Дэймон Найт - Orbit 6

— Audifax O’Hanlon, Exaltation Philosophy

The True Believer was sailing offshore in an easterly direction in the latitude of fifteen degrees north and the longitude of twenty-four degrees east. To the north of the coasting ship was the beautiful Cinnamon Coast of Libya with its wonderful beaches and remarkable hotels tawny in the distance. To the east and south and west were the white-topped waves that went on forever and ever. The True Believer sailed along the southernmost edge of the ecumene, the habitable and inhabited world.

August Shackleton was drinking Roman Bomb out of a pot-bellied bottle and yelping happily as he handled the “wheel” of the True Believer .

“It’s a kids’ thing to do,” he yipped, “but there were never such beautiful waters to do it in. We try to call in outer spirits. We try to call up inner spirits and lands. It’s a children’s antic. Why do we do it, Boyle, other than for the fun of it?”

“Should there be another reason, Shackleton? Well, there is, but we go about it awkwardly and without knowing what we’re doing. The thing about humans (which nobody apparently wishes to notice) is that we’re a species which has never had an adult culture. We feel that lack more and more as we become truly adult in other ways. It grows tedious to stretch out a childhood forever. The easy enjoyments, the easy rationality, the easy governments and sciences are really childish things. We master them while we are yet children, and we look beyond. There isn’t anything beyond the childishness, Shackleton. We must find a deeper view somehow. We are looking for that something deeper here.”

“What? By going on a lark that is childish even to children, Boyle? I was ashamed before my sons when I confessed on what sort of diversion I was going. First there were the séances that we indulged in. If we raised any spirits there, they were certainly childish ones. And now we’re on this voyage on the True Believer . We’re looking for the geographical home of certain collective unconscious images! Why shouldn’t the children hoot at us? Ah well, let us not be too ashamed. It’s colorful and stimulating fun, but it isn’t adult.”

The other four members of the party, Sebastian Linter and the three wives, Justina Shackleton, Luna Boyle, and Mintgreen Linter, were swimming in the blue ocean. The True Believer was coasting very slowly and the four swimmers were clipped to outrigger towlines.

“There’s something wrong with the water!” Justina Shackleton suddenly called up to her husband. “There’s weeds in it, and there shouldn’t be. There’s reeds in it, and swamp grasses. There’s mud. And there’s green slime!”

“You’re out of your lovely head, lovely,” Shackleton called back. “It’s all clear blue water off a sand coast. I can see fish twenty meters down. It’s clear.”

“I tell you it’s full of green slime!” Justina called back. “It’s so thick and heavy that it almost tears me away from the line. And the insects are so fierce that I have to stay submerged.”

But they were off the Cinnamon Coast of Libya. They could smell the warm sand and the watered gardens ashore. There was no mud, there was no slime, there were no insects off the Cinnamon Coast ever. It was all clear and bright as living, moving glass.

Sebastian Linter had been swimming on the seaward side of the ship. Now he came up ropes to the open deck of the ship, and he was bleeding.

“It is thick, Shackleton,” he panted. “It’s full of snags and it’s dangerous. And that fanged hog could have killed me. Get the rest of them out of the water!”

“Linter, you can see for yourself that it is clear everywhere. Clear, and of sufficient depth, and serene.”

“Sure, I see that it is, Shackleton. Only it isn’t. What we are looking for has already begun. The illusion has already happened to all senses except sight. Stuff it, Shackleton! Get them out of the water! The snakes or the crocs will get them; the animals threshing around in the mud will get them; and if they try to climb up onto the shore, the beasts there will break them up and tear them to pieces.”

“Linter, we’re two thousand meters offshore and everything is clear. But you are disturbed. So am I. The ship just grounded, and it’s fifty meters deep here. All right, everyone! I order everybody except my wife to come out of the water! I request that she come out. I am unable to order her to do anything.”

The other two women, Luna Boyle and Mintgreen Linter, came out of the water. And Justina Shackleton did not.

“In a while, August, in a while I’ll come,” Justina called up to the ship. “I’m in the middle of a puzzle here and I want to study it some more. August, can a hallucination snap you in two? He sure is making the motions.”

“I don’t know, lovely,” August Shackleton called back to her doubtfully.

Luna Boyle and Mintgreen Linter had come out of the ocean up the ropes. Luna was covered with green slime and was bleeding variously. Mintgreen was covered with weeds and mud, and her feet and hands were torn. And she hobbled with pain.

“Is your foot broken, darling?” Sebastian Linter asked her with almost concern. “But of course it is all illusion.”

“I have the illusion that my foot is broken,” Mintgreen sniffled, “and I have the illusion that I am in very great pain. Bleeding blubberfish, I wish it were real! It couldn’t really hurt this much.”

“Oh elephant hokey!” Boyle stormed. “These illusions are nonsense. There can’t be such an ambient creeping around us. We’re not experiencing anything.”

“Yes, we are, Boyle,” Shackleton said nervously. “And your expression is an odd one at this moment. For the elephant was historical in the India that is, was fantastic in the further India that is fantastic, and is still more fanciful in its African contingency. In a moment we will try to conjure up the African elephant which is twice the mass of the historical Indian elephant. The ship is dragging badly now and might even break up if this continues, but the faro shows no physical contact. All right, the five of us on deck will put our heads together for this. You lend us a head too, Justina!”

“Take it, take my head. I’m about to let that jawful snapper have my body anyhow. August, this stuff is real! Don’t tell me I imagine that smell.”

“We will all try to imagine that smell, and other things,” August Shackleton stated as he uncorked another bottle of Roman Bomb. In the visible world there was still the Cinnamon Coast of Libya, and the blue oceans going on forever. But in another visible world, completely unrelated to the first and occupying absolutely different space (but both occupying total space), were the green swamps of Africa, the sedgy shores going sometimes back into rain forests and sometimes into savannas, the moon mountains rising behind them, the air sometimes heavy with mist and sometimes clear with scalding light, the fifty levels of noises, the hundred levels of colors.

“The ambient is forming nicely even before we start,” Shackleton purred. Some of them drank Roman Bomb and some of them Green Canary as they readied themselves for the psychic adventure.

“We begin the conjure,” Shackleton said, “and the conjure begins with words. Our little group has been involved with several sorts of investigations, foolish ones perhaps, to discover whether there are (or more importantly, to be sure that there are not) physical areas and creatures beyond those of the closed ecumene. We have gone on knobknockers, we have held séances. The séances in particular were grotesque, and I believe we were all uneasy and guilty about them. Our Faith forbids us to evoke spirits. But where does it forbid us to evoke geographies?”