Watson, Ian - Black Current 03 (16 page)

 
          
"That's their chosen path. You
two won't be involved." Peera-pa turned back to the doorway. Over her
shoulder she added, "Peli can be, if she wishes.
Assuming
that she hasn't put everyone off."
She disappeared through the
veils.

 
          
"Oh sod," mourned Peli.
"How
can I go back inside?"

 
          
"Urn, sweet as
roses?"

 
          
"Sweet as
what?"

 
          
"Roses.
The Godmind's favourite flowers.
Never
exported to the colonies."

 
          
"Oh,
those."

 
          
And so to lunch: of snakemeat in
aspic, galantines, salads, quiches, stuffed bluepears. I don't know how
Mardoluc managed, either in the preparation or in the consumption. Trays sat
everywhere and people moved from one to another, continually changing places—
except for Papa in his pit, to
whom
mighty tidbits
were brought whenever anyone shifted. The meal was like a weird change-your-
partners dance, or a kids' game of musical cushions. I didn't notice anyone
conspicuously avoiding Peli; though with everyone, us included, bobbing up and
sitting down elsewhere, you never knew where you were.

 
          
I did notice Credence staring fixedly
at me, at one point, like a cat intent on a flutterbye. She hastily adopted a
sweet smile. Peera-pa, unveiled once more, dipped into our orbit amiably enough
then out again. I exchanged pleasantries with many of the cultists, and they
with me. In the midst of all, conducting the food-
dance,
reposed Mardoluc.

 
          
Finally, Peera-pa clapped her hands.
The trays were all whisked back upstairs—whither Peli and I and others all
repaired briefly to visit the privies.

 
          
Once we had all reassembled in the
big room, Peera-pa unlocked one of the lacquered cabinets. Within, were bottles
of an oily yellow liquid with several fingers of sediment in the bottoms;
numerous glasses; and a few phials full of darkness which I had no difficulty
in identifying as the substance of the
Worm.

 
          
Peera-pa unstoppered the phials,
emptied these into one of the yellow bottles and shook vigorously so that
sediment and oil and blackness were mixed into a turbid cocktail. She agitated
a couple of other yellow bottles too, without adding anything.

 
          
"Today," she said to the
assembly, "Papa and I will pierce the veil of fleeting phenomena in
company with the priestess of the current, blessed be she. We three shall
follow the black way. Monitors will be Credence and Zelya and Shooshi. Everyone
else will follow the usual amber path."

 
          
"Excuse me, but what are these
paths?" I asked.

 
          
Peera-pa indicated the different
bottles.

 
          
"Oh. And what are
monitors?"

 
          
"Monitors don't take any drug.
They stay in ordinary time, to watch over you. When you speed up afterwards,
they ensure that no harm comes."

 
          
"And they see to our
nourishment!" Mardoluc had hauled himself out of his pit by now and joined
the rest of us. "The drug takes about ten minutes to act," he told
me. "The slowing effect can last for a good five hours, though it's
strongest earlier on. Then the speed-up takes over—"

 
          
"And we gobble all the
left-overs. I've seen the drug in action."

 
          
"Left-overs!
Tut, you insult me. There's a whole new feast
awaiting
."

 
          
"Those who wish to take partners
may now disrobe," announced Peera-pa.

 
          
Both men from the farm and four women
undressed. They jogged up and down for a while, showing off.

 
          
Peera-pa distributed glasses of the
amber liquid first of all; and Peli wound up with one in her hand.

 
          
"Wait a mo," she said.
"Why shouldn't I be a monitor?"

 
          
Credence answered, "You've no
experience. Drink up, now!"

 
          
"I ought to keep an eye on
Yaleen."

 
          
"You'd find it very
boring."

 
          
"What, me, as can keep watch for
hours without fidgeting?"

 
          
A chuckle rumbled from deep within
Mardoluc. "In that case you're an ideal subject for the drug." Other
people were already downing their amber drinks.

 
          
Credence gave a negligent shrug.
"It's up to you. We can hardly pour the stuff down your neck. But you
might easily misinterpret what you see, seeing as you know fart all about
it."

 
          
Peli flushed redder than usual.

 
          
"Which
might make you interfere inappropriately," agreed Mardoluc. "You
might do something we'd all regret."

 
          
"
It's
okay, Peli," I murmured. "Honest, Papa knows best."

 
          
"Fart
all," repeated Credence. "Be a good big sister, hmm? Show an
example."

 
          
"Damn it," swore Peli, and
swallowed her drink.

 
          
Credence patted her on the arm.
"Take my advice: pick a quiet spot, sit down and calm down. Here, I'll
find you one—where you can watch the love-making, if you like. That's always
nice to meditate on."

 
          
Indeed, those who had taken their
clothes off were already occupying one of the pits and engaging in gentle
preliminaries.

 
          
"It's all a question of
timing," I heard Credence remark, as she drew Peli away.

 
          
Of the cultists who were still clad,
one woman had lain supine on the matting. Another was kneeling. A third sat
hunched over her knees. Several still stood, and looked like staying that way.
It was then that I cottoned on to the reason why the numerous windows were tiny
and opaque. This must be to stop participants from being blinded should the sun
stare in their eyes while they were slowed, and no monitor happen to notice.

 
          
Peera-pa handed Papa and me our dark
drinks. She raised her own.

 
          
"We three will hold hands. That
way, I hope we may commune. It's quite possible in timestop. You being
priestess
makes
this highly probable."

 
          
"Does it? I shan't have much of
a view round Papa's belly."

 
          
"The view you seek is
within," she said.

 
          
"Okay. Cheers." I drank. So
did
they
. Shooshi relieved us of our glasses.
Peera-pa, Papa and I linked hands.

 
          
The first thing I noticed about being
drugged was that I'd been like this for an immensely long time. Yet the
experience had only just begun; I was aware of that too. There was simply no
borderline to mark the change. Once crossed—as soon as I realized the alteration
—the borderline itself receded infinitely; vanished. The immediate past fled
away. My memories were of a timelessness to come.

 
          
I knew now where Papa had got his
idea about how we emerge as full persons from out of a fog which, thereafter,
hides the nature of what we were
before-we-were.
My own sensations were similar. I had gained Time—some sort of absolute time—by
losing touch with ordinary time. Here was the same kind of
"never-ever" as I'd experienced in
Ka
-space during my crazy homeward flight from Earth.

 
          
Indeed, for a moment (but a moment of
what magnitude?)
then
and
now
connected up seamlessly. Past event
and present event were one. Whatever had occurred during ordinary time between
whiles became an ox-bow lake of happenings—something pinched off from the
stream of never-ever.

 
          
For a moment (but a
moment of what order?)
I thought I understood the means by which I had
twisted back through time. I hadn't slid down a ladder of years, which everyone
else must
needs
climb upward. I had simply floated
from the outflow of the ox-bow of events, back into the inflow; for both lay
side by side in the never- ever.

 
          
When that had happened, I'd been
dead; detached from the world. Now, however, the world confronted me—in the
shape of Mardoluc's belly mainly, but also including his podgy hand holding
Peera-pa's (I could see that), a patch of golden wall, a distant wax- paper
window outlined in bloodwood.

 
          
As I stared fixedly, belly and wall
and window began to blank out.

 
          
After an immeasurable while, the
world came back, glowing with the message of its existence!

 
          
I had
blinked;
that's what. I had blinked my eyes. The blink had lasted
for dark ages.

 
          
It came to me now that the whole
world was actually winking in and out of existence constantly; yet we never
noticed, because of the pace of time. Yes, the world forever came and went,
just as it had done in that eyeblink!

 
          
For an age the world glowed and
vanished and glowed again. Why should it remain the same, each time it
returned? Why should it not be different?

 
          
Presently the answer became clear:
the world remained constant because it was only a shadow. It was the shadow of
the void. The shadow of nothing is something. The shadow of blackness is light.
The shadow of a
Ka
is a person. The
shadow of Potential is objects, things, events.

 
          
You can't change shadows by grasping
them. You have to grasp the original. But how can you grasp a void?

 
          
I'd gone back through time, but I
hadn't changed anything. I'd been scared to try—in case I vanished. Everything
had to happen exactly as before.

 
          
I was breathing ever so slowly, in
and out. His hand and hers grasped mine. Increasingly I became aware of the
pressure of palms and fingers. My nerves had taken so long to pass the message
on that when it finally
arrived,
it wasn't a whisper
but a shout.
Hearing this message of touch coming in so
slowly, my brain opened its ears wide to hear it.
Was it thus with those
lovers rubbing against each other in the pit? Every feathery touch became a
huge caressing wave?
And orgasm itself, a volcano?

 
          
Aha,
little priestess! Ho there, Peepy, we’ve done it!
This way.
Over here! Join in, do!

 
          
Not
only possible, I told you, but probable! Rejoice!

 
          
Whilst
simultaneously. . . .

 
          
Yaleen!

 
          
Worm?

 
          
It's
me, all right. But you're so quick.

 
          
Quick?

 
          
Compared with sluggish old me.
You 're
time-slowed, aren 't you? I've done that too. Part of me can match you for a
while; the rest can catch up later.
How's tricks
?
Given any more thought to my proposal?

 
          
About
jumping out of a balloon?

 
          
Either
that,
or some other method.
'Tisn 't
as though you lack the knack of dying.

 
          
I
wasn 't
planning on becoming an expert.

 
          
I'm
one, and it
hasn 't
done me any harm.