Authors: Walter Mosley
47 (15 page)
As he spoke one of the shivering piles of stones exploded
outward, disgorging an albino creature that was made up of
a great head, from which hung a dozen limbs that seemed to
work as both legs and arms. The creature (which was about
the size of a wild boar) climbed to the top of a nearby pile
and shook itself, throwing off the water of its birth. Then it
moved its head around until great blue wings sprouted from
the back. The beautiful creature let out a terrible scream
and then flew aloft on its blue wings.
"Where's it goin?" I asked as my friend and I watched the winged thing fade into the pink-and-red horizon.
"To seek the God-Mind and kill it," he said. "To rend
the universe open and feast on its heart."
Up until that moment I wasn't truly troubled by the
sights I beheld. Even the physical changes to John's body
didn't seem so strange to me. I already knew he was different on the inside from the way he talked. But John's words
about destruction set off a deep agitation in my heart. I had
no idea what a God-Mind was but I had heard the word
God
before and I knew that killing was bad no matter who
it happened to.
The stacks of birthing stones spread out as far as the
eyes could see. Here and there albino members of the
+7
Calash race were rising up from their cocoons and taking
flight.
"There must be more of'em than Mud Albert could
count," I said.
"They are as plentiful as the stars," John agreed, "and
yet there is but one."
"What's that mean?" I asked.
"You will see," he said.
Another stack of stones burst open
nearer to us. The
big-headed white creature with its dozen limbs crawled
out and shifted and turned until it had wings. But this one,
rather than gliding off into the sky, turned its one great
black eye upon my friend and me. The creature screamed
as did the previous newborn, but instead of leaving he
dove at us. John and I ducked down to keep from being
battered by those blue wings. As we arose the eerie bird-like thing wheeled in the sky, obviously intent on attack
ing again.
"Let's skip this part," John said.
He waved his orange and purple hand through the air
and suddenly we were standing on a black platform in a
wide, glassy sphere. There was no sky above or ground below us, only thousands of small black platforms that jutted
out from the sides of the globe. When I looked around the
sphere I realized that we were in the largest place that I
had ever been, even larger than that valley where I saw the she-bear and first imagined being free.
While I watched, a small creature walked out up the
ledge nearest my eye. He was no larger than a baby chick but the same proportions as tall, lean John. He was bright yellow in color and when he saw my face he smiled and nodded. The light above his head lengthened like a candle
reaching its highest flame.
"Hello, hero," he said.
"My name ain't hero, it's Forty-seven, but hello to you too, little yellah man."
As I spoke these words I noticed tiny little men and
women were climbing out onto the thousands of ledges
around me. They were every different color of the rainbow and all of them so bright that the big sphere got as clear as
midday.
"Who are all these little people?" I asked.
"They are my people," Tall John said in my ear.
I turned to ask how we got from one place to the other. But as I did so I found myself facing another small ledge,
and on that ledge I saw a tiny little Tall John standing there
and smiling.
"Is this what you really look like?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"And is this your home?"
"This is Talam the primal hive," small Tall John said.
"It is where we fled when the Calash tried to steal our
technology and use it to tear open the fabric of the world."
I had no idea what his words meant but I knew that it couldn't be good.
"As I told you before, there is a higher place," John said.
"The Great Mind," I added.
"That's right. It is the place where all mind resides. You
are there and I am too, but we are also in the physical world
with our bodies and with each other. In the physical world
every being is different, but there, in the higher place, we
are all the same."
I didn't know what he meant by all that. It sounded like
when Brother Bob would deliver a sermon but here there
was no podium or cross. Without those things to secure my
eyes I realized that I had never understood those sermons.
"And so you and them Calash things are really the
same?" I asked.
"Yes," my diminutive friend said, "and no. In the upper
reality we are all the same, flowing in one direction, with
one eternal plan. But here in the material world the Calash
believe that they can break the barrier between mind and matter and feast upon the pure energy of the God-Mind."
"And that's bad?"
"They will never succeed, but in trying to do so they could throw the whole universe into turmoil. They will
never be able to conquer the walls of heaven as they wish,
but they can destroy all life and therefore strangle the
spirit until it is warped out of all understanding."
All around me thousands of thousands of tiny bright-
colored men and women began to weep.
"What do you want me to do?" I asked, intent upon
helping those wee folk if I could.
It was the most important decision of my long life and I
didn't even stop to think about it. Tall John, my first true friend, said that there was a battle brewing between him
and the wing-heads called the Calash. Well, then, I would
do what I could to defend my friend and the universe
whatever that might be.
There came a tittering among the uncountable elfin cit
izens of the great hive. Then they all cheered. They had
small voices but there were so many of them that the sound
came like a roar.
"I told you," John said, addressing the unlikely con
gress of elves. "I told you that he was the one."
"But will he have the ability to stand against Wall?" a
thousand voices asked.
"Victory can never be assured," John replied. "But at
least he is willing."
"You could destroy the planet," a thousand thousand voices bellowed. "Destroy Earth and Wall will die."
"How would we be able to distinguish ourselves from
the Calash if I were to do such a thing?" John's single voice
asked. "There are plants and fish and insects ..." at each
mention of a life form the image appeared before the great
congregation. And every time the little people beheld the beauty of life on Earth they tittered and cooed. ". . . there
are men and bears and eagles flying," John continued,
"and we will not end them because that would mean that
we would be doing the Calash's work for them."
"N'Clect is right!" a thousand thousand thousand
voices proclaimed. "Let the one called Forty-seven go forward and do battle with Wall. Let us put our faith in Life."
And there I was, a small slave boy from the Corinthian
Plantation, being cheered by a number that added up to a
billion. And even though I couldn't count nearly that high I was loved and applauded by them. John leaped on my
shoulder and shouted out my name. And then the name
Forty-seven was on the lips of the whole hive.
I didn't know it at the time but N'Clect was John's real Talamish name.
14.
Sunlight glittering through the leaves roused me. I sat up, rubbed the sand out of, my eyes, and realized that I was
alone. Looking around for my friend I saw that there was a
young doe at the edge of the empty space created by the
tree. Timidly it looked at me. It was equally afraid and cu
rious and so moved forward and back, keeping its place but
at the same time still ready to flee. A mother deer emerged
from the bushes then. She cast a wary eye on me and then
nuzzled her little fawn. Instantly the young deer calmed
down. I could see that there was a berry bush where the
two stood. They were eating the sweet fruit and so dared
the danger that I represented.
Even though I was afraid of being alone and scared of
what Tobias would do when he caught me, I was still en
thralled by those deer. I wondered what it would have
been like if my mother, Psalma, had lived. Would she have
stood over me, protecting me while we ate sweet berries?
While I lamented the loss of my mother Tall John strode
into view. Not the tiny orange and violet John with flames
above his head but the colored slave boy with the skinny chest and coppery skin. I wondered then if my dream was
real. He stepped in between the mother and child, stroking
their flanks and saying something I couldn't hear. They
pressed their snouts against him in a friendly way and then
went back to eating. John then turned toward me.
In his right hand he carried the napkin that Flore had
wrapped my cookies with. He held the big handkerchief
by the corners like it was a sack.
"Good morning, Forty-seven," he said upon reaching
me. "Did you sleep well?"
"They gonna kill us, Numbah Twelve," I replied.
"Would you like to flee to the north?" he asked.
"I ain't jokin' wit' you, fool."
"I'm not telling a joke," he said. "If you wish we can
head north right now. By day after tomorrow we'll be in a
place that doesn't have slavery and doesn't return slaves."
"Ain't no sucha place," I said.
"There are many lands that don't have slaves, Forty-
seven. Canada, Vermont."
I could tell that he was serious, that he was willing, with
no more than a shrug and a nod, to take me away from all the chains and chiggers and cotton. All I had to do was say
yes and the misery of my daily existence would have fallen
away.
"What you got in that napkin?" I asked him.
"I went back to my bag in the tree and got a chemical
that will kill the virus in Eloise's brain. I also collected var
ious fungi that will carry the serum through her blood."
"So if we run away she'll die?"
"Probably."
"But if we wait and run away later can we take Flore
and Champ and Mud Albert with us?"
"No," John said. "Only you."
If I ran Miss Eloise would die, and my friends would re
main slaves no matter what I did. I couldn't imagine a life
where Eloise was dead and where I'd never lay eyes on Big
Mama Flore again. The only choice I had was to go back
to Corinthian, and I knew that I would at least get bull-
whipped for running away.
I could feel the lash on my back even as I stood there in that primal paradise. Fear of the whip brought tears to my
eyes. But the thought of leaving my friends and the thought
of the Master's daughter dying was too much for me.
That was the way it was for the short while that I knew
Tall John from beyond Africa. Everything he said to me
was both a test and a lesson. Being his friend was my first
experience with the responsibilities of freedom.