Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (36 page)

Be that as it may. The
Nightingale
and I worked on the ship, deciding which systems were needed and which could be abandoned. The
Nightingale
had been pared to a minimum. It had been cleared of life-forms. It had been stripped and gutted. Structurally, the ship was now a skeleton. Its plates were open and the inner parts would be exposed to the vacuum of space. This did not matter and in some ways was an advantage for space does not corrode. Secure were my anachronistic suite of rooms with their dickering fire and antique bedroom. The mind of the
Nightingale,
healthier now, knew its strengths. It had calculated that if we attempted to leave now we had a 60:40 chance of achieving escape velocity. These were the best odds we would ever have. With nothing left to jettison from the
Nightingale,
delay could only mean that second by second we lost our reserves of energy. We had an “escape window” (as the
Nightingale
called it) of two days. These calculations were completed immediately after the cleaning of the DME area and the departure of the creature.

What could I do? I am not profoundly sentimental, yet I could not face the thought of blasting off from this world without a proper farewell. I suppose the idea of leaving was less important to me than continuing to meet with the big red creature. I mean, tell me what gives value to life? What price the skin of Jon Wilberfoss if he denies a friend that has helped him? What value can I place on the deaths of ad my comrades? It is in the quality of our relationships that true value resides. Chi-da had come to mean more to me than the
Nightingale.

I delayed. I waited for the creature to return. At the same rime, my reasonable mind told me that the creature might be dead, that it might have become bored, that it might have migrated to a distant ocean, that in thinking it had any deep interest in me or the
Nightingale
I was felling into the greatest fallacy of ad, that of ascribing human motives to the alien mind. I had fears and the
Nightingale,
the damned
Nightingale,
played descants on my doubts whispering that it had gone and would never return.

So the minutes ricked by and became hours and the hours stretched into days and the
Nightingale
became frantic.

I stayed outside the ship with my intercom switched off to still its voice. I sat atop the
Nightingale,
stone-faced like an Indian chief of old Mother Earth, waiting.

The time for our optimum departure passed. When I entered the
Nightingale
to sleep, that machine screamed at me. Logic without love is a damned conjunction. I recharged the batteries of my small anti-grav unit while the
Nightingale
demanded that I settle in my couch and prepare for acceleration. I overrode with an act of will for I was still Commander of the
Nightingale
and I was still a field living entity and the
Nightingale
could not choose but obey.

But though my authority was absolute, the
Nightingale's
obedience was only temporary and it began again, telling the minutes as they slipped past and the changes in the probability of our escape.

I placed a limit on my waiting. I told the
Nightingale
that I would not contemplate attempting to depart until our odds of success had declined to 50:50.

On the sixth day we reached the moment of 51:49 and I heard the
Nightingale
begin to warm the engines. We had planned our departure as follows. We would lift as far as we could using the anti-gravity system. This system, not being designed to heave a spaceship into space and in any case being damaged, would bum out at a certain point. We could not know exactly when. But when it did, we would feed ad power to our emergency rockets and trust to luck. Our aim was to achieve just sufficient velocity to get us into a safe orbit from which we could begin to negotiate a space/time shift with the STGs.

And still I delayed. The
Nightingale
became wild.

I sat outside the ship looking toward the sea while the night gathered. I felt the grief of the abandoned.

And in the evening it seemed to me that I saw a stipple on the ocean. The moon sprang up and I saw, unmistakably, the vast creature rise from the sea and begin to drift toward us. I stood on the top of the
Nightingale
waving.

It arrived swiftly and silently and blood-red. Several eyes bobbed around me. Dramatically I pointed to myself and then up to the sky where the first stars were already twinkling. A tendril lifted and offered to support me. The creature thought I wanted a ride. I made the negative sign quickly and then indicated both myself and the
Nightingale
and again pointed up to the stars.

It understood. The eyes withdrew and looked at me steadily. Slowly the entire widespread creature gathered and then anchored on the hills. The tendrils gripped the shrubs and rocks. In the dying light of the sunset Chi-da was gathered like a wave, frozen at the point of breaking. It filled half the sky. Ad its hundreds of eyes came to the front and stared at us.

I waved, a gesture which could have no meaning, and I felt my throat hurt when I saw a single tendril rise and imitate my gesture. Then I lowered to the entrance hole which led to my rooms.

The
Nightingale
was intoning the odds as I stripped off my survival suit in the control room.

“Ad right,” I called. “We’re leaving. Let’s give it our best shot. Perhaps we’d crash. Who cares? We do the best we can. OK?”

For answer the
Nightingale
began a countdown. The anti-grav units were coming alive, the rocket units were primed. Within the bio-crystalline system, light was flowing. The countdown was as old as space travel itself, perhaps as old as human anticipation. It entered its final phase.

10, 9, 8 . . .

I made myself as comfortable as I could. In the viewscreen I could see the dark shape of Chi-da and the bank of eyes staring at us.

7,6,5...

The
Nightingale
began to shake. I imagined the anti-grav units flexing their power and asserting their lift, sensing the different structures within the ship and points of pressure. Already the
Nightingale
would be experiencing torque and compression. Would it hold?

4, 3 2 . . .

There was a shouting in my ears. The dead companions and Medoc whom I had killed, were there outside the ship chanting their farewell and I shouted my goodbye.

1 . . .

I felt sick. As the anti-grav units gripped deep, the entire ship became a force field. I felt us lurch and lift. The acceleration pulled at my hair and beard and I felt the sides of my mouth tear. We were climbing. I saw the nearby
hills
slide down the screen. I saw Chi-da detach and rise with us. We were ahead of calculation and the anti-grav units were straining to incandescence. The vibration grew. I heard a bumping. We were straining. . .

. . . and suddenly ad movement ceased.

And then we began to fad . . .

WULFNOTE

At this moment Wilberfoss became awake. The hypnotic hold had broken. He stared at me blankly and then began to howl.

WULFNOTE

I will begin by quoting the exact words from my file notes made on the day of Wilberfoss most violent outburst.

Wilberfoss is become bland. He reminds me of the man who arrived here last year. He is passive but aware. A clam would be more interesting. He has not spoken to either Lily or myself since his last waking up.

I have tried the hypnotic words but they do not work anymore. Lily will have to set more words in his psyche but given his present state, that may take time.

Lily lets him wander. That surprises me, for to my non-medical but pondering mind, he seems in a state of mute distress. I think that now more than ever he may try to do himself harm. I have expressed my fears to Lily and she agrees. But she reasons as follows: Wilberfoss is healthy in body. Medoc and I have brought him self-awareness. If he wishes to cure himself he can. If he does not wish to cure himself, there is now nothing any of us can do. It must be up to Wilberfoss. “Of what avail,” she says in her quaint way, “would it be to keep the healthy animal in a state of coma?” And I suppose I agree. But it is not easy to watch. We have come so far. We are so close. What ads him?

I realize that I have the rationalist's, perhaps the historian’s, desire to find ends and causes, shapes and meanings. But life is not like that, is it, you humans? I realize that tragedy is a human invention, to give shape to your experience: meaning to your chaos. Beyond tragedy there is only the incandescent present, illuminating everything, or the vacancy of death. If I were you I would think that Wilberfoss is a lesson in tragic waste. But no matter.

Spring is come to the garden. Wherever you turn there is blossom. The dartwing are already nesting in the eaves of the hospital and are very noisy. I have seen lizards sunning themselves on the stonework and slowly waking up. Round the Pectanile there is a veritable carpet of flowers. Yesterday the smell of the sea was very strong in the garden.

Wilberfoss wanders like one of the dead. I doubt there will be any more joy from him today than yesterday.

For this afternoon I shad take a chance and depart the Poveredo Garden and visit Tancredi. I want to bring him up to date on what is happening. Though he still rails against Wilberfoss I have managed to show him that that man is largely innocent of wrong-doing. While somewhat premature, my finding is that the Magistri who appointed him must look to their own procedures.

But yet there is more.

Thus ends my file note. Now let me tell you what happened on that special day.

At quarter-past-four in the afternoon, as I was taking dictation, I received a cad from Lily asking me to come back to the garden quickly. Tancredi drained his wine glass hurriedly and sent me on my way.

I swung out wide over the sea as I dived down to the garden. Lily was calling at the time and I was able to pinpoint her position. I dived down through the trees some two hundred yards from the Pectanile and followed the river and came to the place where the formal garden merges into the wild Talline wood. There the river passes over rapids. There are deep hollows and places where the trees, widow and gosstang, hang over and trail in the stream. It was to this place that Wilberfoss had come.

Lily was in the river. She was half-submerged in the tumbling water. She was in no danger. Lily could charge about submerged if she had to.

She spoke to me as I descended. “Wilberfoss says he’d n’er move, till that th’art here.” And only then, as I moved slowly between the banks and under the branches, did I see him.

He was perched on a rock. He was naked. And yet I hardly recognized him. He was daubed like a savage.

Let me tell it to you simply.

He was streaming with blood. He had a knife. He had sliced his forehead and cheeks. He had cut down the lines of his shoulder muscles and along the backs of his arms. He had cut down his chest and then outward following the lines of the ribs. He had savaged his back into ugly wounds. He had cut his thighs and calves and the tops of his feet. But there is more.

Perched on the rock and crouching, he defecated into his hands. Then he began rubbing his feces into his wounds. He was smearing himself. He mixed shit with blood.

He saw me but did not see me. He looked through me but yet he spoke. “O Wulf,” he howled. “Damn you. Damn you and Medoc. Damn ad of you.”

I spoke to Lily privately. “Why have you not stunned him?”

“He has cut out the cache. Now if I try to reach him he will run away. You must speak to him.”

There was nothing I could say. Nothing I could do but watch. What words can be used before such self-abuse? I waited.

He sat crouched for a long time, staring. He was hunched down on the flats of his feet, his arms thrust forward and resting on his knees as though waiting for pain or punishment.

Of course nothing happened. The river gurgled. Birds sang. Branches creaked. Shadows moved. Ad about us life and time continued. Lily and I waited and watched. What did he expect?

Eventually he stood. The blood had dried and clotted and was indistinguishable from the excrement. He turned and jumped down from the rock on the side of the stream away from Lily. He broke through the screen of bushes and turned to his left and began to run. I rose and followed him.

He was making his way toward the main gate. He broke through a fence and jumped over a small tributary of the main river. He stumbled and fed there and for a moment was on his knees in the mud; but then he clambered up the bank and ran on. He crossed a small vegetable patch that was in the care of the gate warden and came to the carved screen which marked the entry into the garden.

Here he paused, his arms resting against the screen and his head on his arms. The gate warden came out of his hut, saw him and immediately departed inside again. Wilberfoss lifted and ran on. He went around the screen and through the gate and came to the statue of St Francis Dionysos. He sheltered his face from the statue and ran past it and up the hill and turned right. He came to the arcade where he had lived with Medoc and there he paused.

There were many people about and they stared at this naked madman and moved away from him. He must have smelled too. People saw me trailing him and no one interfered.

Wilberfoss ran back down the arcade and turned up the path he had followed so many months earlier, the path that led up to Tancredi’s small house at the height of the Monastery. He was weakening and staggered. I was amazed he lasted so long. Occasionally he stopped and gasped and then plunged on, driving himself up the steep hill. He approached the headland and the balcony called Temptation.

Many of the Children of the War had gathered there and now stood banging their stones, blocking the way. How had they known to gather? There were several junior members of the Gentle Order and the Bursar. I was also surprised to see Tancredi. He must have decided to set out for an exercise walk. It was little more than an hour since I had left him. Perhaps he was hurrying down to the Poverello Garden having gathered that something was wrong.