Watson, Ian - Black Current 01 (20 page)

 
          
Yet
here on this particular world of ours, Man had encountered the Snake of the
River, an evil infiltrating creature intent on subverting the
"psycolonists" and invading Eeden, only true Home of Humanity. The
Snake worked its wiles especially through women, due to subtle differences in
glands and blood and brain—which made all females potential agents of the
Snake, Satan. Once infested, people could only be purged by pain and fire; which
of course tended to kill them.

 
          
Naturally,
I was puzzled about the nature of this God-Mind, who had created human life
here, and whose all-powerful will could cross the cosmos, only to be thwarted.

 
          
It
appeared that "God" was a higher intelligence of "an ineffable
nature".
Inexpressible, beyond the comprehension of mere
mortals.
One day he would rule the whole universe, and create it. (Which
meant that he both did rule, already, and didn't—the Deotheorists' ideas of
time were really weird.) The arrival of dummy-people in the demesne of the
Snake had awakened that other divine (or devilish) force to similar ambitions.
Now there was a second contender for captaincy of the ship of stars.

 
          
What's
more, the supreme God-Mind, the Lord of Creation, had himself somehow been
produced out of the mind of Man; created, given birth to.

 
          
So.

 
          
This
was both crazier, and more rational, than I'd expected. It wasn't simply that
the Sons of Adam
lorded
it over women. They did—with a
vengeance. But they actually had a reason. True, as far as I could make out,
the average tenor of western life was cruelty, superstition and oppression pure
and simple. Self-interest and rabid prejudice—coupled with distinctly backward
circumstances. I noted how Jothan and Harld ogled greedily at some of the items
I related of life in the east, ordinary items we took for granted. Still, there
was a rationale behind their wretched system.
The God-Mind,
versus the Vile Snake.

 
          
I
feared it might make me spew to play host to such a hostile concept of the
black current; I who had drunk of it. To my surprise, it didn't. I was far from
any eastern town or boat, far from the river, far from the community of women.
I felt as if a persuasive influence had withdrawn from me; or perhaps it was just
lying low, keeping watch.

 
          
That
afternoon Andri, Jothan and I set off along the trail to the north-west. We
left Harld and the other two men to get on with whatever business my arrival
had interrupted—business which just had to be intimately connected with the
forbidden river. Whose daughter had now fallen into their hands like a ripe
peach.

 
          
Ripe?
Ah well, perhaps "ripe" is an exaggeration!
After my many weeks alone on sparse rations I was more like a shrivelled twig.
Still, they loaded me up for the journey (I only realized later that they had
burdened me lightly compared with the way a woman of the west would ordinarily
have been weighed down). Andri and Jothan wore heavier back-packs.

 
          
Yet
I stepped out relatively lightly. The trek wasn't so bad now that there was a
definite path to follow, in the company of guides. That evening we made genuine
camp, amidst jungle which seemed far less wild and chaotic.

 
 
          
*
* *

 
          
Marching
in single file allowed few opportunities for chattering.
When
we sat round a fire that evening Andri and I talked again, whilst Jothan busied
himself boiling soup.

 
          
"Do
you really think you're a puppet?" I pressed Andri.
"Or
a dummy-body, or whatever?"

 
          
He
scratched his beard a while. "Look: our forebears weren't bom here, for a
fact. If you plunge into water, does that turn you into a fish? Likewise, if
you plunge into a foreign world, why should you suddenly be at home?"

 
          
"We
live
here. We are at home."

 
          
He
nodded at the cookpot. "Why should we be able to eat what's here, and live
on it?"

 
          
"Well,
we do."

 
          
"That's
no answer."

 
          
"We
must have brought a lot of things with us to eat. Chickens, for instance! Some
ancient writings mention chickens."

 
          
"Do
they? How d'you know they're the same sort of chickens, eh? And why should
chickens be able to peck around and live here? Unless, girl, unless we've all
of us—chickens
and
people—been made
into the so
^r
t of bodies as can live here. The Deotheorists say if
you just dump a man of Eeden down on a strange world exactly as he is, he'll
starve in a few days. He can't digest the local food. Or it poisons him. Same
applies to the air and water."

 
          
"It
couldn't have been
too
different
here."

 
          
"Happen
not. Otherwise maybe we'd have needed scales on our skin, or shells on our
backs."

 
          
"That's
silly."

 
          
"No,
it ain't. We'd have been made differently.
As would the
chickens and cucumbers and everything else as came from Eeden.
The
Deotheorists say that all the kinds of life there are, are spelled out by
different words. These aren't like our
words, that
we
speak. They're very long magical words—so long, it would take you ten thousand
pages to write but a single one of 'em. These words are written in our flesh.
If you change the spelling, you change the shape of life.

 
          
"When
we arrived here, whatever it was as brought us read all the words of
this
world back to the God-Mind. He
thought about them, learned the language of life here, then he changed the
spelling of our own words so as we would fit in.

 
          
"And
on a hundred other worlds elsewhere, other words were read. And other
shapes was
bom.

 
          
"Only
the God-Mind can understand these words and change our spelling. It only takes
Him minutes.
Hours at the most.
It would take us
hundreds of years. I'll warrant He changed our stomachs and our blood quite a
bit.
Though not our outward looks.
We look the same as
we would back in Eeden."

 
          
If
the God-Mind hadn't changed our appearance, why assume that he had changed us
in secret, hidden ways? This seemed to be a completely unnecessary theory, in
high need of the "razor of logic" to cut it out. I said so.

 
          
"Why
is the idea handed down, if it's unnecessary?" demanded Andri.

 
          
"Because it gives the Brotherhood an excuse to rule the
roost."

 
          
He
grinned broadly. "Ah, you've solved it all in a twinkling!
Simplicity itself!"
He leaned closer. "Simple as
a fellow shoving his squirter in a woman and making a baby pop out nine months
later! Would you care to explain just how a baby is made, eh? Or how does a
seed make a plant? Come on: tell me the recipe."

 
          
"A
plant makes itself out of soil and water. A baby makes itself out of its mother
and the food she eats."

 
          
"How?
How does it make itself?"

 
          
I
knew how to
stop
a baby, with a
draught of Safe. But actually I was floundering. It occurred to me that maybe
Andri's "long words" were what "genes" were; but
"genes" was only a word itself, without much meaning. "It
starts out tiny and gets bigger," I said.

 
          
"So
this here fellow squirts a tiny baby into the woman, does he?
Too tiny to see with the eye?
How does
he
make it in the first place?"

 
          
"No,
the woman has a tiny egg in her—"

 
          
"How
does the egg become a person? What tells it?" Andri guffawed. "Look,
girl:
words
—very long words written
very small with a million million letters in each word—that's what makes a baby.
The word of God.
Made flesh."
He gazed at me. "Don't have any such notions, do you? Never even give it a
thought. Just get on living soft lives—"

 
          
"Hey,
I resent that! Working a boat isn't any holiday."

 
          
"Like
beasts, that don't question."

 
          
"We're
beasts, are we? So now we come to the nub of it. What hatred you must feel for
women! What a load of fear! Yes, I said
fear.
Let me tell you something, mister: you're no better than the rest of those
Sons.
Worse, probably.
Whatever it is that
you re
after, you're screwing yourself
up twice as bad."

 
          
"Maybe
it is in Man's nature to torment
himself
, for truth.
To strive."

 
          
I
snorted. "And not in Woman's nature, I suppose."

 
          
"
Yourself
excluded.
Naturally?"

 
          
This
exchange seemed to be taking rather a vicious turn. Partly my own fault, I
admit.

 
          
Just
then Jothan cut in. "You've failed, girl. You wouldn't last ten minutes.
You'd be in the ducking stool.
Shrew.
Scold.
Argumentifier.
Heretic.
Disobeyer."
Placidly he stirred the soup. "Why,
you ain't even doing the cooking."

 
          
Andri
actually winked at me.
" 'Tis
true, what he says.
You'll have to watch that tongue of yours. Or you'll end up pickled or cooked,
yourself. The Brotherhood
don't
brook opinionated
females. Us, of course, we're broad-minded. And we're still way out in
no-man's
- land."

 
          
"You'll
have to act more appeasing," said Jothan. "Truesoil is
,
you'd better just stay shut up."

 
          
"Okay,
point taken," I said. "No one's eavesdropping on us here. So, Andri,
do you or don't you believe that you're an artificial person, a dummy? Tell me:
I'm fascinated."

 
          
"Whatever
you start out believing, Yaleen, you'll believe to the end of your days—even if
you convince yourself you've changed your mind a dozen times, and turned all
your thoughts inside-out. 'Tis true. You can't wash out the dye you're first
dipped in. The best you can be is aware of this. Then at least you'll know what
stains you always, even when you're going against the grain."

 
          
"Dipped
in dye, is it?" And I had been dipped in the black current. . . .

 
          
How
I rejoiced that I'd been bom in the east, where people could be happy. Nobody
could be happy on this other shore. They must be mad to give themselves up to
such misery, when they could have used the river as the highroad to prosperity,
variety,
civilized
lives. As I thought this, something
deep in me and far below the surface seemed to agree and flood me with a wry
euphoria.

 
          
"Soup's
ready," Jothan announced.

 
          
We
walked for the best part of another day till we reached a rough road running
north and south. The trail stopped short of this road, leaving a mask of
undergrowth. We must have veered quite a way inland, far from the river.

 
          
Andri
jerked his thumb southerly.
"Worlzend's that-a-way.
We head north. We'll come to Pleasegod in a couple of hours. You'll stay out of
sight with Jothan, till I End you decent raiment. If we meet someone
beforehand—"