Bright Segment

by Theodore Sturgeon

  And at last I squat in the corner of that beastly smile, and all the hate I have ever known pours out of my arms and into the flailing of the shield. Edge and edge, flat and edge again, I belabor that viscid mound just back of my perch. It yields slowly, and at first I must work with my face but an arrow-length away; I feel it is burning me, filling me with a brutal and primitive madness that surely must turn my brain into what one finds in a dryrotted chestnut. But then it ceases to be, and is no more, and surely no less horrid than any part of the beast.

  How long this pounding? I know not … but at length pain reaches it, and a convulsion such as should be impossible to anything so ponderous. My handhold disappears; there is a moment of strangling and a moment of crushing weight, a blow precisely where, earlier, my forehead struck the shield. And then I am thrashing in shallows on black rock, my legs tangled with the limp neck of the hippogriff.

  The anchor of the Princess’s leg-shackle grinds my small ribs; I shift away from it, clutch it between arm and side, and lock my legs about the neck of the hippogriff, lest his body be swept out to sea. Water runs and runs, tugs and cascades off the rock, and for a long time my sky is full of black specks shifting and twinkling. But I will not let go.

  When the tugging stops, I raise my head. The water is back to something like normal. More than half the hippogriff’s body is aground. The rock is completely free of litter—the last cascade having swept it clear. Out at sea stands a new mountain: I think it is dead now. It is sinking, ever so slowly, or sliding down some age-old chute it has worn in the ocean floor.

  “Rogero—”

  I kick free of the hippogriff’s heavy neck and head, and crawl to her.

  “Princess!”

  “Thou art bravest of knights.”

  “Nay, Angelica,” I mumble. “I am neither brave, nor a knight. I must free thee.”

  “A simple matter.”

  “Ay, had I his strength,” and I nod to the dead hippogriff.

  “Mourn him not, Rogero,” says the Princess. “Thee stayed by him as he died, and thee will be rewarded.”

  “Then must we wait on another hippogriff to strike thy chains?”

  “No. The ring, Rogero; take off the ring.”

  I stumble up the slope to her shackled hand, and take the ring, while she says, “It is a greater amulet, possibly, than thee knows. I was seeking it when I was shipwrecked here; I never thought to see it again; to have it brought to me makes thee part of a miracle.”

  “See it again? It is thine?”

  “It was stolen from my treasure house long ago, and has been on many hands. Its last use, so I was told in the north, was to be by a maiden who wished to free some dolt stupid enough to be entrapped by a magician and too stupid to break free. How came thee by it?”

  “It was … cast aside as worthless.” My ears burn. “Princess, I must free thee.”

  In her chains, she stretches lazily. “Whenever we like. These bonds mean nothing. Rogero, I am in thy debt.”

  “No, Princess, for I have seen thee. It is enough.”

  “Prettily said, and I believe thee.” And it seems she is amused. “Then do as I ask, and thee shall see a new power of the ring. Put the ring in my mouth.”

  I held it to her parted lips. “Thou art a sweet and somewhat slow-witted man,” she whispers. “Goodbye, Rogero.” She takes the ring.

  The shackles lie empty, and I crouch there over the black rock which pillowed her, my one hand extended, my mind awhirl at the nearness.…

  Nearness? She is gone!

  Ah, she might have told me of this magic before demonstrating it! Is the world and all its magics leagued against me? Has the universe itself been designed to make me out a fool? “Thou art a sweet and somewhat slow-witted man.” Aiee! I shall have that carved on my tomb!

  Slowly I mount the rock, and face the rocky spine leading to the mainland, to and through the barbarians; through mountains and hunger and poverty and illness; to aid and be aided along the way, until at last I have won what was given me and what, unearned, was cast aside; afoot, acrawl—to my destiny.

  “Are you quite all right, sir?”

  Now that, old Dean-head, is a question. The music is surf and feathers in all its upbeats, strictly society on the down: scherzophrenic. A hot, transparent, blue flame whuffs out, and suddenly that is a matter of supreme importance, though I can’t think why. Slowly I look up at him. “Me?”

  “It seemed for a second or two that you weren’t quite—with us, sir.”

  “A second or two,” I say, “that’s all it takes.” Now I remember: that blue flame on the jubilee tray is the one I was looking at when I went under, or other, or wherever Rogero keeps his world. Surely I know where that is! I look up again. Deans read books. “Listen, what do you know about Atlantes?”

  “Atlantis, sir?” This guy, you couldn’t ruffle him with a williwaw. “As I recall, it sank under the sea.”

  “No, Atlantes—a magician.”

  “Ah. I believe there was a necromancer of that name in Ariosto, somewhere.”

  I put an accurate forefinger on his second stud and push it triumphantly. “Orlando Furioso! So that’s it! Hey, do you remember what ever happened to Bradamante?”

  He puts his hands behind his back and looks at the wall meeting the ceiling. Good head on that man; splendid. “As I remember, sir, she married a knight—”

  “Ex-knight,” I say, and it hurts. “Also, good night.” I give him a whole heap of money and head out.

  “Good night, sir,” says the doorman.

  “Oh,” I say, “You. Hey, a girl about so high and so wide with a silver streak in her hair, she left here. How long ago?”

  He says he doesn’t recall so I give him some money. “About four minutes,” he says. “That way,” and points.

  “Only four?” I have something in me like a pain. “That way, you’re sure?”

  “You should be able to catch her,” he says. He closes his eyes and smiles. “Pretty.”

  “The Grand Canyon,” I say, “it’s cute too.” I run the way he points. It’s to the river.

  So it’s Orlando all this time, I think, and something has kept me from recognizing it. Atlantes and Bradamante, Angelica, princess of Cathay, the hippogriff and the Orc, all there. And what am I doing, acting it out? Atlantes kept Rogero from being a knight; some sort of magic keeps me from being a painter. Only nowadays they call it a neurosis.

  So where am I going in such a hurry?

  Got to save the Princess from the Orc. Orc, variant of urp, a real nauseating beast. Better I should go right back to the studio and mind my own business. Yes, that’s what Rogero kept telling himself. And he landed by the Princess anyway, no matter how his hippogriff laughed. Well laugh then, hippogriff. You’re not long for this world anyway.

  There she is!

  Walk now. Get your wind. See what happens to her. She’s chained naked on no rock yet. Or maybe she is … analogies being what they are …

  Now cut it out, Giles! You’re all right now. It’s all just a story you read and mooned over when you were a kid. There were others; but did you really live it up with “The Little Lame Prince”; did you referee that go between the firedrake and the remora in Andrew Lang’s book; did you feel the icicle pierce your heart in “Back of the North Wind”? So maybe your subconscious is trying to tell you something with Arisoto. Tell you what? To get religion? Or (and this is the idea that feels like pain) that you’re no more a painter than Rogero is a knight, in the long run … in spite of some initial successes?

  Go home, go home, and paint the way Miss Brandt wants you to. Go home now and your hippogriff will love you for it; yes, and live, whatever that might mean.

  But wait; Miss Brandt wants you to be a painter and Bradamante didn’t want Rogero to be a knight. My story doesn’t coincide with his; it just sort of resonates. All the more reason to get of here, Giles; go home. You’ve got all the money in the world; all the freedom, all the time to go anywhere and
do anything. Paint anything. You know what happened to Rogero, his hippogriff, and his magic ring—yes, and his shield too, when he let his bumbling chivalry override his derisive conscience. (Conscience? Since when can a conscience be as beautiful as a hippogriff?)

  So, go home. But look; look there, she has stopped at the River Road, and stands under a light, her gray silk gone all silver and the margins of her hair sinking a little over her slender shoulders as she raises her face to the sky. What is in that face? I can’t see, I can’t see … an appeal, a submission rather; such sadness as hers is past hope and therefore past appealing to anything.

  Princess, what is your rock, what your Orc? What comes, and you helpless; what shows itself without form, grows to fill the sky; what is impregnable, ironclad, and filthy, unspeakable? What fills your world and your short future, and proves at the same time that it shows only its slimy skull, and there is measurelessly more below?

  You don’t scream, Princess?

  You are only calm; but I have seen your tears.

  She crosses the road to the trees, and takes a path toward the water; so laugh, hippogriff. I’ll go to her.

  But she’s gone in the shadows: hurry, hurry—

  And there in a quiet place I come on her and, like Rogero on the black rock, I sip the vision; for to gulp it would be more than I could bear.

  There is a hole in the grove, an empty place by the water to let the night in. Part of a moon floats a train across the water to her as she sinks to a bench. Her head turns and tilts a little, as if to a footfall (does she hear me? Does she know there is more than her sadness in the world?) and she is completely in silhouette except for the single beam cupping a cheekbone, and the silver streak in her hair; with that small shard of cold white, the path on the water has a part of a moon at each end!

  And still more, just a little, her head turns, so her perfect profile lies in liquid moon; and now, if she turns only her eyes, she may see me. She does.

  “I knew you’d be around.” Her voice … a bell, a bird, a sound-unlike-sound … no. A voice, just a voice. Think about that, Giles; but not now.

  “May I … I mean …”

  “Sure,” she says, indicating the bench. “Why not?”

  I sit timidly at the other end of the bench, watching her as she stares out over the water. Her eyes are hooded and her face a chalice of sadness, brimming. And suddenly I know her Orc.

  Poverty can be the Orc. Poverty can be the monster visible and nearing, which comes slimy and stinking out of the pit to fill the sky and yet be showing only its smallest part. Poverty can come to one chained, disregard one’s station and one’s virtues, and take one at its leisure.

  Then I might be Rogero yet, for there is money in my pocket, neat, obedient, omnipotent money. Should I challenge her monster?

  She might be angry. (Angelica? Angry? No; she bade the knight leave her and save himself.)

  I look at her, and the sadness in her is greater than the money in my pocket. I see abruptly that my gesture would not anger her after all. She would simply pity me. My effort would be lost in her great need.

  Then I’ll share what I have. Half what I have is still, effectively, all the money there is.

  She is looking at the moon, so distant and so dead; she has the mark of distance and death upon her. Rogero offered no part of himself to his princess; he offered it all.

  All of it? I touch the lapel of the most expensive suit I have ever owned; good new money whispers under my hand of miles and years of color and startlement, tastes and textures and toys; all the things, the thrills I’ve never had because it took too much time to just be Giles.

  “I wish you wouldn’t stare like that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “Sorry.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  Only that when tomorrow’s sun comes to you, you might give back to it as much gladness as a daffodil. Just that by giving you all I ever owned, so new that my own hands have not touched it, you might never be afraid again. “Just that I’d like to … borrow your pen.”

  “My—well, I suppose.” She has it in her handbag; finds it and gives it to me.

  I take my elegant, one and final blue book, and crouching close in the moonlight, Giles, I write, Giles, and Giles, and Giles, until I’ve written on the bottom line of every perforated page.

  I hold it out to her with the pen. Here (I would say, but I cannot speak) here is all the magic I own, since I lost my shield. Here are my hooves and my talons. Here are my wings.

  “What’s this?”

  “Yours,” I croak. “I don’t want it. Any of it.”

  “God,” she says.

  She rises like the lily—but now, in the moonlight, more like a cereus—and looks at me. “You’re sure, now.”

  “Never more sure.”

  “I thought,” she says, “that you’d turn out to be a lot more fun than this.” And she throws the book into the river.

  I sit in a dream by the corpse of a dream. It grows cold. Loneliness lives in my very pores as sadness lives in her face. She is gone, the moon is gone, and something else has gone, too. I do not know its name but it once kept me warm.

  When she left, her leaving a completion of the absent gesture of throwing the book, I said nothing and I did not move; I am not sure that I really saw her leave.

  Rogero, I think, I need you. I wish I could have a word with you.

  For when you were stripped and alone, somewhere in yourself you found a way to travel, through wild countries, through poverty and sickness and hardship, certain that they would refine you for your destiny. You see, dear dopple, the twentieth-century man has no destiny; at least, he has no magicians to read it off for him, so he can never quite be sure. But take his amulets away, his spells and cantrips graven with the faces of dead presidents—and he’ll look over no mountains toward an unshakable faith. He’ll stare at nothing but his own terror.

  Rogero, the universe is indeed leagued together to make fools of us.

  I leave the bench and the river, not to be a pilgrim, but just to take my misery to familiar surroundings and wrap it up in weariness. And tomorrow I shall wake with the comfort—if such it is—that I am Giles and will continue to be Giles without the intrusion of Signor Ariosto’s parables. It had better be a comfort; I may even turn my staring white canvas to the wall, now that I think of it; I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to touch it.

  So I walk and I walk. And then up the long steps and down the long hall, fling open the door which unveils the dirty—

  But it isn’t a dirty bed, and I have one mad moment of childish panic; I have burst into the wrong place; and then I see the easel, the bright clean easel, and I know I am home.

  “I hope you don’t mind; the door was open, and I thought … so to keep myself busy while I waited, I—” She makes a smile, and tries harder and makes another, but smiles over hands which rapidly clasp and unclasp are unconvincing. “I’ll go,” says Miss Brandt, “but I wanted to tell you I think you did a splendid thing.”

  I look at the clean, shelved dishes and the drum-tight bedclothes, and my paints and brushes sensibly left untouched. But what impresses me is the unthinkable statement that I have done a splendid thing. I sit on the bed and look at her.

  “How did you ever find out?” she asks. “You weren’t to know, ever.”

  “I know a lot now,” I tell her. “What specially do you mean?”

  “About the money. Giving it back.”

  “I gave it away,” I admit. And, because it’s the truth, “I don’t call that so splendid.”

  “It was, if …” And then, as if she’s had the question held down tight and can’t control it any longer, she flashes a glance at the easel, and asks, “Does it mean you’ll paint again?”

  My eye follows hers and I shudder. She turns pale as the new light at the window. “Oh,” she says in a very small voice. “I—guess I’ve done the wrong thing.” She snatches up a shiny black pocketbook and runs to the do
or. But there’s a Giles standing there first, who pushes her back hard so she sits down—plump!—on the bed.

  I am tired and hurt and disappointed and I want no more wonderments. “You tell me all the things you’ve done, wrong and otherwise, right from the beginning.”

  “Oh, how it began. Well, I’m her secretary, you know, and we had a sort of quarrel about you. She’s a mean, small, stupid sort of person, Giles, for all her money and the way she looks—she is lovely, isn’t she? In case you want to know (everybody does) that streak of silver is real. Anyway, I—”

  “You’re her secretary?”

  “Yes. Well I got so terribly distressed about—” She waves at the easel again, and the miraculous lashes point away, “—you, you know, that I suppose I got on her nerves. She said some mean things about you and I sort of blew up. I said if I had her money I’d see to it that you started painting again.”

  “Just like that.”

  “I’m sorry. It was—so important; I couldn’t bear to have you just—”

  “Go on with the story.”

  “She said if I had her money and tried to use it that way I’d just make a fool of myself. Well, maybe she was right, but … it went like that until she swore at me and said if I was so positive, go ahead. Take all the money I wanted and just see how far I’d get.” All the while she talks she is pleading, underneath. I don’t listen to that part of it. “So I came here yesterday and I was to phone her the way you sign your name, and she would call the bank and fix it up.”

  “Nice of her.”

  “No, it wasn’t. She did it because she thought it would be amusing. She has so much money that it wouldn’t cost her anything. Anything she’d notice. And then you found out about it, I don’t know how, and gave her the checkbook. When she came back last night she was wild. It wasn’t half the fun she thought. All you did was to be amusing in a restaurant for a couple of hours. Please don’t look at me like that. I just did what I could. I—had to. Please—I had to.”