Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (12 page)

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Before coming to this let me tell you what I saw. It was my love of history and hence my concern with cause and effect which made me explore why Wilberfoss had been chosen. I considered that if I could answer
that
question I would be close to understanding human motivation. What did this man Wilberfoss have that other men did not? He was a fine pilot, but there were hundreds such. He was intelligent, but intelligence is a commonplace. He had, as we subsequently discovered, an interesting and passionate past, but so have many. He had reached a point in his life when he was starting to ask questions about purposes and meanings (and that I am sure is significant), but there are many such. What, I wondered, made him special? Could I see it? Would I recognize it if I saw it?

Well, the events I am about to describe may provide a partial answer: certainly they made me feel the inadequacy of my metal shanks and the dull spirituality of my biocrystalline brain.

On a sunny morning after rain, Wilberfoss was sitting outside his room whittling on a stick. There were many sticks about as the previous night there had been a gale and trees and shrubs were lodged and broken. He looked completely at peace: a strong man, astride a stump, relaxed and yet well-knit and ready. There came a noise from a thicket, a rattling followed by a mewing, and anyone who lived on that world would recognize the sound. It was a sandar, an eight-legged, grub-like creature which at maturity can reach the size of a domestic cat. A sandar spends most of its life burrowing inside trees where it can anchor with its mouth, fringed with saw-like teeth, while it inserts its long black tongue into the main sap lines. But they can be dangerous. They are aggressive. They can spit venom and they can climb with amazing agility, sometimes humped like a squirrel, sometimes spread with all legs stretched, a bit like a bat. The rattle is a warning. The mewing is an expression of anger, I am told. In combination they signify a creature that will attack without any provocation and which is to be avoided.

Wilberfoss paused in his whittling and listened with his head cocked over on one side. The sound continued, growing in intensity, and it was obvious that the sandar was trapped or incapacitated in some way. A Talline would have left the area or looked about for a spear, but Wilberfoss stood up and put his knife to one side. He glanced around to make sure that he was not seen and then walked toward the edge of the clearing. He did not see me for I was high in an oak tree and hidden in leaves. I guessed at what he intended to do and sent a message to Lily warning her that she might be needed. She was at the far end of the garden and began hurrying back to us.

Wilberfoss walked directly toward the rattling and mewing and I could hear him whistling between his teeth and murmuring a song. He parted the branches of a fallen glue-pot tree which showed the peculiar stunting which is characteristic of sandar infestation. Wilberfoss held back the branches and revealed the sandar. I could see it. It was partly crushed against the trunk of the glue-pot tree by a branch from the neighboring tree. Two of its short legs were broken and hung useless. Its mouth was open and its ring of teeth exposed. The black tongue was coiled inside the wide mouth. It was ready to spit. Sandars can spit and they can lunge and bite. The mouth closes over its prey which is then killed with a bite and ejaculated, for the sandar dines solely on tree sap.

Wilberfoss reached in and touched the sandar. Folly. I rose from my perch in the oak fully expecting to see Wilberfoss reeling back with poison in his eyes and the sandar locked like some monstrous growth onto his arm or his chest or worst, his throat. I once saw the remains of a dog that had been killed by a sandar. It looked as though it had been flayed with wire. But there was no convulsion among the branches.

Wilberfoss slid one arm into the narrow space between the sandar’s pudgy legs and supported its body. This brought his face close to its blind open mouth. With his other arm he bent back the branch of the tree that pinned the creature. The branch yielded and he lifted the sandar free. It held to his arm with its legs and its mouth closed like a button.

I retired and buried myself in the leaves of the oak and watched. Wilberfoss carried the sandar to the stump where he had been working and set it down. He touched the two legs and I saw the creature writhe but it still did not bite or spit. There was little he could do for the broken legs but I saw him examine them with his fingers. Once he touched his fingers to his mouth and then rubbed his saliva into the creased skin. While doing this he held the sandar as a woman holds a baby when she is relieving it of wind.

At that moment Lily came trundling into the garden at full speed, her twin tracks churning the gravel of the path. Wilberfoss called for her to be quiet. She stopped and her twin lamps surveyed him. “Are you hurt by the sandar?” she asked.

“No,” he replied. And then his eyes narrowed and he looked at her sharply. “How did you know that I had found a sandar?” he asked.

“Wulf reported you were in danger,” she replied artlessly. I do not know if she understands what a lie is. Lying is hard for machines, even for cunning wordsmiths like myself.

Wilberfoss looked around the clearing. “Come out, Wulf, wherever you are hiding,” he called and, of course,

I obeyed. I emerged from the oak and lowered down to soil level. “If you are so interested in what I am doing, why not come close? But not too close. I don’t want you to frighten it.”

Wilberfoss selected some sticks from the ground and split them and shaped them into short white splints. He spoke to Lily and she obligingly handed over some white bandages. Carefully but deftly he tied up the wounded legs while the creature lay like something stunned or in ecstatic trance, its mouth opening and closing slowly.

“Where did you learn to do this?” I asked as he finished and set the creature on its leg?. He watched it for a few seconds with his fingers resting on its head. He did not speak but picked the sandar up carefully and carried it back to the glue-pot tree. He placed it in the tree where it could squirm into one of its several burrows and there rest and feed.

Wilberfoss came back wiping his hands. Some venom had leaked onto him. Lily offered a napkin which he accepted.

“They taught us a lot when I joined the Gentle Order,” he replied. “Splints and tourniquets and such.”

Splints and tourniquets! He chose to deliberately misunderstand me. Where I wondered had he learned to charm animals? The truth, as I realized later, was that he had not learned. It was a gift. Some days after this event I chanced to hover close to the glue-pot tree where the sandar was sequestered. It registered me and spat at me. Thus, a creature that did not have enough intelligence to distinguish between an animal and a machine, could nevertheless respond to the will and affection of a human. That required thinking about.

After this event, there were many other occasions when I was able to observe Wilberfoss’s canny ability with creatures. I will recount only one more for it has some interesting philosophy.

We were by the river. This must have been two weeks after Wilberfoss entered the garden and as far as I could see he was living the life of a lotus eater and did not seem concerned with coming to a decision. Oh, I know all about procrastination in humans. Wilberfoss sat naked on a rock with his feet in the stream. He was perfectly still, like a stranded tree trapped after a flood. He was whistling softly and staring into the deeper part of the rippling water.

I approached slowly, as I have learned, and settled down in the gravel behind Wilberfoss. Minutes slipped past and then there was commotion in the water. A ridged and bony-plated tail rose and slapped down on the water sending spray to the distant bank. High-jointed legs scrambled for purchase on the submerged stones and a creature like a giant crayfish heaved itself up. Its dozen or so feelers were spread like the tines of a ruined fan in front of it. I recognized a Rune cray or Farmer cray as it is sometimes called.

The Rune cray. There is a legend among the Tallines that they obtained the characters for their writing from the symbols found on the tails of male Rune cray. Hence its name. I think there is truth in this for I have studied Talline script with the careful eye of a pattern assessor and I have studied early archaeological remains. The cray tail provides a consistent and natural sequence of symbols.

The name of Farmer cray comes from the Cray’s practice of building nets underwater. Within these it contains other marine creatures upon which it finally feeds.

The cray reared up out of the water and for the first time revealed its claws which were almost as big as a man’s hand and were black as ebony. It is a wonder that the creature can lift such massive devices on so spindly a body. Wilberfoss intensified his whistling and crooning and reached toward the cray. It came forward, tentatively and with claws open and advanced.

“Now watch this,” said Wilberfoss. He took the proffered claw and shook it much as I have seen him shake hands with a fellow human. Then he placed his finger within the claw and the claw closed gently.

“Does that cause you pain?” I asked.

“Oh no,” he replied. “The Rune cray is careful. It knows to the thousandth part of a gram how yielding my flesh is and how delicate. If we were enemies it could snip my finger off. Snip. Snip. Just like that. But now I am bringing it happiness.”

“How?”

Wilberfoss worked his finger back and forth within the claw, limbering the Cray’s entire arm so that it had to move close to remain standing. I may say that it crouched in front of Wilberfoss and I have never seen such a strange sight: man and beast, sharing a strange voiceless ritual which brought them both pleasure. “The claw is so sensitive,” said Wilberfoss. “The pleasure is in touching that sensitivity. Like with a woman. It will squeeze me to the point of pain and rock back and forth over that point, enjoying itself.”

“How do you do this?” I asked.

“I just do. The main thing is not to be afraid and to match your speed to that of the creature. Find the song that it likes. Singing is important.”

“How do you know the song?”

“You just do. It isn’t a set song. The song is merely a convention to transmit your feelings. The animal does the rest. But don’t be afraid and don’t be too analytical. If you start to watch yourself too closely the creature will know and it will resent you.” As he said this, Wilberfoss spread his thumb away from the palm of his hand and the cray immediately swung its other claw up and seized his thumb. Wilberfoss slowly came to his feet and lifted the entire cray off the ground. Its tail stood stiff and its feelers trailed over his arm like the whiskers of a cat. After a few moments he lowered it back into the water. Its legs spread to take its weight and then gently the large claws opened and released Wilberfoss’s finger and thumb. “You must feel about it the way it feels about you. Let it be the master. Aggression is like ice. It numbs. But you must not be subservient either. If that Rune cray had thought for one moment it had me in its power it would have tried to eat me or drag me down to its lair. No, it recognized a truce.” As he spoke the Rune cray backed into the water, picking its way delicately before launching and plunging. The last we saw of it was its tail, wide spread, driving it down under the surface.

Wilberfoss grinned at me. “Do we still have something to teach the wise old bio-crystalline Wulf?” He banged me on my dome with the flat of his hand. Then he did something most unexpected. He climbed onto me. “Can you lift and carry me home?” he asked. I tried but I could not and so he walked away from me and left me in the shingle.

Let me say that while I believed Wilberfoss’s explanation concerning his power over creatures, I did not believe that he knew the whole story. He was more the agent than he allowed though I am convinced that he was ignorant of the extent of his power. In some strange way he could hypnotize. I am not comfortable with the idea of telepathy for cannot I also think and I am in no way telepathic, but his power suggests telepathy.

The important question now is, was Wilberfoss able to manipulate humans? His immense sensitivity to creatures as diverse as the tree sandar and the Rune cray would suggest that he could. Not intentionally. Let us be very clear about that. Not intentionally, but effectively. To quote a human truism again: the greatest strength is the greatest weakness. Sympathy for all may mean sympathy for none.

I must now discuss Jon Wilberfoss’s mystical experience.

As the days passed Jon Wilberfoss became more and more a creature of the garden. I had no idea what was happening to him. He avoided contact with me.

What I am about to present to you are two versions of the truth. The first is my description of Jon Wilberfoss’s actions as I observed them on the thirty-fourth day of his retreat. The second is a transcript of his commentary during his convalescence in the garden. Me first.

I had noted that Jon Wilberfoss was spending more and more time by the river. Running water seemed to give him particular pleasure. I also knew that he was hallucinating as I would find him at all hours, crouched by a shrub or sitting in branches, lazing in the flowers or wandering on the borders of the wild area, and always he was deep in conversation. He did the talking, hardly ever pausing to listen. Unfortunately, all I could detect were whispers from his lips. He could have been praying after the Talline fashion, that is while walking. As I say, if he knew that I was about he took steps to avoid me.

Well, on this one day he was down by the river at the place where the river ran through fantastic shapes of limestone. There was a frantic quality about him. He was waving his arms in vague exercise motions. He had been eating some of the berries that grow by the river and their juice, running in rivers from his lips, had stained his mouth and arms like a tattoo. He saw me and waved, beckoning. Curious as to this change in him, I swooped down. I noted there was white spittle in the comers of his mouth and his eyes were focused on some distant event or internal landscape. Lily was standing patiently on the river bank and so I assumed that Wilberfoss had done no harm to himself with the berries.