The Wellstone (15 page)

“Tonga has no king,” Bascal said, sitting cross-legged with his feet twisted up in a strap. “There is no Tonga.”

“I thought that was your dad,” Steve Grush cut in, provoking nods and murmurs from several others around the circle.

“No,” Bascal said, looking annoyed. “My father may be the King of Sol, but never has been and never will be the Tu’i Tonga. Technically speaking, he can’t even own property there, although I doubt the courts would see it that way. My mother is the Kuini Tonga, and there
is
no king. There never will be again. But I was actually referring to the story I’m trying to tell, about the first people in the world, before Tonga even existed.”

He paused, glancing around the circle both to make sure he had his audience’s full attention, and for dramatic effect. The Poet Prince in action. Then he began.

“Imagine that we’re on the open ocean. Waves rolling all around us, the hot sun beginning to set. The horizon is a dividing line between the sky and the sea. Imagine a catamaran sailboat: two huge canoe hulls with a sturdy platform lashed between them, as big as
Viridity
’s cabin here around us, though it’s open to the sky and the sea. And there’s a mast we can raise or lower as needed. There may be enclosed buildings on the platform, or a whole second level, or both. The sail is woven pandanus fiber, which depending on how you prepare it can be anything from tough basket wicker to a soft cloth, like silk. It’s the wellstone of its day. The rigging is a line of twisted coconut husk.

“This is not a primitive vessel; the largest versions can carry a hundred armed men, with months of provisions. It simply lacks metal, or clay, or any of the thousands of materials other civilizations take for granted. If it isn’t a plant or a bone or a volcanic rock, we’ve never seen it, but we know as much geometry as any Greek philosopher, and we can sail as fast and as far as a Spanish galleon. By night, we watch the stars. By day, we watch the sun and moon, and the cloud formations. In the right light, the clouds reflect the color of the sea and land beneath them. We also look for birds, for flowers and coconuts drifting in the current. Most importantly, we feel the waves beneath us. The ocean swells reflect off the land, and their ripples can be felt even two hundred kilometers away. The contour map is in our heads—we
feel
our way along, using the only programmable substance available. Brains.

“And we tell stories. We tell stories. We tell stories to pass the time. I’m taking you back, back, back before the sun god Tangaloa fathered the first Tu’i Tonga, before Maui, the god of fire and trickery, fished the islands up from the ocean with his magic hook. Before there were people, before there was time, the spirits of the people lived in their own special network in the sky. These sky spirits were never born and could never die. Every day was the same as every other day.”

“Cool,” someone said, half-seriously.

“Shut up,” Ho Ng warned.

And the prince went on: “But there were some among the sky spirits who grew restless, who wanted something to happen. The spirit of a lizard also lived in the sky, and was thought to be wise and helpful, although not entirely trustworthy. He had a streak of cruelty which he sometimes indulged. But he was always forgiven, because the sky spirits had to live together forever, and couldn’t afford to hold grudges.

“When the hot Earth had cooled and living things came out of the ocean to take root and grow in its soil, and different creatures had evolved to shape the ecosystem, the lizard told the sky people about the amazing beauty and sensuous delight of the Earth, which he said had been prepared especially for them. Earth’s land cradled all the colors of the rainbow, and its waters and winds flowed with sweet songs. And there were tastes as well! Sweet coconut and hearty yams, taro and breadfruit, and best of all, the flesh of fish and animals. Even the caves echoed your name when you called out to them.

“The lizard told the sky spirits how to visit the Earth: slide down a long, thin cable that was anchored in Africa, at the Earth’s equator. Shinny, shinny, slide! Down to Earth you slipped and slid, becoming solid as you went. The sky spirits were so excited they could barely wait their turn to slide down the cable.

“ ‘But how do we get back home?’ a man asked.

“ ‘Yes,’ said another. ‘We won’t go unless we can come back home again.’

“ ‘Oh, that’s easy,’ said the giant lizard, his mouth crooked open in a smile. ‘Just climb back up the cable. It has grooves in it, so any ratcheting mechanism will let you climb up without sliding back down. See?’

“And he showed the people the teeth and grooves of the cable. ‘Thank you,’ said the sky people. Not everyone went—some believed the lizard’s words and some didn’t. But many, oh so many, chose to go! One by one they attached their skysuits to the cable, and down they slid. They were so excited they didn’t even notice the lizard laughing at them.

“Earth was gorgeous. Fresh, cool water bubbled up out of the ground. Flowers bobbed in the breeze. Everything the lizard had said was true! The people harvested yams and luscious red fruits. They lit a huge fire and watched it dance and wave like the arms of a hundred happy girls. Later, when they had explored and were ready to rest, the sky people baked their yams in the glowing coals. In the shade of a tree they feasted, dancing and singing and warming themselves by the fire. And they took torches into the caves and drew sooty pictures on the walls. And they found that they could make love, and afterward they slept.

“But in the morning, something terrible happened: one of the sky people stepped on an ant, crushing it. “Get up,” said the sky person to the ant. But the ant didn’t move. It lay in pieces at the sky man’s feet. Gently, his wife lifted the dead ant. Other ants scurried about, frightened by her huge human shadow. She reached down and smashed another ant between her fingers. All movement stopped. Suddenly she screamed a bloodcurdling yell, and all the people of the tribe came running.

“ ‘What’s the matter?’ they yelled.

“ ‘This creature ...’ The woman was panting now. ‘It won’t move. It is ... no more.’ There was no word in their language for death, so she couldn’t even say that it had died. The people began to tremble. What kind of world had they come to?

“Together the men carved spears and hunted a bird, a gecko, and a pig. ‘We honor your spirit, living creature. May you live forever,’ they chanted. Then they took a heavy rock and killed the bird, the gecko, and the pig. The pig’s dark blood gushed from its neck into the sand. Prayers drifted away in the evening wind. Nothing could bring these creatures back to life.

“The lizard’s beguiling story had left out one detail: nothing lasted here. The bees made their honey, and then they died. The flowers bloomed, and their open faces shriveled. Dogs and pigs and even wives grew old and died. A lie of omission is still a lie; they knew now that the lizard had betrayed them.

“Too late for the people of heaven! They had eaten the food of the Earth, killing living things in the process. Now they too would experience all of Earth’s gifts, even the bitter ones: birth, sickness, old age, and death. The sky people huddled together and wept. One brave woman said, ‘Don’t give up! We must climb back to the sky. We don’t need these full bellies. It’s better to live forever!’ The people ran to the base of the cable. It must still be there, waiting for them to slip their skysuit ratchets into the carved notches and climb back to heaven.

“But no! The evil lizard had bitten through the cable. It lay coiled on the ground, frayed and still dripping with his saliva. ‘Look!’ cried the man who had asked the lizard how they would return to the sky. ‘The notches don’t even go all the way to the ground! All the time he was planning to leave us here!’

“Sadly, the people turned away. The sound of weeping grew dimmer and dimmer as small groups wandered off by themselves. One group followed the snaky curves of the riverbank. Another walked under the broad-leafed canopy of the forest. A third one climbed up into the hills. They were the ancestors of the people who live today. Because of them you were born, as generation upon generation of them were born, and died.

“But eventually, the people grew wise and clever, and strung their own cable back to heaven, and filled the heavens and the Earth with holes which connected to each other. Thus they brought all the delights of Earth into heaven, and all the delights of heaven back down to Earth, and all the horrors were buried and forgotten, and the giant lizard fled and has not been seen again.”

Bascal surveyed his audience before adding, in a less sanguine tone, “And everyone lives forever, and every day is the same as every other day, until the end of time.”

The campers sat quietly, digesting the tale.

“You made that up,” Conrad said finally.

“Parts of it,” Bascal admitted with a shrug. “The guts are traditional.” He addressed the circle. “Now, you’ve got to imagine there’s a bowl of kava, a numbing pepper-root drink that will literally loosen your tongue and lips. And brain. I pass it to the man on my left—or sometimes woman—who drains it and then tells the next story.”

The person sitting on Bascal’s left was Ho Ng, his faithful companion.

“What?” Ho asked brilliantly.

“Tell a story,” Bascal repeated.

“Oh. Bloodcrap.” Ho thought for a minute or two, and then launched into a disjointed rendition of “Little Red Riding Hood.” The next in line was Steve Grush, who did a slightly better job with “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” although Jamil and Karl teased him for it until Bascal told them to stop.

And then it was Jamil’s own turn, and instead of a fairy tale he related the plot of some holie drama he’d seen on TV, about a Christian priest fighting corruption in early Antarctica, during the height of the Fax Wars when it was still possible to steal someone’s identity and get away with it. There was no Constabulary then to enforce the new Queendom standards and brighten up the worlds’ gray areas. Outside of the old nation-states the regulatory situation was murky at best—frontier justice being the norm. All this was much to the woe of the priest, who had just escaped from an even worse situation on Mars. It actually sounded like a pretty good movie, although Jamil couldn’t remember any of the characters’ names, so everyone was “the guy” or “the other guy” or “the guy’s girlfriend’s friend.”

Finally, Bascal laughed and told him to stop. “This guy has heard enough from that guy about those other guys,” he said. Then he added, more seriously, “It’s been a big day for all of us, probably the biggest day of our lives. We’re tired, we’re hurt—and if you think you’re sore now, just wait till tomorrow. That’s all the story time we probably need. Now, I suggest we turn the lights down and start getting ready for bed.”

This was done: the soft glow of the wellstone was halved, then halved again, and in the gloom Conrad watched Bascal and Xmary quietly slip into the bridge, and close the door behind the single Palace Guard that slipped in after them. The other guard stayed behind, to monitor potential threats here in the main cabin. Someone might drill a peephole and gas the couple to death! Conrad wanted to brood about that, to have some time to feel jealous and worried and angry with Bascal for being such an unholy jerk about everything. Except that Ho, when he realized he’d been closed out of the bridge, got a baleful look on his face and started kicking mattresses.

“Hey,” Preston Midrand said, when his own was kicked.

“Yeah?” Ho demanded, rotating in the air and stopping himself on Preston’s shoulders, so the two of them were eye-to-eye but upside down from each other. And when Preston declined to answer, Ho pushed himself away and collided “accidentally” with Jamil.

“Watch it, you shit,” Jamil called out.

“Still crowded in here,” Ho said, although with the loss of bodies and the addition of a third dimension the exact opposite was true: even with seven of them in here, it felt kind of cold and empty. “There’s room in the storage closet. Some bloodfuck should sleep in there.”

“Sleep there yourself,” Conrad told him, causing Ho to look up and shoot him an evil glare. It seemed for a moment that some sort of confrontation was about to gel. Not physical, with a Palace Guard still standing in silent watch over the room, but possibly a moment of open power struggle. Then Ho seemed to think better of it, and leveled his ire at Preston instead.

“You. Go on.”

Conrad sighed. “Oh, for the love of little gods, Ho. Will you leave him alone?”

But Preston was holding up his hands. “No, no, it’s all right. I’ll go. Maybe there’s a little privacy in there. Maybe it’s
warmer
.”

“Yeah?” Ho said, perking up. “I forgot about that. Never mind, bloodfuck,
I’ll
sleep in the closet. My own private room.”

“Until we need toilet paper,” Jamil added sourly.

These arrangements were finalized, and Conrad drifted over to the little environmental control panel he’d prepared in a rare moment of forethought. It was just a flimsy sheet of wellstone, connected by a ribbon to the cabin’s exterior wrapping, but it would do for now. He turned the lights down the rest of the way, so there was only the starlight shining down through the sail, through the wellstone wrapping around the cabin, through the clear plastic of the skylight itself. He thought for a while that his eyes would adjust, but they didn’t seem to. It was just too dark: not enough of an opening to really let the starlight in. So he got up again and added a soft night-light glow to the ceiling in the ’toir, then settled down and strapped back into his bedding again.

And then, finally, he had a free moment to stew over the day’s events. It was a lot to take in: the silencing and stranding, the involuntary storage, the ascension of Ho Ng to a position of ... something. It was all so shallowly, transparently unnecessary. Bascal was listening to his own dark voices, and to Ho’s, when being nasty offered no actual benefit. It wasn’t like he
needed
to bury all dissenters; he’d simply felt like it.

And that,
that
was the critical issue. “Evil” as a concept had never much interested Conrad—he’d been assured of its existence but had never once seen a clear example. Until today. But the way he saw it, you had your basic “tough decision,” where one person got something—say, a nice apartment in Denver—and that meant someone else couldn’t have it. Then you had your “management decision,” where somebody decided how many apartments there were going to
be
in Denver, based on the available resources and the various implications of their use. How individual people felt was not much of a deciding factor. And yet there was nothing intentionally nasty about it; such decisions were necessary.