Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic Read online

  I approached slowly, as I have learned, and settled down in the gravel behind Wilberfoss. Minutes slipped past and then there was commotion in the water. A ridged and bony-plated tail rose and slapped down on the water sending spray to the distant bank. High-jointed legs scrambled for purchase on the submerged stones and a creature like a giant crayfish heaved itself up. Its dozen or so feelers were spread like the tines of a ruined fan in front of it. I recognized a Rune cray or Farmer cray as it is sometimes called.

  The Rune cray. There is a legend among the Tallines that they obtained the characters for their writing from the symbols found on the tails of male Rune cray. Hence its name. I think there is truth in this for I have studied Talline script with the careful eye of a pattern assessor and I have studied early archaeological remains. The cray tail provides a consistent and natural sequence of symbols.

  The name of Farmer cray comes from the Cray’s practice of building nets underwater. Within these it contains other marine creatures upon which it finally feeds.

  The cray reared up out of the water and for the first time revealed its claws which were almost as big as a man’s hand and were black as ebony. It is a wonder that the creature can lift such massive devices on so spindly a body. Wilberfoss intensified his whistling and crooning and reached toward the cray. It came forward, tentatively and with claws open and advanced.

  “Now watch this,” said Wilberfoss. He took the proffered claw and shook it much as I have seen him shake hands with a fellow human. Then he placed his finger within the claw and the claw closed gently.

  “Does that cause you pain?” I asked.

  “Oh no,” he replied. “The Rune cray is careful. It knows to the thousandth part of a gram how yielding my flesh is and how delicate. If we were enemies it could snip my finger off. Snip. Snip. Just like that. But now I am bringing it happiness.”

  “How?”

  Wilberfoss worked his finger back and forth within the claw, limbering the Cray’s entire arm so that it had to move close to remain standing. I may say that it crouched in front of Wilberfoss and I have never seen such a strange sight: man and beast, sharing a strange voiceless ritual which brought them both pleasure. “The claw is so sensitive,” said Wilberfoss. “The pleasure is in touching that sensitivity. Like with a woman. It will squeeze me to the point of pain and rock back and forth over that point, enjoying itself.”

  “How do you do this?” I asked.

  “I just do. The main thing is not to be afraid and to match your speed to that of the creature. Find the song that it likes. Singing is important.”

  “How do you know the song?”

  “You just do. It isn’t a set song. The song is merely a convention to transmit your feelings. The animal does the rest. But don’t be afraid and don’t be too analytical. If you start to watch yourself too closely the creature will know and it will resent you.” As he said this, Wilberfoss spread his thumb away from the palm of his hand and the cray immediately swung its other claw up and seized his thumb. Wilberfoss slowly came to his feet and lifted the entire cray off the ground. Its tail stood stiff and its feelers trailed over his arm like the whiskers of a cat. After a few moments he lowered it back into the water. Its legs spread to take its weight and then gently the large claws opened and released Wilberfoss’s finger and thumb. “You must feel about it the way it feels about you. Let it be the master. Aggression is like ice. It numbs. But you must not be subservient either. If that Rune cray had thought for one moment it had me in its power it would have tried to eat me or drag me down to its lair. No, it recognized a truce.” As he spoke the Rune cray backed into the water, picking its way delicately before launching and plunging. The last we saw of it was its tail, wide spread, driving it down under the surface.

  Wilberfoss grinned at me. “Do we still have something to teach the wise old bio-crystalline Wulf?” He banged me on my dome with the flat of his hand. Then he did something most unexpected. He climbed onto me. “Can you lift and carry me home?” he asked. I tried but I could not and so he walked away from me and left me in the shingle.

  Let me say that while I believed Wilberfoss’s explanation concerning his power over creatures, I did not believe that he knew the whole story. He was more the agent than he allowed though I am convinced that he was ignorant of the extent of his power. In some strange way he could hypnotize. I am not comfortable with the idea of telepathy for cannot I also think and I am in no way telepathic, but his power suggests telepathy.

  The important question now is, was Wilberfoss able to manipulate humans? His immense sensitivity to creatures as diverse as the tree sandar and the Rune cray would suggest that he could. Not intentionally. Let us be very clear about that. Not intentionally, but effectively. To quote a human truism again: the greatest strength is the greatest weakness. Sympathy for all may mean sympathy for none.

  I must now discuss Jon Wilberfoss’s mystical experience.

  As the days passed Jon Wilberfoss became more and more a creature of the garden. I had no idea what was happening to him. He avoided contact with me.

  What I am about to present to you are two versions of the truth. The first is my description of Jon Wilberfoss’s actions as I observed them on the thirty-fourth day of his retreat. The second is a transcript of his commentary during his convalescence in the garden. Me first.

  I had noted that Jon Wilberfoss was spending more and more time by the river. Running water seemed to give him particular pleasure. I also knew that he was hallucinating as I would find him at all hours, crouched by a shrub or sitting in branches, lazing in the flowers or wandering on the borders of the wild area, and always he was deep in conversation. He did the talking, hardly ever pausing to listen. Unfortunately, all I could detect were whispers from his lips. He could have been praying after the Talline fashion, that is while walking. As I say, if he knew that I was about he took steps to avoid me.

  Well, on this one day he was down by the river at the place where the river ran through fantastic shapes of limestone. There was a frantic quality about him. He was waving his arms in vague exercise motions. He had been eating some of the berries that grow by the river and their juice, running in rivers from his lips, had stained his mouth and arms like a tattoo. He saw me and waved, beckoning. Curious as to this change in him, I swooped down. I noted there was white spittle in the comers of his mouth and his eyes were focused on some distant event or internal landscape. Lily was standing patiently on the river bank and so I assumed that Wilberfoss had done no harm to himself with the berries.

  Solitude, the perfumes of the garden and his strange diet had worked to liberate forces deep in his psyche. I have read about such. He had been building to this for some time. Wilberfoss was in a state of vital trance. Other humans, had they been present, would have found him an awesome force. I have mentioned his ability with animals. In his present state I truly believe he could have made plants wither, flowers open or seeds start. The two Talline women who were recuperating in the garden stood under the trees on the bank holding hands and looking at him. It was my guess that in some strange way, Wilberfoss had summoned them to come and bear witness. I am also certain that Wilberfoss did not know in any conscious way that I was there. Perhaps, if he saw me at all, I was to him a bird with gilded plumage.

  Wilberfoss was naked, as was usual now. He waded out into the middle of the stream beating his hands on the glossy surface. The river moved quickly there and flowed like glass. He stood to his midriff in water. Above him was a limestone shape like the head of a horse. Fems sprouted from its nostrils and brown roots wound about it like veins. Standing in the middle of the stream Wilberfoss was able to reach up and place his hands against the rock. He held himself braced and steady. The water buffeted his midriff and he moved ecstatically against it. I did not know what he was doing, but the two Talline women laughed and one of them called something in Talline but the words I did not know: they sounded dialectal.

  Then he relaxed suddenly and crouched down
in the water and it swirled around his neck and head.

  ★★★

  Wilberfoss’s attention shifted to the side of the river where trees grew in the water between limestone jetties. He seemed to be watching something move. Suddenly he strode over to the side and reached up with his hands as though touching an object. He could see something that I could not. He stood very still for several minutes and finally toppled back into the water and swam with the stream.

  When he emerged he came straight to me. He was beaming and he said, “Wulf. A message for Magister Tancredi. I accept the captaincy of the Nightingale. A message for Medoc. To prepare for departure if she so desires.” Then he dived again and did not emerge until he was far down the river where the honey and green limestone overhangs the river and is shaped into dark caves.

  I wasted no time. I did not attempt to explain that Medoc had already departed with a trader to a distant part of the planet. Wilberfoss would find that out for himself soon enough and I calculated that his decision must have taken all possibilities into account. I did not at that time have an appreciation of human mysticism.

  That very day Wilberfoss bade Lily farewell and joined Tancredi for a night of vigil. His die was cast. I resist the pun.

  Here now, in Wilberfoss’s own words, is what happened to him. It is a strange tale and again I must ask you to decide what is fact and what is symbol.

  Wilberfoss was well on the road to recovery when we made this recording. His mind was relatively uncluttered and he was cooperating in a whole series of recordings concerning his mental state and the Nightingale. The season was early summer and Wilberfoss was seated in a dell below the curved shape of the Pectanile.

  WULF: It seemed to me in those days that not only were you avoiding me, but you were almost willing yourself into an abnormal state. Is this true?

  WILBERFOSS: Perfectly true on both counts. You were a constant reminder of reason and order and yet I knew that I had to delve beneath reason to our most fundamental faculty of understanding—I mean a state of creative dreaming, a state in which the distinction we draw between the imaginary and the real becomes blurred. I needed to reach this if I was to come to any understanding of myself.

  That I failed is not relevant. I failed, but the procedure I adopted was correct and were I faced with the same question again I would act in the same way, again, though the conclusion would be different. I am not sure why Tancredi wanted you there with me. I assumed he wanted you to report to him. I had no need of a scribe. I did not need language, which is a code of names. I needed to become the name maker.

  Look at it this way, Wulf. Reason is a rope on to which the intellect can cling while suspended above a dark pit of unknowing, yet true understanding can only come when the rope is relinquished. In that moment of relinquishment we do not fall: the darkness clarifies and becomes something new, charged with hope and possibility and, yes, let it be admitted, sometimes tragedy. The rope is always there for without it we become mad. Reason asserts itself and protects us from madness by discovering patterns in the chaos of our experiences but first we have to open ourselves, unafraid, to chaos, (pause) There, does that make more sense?

  WULF: Not to me. But I have recorded your words.

  Others may make sense of them.

  WILBERFOSS: Now, as to my willing myself into an abnormal state, you must realize that mental commitment and physical commitment must be associated. The alternative is a kind of hypocrisy, but I do not condemn hypocrisy. To know one’s true mind is surely one of the hardest tasks that face a human being. It is matched only by the difficulty of acting on one’s understanding once one does know one’s true mind. Be that as it may. I drove my body to drive my mind. I sought out the aromatic herbs that bring dreams. I starved myself and then ate berries. I refused myself sleep until I was delirious and then I crawled into the Pectanile up there and let it control my dreams. I ran after any shadow of strangeness.

  I drove myself until my mind began edging into a new awareness and then I let that awareness lap about my question. The Nightingale?: Yes or No.

  Men of old, you know, danced themselves into trance. Women too. They breathed in smoke, whipped themselves with nettles. I was mild by comparison.

  WULF: Tell me about the day on which you made your decision.

  WILBERFOSS: I was by the river, wasn’t I?

  WULF: Yes.

  WILBERFOSS: It is hard to remember details. The river had become a living presence to me. It was female. It flowed around me. The land was male. I stepped from the land. I was at the meeting of two great forces, or was it the estrangement of forces? Words lose meaning at such a point. . . opposites join, (pause) Were you there, Wulf?

  WULF: I was there.

  WILBERFOSS: I remember that I felt I had superhuman strength. If you had asked me to lift the hills I would have tried. I could feel no limit to my strength. I strode into the water ... ah, it was like Medoc, and I made love to the water. I hoped to engender something. Silver snakes. Bright winged birds. Ah, I felt clean . . . (pause)

  WULF: Go on.

  WILBERFOSS: If only I had not wanted things so much. If only I had been content to make love to the stream. If I had been content with Medoc.

  WULF: If. If. ..

  WILBERFOSS: True. But the story goes on. While I

  stood there recovering from my exertion I heard a sound like thunder in the hills. But it was not thunder, it was a roaring. It came from the trees. I was surprised but delighted. The trees shook. There was something moving there. I heard a snuffling, too, like giant bellows being pressed. Then, stepping down to the waterside, slipping on the moist soil, came a monster. It had giant plates up its spine. The tail was so heavy it could only be dragged. I could smell the creature’s breath when it opened its mouth. It had come to drink. Its tongue was black and the inside of its mouth was yellow. There were spines of bristle standing out from its jaws and the eyes stared at me with a kind of intelligence. I recognized my own eyes. I was the monster. The monster was me. That is to say, the monster was part of me. It was my most primitive part. It was the blundering instinctive side. It was the kill before being killed instinct.

  This is not so strange as it sounds, Wulf. We humans often see our mental states reflected in the world about us. Strange only is that I should recognize it for what it was. The creature drank and howled to the sky and I thought it would launch itself into the water in an attempt to devour me. I forestalled it. You have seen my power with animals? Yes, well, I reached out and I quelled this beast. I placed my hand between its eyes. I bade it sleep and its eyes closed. Its heavy giant head, twice as big as me, lowered and sank in the stream and the clear water tumbled in its whiskers. In that moment I knew. I knew I had answered my question. Here, symbolically, was the worst side of my nature and I had subdued it. I knew then what the senior confreres had seen in me. I knew then why I had been chosen for the Nightingale. Because I was a man who could subdue his own nature and who could reach out to other creatures.

  But I was wrong. I had not subdued my nature. I had merely lulled it. I had created a situation which served my own ends. I did not know then, but I know now. (pause) Let me tell you one other thing, Wulf. I now know what I should have seen. Shall I tell you? I should have seen the gentle, bull-headed St. Francis picking his way daintily down to the water’s edge. He should have entered the water and picked me up and carried me out. That is what I should have seen. That is what I should have experienced. Had the bull-headed one come, there would have been no conflict, no death on a starship, no madness, no lurking monster.

  I should have waited for him for the forty days, sitting in the Pectanile, playing with the Rune cray, watching the season change, rambling like old Adam. And when he didn’t come I should have left the garden, sent my regrets to Tancredi and picked up the strands of my life with Medoc. You could have written the report.

  WULF: Medoc had already left you.

  WILBERFOSS: Ah yes. But she would have come back. Though
she went off with that trader she did not sign a commitment to him until the day after I left aboard the Nightingale. Did you not know that? No. Well, that is human nature. That is love. We are pretty simple, aren’t we?

  9 The Arrival and Departure of the Nightingale

  Events moved quickly.

  Immediately he received the news that Wilberfoss had decided to accept the captaincy of the Nightingale, Magister Tancredi contacted Assisi Central and wheels began to turn. A great organization such as the Gentle Order of St. Francis Dionysos can move with amazing speed sometimes. Within hours of the announcement being received we were informed that the Nightingale was being powered up for the short flit from Assisi to Juniper. Being merely a move within the Lucy System, this meant that the great transformation generators which could lift the ship into and out of Noh-time would not be used; this was as well for the bio-crystalline brains which managed the symbol generators had not yet been fully awakened. Indeed, final induction could only take place in the presence of the Captain.

  Powering up and the checking of onboard systems took a day and then we were told that the ship was on its way.

  It would take ten of our days to cruise slowly from Assisi to Juniper, Assisi being then reasonably close to us and clearly visible in the night sky.

  Meanwhile, mechanics and the dreamy mystical scientists who specialize in bio-crystalline technology began to arrive on Juniper from the distant Blind Man System where the Nightingale had been built. They came in three Noh-time ships which were small and primitive in comparison with the Nightingale. Such ships had been the mainstay of the Gentle Order’s work since the time of the War of Ignorance.