Дэймон Найт - Orbit 11

They walked Prague aimlessly, then found an aim when they grew aware someone was shadowing them. Surely an agent of the Czech SSB who had picked them up at the embassy, he wore a trench coat and had bare feet to match. They stopped midway on a bridge, leaned on the parapet, and eyed themselves in the Moldau. Their shadow did the same.

Talking lightly to throw their shadow off, they agreed this bridge most likely was the one Good King Wenceslaus depontiated St. John of Nepomuk from, after torture failed to make Nepomuk open up to the king about what the queen had said in the confessional. As one, they snapped back from the parapet; inertia left their reflections on the water. They stepped softly away; once across, they glanced back. The poor schlemiel was still watching their reflections in the Moldau.

They had shaken their shadow but they kept on the go till, dog tired, they had to rest. Ben sat emptying his shoe, pouring a cone of time and space. Boothill. He scraped scatological matter from the sole. Look your last on last things. Doré had engraved the Wandering Jew sitting wearily down, on Judgment Day, and easing off his shoes. Fitting; the Wandering Jew had been a shoemaker. Was Jesus the Wandering Jew? He could’ve switched bodies with the shoemaker he put the curse on: humble shoemaker going to the cross, Jesus going on to numberless crossroads. Ever and afar. Ben looked around for the time, saw the hand of a Hebraic clock move counterclockwise on the old Ghetto Town Hall: Over the way, Staronová Synagoga burst on his retina.

He shoved on his shoe; the others followed him to the heaped-up cemetery. A womb of stillness; they felt the soothing heartbeat. Mother Earth. The bedrich bride. Layer upon layer of graves. Ben broke the spell. He hunted the grave of the MaHaRal of Prague, Rabbi Yehuda Loew ben Bezalel, maker of the Golem. The MaHaRal had molded clay from the Moldau’s banks into the likeness of a giant man. In an ecstatic state he had animated it by writing on its brow the Hebrew word for Truth, and the robot had helped save the people of the ghetto. Ben found the grave, a chiseled vault.

Thousands of pebbles covered it, each standing for a visitor. Many visitors dropped letters, prayers for help, into the vault. Ben drew pen and pad. In the name of Shem . . . forash, Kumopen! He thrust the note into the vault, ground shook, the pebbles scattered, the stone split open, a coffin heaved up. Its lid lifted, shedding moldy letters and Ben’s note. A skullcapped, MGM-lion-maned man sat up and opened his eyes. The letters of Emet, Truth, shone on his brow. He looked blankly at the sojourner.

“Ato Bra Golem Dybbuk... Thou, Eleazar of Worms?” The blear passed from his eyes. “No. Who wakes me on the Sabbath?”

Carol’s nudge jarred Ben’s voice loose. “Ben Kaplan.”

“Shalom, ben-Kaplan. Help you want, no?” The mane shook slowly. “Joseph the Golem is no more. But the Psalms remain. ‘Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect, and in the book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.’ Is that not what you term DNA, my son? All matter is one: what matters is how you rearrange it. Take of me a pinch and get you yonder to Mount Blanik, where the old heroes of the goyim slumber. Them you should disturb on Shabbos. And there prepare you an ark each. And when you see a vulture sup, scatter the pinch.”

Before Ben could ask how to take a pinch of him to Blanik, the MaHaRal rubbed from his brow the first letter of Truth, leaving Met, Death. Murmuring the Shema Yisroel, he crumbled to dust, Ben hesitated. His mother’s voice whispered, “Go on, take a pinch.” Ben grimaced but picked up his note, took a pinch of the MaHaRal’s dust, and rolled a joint.

A bus dropped them off with the canvas foldboats they had charged to Ben’s Diner’s club card in a sporting goods store. On top of old Blanik they stretched rubberized sailcloth over knockdown frames and sat the night in the boats, holding the double-bladed paddles and wondering who would first say they were wasting their time.

Dawn. Bird shadow followed contours but bird substance proved crow. Its “Cras! cras!” promised no quick relief. They sat waiting. Another shadow, another crow. Frank nodded. “Quoth the Kafka, ‘Ravenmore!’ “ A third shadow. A vulture swooped down on a dead mouse in the grass; residue of rosy dawn scattered trembling light, the vulture burped culturedly and flew off. Ben field-stripped the joint, shaking out the dust and balling the paper. Breeze blew dust and paper into crevices and, though it had already eked out a mouse, Blanik labored.

“An earthquake!”

A sulfurous, ionized smell, then they were floating on the waters of a sudden hot spring that subsided, drawing their boats deep into the mountain. The quake had sunk potato fields and mushroom patches and they found themselves riding an underground river of bramboracka. It needed a little salt.

“Way we were facing, we should come out in Austria.”

“If we come out.”

They paddled madly to clear the luminous walls of the tunnel and the echoing emberhang and to keep the soup from capsizing them. The stream suddenly forked. Liza, in the lead boat, strove to bear right. Unexpectedly, she pressed a hand to her belly as if to pump out an aria, the paddle twisted in her other hand, and the boat swung left. The rest swore and followed. The tunnel darkened and narrowed; they could not help knocking loose stuff off walls and roof but brushed away most of the debris. They burst into day. Signs fleeting by and Frank’s map said they were in Yugoslavia.

And barely in time. The boats had torn and filled with lukewarm soup. It was no strain to laugh that off: yet it was to weep that the debris they hadn’t managed to brush away proved diamonds and gold nuggets. They pulled up under a bridge, let the boats settle, wrung themselves out, and the others turned on Liza.

“Why did you take the wrong turn?”

“I got a sudden cramp and lost control. I couldn’t help it. I’m not mescaline—I mean, I’m no heroine. Oh . . .” Her weeping satisfied them and they let her be.

The scape faded out. A spot of darkness thinned, a Western Union Boy, ninety into the shades if a day, cycled out of the mist and handed Ben a telegram. Ben signed for it and diamond-tipped the messenger, who cycled away into mist.

What’s it say?

“Stop.” We’re wasting our energy shaping the dream. We ought to put it into waking up.

We tried that. Someone’s working against us.

Or something. Maybe our web of energy’s made the dream real—an entity conscious of itself, following its own logic, holding us to keep from dissolving into baseless fabric. We need dreams, maybe dreams need us.

Tell it if it holds us it’ll die with our bodies. Promise we’ll redream if it lets us go now.

How do you talk to a dream? As well talk to the universe awake.

Maybe it has a locus in some symbol.

We can’t analyze dream symbols while dreaming, tell real from false.

The scape faded in. They plodded along the riverside, struck an asphalt road. The signpost pointed to Split. Liza sank to the ground, leaned back against the post, and said she couldn’t go on. Tears mingling with soup stains, she said she was a burden, said they’d be better off without her. Martin came back from scouting.

“Don’t quit now. We’re near the waterfront. Just think, Italy’s over there.”

At nightfall they stole down to the docks, passed ships flying Iron Curtain flags, found a Swedish freighter, Ariel. The watchman followed the Balkan custom and slept with his head covered. They climbed the boom of a cargo crane and dropped lightly to the Ariel’ s deck. They made their way below and hid in an engine room compartment. The Ariel got up steam and sailed with the morning tide.