The Ships of Earth: Homecoming: Volume 3 (15 page)

Rasa noted with interest that Volya still spoke of the Oversoul as
he
; so Nafai’s and Issib’s custom of calling her
it
had not yet overtaken him. She liked that. Perhaps it was just because he was getting old and unimaginative, but she liked it that Volemak still thought of the Oversoul in the old manly way, instead of thinking and speaking of her as a mere computer—even one with fractal-like memory that could hold the life of every human who ever lived and still have room for more.

“So I’ll begin, and tell the dream straight through,” said Volemak. “And I’ll warn you now, that because the dream didn’t come from the Oversoul, it gives me more reason
to rejoice—for Nafai and Issib, anyway—and yet also more reason to fear for my first sons, Elemak and Mebbekew, for you see, I thought I saw in my dream a dark and dreary wilderness.”

“You can see
that
wide awake,” murmured Mebbekew. Rasa could see that Meb’s jest was nothing but a thin mask for anger—he didn’t like having been singled out like that before the dream began. Elemak didn’t like it either, of course—but Elemak knew how to hold his tongue.

Volemak gazed at Mebbekew placidly for a moment or two, to silence him, to let him know that he would brook no more interruption. Then he began again.

“I thought I saw in my dream a dark and dreary wilderness,” said Volemak, but he knew as he said it that they would not understand what his words meant to him. Not the hot desert that they knew so well by now, dreary as
that
wilderness was. Where he walked in his dream was dank, chill and dirty, with little light, barely enough to see each step he took. There might have been trees not far off, or he might have been underground for all he knew. He walked on and on, with no hope and yet unable to stop hoping that by moving, he would eventually escape this desolate place.

“And then I saw a man, dressed in a white gown.” Like a priest of Seggidugu, only those are ordinary men, sweating as they perform their rites. This man seemed so at ease with himself that I thought at once that he must be dead. I was in a place where dead men waited, and I thought perhaps that
I
was dead. “He up came to me, and stood there in front of me, and then he spoke to me. Told me to follow him.”

Volemak could tell that the others were getting
bored—or at least the most childish of them. It was so frustrating, to have only words to tell them what the dream was like. If they could know how that voice sounded when the man spoke, how warm and kind he seemed, as if the very sound of him was the first light in this dark place, then they’d know why I followed him, and why it
mattered
that I followed him. Instead, to them, it’s only a dream, and this is clearly the dull part. Yet to me it was not dull.

“I followed him for many hours in the darkness,” said Volemak. “I spoke to him but he didn’t answer. So, since by now I was convinced that this man was sent by the Oversoul, I began to speak to the Oversoul in my mind. I asked him how long this had to go on, and where I was going, and what it was all about. I got no answer. So I became impatient, and told him that if this was a dream it was time for me to wake up, and if there was going to be some point to this, maybe he should get to it before dawn. And there was no answer. So I began to think that maybe it was real, that it would go on forever, that this is what happens to us after death, we go to a dreary wasteland and walk forever behind some man who won’t tell us anything that’s going on.”

“Sounds like life, lately,” murmured Mebbekew.

Volemak paused, not looking at Meb, waiting for the others to glare him into silence. Then he went on. “Thinking it might be real, I began to plead with the Oversoul or whoever was in charge of this place to have a little mercy and tell me something or let me see something, let me
understand
what was happening. It was only then, after I began to plead for relief, that the place lightened—not like sunrise or coming near a campfire, I couldn’t see any source of the light, I could simply
see
, like bright daylight, and I came out of the stony place to a vast field of tall grass and flowers, bending slightly in the breeze. It was such a relief—to see
life
—that I can’t describe it to you. And a little way off—perhaps three hundred meters or so—there was a tree. Even at that distance I could see that amid the bright green of the leaves there
were spots of white—fruit, I knew at once. And suddenly I could smell the fruit, and I knew that whatever it was, it was delicious, the most perfect food that ever existed, and if I could only taste that fruit, I’d never be hungry again.”

He paused for just a moment, waiting for Mebbekew’s obligatory smart remark about how hungry they all were right now, waiting for this dream to end. But Meb had apparently been chastened, because he was silent.

“I walked—I
ran
to the tree—and the fruit was small and sweet. Yes, I tasted it, and I can tell you that no food I’ve ever had in life was as good.”

“Yeah, like sex in dreams,” said Obring, who apparently thought that he could fill in for Meb. Volemak bowed his head for a moment. He could hear a movement—yes, Elemak rising to his feet. Volemak knew the scene without looking, for Elemak had learned this technique from him. Elemak was standing, looking at Obring, saying nothing at all, until Obring withered before him. And yes, there it was, Obring’s mumbled apology, “Sorry, go on, go on.” Volemak waited a moment more, and there was the sound of Elemak sitting back down. Now he could go on, perhaps without another interruption.

But it had been spoiled. He had thought he might be on the verge of finding exactly the right words to explain how the taste of the fruit had been in his mouth, how it made him feel alive for the first time. “It
was
life, that fruit,” he said, but now the words sounded empty and inadequate, and he knew the moment of lucidity had passed, and they would never understand. “The joy I felt when I tasted it—was so perfect—I wanted my family to have it. I couldn’t bear the thought that I had this perfect fruit, this taste of life in my mouth, and my family didn’t know about it, wasn’t sharing it. So I turned to look for you, to see where I might find you. You weren’t back in the direction
I
had come from, and as I turned around I saw that a river ran near the tree, and when I looked upriver, I saw Rasa and our two sons, Issib and Nafai, and they were looking around as if they didn’t know where they were supposed to go. So I called to them, and waved, and
finally they saw me and came to me, and I gave them the fruit and they ate it and felt what I had felt and I could see it in them, too, that when they ate the fruit it was as if life came into them for the first time. They had been alive all along, of course, but now they knew
why
they were alive, they were
glad
to be alive.”

Volemak couldn’t help the tears that flowed down his cheeks. The memory of the dream was so fresh and strong inside him that telling it was to relive it, and the joy he felt could not be contained even now, after a day of work in the garden, even with the sweat and dirt of the desert on him. He could still taste the fruit in his mouth, could still see the look on their faces. Could still feel the longing he felt then, for Elemak and Mebbekew to taste it, too.

“I thought then of Elemak and Mebbekew, my first two sons, and I looked for them, wanting them to come and taste the fruit as well. And there they were, too, toward the head of the river where Rasa and Issib and Nafai had been. And again I called to them, and beckoned, but they wouldn’t come. I tried to tell them about the fruit, shouting to them, but they acted as if they couldn’t hear me, though I thought at the time that perhaps they really could. Finally they turned away from me and wouldn’t even pretend to listen. There I stood with that perfect fruit in my hand, that taste in my mouth, that scent in my nose, knowing that they would be as filled with joy as I was if only they would come and taste it, and yet I was powerless to bring them.”

Before his tears had been of joy; now they flowed for Elemak and Mebbekew, and they tasted bitter to him. But there was nothing more to be said about their refusal—he went on with the dream.

“It was only then, after my two oldest sons had refused to come to the tree, that I realized we weren’t the only people there in that huge meadow. You know how it is in dreams—there aren’t any people, and now there are thousands of them. In fact, not just people, but others—some that flew, some that scurried along—but I knew that they were people too, if you know what I mean. A lot of them
had seen the tree. I thought maybe they had heard me shouting to Elya and Meb about what the fruit was like, how it tasted and all, and now they were trying to get to the tree. Only the distance was much farther now than it had been before, and it was as if they couldn’t actually see the tree itself, but only knew generally where it was. I thought, How are they going to find it if they can’t see it?

“That was when I saw that there was a kind of railing along the bank of the river, and a narrow little path running right along the river’s edge, and I could see that that was the only route they could follow to reach the tree. And the people who were trying to find the tree caught hold of the iron rail and began to follow the path, clinging to the rail whenever the ground was slippery, so they didn’t fall into the water. They pressed forward, but then they came into a fog, a thick and heavy fog drifting up from the river, and those that didn’t hold on to the rod got lost, and some of them fell into the river and drowned, and others wandered off into the mist and got lost in the field and never found the tree.

“But the ones who held on to the railing managed to find their way through the fog, and finally they came out into the light, near enough to the tree that now they could see it with their own eyes. They came on then, in a rush, and gathered around me and Rasa and Issib and Nafai, and they reached up and took the fruit, and those that couldn’t reach high enough, we plucked fruit for them and handed it down, and when there weren’t enough to reach from the ground, Nafai and Issib climbed the tree—”

“I climbed ...” whispered Issib. All of them heard him, but no one said a thing about it, knowing or guessing what he must think, to imagine himself climbing a tree alongside Nafai.

“Climbed the tree and brought down more of the fruit to give to them,” said Volemak. “And I saw in their faces that they all tasted what I had tasted, and felt what I had felt. Only then I noticed that after eating the fruit, many of them began to look around them furtively, as if they
were ashamed of having eaten the fruit, and they were afraid to be seen. I couldn’t believe that they could feel that way, but then I looked in the direction that many of them had looked and there on the other side of the river I could see a huge building, like the buildings of Basilica only larger, with a hundred windows, and in every window we could see rich people, extravagant people, stylish and beautiful people, laughing and drinking and singing, the way it is in Dolltown and Dauberville, only more so. Laughing and having a wonderful time. Only I knew that it wasn’t real, that it was the wine making them think they were having fun—or rather, they
were
having fun, but the wine made them think it
mattered
to have fun, when here, just across the river, I had the fruit that would give them the kind of joy that they were pretending they already had. It was so sad, in a way. But then I realized that many of the people who were there with me, people who were actually
eating the fruit
, were looking at the people in that huge building and they were envious of them. They wanted to go
there
, give up the fruit of the tree and join the ones who were laughing so loudly and singing so merrily.”

Volemak didn’t tell them that for a moment he also felt a faint sting of envy, for seeing them laughing and playing across the river made him feel old, not to be at the party. Made him remember that when he was young, he had been with friends who laughed with him; he had loved women whose kisses were a game, and caressing them was like gamboling and rolling in soft grass and cool moss, and he had laughed, too, in those days, and sung songs with them, and had drunk the wine, and it was real enough, oh yes, it was real. Real, but also out of reach, because the first time was always the best time, and anything he repeated was never as good as it had been before, until finally it all slipped out of his reach, all became nothing but memory, and that was when he knew that he was old, when the joys of youth were completely unrecoverable. Some of his friends had kept trying, had pretended that it never faded for them—but those men and women faded
themselves, became painted mannequins, badly made worn-out puppets made in a mockery of youth.

So Volemak envied the people in the building, and remembered having been one of them, or having tried at least to be one of them—was anyone every really a true part of this transient community of pleasure, which evaporated and reformed itself over and over again in a single night, and a thousand times in a week? It never quite existed, his family of frolickers, it only seemed about to exist, always on the verge of becoming real, and then it retreated always just out of reach.

But here at this tree, Volemak realized, here is the real thing. Here with the taste of this fruit in our mouths, we are part of something that isn’t just illusion. We’re part of
life
, wives and husbands, parents and children, the vast onward passage of genes and dreams, bodies and memories, generation after generation, time without end. We are making something that will outlast us, that’s what this fruit is, that’s what
life
is, and what they have across the river, their mad pursuit of every sensation their bodies can experience, their frantic avoidance of anything painful or difficult, it all misses the point of being alive in the first place. Nothing that is new is ever new twice. While things that are true are still true the next time; truer, in feet, because they have been tested, they have been tasted, and they are always ripe, always ready . . .