Walter Mosley - 47

John had a look of terror and shock on his face.

"What are you doing, Tobias Turner?" he asked with a crack in his voice.

"What I should'a done the minute you stood up an

called me by my name," Tobias said. "This is no house of abolitionists. You will pay for your crimes."

"But I saved your daughter," John said. I could hear the pain and confusion in his words.

"God saved my child," Tobias said. "And now I shall do his will by punishing you."

One of the white men hit John in the face and he fell unconscious.

"Check his pockets to see what else he stole from me," Tobias told them.

The only thing they found was the cigar-shaped sleep inducing device. Tobias took that and put it in his pocket. Then the white men dragged John from the room.

I was deeply shocked by this brutality. After all, I had just come from a bright field of beauty and saving the Master's child. But those men didn't care how I felt. The men who held me battered me around the shoulders and head and dragged me from the room.

Flore yelled out, "babychile!" and I called out for her, but to no avail.

The Tomb was a tiny shack that had once been an outhouse. It sat in the middle of the yard and Mr. Stewart used it to punish slaves without permanently damaging them. It was no bigger than a deep coffin on the inside with just enough room for a male slave or two smaller boy slaves, as we found out.

Mr. Stewart chained us hand and foot and tied us together. Then he locked the door behind us. It was dark in there and filled with biting maggots and ticks. As the sun bore down on the yard the heat rose in there until it was hotter than I had ever known.

"Are you all right, Forty-seven?"

"No," I answered petulantly. "Here I am in the jail when I should be free all'acause you had to go talkin' to that white man like he was a babychile."

"But we saved his daughter," John said in the darkness, where I was sure we'd die.

"But you a niggah, man," I cried. "An' ain't no niggah gonna ever speak to a white man wit'out givin' him his proper due."

"Neither master nor nigger be," he said in the darkness.

I wanted to strangle those words out of his throat but I knew that he was just ignorant of our ways. It had been less than a day since we had shared the dream of his land with his tiny, rainbow-colored people. But a lot had happened since then. Part of me thought that his land of Elle on the ocean named Universe was just a dream. But I knew in my heart that it wasn't, that Tall John was really from beyond Africa and had to be forgiven for not knowing that he was inferior to the slave master's power.

"Listen, Forty-seven," John said. "That's the reason I need you. I've lived among your people for many years but I've never understood their brutality. I was always on the outside passing through."

"But you been a slave," I argued.

"I always had the power to shrug off my chains and escape. I never really paid all that much attention to the people I met along the way because I was looking for you. I suppose that I always looked down on everyone I met and therefore never realized how they felt. Not until now when all of my power has been drained off to save the girl Eloise."

"That's why you need me?" I asked. "To understand how slaves feel?"

"No. Wall is coming."

"That's Mr. Pike?"

"Yes. He is a great power among his people. Much greater than I. You know how to survive against forces much greater than you. You are the teacher and I am the dunce. Without you there can be no future for anyone."

And even there, in my greatest danger, I felt the urgency in John's words.

"Deep under the ground in your world there is a kind of metal," John continued. "It looks like green powder but when it is spun at a great speed it starts spinning on its own and goes even faster. It picks up speed more and more until finally it goes so fast that it tears apart the glue that holds the universe in place."

"And Andrew Pike want that green powder?"

"Yes. He wants to make it spin and blow up everything."

"Why would somebody wanna do sumpin' like that?"

"Because," John said, "in another place beyond the world where we see and breathe there is a river of consciousness "

"That's what you said before. But what do the countesses river got to do with green powder?"

"Not countess but consciousness psi what thoughts and dreams are made of," John explained. "You and I and all of my people and all of yours "

"You mean Champ and Mama Flore too?" I asked.

"And Tobias and Eloise," John added.

I didn't say anything but I was surprised that John saw Tobias and me as belonging to the same people as if we

were the same race. This set off a way of thinking that was more alien to me than anything I had experienced up until that point.

"So all of us are here but at the same time our idees an' our dreams is swimmin' in this river?" I asked.

"Exactly. It is in a place beyond space and time. It is another place that cannot be touched or seen or heard."

"Except if'n you spin that green powder," I added.

"No, but that's what Wall believes," John said in the dark.

"An' this Wall is also Andrew Pike?" I asked.

"Yes. His people, after they split off from our race, developed a taste for the small trace of spirit that makes its way into our bodies. They suck out the energy and souls of sentient beings for their sustenance. But they're greedy; they yearn to obtain the Upper Level where they can feast on the God-Mind."

"So all this man Pike, who really is Wall, gotta do is dig down an' git that green powder an' then everything gets blowed up?" I asked, trying to string together all he'd said.

"No," John said. "First he must acquire a machine. When Wall got here he sent off a message telling his people to send this machine from a colony they have in this galaxy. When it arrives it will be able to mine and then spin the green powder. Wall and the Calash believe that this will open the universe to their perverse appetites."

"How long before it gets here?"

"One hundred and eighty-seven years."

"We all be dead by then," I said, thinking that John and I would probably be dead before the next day dawned.

"Maybe so," John said, "and maybe not. But regardless there is another quicker way that he might attain the green powder."

"What's that?" I asked.

Listening to his story I forgot my situation. I was more worried about that green powder than I was about the bugs biting me and the heat sweating me to death.

"I came here in an extremely powerful craft called the Sun Ship," he said. "The engine of that ship can be altered to help Wall excavate the green powder. Wall must not have it."

"And you took this ship on the Universe Ocean to come here?"

"Yes."

I didn't even understand most of the words he said. But I could feel the urgency in his tone. I could feel his fear. And even though I was in dire trouble myself I worried about my friend and my world.

We stayed in that hotbox all day. After a few hours I began to swoon in and out of consciousness.

"I think I'd like to go up north now," I said to John once when I had awakened.

"I can't take us for a while," he said. "My power was greatly weakened by the healing of Eloise. I won't be able to flee or even unlock these chains for a day or two."

What could I say? He'd only saved Eloise because I had asked him to. It was my fault just as much as his that we were in the Tomb.

While we wasted away in the hot stench of our prison I worked my wrists around in the manacles. My sweat made the skin so slick that I was finally able to slip free.

"John."

No answer.

"John."

A slight moan sounded from where my friend lay in the pitch black of our prison closet.

"John, I got my hands free," I said. "Maybe you could too. Maybe we could get outta here an' run."