Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic Read online

  The God broke into pieces of gold and these spun around me. They became people, a golden blur of people. April was there, and the man I had strangled, and his wife and other women, and my mother and father, and my jailor and Medoc who lay for in my future. They were dancing around me like children around a bonfire. And I shouted that I was not dead, and as I shouted the visitors faded and I woke up.

  I lay on the ground savoring the silence and privacy.

  And everything was changed. I awoke with the knowledge that the gold of the God had entered my veins and that I had eaten the sun like an apple. I saw as though for the first time or like a man recovering his sight after a long period of blindness. I saw colors I had never seen before. The dark blue of the sky had a rich texture of crushed velvet and light swarmed in the sky like silver snakes. The brown world outside the walls of my tunnel ran with colors of earth: with red and gray and brown and cream. The green shoots of the small plants whose roots I had eaten glowed like flame. There was a small creature, a bit like a beetle and a bit like an ant and I had crushed it under my heel in my ecstasy so that one of its legs trailed. I picked it up marveling at the iridescent colors which patterned it. I could see moisture at the broken leg joint and I willed it to heal, saying, “I affirm the unity of all life.” I closed my eyes and when I opened them again the small leg was working like a machine hammer and the insect scampered to the edge of my hand and launched itself into the air and fluttered to the ground.

  That was when I noticed the difference. My hand was no longer my hand. It was larger and luminous. I crossed to the side of the dome and peered at the clear plastic, seeking an image of myself. I saw a homed man. I reached up and could feel my horns, short and stiff and cruel and throbbing with new life. My feet had healed and were larger and golden like my hands. Wonderingly, I picked up my pack and few belongings and began to run away from that cross-path where tunnels met. I ran with the fierce energy of the bull that had entered me. I ran with the care of the gentle man in the dun brown habit guiding me for I would not willingly bruise any living creature.

  Something eke. I was now running toward and not away from. Punishment became pleasure. I was not running home except in a new philosophical sense. I was not running toward my parents’ farm but toward the nearest outpost of the Gentle Order of St. Francis Dionysos. I had recognized that small man who met me on the way for I had seen his statue mounted outside the small dwelling occupied by the Gentle Order. It was St. Francis Dionysos.

  Wulf: And the bull?

  WILBERFOSS: The bull was part of him. And the bull was myself. My true nature. The stamp of the God made manifest. Life, if you like. The force of life. Kind and cruel and neither of these and both.

  WULF: And did you really have horns and golden skin?

  WILBERFOSS: For a time I did. I had them for as long as I needed a sign. Then, with my decision to join the Gentle Order they gradually faded.

  WULF: And when you came to The House of the Gentle Order?

  WILBERFOSS: When I came to the House I knocked on the door and I was welcomed and I told my story and I was accepted. And so my commitment to the Gentle Order began. The next day I was given the green habit of the postulant and I felt great relief as I drew it over my head.

  WULF: Didn’t it get tangled in your horns?

  WILBERFOSS: No. The outward bull was gone and had taken residence inside. Inside inside.

  The effects of the liberating drugs were fading. Lily and I watched as Wilberfoss began to close down. His eyes which had held some sparkle when he spoke now became dull pools of pain and finally blank. The voice began to slur and the sounds transmuted into grunts and stops. The arms relaxed like dead eels.

  But before he faded entirely he rallied and spoke clearly and urgently for one last time.

  WILBERFOSS: Such was my youth. Such was my happiness. How could such happiness lead to such sadness? How could it be that I, who came to love all life and to hate all killing, should come to kill so many? How did I come to kill the God?

  Wilberfoss stared at me and Lily as though we were sharks and demons. I do not know what he saw. Some gateway into his private hell sprang open and he looked in. He started to scream and he jabbed with his fingers for his eyes. But Lily was quick. She caught his hands in mid-strike with one of her dexetels and at the same time injected him from the cache at the nape of his neck. He collapsed, shuddering and heaving, and then lay still. I remembered his description of how he had caught the soil snakes and how they convulsed underground.

  Lily picked him up and hefted him into her womb-cage and trundled away toward the living quarters without so much as a word to me. I stayed on in the garden. I had much to think about. An autoscribe is good with facts and figures and solid stable syntax. But with regard to Jon Wilberfoss, I was at the margin of my ability. Perpetual self-referencing can only lead to meaninglessness and hell. Inside inside, as Wilberfoss says.

  That day I found no answer.

  The next day I wrote my case notes and although this chapter is dealing with Wilberfoss’s life, I will here quote my original notes as they illuminate Wilberfoss’s discourse:

  What are we to make of this? I cannot tell what mode Wilberfoss is speaking in. He sounds realistic most of the time, matter of fact almost, but then it becomes clear that he is speaking emblematically.

  In a way that is exactly his problem. He is trapped between two worlds and has confused them. He has the world of his feelings where meaning comes from his intuition and is perceived in visionary terms. And he has the real world in which children are born and men and women die and autoscribes swoop. At any moment Wilberfoss can experience a collapse of the real world into the world of his emblems. And there he must make his own way for Lily can keep him alive and I can tell his story but only he can journey through.

  Well, that is the perception of an autoscribe and I am aware of my rationalism. I am perplexed by the thought that I may have got it all wrong. Perhaps the emblematic world is the real world after all and I am no more than a passing fantasy in Wilberfoss’s world. In which case Wilberfoss really did have horns and golden skin and killed the godhead in him. In my rationalism I am glad that I do not have dreams. What dreams can an oil can have?

  There is more to come. I can tell that. What we have heard today is merely the sighing of wind before the coming of the rain. There are things Wilberfoss cannot face, yet. Things for which he has no shape of words. Things of which he is perhaps numbly unaware and which are waiting to open their jaws and bite as he moves closer through the darkness to his own truth. We saw that happen in his last moments of consciousness.

  What then did take place aboard the Nightingale?

  POSTSCRIPTUM

  This section cannot end on that question. There is more. But you do not need to hear Wilberfoss’s voice to understand it. I can tell the tale briefly.

  Jon Wilberfoss was accepted as a postulant in the Gentle Order. I have the notes made by the Magistra who accepted him and that lady comments on the fire that seemed to bum inside him. She mentions his quickness and the candor with which he confessed. He talked about his home form, the man he had killed, life in prison and the vision he had seen. The Magistra had some doubts about Wilberfoss mainly, it seems, concerned with his youth but she was also excited by his strangeness. The Gentle Order absorbed the fact that Wilberfoss had killed a fellow mortal. They absorbed it in the sense that they did not hold that a man’s Life should be forever marred by one mistake. In their view, as the Magistral notes make clear, Wilberfoss had accepted his act and was set on a new path. Was it not true that the gentle St. Francis himself had once aspired to be a soldier? And was. not Paul once Saul and the passionate Augustine of Hippo a philanderer before a Saint? Most men seem to require a shock to push them into their true spiritual vocation. Even so Wilberfoss was watched closely especially as he took the sacred oath of the Gentle Order, vowing to protect Life.

  Wilberfoss went to the training school on Assisi Central and there t
rained as a pilot. He specialized also in land contact. This means that in the course of a Mercy Mission he was one of the pilots who physically went to the surface of a planet either to pick up or to deliver a sick or dying life-form. He was not a contact specialist, but he showed himself to have contact skills. That is rare and special. It was in this part of his training that he learned the stealth I mentioned when Miranda came a-calling.

  When Wilberfoss was convalescing in Lily’s Garden he would sometimes sit for hours talking about the days when he was a contact pilot. Extraordinary stories. Occasionally a colleague from those days would visit the Pacifico Monastery and the two of them would sit together, merry as thieves, swapping yams while the sun went down.

  Wilberfoss relished excitement and difference. He liked the glamour of being a pilot and he had the energy of two men when it came to confronting hardship. He must have found the simple life of Shuttle Pilot boring, despite the feet that he rationalized his experience as necessary servitude. The problem was that he saw himself (as he states) as someone special. That need not be a bad thing in itself for it seems to me that individual human beings should see themselves as special: they are unique lifeforms. But Wilberfoss believed he had a destiny to fulfill. Thus in his mind, the strange event when he was a child and was saved after falling near the shore, and the fact of his selection for the captaincy of the Nightingale, were linked. Destiny.

  We can say of his marriage to Medoc, the Talline woman, that it satisfied his lust for the curious and his desire to serve. He discovered the peaceful family man within the brave dare-devil. Medoc satisfied (say) ninety percent of him.

  This story concerns the remaining ten percent.

  5 The Offer

  Tancredi paused and looked at Wilberfoss. It was a look which could have been envy or it could have been pity. “Assisi Central have sent me this,” he said, tapping the red-edged document. “They have invited you to become Captain of the Nightingale.”

  Wilberfoss sat back in his chair and stared at Magister Tancredi. His face was expressionless. Then he said, “I think there has been a mistake. I never put myself forward as a candidate.”

  “No mistake,” said Tancredi. “With the Nightingale you did not need to put yourself forward. No one did. The Magistri came looking. I flatter myself that even I, long in the tooth as I am, had a chance. But they needed a younger man. And they chose you.”

  “But there are—”

  “Out of all the available pilots, some of whom are undoubtedly better than you in matters mathematical and mechanical, they chose you. Or rather they invited you.

  For the final decision must be yours.”

  “Why was I not told? Why was I not interviewed?” “About two years ago, you may remember, we had a visit from the Magistri of Assisi. You were their guide. You brought them in, took them around to Kithaeron, Fum and Sesha and then saw them on their way. One of them even stayed at your house.”

  “But I thought they were just on a fact-finding mission.”

  “They were.”

  “But they told me—”

  “Accept it. They have chosen you. The honor is without parallel as far as I am concerned. Though I can see that in your case there are complications.”

  Silence between the two men. Then Wilberfoss.

  “Do you know how they reached their decision? Was it voted on?”

  “Well, I suppose voting came into it. It usually does. But they would have spent a long time in meditation. And remember, over half the committee concerned with the Nightingale are quaestors. They’ll have been in trance a great deal of the time, trying to read the future, examining you, seeing you in light and dark. Few men will have been examined as you have been. Believe me. They quite possibly know you far better than you know yourself. No, more than that. I would say they definitely know you better than you know yourself. Trust them. They are not fools, nor are they politically motivated despite the stories. You are no one’s favorite. You are simply the man they have chosen. But in the end, the decision is yours.”

  “Did you know I was being considered for the Nightingale?”

  “I knew you were being considered, but that is all. So were Jones of Kithaeron and Bothwell of Fum. And there must have been many, many others too. But they saw something very special in you.” Tancredi looked at Wilberfoss quizzically, with his head on one side. “Come on. Don’t tell me you are not excited.”

  “I suppose I’m excited. But an honor unlooked for, not even considered or even desired, must make any man pause. I say, ‘Why me?’ I suppose the truth is I don’t feel worthy. There must be prospective Saints waiting out there. Women and men with a mark on their brow . . .

  I mean, I’m not pure ...”

  WULFNOTE

  You who are reading this and now know something of Wilberfoss and the forces that drove him will understand this remark. And you must surely pity the ignorance of Magister Tancredi.

  The conversation stopped. Tancredi shrugged. He was already deferring to Wilberfoss, and then he said, “This is getting us nowhere. Have a glass of wine with me and then go home. Talk with Medoc. You can talk with me again tomorrow.”

  “I have already made part of my decision,” said Wilberfoss. “You can contact Assisi Central and tell them that I have asked to take the forty days. I need that time. And if they have taken so many years to decide on a captain for the Nightingale, they can surely allow me that small grace of time.”

  “Of course they will. They will expect it.”

  A SECOND WULFNOTE

  I was there in the comer and I heard all this. The forty days is the period allowed to any member of the Order of St. Francis Dionysos when faced with a difficult decision. During this period he or she can be absolutely alone, free to commune only with their own conscience. There will be no other human being near to hand. Frequently people fast during the forty days and frequently they have visions. Usually truth prevails. It is as though there is an universal force at work compelling truth to emerge. Forty days is a long time for dishonesty to live undetected in an open human being. It is society, the pressure of other human beings, which makes for dishonesty I think. Solitude provokes crisis and crisis leads to truth.

  Magister Tancredi continued. “In any case, the Magistri of Assisi would probably demand that you take the forty days and that you purge your mind. You may enter the Poverello Garden tonight if you wish. I will make all the arrangements. Lily I am sure is ready. You should take Wulf with you too. Use it to record your moods and ideas. It is a competent autoscribe, reliable and fair, although a bit pompous and old-fashioned in its expression.”

  In its comer the giant autoscribe, which resembled the helmet of a Greek warrior at Troy, trembled slightly as it floated on its AG cells.

  “I will take it gladly,” said Jon Wilberfoss.

  Magister Tancredi raised his hand. “But before you enter the garden be sure to talk to Medoc. I suggest that you ask her to go with you. Together you two are a unit. A very powerful force. Think on it.”

  “I will.”

  And there the conversation ended. Both men sat for a while before the fire and sipped their wine.

  They seemed to be communicating though they did not speak. I am not implying any telepathic ability. I have noticed that human beings sometimes seem to communicate most successfully when they are simply sitting together and not speaking. Both men were relaxed. Both were drifting in their minds, the hour being late.

  Tancredi I am sure was remembering the time when, before he became Magister of Pacifico, he was a Master Pilot in charge of a hospital ship. And I am also sure he took pride in the feet that one of his domestic pilots had been accorded the singular honor of being invited to captain the Nightingale.

  As for Wilberfoss... At that time I did not know what he was thinking. I was surprised that he had accepted the news so calmly. I was surprised that he did not hurry down the hill to tell his wife Medoc. I was surprised that he stayed so long. I saw him swirl the red wine in
his glass. There was a flourish in the gesture. I thought to myself. “He is toasting himself,” and at that time I did not realize how dangerous that can be for a human being. Perhaps, even as he sat there, comfortable before the fire, with wine in his glass and basking in the admiration of his Magister, he already thought of himself as “called,” as one of the elect whom Fate had selected to fulfill its mission. Perhaps in his mind he went back to that day on his Homeworld Icarus when he met and was possessed by the bull-headed God, perhaps he remembered the miraculous rescue of a foolhardy boy outside the dome of his family farm.

  Whatever.

  The news that he had been chosen to captain the Nightingale gave him a sense of destiny, and all his woes spread from that.

  The wine finished, Wilberfoss stood up and bowed to Magister Tancredi. Tancredi showed him out, walking with him to the door. I drifted behind.

  Wilberfoss ran down the hill. He paused at the lookout and stood above the bay staring up at the stars. Then it was on again. He never spoke to me.

  Knowing where he was going I let myself drift out from the cliff over the dark water and glide down until I was on a level with the arcade where he had his house. Wilberfoss came pounding down the pathway and beckoned to me. He threw open his front door and let me glide through first. I heard the voice of Medoc calling, “Jon. Jon Wilberfoss, is that you? What called you away from shantra?”