Damon Knight - Orbit 20

I became aware, for instance, of a slight southeast wind, which made it necessary to adjust the natural inclination of my body a few degrees from time to time. It would be well to keep an eye on it during the day. The footing was excellent, a trifle uneven, but for the most part solid and sure, with little mounds and hollows supplying good purchase.

As we completed the form, I shivered in the early-morning chill. I noticed out of the comer of my eye that the master was smiling happily. He considered shivering, like sneezing, an efficient, enlightened technique of adjustment to changes in the environment.

“If something harmful gets into your nose, why, blast it out with all your might. What a thrill of survival this gives!”

As for shivering, I have seen him take off his shirt in the iciest weather, and tremble until his outline blurred, then stop and examine the color of his skin for a certain pink hue, which he took to mean that his blood was circulating more swiftly, and the adjustment was taking place successfully.

The yawn, however, he considered as a more or less desperate attempt to adjust the oxygen level of the body by gulping it in hysterically.

“Breathe deeper in the first place, you fool, instead of waiting until you’ve almost passed out,” he said.

Sickness and fainting he viewed as the result of refusal to adjust to the environment. Once, when a young woman had fainted with illness in a rainstorm, he remarked to her casually as she began to revive, “Your techniques of shivering and coughing are quite good. Your technique of throwing out all your food, while a bit drastic for my taste, may well be warranted here. However, your technique of falling senseless to the ground and then lying there limp, while your consciousness retreats into an imaginary world, is inefficient in the extreme. I suggest you abandon it and concentrate your efforts more in the area of crying out for help, or perhaps even merely moaning for sympathy.”

We came down a narrow dirt path, moving fast, I waving my arms, he his staff, to adjust our balance; the old man leading the way, hopping and prancing from rock to rock, shortcutting the path wherever he could, until we landed on flat ground at the bottom, with a minor army of little stones and pebbles following us.

Here we caught our breath, deliberately (under his critical eye) breathing in huge gulps of air, ending with shallow, swift hyperventilation.

Then we proceeded leisurely along the road that led to the great lake.

At first I thought there were many-colored flags waving in the wind. The voices were like the plaintive cries of gulls. Then I began to recognize, with my eyes: silk scarves, turbans, bright yellow turmeric-dyed cotton robes waving in the wind. With my ears: “Fresh fruit, wine, beer, meat—step this way, gentlemen— fish, I have fish.” And later with my nose: strong perfume, strong wine, human sweat. And with some other sense I felt an all-pervading spirit of drunkenness and exhilaration, the raw soul of festival. What faces, I thought, what bodies. With a giddy flush I pushed the whores away from me, the bold ones who strove to push their ripe breasts up against my bare chest and shoulders; but gently, gently, for the daughters of our golden lady are sacred.

Ancient ruins lined the roads. They were chipped and broken, filled with rubble, and yet they stood, they still stood.

“What do they suggest to you, master?” I gestured toward the broken buildings.

He shrugged noncommittally. “Things change; life goes on.”

“Could we have built them, could we possibly have built them?”

“Why not?” He increased his stride a trifle, to discourage my questioning.

The crowds became thicker, the voices louder, brasher. Suddenly we beheld an incredible sight: the street of the trappers and sellers of wild birds.

A fusillade of color, a blaze of song. Endless rows of woven straw baskets of beautiful birds.

Their calls filled the air: some sharp and grating, some clear, some full, and some sad and distant as a dream.

“I’ve never seen such a beautiful sight,” I said.

Something strange was in the master’s expression, something I had never seen before.

“You know not how to look,” he said, “and nothing I can teach will ever show you how to look at these exotic birds, these beautiful free spirits sold into slavery, betrayed by the caretakers of this beautiful planet, Earth.”

Now we continued in silence, into the crowd.

We passed by the park of the temple of Our Lady. The groves of trees were etched clear, but strangely two-dimensional against the oncoming night. It was as if the light were being drained from the sky swiftly and suddenly; the torches were lit, the lamps of colored paper hung, the dancing and drinking had begun in earnest.

It was well after dark when at last, in the heart of the city, we asked directions to the cheaper inns and restaurants, frequented by gladiators.

The next morning I fought my preliminary bout. I almost felt sorry for him. He pawed the air helplessly, frantically. His balance was absurd. I avoided him until he tired somewhat, and swatted him a few light blows, careful not to bruise my knuckles; I was saving my kicks for someone else.

The crowd went wild. It was easy to see I was to be their favorite.

I was tall and fast. A smooth classical boxer, and quite handsome, I thought to myself. But I was young, oh I was young.

“Not a bruise on me.” I was jumping up and down, swatting invisible flies in the air. “I can’t lose, I just can’t lose, with a teacher like you how could I?”

But he was paying no attention to me. To my annoyance I saw that he was staring fixedly at something beyond me. I turned, and caught my breath.

“What a freak,” I said.

He was a short man, a broad man, a mutant. He had reddish skin and dark curly hair. His face was jagged and lonely, somber and strong, his bone structure grotesquely thick and square. His arms were short and muscular, all four of them. His eyes were used to pain.

Now I noticed the girl at his side. The astonishing contrast somehow seemed right: the princess and the caveman, Beauty and the beast. It was one of those paradoxes which forever seem to remind us that we didn’t invent the world out of our logical mind, that it invented us out of the unfathomable depths of its crazy nature.

No problem there, I thought. The mutant moved in a surly, awkward manner, bobbing and weaving like a duck. He took too many blows to get inside, where he could work his short arms, and yet he was impressive in his clumsy way. He was thorough and decisive, and he was accurate with his hands.

“He can’t even kick,” I said. “He’s already got his face bruised up and it’s only the first prelim.”

The old man shook his head. For the second time that day he said, “You know not how to look.”

The days of the festival fell by, light and swift. I won my preliminaries effortlessly, careful not to take any chances or injure my hands. Each night after a simple meal and a short walk, I went to bed early, my frantic mind filled with the color and excitement of festival.

The night of the semifinal a change was made in the schedule. The two finalists were given the next day off to rest for the final event, a brutal fight in a roped-off area, broken into rounds and rest periods, but fought to the finish. We would wear no padding on hands or feet. I would bruise my knuckles on that one, I thought to myself.

That night I went after dinner to the tavern where the gladiators went to drink and whore. A glass of wine or two wouldn’t harm me, with a day off before the fight, or so I told myself.

I saw them in the tavern, through the frenzied dancing couples, by the light of colored lanterns. She held a glass of red wine to her lips; she touched her hair; she smiled at something he said; and seeing me, was it because of seeing me? her smile blossomed. I should like to think that even if she gave her smiles freely, in that one instant, in the Tavern of the Red Lion, she smiled for me alone, before she looked away.