Дэймон Найт - Orbit 6

“Ease up a little on the evoking!” Justina shrilled up to them. “The snapper just took me off at the left ankle. I pray he doesn’t like my taste.”

“It has been a mystery for centuries,” said August (somewhat disturbed by his wife’s vulgar outburst from the ocean), “that out of the folk unconscious there should well ideas of continents that are not in the world, continents with a highly imaginary flora and fauna, continents with highly imaginary people. It is a further mystery that these psychic continents and islands should be given bearings, and that apparently sane persons have claimed to visit them. The deepest mystery of all is Africa. Africa, in Roman days, was a subdivision of Mauritania, which was a subdivision of Libya, one of the three parts of the world. And yet the entire coast of Libya has been mapped correctly for three thousand years, and there is no Africa beyond, either appended or separate. We prove the nonsense of it by sailing in clear ocean through the middle of that pretended continent.”

“We prove the nonsense further by getting our ship mired in a swamp in the middle of that imaginary continent and seeing that continent begin to form about it,” said Boyle. And his Green Canary tasted funny to him. There was a squalling pungency in the air and something hair-raisingly foreign in the taste of the drink.

“This is all like something out of Carlo Forte,” Linter laughed unsteadily.

“The continental ambient forms about us,” said Shackleton. “Now we will evoke the creatures. First let us conjure the great animals, the rhinoceros, the lion, the leopard, the elephant, which all have Asian counterparts; but these of the contingent Africa are to be half again or twice the size, and incomparably fierce.”

“We conjure them, we conjure them,” they all chanted, and the conjured creatures appeared mistily.

“We conjure the hippopotamus, the water behemoth, with its great comical bulk, its muzzle like a scoop-shovel, and its eyes standing up like big balls—”

“Stop it, August!” Justina Shackleton shrieked from the water. “I don’t know whether hippo is playful or not, but he’s going to crush me in a minute.”

“Come out of the water, Justina!” August ordered sternly.

“I will not. There isn’t any ship left to come out to. You’re all sitting on a big slippery broken tree out over the water, and the snappers and boas are coming very near your legs and necks.”

“Yes, I suppose so, one way of looking at it,” August said. “Now everybody conjure the animals that are compounded out of grisly humor — the giraffe with a neck alone that is longer than a horse, and the zebra which is a horse in a clown suit.”

“We conjure them, we conjure them,” they all chanted. “The zebra isn’t as funny as I thought it would be,” Boyle complained. “Nothing is as funny as I thought it would be.”

“Conjure the great snake that is a thousand times heavier than other snakes, that can swallow a wild ass,” Shackleton gave them the lead.

“We conjure it, we conjure it,” they all chanted.

“August, it’s over your head, reaching down out of the giant mimosa tree,” Justina screamed warning from the swamp. “There’s ten meters of it reaching down for you.”

“Conjure the crocodile,” Shackleton intoned. “Not the little crocodile of the River of Egypt, but the big crocodile of deeper Africa that is able to swallow a cow.”

“We conjure it, we imagine it, we evoke it, and the swamps and estuaries in which it lives,” they all chanted.

“Easy on that one,” Justina shrilled. “He’s been taking me by little pieces. Now he’s taking me by big pieces.”

“Conjure the ostrich,” Shackleton intoned, “the bird that is a thousand times as heavy as other birds, that stands a meter taller than man, that kicks like a mule, the bird that is too heavy to fly. I wonder what delirium first invented such a wildlife as Africa’s anyhow?”

“We conjure it, we conjure it,” they chanted.

“Conjure the great walking monkey that is three times as heavy as a man,” August intoned. “Conjure a somewhat smaller one, two thirds the size of man, that grins and gibbers and understands speech, that could speak if he wished.”

“We conjure them, we conjure them.”

“Conjure the third of the large monkeys that is dog-faced and purple of arse.”

“We conjure it, we conjure it, but it belongs in a comic strip.”

“Conjure the gentle monster, the okapi, that is made out of pieces of the antelope and camel and contingent giraffe and which likewise wears a striped clown suit.”

“We conjure it, we conjure it.”

“Conjure the multitudinous antelopes, koodoo, nyala, hartebeest, oryx, bongo, klipspringer, gemsbok, all so out of keeping with a warm country, all such grotesque takeoffs of the little alpine antelope.”

“We conjure them, we conjure them.”

“Conjure the buffalo that is greater than all other buffalo or cattle, that has horns as wide as a shield. Conjure the quagga. I forget its pretended appearance, but it cannot be ordinary.”

“We conjure them, we conjure them.”

“We come to the top of it all! Conjure the most anthropomorphic group in the entire unconscious: men indeed, who are black as midnight in a hazel grove, who are long of ankle and metatarsus and lower limb so they can run and leap uncommonly, who have crumpled hair and are massive of feature. Conjure another variety that are only half as tall as men. Conjure a third sort that are short of stature and prodigious of hips.”

“We conjure them, we conjure them,” they all chanted. “They are the caricatures from the beginning.”

“But can all these animals appear at one time?” Boyle protested. “Even on a contingent continent dredged out of the folk unconscious there would be varieties of climates and land-forms. All would not be together.”

“This is rhapsody, this is panorama, this is Africa,” said Luna Boyle.

And they were all totally in the middle of Africa, on a slippery bole of a broken tree that teetered over a green swamp. And the animals were around them in the rain forests and the savannas, on the shore, and in the green swamp. And a man black as midnight was there, his face broken with emotion.

Justina Shackleton screamed horribly as the crocodile sliced her in two. She still screamed from inside the gulping beast as one might scream underwater.

The ecumene, the world island, has the shape of an egg 110° from East to West and 45° from North to South. It is scored into three parts, Europa, Asia, and Libya. It is scored by the incursing sea, Europa from Asia by the Pontus and the Hyrcanum Seas, Asia from Libya by the Persian Sea, and Libya from Europa by the Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas (the Mediterranean Complex). The most westerly place in the world is Coruna in Iberia or Spain, the most northerly is Kharkovsk in Scythia or Russia, the most easterly is Sining in Han or China, and the most southerly is the Cinnamon Coast of Libya.

The first chart of the world, that of Eratosthenes, was thus, and it was perfect. Whether he had it from primitive revelation or from early exploration, it was correct except in minor detail. Though Britain seems to have been charted as an island rather than a peninsula, this may be the error of an early copyist. A Britain unjoined to the Main would shrivel, as a branch hewed from a tree will shrivel and die. There are no viable islands.

All islands fade and drift and disappear. Sometimes they reappear briefly, but there is no life in them. The juice of life flows through the continent only. It is the ONE LAND, THE LIVING AND HOLY LAND, THE ENTIRE AND PERFECT JEWEL.

Thus, Ireland is seen sometimes, or Hy-Brasil, or the American rock-lands; but they are not always seen in the same places, and they do not always have the same appearances. They have not life nor reality.