Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (241 page)

All three answered that they would. Stafford said, “Very well. We believe that the citizen owes the state certain debts in return for its protection. Now, what would you wish to do?”

They talked a while. The result was that Mix entered the army as a private. Stafford apologized for the lowly position. He realized that a man of his training and experience should have a commisison. But it was the policy to start all newcomers off at the bottom. This avoided unhappiness and jealousy among those who had established their status.

However, since Mix had stone weapons of his own, and there were few of these in this area, Mix would be assigned to the elite squad of axemen. After a few months, he could be promoted to a sergeancy. That was the lowest permanent rank in the axemen.

Yeshua asked for a job as a carpenter. He did not want anything to do with the military, for he objected to shedding human blood. Stafford frowned at this. It was the state’s policy to call on all able bodies, men or women, to fight for Albion. However, in view of Yeshua’s ownership of flint tools and his undoubted usefulness, he could be admitted as a second-class citizen. This meant that he would not get any of the bonuses given out by the state every three months: the extra cigarettes, liquor, etc. At the same time, he would have to contribute a certain amount from his own copia to the state treasury. And, in case of war, he would have to submit to being kept in a stockade until the fighting was over. The state did this to make sure that the second-class citizens, of whom there were not many, would not get in the way of the military.

Yeshua agreed to this.

Bithniah was assigned to a woman’s labor division. At present, this was busy adding to the southern wall dividing Albion from its neighboring state, Anglia.

Mix reported to Captain Hawkins. He spent the morning drilling and practicing throwing his axe and spears. That afternoon, he instructed craftsmen how to make boomerangs, unknown to this area.

Several hours before dusk, he was dismissed. After bathing in the river, he returned to his hut. Bithniah was home but Yeshua was gone.

“He went up into the mountains,” she said. “He wanted to become pure again!”

She raved on until Mix quit listening. He waited until she had run out of breath and tears, then he asked her if she wanted to move into his cottage. She replied that he reminded her too much of Yeshua, and would he please leave? Mix shrugged and went to the nearest stone to charge his copia.

While there, he met a pretty blonde who had recently parted with her hutmate because of their quarrels over his unreasonable jealousy. Delores and he had more in common than a desire to find a mate. Their lives on Earth had not had a chronological overlap, for she was born five years after he had rammed his car into the barricade on the road between Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. She had never seen any of his movies, but she did know who he was. Since one of her father’s childhood heroes was Tom Mix, she had heard her father discuss him more than once. And, when the family had moved to Arizona for a while, her father had insisted they go see the monument that marked the site of the accident.

* * * *

For the first time, Mix heard details of what happened after his death. He felt hurt that the onlookers had been more interested in catching the many dollar bills that had flown like green snow around the barricade than in determining whether he was alive or not. But in a few minutes, he smiled to himself.

That the money meant more than a human life to those workers was only natural. If he had been in their skins, and their situation, he might have done the same. The sight of a thousand-dollar bill blown along by the wind was very tempting—to those who did not earn in two years what he made in a week. He could not really blame the slobs.

Mix and Delores Rambaut went to her hut to live, since her former mate had walked out and, therefore, lost his right to the property. Mix would have to make a formal application and pay a slight tax, cigarettes or labor, for the use of the house, but the whole procedure was routine.

He was looking forward to night when he was summoned by Stafford. The lord was grave and perturbed.

“My spies in Kramer’s land tell me he is getting ready for a big attack. But they don’t know on whom, for Kramer has not told even his highest officers. He knows that we have spies there, just as he undoubtedly has here.”

“I hope you still don’t think that I’m a spy,” Mix said.

Stafford smiled slightly. “No. I’ve checked out your story. You’re not a spy unless you’re part of a diabolically clever plot by Kramer to sacrifice a good boat and fighting men to convince me you’re what you claim to be. I doubt it, for Kramer is not the sort of man to release Jewish prisoners. On one hand, I can’t believe Kramer could find among his followers the caliber of man to deliberately allow himself to be killed to further Kramer’s ambitions. On the other hand, he does have a number of religious fanatics who might do just that.”

* * * *

It soon became apparent why Stafford was consulting him, a stranger, a lowly private, and an American colonist. For Stafford, despite his outward politeness, could not conceal his feelings of his own superiority, both as a blue-blooded lord and an Englishman. Mix was a “provincial,” one of the inferior and wild breeds. Mix, aware of this, felt only slight resentment and more than a slight amusement. What would Stafford say if he were told that England had become the American “province” in Mix’s time?

Stafford, however, was impressed by the showing of Mix in the river battle and his Earthly military background. Moreover, Mix knew Kramer’s land, and he had made the statement the night before that the only way to defeat Kramer was to beat him to the punch.

Just what did he mean by that?

“As I understand it,” Mix said, “Kramer’s method of expansion is to leapfrog one state and conquer the one beyond it. After consolidating his conquest, he then squeezes the bypassed area between his two armies. This is an excellent method, but it wouldn’t work if the other states would ally against him. Unfortunately, they’re too jealous of their own prerogatives to submit to being lead by another state. Besides which, they don’t trust each other. So Kramer has been having his own way.

“But I think that if we could deliver at least a crippling blow, the other states would then jump in like a pack of wolves and finish him off. So my idea is to make a night raid—by boat, of course—and burn his fleet. Maybe even a landing and a suicide force to try to kill Kramer. Knock him off, and his state will fall apart.”

“I’ve already sent assassins after him, and they’ve failed,” Stafford replied. “I like your aggressiveness, but I don’t see how we could carry the attack off. There are two states to the south of us, and a stretch of twenty miles of river. We have to sail or row upriver, so we couldn’t reach Kramer’s land before morning if we left at dusk. Moreover, we’d be observed by his spies in the other states long before we got there, and Kramer’d be ready for us.”

“Yeah, but you’ve forgotten the savages, the Huns, that live across the river. So far, there’s been an unspoken agreement that the middle of the river is the dividing line, and each stay on his side of the line. But I’ve got an idea. Here’s what we could do.”

They talked for another hour, at the end of which Stafford said that they would follow Mix’s plan. It was better to take a chance, no matter how desperate, than
to let Kramer call the shot.
Stafford was beginning to pick up some of Mix’s twentieth-century phrases.

VI

During the three-day preparation, Mix was busy. But he had some time in the afternoon for himself, and he decided to visit the man who could be his twin.

First, he stopped at Bithniah’s. She was now living with one of the men whose mate had been killed during the river-fight, and she seemed fairly happy with him. No, she had not seen the “crazy monk,” as she called him. Mix informed her that he had gotten glimpses of Yeshua now and then. He had been cutting down pine trees with his axe, preparatory to fashioning some furniture for Stafford.

Following her directions, Mix crossed the hills at a southward angle and presently came to the foot of the mountains. He began climbing up a not-too-difficult path. In a few minutes, he heard a wild skirling of music. It sounded to him like a bamboo syrinx, of which there were many in this area.

The climbing became steeper. Only a mountain goat or a “crazy monk” would have daily used the so-called path; Mix decided that he was not going to make many calls on Yeshua. But there was something about the man—aside from his physical appearance—that intrigued him.

Sweating despite the shade, he pulled himself over the edge of the rock and found himself on a small plateau. A building that was more of an enclosed lean-to than a hut was in the middle of the tablerock. Beyond it was a small cascade, one of the many waterfalls that presumably originated from unseen snows on top of the mountains. The cascades were another mystery of this planet, which had no seasons and thus should rotate at an unvarying 90 degrees to the ecliptic. If the snows had no thawing period, where did the water come from?

Yeshua was by the waterfall. He was naked and blowing on the pan’s pipe and dancing as wildly as one of the goat-footed worshippers of The Great God. Around and around he spun. He leaped high, he skipped, he bent forward and backwards, he kicked, he bent his legs, he pirouetted, he swayed. His eyes were closed, and he came perilously close to the edge of the plateau.

Like David dancing after the return of the ark of God, Mix thought. But Yeshua was doing this for an invisible audience. And he certainly had nothing to celebrate.

Mix was embarrassed for he felt like a window-peeper. He almost decided to retreat and leave Yeshua to whatever was possessing him. But the thought of the difficulty of the climb and the time he had taken made him change his mind.

He called. Yeshua stopped dancing and staggered backward as if an arrow had struck him. Mix walked up to him and saw that he was weeping.

* * * *

Yeshua turned, kneeled and splashed the icy water from a pool by the side of the cataract, then turned to face Mix. His tears had stopped, but his eyes were wide and wild.

“I was not dancing because I was happy or filled with the glory of God,” he said. “On Earth, in the desert by the Dead Sea, I used to dance. No one around but myself and The Father. I was a harp, and His fingers plucked the ecstasy. I was a flute, and He sounded through my body the songs of Heaven.

“But no more. Now I dance because, if I do not, I would scream my anguish until my throat caught fire, and I would leap over the cliff and fall to a longed-for death. What use in that? In this world, a man cannot commit suicide. Not permanently. A few hours later he must face himself and the world again. Fortunately he does not have to face his god again. There is none left to face.”

Mix felt even more embarrassed and awkward. “Things can’t be that bad,” he said. “Maybe this world didn’t turn out to be what you thought it was going to be. So what? You can’t blame yourself for being wrong. Who was right? Who could possibly have guessed the truth about the un-guessable? Anyway, this world has many good things that Earth didn’t have. Enjoy them. It’s true it’s not always a picnic here, but when was it on Earth? At least, you don’t have to worry about growing old, there are plenty of good-looking women, you don’t have to sit up nights wondering where your next meal is coming from or how you’re going to pay your taxes or alimony. Hell, even if there aren’t any horses or cars or movies here, I’ll take this world anytime! You lose one thing; you gain another.”

“You don’t understand, my friend,” Yeshua replied. “Only a man like myself, a man who has seen through the veil that the matter of this physical universe presents, seen the reality beyond, felt the flooding of the Light within…”

He stopped, stared upwards, clenched his fists, and uttered a long ululating cry. Mix had heard only one cry like that—in Africa, when a Boer soldier had fallen over a cliff.

“Maybe I better go,” Mix said. “I know when there’s nothing to be done. I’m sorry that—”

“I don’t want to be alone!” Yeshua said. “I am a human being; I need to talk and to listen, to see smiles and hear laughter, and know love! But I cannot forgive myself for being…what I was!”

Mix wondered what he was talking about. He turned and started to walk to the edge of the plateau. Yeshua came after him.

“If only I had stayed there with the Sons of Zadok! But no! I thought that the world of men and women needed me! The rocks of the desert unrolled before me like a scroll, and I read therein that which must come to pass, and soon, because God was showing me. I left my brothers in their caves and their cells and went to the cities because my brothers and sisters and the little children there must know, so that they would have a chance to save themselves.”

“I got to get going,” Mix said. “I feel sorry for whatever’s riding you, but I can’t help you unless I know what it is. And I doubt that I’d be much help then.”

“You’ve been sent to help me! It’s no coincidence that you look so much like me and that our paths crossed.”

“I’m no doctor,” Mix said. “Forget it. I can’t straighten you out.”

Abruptly, Yeshua dropped the hand held out to Mix, and he spoke softly.

“What am I saying? Will I never learn? Of course you haven’t been sent. There’s nobody to send you. It’s just chance.”

“I’ll see you later,” Mix said.

He began climbing down. Once he looked upwards, and he saw Yeshua’s face, his face, staring down at him. He felt angry then, as if he should have stayed and at least given some encouragement to the man. He could have listened until Yeshua talked himself into feeling better.

* * * *

By the time he had reached the hills and started walking back, he had a different attitude. His story that he had to be back soon was true, for Stafford was holding a council of war. Mix, although technically a private, was actually an important man.