Watson, Ian - Black Current 03 (31 page)

 
          
"How does it feel to be a
heroine?" Tam asked Yaleen.

 
          
"I think," she said,
"I already was
one.
"

 
          
"Uh?"

 
          
"I feel as if I already did
something splendid and awesome! But I've no idea what! I can't ever know what
it is—because, because it surrounds me on all sides. It's the air I breathe.
It's everything. There's nothing else apart from it."

 
          
"That's a psychological
condition known as
day jar view
, "
remarked the woman Melza from Jangali.
"When you tipple too much in the heat of the day, suddenly it seems as if
things that are taking place, have already taken place before. This can occur
in your dreams, too. You're convinced you're revisiting the dream—not viewing
it for the first time. It happens to everyone at least once in their lives.
Dayjar view
."

 
          
"Oh," said Yaleen.

 
          
Presently they were high enough to
enter the airstream blowing from the west. With a lurch and a bump and a twist
about, the
Rose
changed course and
picked up speed.

 
          
A panic breathlessness assailed
Yaleen. However, she stood still and breathed slowly and pretended to herself
that the
Rose
was merely afloat upon
pretematurally clear water—and that a solitary cauliflower cloud down below was
only a reflection of itself.

 
          
Before long they were crossing a
featureless light brown plain. Beyond that plain long ridges of dunes, toothed
with arrow-heads of sand, webbed the surface.

 
          
The invisible living current of air
swept them onward, eastward.

 
         
Thus it was in the time of Yaleen of
Pecawar—perhaps!

 
          
Nowadays, of course, the whole of our
planet has long since been thoroughly explored and thoroughly settled. We have
launched machines and a handful of people into orbit around our world. There's
serious talk of sending ships of space out to visit the moons of great distant
gaseous Hepseba which shares this sun-space with us; though such a voyage would
last for many years. Hepseba is so far away that it went unheeded by our ancestors.
Some day in the distant future we might even go further, inconceivably further,
to the stars to plumb the mystery of our origins.

 
          
Meanwhile we confront the mystery of
these three texts discovered inside a fallen obelisk—twin to the so-called
Obelisk of the Ship, buried by sand near the eastern edge of the Oriental Erg.

 
          
The
Book of the River
is an ancient printed volume.
The Book of the Stars
is a roll of antique newsprint tied with
twine.
The Book of Being
is a bundle
of manuscript papers written in three distinct and separate hands. Whereas most
other ancient paper has perished over the centuries, down the millennia, these
three examples were preserved by the dryness of the desert—and by their hiding
place within mortared stones, which themselves were hidden inside a dune.

 
          
To say that we question the veracity
of these texts is the wildest understatement. We well know that our ancestors
were great romancers. (Admittedly, so are we; though nowadays we at least
strive to be self-consistent in our flights of fancy!) And we know how they
lived in an age of taboo and superstition—not forgetting the fungus-spore
amnesiplague, which we have eradicated.

 
          
Yet why should these three documents
in particular have been considered valuable enough to pack inside that obelisk?
And considered so, by whom?

 
          
Had the erectors of that stone finger
in this quixotic location simply found themselves one block short? Thus one of
the construction crew, who happened to be a devotee of romances, used a book
and a roll of newsprint and a manuscript continuation of those first two tales,
as wadding to stuff into the vacant central space. And perhaps all the masons
involved were romancers, since it's a romantic endeavour to rear a column of
stones in a desert where it can only serve as a landmark to itself alone!
Besides, as I say, at least three hands were involved in composing the third
volume.

 
          
But now consider: if the first two
printed books are "true", then the third book cannot possibly be
true.
And vice versa.
Yet if the third book alone were
true, how could it have been written? Most of it would have lacked foundations
(much like the obelisk!).

 
          
Only the final section of
The Book of Being
strikes us as familiar
in its portrayal of our world. On the other hand, all of the persons in this
last part—barring one or two minor figures—are already established in the
first two books.

 
          
And what of the section written in
the second hand (and second person), entitled "All the Tapestries of
Time"? Perhaps here we have a curious and cavalier attempt to connect the
first two volumes with the reality of "The Rose Balloon". Perhaps
this part was scribbled by one bored, though ingenious, stone mason whilst the
construction crew sheltered in their tents during freak sandstorms. Let us
imagine this author comparing notes constantly with a rival mason and would-be
romancer who was busily scribbling the final part during those same storms.
Both of them took as their starting point two genuine romances of the period.
The first had been printed as a proper book. The second had been issued more
cheaply—or more popularly?—on newsprint. And of course a partial continuation
already existed in manuscript alone; which they happened to have with them in
their tents. From which fact, do we deduce that a
third
mason was the original author—but he had run out of steam,
and cared so little for the final product that it was left abandoned inside the
obelisk as makeweight? Or that the masons feared they would die in the desert,
and felt so proud of their collaboration that they sealed it inside the stones
for safety?

 
          
Perhaps this is the explanation of
The Book of Being.
[1]

 
          
As to the content of the first two
volumes, what can one say? Except, to begin with, that in many respects our
ancestors viewed the world upside-down! Thus the
Tambidala
River
flows "down" to the
north. Knowing only one river, they didn't feel the need to give it a special
name; but being the only one, it was the norm. Now that we're acquainted with
the other major rivers on our planet—all of which flow otherwise, from north to
south—we would phrase this differently.

 
          
Secondly (and more important) through
no fault of their own our ancestors were taboo-stricken; and being great
romancers into the bargain they often thought mythically and metaphorically
when treating taboo topics.

 
          
Thus the "black current" is
a picturesque metaphor—a myth— used to express certain inhibitions which were
programmed into us originally; which were built into our two core societies (on
the east and west banks of the Tambidala) when this world was first colonized,
as a way of ensuring our survival along lines presumably different from those
of our mysterious mother world.

 
          
Likewise the "Godmind" is a
myth representing our designers.

 
          
Likewise the epidemic of forgetting
when Godmind and "Worm" first battled (an earthquake of the mind
which is echoed later on by the final scribe's "Pause") reflects the
spore-derived amnesiplagues which caused chaos at widely separated epochs in our
consequently tattered and fragmented history.

 
          
Such examples could be multiplied.

 
          
Yet curiously, as myth these texts
aren't as heroic in sum as one might expect of ancient days. They also mock
themselves, especially when the final "stone-mason scribe"—in the
process of purging the story of false infinities—chooses to make Yaleen
marginal and submerged, rather than some hidden ruler of the world cloaked in
disguise. Perhaps what we witness here (and elsewhere) is transitional myth:
the withering of myth into ironic fancy in face of early industrialization and
science.

 
          
Finally, "Ka-space" is a
myth for some hyper-reality or dimension, as yet unforeseeable by us—through
which the original starship must have flown.

 
          
Might not "Ka-space", as
envisaged by the Yaleen author, seem a dangerous myth today? One which might
bring superstition back into the popular mind, to oust our rational sciences?
How can we contemplate Ka-space when our greatest dream is to launch a puny
ship, our best, to the world next door—on a journey of
many years? Ka
-space would dwarf our efforts.

 
          
Yet the imagination needs uplifting.
Joy is not to be sniffed at. So therefore let these three books be printed out
of our own resources, and enjoyed.

 
          
— 'Mistress Charmy-Chateline, Guild of Boats
& Spaceships (advised by Savant Perse-Kirstoj