Edmund Cooper - A Far Sunset

‘What is the first gift of Oruri?’

‘A child,’ said Mylai Tui simply.

He sat up with a jerk. ‘How do you know that you will not give me a child?’

‘Lord—Paul—you have loved me many times.’

‘Well?’

‘I have not worn the zhivo since I left the Temple of Gaiety and gave up the duties of a noia, Paul. You have loved me many times. If you had been an ordinary Bayani, by now I would have swollen with the fruit of love. I am not swollen. Therefore Oruri withholds his first gift … My Lord, I have sinned. I know not how, but I have sinned… Perhaps you will fare better with another noia.’

He was thunderstruck. For in a terrible moment of clarity he saw that Mylai Tui possessed a wisdom greater than he could ever hope to attain. ‘It is true,’ he said calmly. ‘I want a child, but I did not know that I want a child … There are so many things I do not know … Yet, there is no sin, Mylai Tui. For I think that my blood and yours will not mingle. I think that I can never get a child save with one of my own people. And so I shall not send you away.’

Mylai Tui sighed and smiled. ‘My lord is merciful. If I cannot bear the son of him who came upon a silver bird, I wish to bear the son of no other.’

He took her hands and looked at her silently for a while. ‘What is it that binds us?’ he asked at length.

Mylai Tui could not understand. ‘There is nothing to bind us, Paul,’ she said, ‘save the purpose of Oruri.’

Three gilded barges, each propelled by eight pole-men, passed slowly along the Canal of Life under the great green umbrella of the forest. In the first barge, guarded by eight brawny priestesses, there was the small shrouded palanquin that contained the oracle of Baya Nor. In the second barge, guarded by eight male warriors, was the god-king, Enka Ne, the council of three and the stranger, Poul Mer Lo. In the third barge, guarded also by eight warriors, were the three girl children who were destined to die.

Poul Mer Lo sat humbly below the dais on which the godking reclined, and listened to the words of his master.

‘Life and death,’ said Enka Ne, in a voice remarkably like that of Shah Shan, the beggar, ‘are but two small aspects of the infinite glory of Oruri. Man that is bom of woman has but a short time to live, yet Oruri lives both at the beginning of the river of time and at the end. Oruri is the river. Oruri is also the people on the river, whose only value is to fulfil his inscrutable purpose. Is this thought not beautiful?’

The bright plumage rustled as Enka Ne took up a more comfortable position. Poul Mer Lo—Paul Marlowe of Earth —found it difficult to believe that, beneath all the iridescent feathers and the imposing bird’s head, there was only the flesh and blood of a boy.

‘Lord,’ he said carefully, ‘whatever men truly believe is beautiful. Worship itself is beautiful, because it gives meanin g to the act of living … Only pain is ugly, because pain deforms.’

Enka Ne gave him a disapproving stare. ‘Pain is die gift of Oruri. It is the pleasure of Oruri that men shall face pain with gladness and acceptance, knowing that the trial shall bring them closer to the ultimate face … See, there is a guyanis! It, too, fulfils the pleasure of Oruri, living for less than a season before it receives the infinite mercy of death.’

Poul Mer Lo gazed at the guyanis—a brilliantly coloured butterfly with a wing span longer than his forearm—as it flapped lazily and erratically along the Canal of Life, just ahead of the barge containing the oracle. As he watched, a great bird with leathery wings dived swifdy from a tree-fern on the banks of the canal and struck the guyanis with its toothed beak. One of the butterfly wings sheared completely and drifted down to the surface of the water: the rest of the creature was held firmly in the long black beak. The bird did not even pause in flight.

Enka Ne clapped his hands. ‘Strike!’ he said, pointing to the bird. A warrior raised his blow-pipe to his lips. There was a faint whistle as the dart flew from the pipe. Then the leathery bird, more than twenty metres away, seemed to be transfixed in mid-flight. It hovered for a moment, then spiralled noisily down to the water.

Enka Ne pointed to the warrior who had killed the bird. ‘Die now,’ he said gently, ‘and live for ever.’

The man smiled. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘I am unworthy.’ Then he took a dart from his pouch and pushed it calmly into his throat. Without another word, he fell from the barge into the Canal of Life.

Enka Ne looked intently at Poul Mer Lo. ‘Thus is die purpose of Oruri fulfilled.’

Poul Mer Lo gazed at the enigmatic waters of the canal. The barge had already left the body of the warrior behind it. Now a butterfly wing floated past and then the still twitching shape of the leathery bird, with the rest of the guyanis still gripped in its beak.

Paul Marlowe, man of Earth, struggled against the dreamlike fatalism which had caused him to accept the role of Poul Mer Lo in a dream-like and fatalistic world. But it was hard, because he was still enough of a psychiatrist to realize that two people were inha hiring the same body and were making of it a battleground. Paul would be forever the outcast—technological man, with a headful of sophisticated and synthetic values resisting the stark and simple values of barbarism. Poul was only a man who was trying desperately to belong—a man who wanted nothing more than peace and perhaps a little fulfilment in the world into which he had been thrust.

Was it Paul or was it Poul who was travelling along the Canal of Life with Enka Ne? He did not even know that. He knew only that the great green hypnosis of the forest and the brightly plumed hypnosis of the god-king and the meaning of life and death were all far too much for the would-be fratricides who lived in the same tortured head.

It was a heavy, languorous afternoon. By sunset one of the girl children in the following barge would be sacrificed against the phallus of Oruri in the forest temple of Baya Sur. Poul was fascinated. Paul was shocked. Neither knew what to do.

‘Lord,’ said Paul—or Poul, ‘which was of greater value: the life of the guyanis or the life of your warrior?’

Enka Ne smiled. ‘Who can know? No one save Oruri. Was it not Oruri in me that bade the warrior be at one with the guyanis?’

‘Who can know?’ said the man of Earth. ‘It is certain that I do not.’

The god-king’s councillors, crouching together, had heard the exchange in silence. But they were plainly unhappy that a stranger should question the act of Enka Ne. Now one of them spoke.

‘Lord,’ he said diffidently, ‘may it not be that Poul Mer Lo, whose life is yours, has a careless voice? The affliction may easily be remedied.’

Enka Ne shook his feathers and stretched. Then he gazed solemnly at the councillor. ‘There is no affliction. Know only that the stranger has been touched by Oruri. Whoever would challenge the purpose of Oruri, let him now command the death of Poul Mer Lo.’

The councillors subsided, muttering. Poul Mer Lo was sweating with the heat; but somewhere in a dark dimension Paul Marlowe was shivering.

‘See,’ said Enka Ne, ‘there is the first stone of Baya Sur.’ He pointed to an obelisk rising from the smooth water of the canal. ‘Soon there will be a sharp glory. Let no man come to this place without tranquillity and love.’

Baya Sur was, unlike Baya Nor, no more than a single stone temple set in the forest and protected from its advance by a high stone wall. At the landing place about forty men—the entire population of Baya Sur, waited to greet the barges. The one containing the oracle was the first to pull in. The palanquin was lifted ashore carefully by the priestesses and carried into the temple. Then Enka Ne gave a signal and his own barge was poled in. He stepped ashore with a great rustling of feathers and with all the arrogance and brightness and mystery of a god. After him came the councillors, and after them came the stranger, Poul Mer Lo. No one stayed to meet the three girl children. Looking over his shoulder as he walked along the paved avenue that led to the temple steps, Poul Mer Lo saw them step ashore and walk gravely after him like tiny clockwork dolls.