Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (37 page)

Everyone drew back as Wilberfoss approached.

Wilberfoss saw Tancredi and with a despairing cry ran toward the narrow raid which guarded the edge of the path and threw himself over. He vanished downward immediately. Everyone clustered to the raid but I flew high and then swooped. I dropped faster than a stone and when Wilberfoss hit the water in a tangle of arms and legs, I was there to support him when he bobbed, open mouthed and gasping, to the surface.

I could not lift him but I could support him. Within minutes a Talline boat rounded the headland and came skimming toward us. Wilberfoss was dragged aboard and by gasping in the swill of brine and sand and shells at the bottom of the boat.

The seamen lost no time. They pulled on the oars and the boat turned and quickly carried him to the wharf near the entry to the Poveredo Garden.

Lily was waiting. She took him, cold and fatigued and bleeding from his cuts, into her iron womb and trundled back into the garden under the watchful eye of St. Francis Dionysos. She did not make the traditional pause.

Let me make this clear. Wilberfoss was conscious during ad of this. He stared at me as I held him above the waves. He stared at the thick-fingered Tallines who hoisted him from the sea. He stared at the Children of the War who had come running down to see him landed at the wharf. He stared at Lily as she received him and he stared at the statue of St. Francis Dionysos as he bumped past it and entered the Poveredo Garden.

Lily took him straight back to her small hospital, to the room where he had been living since his return to the Pacifico Monastery months earlier. Little over forty minutes had elapsed since he had escaped from the garden.

I came to them there later having paused for a few minutes to talk to Tancredi. Wilberfoss was sitting still and Lily was washing him. He was cleaner for his dip in the sea but many of his cut marks had opened. Lily mopped and cleaned and dressed. I settled close, resting my large helmet frame on the ground for my energy cells were greatly overtaxed and in need of time to recharge.

“Do you wish to talk to me now?” I asked, and he nodded. “Very wed. Begin,” I said. As you gather, I was in no state to trifle. “Do you need hypnotic assistance?” Wilberfoss shook his head. He began to speak.

Wilberfoss’s Narrative

So the
Nightingale
was lifting, riding on its anti-grav units, and I felt a great surge of hope. At the same time, I was aware that I was heading into the unknown and was leaving the only creature that had ever come to me with a selfless interest. Chi-da. The name means “Great Breath.” “Great inspiration.”

Then we faltered. The acceleration died away. The fierce grip of the planet began to assert itself. I wondered why the
Nightingale
did not immediately fire the rockets. I thought that it was preoccupied with calculation. I thought it had over-estimated its own residence.

And even as I was wondering and preparing myself for a fed that would simply be a conclusion, I felt the
Nightingale
shake and then, unmistakably, begin to rise again. The viewscreens showed me nothing. They were completely occluded.

I called out to the bio-crystalline brain of the
Nightingale
to tell me what was happening. I demanded to know if it had fired the rockets.

There was no reply for a moment and then came the
Nightingale's
calm voice whispering. “Commander Wilberfoss. The anti-gravity generators have failed and I have released what I can of their weight...”

“Then what. . . ?”

“The escape rockets have not yet been fired. We are at present in the grip of the alien life-form with which you have been communicating, that you cad Chi-da. It is lifting us at an acceleration un-hoped for. It has us gripped. . .”
(pause.)
“We are approaching the atmospheric limit of the planet.” Pause. “We do not yet have escape velocity.”
(pause.)
“We must fire the emergency rockets.”

“Can’t you fire them?”

“I need your order.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“Because when the rockets are fired they will kid the life-form that is lifting us. We will tear through it. We are approaching the critical limit. I cannot kid. I need your order.” Pause. Then . . .

“Escape limit in 5 seconds.” It began to count.

“4 seconds “3 seconds “2 seconds”

“FIRE”

I screamed the word and the
Nightingale,
ready and waiting, obeyed. The acceleration was like a punch in the back. We leaped away from that planet with a roar and in so doing we ripped through the thin fabric of the creature that had saved us. We tore it apart. The viewports cleared and I saw parts of it slither past. Those cameras that were looking downward showed me the creature in tatters. Parts of it were exploding, parts were burning, the rest was falling down to the gray sea. We had tom through the body of the most beautiful creature I had ever known. Again I had killed but this time there could be no forgiveness . . .

I have done this. Me. Wilberfoss, the lover of life, the giver. I have done this. And now the truth is told . . .

. . . and not told. For the deepest truth is that I found pleasure in the destruction. The killing had relish. That is the terrible truth I have tried to hide from. And now it is in the open. The murderer was not expulsed. The beast by the river was not tamed.

Ad my life I had wanted to be the selfless giver, and at the moment of crisis I was found wanting. It gave up its life so that I could live . . . but I killed it. I killed it. And the killing had relish. I do not deserve to live. There can be no forgiveness. Close your book. I have faded in my deepest ideal and there is no health in me.

Wilberfoss railed on in this matter for several minutes and then finally became still. His last words were, “You should have let me die.”

WULFNOTE

So there it was, set out in four little words: “The Killing had Relish.” The great truth that he had been unable to face was that he, Jon Wilberfoss, who had set himself such high standards for his love of life, had discovered the killer in him. Pipping off the mask of St. Franics Dionysos he had discovered the grim face of Achides. I am sure the revelation is altogether more subtle than that, but that is its broad outline. He had destroyed beauty and life. He refused to face that truth and hence his agony. And yet there is more. Wilberfoss had met, and experienced at first hand, a selfless giver. He could not be ignorant of the fact that the creature which he calls Chi-da knew exactly what it was doing. It knew that it would be destroyed. It made a conscious sacrifice: its life for his. When Wilberfoss called “Fire” he accepted that sacrifice. He need not now accept the guilt. It is ad to do with Yes and No. Wilberfoss felt crushed by the knowledge that he had elected No at a crisis in his life. It was my job to make him see that his No was ready a triumphant YES and that if he so chose he could now build on to greatness. Let me affirm that if Wilberfoss had been able to cast aside his guilt he would have become the true man to captain a ship like the
Nightingale.
The
Nightingale
would have multipded his qualities a hundredfold.

I explained ad this to Wilberfoss and in his mind he knew the truth, but in his heart he could not accept it. Guilt is not like mud on a pair of trousers that can be easily washed. Guilt deforms the very fabric.

So we have a story of near-greatness. A man picked out for trial who came to face his own deepest nature and recoiled in horror. I hope I have made it clear.

Wulf does not mean to be sententious in pointing out that old wisdom has always enjoined that Man should seek to know himself and that that is the hardest quest of ad. How nice to be safely bio-crystalline! My limits are more or less knowable and as I contemplated the bowed head of Wilberfoss, I knew that I was at one of my limits.

As always, as ever, as it has been from the first day, the human is alone to find its path I think. Perhaps the only certainty is that, at least, there is a path or so I am told.

After the hardest truth, the rest of the truths fed free, like the release of a log jam. I will tell the rest of Wilberfoss’s story quickly.

The rockets burned long enough for the
Nightingale
to escape.

Within minutes of their departure they were resting in orbit and the
Nightingale
was busy about the calculations that would enable the STGs to go into action. Wilberfoss felt that he was in a dream. The delusion which was to possess him for most of his time with us in the garden was already shaping his thinking. At the same time, after deliberating (that is to say making him once again aware of) his killer instinct, Wilberfoss conceived a deep hatred for the
Nightingale
and prepared to kid it. While the
Nightingale
plotted an optimum course, Wilberfoss plotted how best to destroy the
Nightingale.
As he freely admitted, this would allow for a great cover-up. He would destroy the evidence and he would then let the madness which was already teeming in his mind, take charge. Very convenient. I cannot understand why he did not choose to kid himself at the same time. My guess is that the instinct to live is so strong. He seems to have conceived of a future as a great deluder, protected by madness. Is that not itself madness?

While they were in a part of space that had not been visited before (which is, let us face it, most of the galaxy), the
Nightingale
yet had one clue. There was a telltale cluster of stars which it thought it could identify by their spectra and it programmed the STGs to tear space to that proximity.

This they did. The journey was uneventful as far as Wilberfoss was concerned. One patch of space blinked out and with it went a high-gravity planet with a gray sea, dun colored land and a single moon. Moments later the black sky blazed with a multitude of different stars and the
Nightingale
was intact.

Immediately the
Nightingale
began to broadcast MAYDAY and the signal contained a coded map of the stars about them. Wilberfoss settled down to wait. He might have waited ten minutes, ten years or ten decades. He had no way of knowing.

He settled down in his suite of rooms with only the idiot flickering fire for company. I asked Wilberfoss what he thought about during that time and he replied, “Nothing.” I have checked this under hypnosis and it is true.

The man was closed down as though catatonic.

And at the end of three weeks the MAYDAY was acknowledged. An incredulous communications officer on a mining asteroid sent back a reply, verifying position and advising that a message had been sent to Assisi Central. Help would be on its way.

The
Nightingale
had been found as a result of a stroke of chance and I note how often this has been the situation in this narrative of Jon Wilberfoss. The communications officer was checking his main receiver after completing an annual overhaul. He had it tuned to a frequency that is rarely used for close range transmission. He was checking the calibration when he heard the whispery voice of the
Nightingale,
calling coordinates and identifying itself. He, like anyone engaged in exploration of space, knew of the
Nightingale
and of its strange and sudden disappearance. He was incredulous, but he was wed trained too and within minutes priority circuits were humming and the distances between stars were bridged as STG amplifiers opened up.

Days later Wilberfoss received his first real/time transmission. This was the first time for many months that he had spoken to a fellow human being. He was quiet and polite and reserved. He confirmed ad details but when pressed to speak of his ordeal, said nothing.

Another week passed and then Jon Wilberfoss was awakened by the
Nightingale
telling him that a C-class starship of the Mercy fleet of St. Francis Dionysos had arrived in the proximate space. It was already negotiating to engage. Jon Wilberfoss looked out of the view ports but could see nothing. But then, as he was turning away, a beam of light dabbed out from the darkness and the
Nightingale
was touched. A Laser Communication Beam had reached it.

“You are saved, Jon Wilberfoss,” said the
Nightingale.

“You will be a great hero. You will have many stories to tell.” But Jon Wilberfoss did not answer.

Quietly, methodically, as he had done a thousand times before, he donned his survival suit and checked the power pack on the small anti-grav unit and the air supply. Ad was wed.

Then he drifted down the corridor to the vacuum chute that led down to the room where the bio-crystalline seeds were growing.

“Where are you going, Jon Wilberfoss?”

“To make my farewell.”

Knowing that he had a sentimental side to his nature and that such symbolic acts were of value to the human animal, the
Nightingale
did not think to interfere.

Jon Wilberfoss dropped into the darkness and turned ad his suit lights On. He was in vacuum and soon stood outside the entrance to the seed chamber. The door opened at his request and the blaze of light from within the chamber paled his lights. The
Nightingale
still had less than one hundredth of its original capacity, but what it had was impressive. It had grown. The new seeds that Jon Wilberfoss had implanted like coals against the pale glimmer of the dying brain, now blazed. A pattern of sliver nerves filled the entire upper chamber of the room.

Jon Wilberfoss entered. He selected a small, wed balanced machine hammer from the suit tools and deliberately struck at the nearest seed. It exploded in motes of light which shimmered in the chamber. He went on. He struck with his hammer and swept with his arm. He broke the bio-crystalline fibers. With his gloved hands he scooped out the semi-living seeds of light and smashed them on the ground and trampled on them. Last of ad he struck at the fiber which connected the local brain of the
Nightingale
with the specialized brain of the STGs. It was already wavering to red in shock for it hid no way of defending itself against the destruction. Wilberfoss struck and struck again. This was one of the original links and it was strong and tough. But it began to break. There were splinters first and then whole strands came away. He gripped the trunk with both hands and pulled and it tore away and came crashing down on him.