CHAPTER XIV

DISCOVERY: I walked into the village in a slow hobble, concen­trating on keeping my stride tight, my posture alert even though I had been badly hurt in the forest, flailing around in some forgotten dream. Past the clearing I walked into a sudden lowland which I had not noticed before, a shallow ramp laid in the mud, outlining the perimeter of the village. Past that there was a sudden rise and then the village itself, the shacks and tents unevenly laid out on the land, a long line of them flanking the corridor of a crude path which had been laid in between, the path continuing down as far as I could see and through that tunnel of vision the settlement, shacks and tents, huts and enclosures by the hundreds, moved off into the distance and the haze.

It was the first time I had actually come into the village; all of the times before I had stood on the rim of it while waiting for Stark and Closter to bring the natives to me, while waiting for the natives to make their own shy, tentative gestures toward me. This was a commander’s prerogative, to stand outside, to be ap­proached by the natives and subordinates rather than having to approach them. I had never felt any sense of strain about this, the policies and procedures of the Bureau also being clear in this re­gard . . . but walking through the village I felt a vague hesitancy, the same sense of oozing disconnection which had assaulted me at other times. It was a feeling of irretrievable alienness which came over me, some aspect of the weather, the geography of the village, the silent shacks and huts in which I knew the natives were huddling, looking at me with their gaping, blank, mindless eyes . . . and not only that but the realization that my obligations, by walking in there, had been clearly defined, clearly articulated as if for the first time and that no one would save me. My fate lay within my own hands.

But hesitancy did not jar my step nor did uncertainty blind my eye. Looking casually from right to left in a swinging cool, appraising commander’s gaze, I walked down the rows of crude huts, my arms loose and dangling at my sides, my stride confident, my visage similarly so, keeping myself within the tigthly controlled compass of the commander’s role. My new-found self-possession caused me to move in small waves of isolation sealing me off from the natives and yet making me a part of them, a part of their village, that is to say as comprehensible and matter of fact (although very much admired) as one of their enclosures. I might have been an artifact, a feeling of being immersed in stone overcoming me as I stood poised there, letting the breezes waft their way through my appendages which felt, by the way, rather transluscent. I held my ground, my hand reaching inside my clothing to grasp and caress the weapon which lay in its accus­tomed place nestling cool against me. I had taken it merely for security, of course, having no intention of using it against this mild and beneficient people who had done me no harm. My ac­tions against the mutinous and villainous crew had been for sim­ple self-protection; if the same circumstances had been repeated I might have done it again . . . but, after all, I was not a fiend. Fiendishness, demonology, trollery lay outside of my mild com­pass; I was there to be reasonable. My position exuded reasona­bleness.

Through the open spaces of the huts I knew that natives were looking at me with emotions ranging from fear to wonder. I would, of course, be a god manifest among them; it was amusing to think that they regarded me with such awe and reverence and I allowed a small, cold godlike smile to play across my lips, at the same time spreading my legs slightly to maintain an easeful pos­ture. My hand fell away from the comforting bulk of the weapon; knowing it was there, after all, I had no need to stroke it further. I was not a compulsive. Neither a fiend nor a compulsive. In all ways I knew that I was making exactly the impression which I had had in mind before I began this stroll, one of endless patience. I would hold my position as long as necessary. Neither moving further into the village nor going from it, I would remain there until I had achieved my objective.

It took some time. I knew that it would; I was well prepared to wait. I had, after all, nothing to do at the moment. The aston­ishing news from the Bureau, their refusal to allow me to debark had left me momentarily without tasks to absorb my energies. My communications with the Bureau were now at an end of course; it was not petulance but determination which had made me decide that I would never communicate with them again. If they did not understand what lay behind my very urgent and well-reasoned request to leave I was not going to discuss the issue with them anymore. There would be plenty of time to settle the matter at higher levels of approval. In the meantime I bore the Bureau no grudge nor did I fulminate over their atrocious lack of sympathy or understanding. Rather I felt pity for them, a rather large and benevolent sense of pity which might well indeed have been the emotions of a disappointed but long-suffering god. They did not understand the situation; it was beneath their pitiful and limited gifts of comprehension. I bore them no ill will. It was perfectly all right with me. Everything was all right with me; I had arrived at a final and reasoned assessment of affairs which left me without any culpability whatsoever. I had done exactly what any reasonable man would have.

Some time passed. With the clicking again of invisible insects in the groves, the slow passage of the sun began across the sky, tracing out its arc in little smudged particles left behind like pencil tracings or shavings. The gentle, bucolic breezes continued to waft at my clothing, little shadows like fingers came out tentatively across the ground and tickled at my toes. I shifted my position slightly from time to time merely to keep circulation glinting and burbling through my veins, then permitted myself to stare with abstracted eyes at that inverted bowl of sky, admiring the way that it seemed to clamp down tightly upon Folsom’s Planet, mak­ing an inverted bowl of all landscape. Finally and as I knew it must happen, the native called Ezekiel came down the line of shelters, moving at a slow limp, his eyes fixed upon me, moving with a steady, rolling, bouncing gait, one of his legs clearly shorter than the other (or maybe it was merely some unevenness of the ground underneath that gave this jog to his stride). He came in front of me and paused before me. He folded his hands. We stood in mutual contemplation that way for quite a while.

He did not speak nor did I; he probably out of awe, I because there was nothing for me to say until I had formulated exactly the best way to proceed. For the first time since the decision to come to the village had been made I realized that I did not know exactly how to handle the situation, did not even know what I had had in mind when I decided to come. Did I expect to ask something of Ezekiel or, rather, did I think that he would ask something of me?I was not sure. It was a matter of getting things right in my mind and in the meantime I said nothing at all. I was sure that inspiration would assert itself as it always had up until this point and that when the right series of actions had been pre­sented, it would occur. One must have a certain faith. One must have a cold, hard faith in the efficacy of processes and even though things up until now had been difficult they had worked out for the best, hadn’t they?—in a fashion of course. I knew that they would continue to do so if I only held my ground. So I stood there and so did the native; I could see up and down the line of shelters that we were being looked upon by natives observant of our actions who would not yet come out and the irony of this made me smile because in a way the natives were like the Bureau, I thought. They did not want to get involved. They did not want to take a position. They would observe, they would take in everything that had happened but they would not, of themselves, assert a position. They were not to be blamed for this of course. Con­sidering my godlike status and the fact that only Ezekiel had been educated to communicate with me, their actions were to be ex­pected.

Finally, Ezekiel spoke. He shuffled around in the ground, moved his feet, looked up and down at me and said, “In what way may I pay you honor?” in a very low voice. “What may I do for you?”

“I’m not a god,” I said. “That’s the first thing. I want you to understand that right away. None of us are gods.”

“I know that now. I know that you come from a different world and that you come to help us. But the others do not know this and it is hard for me to accept this too.”

“Well, you had better accept it,” I said, “you had just better understand that there are no gods here and that there never has been.”

“Very well,” Ezekiel said after a pause. “There are no gods here.”

“The others are gone,” I said. “I want you to understand that as well and right now. They will not be back. They are no longer here.”

He looked up at me with a bland and shy expression, his eyes showing depths of cunning that, if I were a suspicious man, might have made me feel that he did not believe me. “They have gone away?”

“They have very definitely gone away. They have left. They are no more.”

“Where have they gone?” he said but slyly, lowering his eyes, “although to ask a god cannot be done . . .”

“I am not a god,” I said again. “None of us are I want to make that very clear. I want you to understand this from the beginning.”

“All is well,” Ezekiel said, “all is well then if you say.”

“Now you must help me,” I said.

“Help you?I do not see how we can help you.”

“Notwe ,” I said. “Just you. I need your help.”

“But I do not see how it is possible . . .”

“I told you,” I said. “We are not gods . . . We are beings such as yourselves at a more advanced state of civilization. That is all.”

“I do not know what civilization . . .”

“That need not concern you,” I said. “Come with me.”

Ezekiel looked up at me, backing away slightly from my hand, his body arched. “Go with you where?”

“Back to the ship,” I said. “I need your help.”

“I do not understand.”

“There is no need for you to understand. How could you un­derstand everything?You did not have enough time to be told. You are to return to the ship with me. I need your assistance.”

“I am frightened,” the creature said. “I am not willing to go. Something is wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong at all. I need your assistance.”

“I would have to consult with my people,” the creature said. “I would need the permission of the Elders.”

“That is ridiculous. You are an Elder yourself. Furthermoreyou are a leader, otherwise you would not be here. You are to come with me.”

“But I do not want to come.”

“You will come,” I said again and then paused. “You will come,” I said, “because I am going to put the equipment of knowl­edge in your hands. It is no longer necessary, as the others wrongly told you, for the others to be similarly educated, for you to go through a period of orientation before we can turn over to you the tools of knowledge. No, on the contrary, I have decided that you are prepared for them now. It may be yours. If you return with me to the ship all will be given to you.”

He said nothing. The cunning had returned to his face both countering and augmenting the fright in a way too peculiar, perhaps, to relate. He turned, looked back at the empty rut behind him, then back at me. “I would learn . . .”

“You will learn what you need to know. I will tell you everything. Come,” I said and extended a hand, touched Ezekiel’s wrist, a repellent thing to do but then I had no choice and was trying to gain his full confidence. Anything is possible if you can will yourself to do it. “You are to go with me,” I said.

“Alone?With none of the others?”

“They are not necessary.” My patience was beginning to wear out. I was entitled to this exhaustion of compliance; I had spent too long already trying to find cooperation through reasonable means. In terms of the terrible pressures impinging upon me I had granted more time to this than the situation deserved. Any rea­sonable being would have agreed with me. I reached inside my clothing once again, took out the weapon, showed it to Ezekiel. “Do you see this?” I said.

“Yes. It creates fire.”

“It also creates death.”

“What is death?” Ezekiel said seriously. “I do not know what you mean by that.”

“It means that you will no longer be anymore. It means that you will no longer exist. You will be at one with the gods. Do you understand that?”

“You mean the great pain that will not end.”

“Yes, that is right.”

“You are showing the great pain, the pain that will not end unless I do what you say.”

“Yes,” I said with relief, “that is what I am saying. I want you to go back with me.”

“All right,” Ezekiel said. He showed a great deal of dignity, more than would have been expected from such a loathsome crea­ture in these circumstances. “I will go with you then, if I must.”

“Yes, you must.”

“May I talk to my people first?”

“No,” I said without thinking about this. “No you may not talk to them.”

“They will be afraid. They will not know what has happened to me.”

“That does not matter,” I said, “that does not matter,” and putting out a hand I seized him, took him by the glossy surfaces of his covering which felt to my hand very much like the burlap of the tents in which we had stayed and drew him toward me. He came against me quickly, softly, twisting in my gaze, then yielded spasmodically in a way that carried him almost against me and I could feel the tic of revulsion again, the evil within him contained by its alienness as it came close, then whisked past me in a spasm of foulness. I held the weapon awkwardly, jammed it then behind him. “Let us go,” I said perhaps somewhat melodramatically. “Let us go now.”

“I want to learn nothing.”

“None of us want to learn. But you must,” I said, “you have no choice, without knowledge nothing can happen,” and I kicked him ahead of me then, a satisfying clout with the knee in his rectum which sent him lurching forward. Folding an arm around him I prevented him from stumbling, kicked him again and on the second kick he gave a small and terrible sound of pain which I found brutally exciting; this explosion of my will against his seemed to open me up toward new layers of feeling and that is the way we left then. Not letting him go I pushed him in front of me down the path, covering him with the weapon without letting him open up the ground. The village receded before me, spun like tape fed through the spools into reverse. We moved down the path, skittering like animals as we came away from it and so intense was my absorption, so rigid my sense of frieze, so great my anticipation of what lay ahead that I did not even realize as I guided Ezekiel toward the forest that it had become night . . . and that throughout all of this no native had interfered by so much as his presence.

Ezekiel was right: they did think that we were gods. In my interposition, I must have fulfilled prophecy.