Dreamers Page 6

in this

  distracted globe

  remember

  thee

  yea

  from the table

  of my memory

  ill wipe away

  all trivial

  fond records

  ungar said

  he did not know

  whether

  we would be able

  to make geniuses

  or whether

  we would

  be able to raise

  the general level

  of morality

  but we could certainly

  raise the general

  level of intelligence

  the

  number

  of volunteers

  in the

  creche

  has

  dropped to

  the

  danger

  level

  check blood samples

  for parental

  yearnings

  “Is that where my successor must be found,” the Mnemonist asked, “among the volunteers? Among those who find fulfillment in service?” That was a broader group than that of the historians, though the group was getting smaller constantly. He knew them well: They were the men and women who seldom if ever popped, who served in the crèches, in the skill positions where human discrimination was desirable or even essential. Perhaps one of them might find his position of ultimate service uniquely satisfying. “Am I not a volunteer?” he asked.

  if i

  forget thee

  o jerusalem

  let

  my right hand

  forget

  her cunning

  two scientists

  have isolated

  the first known

  memory molecule

  in the brains of rats

  the fear molecule

  scotophobin

  the most likely

  Volunteer

  might be one

  who has suffered

  Much

  and sacrificed

  More

  The Volunteer

  THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

  The waters soupy with proteins and amino acids splashed against the hot volcanic rock, steaming and pouring down, and splashing and steaming again and again and again over the centuries and over the millennia, until at last a chance linkage of proteins achieved the power of reproduction and began to eat and grow and divide and eat and grow and divide, to mutate and to differentiate and to compete ... and finally consciousness stirred.

  The Man Who Hunts Alone returned through the forest with the deer across his shoulders, its legs dangling against his chest on either side of his broad neck. He could feel the soft hide of the young animal against his shoulders and the head bouncing against his back as he jogged along the trail. He could smell the slowly generating odors of decay in his kill and the nostril-flaring odor of new blood not yet congealed in the knife wound across the deer's throat. Beyond those he could smell the leaves of the forest, particularly the needles of the firs that grew thickly here and smelled the strongest. He could feel the leaves under his feet; he could hear them crunching as he trotted—but not loud enough for anyone to hear except the little animals who scurried away at his approach.

  The Man Who Hunts Alone reached the clearing. He stopped just inside the edge of the forest with the caution that came from long experience with perils that lurked everywhere. On the far side of the clearing, like a shadow on the face of the wooded bluff, was the mouth of the cave. The clearing looked just as he had left it the day before, but it was silent—no voices, no movement. He circled the entire clearing, staying just out of sight among the trees, and found nothing—no trail, no intruders. From the nearest point he could see a few paces into the dark opening of the cave; nothing moved.

  Soundlessly he put down the carcass of the deer and eased into the clearing and across it to the bluff. He glanced around one last time and then moved quickly and quietly through the opening and stopped just beyond the sunlight that spilled into the cave. The cave was dark and quiet, and it had the good familiar odors of smoke and meat and urine. In a moment his vision grew sharper and he saw the forms of his two children, a boy and a girl, lying stretched out beside the black remains of an old fire as if they were asleep. But they were lying too still.

  Their throats had been cut like little pigs. The smell of blood was thick in the cave. The bodies were small and fragile beside the old fire, smaller even than the deer he had carried back for their meal, and they were dead. Sorrow was a cold fist in his throat, and the woman was gone.

  He turned and left them behind, the dead who could feel nothing anymore, and began the search for those who were still alive, who could still feel joy and pain. He hunted for the path the woman would leave, the woman who did not hunt and had not the skills of the hunter, who would leave a trail that he could follow, because she had not died here with the children she had borne.

  Finally he found it, a twig broken from a low bush, still damp with sap, and a few steps beyond, a woman's footprint in the soft ground near the stream. He went up the stream until he found another footprint where she had emerged from the cold water, her foot slipping from the stone where it should have stepped. An hour later he found the first faint indication that she was not alone, the imprint in the dust of the trail of a large toe that could not have been hers.

  After that he jogged along, checking the trail only occasionally to make certain that they were still ahead. The trail went the easy way through the valleys away from the hills—the easy way because the woman was weak. Once, the tracks crossed a rocky patch, but he circled it until he found where they had left again.

  On the evening of the third day he caught up with them. He could not follow the trail after dark, but neither could they travel by night without leaving a broad trail, and the woman slowed the other down. She needed food frequently, and they would stop to eat. He had found a few bones carelessly unburied, and a few fruit seeds cast aside. The Man Who Hunts Alone had eaten as he ran, gnawing at the raw meat of a rabbit he had come upon unexpectedly along the trail or stripping seeds and fruits from the bushes as he passed.

  He knew the trail was minutes fresh, and he approached cautiously. They were lying under a bush, a strange hunter and the dark-haired, blue-eyed woman he had taken into his cave after stealing her from a family that lived many days’ journey to the south. They could not wait, his woman and the strange hunter; they were mating with the frenzy of animals in heat. He could smell the sweat from their bodies and the love odors from the woman. They pounded their bodies together, her slenderness against his thick hips and thighs, and he could hear the slap-slap-slap of flesh against flesh and the leaves that crackled beneath them as they rolled carelessly beneath the bushes they thought concealed them.

  He found a fist-sized stone beside the trail and hit the man on the back of the head before either of them knew he was there. Quickly, casually, he cut the man's tendons just above the heels and forgot him; he would awaken, but he could not crawl far. When he rolled the man away, the woman looked up at him with her blue eyes, looked at the bloody knife in his hand, and looked at his face again.

  “He came upon me when I wasn't watching,” she said. “He made me look while he killed the children, and he threatened me with his knife if I didn't do everything he said."

  “You came with him."

  “Only because I was afraid,” she said. Her body was still sweaty and red from the lovemaking, but she lay there in the dust and the leaves, not covering herself while she lied to him.

  “You helped him."

  “No, no..."

  “You enjoyed it."

  “I was crazy with fear. I couldn't help it."

  “You killed the children,” he said. “It was too neat for him. You got him to take you away. It was your idea. You did it all. You—"

  “Yes,” she said when she knew there was no hope. “I hated you. I hated you always. You don't know how much I
hated you, hated looking at you, hated you touching me. I hated your children. The first chance, I got away. I hate you, hate you, hate you—"

  She hated him while he cut off her toes one by one, and then her fingers, her ears, her eyelids, her nose.... After the first hour she began to scream. Each scream sent a shudder of pleasure down his back. She was a strong woman and she lived for most of two days.

  THE DISCOVERY OF SEX

  The creature floated peacefully, contentedly, in a sea as warm and thick as blood, conscious of self and satiety but unthinking, pleased to drift and eat and drift until some inner pressure that it did not understand forced it to divide into two creatures that would eat and drift. Into this paradise came a need that grew not into division but into a desire to merge. Other creatures floated in the sea, and it sought one out and tried to join with it in a greater union. He found resistance, rejection, recoil, injury, pain.

  The stone floor was cold and hard beneath his feet but not as cold nor as hard as the face of the man who sat upon the throne. Outside, the sun was hot and bright, but the palace was cold and dark. The smell of the burnt offerings was strong; the odor of fear was stronger. His skin felt clammy, and his robe raised bumps on his skin where it touched. He held his ceremonial headdress in his hand, and he said, “We must make sacrifices, O Mighty One. This is the only thing that will stop the white invaders, that will keep them from this holy city, from this palace itself."

  The king's haughty mask slipped, and he squirmed irresolutely on his throne. The hangers-on of the court, in their fancy clothing, whispered to one another behind cautious hands. He was a weak king; it was tragic that he was king when the times demanded strength and decisiveness if the Kingdom of the Sun were to survive.

  “We have sacrificed many times already, holy father,” the king complained. “It has brought us no nearer to repelling the invaders, and the people grumble."

  The priest did not look at the king's daughter seated on the dais beside the throne. She was dark and lovely, slender, not like the peasant women, but deep in the breast, and she looked at him now—the woman who was his by promise of the king, who had been allowed to reject him—from beneath the dark lashes that veiled her startling blue eyes. But he knew that she was there. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen her coquetting with the fancy young men of the court.

  The invaders, it was reported, had blue eyes.

  “The gods are not satisfied,” he told the king. “They think we grudge our sacrifices, that we cheat them of their honor. They will not stop the white devils unless we are properly contrite, unless we humble ourselves before them, unless our hearts are open and worshipful."

  “Perhaps,” the king's daughter said, “the white soldiers are not devils but the gods of our legends come back to reclaim their world."

  “Nonsense,” the priest said. “The gods have never left us. You talk myth and superstition. The gods do not need to come like invaders."

  “Perhaps,” she said softly, “it is the white soldiers we should humble ourselves before."

  “These white devils will destroy the Kingdom of the Sun,” he said. “They will kill your father and all the members of his court. They will topple our temples and steal the tears of the gods. They will rape our women and scatter our people to the ends of the earth, and the land of our fathers will be peopled by peasants and half-castes; they will eat dirt and call it food, and our ancient glories will be lost forever."

  Even the girl was shaken by the eloquence of his prophecies, and the whispering courtiers were silent. The words hung in the air like feathered serpents, for the wisdom was on him and they knew.

  The king was terrified. “What do you want?” he asked. The words trembled from his mouth.

  “What I want does not matter,” the priest said. “What do the gods want?"

  He could smell the king's fear from where he stood in front of the throne. Gradually the king regained some measure of control. “All right,” he said, “you may have your sacrifices."

  “With an open heart,” the priest insisted.

  “Yes, of course,” the king said. “How many maidens do you want?"

  “Just one,” the priest said.

  The king was surprised. “One?"

  The priest nodded and lifted his head high as befitted the spokesman of the gods. “They ask for the king's daughter."

  The smell of the gods was powerful in the king's house. The courtiers gasped. The king fell back in his throne. Even the daughter of the king paled and trembled and was silent. Now she knew her life was in his hands.

  “No,” the king said. “You are wrong. You have read their message wrong. They do not demand my daughter. This may not be. You may have a hundred peasant girls, but you may not have my daughter."

  The priest lowered his head the appropriate small distance to show proper obedience but not enough to indicate submission. “I will do as the king commands,” he said, but he could not conceal his triumph completely. “I fear it will not be sufficient to appease the gods. The white devils will continue their dreadful advance into our interior.” Now she would come to him. Now she would agree to the promised union of priesthood and royalty. She had regained her composure after the king spoke, but now she knew who held the power.

  A day later he stood before the high altar, weary with blood and death, his arm heavy with the weight of the ceremonial knife and the lives it had taken and the hearts ripped from still-heaving maiden breasts and deposited reverently before the gods. The smell of blood, the incense of the gods, was so thick it could almost be felt. But in spite of all the dark bodies that had been stretched before him, in spite of all the blood that had drenched his ceremonial apron and collected in the concave altar stone, in spite of the incense, he knew that the gods were unappeased; their thirst had not been quenched. He had been right about the gods, though he had not known it. He had been wrong about the daughter of the king. She had not come to him. She had sent no message. She thought she could defeat him. She thought she could evade her proper place, that she could flout his honor, that she could cheat the gods; and a feeling of hatred rose in him to replace the love that he had felt for her. A cold desire for revenge replaced the desire that had flowed like lava through his veins; an eagerness for her death replaced the yearning to touch her skin and join himself to her.

  He was not surprised when the young priest came to him and whispered in his ear that news had come. The white devils had marched deeper into the kingdom; more villages had welcomed them; peasants and villagers were rising from their long submission; they were taking up clubs and implements and marching with the white devils toward the capital.

  The priest felt the strength return to his arm, and the knife in his hand felt as if it had never tasted blood. “And how does the king receive the news?” he asked.

  “With rolling eyes and trembling hands,” the young priest replied.

  “You must go to him,” the priest said. “You must tell him you bear a message from me. Tell him that he must send his daughter to me for sacrifice, that the gods are unappeased, that they will not destroy the invaders unless they know his heart is reverent. Tell him unless he does this the white devils will march through the streets of the city, and the king himself will be killed like a dog and thrown into the gutters for peasants to kick and urinate upon."

  Before the sun had climbed another arc of the sky, the daughter of the king was brought before him. There had been no doubt in his heart, and it was so. Unlike the peasant girls, awed by the magnificence of the altar, by his assuming the aspect of the gods, and by the honor about to be accorded to them, she came struggling in the hands of priests, cursing them, unbelieving and blasphemous.

  Only when she was stripped of her royal clothing and stretched upon the altar before him did she finally realize that her fate was upon her. She fell silent then under his stern, remorseless gaze, and he looked upon her slender body, aristocratic and lovely, and saw it not as the body of a desirable woman but as an ulti
mate sacrifice, convulsed now with uncontrollable tremors as she looked up at him, surrender in her eyes.

  “Please,” she said, her voice weak and shaking. “Please. I will do whatever you wish."

  But that possibility was as remote as the memory of another life. The power was upon him like a mantle, guiding his actions, controlling his arms as they raised above her and plunged the knife into the soft breast. The blood spurted like the blood of any peasant, and the heart lay in his hand like any heart, still throbbing with life for a moment. And he knew the great joy of serving as the instrument of divine forces to do that which his heart desired. He was like a god himself, and he was no longer tormented, like a man, by desire.

  THE TERROR OF THE MUTANT

  The darkness was pleasing and warm like blood, and he floated happily for an age, not remembering, mindless and content. So gradually that he could not determine when it began, something began to ache. He moved slowly in the warm, dark waters, trying to relieve the sensation, to move away, but the discomfort grew. It began to focus inside him, where he could not escape, and he wriggled and flopped and splashed, and finally he found himself on a hard surface, gasping for breath, and memory returned.