This episode is found in the mythologies of the Pharsees of the Esbaahn Cluster and the Brassad subcultures of the Sarsan Reach. Both include it within larger, dissimilar bodies of myth.
Lacking intermediary occurrences in space and time, the two versions have been cited by one-world proponents as evidence for prehistoric migrations from a common origin-world, but there is still doubt about the tale's provenance. The Brassad myths are older by a thousand years, and the episode's "fit"the number and sequence of commonly repeated elements between it and the larger body of worksis superior to that of the Pharsee mythology, wherein it may represent a late inclusion.
The Pharsees treat their version as a moral fableonly the pure in heart can peer into the world of dreams and spirits, but they risk the sickness of understanding too much. Considering the Pharsee's reclusive nature, and their refusal to join in galactic politics, it is hardly irresponsible to discount their interpretations of the story.
Obviously, Benadek is "special," as the story implies. We, millennia in his future, assume it if only because his myths have endured. But so have other archetypal figures. Is there some deeper meaning in this new, internally consistent story? Where do "pure-humans" and "simples" fit in our cultural histories, our moral fables? The relevant question is not why Benadek is special to us, but why he was special to Achibol and Sylfie.
Chapter Six reveals one secret, but this editor suspects it reflects only the primitive belief of incipient humans in their own uniqueness and, for us, represents a yearning for simpler days when one world was the center of our universe, and sun and stars revolved around it.
(Kaledrin, Senior Editor)
The temple wall loomed. There was Achibol, silent in the honch's grasp, perhaps dead. Sylfie slumped against the wall. There was blood on her face, and her head was cocked unnaturally sideways.
The small, round eye of a laser pistol stared at Benadek, unblinking, unmoved by the screams all around, screams that made his eardrums flutter like diving june bugs. Screams of mothers, women; man-screams, father-bellowsrage and pain, agony and despair, underlain by hoarse honch-laughter. Then the sounds attenuated to moans and dying mutters and, somewhere near, woman-voices crying.
"Boy! Awaken!" It was Achibol.
"Benadekit's a dream. Please wake up," Sylfie pleaded. "You're safe now."
Benadek forced his eyelids apart. Dawn-sounds filled his ears. Achibol's face filled his field of vision. "That was quite a dream, boy. Are you awake now?"
"Master. I dreamed . . . but it's gone now." Only the byproducts of the nightmare remained: cooling sweat on his clothing, the aftermath of adrenaline making his gut knot and his hands tremble.
"Do you remember anything?"
"I'm sorry, Master. It's gone. It always is." Sylfie was holding his hand to still his trembling. Their mutual grip was hot, sweat-slick.
The sorcerer ignored her, and pressed on. "Such violent dreams. So powerful, yet so soon gone. No trace remains?"
"None, Master."
"This is not new, is it? Not the first such terrifying, unrememberable dream?" There was no doubt in his voice.
"No. Not the first time. I never remember them."
"When did they start? Do you remember that?"
"I've had them as long as I can remember. Years? Yes, years."
Slowly, Achibol wormed answers from him. Benadek remembered nothing of how he came to be in Vilbursiton, how he became an urchin among other urchins. His life began in those dirty streets, five years or so before.
"Do you want to know?"
"Will I remember the dreams then, even waking?"
"Can you face them, otherwise? They're child-dreams, and you're mostly a man. You've hidden some monstrous agony your child-mind couldn't face. But the dreams will keep coming until you do. No good comes of pain held so close. The question is, are you now strong enough to withstand that which drove your entire childhood into hiding in the back alleys of your mind? Will you?"
Benadek did not answer immediately. The dreams plagued him, and he had no past. He remembered only . . . his father. His father, the connecting link between the after and the unremembered before. Sylfie squeezed his hand. Achibol peered closely. "I'll try," the boy said.
Achibol got to his feet. Benadek heard, rather than saw, as he rummaged within his trunk. He returned with a tiny glass cup of clear fluid. "Drink this," he commanded. Seeing Benadek's hesitation, he explained. "A potion to help you relax. The real work of recalling your life, the `magic,' if you will, will be your own. I'll assist, and guide you. Now lean back and be comfortable."
Handing Benadek the cup, he flourished a blue-glass bauble on a frayed string, and swung it in front of the boy's face. "Watch this. Relax. Feel your body becoming loose, heavy . . ." Benadek was familiar with the routine. He'd watched his master mesmerize rubes, curing hives, impotence, and unnatural cravings.
For a moment he dozed, but soon became freshly aware of Achibol's voice. "The man with you. Who is he? Who is the man?"
"My father." The words were not Benadek's, but someone else's, a younger someone using his mouth, his lungs and breath. Once the voice began speaking, it did not stop. Achibol injected short questions periodically, but the voice needed little prompting.
Short, crooked rows of summer corn march across Benadek's mindsmall, weak plants, but tall to a little boy. There are lamp-lit memories, too: his mother's face, animated, reading and storytelling. Somewhere, a more mature Benadek fights not to leave those safe, halcyon times, before the mountains and the cold.
"It is late fall," the unwelcome voice prompts him. "The corn is in. Where is your father?"
Fire! The little corncrib, their pitiful harvest, is burning. Flames lash its hand-split slats, weaving in and out, consuming. A horrid face looms up, grinning, with big, flat teeth. "Honches!" someone yells. Honch-hands pick him up. His screams and his mother's commingle. She claws the honch, who throws Benno away.
He is being carried, and the horizon goes up and down with his bobbing head. He sees tracks in the snow.
"In the snow? When is this? Where are you going?"
"The mountains. They're big and gray and cold, but the honches won't follow us there."
"Who is `us,' Benno? Who is with you?"
"Mama."
Who else? Where is Papa?"
"Hunting."
The mountains grew taller every day, Benadek remembered. He was always hungry, always cold. Then there was a tiny house of stones, with a pine-branch roof and a raggedy blanket door. Sometimes, at first, it was warm inside, when the snow blew deep around it. Later, it was always cold.
Game is scarce. We're too high up, Papa says. The rocks and scrub shelter only goats and eagles. Papa has to go down into the trees to hunt. Mama is sick from cold. Wood is scarcetwigs scarcely worth the effort to dig from the snow. Mama reads to me. I show her letters and words I know. Outside, the wind howls.
Now our food is gone. Mama gives me leather to chew, but I mustn't swallow it. Mama is very quiet. I crawl under the fur with her to get warm, but Mama is cold too. She puts her arms around me. "Good-bye," she says, not "good night."
Mama is holding me. I have to get up or I'll wet us, but she won't let go. Wake up, Mama. I can't wake her. I wet myself, and for a few minutes I am warm.
Papa is here. He picks me up. Mama is sleeping yet. Papa is quiet, so he won't wake her. He is crying. "We have to go, son," Papa says. "I'll take you to a town, where you'll be warm." He wraps me in the blanket. Mama will be cold, with nothing over her. Papa says she isn't cold anymore. "Now we must go. You must have warmth, and food. You are very sick."
"Bring Mama! Mama's hungry too."
"Mama's gone, Benno. Now it's just the two of us."
"No! Mama's in there. Wake her up."
"Mama wants me to take you where there's food and a warm place." Papa was still crying.
"I'll say good-bye to her," I told him. He let me go. Mama wouldn't talk to me. I think I fell asleep again. Papa carried me away.
"The temple. Tell me about the temple."
"I don't like the temple. The temple is bad."
"Why is it bad?"
Father at the temple gate, and he peering from behind a rain barrel? No, that was later. Before that, there was a house with many rooms to get lost in. Other faces stared from doorways, frowning at crying little boys.
"Did you just arrive there?"
No. Been there a long time. Papa says, "Not much longer, son. Come spring, you'll be on your own."
"Did he go away?"
Papa coughs blood. His skin is papery and gray, and his bones stick out. "I'm going to the temple," Papa says. "These simple folk go there to be healed. The honches there don't know me. I'm dying, like your mother. Maybe the temple can fix me up. I have to risk it, boy."
"Then the temple? You went with him?"
The big wood door. Waiting outside for Papa. The sun goes two hands across the sky. Then Papa comes out. He's crying real loud. The temple hurt him. Papa kicks and bump-bumps his head all bloody. I say, "Papa stop it," and his eyes go funny and he gets all gray. The honches laugh.
"Enough!" another voice said angrily. "No more!"
"Mama?"
"No. Sylfie."
Sylfie? In bits and pieces, Benadek's memory returned. He opened his eyes. Sylfie's face filled his field of vision, upside down. A distance away, Achibol's eyes were like black coals, angry. But not at him.
Achibol rummaged in his trunk. "Drink this, boy," Achibol commanded, proffering him a tiny glass with a trumpet-flared rim. "It will make you sleepreal sleep."
Later, when he awakened, Achibol asked him if he remembered it all, now. Benadek nodded. His face was pale and drawn, and he looked older. There was another thing there, too: rage. Silent, deadly rage.
"I remember."
"Do you know what it means?"
"I think so."
"Tell me," Achibol pressed.
"I'm a pure-human. I'm not a boffin."
"What else?"
"I was right to stay away from the temples. They would have killed me, too."
"In all likelihood they would have, had you gone there. Anything else?"
Benadek shook his head. "Nothing."
Hearing the edge in Benadek's voice, the old man desisted. "Never mind, then. There's time enough later. Can you walk? No? Then I'll help you onto the mule."
When they'd been moving for several hours, Benadek felt recovered from his ordeal. It was all in his head anyway. Why should he feel so weak? He must never be weak again. There was too much to be done.
"Master? What does it mean to be a pure-human?" he asked as he walked beside Achibol again.
"For me? Or for you?"
"Is there a difference? Aren't I like you?"
"You have the same number of chromosomes, and a full complement of genes instead of simples' multiple redundanciesbut we're of different stock to begin with, and there will be other . . . differences . . . too. Successful mutations that didn't kill your ancestors, or you."
"What differences?"
"I can't know unless they reveal themselves. But I will be watching closely for cluesthere may still be danger to you. Have you remembered any more about your father? How he differed from simples? That might help."
Benadek shrugged. "He was smarter, I think."
"Your mother?"
"She was funny. I used to laugh at her story-faces . . .
"What were those?"
"Bears and squirrels, things like that. She made faces when she told stories. When she was being a frog, she made her face like one."
"Truly? Could she turn green, too?" Benadek's flush warned Achibol he was treading on dangerous ground. "I'm not mocking you, boy. I need to know exactly what your parents were, for your sake. Did she turn green? Did she grow squirrel hair on her face?"
"Of course not! They were just faces. She was still Mama. You're sure you're not teasing me? Can pure-humans do such things?" What, he asked himself, can pure-humans do? What tricks and talents might I have that will prove useful to me?
"There are many stories, and few facts. Theyand youare special, though. We must discover in what ways."
That was good enough for Benadek, for the time. To be special and to be wanted. He would ignore the rest for now, and let his present and past selves merge. He knew what he had to do. How he would accomplish it could wait. His parents' deaths were now fresh as yesterday, the price of his long respite from grief. At least he had Achibol to talk with, and Sylfie to comfort him. Sylfie. She smells like Mama. They'd make camp soon, he hoped. Achibol would sleep by the fire. He looked back at Sylfie. He was really looking forward to darkness, for the first time in days.