LOGICIST

by Carol Emshwiller

I feel as if F&SF was a big part of my life with Ed Emsh. We lived with and by that magazine. Ed sold his first cover there, and for a while F&SF was our only income … until Ed started selling all over sf.

One nice thing was the Fermans. Sometimes we’d deliver a painting to their house in Rockville Centre. We were in Levittown and they were not far from us then. They always invited the whole family, and my kids would cavort around in their house. They seemed to like having us all. And they always had cookies.

With me, I started selling stories to the pulpiest sf magazines first, but my ambition was to make it into F&S . I knew that was one of the places where the best sf writers were. I felt I couldn’t say I was a real writer until I made it there. It took a while.—Carol Emshwiller

I took the children out to see the battle. I thought they should see history as it was happening. My class of eight-to-ten-year-olds watched from a hill on the sidelines. We normally played our ball games right where they were fighting.

Except for the blood and the noise, it looked like a game. At first the children thought it was. I told them the blood was real, but they didn’t think so. Then, when they finally believed me, I didn’t let them shut their eyes or cover their ears. I told them, “Ten points off if you do either.” I said, “Reality is not a game.” My theory is: You’re never too young to understand the real world.

I was hoping our side would win and the children would feel proud, but I knew it would be just as good a lesson if we lost.

Except I had underestimated the enemy. I don’t know how many children are left and, if any are, I don’t know where they ran to. Now I’m wondering if there can be too much reality, especially if it comes straight at you.

The enemy had a new trick our side didn’t expect. At a trumpet call they all turned and fought the man on their left instead of the man they had been fighting. They brought their swords up under the other’s shields and killed everybody on our side. Just after I said, “It behooves us to remain calm,” the enemy started coming after us. We called out that we were just watching, that we had no weapons, but they didn’t care. Perhaps they were yelling so loud they didn’t hear us. We ran, helter skelter. I fell into a drainage ditch first thing and several of the enemy, heavy with armor, ran right over me. One actually stepped on my head so that my beard and face were pushed into the mud.

Then they scattered every which way and went and killed the dogs and cats and cows and goats and pigs…. Everything alive they could find.

Those children that are left … if any are … have learned four valuable lessons—as have I: A: When watching a battle, stay hidden. B: Trying to explain that you’re just watching is a waste of time. C: At the first sign of defeat, run. D: One should also run even if one’s own side is winning, since, when the killing starts, it can’t be stopped.

E: Remember that a soldier has only one reason for being … only one duty. What else is a soldier for?

After all the yelling, there was, finally, silence, no barking, no baas, no heehawing. The birds stopped singing. Even the bugs stopped buzzing.

I spat out the mouthful of mud and looked around for any children who had survived, but if they had, they’d run off. It was too painful to keep looking. I saw one child … a good and gifted boy I had only had to flog once…. All my careful teaching gone for naught. It was too much for me. I have a bad knee, but even so I ran as I’d never run before. On and on.

Finally I heard bugs again, a donkey brayed, and then I heard barking. There were birds. But I kept on. I was wondering how far I’d have to go before there wouldn’t be any more reality. I ran until I fell exhausted and couldn’t get up.

When I had the energy to lift my head, I saw I lay beside a pond and in the pond there were ducks … a mother and a dozen ducklings. I thought: Yes, ducks. Yes, yes, ducks. Ducks!

I had stumbled into a land where ducklings and children might actually survive.

So A: Should I stay? What would be the moral thing to do? When I became a teacher I swore an oath to behave as I was teaching others to behave. The little ones pick things up so fast.

Or B: should I run back to see if I can help? Even help a dog or cat? Some creature in pain? Perhaps there’s something back there as thirsty as I am.

But C: Can I find my way back? And when will I have the energy to do so?

I hear somebody actually singing. This can’t be real, what with the ducks and cicadas and now songs.

It’s a woman’s voice.

I raise my head again and see a green dress and somebody hanging out laundry. The song is in the enemy’s language. I know a few of the words. There are flowers and rivers in it. To think that the enemy would sing of flowers.

Have I strayed into enemy territory? At least I’m dressed as a school teacher. I have a school teacher’s beard and a school teacher’s uniform. Though now that I’m so covered with mud, would anyone recognize what I am?

The voice is pure and sweet. She ornaments the notes with little trills and rills.

A: The enemy can sing.

There is no B.

I lie back, and fall in love.

And then I see the actual woman. Face ruddy with hard work and sun. Looks to be in her forties. I would guess older than I and certainly of a different class. I wonder how much education she can have had.

Even so I’m still in love.

She doesn’t see me. Perhaps I’m still back in my own reality while she is on the other side, in this world of laundry and songs.

I try to sit up. That’s when I feel pain in my side. When several of the enemy ran over me, it feels as if they may have broken my ribs.

I can’t help crying out in pain. She sees me. Gives a little, “Oh,” in the middle of her song, drops a child-sized tunic, and turns as if to run away, but then turns back and stares.

I say I’m sorry I’ve scared her. She answers something in her language.

I ask for water. All I know is their word for river, but she understands.

There’s a pump not far from her laundry lines. She gets the tin cup hanging there and brings me some and then another cupful after I finish that one.

It’s the best water I ever tasted. Proof yet again that this can’t be reality.

I want to tell her that I’m a teacher and that I must get back to my class. I try to ask all this with simple words and gestures, but I can’t make her understand.

I want to ask, A: Is there a doorway back into my world? B: Is there no war here? C: And if not, why not? And if no war, I surely don’t belong in such a place. Why should I stay in a kind of heaven when what remains of my class is back in a dangerous world? And D: Besides, what could children … or anyone … learn here? One never learns when things go well.

E: Though perhaps only I am left. In that case I could stay here and still be a moral person. But one must not be seduced by this place.

I imagine everything here is as icy and sparkly as that water. I imagine the food as tasting of the earth. There, above her laundry, is the half-moon. The green of her dress is the color of pine trees.

I say again, “I must get to war. Which way? The war?”

Even with gestures she doesn’t understand.

Instead she helps me up and to her house. A solid stone house, looks to be more fortress than house. Or prison. I won’t go in. I collapse on one of the chairs she has near her front door.

I see why the chairs are here. One can get a good view of the hills and the forest beyond. At first I think it’s a good place to watch and analyze a battle. And then I think, no, a good place to watch sunsets.

There are two chairs. I presumed she had a husband to sit and watch with her, but out comes an even older woman. This woman is obviously scared of me. Easy to tell by her gestures and her voice.

I used to depend on my bearing, my finely molded features, my well-trimmed beard, the neatness of my uniform … but now, stooping in pain and covered with mud, I know I can’t count on those.

I get up and start hobbling away as best I can. I hold my side with both hands.

“Fall, fall, defall,” the first woman says, and pulls me back into the chair.

The older woman is still gesturing and talking. She obviously wants to get rid of me but the younger one seems to be arguing for me to stay. The older woman drags the other chair to the opposite side of the door so as to be farther away from me, plumps herself down in it, and frowns out at the view.

In the distance, behind the fields and the forest, there are cliffs. Did I run through all that to get here? Did I cross those cliffs? Could I have climbed down … through even A, B, and also C and not remembered?

The younger woman goes inside and brings out tea. She sits on the ground in front of us as if it were the most natural thing for a grown woman to do.

(I wish she’d sing again but I don’t know how to ask.)

One forgets how life might be led. How there can be moments of silence and serenity.

The tea is strong—as if it’s been sitting at the back of the stove all day—but it’s exactly what I need. I feel my mind clearing and my strength coming back.

I become more aware of how filthy I am and I’m suddenly embarrassed. Perhaps one can’t even see that I’m a teacher.

Then the older woman says a shocking swear word in my own language. Then, again in my language, “I will kill you first chance I get.”

I stand up again. I try to bow but it hurts too much. “Madam, I know I don’t belong here. Show me which way, and I’ll go back to the war.”

She points to those cliffs in the distance. Says, “Go.”

It makes sense that the cliffs are the demarcation between the world full of wars and this world of gentleness.

I start staggering toward them. Again the other woman grabs me and pulls me back, but in a way that hurts my ribs. I yell. She jabbers away at the old woman, scolding.

The pain takes my breath away. I have to sit and recover.

The old woman says, “I was once taken by the enemy,” meaning my people. “I know your kind.”

“I’m a teacher. I always try to teach what’s moral and real.”

But there’s always the antithesis. What is moral for one may not be moral for the other. I have also taught that.

But there are lessons to be learned here. One should listen. For many reasons, not least of which is that, as is often said, if the teacher isn’t also a student then no one learns.

I say, “I will listen. I’m never loath to learn.”

She says, “I learned your language as a slave. That’s all there is to say.”

I can tell she won’t say anything more, but it’s a completely understandable syllogism: All slaves…. She, a slave, therefore….

I don’t want to see her naked back, though it might be a good lesson.

This, I’m afraid is also a land of reality. Or, on the other hand, is this where you finally get to go to avoid it?

But here comes a child just the age of those in my class. He wears armor and holds a sword. Do even the children take part in the battles? Perhaps this isn’t as ideal a spot as I think. He must know a great deal more than my class did.

The old woman says, “You killed his father.”

“Not I.”

He’s heard the older woman talking in my language. He tries out his few words. “How are you? I am fine. Where is the book? Good morning.”

(The child has been well taught. He says his Rs as we do.)

I think to answer in kind with, How do you do? but before I can he attacks me with his sword, which I now see is wooden and his armor is paper painted silver. My class has often dressed the same.

I don’t defend myself. He stabs and slashes at me. Even though the sword is blunt, it does do some damage. This is my lesson: To sit and absorb it.

I let him go on until he’s tired.

The tea has spilled all over me, though what with the mud, it hardly matters.

I see I’ve impressed the old woman with my forbearance. She looks as if she’s even ready to pull the chair back to my side of the doorway. She says, “Thank you.”

The other woman says something to the child that sends him off inside. Then she insists that I take off my tunic.

Easier said than done since I have to pull it up over my head. When she sees how it hurts me, she gets scissors and cuts it down the front before I realize what she’s doing.

Not only is my uniform as a teacher important to me (it is, in its own way, soldierly with its gold-fringed teaching epaulettes—and I do think of myself as soldiering on in the realms of learning. Fearlessly, I may say), but also I’m not used to being even only half-naked in front of anybody and especially not a woman. I’m thin and not well muscled. I sit all day. When not preparing for my teaching I’m studying. I always try to enrich myself so as to become a more enriching teacher. I have won several firsts, the ribbons for which have been sewn onto my tunic over my heart. I can’t be without that tunic. I hesitated too long worrying about my nakedness. She’s snatched it away and taken it inside.

I get up and follow … into that strange fortress of a house. First there’s an empty hall of yellowish stucco. With one tiny, useless window. I find it ugly but I know tastes differ.

I hurry though one of the doors in the far wall, hoping to find a warmer spot … or my tunic.

I find the child.

He sits at a low table just his size and works on some writing or drawing.

He says, carefully, slowly (and as if he’s completely forgotten he had attacked me), “Hello. My name is Eppi. What is your name?”

I begin to realize how sick I am. I sit down on the floor. I can’t help it even though I know I especially shouldn’t do it in front of a student.

Or a woman, and I know she’ll find me here. But I can’t get up. I give up. I’ve sullied my uniform and my occupation. I’ll give back my firsts.

The child has a cup of something. He brings it to me and holds it to my lips. I have no idea what it is but I drink it and thank him. I say, “You’re a worthy young man.”

“What is worthy?”

“You are good and kind.”

He gives me such a smile. I see my words have made him, yet another notch, good and kind.

He brings me his drawing to admire. A battle drawing. I’m not in the mood even to look at it, but I admire.

Then I begin to shake. I moan and lie back. All dignity, all decorum lost.

The child calls, “Maaaaa.”

I’m thinking: Is this the one universal word?

Then: Must find out if true.

Then I’m thinking: firstly, secondly, and: A, B, and C, also D, and many others….

Next I know I hear singing. I’m warm and clean. And yet again—or still—in love. I would stay forever where this singing goes on and on.

Would I? Even if one’s duty lies elsewhere?

There she is. Moving about the kitchen with poise and grace as if a lady, and I’m in a corner on a sleeping shelf. She doesn’t even need to stop and think as she does the rills and trills.

I have never thought to marry and certainly never with a woman who cooks and does laundry, and not only that, is one of the enemy. Also with whom I can’t converse. I’ve always though it unlikely that I would find someone suitable. There are few women who are my equal so I had decided never to marry. I would have wanted someone almost as knowledgeable as I am.

But I’ve changed my mind since being here. I hadn’t realized how important music is. And a voice so sweet and so clever at ornamentation. There’s knowledge of a kind in that.

Isn’t there?

But then, of my own love, I think, barbaric! And, How can I stoop so low? Perhaps I’m no longer fit to teach.

And yet I’ve crossed a line into a pleasant unreal land. Perhaps there’s not even any need for my kind of teacher here.

Then broth and teas and a gentle hand, the boy and his drawings (all of battles and none of flowers.) And even the grandmother. She’s now on my side. And best of all, singing every day. I take up Eppi’s miniature oud—actually no more than a toy, but I learn to strum a few chords. I can make the younger woman, Lala (can it be that she’s named for her singing?) … I can make her sing whenever I want her to, just by strumming.

Lala has washed and repaired my tunic. It doesn’t look quite as nice as before, but at least I’ll look like a teacher.

But I’m going against everything I teach. I lie. I pretend. I say I’m sicker than I am. I groan when I have no pain. I have her arms around me helping me whenever I want them. I have tidbits to tempt my appetite.

I’m coming close to doing what I’ve never done before. There never seemed to be time for it or a good opportunity. We’ve kissed. I’ve touched her breasts. I’m thinking, A: one more suitable word, or B: One more suitable gesture…. Conclusion: She’ll be in bed with me within a few days.

I’m up and around well before they realize it. I snoop. I want to find out about their way of life. I’m not thinking about finding secrets, I just want to know them … her, Lala, that is.

Does the enemy have marriage as we know it? Does she have keepsakes of her former man? I need to know. I think I’ll ask her soon to marry me.

But, in Grandma’s room, I find a dagger and a map.

I can’t read the writing on it, but I know it’s important. There are arrows and dates. I can see where their secret redoubts are.

I change into my teacher’s tunic. I take the dagger…. (Grandma has had plenty of chances to kill me should she have so desired.) I take the map. This time we won’t be fooled by a trumpet call. I alone am left to warn my side of that treachery.

All those songs have made me forget my duties.

*

I climb the cliff and cross back over into the real world, with map, Grandma’s dagger, and Eppi’s wrapped-up lunch.

At the top here’s the line. I can feel it in the very air: war on one side, serenity on the other. A hot breeze. A smell of iron. The trees here, half-dead. The streams, few. Below, the streams are many. From up here, they’re shining in the sun as if rivers of silver.

But there are children up here. Even if only a few, isn’t my duty to them? Not to Eppi?

I take big breaths of the metallic air. My kind of air. It’s just as well. I’ve managed to avoid a love both A: uncivilized, and B: unrefined. I’ve adhered to my principles and overcome my errors in judgment.

I have taught my students discipline and most particularly self-discipline. I’ll be a better teacher now than I’ve ever been before. I will teach them what I have learned about reality. A: That we will live with wars, and B: That there will always be wars.