Neverness (31 page)

   I could not bear to watch him place a meaty wad moist with my saliva into his mouth. "I can't," I said.

   "Please, Mallory, I'm hungry."

   I quietly cursed and bit off a chunk of meat. I chewed it thoroughly. As I spat out the brownish-red mass into my hand, he said, "You know, I used to chew my father's meat when he was old." He scooped up the contents of my hand with his own and gobbled it down. "That's good, very good. But you don't have to chew it so much. You'll chew out the juices if you are not careful, and meat is best when it is juicy, hmmm?"

   He reached out feeling the meat I had brought him, kneading his hands through the seal blubber. With his greasy fingers he rubbed his face thoughtfully and then returned to his explorations. "What's this?" he cried out. "Under the ribs - if feels like liver!"

   "Yes, I've brought you some liver," I said. "I thought you might like it."

   "But I may not eat liver, don't you know?"

   "Is it too rich?"

   "It is too rich and that is why I may not eat it. Yuri says liver must be reserved for the hunters and pregnant women. And sometimes the children. They need its richness more than I do, you know."

   "It's just a little liver," I said. "Would Yuri deny you a taste of liver?"

   "Listen, he would deny me more than that, of course. Before you came I had not eaten much for twelve days. When times are hard, you know ... well, I am old and the children must eat, hmmm?"

   I did know about this cruel custom of the Alaloi's, and thoughtlessly, I said, "Children must eat, then, but it is evil for a man's family to make him starve."

   In truth, I did not really think it was evil that the old should die so the young could live. But that the Alaloi should have to live so close to life - and death -
that
, I thought, was somehow evil.

   "Evil, hmmm ... would you cut me a piece of liver, please?" He stared at the fire for a long time, pulling at the loose skin of his throat. Orange fingers of light played across his greasy face. With his scrawny neck and toothless, puckered mouth opening and closing in anticipation of his dessert, he looked like a hellish, glowing bird. "What is evil, hmmm? What is good? Do you know?"

   He turned around and rummaged in a pile of decaying offal and old bones. He grunted, turned back to me, and held up a piece of organ meat. "This is the stomach of Ayeye, the thallow who flies above - did you know Yuri hates me because I once freed a young thallow from one of his traps? - the thallow flies above mountains, and it is bad to eat Ayeye, but Yuri wanted the thallow for Liam's initiation, not for eating. But I freed the bird anyway because I pitied him, you know? Of course I would have freed him even if Yuri had been hungry and wanted to eat him because it is wrong to eat - do you see the stomach of this thallow that Choclo has brought me, that my hungry people have eaten?"

   "I see it," I said. "Put it away, it stinks."

   He jabbed his pale, crooked finger through the lower opening of the stomach. As one puts on a glove, he pulled the glistening muscle in folds down around his hand until the finger emerged from the upper opening. He wriggled his finger and said, "Death is evil, do you think? You know, we are worms in the belly of God, and so we perceive only two of God's attributes, hmmm? Like a worm," and here he again wriggled his finger inside the bird's stomach, "one part of us looks up through the throat and mouth of God into the light, and we call this good - did you know that Yuri's doffel is the thallow? - we look into the light of life and call it good while our other part crawls down into God's bowels, down into blackness and dung and evil. You know, most people, caught in the stomach of God as they are, tend to see these two attributes only, but there are many more beyond our comprehension. Can you please slice me another piece of liver?"

   I cut him a piece of liver and said, "Try to eat it slowly. Else you'll waste it, and that
would
be evil."

   "Thank you. That was good, hmmm? Good for an old man to eat the tender liver of the seal, but not so good for Nunki, hmmm? If Nunki could talk, he might even say it was evil that he should go over to the other side while still so young and full of life? But what can an animal know? What does a man know? Listen, little Choclo likes to talk to me - shall I sing the song I taught him? - he talks about what he sees, you know, and he said that Mallory Sealkiller looks at his sister, Katharine, the way Liam looks at Katharine. And that is wrong, he says, that is evil, but what can he know of either? He thinks he knows good and evil, of course, but I did not tell him that some men, men who stand apart high on mountain tops, some men can imagine what it is like to leave the belly and view the whole body of God. I myself have almost seen it once or twice. It is a mighty thing, you know, with a golden beak and silver wings stretching across all the universe until the tips touch at the far side. I heard its cry once or twice as a child so I can tell you the deepest thing I know: The nature of God is beyond good or evil."

   I smiled as I sliced soft, jellylike pieces of liver. I remembered that the Alaloi believe God is a thallow so great it can devour the world as easily as a loon swallows a berry; they believe that God and the universe are one. I chewed quickly and spat a purple bolus of liver into my hand. Because I doubted that any man could know the true nature of God, be it a thallow or a ball of light or an ultimate system of describing the infinite structures of the manifold (as certain pilots believe), because I doubted many things, I said, "Perhaps your vision of the thallow was only a dream. Dreams can sometimes seem real. But most dreams are false, aren't they?"

   He snapped the liver from my hand and ate it. "You men of the southern ice have strange dreams, hmmm? False dreams, too, I see. You know, you are a kind man but sometimes your words cut like the wind. I will tell you the simplest thing I know, hmmm? A hungry man is not more certain of the existence of hot meat than I am of God."

   Thus I passed most of the evening, feeding him as a beast feeds its young. We talked about many things, but most of all we - I should say Shanidar - talked about good and evil. I was surprised that he talked so freely with me, but then the Alaloi are natural philosophers and they love to talk. Also, I think he was too aware of his own mortality; he must have been desperate for companionship of any sort, even mine. It puzzled me, though, that he seemed to like me, because I did not like him. I pitied him, especially when he reached out to grasp my hand, and he said, "Once at night, years ago, I dreamed of having a son but none of the Devaki would marry a man who had not died at the right time, you know, you know? I had a dream at night - Listen, the lights in the sky are the eyes of God watching us. The lights in the midnight sky are stars, and there real men live in the radiance of God's eyelight, though no one believes me that this is so. If I had been blessed with a son I would have taught him the truth - Listen, there is something I want to ask you, hmmm? When it is time for me to go over - clearly it is not time yet because this liver lies so cleanly in my belly - when it is time, just before I - Listen, don't let Yuri know you brought me the seal liver because he would think I am stealing it from the mouths of the mothers, and if it were true that would be evil, hmmm? - When it is time for God to devour
my
meat, would you carry me out of the cave so I can sit beneath the night? I want to feel the starlight once more before I make the great journey."

   I promised to do as he asked and he squeezed my hand. He thanked me for bringing him enough meat so he could go to bed and not lay awake thinking about his hunger. He patted his belly, smiling. I was glad to be done with my loathsome task and I smiled too. We smiled together. It should have been a good moment, with both of us smiling, but it was a moment of horror. I was seized with a sudden, inexplicable panic. The cave walls drowning in vivid colors, the fiery logs crackling and spitting cinders, the putrid smells of blood and breath, Shanidar's too-familiar smile - all these sensa filled me with a deep fear of my own existence. The sheer hopelessness of life terrified me. Shanidar smiled at me from across the fire, and it seemed as if his head were floating above a sea of orange flames. I could see only his head, sunken in flesh and the folds of time, smiling as I smiled. I stared at his eyes, at the lenses frosted and white with the ice of cataracts. I stared through my eyes at eyes similar to mine. All men, I realized, would come to have such eyes if only they lived long enough. I was shaken with the fear, the bone knowledge, the utter certainty that the shape of Shanidar's smiling face was the shape of my own. No skill or force could keep me from this fate should the ticking of my inner clock slow down as his had slowed for him. I was young now, but soon, very soon according to the measure of universal time, I would be old. My fear was so great that I felt an overwhelming urge to scream for help. There was no escape, I thought, and my stomach knotted and I began to sweat. No matter the arts of the cutters and the cetics - they could fold flesh back to youth a few times, perhaps even many times, but they could do nothing to prevent the mutability of one's selfness and soul. There was no way I could keep myself young, no way to stop myself from changing inside, where it mattered. It was my fate to change, as it was everyone's fate. Shanidar smiled, and he had no teeth, and I realized that the whole of my life until this moment had been false. I looked at the solid walls of rock running with paints, and I squeezed my aching knee, and everything at once, the rocks and blood and bones seemed utterly unreal.

   As if he could hear my thoughts, he turned his head in my direction and suddenly stopped smiling. "You know, even kind men such as you and I must grow old, hmmm? That is why we must go over at the right time. Otherwise there is no peace forever."

   He talked about the peace and enlightenment awaiting on the other side of day, and he talked about his love for his people who had almost completely rejected him. I must admit I paid him little attention. I wanted to run back into the main cave, to find Soli and the others, to make them understand that our quest for the secret of life was stupid and meaningless. There was no secret; there was only the crushing bondage of being, and finally when it was time to be no more, nothingness.

   I stood up abruptly, nearly ignoring the Old Man of the Cave as be said, "There is one thing I should tell you before you leave, hmmm? I forgot to tell you this, but you should know. God's wings touch at the far end of the universe - did I tell you this before? - his wings are silver and they touch, but his eyes are closed because he himself is sleeping. Listen, one day God will wake up and be able to see himself as he really is. I can almost hear his scream, the beating of his wings. But until then, good and evil will not exist because only God can truly see what is good and what is not. And this is the thing that I wanted to tell you: Men such as you and I, kind men who kill their own doffels, we must do as we will because for us all things are permitted. But there is always a price, hmmm?" He ran his trembling finger along the gums inside his mouth and repeated, "The price must be paid."

   I returned down the rock vent as fast as I could. I wanted to find Katharine, to stroke her hair, to ask her what she had
seen
; I wanted to make her tell me what I would be like when I had grown old. As I hurried through the dark passageway, the Old Man of the Cave began to sing a mournful song, and I tried not to listen.

What an extraordinary thing, that the ripples in the spacetime continuum should ripple in such a way that the ripples could control their own rippling! That energy captured and bound should lead to greater concentrations of energy instead of gradually bleeding away into the heat death and universal calm! How mysterious that consciousness should lead to greater consciousness and life beget life greater and more complex!

   from
A Requiem for Homo Sapiens
, by Horthy Hosthoh

When I returned to the main cave, the Devaki and my "family" were feasting on seal meat. Obsessed as I was with thoughts of decay and death, I was unprepared for joy, the joy of a hundred and twenty happy people filling themselves with their beautiful meat. It was a feast of flesh, a celebration of love and life with little respite or pause. Everyone except the unweaned babies and children gorged on roasted seal steaks and blubber. (At first, of course, many were so impatient and hungry they ate their meat raw.) The cave was alive with the smell of burning sweetbreads and the happy chatter of the children as they licked down fingers of grilled liver dipped in melted fat. Yuri and the rest of the Manwelina were glad to share the food with the Yelenalina and Reinalina families. Their hunters had returned earlier that day from their shagshay hunt with empty sleds, but Yuri announced they would fill their bellies anyway because he knew that in the next hunt the luck might go the other way. Even the Sharailina, who possessed the lowest status of all the families due to an unfortunate and unsavory accident that happened years ago, even the lowly Sharailina partook of the rich meat. Around all the huts the cave floor was littered with cracked bones; the bloated, distended bodies of those who had eaten too much (nearly everyone) were sprawled in front the fires. There were grunts and belches and moans. And to my surprise, many of the Devaki were telling lewd jokes and touching each other openly. I stalked through the cave, and I saw a nubile Yelenalina woman - I think her name was Pualani - giggling and whispering something in young Choclo's ear. They fondled each other and disappeared into one of the Yelenalina's huts. All around the oilstones, in the soft, flickering light, it seemed the men and women were pairing and touching, quietly vanishing into the darker recesses of the cave. I found Bardo with his arms thrown across the backs of two pretty Senwelina girls as he sat between them singing. I walked closer to huts noisy with gasps of passion, and he winked at me and bellowed, "Two's not too many for one, but it's too few for two such men as we! But when Bardo is content, Bardo is willing to share." And then, "Where have you been? You look white as bird puke."