by Sam Smith
"You," he pretends to strike me, "don't give no orders." He makes as if to hit me again, makes me jerk back against the wall.
"What do you have?"
This new one has horns and claws growing out of his arms and hands.
"I have what I know." The words, the thoughts, are difficult for me.
"What do you know?"
This one, on the other side, has glaring red eyes. I can feel heat coming from the eyes as he moves closer, repeats,
"What do you know?"
"I know why?"
"No you don't," the middle one prods my soft stomach. "No you don't."
"What if he does?" claws asks him.
"What if he doesn't?" red eyes says sideways against my cheek.
"He doesn't." I'm prodded again. "Do you?"
"Will you tell? Will you tell?" red eyes glare into mine.
"You won't," middle one prods me. "Will you?"
"Kill him anyway."
The claws have grown.
33
I awoke mouth open and sweating. I shouted — my voice a croak — for light.
Gasping, blinking, I lied there looking up at the shuttered window, convinced that the vivid dreams were the Knowledge trying to stop me.
No, not the Knowledge. Something in the Knowledge.
Had that been my amendment, I wondered. Or had the Knowledge been telling me what to think?
Like the dream my thoughts were clear and sharp. They didn't, however, make much sense. Like my dreams.
Rationale notwithstanding I reached for my notepad, recorded all the details of all the dreams as they returned to me.
Reading back through the last dream, thinking on my situation, I decided to make a record of my theories concerning the dreams. Just in case, I told myself, anything should happen to me.
What, I asked myself, was I expecting to happen to me?
Circular thinking.
I got on with my theories.
'Theory 1) I see myself pitted against an adversary within the Knowledge. I cannot see him, cannot therefore directly fight him. He makes warring gestures into mirrors behind my back. I will win when I confront him, catch him pulling faces at me. De-demonised.
Theory 2) I, we, who have been sent here to seek ways of ending the suicides, have been presented not so much with an abstract puzzle, rather we have been placed inside a maze. Inside this maze are many traps, some self-imagined, which might even so prove fatal. Some of us will argue with walls. Some of us will go in circles. (Within the maze we will be following the rules of the maze. I have to leave the maze.)
Theory 3) The Knowledge is my enemy. The Knowledge has become a power unto itself. A force all its own. It reaches decisions. Hybrids now are both its master and its tools. Insular I am one of their principal weapons in their fight for supremacy. The Knowledge therefore is sending out destructive tendrils when I am at my most vulnerable, when I am least on my guard, when I am asleep. I must dream always of fighting lest it absorb me, make me a part of it, and kill me.
Theory 4) We live alone and we die alone. The rest is illusion. Is that what the hybrids are leaving? An illusion?
Theory 5) A weakness that my enemy the Knowledge will exploit is the competitor in me wanting to be first with the solution. The correct solution is what matters, not me being first with it. Find it!'
When the last of the fear sweat had evaporated from me, when my pulse stayed slumberly slow, when I could recall no more of my thoughts worth recording, I returned — on guard! — to sleep.
34
The creatures are small, humanoid, some pink, some brown.
I am in a dark part of the forest.
The creatures chirp as they run along behind and beside me. They follow narrower paths beside the broad path along which I am striding. They have large hands and large feet, thick curls of black hair.
I stop at their loud chirping, look behind.
They are all — large hands on knees, or holding their sides — gasping for breath.
To one side, through the tall grey pillars of the trees, is a yellow sunlit glade.
"Shall we rest there?"
Two of them glance, covertly pleased, to one another. The black curls bob as they nod their heads.
I know that their gasping of a moment before, like children, was overacted. But I want to trust these little people, do not want to suspect them, do not want to let them know that I might suspect them. Now they are happily chirping along beside me again.
In the glade is a grassy mound. I lie on this as I would on a divan.
I am naked. So too are the little creatures. My arms are outspread. They lean against my flanks, from my ribs to my knees.
The sun warms my face, closes my eyes. I sigh and smile.
I feel one of the creatures clambering up over my knee. I think he will sit on me, chatter to his friends below.
Another is climbing up onto my stomach from the opposite side.
The first one is walking, wobbling, up my leg towards my penis.
Wondering what he intends I lift my head.
Others are clambering up over my side. I am uncomfortable rather than afraid, uneasy at being under them.
One shouts something from my stomach. I look out to my arms. My wrists have been tied to two old tree roots. Raising my head further I see that my feet have been similarly bound.
The creatures are watching me. Still I feel that they don't mean to deliberately harm me. But I don't like this being tied.
To not alarm them I chuckle first at their practical joke. They do not respond. Then I try to turn the joke by easily breaking free.
I cannot.
But my wrenching and writhing has made them all fall about upon my legs and stomach. Laughing they cling to each other.
One has fallen against my penis, has both his arms wrapped around it.
I feel the startings of an erection. No! I tell my body. But the creature has felt the extra pressure of blood too, calls to his companions. They look from my moving penis to my hot face; and still it grows. Cheering they all rush to it, try to climb on, trip over one another laughing.
One female creature yells from my chest for them to stop. They look to her as, spitting into her plump palm, she rubs the spittle into her crotch. Pushing some of the men aside, cheered on, she walks splay-legged towards my erection, which is almost as tall as her.
"No. Please don't," I say.
They stop laughing.
"Please don't."
35
As a child I'd had many nightmares.
Mine had been an imagination limited only by what I hadn't read, and I had read with a hunger. Many of those book images had found alternative expression in my dreams. Not one of those dreams, though, had been as vivid nor as memorable as those on Arbora.
Waking that morning, my brain feeling squeezed by lack of restful sleep, I was convinced that my mind was being tampered with — by someone, or something — and because my mind was my only defence against it then maybe I'd already lost.
Going to the doorway I looked down on the white mirror of the lake.
This early Sririsl's door was still shut.
What I had to decide, I told myself, was if this tampering was deliberate or accidental. How, though, to decide with a mind that was no longer my own?
Standing naked in the doorway my body stretched a yawn into itself. Unstretching I examined my abdomen and legs to see if I'd ejaculated in my dream, was relieved to find that I hadn't. The dream had been one of humiliation then, not of suppressed sexuality.
I'd have understood if it had been sexual: it had been weeks since I'd been with anyone. (Back on my city/world there had been such a procession of women wanting to have sex with the anti-poet poet, or so it had seemed, that — so weary of its repetitions had I become — I had invented, to the latecomers' consternation, anti-sex sex.)
Body and brain were the same as back then. A lifetime away. Three witnessed deaths away. Was this brain, this mind, stil
l mine?
I could see the dream's roots in my day's concerns — the unusualness of my being naked around Sririsl; the unease a couple of times when my body, for its own hormonal reasons, had produced the beginnings of an erection and I'd been worried in case scrawny Sririsl had thought herself the stimulus and had sought to take advantage of it.
The strange little creatures had been the dream's version of the strange Hybrids. (I was reluctant to believe that those vulgar little people had been the product of my own mind.)
None of that, though, explained the dream's supercharged clarity. Nor my having been tied down. Unless that had been symbolical of my daytime feelings of powerlessness.
A hen clucking brought to mind Sririsl telling of a wolf-like mammal that preyed upon the hens. I took myself off, without enthusiasm, to investigate.
At the hen-house was no bloodshed, merely a red-feathered bird excitedly announcing that she had laid yet another egg. I spread a handful of seed-heads over the ground and, while the birds were busy pecking, I collected up the eggs as Sririsl had the day before.
I had picked up, almost absently, a hen and was leant back against the hen-house smoothing its feathers when Sririsl arrived.
I made a study of Sririsl this bright white morning — the slight bow to her back, the loose muscles under her arms, the pocked skin hanging in folds from her buttocks, the paucity of pubic hairs, the lifetime's weariness in the eyes.
It was with surprise — my tired brain was so slow that morning — that I realized Sririsl was concerned for me. And woozily I wondered what she knew of my last night's dreams to make her so concerned for me.
Neither of us moved for several moments; the both of us standing on the beaten earth, hens pecking around our feet, one in my arms, all three scrutinizing one another.
A strange interlude (thoughts reaching out to each other?) and one which I broke. By releasing the hen.
I could not find the words, the common experience, to tell Sririsl of my dreams; nor did I want to let her know that the Knowledge had successfully fed me dreams; but not being able to tell her I could also not be reassured by her.
Wanting Sririsl to let slip incriminating knowledge of my dreams I could think of nothing else, and so — on our slow berry-picking that morning — we didn't talk much. But neither did Sririsl, being in my company, read any more of the anthology.
Sririsl even followed me down to the lakeside, sat on a rock while I swam. (We humans are quick to establish rituals.) And even there Sririsl didn't read the anthology. So it was, with some surprise, looking across the light liquid water, that I realized that Sririsl was truly worried about me, Okinwe Orbison.
That afternoon Sririsl came over and sat with me outside my door. In an attempt to regain my interest in her she said,
"I'm going to die."
"Oh?" I looked around at her, "When?"
She smiled,
"Not just yet."
Baffled I returned her stretched smile, shook my head, yet was grateful for her odd attempt to cheer me. I couldn't though think of any more to say, much as I wanted.
My mother wouldn't thank me — so wrinkled by starlight and gravity was Sririsl — but I was beginning to think of Sririsl in a maternal role, was hugely glad of her solicitousness. Still though I couldn't respond. I was so tired. And I was so afraid of sleep.
36
A group of grey birds are feeding down in the sharp green grass. One turns its head as I fly over.
Safe to go down. This pleases me.
Curious I look to my wings. Same grey feathers as the bird below. This knowledge fills me with joy. (I have escaped myself.)
Overflying, I turn; dropping swoop; and I settle to the ground alongside the others. Quick white flashes of underwing feathers are like the greeting smiles of busy people. Yes, I think, busy is best.
Before I too start to feed on the fresh blades of grass, I look about for predators, glance to our tree look-out.
All is well.
Relaxed, I peck.
As well as the feeding filling our crops and giving us a good feeling, there is something very satisfying about my being part of a group all involved in the same task.
Clatter of alarm.
All fly up, wings flashing white bars of Beware! Beware!
Once high we circle, turning in unison as we spot a four-legged creature padding along beside a stream. It turns off along its beaten path, away from our feeding ground.
We complete our circuit, settle to feed again. There is no urgency.
In the heat of the afternoon we rise, one by one as we are replete, to the deep shade of the high trees over the stream. There, perched on branches above and below, we are each lulled by the satisfying grinding of fresh food in our crops.
We doze, each on our branch, some in comfortable pairs, all rocking to the movement of the tree, lids sliding over. And back.
Alarm!
I go slap-clattering out through the twig-end leaves of the tree and push myself towards the sky. Higher is safer.
Glimpsing another I begin the arc of a circle with him. Another joins us. And another.
We come back over the tree.
One of our flock, while drinking from the stream — feathers are scattered there, some floating away — has been taken by the four-legged creature, is hanging limp from the creature's jaws.
Head up, breasting the weight, the creature bears the body away.
Not I, I glance to my companions. Not I. We head towards a group of trees on a hill. Higher is safer.
37
I swam that morning still taken with the dream. Or rather, not with the dream itself, but with my commentary thoughts on the edge of the dream, and which I couldn't remember. Being able to recall having the thoughts, but not the thoughts themselves, left me with an uneasy sense of emptiness.
So preoccupied was I with my dream and its effects that it wasn't until I came wading out of the water that I noticed the two women on the shore.
One was Sririsl, watching my splashing approach with, what had become since yesterday, her quizzical concerned smile. Thumbing water from my eyes I saw that the other woman was much younger, about my age, her breasts high, her belly round and her head at the same quizzical angle as Sririsl's.
I was not used to being introduced naked to naked young women. I switched myself into hearty mode.
“I don't need the Knowledge to tell me that you're Sririsl's daughter."
Her smile deepened at my words and approach, but still there was that hybrid hesitation before she responded. Then her eyes narrowed and she speculatively looked me over. That scrutiny made me aware again — I'd come to disregard it in Sririsl's ancient presence — of my maleness.
This young woman had Sririsl's grey eyes, her own thick dark hair.
The pale grey eyes came back to mine.
"I can't see myself through you," she said. Vain this one. She glanced laughing to her mother, "And he can't see himself through me."
"Possibly," Sririsl said, "that's just as well."
From that comment alone, and her eyes again traveling my body, I didn't need their telepathy to know what Sririsl's daughter was thinking.
O lucky day.
That sounds glib, creates the wrong impression. I was certainly not a smooth operator that morning.
Neither was I a shrinking virgin; but, dripping on that shore, made aware of her carnal interest in me, I was covered in confusion, may even have blushed. She was a hybrid, she was desirable, and all the usual signals said that she desired me.
Abruptly turning, hurrying up off the lakeside beach to the house, I dried myself and, not trusting to my biological reactions, I dropped a tunic over my head.
When I emerged from the house Sririsl's daughter greeted my wearing the tunic with blank silence. That puzzled her. So too did my striding towards her holding out my hand like Leon Reduct,
"My name is Okinwe Orbison."
Her hand was small and dry in mine.
"
I know," she smiled happily up at me, wondering what I was going to do next to surprise her.
I had stretched a responding smile across my face,
"I don't know your name."
Her hand still in mine I watched her referring back into the Knowledge: no, no-one had ever told me Sririsl's daughter's name. Her beam of understanding lit me,
"My name is Rufena."
Realizing that I was still holding her hand, realizing that I still had a smile on my face, I let go her hand and, wanting to gather my thoughts, I mumbled something about having to collect the eggs, turned and left.
I could feel them gazing puzzled after me. My behaviour throughout that morning continued to puzzle. Me especially, as I invented yet more urgent chores for myself. Rufena's unexpected presence though, her unexpected attractiveness, had thrown me more off-balance than had the three suicides I'd witnessed.
For the whole of that morning I wanted to be alone, to get my thoughts in order; and for the whole of that morning, curious and concerned, the two women followed me. Even down into the stores with my blindly collected berries.
Standing on the steps Rufena stopped me leaving the storage cellar. The round grey eyes were locked into mine. In the chill of the store I could feel on my face the warmth radiating from her naked torso.
"You have secrets from me," she said. It was a statement.
"As you from me," I glanced around to Sririsl, her head to one side, watching.
"Yes," Rufena said, wondering at the novelty of it, shivering in the chill of the cellar. Oh but her body was beautiful.
When Rufena left for her settlement that afternoon I breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief, threw off my tunic and went for a long cooling swim.
38
Forest trees all around are sensed as shapes.
The creature is behind me. Flap of large leathery wings, fetid moistness of breath.
Fear fills me. My heart grows huge with it, stops my breath.
I know there is nowhere to run, no escaping.