Walter Mosley - 47

"What now?" I asked my brother in light.

"Now we go after Wall and his minion Mr. Stewart," John said, hefting his yellow sack over his shoulder.

"Sounds good by me," I said, even though I was quaking inside.

With that John and I took off through the woods while my friends and fellow ex-slaves slept in the clearing next to the big flat stone.

I expected John to hurry us along toward Andrew Pike and Mr. Stewart. But instead he set a slow pace through the woods. There were larks and whip-poor-wills singing in the trees. A dry breeze was blowing and bright sunbeams peeked down through the dark covering of leaves and pine needles. We walked along a shallow creek bed that burbled over large white stones.

For quite a while John was silent on our country stroll. I didn't want to interrupt his reverie. I could tell by the look on his face that he was worried.

I didn't want to know about his fears. The battle at the Corinthian Plantation had been the worst thing that I had ever seen, and from what I understood Andrew Pike meant to cause a conflagration that was on an infinitely grander scale. I didn't care to know about it, fearing that my courage might fail if I did.

After a long time an hour or more the smile came back into Tall John's face.

"You must wonder why," he said. I knew what he meant. It was almost as if I knew what he was thinking. The light he had saved me with had brought us closer than brothers.

"Yeah," I said. "Why me? There's a many millions of peoples in this world. You could'a picked any one'a thems to help you. Heck, you could'a raised a whole army with the tricks you could pull."

"Yes," Tall John said, shaking his head sadly. "And then Wall would raise an army and the whole world would go to war. And war would only benefit my enemy." "It'a on'y hep him if he win," I said. "No, my friend. If Wall could start a big enough war he would spur the growth of technology. Man always starts inventing when he wants to win a battle. Soon enough he wouldn't need my Sun Ship to mine the green ore.

Mankind itself would furnish him with the tools he needs."

"But why me?" I asked again. "Why am I here wit' you? Why not a real hero like Champ Noland or somebody at least knows his numbers like Mud Albert?"

Tall John stopped walking and put his hand on my shoulder. When he did this I realized that I had still been growing. I was now taller than he.

"On my homeworld," he said, "we had a machine made of glass. There were a trillion trillion prisms in this machine and they made up an infinite number of tiny reflections…"

I understood the meaning of his words as they filtered through the light in my mind. I could even see the machine he spoke of. It was a great crystal ball throwing off an uncountable number of rainbow-colored beams of light.

"… this machine was one-of-a-kind," John continued, "built by our ancestors who were very wise and very patient. It is believed among my people that the ancients placed all of their knowledge into the crystal globe so that in times of great stress we could come to them and ask for advice."

"An' so that big glass ball got the answer to anything you wanna know?" I asked. "In a way," John said.

We were standing in an open field of grass surrounded by a dozen or more live oaks. The sun was high but the air was almost cool. And even though I was scared of going

into battle against Wall I was also deeply happy to be learning things that no other human being had ever known.

"You see," John said, "it is the custom among my people that every citizen gets to ask only one question of the Queziastril " "The what?"

"Queziastril was the name of our glass machine." "Was?"

"The Calash attacked us and destroyed Queziastril so as to keep it from revealing their plan to rip the fabric of existence."

"But you knew anyway," I said.

"Yes. But knowledge is a strange thing," John replied. "A thousand people might ask Queziastril the same question and for each person the machine would give a different answer."

"Maybe yo machine was broken," I speculated. John grinned.

"No," he said. "What would the answer be if I asked you how long it would take you to run around this field of grass?" "I dunno," I said. "With the speed you give me I expect it would be pretty quick."

"Now what if I asked Flore the same question?" "Big Mama don't run," I said. "She on'y walk, an' not too fast neither."

"So the answers would be different." "I see what you mean," I said. "For everyone ask yo machine how to do sumpin' there would be a different way."

"And so," John said, "when I went to Queziastril and asked how could I stop the Calash from destroying everything…"

I don't know if John finished his explanation in words because suddenly it was as if I were standing in front of the great glass ball. My mind was sucked into image after image upon the reflective faces of the prisms. It was as if I were traveling down halls of pure light, one after the other.

I saw strange and alien images at the end of each hall but there was no time to ponder them because no sooner than I came to the end of one hall I was hurtled off into another. Then, finally, after seeing ten thousand fleeting scenes, I stopped before a square prism that was shiny and reflective like a silver mirror.

The image I beheld there was my own. I realized that I was seeing my own image through John's eyes many years before I was ever born. And even though I was sure that the boy I was seeing was me I seemed somehow different, not older but with much more experience. I was wondering how that could be when John started speaking again.

"You," John said, and I came out of the vision to find myself again in the grassy lea. "You were the answer Queziastril gave me. For the next five years I was granted special access and so I came back again and again to learn about you and what role you were destined to play in our war against Wall."

"And so you know everything that's going to happen?" I asked.

"No," he said. "One day the Calash came and destroyed the machine of the ancients. And also Queziastril will not allow certain information to pass through time. The machine is sentient "

"What does that mean?" I asked. "It is like a living thing and knows to keep certain information about the future from those living in the past. Because if you knew mistakes that you were going to make and you tried to change them the world would suffer from things that never came to pass."

"How long ago did you ask that question?" I asked John. "Thousands of years ago." "I wasn't even born."

"No. But time, like all other things, moves in a circle. Every moment comes back on itself. It was said that Queziastril could remember tomorrow."

That was way beyond anything I could understand at the time. Even though I contained part of Tall John's light I was still limited by the things I had known and experienced as a child and a slave on the Corinthian Plantation. "We bettah git down to yo machine," I said then. "Let us run," Tall John from beyond the stars said with a grin.

I ran as fast as I could through the thick forest. I tried my best to keep up with John, but now he moved like the wind. Every now and then when I would lose sight of him completely I'd hear his voice in my head saying, "This way, slowpoke." And I'd follow in the direction of the thought.

After a short time I came to a ledge that looked down into a basin. John was there scanning the valley. His chest was heaving and sweat was dripping from his head and neck. Over his shoulder down about five hundred feet or so, I could see Mr. Stewart and Andrew Pike peering into a hole that resembled a freshly dug grave. Mr. Stewart was on his knees, holding up what looked like a long green stem.

"That's a part of the machine I used to come here," John said. "It once held enough power to ignite a thousand stars. But that's nothing compared to what the green powder can do."