Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

“Let the rumors run no more,” Koster spoke like fire. “Let all such talk cease right now. Let the rumor-men’s minds be befuddled and their tongues be like rocks in their mouths.”

It happened just like that. Rumor everywhere was frozen in midspeed, and the tongues of all the mongers were like rocks in their mouths. These things can be stopped.

“The migrating birds will halt in midair!” Saul Trumait commanded. “Not one wing will beat till we say it may beat again.”

And all the migrating birds were frozen motionless in midair.

“Look, look!” one of the more excitable disciples cried out. “It’s like lava flow bursting up through the pavements outside, up through the sidewalks, up under this very floor, it seems like.”

“Oh, that is us,” Saul Trumait said easily. “Where do you think we draw our power from? We also have our fathers.”

“Let the people stop their wandering,” Cachiporro ordered. “Should there be a revolution that is not ours? Let all vehicles stand still at once. Let the wandering people not set another foot down.”

And quite a few persons of the world were paralyzed with one foot in midstride. These three men were really very powerful.

“Let the fires and bombings stop if they are not our own fires and bombings,” Koster commanded. And all except the privileged bombings and fires ceased.

“Is there anything else of the divergent unlawful—that is not of the true unlawful going on?” Trumait asked, breathing a little heavily from the power that had been flowing through him. “What do our special monitors show? Is there anything going on that is not ours?”

“There are still earthquakes; there are still people laughing; and there are other lava flows which do not seem to be yours,” said one of the disciples who was fiddling with the instruments.

“Let the false lava stop!” Cachiporro commanded. “There must be no lava that does not come from our own fire fathers.”

“Let the people’s laughter cease,” Koster roared. “Let it scorch their throats.”

“May the quaking leave off right now,” Trumait ruled. “We are the only earth-movers.”

“Stop, you fool things, stop!” Pedro Cachiporro ordered. “We are the only authority and we order you.”

“Halt!” Koster barked. “We are the power.”

“Let none of it move,” Trumait commanded.

And it all stopped.

The red lion and the red tiger and the red wolf looked at each other with thunderous triumph; and the disciples adored. The three men themselves were Revolution, they themselves were the Moving Powers of the world and nothing could move without their instigation.

“Ah, something is beginning again,” said the disciple who was fiddling with the instruments. It had been a short but momentous pause. “It’s like a new kind of earthquake now, a new sort of lava flow, a different shape of world waves. Hear it? You don’t need instruments. Hear it?”

It all broke loose. It broke wide open. What world-noise was that? Laughter, world-laughter. The three unpowered leaders diminished and their faces cracked like clay pots. It was the whole world laughing at them, in new mountains that had not been mountains a moment before, in craters that were fire-new craters, in pinnacles and persons that had just been renewed. The whole world was laughing at the three creatures that shrank and shattered and turned into unnameable minuscules.

This was Revolution, and the revolutionaries had never stood tall enough to touch the least hairs on its toes.

The continents began to detach each from each and to drift. Whether they would move much or little during the Jubilee depended on their own proclivities and states of mind, but they were free to move. And it was not a thing of a million years or a thousand. It was the thing of an hour.

There were world disturbances, of course; there were three-mile-high waves here and there, and such; but there were no more disturbances than could be expected from such causes.

“There is land below that isn’t charted,” said the navigator of the plane that was carrying the president and the congresses.

“Chart it then if it will make you happy,” the pilot told him. “That is Hy-Brasil, an old land come back. I bet it felt that it had been submerged long enough.”

“And you’re coming down too soon, coming down to no possible land,” the navigator said an hour later. “You’ll hit open ocean.”

“Oh no. We’ll hit risen land,” the pilot insisted. “See it there now. Is it not fresh and shiny with the sea-water still rushing off its risen flanks and the spray of it rising a mile high?”

The plane came down to Lyonesse which had been the mother of assemblies a long time ago, which had sunk into the ocean a long time ago. It was a good town and a good land, and it seemed glad to be back.

Other planes and various craft were also arriving at Lyonesse. They were homing in on it from everywhere. The crafts carried the governing bodies of more than two hundred commonwealths, and all those parliamentary and official types were beaming and bright and happy. What town they would form there now would be a curious one, but there are advantages in having all governing bodies gathered together in one place where they will not bother the peoples of the world.

And in another place there were three wise men walking in that first noontime of the Jubilee. Perhaps these three men had once had the names of Ruil and Amerce and Romer, but they did not have those names now.

They were walking in a direction that had not yet been renamed. They would not sleep that night where they had slept the night before, nor would any other person in the world. They had sandals on their feet; they were wrapped in cloaks and euphoria; they had staffs in their hands; and they carried (from some old symbolism or from some new joy) lighted lanterns in the daytime. Three wise men.

I just looked up and a man fell by my window with his arms waving. (Earlier, my thumb was engaged in moving across the paper like a chicken drumstick. Scratching, scratching.) He seems to have been in a great hurry, and possibly there was something he wanted to tell me. This may, I realise, have something to do with the scaffolding which grew outside my window during the night; it’s out there now, as I write a wood and steel doily of piping, ladders, planks and pantlegs;

I go to the window and there is a crowd below me, a red truck with two white attendants. The man is lying strangely on the pavement; perhaps he is very tired. Pigeons tiptoe down his legs and arms. Snails would be better, but snails (les escargots) are not in season—only strawberries. His mouth is full of strawberries. The red juice dribbles out of his mouth and streams along the pavement.

I wonder what it was that he wanted to tell me? Probably that he loved me.

Schlupp-thunkk. Schlupp-thunkk. The wipers mimic a heart. Beating.

Postmortems of parties dead and cold now, passing home in a bouncing car. You here beside me, warm with drinking, soft with sleep in your pumpkin dress that skis off one shoulder and slides along your leg. The child in your lap. Shapeless in her bundle of flannel.

—like it’ll snow forever. And our Fiat crunches through the crust of that snow. The motor, in third, hums and whirrs. Thinking of our Ford gathering snow on the salvage yard. In the backseat now there are the remains of two pheasants and a bottle of brandy. The brandy rolls and clatters against the oven pan, rolls in its nest of birds’ bones and greasy dressing. Snow stipples the flat grey air, slurs the streets. I smoke the last cigarette and watch for ice. Guilt in small actions, always. The heater growls.