Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (27 page)

I like his hands. The hands can tell so much. When I was in military service hundreds of years ago I spent many hours holding the hands of the dying. I became so sensitive to the life signals that are transmitted through the hand that I was able to predict those who would live and those who would die. I was not always right. My awareness of those that were failing meant that I was able to take action in time to save them. Sometimes, those whom I thought were safe, would suddenly withdraw from the world and pass away in their sleep. For one who is dedicated to the saving of life I have seen so much of death that. ..

Wdberfoss’s hands give me cause for hope. His grip is strong but not aggressive. His hands are square-palmed and the fingers maintain a nice proportion. There is great practicality in his hand. He gripped my grace and feather dexetels once when I was stroking his palm and scratching gently along the line of his life, and his grip had a desperate power. He was asleep, and I wanted him to squeeze, hoping that I would see a dream of bitterness resolve itself through tension. But he relaxed as though afraid to crush me and the nightmare carried him away. Ha. He will have to learn some cruelty before he improves. One day, with luck, I may be able to slap him into anger and his dignity will assert itself.

Wilberfoss has well-spread shoulders and strong limbs. I once cared for a wrestler who had broken his neck in a fed. Wilberfoss reminds me of him, except for his temperament. We must be grateful for the sturdiness of his physique. Had he not been solidly built, there is no way that he could have survived the strain of living on the high-gravity planet where he was marooned.

His face. The tranquilizing drugs have made him into an imbecile. I doubt if his mother would recognize him. The muscles of his face have no tone and this is another reason why I have chosen to control him through gas. If he ever comes to himself and looks at himself in the mirror he will expect to see a face he recognizes. Dignity, you see. Health and dignity. These are different names for the same thing. For one who despises himself, an imbecile face could seem a just punishment and would be relished. If he begins to recover and if I have the opportunity, I will operate on his face for one cheekbone is depressed and the nasal cartilage is deformed. I doubt there is much I can do to eradicate the patterning on his skin. He has been tom by high gravity and now his face is covered by stretch marks. I will massage him and exercise his muscles. But you know, those who have been in high gravity invariably grow to love their sliver lines. In one such as Wilberfoss whose skin is naturally dark, the effect could be striking, handsome even, I imagine, like sliver tattooing. When he comes to health he may even enjoy his skin as a record of his ordeal. But for the time being, guilt has deformed his understanding, and he is a long way from health.

How can I speak of guilt?

I can read it in him. I have studied the words he spoke when he was first rescued. They are words which describe his inner landscape. He talks of the
Nightingale
having blood streaming past its windows and that he made the blood to flow. He talks of the screaming that drove the sensitive bio-crystalline brains aboard the
Nightingale
into frenzy before he stopped them. He talked about a sea that moved like molten lead and with drops of blood on it.

This I, Lily the autonurse, affirm, that Jon Wilberfoss committed an act aboard the
Nightingale
that he cannot now face. Though he cannot face his action, he is aware of his guilt. He is his own harshest judge and madness is a kind of sanctuary. He is like a pitcher that is filled to the brim with horror. He would like to break the pitcher but what he really needs is to be emptied out. I believe that when he begins to talk again he will be on his way to a cure. And to assist in that cure I am glad that I have Wulf with me. I am sure also that when all is revealed we will look upon him more in pity than in contempt.

For therapy this I propose. Sleep, naturally, and good food. There are Talline herbs that will help him. So far as I am able I will lead him toward good dreams. I will relax my grip on his consciousness as he shows his mental strength rising. However, he must begin this process for himself.

At the moment as I compose this he is sleeping in my womb. I have moved from the building and out into the shady green of my garden. It is almost midday and the autumn sun is gathering its last strength. Last night there were high winds and this morning there was a shower. Weather patterns are changing rapidly. The rain has released many smells. The garden is alive with wraiths of steam. It is an old belief that sun after rain is peculiarly beneficial and I have noticed that those who are sick frequently relish such sunlight.

So let it be with Wilberfoss.

WULFNOTE

It was autumn when Wilberfoss came to us. It was winter before he began talking to us. On a cold day when the sunshine seemed almost white and the wind shook and loosened the last dry brown leaves from the trees and sent them hurling over the wall of the Poverello Garden, an old Talline woman came to us. She was wintering over in the garden like a migrating bird and would travel south in the springtime. She had heard that we had a sick man and she came from the Hall of Sanctuary to the enclosure where Wilberfoss lived and knocked at the gate. That morning she had visited the Pectanile just before dawn at a time when the moonlight was still reflected in its pool. She had gathered some water while the moon was on it. To this she had added fresh herbs finely chopped and some strips from the bark of the Builder Tree. She presented this potion to Lily and suggested that it might help if the body of the sick man were washed in the water and the water left to dry on him.

Lily, ever one to learn where medicine is concerned, accepted the brew, analyzed it for toxic substances, noted the contents for future reference and then did exactly as the old woman had suggested. Wilberfoss was restless and as the water dried on him his skin became blotchy and angry and hot. Lily held him under close observation and noted that it was inner heat that was being released. The redness of his skin fluctuated, each time becoming less angry looking, until finally it stabilized and Wilberfoss lay on his face clean and rested and breathing easily. Lily brought him out of sleep and he smiled when his eyes opened. Lily brushed him lightly with a clean napkin dislodging from his skin the small dried particles of chopped herbs.

At this time Lily was experimenting with hypnosis. She had spoken to him in his dreams, telling him that he would gradually remember everything, but that there would be no pain. She had also implanted a hypnotic suggestion deep in his psyche such that I could use key words to help him reveal his memories. I am convinced that the gentleness of this procedure materially helped Wilberfoss to recover.

The Talline potion, whatever it was, had brought Wilberfoss relief. He woke up smiling. It was not the normal human smile of full consciousness but a somewhat brittle smile, by which I mean that it was a smile that was full of tension, the smile of a man who wants to be liked or who wants others to agree with him.

Wilberfoss looked across at me and said, “Wulf. Good to see you.” Those were the first conscious words that Wilberfoss had spoken to me since his return. Then his gaze slid across to Lily. “And hello to you too, Lily. Why don’t you both come with us on the next trip in the
Nightingale
? We could use such as you. You could be very useful.”

“I could certainly have helped you with Sandy/Quelle,” I said clearly and slowly and both Lily and I watched carefully to see what reaction the words might provoke.

Wilberfoss nodded as though listening to a private voice. “Sandy/Quelle. That was a close shave. I loved them both, you know. Shame they couldn’t love one another. But they couldn’t. They were poison to one another. I only realized it one night when Sandy was really sick. He was howling in his room like a cat that has had its muzzle bitten. I went in to him and held him in my arms and the Quelle tried to make him bite me. Me! Ha. The Quelle held no dangers for me. I managed to get through to it, to join with it. It was terrified, poor beast, and had no more substance than slime. I wondered then whether or not it had been ill even before it joined the
Nightingale.
I managed to quieten it. But I couldn’t stave off the inevitable. They killed one another, Sandy and Quelle. Someone blundered when they made that joining. Someone has got questions to answer.”

“And what happened to the
Nightingale
when they died?” I asked.

“Why, nothing. We treated the bodies with respect and continued on our journey, I think, and then I came back here. I can’t remember how I got here. But I’ll be ready for duty again soon I hope. I have a lot of service in me.”

Hearing that, I induced the hypnotic state in him. His conscious mind was holding out on us. I thought for a while before my next statement. I wanted to challenge Wilberfoss. “You did not continue on your journey,” I said. “The
Nightingale
was damaged. You came out of Noh-time without preparation. Your ship was damaged, and you made landfall. Tell us about that."’

Wilberfoss frowned and looked puzzled and then he nodded. He looked downward and to his right, a bit like a person peering through a hole. I think he was seeing things. New memories had been revealed to him.

“You are right,” he said. “That strange gray and green planet! We landed there. We came down with a thump. I’m remembering.”

Wilberfoss’s Narrative

When I climbed from my couch I fell. . . and the floor was sloping so that I stumbled when I tried to stand. Oh, the weight. My arms and legs were of lead. It was unrelenting. I crawled to the door and dragged myself upright against the door frame. Standing, I found it easier to walk and stumped into my quarters. There was silence. I had got used to the presence of bio-crystalline awareness which can sometimes be heard like a humming of bees on a summer’s day and sometimes like the snuffling of a giant beast. Now there was nothing and the silence was frightening. I tried to use the video board but that too was dead. There were no images, not even ghosts of light. I could not speak to the ship or to any part of it. I remember a horrible thought came to me: that the
Nightingale
was a dead animal and that I was in its stomach. At the same time, I recognized that kind of thinking for what it was and dismissed it.

I knew there must be other people somewhere and that I could not be alone on the
Nightingale.
I needed to find other people. There was a corridor which spiraled downward from the reception foyer outside my apartment and connected my rooms with a staff canteen. You have been there, Wulf and Tancredi. Do you remember? I decided to go there first. All my senior assistants lived in quarters off this dining-room.

I supported myself on the handrail which ran around the spiral but, before I had gone halfway down, I felt as though I had run a marathon. And then I heard distant voices. People were gathering in the dining-hall. . . there were lights beyond the doors. I walked on and then, using more force than necessary, for estimates of strength are deceptive in high gravity, I pushed the atmosphere doors and they banged open and I lurched through.

There must have been fifty or sixty people in the dining-room. They fell silent when I entered. They all looked at me. There were technicians and medical staff, some with cuts on their faces and others with arms in hastily improvised slings. However, it is the silence I remember and the expressions of disbelief on the faces. You know, a ship like the
Nightingale
feels as secure as the planet of your birth . . . until something goes wrong.

Suddenly there was cheering and smiles. I was greeted like Lazarus up from the dead. I found out later that a rumor had been circulating that I was dead and that the
Nightingale
was without a leader. For my part, I was glad of their support. I had not realized how warmly I was regarded. I found out later that people admired the way I had handled Sandy/Quelle. However . . .

I sat down gratefully at one of the wide tables and spread my legs for they had begun to ache. I began to organize things. We had food in the stores and the hydroponics girdle which could be seen from the dining-room was green and misty. No trouble there. The plants stood tall and the gardeners were already at work tying up plants and supporting them. The
Nightingale
had cast a gravity field around the hydroponics troughs and was able to hold them at just thirty percent above normal gravity.

We had light. We had heat. So, within certain parameters the ship was obviously functioning even though it was not communicating directly with us by voice.

But I needed to get a clearer idea of how things were in the rest of the ship. I organized survey parties to explore. The members wore gravity suits which enabled them to float through the ship. Even so, I knew it would be hours before they could report back. The inhabited parts of the
Nightingale
occupy more than a cubic mile of space. It wasn’t until six hours after we had made planet fall that the first reports of our state began to come in.

They were not good. I discovered that the DME sector, badly damaged by the meteorite, had only managed to protect five independent atmospheres and that these were now isolated behind their own particle screens. There were now in total only some forty DMEs still alive. Communications had been established by using vacuum microphones which could attach to the particle screens. In the absence of bio-crystalline channels we had to use amplifiers and hundreds of yards of cable. I was informed that each of the five atmospheres contained a contact specialist from the Gentle Order. They seemed wed and confident but they wanted news. They would not leave their special charges but wanted to remain in contact. Each atmosphere contained its own special food supplies which included food for the Contact Confrere.