Snail on the Slope

Chapter Eleven

He woke up, opened his eyes and stared at the low, lime-encrusted ceiling. The ants were again heading across it. Right to the left, loaded, left to right, empty. A month ago it had been the other way around, a month ago Nava had been here. Nothing else had changed. Day after tomorrow, we'll go, he thought.

The old man was sitting at the table looking at him and cleaning out his ear. The old man had got terribly thin, his eyes were sunken, he hadn't a tooth left. Probably he'll soon die, that old man.

"Why on earth is it. Dummy," said the old man tearfully, "you've not a thing to eat. Since Nava got taken from you, you've no more food in the house. Not in the morning or at dinnertime, I told you: don't go, shouldn't. Why did you go away? Paid too much heed to Hopalong and went, what does Hopalong know about what's done and what isn't? Hopalong doesn't realize that, and his father before him was just as slow, his granddad just the same, all the Hopalong breed just the same, so they've all died, and so will Hopalong, no way out... Maybe you have got some food, Dummy, maybe you've hidden it, eh? A lot of them do ... if you have, get it quick, I'm hungry, I can't do without food, I've eaten all my life, got used to it... So now you've got no Nava, Barnacle killed by a tree as well, ... that's who always had a lot of food, Barnacle! I used to get through three pots at his place, thought it was always low-grade stuff, nasty, why he got killed by a tree, likely... I used to tell him: shouldn't eat food like that..."

Kandid got up and searched the hiding places Nava had devised throughout the house. There was no food at all. After that he went out into the street, turned left and headed for the square, to Buster's house. The old man trailed along behind, sniveling and whining. From the field there came coarse and ragged shouting: "Hey, hey, make it gay, left way, right way..." The forest returned an echo. Every morning, so it seemed to Kandid, the forest had moved closer. In fact, this wasn't so, and even if it was, it would hardly have been perceptible to the human eye. The number of deadlings in the forest, probably, had not increased, but it seemed so. Very likely because Kandid now knew what they were, and that he hated them. Whenever a dead-ling appeared out of the forest, the cry at once went up: "Dummy! Dummy!" And he would go there and destroy the deadling with his scalpel, swiftly, surely, with cruel enjoyment. The whole village would run to view the spectacle and invariably exclaimed in unison and covered their faces, when the terrible white scar opened up along the steam-shrouded carcass. Little bovs no longer teased Dummy, they were now mortally afraid of him, ran and hid at his approach. The scalpel was discussed in whispers at home in the evenings, and by order of the resourceful elder they started making storage bins out of deadling hides. They were good ones, too, big and tough...

In the middle of the square stood Ears, up to his waist in grass and shrouded in lilac mist; his palms were raised, his eyes glassy and there was foam on his lips. Around him crowded curious toddlers, listening and watching, open-mouthed; this spectacle never wearied them. Kandid also stopped to listen, and the toddlers scattered like leaves.

"Into the battle new..." burbled Ears in a metallic voice. "Successful movement... extensive areas of peace ... new detachments of Maidens... Calm and Amalgamation..."

Kandid passed on. Since that morning, his head had been reasonably clear, and he felt he could think, and bsgan to consider who he was, this Ears, and what his function was. There was some point now in such speculation, since Kandid now knew something, and sometimes it even seemed that he knew a great deal, if not everything. Every village had its Ears, we've got one, New Village has, and the old man used to brag of how special the Ears had been in the now mushroomy village. No doubt there had been a time when many people knew what the Accession was, and understood what successes were being referred to; then, very likely, they had been concerned to inform everybody about it, or had assumed they were concerned, later it dawned that a whole lot of people could perfectly well be done without, that all these villages were - a mistake, the villagers no more than sheep ... that occurred when it was discovered how to control the lilac mist, and the first deadlings emerged from the lilac clouds ... and the first villages found themselves at the bottom of the first triangular lakes ... and the first detachments of Maidens appeared... The Ears had remained and the tradition had survived, something that wasn't wiped out because they had simply forgotten about it. A pointless tradition, as pointless as this whole forest, as all these artificial monsters and cities, which spawned destruction, and these terrible hoyden-amazons, priestesses of parthenogenesis, cruel and complacent mistresses of the virus, sovereigns of the forest, fresh-water plump ... and this vast activity in the jungle all these Great Harrowings, and Swampings, undertakings monstrous in their absurdity... His ideas flowed freely almost, even automatically, for the last month they had managed to carve for themselves permanent channels and Kandid knew in advance what emotions would spring up in him the next second. In our village this is called "thinking." Here, now doubts would come up... I saw nothing after all. I encountered three forest witches. Plenty of strange things in the forest. I saw the destruction of a deceptive village, a hill resembling a factory of living creatures, hellish violence done to an armchewer ... destruction, factory, violence... Those words are mine, my concepts. Even for Nava destruction isn't destruction, it's the Accession ... but I know what the Accession is. To me it's terrible, revolting, and all because to me it's alien, and perhaps one should say not "a cruel and senseless driving of the forest over people," but "a systematic, superbly organized, precisely thought-out drive of the new against the old," "a well-timed and matured, abundantly powerful offensive of the new against the rotten, hopeless, old order..." Not a perversion, but a revolution. The natural order of things, a natural order I regard from the outside, with the partial view of a stranger who understands nothing and by virtue of that fact, imagines that he knows it all and that he has a right to judge. Just like a little boy indignant at the nasty cock for trampling the poor hen...

He looked back at Ears. Ears was sitting in the grass with his customary dazed look, turning his head, endeavoring to recall who and where he was. A living radio receiver. So, there must be living transmitters ... and living mechanisms and living machines, yes, the deadlings for example... Well now, why, why doesn't all this, so superbly thought-up, so superbly organized, rouse in me a shred of sympathy - only disgust and loathing...

Buster came up noiselessly behind him and clapped him between the shoulder blades.

"Stands there gawping, wool on yer nose," said he. "There was one gawped like that, they twisted his arms and legs off, no more gawping from him. When are we leaving, Dummy? How long are you going to keep pulling my leg? My old woman's gone to another house, wool on yer nose, and I've been sleeping at the elder's for three nights, just now I'm thinking I'll go and spend the night with Barnacle's widow. The food's so rotten that even that old stump doesn't want to guzzle it, makes a face, says: everything you've got's rotten, you can't bear to smell it, never mind guzzle, wool on yer nose... Only I'm not going to Devil's Rocks, Dummy. I'll go with you to the City, we'll pick up some babes there. If we meet thieves we'll give them half, we won't be mean, wool on yer nose, and bring the other half back to the village, let them live here, what do they want floating about there, there was one floated, gave her a good 'un up the hooter, no more floating and hates the sight of water, wool on yer nose... Listen, Dummy, maybe you lied about the City and those babes? Or maybe you were seeing things - the robbers took Nava away from you, and you imagined it out of sorrow? Hopalong there doesn't believe it; reckons you were seeing things. What's that City in the lake, wool on yer nose, everybody said on a hill, not in a lake. Who can live in a lake, wool on yer nose? We'll all drown in there, there's water there, wool on yer nose, never mind the babes in there, I'm not going in even for them, I can't swim, and anyway what for? Now I could stand on the bank, while you drag them out... You'll go into the water then, and I'll stay on the bank, and we'll soon manage it that way, you and I..."

"Have you got yourself a stick?" asked Kandid.

"Where can I get you a stick in the forest, wool on yer nose?" objected Buster. "That means a trip to the swamp, for a stick. And I've no time, I'm hiding food so's the old man won't guzzle it, anyway what do I want with a stick, I don't intend to fight anybody... There was one who fought, wool on yer nose..."

"Okay," said Kandid. "I'll get you one myself. We leave day after tomorrow. Don't forget."

He turned and retraced his steps. Still the same old Buster. None of them had changed. No matter how hard he had tried to get it into their heads, they couldn't grasp anything, and seemingly, didn't believe what he said.

Deadlings can't be servants to women, you're putting it on there, Dummy, boy, three of them you couldn't drive away. Women are scared stiff of dead-lings, take a look at mine, then tell us again. As for the village going under, that's the Accession happening, nobody needs you to tell them that, what those women of yours have got to do with it I can't make out... Anyway, Dummy, you weren't in the City, go on now, confess, we won't take offense, you tell a rattling good story. Only you haven't been in any City, we all know that, 'cos if anyone gets to the City, they don't come back... It wasn't any women took away your Nava, just robbers, our local ones. You could never fight off robbers. Dummy. Though a man you are, of course, of the bravest, and the way you tackle deadlings - that's just terrible to watch..."

Any idea of approaching destruction simply couldn't enter their heads. Destruction was approaching too slowly and began its advance too long ago. Probably, the trouble was that destruction was a concept linked with immediacy, right now, with some sort of catastrophe. They were unable and had no desire to generalize, couldn't and wouldn't think of the world outside their village. There was the village and there was the forest. The forest was the more powerful, but then the forest had always been and always would be more powerful. What had destruction to do with it? What destruction do you mean? It's just life. Now, when a tree crushes somebody, that's destruction all right, but you've just got to use your head and figure out what's what... One day they'd realize. When there were no women left; when the swamps had advanced up to the house walls; when subterranean springs were tapped and the lilac mist hung over the rooftops... Or maybe they wouldn't even then - just say: "Can't live here anymore - the Accession." And go off to build a new village...

Hopalong was sitting before his door, pouring ferment on a prop of mushrooms that had come up during the night, and preparing to breakfast.

"Take a seat," said he affably. "Something to eat? Good mushrooms."

"I will," said Kandid and seated himself alongside.

"Eat up, eat up," said Hopalong. "Now you've got no Nava, while you're adjusting yourself without Nava.

I've heard you're going off again. Who was it telling me? Ah, yes now, it was you yourself said to me: I'm going, so you did. No sitting at home for you. Better if you did, would have been better... To the Reed-beds is it, or the Anthills? I'd go with you to the Reed-beds. You and I, we'd turn right down the street, pass by way of the scrub, we would, we'd stock up with mushrooms there at the same time, we'd take along some ferment and eat - grand mushrooms there in the scrub, not like in the village, don't grow anywhere else either, but there eat and eat, never get enough... When we'd eaten, you and I, we'd leave the scrub, then past Bread Fen, eat again there - fine cereals grow there, sweet, amazing, growing on the marsh, on the mud there and cereal's like that coming up... Well, after that, of course, straight after the sun, three days walking, and there's your Reed-beds..."

"We're going to Devil's Rocks," Kandid patiently reminded him. "Leaving day after tomorrow. Buster's going too."

Hopalong shook his head, dubiously. "Devil's Rocks..." he repeated. "No, Dummy, we won't get to Devil's Rocks, won't get there. Do you know where it is, Devil's Rocks? Maybe they don't even exist, people just say: Rocks, they say, Devilish... So I'm not going to Devil's Rocks, I don't believe in them. If it was to the City now, or the Anthills, still better, that's a stone's throw from here, right next door... Listen, Dummy, let's go, you and I, to the Anthills. Buster'll go too... I've never been there since the time I damaged my leg. Nava often used to beg me: let's go, she says, Hopalong, to the Anthills... Wanted, you see, to have a look at the hollow tree, where I hurt my leg... I tell her I don't remember where that hollow tree is, and anyway, maybe there's no Anthills there anymore, it was long ago when I was there."

Kandid masticated mushroom and regarded Hopalong. Hopalong talked and talked about the Reed-beds, about the Anthills, his eyes were downcast and he looked at Kandid only occasionally. You're a good man, Hopalong, and a kind one, a great orator, the elder takes notice of you, and Buster, and the old man is just terrified of you, it wasn't an accident that you were the best friend and companion to the notable Anger-Martyr, a man questing, an unquiet man, one who found nothing and rotted in the forest... However, that's the trouble: you don't want to let me go into the forest, Hopalong, you pity the wretch. The forest is a place of danger and disaster, where many have gone and few returned, and if they have returned they're badly frightened, and, occasionally, crippled ... one with a broken leg, another with ... And you pretend, Hopalong, out of cunning either to be a halfwit yourself or to take Dummy for one, but really you are sure of one thing: if Dummy has come back once, having lost a girl, two such miracles can't happen...

"Listen, Hopalong," said Kandid. "Hear me out carefully. Say what you want, think what you like, but T ask one thing of you: don't abandon me, go into the forest with me. I shall need you very much in the forest, Hopalong, we're setting off the day after tomorrow and I want you very much to be with us. Do you understand?"

Hopalong looked at Kandid and his washed-out eyes were inscrutable.

"Surely," he said. "I understand you very well. We'll go together then. So we go out from here, turn left, go as far as the field, and past the two stones, to the path. You can tell this path straight away, there's so many boulders you can break your leg... Yes, eat them up, Dummy, they're fine... By this path, then we'll get to the mushroom village, I've told you about that already, I think, it's empty, all grown over with mushrooms, not like these ones here for example, nasty ones, we won't eat them, you can get sick or die that way. So we won't even stop in that village we'll press on right away and after a time we'll get to Funny Village, they make pots out of earth there, what next? That happened with them after the blue grass went through. Nothing happened, no sickness even, they just started making their pots out of earth... We won't stop there either, nothing to stop there for, we'll go sharp right from them and there's your Clay Clearing for you."

Perhaps I shouldn't take you then? thought Kandid. You've been there already, the forest has chewed you over, and who knows, maybe you've already rolled on the ground yelling with pain and fear with a young girl standing over you, biting her delicious lip, her childish littie palms outspread. I don't know, don't know. But I've got to go. Grab one at least, two at least, find everything out, sort every last bit out... After that? Doomed, doomed and wretched. Or rather - happy and doomed, since they don't know they're doomed, that the mighty of their world see in them only a dirty tribe of ravishers, that the mighty have already aimed at them clouds of controlled viruses, columns of robots, the very forest itself, that for them everything is preordained and - worst of all - that historical truth here, in the forest, is not on their side, they are relics, condemned to destruction by objective laws, and to assist them means to go against progress, to delay progress on some tiny sector of the front. Only that doesn't interest me, thought Kandid. What has their progress to do with me, it's not my progress and I call it progress only because there's no other suitable word... Here the head doesn't choose. The heart chooses. Natural laws are neither good nor bad, they're outside morality. But I'm not! If those Maidens had picked me up, cured me and showed me kindness, accepted me as one of themselves, taken pity on me - well, then, I would probably have taken the side of this progress easily and naturally, and Hopalong and all these villages would have been for me an exasperating survival, taking up too much effort for too long... But perhaps not, perhaps it wouldn't have been simple and easy, I can't stand it when people are regarded as animals. But perhaps it's a matter of terminology, and if I'd learned the women's language, everything would have sounded different to me: enemies of progress, gluttonous stupid idlers... Ideals... Great aims... Natural laws... And for the sake of this annihilate half the inhabitants! No, that's not for me. In any language, that's not for me. What do I care if Hopalong is a pebble in the millstones of their progress? And if I ever manage to reach the biostation, which I probably won't, I'll do everything I can to stop those millstones. Anyway, if I reach the biostation... M - yes. It's odd, it's never occurred to me before to look at the Directorate from the side. And Hopalong never dreams of looking at the forest from the side. Nor do those Maidens, either, probably. And it's really a curious spectacle - the Directorate, seen from above. All right, I'll have a think about that later.

"We're agreed, then," he said. "We leave day after tomorrow."

"Surely," replied Hopalong at once. "Sharp left from me..."

A sudden hubbub was heard from the field. Women began shrieking. A great many voices began shouting out in unison:

"Dummy! Dummy! Hey, Dummy!"

Hopalong roused himself.

"Doubtless deadlines!" said he, rising hastily. "Come on, Dummy, don't sit there, I want to watch."

Kandid got up, drew the scalpel from his blouse, and strode off to the outskirts of the village.