Child of Fortune (73 page)

In my mind's eye, I saw the babas of the Bloomenveldt at peace with themselves beneath their final flowers, a peace quite literally beyond the understanding of one whose spirit and body could look forward to centuries of youth rather than weeks of terminal decay. Yet in my heart, I saw Guy Vlad Boca, a spirit who had chosen this selfsame mode of passage from sapient human consciousness in the full flower of adventurous youth.

"Weep not for me, girl," Pater Pan said. "The me you knew is already gone, and you are speaking with a Joker dybbuk he left behind to say good-bye. But I'm real enough to feel sad to leave the worlds all over again, and if you are still a sister of my spirit, you will let me go."

"I can truly do no other?" I asked from the depths of my spirit. For in that moment I was once more addressing myself to Guy as well as I turned my back on him in the depths of the Bloomenveldt and sought the lonely path of my own salvation. I had told myself then that I could do no other, nor in all the time between had I ever reconstructed a more fruitful course of action, but I had never really believed I had acted honorably in my heart of hearts until this very moment.

"You can only keep a mortal spirit in mortal torment," Pater Pan said, "after he who was at home has long since fled into unknown realms. I was happy when I went, for rather than expire in regretful agony, I chose to take one last journey down the Yellow Brick Road and see whatever there is to see in the final mystery of the Up and Out."

"May that road rise up to meet you, mi amor," I said, bursting into tears as I released my hold on the handle of the kundalinic machineries which had summoned forth this echo of the natural man.

Long had I chided myself for failing to risk the all of my own sapient spirit in a berserker effort to rescue Guy from his ultimate and terminal amusement. There in the depths of the Bloomenveldt I had turned my back and let the spirit of a friend and lover go, informed by no greater wisdom than the moral calculus of survival. Therefore had I secretly owned myself a coward in my heart of hearts.

Now, in this Tent of Many Colors, did the bitterest lesson of all yet grant me self-forgiveness, for now I knew to my dismay that greater love and courage of the spirit could sometimes be required to stand aside with an aching and uncomprehending heart and let be what must be.

Teary-eyed, shaking, not knowing what I felt, or even what I should properly feel, I turned to quit this place for the nearest venue of solitude, to find myself confronted with some dozen pair of mooningly worshipful eyes.

They were all staring at me as once they had stared at Pater Pan, as if I had anointed myself pythoness of their noxious cult, and established myself as the consort of their master. Thus had I ironically achieved what once I had so avidly sought, to preside over a Child of Fortune carnival at the Gypsy King's side! All the more did this perception enhance the distaste which I felt at being the focus of the miasma of fawning subservience which fairly exuded from these lost Children of Fortune like a cloying mist of vaporous treacle. Never had even Rollo, Dome, Goldenrod, and my Moussa regarded their Pied Piper thusly in the depths of the Bloomenveldt.

"What do you imagine you are staring at like that?" I demanded angrily.

"The Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt ..."

"Conjurer of mighty spirits ..."

"Pater Pan's true lady ..."

"Bah!" I snarled. "You call yourselves Children of Fortune? Conjure only with that spirit which moves through your own hearts, and give over your lust for all other gurus and deities, feckless urchins!"

So saying, I brushed aside, at least for the moment, their vapid attentions, and stormed like a whirlwind out of the thanatotic shadows of the tent into the bright clean glare of day.

***

But naturellement, I could not leave the encampment with the final chapter of Pater Pan's tale yet untold, nor for that matter could I snatch many moments of solitude from the entirely unwelcome solicitations of its inhabitants with which I was all-but-constantly surrounded from the moment I left the tent.

No sooner had I emerged into daylight than I found myself the center of a ragged little mob of acolytes who thrust food and wine and toxicants upon me and who trailed after me like pathetic puppies wherever I went. The former I waved away with impatient gestures, but as for my train of would-be followers, even shouts and imprecations would only drive them off a certain distance, a score meters or so, from which vantage they kept me under constant observation, tracking my movements en masse from a respectful distance, even when I was constrained to visit the encampment's foul and reeking latrine.

All that first afternoon this went on, while I wandered aimlessly about the camp, seeing and hearing nothing, only seeking to marshal my psychic resources to see this tale through to its final end. Vraiment, in pragmatic terms, there was nothing to prevent me from turning on my heel, fleeing from this unwholesome and sorrowful venue, leaving Alpa, and taking up my new life as a student of the tale-teller's art with never a backward glance. The natural man who had been, my Pater Pan had said his good-bye and vanished into that final Void from which there is no rescue, and there was nothing I could accomplish by remaining here save bear witness to the final passage of what remained in that Tent of Many Colors into the Up and Out.

But of course in the end this proved quite sufficient to require the teller of tales to endure this story to the bitter end, for I knew all too well that if I abandoned it now my spirit would never know a moment's peace. For while the Child of Fortune that I had been had achieved the sad wisdom to let the spirit of the lover of her Golden Summer go to follow the unknown final path he had chosen, the woman I sought to become, she who had sworn the lodge-oath of the tale-teller, must be true to the first allegiance of the craft, and could not truly begin another tale until this one was completed in a manner that could satisfy the heart.

For was this not my wanderjahr's name tale, and if I ended it now with no spiritually satisfying conclusion, who was I to become, what fitting freenom could I choose, in homage to whom or what could I draw an esthetic moral therefrom? No, if I was to become anyone, it must be the teller who now approaches the end of this tale, and who therefore in that very moment of inevitable decision became the woman who transcribes these words now.

And so, by the time Alpa's sun had begun its slide down the sky, I had resolved to remain in this encampment for as long as the corpus of Pater Pan lived, and if the mages spoke true, if the genes themselves, or the collective unconscious of the species, or vraiment the Atman itself, as the Charge Addicts had it, found voice in the terminus of that brain's amplified passage, then this echo, or urgeist, or mere random discharge pattern, would I hector in search of that peace of the spirit which no mere human wisdom could grant me now.

Having so resolved, I allowed one of the boldest of the Children of Fortune to approach me, a handsome golden-haired and bronze-skinned boy at least two years younger than I, who eyed me with the collective worshipfulness to be sure, but whose eyes were enlivened by a certain speculation that led me to believe that the same had not entirely overridden the more wholesome and individualistic regard of his nascent natural man.

"Since I would seem to have been nominated as pontifex entirely against my will," I told him, "I may as well avail myself of the minimal prerogatives thereof. To wit, a tent where I may enjoy at least enough privacy to sleep without the presence of an audience, and a meal to consume therein."

"Pas problem, o Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt," the boy said. "My tent and my bed are yours."

"Indeed?" I said dryly, both outraged and charmed by his frank and callow boldness.

He seemed to writhe in embarrassment, though there seemed to be something thespically feigned about it. "I will of course seek other temporary lodgings," he said quickly. "If that is what you prefer. I am called Kim, you may rely on me, noble maestra, I will be happy to cater to your every need." Now his feigned embarrassment seemed to be replaced by the genuine article, through which he nevertheless spoke with a certain charmingly boyish manliness. "Even those needs which you may not feel now."

Indifferent to the thrall in which I seemed to hold this boy save for the practical means to which I could put it, but preferring the relative spunk of his company to the cloying worshipfulness of his unwholesome fellows, I allowed Kim to enter my service, which is to say I was grateful to let him lend me his plain little tent, see to my food and drink, and contrive to keep the others well away from his prize.

I ate a wretched meal of heavily fried fruits de mer and vegetables washed down with a large quantity of raw green wine, and, rendered empty of thought by the force of the day's events, drowsy by the wine, and torpid by the leaden and greasy repast, I soon enough lapsed into merciful unconsciousness on Kim's pneumatic pallet.

***

The sun was high in the sky when I awoke the next morning, but Kim appeared in the tent as soon as I had risen with a breakfast of fresh fruits and well-sogged grains in milk which gave evidence that he must have been waiting patiently outside with it for hours.

He sat there watching my movements as I ate in silence, and did not speak until I had gotten it all down, which, despite my lack of real appetite, I felt morally constrained to do.

"Pater Pan has fallen silent, and there is much despair among us," he said. "But I have told them, o mi maestra, that surely the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt who is his consort and sister of his soul will summon his spirit forth to speak."

"You have no right to make such promises for others!" I told him crossly.

"I did wrong?" he exclaimed with guileful innocence. "I spoke not truth? Your plan is to linger here and do nothing? You remain here for some reason other than to discourse with the spirit of your great lover?" He cocked an ironic eyebrow at me. "Can it be that you tarry here only because you have been smitten by the charms of some lesser being?"

"Merde!" I snarled, if only to suppress a laughter that would have been entirely unseemly to these dreadful circumstances. "Very well then, Kim," I told him, "I will attempt to fulfill your public prophecy, if only because there is nothing else for it to escape from your outrageous amorous intentions." Though in truth I had to own to myself that he had seen my inevitable intention quite clearly and could hardly be chided too severely for seeking to enhance his repute among his fellows by grandly predicting the same.

***

A contretemps was taking place in the Tent of Many Colors when I arrived. A good two dozen persons were crowded together within its fabric walls, babbling and contending, and, directly in front of the throne of pillows upon which Pater Pan sat like a tranquil bodhi, three young men and an even younger girl were demanding refunds from the keeper of the oracle's time.

"Four credit units for silence!"

"Return my funds forthwith!"

"Fraud!"

"Nom de merde!"

The odor of too many less than-fastidiously-laved bodies, the raucous din, the image of petty moneychangers in a temple which rose unbidden to my mind, all served to overcome my indifference to the tribal matters of these miscreants with righteous ire.

"Return the funds you have appropriated from these rubes at once," I forthrightly commanded as I strode to the front of the tent. "True Children of Fortune do not pick each other's purses, nor is it seemly to gain profit at all from the passage of a noble spirit from the mortal realm. There will be no more trafficking in such ghoulish enterprises while I remain in this camp!"

There was stunned silence at this. She who had been measuring Pater Pan's time in credit units and her confederate with the chip transcriber at the door were the first who dared raise their voices in protest.

"So says who?"

"What right have you to restrict our freedom of enterprise?"

"My name is Sunshine," I told them and the generality. "I style myself thusly as a Child of Fortune among my fellows. I command no one but myself. And myself I will command to leave this encampment rather than submit my eyes to such a sight again."

I gazed about the tent, and now I was the ruespieler, working the crowd with my eyes and voice. "But if you wish to style me the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt, if you persist in regarding my words as those of your perfect master, that is your affair, urchins, not mine. So hear me as whom you will, I tell you that, neither Sunshine the Child of Fortune, nor whatever arcane personage's mantle you choose to drape around my indifferent shoulders, will remain among you if this vile practice does not cease."

"And at any rate as long as the Pied Piper of the Bloomenveldt does not by her arcanely puissant powers call forth the voice of the oracle, we can hardly expect to continue a profitable commerce in the wisdom of same," Kim piped up brightly.