The wind's twelve quarters - vol 2 (16 page)

'You're
a very good man, Sidney,' Hughes said gently. 'I wish...' After a minute he sat
up. He reached up to his face and took off the black goggles. They fitted so
closely around his eyes sockets that it took him a little while to get them
off. When they were off he lowered his hands, and looked across the room,
directly at Shapir. His eyes, the pupils enlarged by long privation of light,
were almost as dark as the goggles.

'I
see you,' he said. 'Hide and seek. I spy. You're It. Do you want to know what I
see?'

'Yes,'
Shapir said softly.

'A
blot. A shadow. An incompleteness, a rudiment, an obstruction. Something
completely unimportant. You see, it doesn't do any
good
to be a good
man, even...'

'And
when you look at yourself?'

'The
same. Just the same. A hindrance, a triviality. A blot on the field of vision.'

'The
field of vision. What is the field of vision?'

'What
do you think?' Hughes said, very quietly and wearily. 'What is true vision of?
Reality, of course. I have been re-programmed to perceive reality, to see the
truth. I see God.' He sank his face into his hands, covering his eyes. 'I was a
thinking man,' he said. 'I tried to be a rational man. But what good's reason,
when you can
see
the truth? Seeing is believing...' He
looked up again at Shapir, his dark eyes both piercing and unseeing. 'If you
want a real explanation, go ask Joe Temski. He's keeping quiet now; he's biding
his time. But he's the one who can tell you. And he will, when his time comes.
He can translate what he hears - translate it into words. It's harder to do
with visual perceptions. Mystics have always had trouble putting their visions
into words; except the ones that got the Word, that heard the Voice. They
usually got right up and acted, didn't they? Temski will act. But I will not. I
refuse. I will not preach. I will not be a missionary.'

'A
missionary?'

'Don't
you see? Don't you see that's what the "room" is? A training center,
a briefing room, a—'

'A
religious center? A church?'

'Well,
in a way. A place where you are taught to see God, and hear God, and know God.
And love God. A conversion center. A place where you're converted! And then you
want to go out and preach the knowledge of God to the others - to the heathen.
Because now you know how blind they are, and how easy it is to see. No, not
just a church; a mission. The Mission. And you learn the Mission, and you come
out of it with the Mission. They weren't explorers. They were missionaries,
bearing the truth, bringing it to the other races and the future races, all the
poor damned heathens living in the outer darkness. They knew the answer, and
they wanted us all to know the answer. Nothing else matters, once you've
learned the answer. It doesn't matter if you're a good man or a bad one, if I'm
an intelligent man or a fool. Nothing about us matters except that we are
trivial vehicles of the great truth. The earth doesn't matter, the stars don't
matter, death doesn't matter, nothing is anything. Only God is.'

'An
alien god?'

'Not
a god. God - the one true God, immanent in all things. Everywhere, forever. I
have learned to see God. All I have to do is open my eyes, and I see the Face of
God. And I'd give all my life just to see one human face again, to see a tree,
a chair -a plain wooden chair, ordinary— They can keep their God, they can keep
their Light. I want the world back. I want questions, not the answer. I want my
own life back, and my own death!'

On
the recommendation of the Army psychiatrist who took over the case of Geraint
Hughes after Shapir was dismissed, Hughes was moved to a military hospital for
the insane. As he was generally a quiet and cooperative patient he was not kept
under strict supervision, and after eleven months of confinement he
unfortunately carried out a successful suicide attempt, slashing his wrists
with a spoon-handle which he had stolen from the mess hall and sharpened by
rubbing against the bed frame. It is an interesting fact that he killed himself
on the day the Psyche XV Mission started back to Earth from Mars, bringing the
documents and records which, as interpreted by the First Apostle, now form the
first chapters of the Revelation of the Ancients, the sacred texts of the holy
and universal Church of God, bringer of light to the heathen, sole vehicle of
the One Eternal Truth.

O
fools (said I) thus to prefer dark night

Before
true light... But as I did their madness so discuss

One
whisper'd thus,
This Ring the Bride-groome did for none provide

But
for his bride.

DIRECTION
OF THE ROAD

The
tree stands just south of the McMinnville bypass on Oregon State Highway
18.
It lost a
major limb last year, but still looks grand. We drive past it several times a
year, and it has never failed to uphold Relativity with dignity and the skill of
long practice.

They
did not use to be so demanding. They never hurried us into anything more than a
gallop, and that was rare; most of the time it was just a jigjog foot-pace. And
when one of them was on his own feet, it was a real pleasure to approach him.
There was time to accomplish the entire act with style. There he'd be, working
his legs and arms the way they do, usually looking at the road, but often aside
at the fields, or straight at me: and I'd approach him steadily but quite
slowly, growing larger all the time, synchronizing the rate of approach and the
rate of growth perfectly, so that at the very moment that I'd finished
enlarging from a tiny speck to my full size - sixty feet in those days - I was
abreast of him and hung above him, loomed, towered, overshadowed him. Yet he
would show no fear. Not even the children were afraid of me, though often they
kept their eyes on me as I passed by and started to diminish.

Sometimes
on a hot afternoon one of the adults would stop me right there at our
meeting-place, and lie down with his back against mine for an hour or more. I
didn't mind in the least. I have an excellent hill, good sun, good wind, good
view; why should I mind standing still for an hour or an afternoon? It's only a
relative stillness, after all. One need only look at the sun to realize how
fast one is going; and then, one grows continually - especially in summer. In
any case I was touched by the way they would entrust themselves to me, letting
me lean against their little warm backs and falling sound asleep there between
my feet. I liked them. They have seldom lent us Grace as do the birds; but I
really preferred them to squirrels.

In
those days the horses used to work for them, and that too was enjoyable from my
point of view. I particularly liked the canter, and got quite proficient at it.
The surging and rhythmical motion accompanied shrinking and growing with a swaying
and swooping, almost an illusion of flight. The gallop was less pleasant. It
was jerky, pounding: one felt tossed about like a sapling in a gale. And then,
the slow approach and growth, the moment of looming-over, and the slow retreat
and diminishing, all that was lost during the gallop. One had to hurl oneself
into it, cloppety-cloppety-cloppety! and the man usually too busy riding, and
the horse too busy running, even to look up. But then, it didn't happen often.
A horse is mortal, after all, and like all the loose creatures grows tired easily;
so they didn't tire their horses unless there was urgent need. And they seemed
not to have so many urgent needs, in those days.

It's
been a long time since I had a gallop and to tell the truth I shouldn't mind
having one. There was something invigorating about it, after all.

I
remember the first motorcar I saw. Like most of us, I took it for a mortal,
some kind of loose creature new to me. I was a bit startled, for after a
hundred and thirty-two years I thought I knew all the local fauna. But a new
thing is always interesting, in its trivial fashion, so I observed this one
with attention. I approached it at a fair speed, about the rate of a canter,
but in a new gait, suitable to the ungainly looks of the thing: an uncomfortable,
bouncing, rolling, choking, jerking gait. Within two minutes, before I'd grown
a foot tall, I knew it was no mortal creature, bound or loose or free. It was a
making, like the carts the horses got hitched to. I thought it so very ill-made
that I didn't expect it to return, once it gasped over the West

Hill,
and I heartily hoped it never would for I disliked that jerking bounce.

But
the thing took to a regular schedule, and so, perforce, did I. Daily at four I
had to approach it, twitching and stuttering out of the West, and enlarge,
loom-over, and diminish. Then at five back I had to come, poppeting along like
a young jack-rabbit for all my sixty feet jigging and jouncing out of the East,
until at last I got clear out of sight of the wretched little monster and could
relax and loosen my limbs to the evening wind. There were always two of them
inside the machine: a young male holding the wheel, and behind him an old
female wrapped in rugs, glowering. If they ever said anything to each other I
never heard it. In those days I overheard a good many conversations on the
road, but not from that machine. The top of it was open, but it made so much
noise that it overrode all voices, even the voice of the song-sparrow I had
with me that year. The noise was almost as vile as the jouncing.

I
am of a family of rigid principle and considerable self-respect. The Quercian
motto is 'Break but bend not', and I have always tried to uphold it. It was not
only personal vanity, but family pride, you see, that was offended when I was
forced to jounce and bounce in this fashion by a mere making.

The
apple trees in the orchard at the foot of the hill did not seem to mind; but
then, apples are tame. Their genes have been tampered with for centuries.
Besides, they are herd creatures; no orchard tree can really form an opinion of
its own.

I
kept my own opinion to myself.

But
I was very pleased when the motorcar ceased to plague us. All month went by
without it, and all month I walked at men and trotted at horses most willingly,
and even bobbed for a baby on its mother's arm, trying hard though
unsuccessfully to keep in focus.

Next
month, however - September it was, for the swallows had left a few days earlier
- another of the machines appeared, a new one, suddenly dragging me and the
road and our hill, the orchard, the fields, the farmhouse roof, all jigging and
jouncing and racketing along from East to West; I went faster than
a
gallop,
faster than I had ever gone before. I had scarcely time to loom, before I had
to shrink right down again.

And
the next day there came a different one.

Yearly
then, weekly, daily, they became commoner. They became a major feature of the
local Order of Things. The road was dug up and re-metalled, widened, finished
off very smooth and nasty, like a slug's trail, with no ruts, pools, rocks,
flowers, or shadows on it. There used to be a lot of little loose creatures on
the road, grasshoppers, ants, toads, mice, foxes, and so on, most of them too
small to move for, since they couldn't really see one. Now the wise creatures
took to avoiding the road, and the unwise ones got squashed. I have seen all
too many rabbits die in that fashion, right at my feet. I am thankful that I am
an oak, and that though I may be wind-broken or uprooted, hewn or sawn, at
least I cannot, under any circumstances, be squashed.

With
the presence of many motorcars on the road at once, a new level of skill was
required of me. As a mere seedling, as soon as I got my head above the weeds, I
had learned the basic trick of going two directions at once. I learned it
without thinking about it, under the simple pressure of circumstances on the
first occasion that I saw a walker in the East and a horseman facing him in the
West. I had to go two directions at once, and I did so. It's something we trees
master without real effort, I suppose. I was nervous, but I succeeded in
passing the rider and then shrinking away from him while at the same time I was
still jigjogging towards the walker, and indeed passed him (no looming, back in
those days!) only when I had got quite out of sight of the rider. I was proud
of myself, being very young, that first time I did it; but it sounds more
difficult than it really is. Since those days of course I had done it
innumerable times, and thought nothing about it; I could do it in my sleep. But
have you ever considered the feat accomplished, the skill involved, when a tree
enlarges, simultaneously yet at slightly different rates and in slightly
different manners, for each one of forty motorcar drivers facing two opposite
directions, while at the same time diminishing for forty more who have got
their backs to it, meanwhile remembering to loom over each single one at the
right moment: and to do this minute after minute, hour after hour, from
daybreak till nightfall or long after?