Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (38 page)

There was still faint luminescence from one place in the room and as he crushed this Jon Wilberfoss said, “Goodbye.”

The rescue ship drew near. I will let the Captain of that ship explain things in his own words:

“We were pulling close using the L-M linkage. We could see something of the damage done to the ship. Plates missing, holes punched in the ship and the entire hydroponics ring had been ripped away. We were amazed that it still held together. But then, parts of it were blazing with light and we guessed it was putting on a brave show. Whatever disaster had overcome it, it had survived.

“We were at full alert, of course. The hospital bays were ad open and standing by. We knew the
Nightingale’s
full complement and we were ready to take as many entities on board as we could. We knew another two ships of the Mercy Fleet were due within hours and that one of these was specialty designed to take DMEs.

“Then, as we came close, as we were dwarfed by the giant wreck, as we were looking for signs of life at its windows or a discharge of static, suddenly ad the lights went out. The ship became black as an asteroid.

“I piloted our way around, looking for one of the entrance bays. And it was one of our junior consoeurs who first saw Wilberfoss. He was a minute sliver figure. A shining dot of light in the dark ship. He was standing at a hole in the ship’s side and waving, the lights of his survival suit were blazing.

“We brought Wilberfoss on board.

“Minutes later we boarded the
Nightingale
and found it a dead ship.”

★
★
★

So we have returned more or less to the place where this story began but we have been on a long journey.

It now only remains for me to describe the final events in the Poveredo Garden.

Shortly after Wilberfoss’s final collapse into truth, I wrote my official report. I dealt in facts. I was not, at that time, greatly interested in what forces made a human rick. I was more interested in meshing cause with effect.

I published my report and many senior members of the Gentle Order visited the Pacifico Monastery to interview Wilberfoss. He answered their questions eagerly. He spoke about everything and occasionally I had to intervene as he tended to cast the worst light, that is the most self-critical light, upon his own participation in the events. In his way he was still asking for punishment. The wiser brains of the Gentle Order took note and it was decided that never again would one man be asked to take such awesome responsibility. The
Nightingale
was a one-time-only ship. In the ship’s capacity to extend the powers of a fallible man, it came close to making him God. In the hands of a brigand the
Nightingale
could, alone, have devastated the Gentle Order.

“We must therefore,” as the Magister of Assisi Central put it, “give thanks that in choosing Wilberfoss, we almost chose correctly. But it is an experiment not to be repeated. It allows vanity too wide a scope.”

And where is the
Nightingale
now? The ship is a museum, a tourist attraction. It is tethered out from Assisi Central in permanent orbit and parties of sightseers are ferried out to it daily. The story of the
Nightingale
has become a myth, like the story of old father Noah and his ark.

That the ship is a wreck is significant. Because it is a wreck, the imagination is free to wander and guess at its one-time magnificence. Given time, its ordeal may begin to seem heroic rather than tragic. And that will be a loss.

Magister Tancredi visited the
Nightingale
during his last sabbatical to Assisi. He informs me there is a restaurant in what used to be the DME sector and he also told me the food was excellent. Some sections of the ship have apparently been restored such as the dormitory and recreation areas. Others, such as the lobes containing the massive symbol transformation generators, have been gutted and their cells redeployed. The private quarters occupied by Jon Wilberfoss are just as he left them right down to his last recorded message. The seed chamber which he ruined is also left as found. Few people visit it as it has an atmosphere of dejection and grief, like a cell for the condemned.

I am told that the museum is wed appointed and informative. The one and only journey of the
Nightingale
is clearly documented with pictures and video shows. The part which Jon Wilberfoss played in the ship’s demise is not, however, emphasized. The implication is that he is dead.

And that is how it should be. The saga of the
Nightingale
is complete unto itself and makes a fitting conclusion to a thoughtful pilgrimage. It would be wrong to contaminate the myth with the flesh and blood of a real man.

But Wilberfoss lives. The events I have described in this yarn occurred some twenty years ago and it is now time for me to place a few last pebbles in my mosaic.

After the departure of the investigating teams from Assisi Central, the spotlight of publicity went off Jon Wilberfoss. Quickly he became a forgotten man. Physically he was in robust health and so gradually Lily withdrew her attention. She had other things to deal with. There were always babies being born. There were always members of the Gentle Order who needed the deep rest that the Poveredo Garden can provide. There were always Talline women on pilgrimage who needed Lily’s help. There were always fractures to set or wounds to dress. Such was Lily’s work and she felt comfortable with it.

Wilberfoss eventually moved out of the small hospital and into a smaller house further around the wad of the garden, closer to the sea wad. He lived on in the garden as a kind of pensioner. He could roam at will and help with the gardening when he had a mind.

I also withdrew from Wilberfoss. After I had written my official report, I undertook to provide a detailed catalog of the contents of the
Nightingale.
Later Magister Tancredi needed me. He was into his dotage and thus I became something between amanuensis and handmaid. Magister Tancredi finally entered Lily’s Garden himself after a stroke which left him unable to speak, and he died there within five days. He never saw Wilberfoss, though Wilberfoss saw him.

A new Magister arrived, one who had been an engineer out in the Blind Man System. His name is Staniforth and he is built like a boxer. He spends much of his time down in the maintenance sheds. He has little need of me and the Pacifico Monastery more or less runs itself. I have retreated to the library.

And so what of Wilberfoss?

It has been my practice for many years now to spend a few hours each week with him. We play a game or we talk. He is still not quite right in the head but there is a kind of glee with him and he is always an interesting companion. I never know what he will come out with. I am like one of those old gold miners who, so long as there were lights, continued to pan.

Here by way of mosaic pebbles are two anecdotes. I have given them titles. They complete this volume. I must confess that I do not ready understand them. But then again, having talked about them with many humans, I am not convinced that anyone else does. I hope you enjoy them.

1) Jon Wilberfoss and the Green Man

One day Wilberfoss was working out at the edge of the orchard at the place where the wild wood comes down to the river. Having worked ad morning gathering windfall fruit he felt drowsy and so lay down in the shade and quickly feel asleep.

He began to dream. In his dreams Jon Wilberfoss was always back in the
Nightingale
and in this particular dream he found himself crouched in the darkness deep inside the ship but safe within a small cell of light. For hours Wilberfoss had been walking through the deserted ship with only darting shadows for company. Several times he paused uncertain of his way and several times he stopped because he believed he could hear someone behind him. Now, tired at last, he had lit his small night light and dowsed his suit lights and had settled down in a comer hoping for sleep. But sleep would not come. He lay awake with his eyes open and eventually, just beyond the small cone of light, he saw movement. A swirl of fabric, he thought.

Now, in the dream he was not afraid. But if such a thing had actually occurred on the
Nightingale
he might have been driven out of his wits with fear. In the dream he stood up and called upon whatever presence was near to reveal itself. A light shone out as though at the end of a long, long corridor. Hesitantly a figure advanced toward him. Man or woman, Wilberfoss could not say. The figure was clothed in a long gown of green. It was holding a lamp which glittered brilliantly and which was held in such a way that it replaced the face of the figure. Nevertheless, Wilberfoss had the impression that the face was damaged in some way.

The figure came toward him tentatively, as though afraid of him. Wilberfoss called encouragement and opened his arms. At moments the shape of the figure was like Medoc, at others it was like the first woman he had loved or the prison warder who had loved him or like Wilberfoss himself. But the face was always, invisible. It came closer and closer . . .

And when the brilliance of the approaching lamp became unbearable, Wilberfoss woke up and found the sun in his eyes. It was mid-afternoon and the sun was streaming down on his face. He opened his eyes and was dazzled so that he seemed to be in a red haze. At first he did not know whether he was asleep or awake.

Wilberfoss sat up and rubbed his eyes to get rid of the redness, and when his sight returned it seemed that everything about him was brighter.

As Wilberfoss said when he was recounting this incident to me, “I know something of such states. I can recognize when the apparent world of sense dissolves to reveal a different reality. I was seeing the world of the Nature Gods which can exist in the blackness of space or in a secret grove at midnight or midday. We live in this world but we do not see it for most of our time. It is a world in which, when we see it, everything reflects us. For when we are there we are the Gods of the earth.”

I have given you Wilberfoss’s exact words. Those of you who are able to make something of them are welcome to do so. Objectively I cannot understand them. But I know they meant something to Wilberfoss and that is sufficient.

So the world seemed brighter and Wilberfoss found his gaze drawn to a particular tree, a sliver oak with leaves that glowed and a trunk that was more vivid than three dimensions. The tree had dense foliage and it moved and jostled in the breeze.

And as Wilberfoss stared at the screen of leaves it seemed that he could detect a face. It was a green face and slightly larger than the face of a man but yet not the face of a giant. It was an ugly and dangerous face, with fat cheeks and thick lips. Yet it was also a face filled with primitive vitality. Leaves grew in the nostrils and throat. Leaves sprouted from the temples and drooped over the ears. The eyes were dark and flashing. Unmistakably the figure was that of a man.

As though aware that it had been seen, the figure moved from behind the oak tree and out into the yellow sunlight. It advanced on Wilberfoss.

Wilberfoss recognized that he was seeing both the spirit of the sliver oak tree and at the same time, for in this state he was a God of Nature, he was seeing an image of himself. That was perhaps most unnerving. He was being confronted with a part of himself that he had lost and never known.

The green man of leaf and bark, with fingers like roots and rough skin, stood over Wilberfoss and then quickly sat down beside him. Wilberfoss felt a pain in his back and side and the Green Man roded into him. It was as natural as a cat catching a bird or a frog jumping.

Slowly the brilliance of the world faded but it could never again completely fade. The vegetative side of John Wilberfoss had come home.

That night Jon Wilberfoss did not return to his small house but made a bivouac under the trees of the wild wood. There he discovered that nature can be cruel but never vindictive. He discovered his own cruelty and strength.

I quote him again: “Had I known my own pagan self, I would never have gone chasing whores like the
Nightingale.”

The second pebble. I have given it the following tide:

2) St. Francis Dionysos Comes Walking

One afternoon, Wilberfoss was whittling wood, sitting with his back to the screen at the entrance to the garden. He was hoping to catch sight of a Talline woman who had come to the garden two nights earlier and with whom he had drunk wine and made love.

Suddenly he heard a voice. It said, “Hey, you. You with the vacant expression on your face. Give me a hand. I’m not so young these days.” Wilberfoss glanced about and then chanced to look out through the gate and he saw the old bud-headed figure of St. Francis Dionysos waving to him. The statue had come to life. It waved its arms and the birds and creatures that were perched on his arms shat themselves in fear and dew and scampered away.

Wondering, Wilberfoss climbed to his feet and hurried through the gate and to the foot of the statue. There he offered his two arms raised and the bud-headed one reached down and put his weight on Wdberfoss’s shoulders and swung to the ground. For a few moments Wilberfoss saw into the hard yellow eyes of the bud and felt its hot breath.

“Thank you,” said St. Francis Dionysos. “I’ve had my eye on you for some time, young man. I thought it was about time we got together. You’d be dying soon, and you’ve still got a few things to learn. Take my arm and let us walk in the Poveredo Garden.”

Wilberfoss did as he was bid, ad the time saying inwardly that this was not happening. And yet, the gate warden came shambling out of his hut and when he saw them he said, “Afternoon, Sir Francis Dionysos. Thank you for the late sunshine and the good harvest.” Then turning to Wilberfoss he said, “There’s a woman left a message with me for you, Mr. Wilberfoss. Says she’s decided to move on . . . trusts you will understand.”

“Sad,” said St. Francis Dionysos gripping Wdberfoss’s arm strongly. “You liked her didn’t you? First woman you’d had for some time eh? Ah wed. There’s a time for standing and a time for being fallow, and you, whether you like it or not, are fallow for the time being.” They walked on. “Do you ever think about Medoc?”