Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

Raincoat nodded hard. “They have not the Light of Stability.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s it exactly.”

“You are hungry, perhaps?”

“I’m not starved, but I could eat. I’d like some water, too.”

“You shall have better. Soon I return.”

Off he went, and I sat there feeling the rock of the boat and the tilt of the deck and wondering. I knew I had been handed something when he said the Light of Stability, only I did not know what it was or how to use it. I thought that if I could find out what it meant I would figure out how to use it. That is the way I was thinking then, when my head hurt so much it was hard to think.

Finally he came back, carrying a tray. “You have not the seasickness. That is well.”

“I’ve been seasick twice in my life,” I told him, “only not very much.”

He put down his tray in front of me and went around behind me. “If I unlock your hands you must do as you are told. This you understand, I hope.”

I said, “Sure.”

“Then I unlock so that you may eat. We have only the most small stove on this boat. One burner. But we do the better we can.”

I said I would behave and I did, just feeling the big soft lump on my head before I pitched into the food. It was fried fish and fried potatoes mixed with onions, none of it too bad. There was wine, too, I think Tokay. I would rather have had Pepsi or even water, but I drank every drop.

“Our government does not believe in God,” Raincoat said.

I nodded. “That’s too bad.”

“The churches believe, but all they teach is wrong. Would you be enlightened?”

I said, “Sure.”

“God exists and is real, but he did not create us. We create him.”

I told him I had not known that, and it sure was interesting.

“It is, and is true.” Raincoat stood up. “There is another, higher universe above this one we inhabit. Call it the Universe of the Ideal. There God dwells. He grants our prayers at times because he must. The more of us who pray for something, the more he must grant whatever it is so many pray for.”

“Like if everybody prays for peace?”

Raincoat had not heard me. “Thus all must pray for the Light of Stability. In change there is no progress. What is progress?”

I waited and he said, “Speak! You must tell me.”

“When things get better.”

“That is change. No! One prays for long hot summers so that she may lounge upon the beach, her sister for long cold winters so she may ski. Crops fail and fail again. The people starve.”

“That’s bad,” I said.

“That is the progress for which you have wished.” Raincoat turned away from me and stood looking out the porthole.

I drank a little sweet wine and waited.

“I have taken away from you my handcuffs.”

“That’s nice. I really appreciate it.”

“You will seize my pistol. Shoot me in the back. Escape.”

I had been thinking the same thing, only my legs were still tied. So I said he had been nice to me and the Light of Stability said it would be better to let him live.

“Exactly so. What is, is right. The enlightened will preserve it. The unenlightened destroy it, promising to bring into being something better, but to bring into being is more difficult than to destroy, and the somethings they bring better are always worse. Thus it is that we do not seek to overthrow the government, though the government seeks to overthrow us.”

“If you don’t want to overthrow the government,” I said, “why would the government want to overthrow you? It would seem to me that it would just pat you on the head and tell you to go ahead and have some fun.”

He turned to face me. “Ah! You do not understand governments.”

“That’s the flipping truth,” I said. I said flipping because I had the feeling he was not the type that would overlook fucking .

“A government is not so many men behind desks,” he told me. “A government is an idea. Without the idea…” He shrugged.

“Only you’ve got a different idea?”

“Exactly so.”

“But you ought to preserve the government, right? I mean from what you said a minute ago.”

“Which we seek to do. A government is an idea; if that idea is mistaken, it is a building built upon the water. Such a building may float for a time. You come to see him and are told, ‘This is our foundation, a foundation so solid it can never fail. Islands wash away. Continents rise but sink again into the sea. But there has always been water and there will always be water. Here we stand!’ The next day they are gone.”

I said, “I got it.”

“There was in the cellar a door that must not be opened, you see. Someone opened—the water rushed in. The communists sink while I watch. It was very quick. Very quiet, too.”

“So you want to change government’s idea.”

Raincoat nodded. “We are the Legion of the Light. We will tow it to shore, you see, and because you are Amerikan you will help us.”

“That’s right,” I said. It was not a lie the way I meant it.

From then on I was loose on the boat. Yes, I could have grabbed somebody’s gun and maybe I could have killed all three of them, but what were the odds? I figured I had about one chance in fifty. And maybe I would not even be wounded. And maybe, just maybe, I could handle that big boat all by myself. But the sails generally took two men and during the thunder storms (we hit a couple of bad ones before we tied up at the capital) they took at least three. We had four because I pitched in, figuring that if we sunk I would drown, too.

What they wanted was for me to make radio broadcasts. I told them it would not help and nobody in America would even listen, but they said it did not matter. What did was that the government would hear them and think it mattered. The government would tune in and have everything I said translated and study it, and in that way the idea of the Light of Stability would sink in.

When Raincoat told me that, I pointed out that he had a gun.

“It is a tool,” he said. “To do good work, one must have tools.”

That is the way it was with those people. On the one hand they did not like to destroy anything. On the other hand they were willing to destroy everything. The Light of Stability was really important to them, but winning was a lot more important. That was one way to put it.

I had taped two or three broadcasts for them when it hit me. None of them spoke English, but if the government had me translated like they said it would, the government had somebody who did. I was broadcasting from an old factory down by the river, and by that time I knew what had been made there. So in the middle of my next I said, “We here where so many women once sewed shirts are sewing the shroud that will wrap all those who oppose the Light of Stability. For them to perish is change, but having perished they will change no more. You in America who hear my words must think on this. Listen again.”

After that I waited, wondering how long it would be and telling myself it might be an hour or even a couple of hours. It took me a long time to go to sleep that night, only when I woke up nothing had changed.

They had given me a book in English to read. It was called the Code of Unchanging and nothing in it made a whole lot of sense, but I had learned early on that the way to do it was to pick up phrases from it and drop them into my broadcasts. So I got them to give me a notebook and a ballpoint and wrote down some things I thought I might use. It would be interesting to know who had translated that book for them, but from the way it read I thought it had to be machine translation.

Like I said, it did not make much sense, but looking for good phrases gave me something to do, and having the pen and notebook I started making notes for this book.