Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic Read online

  For some reason I never thought of running away. I think I knew that on Icarus there was just farm after farm after farm and all of them identical. There was a town of sorts five farms in from us where some of the young men gathered to drink a brew they concocted from rotting corn stalks and kumara skins. Somewhere there was a shuttle port. That was about all I knew about Icarus. I knew more about the myths of old Earth. The only future I had at that time was perhaps to get a farm of my own further out along the rim. Then find a woman and settle down. Settle down! Settle down from what?

  Then one day, unforeseen, my life changed.

  It was early afternoon and I was running through one of the link tubes, working up a sweat, when I saw ahead of me someone who waved. I waved back and then the figure crossed into the tall plants of sweetcorn which occupied a thick strip down the center of the dome tunnel. I paid no special heed, but when I reached the place where the figure had been I heard my name called. I stopped and pushed my way through the stiff upright stalks of corn and there, reclining in the middle, was a woman. I knew her, had known her since I was a boy. We’d shared lessons and played together. Now she was different. I knew all about sex (our lessons were thorough) but sex had never meant much to me. It had seemed silly and my father and mother were no advertisement for married ecstasy. But now, suddenly, here was a woman, and she was lying back and her skirt was up above her knees and there was darkness there between her legs and her arms were lifted to me. I stood stupid as an ox, knowing and yet not knowing. I stood above her and she pulled my shorts down, hurting me, for my cock was standing out like a bottle. I know my throat went dry. I know I went down on my knees. I know she took my ears in her hands. I know I smelled her, a smell of earth and sweetcorn and sweet skin. I know I wanted to lick and tear and . . . and she was so hot, so smooth and fluid, that only her heat told me I was in her and then I came as though I had been stabbed, as though there was blood flowing from me. And she came moments later and made the kind of noises that made me think I had hurt her except that she kissed me and smiled and threw her arms back. Moments later she relaxed and I had a vision. I was lying on my face in a lake of water and the waves were washing over me and I wanted to stop breathing and loll and slip under the surface. But she eased me off her and said, “Thank you.”

  This was the first of many visions. Many deceptions. How can there be other than deception when we who live know so little? Hope is God’s mockery.

  Later, I do not know how much later, some five or six times later I think, I donned my shorts and took to the road again but there was no run in me. I managed to make a hundred yards or so back toward our farm but then I went down on my knees, my forehead on the earth. It was lovely to be on the earth and I squirmed around and looked back down the tube tunnel and she was walking away from me. I loved her then in my mind and I doubt if I have ever felt such clarity of love, such a pure mingling of desire and effort in my life since. I fell asleep in the road. As simple as that. Her name was April.

  I tell you this only because I think that the first time a man or a woman joins in sex they define themselves. You wouldn’t know of course because you are an autoscribe and perhaps you are fortunate because I do not believe that my human passions have brought me or anyone else happiness. But in my life that first encounter with the otherworldly reality of sex was a moment of definition. It was a long time ago and memory is a great liar, but I think I believed that when I was making love I would live forever. There was something eternal and unchanging about it. Lying in the road, knees buckled and body stunned so that my will was as empty as a bucket at evening, I felt a golden something rise in my veins and flow through my body like honey. Oh, blessed. Can you now understand why I am where I am and what I am?

  We made love many times after that, April and I, and we were careless who heard us. But later I became curious about other women. Slow in some ways, quick in others, I was growing up. I reached my present height when I was eighteen. I said to myself one day after I had finished mulching the corn stalks, I sat down in the field amid the growing plants and I said, “I am afraid of no man or God.” And it was a revelation to me for it seemed to me when I looked at my father and mother that they were afraid of something but they never knew what.

  I grew up. I continued my running. I continued my excursions outside the dome holding my breath and I took to spending nights away from home. I began to drink the tear-making liquor brewed in the town. It was commonly called Holy Water.

  I think I believed I was something special, something other than clay. And then one day I made love to the wife of one of the farmers who lived in the Rill Hinterland and he caught us. Think of that, if you can imagine it. His face was like something screwed up and thrown away in the rubbish.

  Later he came after me. That was the next great learning in my life for I killed him. I was in the barn where the Holy Water was served and there were about twenty other young people with me. I had my back to the door and the first indication I had that anything was wrong was when the room suddenly fell silent. I turned around and there he was, the farmer. He looked crazy and his face was blotchy. He had a baling hook in one hand. Have you ever seen one of those? No. You still find them on old-habit planets. It’s a sharp hook mounted on a handle so that you can grip it. You dig the hook into bales and then drag them. Well he didn’t say anything. He just stared at me and then he swung the hook low and up. I jumped. I used my hand to parry the blow and the point of the hook went right through the palm of my hand.

  WULF: Here Wilberfoss offered his left hand and Lily and I could clearly see the pale scar in the center of his palm.

  WILBERFOSS: I bled like Christ or Francis Dionysos with stigmata, but I had the hook. The blow had unbalanced the man and he fell against me and I closed my right hand around his throat and squeezed. There was nothing he could do. He tried to knee me. He tried to squirm. But I squeezed and my face was only inches from his. I could have kissed him. I saw blood on his lips. I felt the stickiness of my own blood as it ran between us. I saw his eyes stare. I saw the moment of his death. And at that same moment, something in me turned black. I had enjoyed the killing. I had him bent back against the bar, I could have been embracing him. I enjoyed the killing and something in me turned black. With his staring eyes in front of me, a small black acorn lodged in my heart and it has never gone away and now it is grown into a black oak tree.

  WULF: Wilberfoss was getting excited in a way that we had observed before. There was no tolerant linkage between his thoughts and his feelings. He was like a human baby, not like a grown man. Lily moved in. She administered a small injection and this stopped Wilberfoss. He sobered and his passion drained away.

  Self-hatred can have many manifestations. To Wilberfoss, his past was so marred and filled with disfigurement that he wanted to obliterate himself, body and spirit. Of course, at this time in his cure, we did not know the depth of his self-loathing. We could only guess at what he meant when he talked about a black oak tree which was growing in his veins.

  WILBERFOSS: They dragged me off and someone worked the hook from my hand and within minutes it seemed I was under guard in the local dispensary and the nurse was packing my hand with a sweet-smelling balm which numbed it. He also gave me a shot of something which took away my sense of color and made the inside of my mouth dry and when I tried to stand I found I had no strength. Then my father arrived and talked at me but I could not understand a word. Nothing seemed to matter.

  So, hours later, I was sent up in the shuttle, still in a drug-jacket, and then I was sent to hospital and then to prison. I was like a cork on a stream. I had no control over my life. And it was while I was in prison that I began to understand the darkness that had grown inside me.

  I had strangled and had liked doing it. The strength in the arms, the stiffness of the body, the thrill of full commitment. You see, the killing had caressed that same secret area in me that had been so quickened by lovemaking. And yet how different. My innocence was gone.
I felt that everything I touched became dirty. The leaves that should have been green were black.

  But it wasn’t just the killing. As a former’s lad I was used to killing. I used to lie in wait for and flay the sand snakes when they tried to steal the vegetables from underground. You could always tell when one was there. You’d see the vegetable, a lettuce say, in the family plot and it’d be moving, rocking, like a float on the sea. Then you’d see the lips of the sand snake, like a band of blue rubber, come up from underneath and grip the body of the plant with its gritty little teeth. That’s when you’d strike. There was a kind of fork called a snaketine with sharp barbed prongs. You’d jab this underground, well below the Ups, and then hang on. Sometimes I’ve seen a snake drag the entire tine fork under. Most times you’d just hold on and let the snake convulse under the ground and then, when it had tired itself out, you’d drag it out and slit it open. One of my first inventions was to link a tine fork up to the farm generator and that cut the snaking time by half. Give them a charge and then drag them out like a stocking filled with sand and slit them.

  No, it wasn’t just the killing. It was the killing of a man. Was he better or worse than me? No. He was me. I was, am, him. All men and women became my family.

  I wanted their forgiveness. But there in the prison there was no forgiveness. I slept with my crime. I lived with my crime. There was no forgiveness.

  No, that’s not quite true. There was some forgiveness. There was some gentleness. Kindness came like . .. There was a warder who took a liking to me. At first I noticed little things. A nod of recognition. An extra ration of toilet paper. An extra potato. A book without the last page tom out. Then the man who shared my cell was moved out without warning and sent to another wing. That suited me. I wanted solitude. But then three days later my warder friend came to visit me. We had to whisper. He wanted to know my story, wanted to help me to see the prison psychiatrist or monk, whichever would help, wanted to help me pull myself together. He wanted me.

  I saw it coming. Even now, so many years later, I wonder whether he knew what was driving him. Came one night I talked about myself in whispers and even as I spoke I felt him kiss me. And in the next moment I kissed him and held him as though holding and kissing him would somehow cleanse me. And he whispered something strange to me. He said, “You have a fire in you. Warm me.”

  We made love then and many times later. Quietly and intensely. Whenever we could. And I knew he had forgiven me and trusted me for he stood holding my iron bunk with his strong back toward me and his neck bare and I ran my fingers over it.

  Then one day he came to me and he said, “Do you love me or am I just what’s available?” The question caught me off guard. It seemed irrelevant. I had no answer. And then he said, “You who have so much must never be cruel to those that love you. But you are cruel and cold.” I did not understand what he meant. “Your case has been reviewed,” he said finally. “The wife has given more evidence in your favor. You have been given your freedom.” He paused and looked at me and then continued, “You will be leaving tomorrow. I shall be staying here. Who has been most in prison? You have all the heat a man can want, but you are a cold-hearted bastard.”

  And I did leave prison the next day. He did not come to say goodbye and I did not go looking for him.

  An official of the prison gave me my few belongings and papers which stated that I was a free citizen. There was money too.

  I sat in the air-lock waiting for the shuttle to carry me down from the prison torus and I cried. You see, for a while I had known peace, and then my friend, or the man who I thought was my friend, with his cruel words had opened the wound again, had revealed a blackness inside me. Misery gave way to anger, which is healthier, but the anger was directed against myself. You see, I was not what my friend had called me ... I was not cold. Am not cold. I have followed my lights into darkness. I have tried to be kind. I have shared. But I have been ignorant and vanity is a sure sign of ignorance. “What do people want of me?” I asked as I sat in the shuttle sliding down toward the surface of Icarus. And I wondered what I could do to achieve peace and where I could place the fierce energy that threatened to tear me apart.

  Every question has an answer. The problem is knowing what questions to ask and recognizing answers when they come.

  The shuttle port was busy when we landed. There was no one to meet me and I was glad. I doubted if my family and friends yet knew where I was. I was alone and unknown. That felt clean. There was a transit vehicle about to leave for my home sector of Icarus but I avoided it. I remember how turbulent I felt: free and frightened, angry and hopeful. I could not sit, passive in a transit carriage, my bag on my knee.

  Then I made a decision. I decided to run home. I was half a planet away but I would run home. No sooner was the thought born in me than I knew it was the right thing to do. I thought the run would be an achievement. I hoped it would bring meaning of some kind. There are those whose spirit is only satisfied by challenges. I had the money I had been given and with this I bought a small tent, some provisions, a small pack for my back and shoes that I could run in. Then off I went.

  Icarus is covered by a network of translucent tunnels which join all the dome farms. The tunnels are like canals of air. Within them there are always plants growing and the air is sweet and pure. The tunnels He like a giant silver net thrown over brown rocky hills and swamps where the mineral water bubbles pink and green and poisonous.

  I had never seen my own world. The shuttle port was somewhere close to the equator and the crops there were soft red fruits which grew under the shade of leaves and a chewy grass which stained the mouth yellow. Here everything was larger than at home. The domes were higher and enclosed trees and I saw flowers which had a crown like a single staring brown eye. They produced oil.

  I ran. I was not fit but I had will. I ran and avoided the main transport routes. I took the tunnels which had only been built for the convenience of the farmers. At night I slept in my tent. When my provisions ran out I began to live off the land, eating the food raw. I was punishing myself for being what I am and curiously I felt better for it.

  Eventually, after three weeks or so on the road, I came to a narrow tunnel which climbed up a rock face in a series of long zigzags and emerged on a high plateau.

  Here there were no forms. The air was thinner and the sky which shone above the crinkled plastic cover was a deep blue, almost aquamarine. Standing with my nose pressed against the stiff plastic wall I looked out on a wild desert where coils of dust and sand were the only things that moved as they scoured the landscape. Here nothing grew. I saw black ice in the fissures between rocks. I saw rocks split as though with a knife. Once a sandstorm blew up and the black and brown particles crawled over the clear plastic like water and left marks like the sucker prints of one of the creatures that lived in the Sour Sea close to my home.

  At night it was so cold that I dared not sleep but ran blindly, my hand pressed against the smooth dome until the fingers were numb and then hunkering down, sucking my fingers until they began to tingle. I slept in the day, making a bed of soil. I had no food and I sucked stones. My bowels ached and my stomach made wind as it tried to digest air.

  But there came a day when I knew I was running downhill. It was a slight descent, but oh what hope it gave me and for out across the plain I could see a splash of green. A plantation, surely.

  I ran on but it was not running such as you know. I hopped and jumped and nursed my feet which were cracked and bleeding.

  Eventually I came across green shoots growing in the tunnel. These were a native shrub which had adapted to the kind of air we breathe. The leaves were poisonous, I knew, but the roots held nourishment and the worst I would get was a bellyache. I ate those roots, spitting out the grit, as though they were confections of the finest chefs. Starvation quickens every sense just as privation quickens one’s understanding of what it means to be human. But I could not eat much. My stomach felt full after a few mouthfuls.
But I felt livelier and hopeful and more awake.

  I ran on and at about midday when the shadows were at their smallest and the roof of the tunnel became misty, I thought I saw a figure in the distance in front of me. There was a place where a cross-tunnel of clear plastic joined the tunnel in which I was running and it was here that the figure seemed to be standing as though waiting for me. I waved but the figure did not respond. At first I thought it was a child, it seemed so small. Then I thought it was a woman, it seemed so poised. Finally I could see it was a human, a man, but he was as small as a monkey. He was dressed in a plain brown garment which matched the color of the soil. As I came closer I could see his face. It was compact, almost the face of a weasel, and he seemed to be smiling in a quirky way as though he knew something that I did not, and yet I did not feel alarmed or threatened by him. At the last moment I realized there was a light shining about him.

  Then, when I was about twenty yards away, the figure suddenly started to expand. I felt an explosion in the space between my ears. The man’s face grew into the muzzle of a bull. Golden horns sprouted from his forehead. The shoulders bunched. The brown garment transformed to black fur. The legs became stiff and short and solid-muscled. I found myself facing a bull and its bulk almost filled the tunnel. It stared down at me with lowered head and eyes of yellow flint.

  I approached it carefully, unafraid, filled with wonder, my arms upraised, and I stroked the fur between its eyes. I felt its hot breath. I touched its horns and as I touched them I knew I was in the presence of a God. I wanted to clasp the bull by its horns and swing my legs up and grasp it around the neck. I wanted to straddle its back and dig my fingers in its black fur and solid muscle. I wanted the bull to turn me and mount me and crush me. And when I wished this it seemed that the bull grew even larger until it occupied all the space in the tunnel. I fell down in a faint, unable to move but still conscious, and in that state the spirit of the bull penetrated me. Man or woman, bull or beast, the God entered me and possessed me utterly, through mouth, nose, ears, eyes and skin; yes, through penis and anus. Totally. No scrap of me was left untouched and yet I lived with dignity. The spirit of the God bubbled in my veins and made me merry. “Dip me in wine, O ye powers, and I will be one with the grape and the harvest.”