of brine and sand and shells at the bottom of the boat.
The seamen lost no time. They pulled on the oars and the boat turned and quickly carried him to the wharf near the entry to the Poveredo Garden.
Lily was waiting. She took him, cold and fatigued and bleeding from his cuts, into her iron womb and trundled back into the garden under the watchful eye of St. Francis Dionysos. She did not make the traditional pause.
Let me make this clear. Wilberfoss was conscious during ad of this. He stared at me as I held him above the waves. He stared at the thick-fingered Tallines who hoisted him from the sea. He stared at the Children of the War who had come running down to see him landed at the wharf. He stared at Lily as she received him and he stared at the statue of St. Francis Dionysos as he bumped past it and entered the Poveredo Garden.
Lily took him straight back to her small hospital, to the room where he had been living since his return to the Pacifico Monastery months earlier. Little over forty minutes had elapsed since he had escaped from the garden.
I came to them there later having paused for a few minutes to talk to Tancredi. Wilberfoss was sitting still and Lily was washing him. He was cleaner for his dip in the sea but many of his cut marks had opened. Lily mopped and cleaned and dressed. I settled close, resting my large helmet frame on the ground for my energy cells were greatly overtaxed and in need of time to recharge.
“Do you wish to talk to me now?” I asked, and he nodded. “Very wed. Begin,” I said. As you gather, I was in no state to trifle. “Do you need hypnotic assistance?” Wilberfoss shook his head. He began to speak.
Wilberfoss’s Narrative
So the Nightingale was lifting, riding on its anti-grav units, and I felt a great surge of hope. At the same time, I was aware that I was heading into the unknown and was leaving the only creature that had ever come to me with a selfless interest. Chi-da. The name means “Great Breath.” “Great inspiration.”
Then we faltered. The acceleration died away. The fierce grip of the planet began to assert itself. I wondered why the Nightingale did not immediately fire the rockets. I thought that it was preoccupied with calculation. I thought it had over-estimated its own residence.
And even as I was wondering and preparing myself for a fed that would simply be a conclusion, I felt the Nightingale shake and then, unmistakably, begin to rise again. The viewscreens showed me nothing. They were completely occluded.
I called out to the bio-crystalline brain of the Nightingale to tell me what was happening. I demanded to know if it had fired the rockets.
There was no reply for a moment and then came the Nightingale's calm voice whispering. “Commander Wilberfoss. The anti-gravity generators have failed and I have released what I can of their weight...”
“Then what. . . ?”
“The escape rockets have not yet been fired. We are at present in the grip of the alien life-form with which you have been communicating, that you cad Chi-da. It is lifting us at an acceleration un-hoped for. It has us gripped. . .” (pause.) “We are approaching the atmospheric limit of the planet.” Pause. “We do not yet have escape velocity.” (pause.) “We must fire the emergency rockets.”
“Can’t you fire them?”
“I need your order.”
“Why, for God’s sake?”
“Because when the rockets are fired they will kid the life-form that is lifting us. We will tear through it. We are approaching the critical limit. I cannot kid. I need your order.” Pause. Then . . .
“Escape limit in 5 seconds.” It began to count.
“4 seconds “3 seconds “2 seconds”
“FIRE”
I screamed the word and the Nightingale, ready and waiting, obeyed. The acceleration was like a punch in
the back. We leaped away from that planet with a roar and in so doing we ripped through the thin fabric of the creature that had saved us. We tore it apart. The viewports cleared and I saw parts of it slither past. Those cameras that were looking downward showed me the creature in tatters. Parts of it were exploding, parts were burning, the rest was falling down to the gray sea. We had tom through the body of the most beautiful creature I had ever known. Again I had killed but this time there could be no forgiveness . . .
I have done this. Me. Wilberfoss, the lover of life, the giver. I have done this. And now the truth is told . . .
. . . and not told. For the deepest truth is that I found pleasure in the destruction. The killing had relish. That is the terrible truth I have tried to hide from. And now it is in the open. The murderer was not expulsed. The beast by the river was not tamed.
Ad my life I had wanted to be the selfless giver, and at the moment of crisis I was found wanting. It gave up its life so that I could live . . . but I killed it. I killed it. And the killing had relish. I do not deserve to live. There can be no forgiveness. Close your book. I have faded in my deepest ideal and there is no health in me.
Wilberfoss railed on in this matter for several minutes and then finally became still. His last words were, “You should have let me die.”
26 The Men Comes Home
WULFNOTE
So there it was, set out in four little words: “The Killing had Relish.” The great truth that he had been unable to face was that he, Jon Wilberfoss, who had set himself such high standards for his love of life, had discovered the killer in him. Pipping off the mask of St. Franics Dionysos he had discovered the grim face of Achides. I am sure the revelation is altogether more subtle than that, but that is its broad outline. He had destroyed beauty and life. He refused to face that truth and hence his agony. And yet there is more. Wilberfoss had met, and experienced at first hand, a selfless giver. He could not be ignorant of the fact that the creature which he calls Chi-da knew exactly what it was doing. It knew that it would be destroyed. It made a conscious sacrifice: its life for his. When Wilberfoss called “Fire” he accepted that sacrifice. He need not now accept the guilt. It is ad to do with Yes and No. Wilberfoss felt crushed by the knowledge that he had elected No at a crisis in his life. It was my job to make him see that his No was ready a triumphant YES and that if he so chose he could now build on to greatness. Let me affirm that if Wilberfoss had been able to cast aside his guilt he would have become the true man to captain a ship like the Nightingale. The Nightingale would have multipded his qualities a hundredfold.