Green Monkey Dreams (20 page)

The nurses would probably tell you I am dying of lies, which they call senility, or of old age. Lies do come more easily as death approaches. They form a barricade against the tidal wave of fear that roars at me when I think of dying. Behind that flimsy barricade, life is piercingly sweet.

Stories give me the courage I need to keep my promise, and to laugh. I will tell you later of the promise.

My grandfather was a liar, you know.
She probably gets it from your father
, my mother used to whisper to my father, as if lies were hereditary.
Perhaps she is a throwback
, my father would respond, to dissociate himself from our bad blood.

My grandfather liked to answer questions with stories.
How can she learn if you tell her such outrageous things?
my mother would ask him in exasperation.

When a drunk driver annihilated my grandfather on a wet road one night, my mother shook her head and said it was a pity, but in her eyes I saw a certain satisfaction, as if he had got his just desserts.

One of the stories my grandfather told was this:

We were passing the city cemetery. Adjoining it was a field occupied only by a couple of amiable and moth-eaten horses, and a grey tower. I asked what the tower was for. My grandfather answered that it held a giant's arm.

(I have told this more than once before. But I cannot tell
this
story without it. It shapes the two great preoccupations of my life – truth and death.)

In answer to the clamour of questions this tantalising titbit about the giant evoked, my grandfather explained that some aeons past, humans had stumbled on a giant's body in a field during a cross-country trek.
In those days this area
, my grandfather had said in a dry aside,
was completely deserted.
This accounted for no one knowing the giant existed or noticing the body sooner.

Human doctors came to examine the enormous corpse and found that the giant had died stretched out flat, except for one arm. Rigor mortis had set in, and the arm was fixed in that position. The doctors could not shift death from his bones long enough to lower it, and even the engineers and builders had no luck with it. Finally it was decided to bury the giant normally, except for the offending arm, which would be encased in a stone tower.

This would also serve as his monument.

I do not know if it still exists. I never leave this place now. As a young woman I would avoid the cemetery and the field with its mysterious tower. It frightened me, that monument to death. But now, when I am afraid and my courage fails, I picture it in my mind and whisper:
Long live the giant!

Oh, I was afraid of death after my grandfather died. I loved him and his loss grieved me. But the thought of him mouldering under the ground with the worms in his eyes haunted me. It drove me to seek out truth, for I had got it into my head that truth would save me from death – that somehow truth and immortality were the same thing.

Yes, I am laughing, but I am not so far from sorrow or terror. I laugh to give myself the courage to keep faith with the giant. I laugh because truth is a wild beast with teeth that rend.

I abandoned the magic and fairytales of girlhood to investigate the source of life in a search for truth that would fill my every waking hour. When the test-tubes and chemical equations of my prime yielded no answers, I turned in grey-haired middle age to philosophy. I was called wise and brilliant, but let me tell you, what lay at the bottom of all that studying and thinking and talking up a storm was my fear of dying.

At the last, I made up my mind to take the initiative with death instead of having it stalk me through the years. I was tired of waiting and it had come to me that perhaps death and truth were the same thing.

I walked out the front door of my house to the nearest bridge and jumped without bothering to leave a note or think twice.

One minute I was flying through the air towards the cold and stinking river with its rotted black teeth of stone; the next I was hovering in the air, surrounded by golden light.

The fairies had got me after all.

Oh, listen. That is not the end and it is rude of you to turn away when the going is rough. A story is a road and you have your feet upon this one. Kindly walk it to the end. This is the hardest bit, I promise you. It's all downhill from here.

Now where was I? Oh yes, flying through the air and then – floating. For a minute I thought I was dead and truly it was something of an anticlimax. I had been taken up by a molecular refractor, though you might as well call it fairy dust. I woke naked in a cage of woven sunbeams, neither dead or even mortally wounded. I was pretty shocked I can tell you. Nothing had prepared me for this turn of events.

The creatures who had got hold of me were humanoid: their heads were devoid of hair, but they possessed two great chilly liquid eyes, two slightly pointed ears, flattish noses and lipless mouths. They were much bigger than we are – as big as a two-storey building. Truly giants. We talk of giants, but you can't imagine what it was like seeing their great faces peering in at me, their pores open like little gasping mouths. I fainted straight away and several more times until I got used to the sight of them. And even when I began to study them, I could not like their hugeness for it dwarfed and utterly diminished me.

It was some time before I looked at them well enough to note that they were different in another aspect from humans.
They had wings.
Not glorious enormous feathered things such as medieval angels might wear, nor even gleaming transparent wings of butterfly gauze, or I should have noticed them sooner. Their poor shrivelled little wings of flesh had forgotten how to flap.

Seeing the wings, in spite of their smallness and weakness, I understood that what I had said to my mother all those years ago had come to pass. Fairies had indeed got hold of me, though they did not call themselves Fairy but Vaeri.

There was no visible way of differentiating male Vaeri from female. They were telepathic, though often they spoke aloud as well. They moved in a languid, sinuous way that always reminded me of seaweed waving in slow motion under the ocean.

The biggest difference between our races, though, was not their size, or their wasted wings, but their agelessness. It was impossible to say from their faces if the Vaeri were young or old, yet their eyes seemed immeasurably ancient. When I understood that they were immortals I gave up lethargy and disbelief and began to try to communicate with my keeper, wondering if here, at last, I should find truth.

Of all the Vaeri, my keeper alone seemed able to display emotion, and at first this was so subtle as to be imperceptible. Gradually I became aware that he was pleased when I responded to his overtures. He was the only one of that giant race who tried to reach me with words and pats and small fumbling kindnesses. His name was Borth Jesu H and he named me Awen-du.

I learned the language of my captors with extraordinary rapidity, and only later understood that the potential for this language, indeed the memory of it, was buried in my genetic make-up. At the time I thought it was my own brilliance that enabled communication with these alien beings.

My life among the Vaeri fell swiftly into routine. There would be great periods of time when Borth would ask me about my life. In particular, about my suicide attempt. I was more interested in finding out if the stories of fairies on Earth had been planted by his people, and what it was to be immortal. He always managed to turn the topic to his own questions, though. If I asked too persistently where I was, or why, or even how I had got there, he would simply go away and leave me alone.

In between our long conversations and being fed the tasteless paste which Borth said cost much effort to prepare, I would be bathed in ion rays that separated all grime from my flesh, and taken to an enormous room with a great vaulted ceiling open to the stars. This was a sort of circular amphitheatre around which sat rank upon rank of white-robed Vaeri facing a small central stage where I was made to stand.

My first trips to this room were frightening simply because I was afraid I was to be killed and eaten, or sacrificed.

But no one even addressed me, though the speakers would often point at me. As I learned their language I came to understand that the word they called me, Uman, meant monster. Once it would have mortified me to be called that, but since the Vaeri themselves could not help being aware of my likeness to them, I assumed it could not be my form in general that repulsed them.

I know now that this likeness of human to Vaeri was the very thing that made me a monster to them. Then, I decided it must have been the result of some action of mine. And since they had taken me from my suicide, I decided I must be on trial for that, for I had become convinced this was some sort of galactic enquiry.

‘You are not on trial,' Borth had assured me when I asked.

Humanity then? I had guessed, but he would not answer. I decided that must be it – Earth was on trial and I was an example of my race. Poor Earth, I thought.

I did not understand the trial procedure at all. Individuals of the Vaeri spoke in a sort of high oratory when they addressed those gathered in the dome, and their words were so abstract as to be nonsense.

These alien rites were fascinating to begin with, then dull, then worrying; for as time passed, I began to fear for my own fate. Whether I was on trial or not, this strange enquiry centred somehow on me.

Why, you might reasonably ask, should someone who had been quite content to abandon life altogether be concerned about anything that happened thereafter? But now that life was forced on me, I had rediscovered an interest in it.

The end of the trial came quite without warning. One day Borth did not come, and another Vaeri brought me to the dome. Then Borth was brought there also and stood beside me. I had not previously thought of him as anything but my keeper, but now I saw that I had been wrong.

‘You, Borth Jesu H, chosen above many to study Creation, are charged with creating monsters,' said one of the Vaeri.

I was shocked to realise it was Borth who was on trial. But the mention of monsters puzzled me greatly. The Vaeri had called me a monster – were they saying Borth had created me?

I did
. Borth sent the words to my mind. I realised he had taken the question from my thoughts.

‘I do not believe my creations are monsters,' Borth said aloud. ‘How could they be when I modelled them upon our own forms?'

‘You admit you made images of the Vaeri from Murmi clay, always intending to breathe life into them?'

‘I did,' Borth said. ‘I do not regret it.'

What is Murmi? I thought loudly, hoping Borth would hear.

I hear
, he sent.

Then he told me this, in thought, so it came to me swiftly:

There are many sorts of clay. At first, students of Creation are given Ramo to practise on – a coarse and short-lived clay which will hold no life. This is intended to develop dexterity and aesthetic taste. In time, we progress to Pya, a softer, finer clay that allows greater subtlety of form and develops delicacy of touch and restraint. Every
thing created of these clays is destroyed lest something imperfect acci
dentally be given lifebreath.

Only in the final stages of study are students permitted the use of Murmi, an actual form of Porsoul. Of all the clays, only these two are dense and complex enough to contain and hold sentient life. Murmi starts out as Porsoul, but at some point before maturity, it is flawed and begins to decay. Use of it gives the students a feel for the real thing, but its flaw prevents it keeping hold of lifebreath. Whatever is formed of it will degenerate as the lifebreath dissipates. Used Murmi is taken far away and dropped onto a barren planet, and there, certain rites are performed to ensure that all potential for life is extinguished.

‘From the very beginning I was fascinated by the Murmi and its inability to hold lifebreath for more than a short while,' Borth was saying aloud to his accusers. ‘The creations I made of it became more and more beautiful and elaborate as I attempted to induce the clay to cling harder to the lifebreath I put into it, but in every case my creations ceased after a time to function.

‘The more I thought of it, the more curious I became as to what this flaw would do to a life that bore it. How would an exquisite form react to the fading of lifebreath? How would it degenerate? How would it understand its degeneration? I wanted to try – to breathe lifebreath into my Murmi creations. I spoke of this desire to the other students and my teachers. They were horrified and I was forbidden to think of it.

‘I bided my time. I was a model student for a millenium or so, and only then did I dare volunteer to journey with a crew that disposed of Murmi. The load we had was unusable, of course, but I had some fresh Murmi in my pocket and in secret I spent many hours locked in my shiproom labouring over my creations. I made the most exquisite forms I had ever made, modelled on the Vaeri. Of course they were much tinier, for I had scant clay and nowhere to hide lifesized creatures. I did not bother with the wings, for they no longer served a purpose in my own kind. When I was finished, I wept to see how beautiful they were.

‘I called my creatures Ur-lings.'

In human words that would be translated as Little People
, Borth sent to me.

‘When we reached the place where the clay was to be thrown out, I pretended to be lost so that I could put my Ur-lings on the ground and breathe life into them. Then I left.'

‘Did you ever return?' one of the Vaeri asked.

Borth inclined his head, having picked up my habit of using body language to enhance speech or thoughts.

‘Twice. I did not dare come again for fear I would be tracked. But the time I spent among the race arisen from my Ur-lings made me see the decadence and staleness of the Vaeri. The Ur-lings are neither smug nor complacent. Their lives contain pain and anger and sorrow, and they strive and yearn for beauty with every fibre of their beings. Life is infinitely more beautiful and precious, and even those who seek death, such as Awen-du, worship it as much as they fear it.'