Four for Tomorrow Part 29

If they had refined their martial arts as far as they had their dances, or, worse yet, if their fighting arts were a part of the dance, I was in for trouble.

209.

"Go on in," I said to Braxa. "Give the rose to M'Cwyie.

Tell her that I sent it. Tell her I'll be there shortly."

"I will do as you ask. Remember me on Earth, Gal- linger. Good-bye."

I did not answer her, and she walked past Ontro and into the next room, bearing her rose.

"Now will you leave" he asked. "If you like, I will tell her that we fought and you almost beat me, but I knocked you unconscious and carried you back to your s.h.i.+p."

"No," I said, "either I go around you or go over you, but I am going thiough."

He dropped into a crouch, arms extended.

"It is a sin to lay hands on a holy man," he rumbled, "but I will stop you, Gallinger."

My memory was a fogged window, suddenly exposed to fresh air. Things cleared. I looked back six years.

I was a student of Oriental Languages at the University of Tokyo. It was my twice-weekly night of recreation. I stood in a thirty-foot circle in the Kodokan, the judogi lashed about my high hips by a brown belt. I was Ik-kyu, one notch below the lowest degree of expert. A brown diamond above my right breast said "Jiu-Jitsu" in j.a.pa- nese, and it meant atemiwaza, really, because of the one striking-technique I had worked out, found unbe- lievably suitable to my size, and won matches with.

But I had never used it on a man, and it was five yeais since I had practiced. I was out of shape, I knew, but I tried hard to force my mind tsuki no kokoro, like the moon, reflecting the all of Ontro.

160 Somewhere, out of trfe past, a voice said, "Hajime, let it begin."

I snapped into my neko-as.h.i.+-dachi cat-stance, and his eyes burned strangely. He hurried to correct his own position-and I threw it at himi My one trick!

210.

My long left leg lashed up like a broken spring. Seven feet off the ground my foot connected with his jaw as he tried to leap backward.

His head snapped back and he fell. A soft moan escaped his lips. That's all there is to it, I thought. Sorry, old fellow.

And as I stepped over him, somehow groggily, he tripped me, and I fell across his body. I couldn't believe he had strength enough to remain conscious after that blow, let alone move. I hated to punish him any more.

But he found my throat and slipped a forearm across it before I realized there was a purpose to his action.

No/ Don't let it end like this!

It was a bar of steel across my windpipe, my cartoids.

Then I realized that he was still unconscious, and that this was a reflex instilled by countless years of training. I had seen it happen once, in s.h.i.+ai. The man had died because he had been choked unconscious and still fought on, and his opponent thought he had not been applying the choke properly. He tried harder.

But it was rare, so very rare!

I jammed my elbows into his ribs and threw my head back in his face. The grip eased, but not enough. I hated to do it, but I reached up and broke his little finger.

The arm went loose and I twisted free.

He lay there panting, face contorted. My heart went out to the fallen giant, defending his people, his religion, following his orders. I cursed myself as I had never cursed before, for walking over him, instead of around.

I staggered across the room to my little heap of pos- sessions. I sat on the projector case and lit a cigarette.

I couldn't go into the Temple until I got my breath back, until I thought of something to say?

How do you talk a race out of killing itself?

Suddenly- -Could it happan? Would it work that way? If I read 211.

161 them the Book of Ecclesiastes-if I read them a greater piece of literature than any Locar ever wrote-and as somber-and as pessimistic-and showed them that our race had gone on despite one man's condemning all of life in the highest poetry-showed them that the vanity he had mocked had borne us to the Heavens-would they believe it-would they change their minds?

I ground out my cigarette or. the beautiful floor, and found my notebook. A strange fury rose within me as I stood.

And I walked into the Temple to preach the Black Gospel according to Gallinger, from the Book of Life.

There was silence all about me.

M'Cwyie had been reading Locar, the rose set at her right hand, target of all eyes.

Until I entered.

Hundreds of people were seated on the floor, barefoot.

The few men were as small as the women, I noted.

I had my boots on.

Go all the way, I figured. You either lose or you win- everything!

A dozen crones sat in a semicricle behind M'Cwyie.

The Mothers.

The barren earth, the dry wombs, the fire-touched.

I moved to the table.

"Dying yourselves, you would condemn your people,"

I addressed them, "that they may not know the life you have known-the joys, the sorrows, the fullness. -But it is not true that you all must die." I addressed the mult.i.tude now. "Those who say this lie. Braxa knows, for she will bear a child-"

They sat there, like rows of Buddhas. M'Cwyie drew back into the semicircle.

"-my child!" I continued, wondering what my father would have thought of this sermon.

212.

". . . And all the women young enough may bear chil- dren. It is only your men who are sterile. -And if you permit the doctors of the next expedition to examine you, perhaps even the men may be helped. But if they cannot, you can mate with the men of Earth.

"And ours is not an insignificant people, an insignifi- cant place," I went on. "Thousands of years ago, the Locar of our world wrote a book saying that it was. He spoke as Locar did, but we did not lie down, despite plagues, wars, and famines. We did not die. One by one 162 we "beat down the diseases, we fed the hungry, we fought the wars, and, recently, have gone a long time without them. We may finally have conquered them. I do not know.

"But we have crossed millions of miles of nothingness.

We have visited another world. And our Locar said, Why bother? What is the worth of it? It is all vanity, anyhow.'

"And the secret is," I lowered my voice, as at a poetry reading, "he was right! It is vanity; it is pride! It is the hybris of rationalism to always attack the prophet, the mystic, the G.o.d. It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the G.o.ds secretly admire in us. -And the tiuly sacred names of G.o.d are blasphemous things to speak!"

I was working up a sweat. I paused dizzily.

"Here is the Book of Ecclesiastes," I announced, and began: " 'Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vani- ties, all is vanity. What profit hath a man . . .'"

I spotted Braxa in the back, mute, rapt.

I wondered what she was thinking.

And I wound the hours of night about me, like black thread on a spool.

Oh it was late! I had spoken till day came, and still 213.

I spoke. I finished Ecclesiastes and continued Gallinger.

And when I finished there was still only a silence.

The Buddhas, all in a row, had not stirred through the night. And after a long while M'Cwyie raised her right hand. One by one the Mothers did the same.

And I knew what that meant.

It meant no, do not, cease, and stop.

It meant that I had failed.

I walked slowly from the room and slumped beside my baggage.

Ontro was gone. Good that I had not killed him. . . .

After a thousand years M'Cwyie entered.

She said, "Your job is finished."

"I did not move.

"The prophecy is fulfilled," she said. "My people are rejoicing. You have won, holy man. Now leave us 163 quickly."

My mind was a deflated balloon. I pumped a little air back into it.

"I'm not a holy man," I said, "just a second-rate poet with a bad case of hybris."

I lit my last cigarette.

Finally, "All right, what prophecy?"

"The Promise of Locar," she replied, as though the explaining were unnecessary, "that a holy man would come from the Heavens to save us in our last hours, if all the dances of Locar were completed. He would defeat the Fist of Malann and bring us to life.

"How?"

"As with Braxa, and as the example in the Temple."

"Example?"

"You read us his words, as great as Locar.'s You read to us how there is 'nothing new under the sun.' And you mocked his words as you read them-showing us a new thing.

214.

"There has never been a flower on Mars," she said, "but we will learn to grow them.

"You are the Sacred Scoffer," she finished. "He-Who- Must-Mock-in-the-Temple-you go shod on holy ground."

"But you voted 'no,'" I said.

"I voted not to carry out our original plan, and to let Braxa's child live instead."

"Oh." The cigarette fell from my fingers. How close it had been! How little I had known!

"And Braxa?"

"She was chosen half a Process ago to do the dances -to wait for you."

"But she said that Ontro would stop me."

M'Cwyie stood there for a long time.

"She had never believed the prophecy herself. Things are not well with her now. She ran away, fearing it was true. When you completed it and we voted, she knew."

"Then she does not love me? Never did?"

"I am sorry, Gallinger. It was the one part of her duty she never managed."

"Duty," I said flatly. . . . Dutydutyduty! Tra-la!

164 "She has said good-bye; she does not wish to see you again.

". . .and ". . . and we will never forget your teachings," she added.

"Don't," I said, automatically, suddenly knowing the great paradox which lies at the heart of all miracles. I did not believe a world of my own gospel, never had.

I stood, like a drunken man, and muttered "M'narra."