‘There’s seeds in every one of them, poet,’ Lem said. ‘And in every seed there’s a tree. I’ll find another place to plant.’
They were brave words, but he sobbed even as he spoke them.
‘They won’t defeat us, Calhoun,’ he said. ‘Whatever God’s name they come in, we won’t kneel to them.’
‘You mustn’t,’ said Cal. ‘Or everything’s lost.’
As he spoke he saw Lo’s gaze move off his face towards the rabble at the cars.
‘We should be going,’ he said, stuffing the fruit back into his pocket. ‘Will you come with me?’
‘I can’t, Lem.’
‘Well, I taught your verses to my daughters,’ he said. ‘I remembered them as you remembered me –’
‘They’re not mine,’ Cal said. They’re my grandfather’s.’
‘They belong to us all now,’ Lo said. ‘Planted in good ground –’
Suddenly, a shot. Cal turned. The three fire-watchers had seen them, and were coming their way. All were armed.
Lo snatched hold of Cal’s hand for an instant, and squeezed it by way of farewell. Then contact was broken, as more shots followed on the first. Lo was heading off into the darkness, away from the light of the fire, but the ground was uneven, and he fell after only a few steps. Cal went after him, as the gunmen began a further round of shots.
‘Get away from me –’ Lo shouted. ‘For God’s sake run!’
Lo was scrabbling to pick up the fruit that he’d dropped from his pocket. As Cal reached him one of the gunman got lucky. A shot found Lo. He cried out, and clutched his side.
The gunmen were almost upon their targets now. They’d given up firing, to have better sport at close range. As they came within a half a dozen yards, however, the leader was felled by a missile hurled from the smoke. It struck his head, opening a substantial wound. He toppled, blinded by blood.
Cal had time to see the weapon that had brought the man down, and recognize it as a radio: then de Bono was weaving through the murky air towards the gunmen. They heard him coming: he was yelling like a wild man. A shot was fired in his direction; but went well wide. He threw himself past the hunters, and ran off in the direction of the fire.
The leader, his hand clamped to his head, was staggering to his feet, ready to give chase. De Bono’s tactics, though they’d distracted the executioners, were as good as suicidal. The gunmen had him trapped against the wall of burning trees. Cal caught sight of him pelting through the smoke towards the fire, the killers in howling pursuit. A volley of shots was fired; he dodged them like the dancer he was. But there was no dodging the inferno ahead. Cal saw him glance round once, to take in the sight of his pursuers, then – idiot that he was – he plunged into the fire. Most of the trees were now no more than burning pillars, but the ground itself was a firewalker’s heaven, hot ash and charcoal. The air shimmered with the heat, corrupting de Bono’s figure until it was lost between the trees.
There was no time to mourn him. His bravery had earned them a reprieve, but it would not last long. Cal turned back to aid Lemuel. The man had gone, however, leaving a splash of blood and a few fallen fruit to mark the place he’d been. Back at the fire, the gunmen were still waiting to mow de Bono down should he re-emerge. Cal had time to get to his feet and study the conflagration for any sign of the rope-dancer. There was none. Then he backed away from the pyre, and took off towards the slope on which he and de Bono had fought. As he did so a vague hope rose in him. He decided to change his route, and made a run that took him around to the other side of the orchard.
The air was clearer here; the wind was carrying the smoke in the opposite direction. He ran along the edge of the orchard, hoping against hope that maybe de Bono had outpaced the heat. Half way along the flank of the fire his horrified eyes found a pair of burning shoes. He kicked them over, then searched for their owner.
It was only when he turned his back on the flames that he saw the figure, standing in a field of high grass two hundred yards from the orchard. Even at that distance the blond head was recognizable. So, as he drew closer, was the smug smile.
He’d lost his eye-brows and his lashes; and his hair was badly singed. But he was alive and well.
‘How did you do that?’ Cal asked him, when he got within speaking distance of the fellow.
De Bono shrugged. ‘I’d rather fire-walk than rope-dance any day of the week,’ he said.
‘I’d be dead without you,’ Cal said. ‘Thank you.’
De Bono was clearly uncomfortable with Cal’s gratitude. He shooed it away with a wave of his hand, then turned his back on the fire and waded off through the grass, leaving Cal to follow.
‘Do you know where we’re going?’ Cal called after him. It seemed they were striking off in another direction to the one they’d been following when they’d first come upon the fire, but he couldn’t have sworn to it.
De Bono offered a reply, but the wind blew it away, and Cal was too weary to ask a second time.
X
UNEARTHLY DELIGHTS
1
he journey became a torment thereafter. Events at the orchard had drained Cal of what few reserves of strength he could still lay claim to. The muscles in his legs twitched as if they were about to go into spasm; the vertebrae in his lower back seemed to have lost their cartilage and were grinding against each other. He tried not to think of what would happen if and when they finally reached the Firmament. In the best of conditions he and de Bono would scarcely be Shadwell’s equal. Like this, they’d be fodder.
The occasional wonders the starlight had uncovered – a ring of stones, linked by bands of whispering fog; what appeared to be a family of dolls, their identical faces pale, smiling beatifically from behind a silent waterfall – to these he gave no more than a cursory glance. The only sight that could have brought joy to his lips at that moment was a feather mattress.
But even the mysteries dwindled after a time, as de Bono led him up a dark hillside, with a soft wind moving in the grass around their feet.
The moon was rising through a bank of cumulus, making a ghost of de Bono as he forged on up the steep slope. Cal followed like a lamb, too weary to question their route.
But by degrees he became aware that the sighs he heard were not entirely the voice of the wind. There was an oblique music in them; a tune which came and fled again.
It was de Bono who finally came to a halt, and said:
‘D’you hear them, Cal?’
‘Yes. I hear them.’
‘They know they’ve got visitors.’
‘Is this the Firmament?’
‘No,’ said de Bono softly. ‘The Firmament’s for tomorrow. We’re too tired for that. Tonight we stay here.’
‘Where’s here?’
‘Can’t you guess? Don’t you smell the air?’
It was lightly perfumed; honeysuckle and night-blooming jasmine.
‘And feel the earth?’
The ground was warm beneath his feet.
‘This, my friend, is Venus Mountain.’
2
He should have known better than to trust de Bono; for all his heroics the fellow was wholly unreliable. And now they’d lost precious time.
Cal glanced behind him, to see if the route they’d come was discernible, but no; the moon had slipped into the cloud-bank for a little while, and the mountain-side was in darkness. When he looked back, de Bono had vanished. Hearing laughter a little way off, Cal called his guide’s name. The laughter came again. It sounded too light to be de Bono, but he couldn’t be certain.
‘Where are you?’ he asked, but there was no reply, so he went in the direction of the laughter.
As he advanced he stepped into a passage of warm air. Startled, he retreated, but the tropical warmth came with him, the honey scent now strong in his nostrils. It made him feel light-headed; his aching legs threatened to fold beneath him from the sheer swooning pleasure of it.
A little further up the incline he saw another figure,
surely that of de Bono, moving in the gloom. Again he called the man’s name, and this time he was granted a reply. De Bono turned and said:
‘Don’t fret, Cuckoo.’
His voice had taken on a dreamy quality.
‘We’ve got no time –’ Cal protested.
‘Can’t do … can’t do anything …’ de Bono’s voice came and went, like a weak radio signal. ‘Can’t do anything tonight … except love …’
The last word faded, and so did de Bono, melting into the darkness.
Cal about-turned. He was certain that de Bono had been speaking from further up the mountain, which meant that if he turned his back on the spot, and walked, he’d be returning the way they’d come.
The warmth went with him as he about-turned. I’ll get a new guide, he vaguely thought; get a guide and find the Firmament. He had an appointment to keep with somebody. Who was it? His thoughts were going the way of de Bono’s voice. Oh yes: Suzanna.
At the mental formulation of her name the warmth somehow conspired with his limbs to draw him down to the ground. He wasn’t sure how it happened – he didn’t trip, he wasn’t pushed – but in an instant he had his head on the ground, and oh, the comfort of it. It was like returning to a lover’s bed on a morning of a frost. He stretched out, indulging his weary limbs, telling himself he’d just lie here long enough to gain some strength for the trials ahead.
He might well have fallen asleep, but that he heard his name called.
Not Cal, nor even Calhoun, but:
‘Mooney …’
It was not de Bono’s voice, but a woman’s.
‘Suzanna?’
He tried to sit up, but he was so heavy, so laden with the dirt of his journey he couldn’t move. He wanted to slough the weight off like a snake its tired skin, but he lay there unable to move a finger joint, while the voice called him and called him, fading as it went searching for him in higher regions.
He so wanted to follow it; and without warning he felt that yearning realized, as his clothes fell away from him and he began to travel over the grass, his belly to the earth’s belly. How he was transported he wasn’t certain, for he felt no movement in his limbs, and his breath was not quickened by the effort. Indeed he felt so removed from sensation it was as if he’d left body and breath behind him with his clothes.
One thing he had brought with him: light. A pale, cool light that illuminated the grass and the small mountain flowers nestling there; a light that travelled so close to him it might have been of him.
A few yards from where he journeyed he saw de Bono lying asleep on the grass, his mouth open like a fish’s mouth. He moved towards the sleeper to question him, but before he reached the man something else drew his attention. Mere yards from where de Bono lay there were shafts of light springing up from the dark ground. He moved over his companion’s body, his light almost stirring de Bono, then on towards this new mystery.
It was easily solved. There were several holes in the earth. He went to the lip of the nearest and peered down. The entire mountain, he now saw, was hollow. Below him was a vast cavern, with brightnesses moving in it. These were, presumably, the presences of which de Bono had spoken.
Now the suspicion that he’d left his body behind him somewhere along the way was confirmed, for he slipped down the hole – which would not have been wide enough to allow access to his head never mind his shoulders – and fell into the upper air of the cavern.
There he hovered, and gazed on the ritual being performed below.
At first sight the performers seemed to be spheres of luminous gas, perhaps forty of them, some large, some minute, their colours ranging from cool pastels through to livid yellows and reds. But as he drifted down from the dome of the cavern, claimed not by gravity but by the simple desire to know, he realized that the globes were far from blank. Within their confines forms were appearing, like ghosts in their perfect geometries. They were ephemeral, these visions, lasting seconds at most, before pale clouds veiled them and new configurations took their place. But they lingered long enough for him to make sense of them.
In several of the spheres he saw shapes that resembled human foetuses, their heads vast, their thread-like limbs wrapped about their bodies. No sooner seen than gone; and in their place perhaps a splash of bright blue, that made the globe into a vast eyeball. In another, the gases were dividing and dividing, like a cell in love with itself; in a third the clouds had become a blizzard, in the depths of which he saw a forest and a hill.
He was certain these entities were aware of his being in the cavern, though none broke the regime of their motion to welcome him. He was not offended by this. Their dance was elaborate, and it would cause no little confusion if one of them were to move off its course. There was an exquisite inevitability about their motion – some of the spheres repeatedly moving within a hair’s breadth of collision, then swinging wide an instant before disaster struck; others proceeding in families which described complex paths around each other while simultaneously moving in the great circle that was pivoted at the centre of the cavern.
There was more to fascinate him here than the tranquil majesty of the dance, however, for twice in the flux of one of the larger spheres he glimpsed an image which carried an extraordinary erotic charge. A naked woman, her limbs defying all the laws of anatomy, was floating on a pillow of cloud, her position one of pure sexual display. As Cal witnessed her she was gone, leaving him with the image of her invitation: her lips, her cunt, her buttocks. There was nothing whorish in her exhibition; the crime would have been in shame, which had no place in this charmed circle. The presences were too in love with being for such nonsenses.
They loved death too, and as unequivocally. One sphere had a corpse in its midst, rotted and crawling with flies, disclosed with the same delight as its companion glories.
But death did not interest Cal; the woman did.
Can’t do anything tonight – de Bono had said – except love,
and Cal knew it now to be true.
But love as he’d known it above ground was not appropriate here. The woman in the sphere needed no sweet-talk; her company was offered freely. The question was: how did he express his desire? He’d left his erection behind on Venus Mountain.
He needn’t have concerned himself: she already knew his thoughts. As his eyes found her a third time, her glance seemed to draw him down into the midst of the dance. He found himself executing a slow, slow somersault, and settling into place beside his mistress.
As he attained this spot, he realized just what function he had here.
The voice on the mountain had called him Mooney, and that name had not been chosen in vain. He had come from above as light, as moonlight, and here he had found his orbit in a dance of planets and satellites.
Perhaps, of course, this was simply his interpretation. Perhaps the imperatives of this system pertained as much to love and snow-storms as to astronomy. In the face of such miracles conjecture was fruitless. Tonight, being was all.
The presences made another circuit, and he, lost in the sheer delight of this preordained journey, tumbling over and over (no heels or head here; only the pleasure of motion), was momentarily distracted from the woman he’d seen. But as his orbit took him out in a wide arc he once more set eyes on the planet she haunted. She emerged even as he watched, only to be lost in cloud again. Did he perform the same rites for her, turning from humanity to abstraction and back again at the blossoming of a milky cloud? He knew so little of himself, this Mooney, in his singular orbit.
All he could hope to comprehend of what he was he had to discover from the spheres upon whose faces he shed his borrowed light. That was perhaps the condition of moons.
It was enough.
He knew in that moment how moons made love. By bewitching the nights of planets; by stirring their oceans; by blessing the hunter and the harvester. A hundred ways that needed only the unbound anatomies of light and space.
As he thought this thought the woman open
ed to bathe in him, to spread her cunt and let his light pleasure her.
Entering, he felt the same heat, the same possessiveness, the same vanity as had ever marked the animal he’d been, but in place of labour there was ease, in place of ever imminent loss, sustenance; in place of urgency the sense that this could last forever, or rather that a hundred human lifetimes were a moment in the span of moons, and his ride on this empyrean carousel had made a nonsense of time.
At that thought a terrible sense of poignancy swept over him. Had all he’d left above on the mountain withered and died while these constellations moved steadily about their business?
He looked towards the centre of the system, the hub about which they all described their paths – eccentric or regular, distant or intimate; and there, in the place from which he drew his light, he saw himself, sleeping on a hillside.
I’m dreaming, he thought, and suddenly rose – like a bubble in a bottle – less moon than Mooney. The dome of the cavern – which he vaguely realized resembled the inside of a skull – was dark above him, and for an instant he thought he’d be dashed to death against it, but at the last moment the air grew bright around him and he woke, staring up at a sky streaked with light.
It was dawn on Venus Mountain.
3
Of the dream he’d had, one part was true. He had sloughed off two skins like a snake. One, his clothes, lay scattered around him in the grass. The other, the accrued grime of his adventures, had been bathed away in the night, either by dew or a fall of rain. Whichever, he was quite dry now; the warmth of the ground he lay upon (that part also had been no dream) had dried him off and left him sweet-smelling. He felt nourished too, and strong.
He sat up. Balm de Bono was already on his feet, scratching his balls and staring up at the sky: a blissful combination. The grass had left an imprint on his back and buttocks.
‘Did they please you?’ he said, cocking an eye at Cal.
‘Please me?’
‘The Presences. Did they give you sweet dreams?’