The Chrysalids

14

I came back slowly, lingering for what seemed a long time only half-aware.

Rosalind was calling me; the real Rosalind, the one who dwelt inside, and showed herself too seldom. The other, the practical, capable one, was her own convincing creation, not herself. I had seen her begin to build it when she was a sensitive, fearful, yet determined child. She became aware by instinct, perhaps sooner than the rest of us, that she was in a hostile world, and deliberately equipped herself to face it. The armour had grown slowly, plate by plate. I had seen her find her weapons and become skilled with them, watched her construct a character so thoroughly and wear it so constantly that for spells she almost deceived herself.

I loved the girl one could see. I loved her tall slim shape, the poise of her neck, her small, pointed breasts, her long, slim legs: and the way she moved, and the sureness of her hands, and her lips when she smiled. I loved the bronze-gold hair that felt like heavy silk in one’s hand, her satin-skinned shoulders, her velvet cheeks: and the warmth of her body, and the scent of her breath.

All these were easy to love — too easy: anyone must love them.

They needed her defences: the crust of independence and indifference: the air of practical, decisive reliability; the unroused interest, the aloof manner. The qualities were not intended to endear, and at times they could hurt; but one who had seen the how and why of them could admire them, if only as a triumph of art over nature.

But now it was the under-Rosalind calling gently, forlornly, all armour thrown aside, the heart naked.

And again there are no words.

Words exist that can, used by a poet, achieve a dim monochrome of the body’s love, but beyond that they fail clumsily.

My love flowed out to her, hers back to me. Mine stroked and soothed. Hers caressed. The distance — and the difference — between us dwindled and vanished. We could meet, mingle, and blend. Neither one of us existed any more; for a time there was a single being that was both. There was escape from the solitary cell; a brief symbiosis, sharing all the world….

No one else knew the hidden Rosalind. Even Michael and the rest caught only glimpses of her. They did not know at what cost the overt Rosalind had been wrought. None of them knew my dear, tender Rosalind longing for escape, gentleness, and love; grown afraid now of what she had built for her own protection; yet more afraid still, of facing life without it.

Duration is nothing. Perhaps it was only for an instant we were together again. The importance of a point is in its existence; it has no dimensions.

Then we were apart, and I was becoming aware of mundane things: a dim grey sky; considerable discomfort; and, presently, Michael, anxiously inquiring what had happened to me. With an effort I raked my wits together.

‘I don’t know — something hit me,’ I told him, ‘but I think I’m all right now — except that my head aches, and I’m damned uncomfortable.’

It was only as I replied that I perceived why I was so uncomfortable — that I was still in the pannier, but sort of folded into it, and the pannier itself was still in motion.

Michael did not find that very informative. He applied to Rosalind.

‘They jumped down on us from overhanging branches. Four or five of them. One landed right on top of David,’ she explained.

‘They?’ asked Michael.

‘Fringes people,’ she told him.

I was relieved. It had occurred to me that we might have been outflanked by the others. I was on the point of asking what was happening now when Michael inquired:

‘Was it you they fired at last night?’

I admitted that we had been fired at, but there might have been other firing for all I knew.

‘No. Only one lot,’ he told us with disappointment. ‘I hoped they’d made a mistake and were on a false trail. We’ve all been called together. They think it’s too risky to come farther into the Fringes in small groups. We’re supposed to be assembled to move off in four hours or so from now. Round about a hundred they reckon. They’ve decided that if we do meet any Fringes people and give them a good hiding it’ll save trouble later on, anyway. You’d better get rid of those great-horses — you’ll never cover your trail while you have them.’

‘A bit late for that advice,’ Rosalind told him. ‘I’m in a pannier on the first horse with my thumbs tied together, and David’s in a pannier on the second.’

‘Where’s Petra?’ asked Michael anxiously.

‘Oh, she’s all right. She’s in the other pannier of this horse, fraternizing with the man in charge.’

‘What happened, exactly?’ Michael demanded.

‘Well, first they dropped on us, and then a lot more came out of the trees and steadied up the horses. They made us get down and lifted David down. Then when they’d talked and argued for a bit, they decided to get rid of us. So they loaded us into the panniers again, like this, and put a man on each horse and sent us on — the same way we’d been going.’

‘Farther into the Fringes, that is?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, at least that’s the best direction,’ Michael commented. ‘What’s the attitude? Threatening?’

‘Oh, no. They’re just being careful we don’t run off. They seemed to have some idea who we were, but weren’t quite sure what to do with us. They argued a bit over that, but they were much more interested in the great-horses really, I think. The man on this horse seems to be quite harmless. He’s talking to Petra with an odd sort of earnestness — I’m not sure he isn’t a little simple.’

‘Can you find out what they’re intending to do with you?’

‘I did ask, but I don’t think he knows. He’s just been told to take us somewhere.’

‘Well—’ Michael seemed at a loss for once. ‘Well, I suppose all we can do is wait and see — but it’ll do no harm to let him know we’ll be coming after you.’

He left it at that for the moment.

I struggled and wriggled round. With some difficulty I managed to get on to my feet and stand up in the swaying basket. The man in the other pannier looked round at me quite amiably.

‘Whoa, there!’ he said to the great-horse, and reined in. He unslung a leather bottle from his shoulder, and swung it across to me on the strap. I uncorked it, drank gratefully, and swung it back to him. We went on.

I was able to see our surroundings now. It was broken country, no longer thick forest, though well-wooded, and even a first look at it assured me that my father had been right about normality being mocked in these parts. I could scarcely identify a single tree with certainty. There were familiar trunks supporting the wrong shape of tree: familiar types of branches growing out of the wrong kind of bark, and bearing the wrong kind of leaves. For a while our view to the left was cut off by a fantastically-woven fence of immense bramble trunks with spines as big as shovels. In another place a stretch of ground looked like a dried-out river-bed full of large boulders, but the boulders turned out to be globular fungi set as close together as they could grow. There were trees with trunks too soft to stand upright, so that they looped over and grew along the ground. Here and there were patches of miniature trees, shrunk and gnarled, and looking centuries old.

I glanced surreptitiously again at the man in the other pannier. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him except that he looked very dirty, as were his ragged clothes and crumpled hat. He caught my eye on him.

‘Never been in the Fringes before, boy?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I told him. ‘Is it all like this?’

He grinned, and shook his head.

‘None of it’s like any other part. That’s why the Fringes is the Fringes; pretty near nothing grows true to stock here, yet.’

‘Yet—?’ I repeated.

‘Sure. It’ll settle down, though, in time. Wild Country was Fringes once, but it’s steadier now; likely the parts you come from were Wild Country once, but they’ve settled down more. God’s little game of patience I reckon it is, but He certainly takes His time over it.’

‘God?’ I said doubtfully. ‘They’ve always taught us that it’s the Devil that rules in the Fringes.’

He shook his head.

‘That’s what they tell you over there. ‘Tisn’t so, boy. It’s your parts where the old Devil’s hanging on and looking after his own. Arrogant, they are. The true image, and all that…. Want to be like the Old People. Tribulation hasn’t taught ‘em a thing….

‘The Old People thought they were the tops, too. Had ideals, they did; knew just how the world ought to be run. All they had to do was get it fixed up comfortable, and keep it that way; then everybody’d be fine, on account of their ideas being a lot more civilized than God’s.’

He shook his head.

‘Didn’t work out, boy. Couldn’t work out. They weren’t God’s last word like they thought: God doesn’t have any last word. If He did He’d be dead. But He isn’t dead; and He changes and grows, like everything else that’s alive. So when they were doing their best to get everything fixed and tidy on some kind of eternal lines they’d thought up for themselves, He sent along Tribulation to bust it up and remind ‘em that life is change.

‘He saw it wasn’t going to come out the way things lay, so He shuffled the pack to see if it wouldn’t give a better break next time.’

He paused to consider that a moment, and went on:

‘Maybe He didn’t shuffle quite enough. The same sequences seem to have got kind of stuck together some places. Parts where you come from, for instance. There they are, still on the same lines, still reckoning they’re the last word, still trying their damnedest to stay as they are and fix up just the same state of affairs that brought Tribulation last time. One day He’s going to get pretty tired of the way they can’t learn a lesson, and start showing them another trick or two.’

‘Oh,’ I said, vaguely but safely. It was odd, I felt, how many people seemed to have positive, if conflicting, information upon God’s views.

The man did not seem altogether satisfied that he had got his point home. He waved his hand at the deviational landscape about us, and I suddenly noticed his own irregularity: the right hand lacked the first three fingers.

‘Some day,’ he proclaimed, ‘something is going to steady down out of all this. It’ll be new, and new kinds of plants mean new creatures. Tribulation was a shake-up to give us a new start.’

‘But where they can make the stock breed true, they destroy Deviations,’ I pointed out.

‘They try to; they think they do,’ he agreed. ‘They’re pig-headedly determined to keep the Old People’s standards — but do they? Can they? How do they know that their crops and their fruit and their vegetables are just the same? Aren’t there disputes? And doesn’t it nearly always turn out that the breed with the higher yield is accepted in the end? Aren’t cattle cross-bred to get hardiness, or milk-yield, or meat? Sure, they can wipe out the obvious deviations, but are you sure that the Old people would recognize any of the present breeds at all? I’m not, by any means. You can’t stop it, you see. You can be obstructive and destructive, and you can slow it all up and distort it for your own ends, but somehow it keeps on happening. Just look at these horses.’

‘They’re government approved,’ I told him.

‘Sure. That’s just what I mean,’ he said.

‘But if it keeps on anyway, I don’t see why there had to be Tribulation,’ I objected.

‘For other forms it keeps on keeping on,’ he said, ‘but not for man, not for kinds like the Old People and your people, if they can help it. They stamp on any change: they close the way and keep the type fixed because they’ve got the arrogance to think themselves perfect. As they reckon it, they, and only they, are in the true image; very well, then it follows that if the image is true, they themselves must be God: and, being God, they reckon themselves entitled to decree, “thus far, and no farther.” That is their great sin: they try to strangle the life out of Life.’

There was an air about the last few sentences, rather out of keeping with the rest, which caused me to suspect I had encountered some kind of creed once more. I decided to shift the conversation on to a more practical plane by inquiring why we had been taken prisoner.

He did not seem very sure about that, except to assure me that it was always done when any stranger was found entering Fringes territory.

I thought that over, and then got into touch with Michael again.

‘What do you suggest we tell them?’ I asked. ‘I imagine there’ll be an examination. When they find we’re physically normal we shall have to give some reason for being on the run.’

‘Best to tell them the truth, only minimize it. Play it right down the way Katherine and Sally did. Just let them know enough to account for it,’ he suggested.

‘Very well,’ I agreed. ‘Do you understand that, Petra? You tell them you can just make think-pictures to Rosalind and me. Nothing about Michael, or Sealand people.’

‘The Sealand people are coming to help. They’re not so far away as they were, now,’ she told us confidently.

Michael received that with scepticism. ‘All very nice — if they can. But don’t mention them.’

‘All right,’ Petra agreed.

We discussed whether we would tell our two guards about the intended pursuit, and decided it would do no harm.

The man in the other pannier showed no surprise at the news.

‘Good. That’ll suit us,’ he said. But he explained no further, and we plodded steadily on.

Petra began to converse with her distant friend again, and there was no doubt that the distance was less. Petra did not have to use such disturbing force to reach her, and for the first time I was able by straining hard to catch bits of the other side of the exchange. Rosalind caught it, too. She put out a question as strongly as she could. The unknown strengthened her projection and came to us clearly, pleased to have made contact, and anxious to know more than Petra could tell.

Rosalind explained what she could of our present situation, and that we did not seem to be in immediate danger. The other advised:

‘Be cautious. Agree to whatever they say, and play for time. Be emphatic about the danger you are in from your own people. It is difficult to advise you without knowing the tribe. Some deviational tribes detest the appearance of normality. It can’t do any harm to exaggerate how different you are inside from your own people. The really important matter is the little girl. Keep her safe at all costs. We have never before known such a power of projection in one so young. What is her name?’

Rosalind spelt it out in letter-forms. Then she asked:

‘But who are you? What is this Sealand?’

‘We are the New People — your kind of people. The people who can think-together. We’re the people who are going to build a new kind of world — different from the Old People’s world, and from the savages’.’

‘The kind of people that God intended, perhaps?’ I inquired, with a feeling of being on familiar ground again.

‘I don’t know about that. Who does? But we do know that we can make a better world than the Old People did. They were only ingenious half-humans, little better than savages; all living shut off from one another, with only clumsy words to link them. Often they were shut off still more by different languages, and different beliefs. Some of them could think individually, but they had to remain individuals. Emotions they could sometimes share, but they could not think collectively. When their conditions were primitive they could get along all right, as the animals can; but the more complex they made their world, the less capable they were of dealing with it. They had no means of consensus. They learnt to co-operate constructively in small units; but only destructively in large units. They aspired greedily, and then refused to face the responsibilities they had created. They created vast problems, and then buried their heads in the sands of idle faith. There was, you see, no real communication, no understanding between them. They could, at their best, be near-sublime animals, but not more.

‘They could never have succeeded. If they had not brought down Tribulation which all but destroyed them; then they would have bred with the carelessness of animals until they had reduced themselves to poverty and misery, and ultimately to starvation and barbarism. One way or another they were foredoomed because they were an inadequate species.’

It occurred to me again that these Sealanders had no little opinion of themselves. To one brought up as I had been this irreverence for the Old People was difficult to take. While I was still wrestling with it Rosalind asked:

‘But you? Where do you come from?’

‘Our ancestors had the good fortune to live on an island — or, rather, two islands — somewhat secluded. They did not escape Tribulation and its effects even there, though it was less violent there than in most places, but they were cut off from the rest of the world, and sank back almost to barbarism. Then, somehow, the strain of people who could think-together began. In time, those who were able to do it best found others who could do it a little, and taught them to develop it. It was natural for the people who could share thoughts to tend to marry one another, so that the strain was strengthened.

‘Later on, they started to discover thought-shape makers in other places, too. That was when they began to understand how fortunate they had been; they found that even in places where physical deviations don’t count for much people who have think-together are usually persecuted.

‘For a long time nothing could be done to help the same kind of people in other places — though some tried to sail to Zealand in canoes, and sometimes they got there — but later, when we had machines again, we were able to fetch some of them to safety. Now we try to do that whenever we make contact — but we have never before made contact at anything like this distance. It is still a strain for me to reach you. It will get easier, but I shall have to stop now. Look after the little girl. She is unique and tremendously important. Protect her at all costs.’

The thought-patterns faded away, leaving nothing for a moment. Then Petra came in. Whatever she may have failed to make of the rest, she had caught the last part all right.

‘That’s me,’ she proclaimed, with satisfaction and totally unnecessary vigour.

We rocked, and recovered.

‘Beware, odious smug child. We haven’t met Hairy Jack yet,’ Rosalind told her, with subduing effect. ‘Michael,’ she added, ‘did all that reach you, too?’

‘Yes,’ Michael responded with a touch of reserve. ‘Condescending, I thought. Sounded as if she were lecturing to children. Still coming from a devil of a long way away, too. I don’t see how they can come fast enough to be any help at all. We shall be starting after you in a few minutes now.’

The great-horses clumped steadily on. The landscape continued to be disturbing and alarming to one brought up in respect for the propriety of forms. Certainly, few things were as fantastic as the growths that Uncle Axel had told of in the south; on the other hand, practically nothing was comfortably familiar, or even orthodox. There was so much confusion that it did not seem to matter any more whether a particular tree was an aberrate or just a miscegenate, but it was a relief to get away from trees and out into open country for a bit — though even there the bushes weren’t homogeneal or identifiable, and the grass was pretty queer, too.

We stopped only once for food and drink, and for no more than half an hour before we were on our way again. Two hours or so later, after several more stretches of woodlands, we reached a medium-sized river. On our side the level ground descended in a sharp, steep bank to the water; on the other stood a line of low, reddish cliffs.

We turned downstream, keeping to the top of the bank. A quarter of a mile along, at a place marked by a grossly deviational tree shaped like a huge wooden pear, and with all its branches growing in one big tuft at the top, a runnel cut well back into the bank and made a way for the horses to get down. We forded the river obliquely, making for a gap in the opposite cliffs When we reached it, it turned out to be little more than a cleft, so narrow in some places that the panniers scraped both walls, and we could scarcely squeeze through. There was quite a hundred yards of it before the way widened and began to slope up to normal ground level.

Where the sides diminished to mere banks seven or eight men stood with bows in their hands. They gaped incredulously at the great-horses, and looked half-inclined to run. Abreast of them, we stopped.

The man in the other pannier jerked his head at me.

‘Down you get, boy,’ he told me.

Petra and Rosalind were already climbing down from the leading great-horse. As I reached the ground the driver gave a thump and both great-horses moved ponderously on. Petra clasped my hand nervously, but for the moment all the ragged, unkempt bowmen were still more interested in the horses than in us.

There was nothing immediately alarming about the group. One of the hands which held a bow had six fingers; one man displayed a head like a polished brown egg, without a hair on it, or on his face; another had immensely large feet and hands; but whatever was wrong with the rest was hidden under their rags.

Rosalind and I shared a feeling of relief at not being confronted with the kinds of grotesquerie we had half expected. Petra, too, was encouraged by finding that none of them fulfilled the traditional description of Hairy Jack. Presently, when they had watched the horses out of sight up a track that disappeared among trees, they turned their attention to us. A couple of them told us to come along, the rest remained where they were.

A well-used path led downwards through woods for a few hundred yards, and then gave on to a clearing. To the right ran a wall of the reddish cliffs again, not more than forty feet high. They appeared to be the reverse side of the ridge which retained the river, and the whole face was pocked by numerous holes, with ladders, roughly made of branches, leading to the higher openings.

The level ground in front was littered with crude huts and tents. One or two small cooking fires smoked among them. A few tattered men and a rather larger number of slatternly-looking women moved around with no great activity.

We wound our way among hovels and refuse-heaps until we reached the largest of the tents. It appeared to be an old rick-cover — the loot, presumably, of some raid — fastened over a framework of lashed poles. A figure seated on a stool just inside the entrance looked up as we approached. The sight of his face jolted me with panic for a moment — it was so like my father’s. Then I recognized him — the same ‘spider-man’ I had seen as a captive at Waknuk, seven or eight years before.

The two men who had brought us pushed us forward, in front of him. He looked the three of us over. His eyes travelled up and down Rosalind’s slim straight figure in a way I did not care for — nor she, either. Then he studied me more carefully, and nodded to himself, as if satisfied over something.

‘Remember me?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I told him.

He shifted his gaze from my face. He let it stray over the conglomeration of hutches and shacks, and then back again to me.

‘Not much like Waknuk,’ he said.

‘Not much,’ I agreed.

He paused quite lengthily, in contemplation. Then:

‘Know who I am?’ he inquired.

‘I think so. I think I found out,’ I told him.

He raised an eyebrow, questioningly.

‘My father had an elder brother,’ I said. ‘He was thought to be normal until he was about three or four years old. Then his certificate was revoked, and he was sent away.’

He nodded slowly.

‘But not quite right,’ he said. ‘His mother loved him. His nurse was fond of him, too. So when they came to take him away he was already missing — but they’d hush that up, of course. They’d hush the whole thing up: pretend it never happened.’ He paused again, reflectively. Presently he added:

‘The eldest son. The heir. Waknuk should be mine. It would be — except for this.‘ He stretched out his long arm, and regarded it for a moment. Then he dropped it and looked at me again.

‘Do you know what the length of a man’s arm should be?’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘Nor do I. But somebody in Rigo does, some expert on the true image. So, no Waknuk — and I must live like a savage among savages. Are you the eldest son?’

‘The only son,’ I told him. ‘There was a younger one, but—’

‘No certificate, eh?’

I nodded.

‘So you, too, have lost Waknuk!’

That aspect of things had never troubled me. I do not think I had ever had any real expectation of inheriting Waknuk. There had always been the sense of insecurity — the expectation, almost the certainty, that one day I should be discovered. I had lived too long with that expectation to feel the resentment that embittered him. Now that it was resolved, I was glad to be safely away, and I told him so. It did not please him. He looked at me thoughtfully.

‘You’ve not the guts to fight for what’s yours by right?’ he suggested.

‘If it’s yours by right, it can’t be mine by right,’ I pointed out. ‘But my meaning was that I’ve had more than enough of living in hiding.’

‘We all live in hiding here,’ he said.

‘Maybe,’ I told him. ‘But you can be your own selves. You don’t have to live a pretence. You don’t have to watch yourselves every moment, and think twice whenever you open your mouths.’

He nodded slowly.

‘We heard about you. We have our ways,’ he said. ‘What I don’t understand is why they are after you in such strength.’

‘We think,’ I explained, ‘that we worry them more than the usual deviants because they’ve no way of identifying us. I fancy they must be suspecting that there are a lot more of us that they haven’t discovered, and they want to get hold of us to make us tell.’

‘An even more than usually good reason for not being caught,’ he said.

I was aware that Michael had come in and that Rosalind was answering him, but I could not attend to two conversations at once, so I left that to her.

‘So they are coming right into the Fringes after you? How many of them?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, considering how to play our hand to the best advantage.

‘From what I’ve heard, you should have ways of finding out,’ he said.

I wondered how much he did know about us, and whether he knew about Michael, too — but that seemed unlikely. With his eyes a little narrowed, he went on:

‘It’ll be better not to fool with us, boy. It’s you they’re after, and you’ve brought trouble this way with you. Why should we care what happens to you? Quite easy to put one of you where they’d find you.’

Petra caught the implication of that, and panicked.

‘More than a hundred men,’ she said.

He turned a thoughtful eye on her for a moment.

‘So there is one of you with them — I rather thought there might be,’ he observed, and nodded again. ‘A hundred men is a great many to send after just you three. Too many… I see…’ He turned back to me. ‘There will have been rumours lately about trouble working up in the Fringes?’

‘Yes,’ I admitted.

He grinned.

‘So it comes in handy. For the first time they decide that they will take the initiative, and invade us — and pick you up, too, of course. They’ll be following your trail, naturally. How far have they got?’

I consulted Michael, and learnt that the main body had still some miles to go before they would join the party that had fired on us and bolted the great-horses. The difficulty then was to find a way of conveying the position intelligibly to the man in front of me. He appreciated that, and did not seem greatly perturbed.

‘Is your father with them?’ he asked.

That was a question which I had been careful not to put to Michael before. I did not put it now. I simply paused for a moment, and then told him ‘ No.’ Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Petra about to speak and felt Rosalind pounce on her.

‘A pity,’ said the spidery man. ‘It’s quite a time now I’ve been hoping that one day I’d meet your father on equal terms. From what I’ve heard I should have thought he’d be there. Maybe he’s not such a valiant champion of the true image as they say.’ He went on looking at me with a steady, penetrating gaze. I could feel Rosalind’s sympathy and understanding why I had not put the question to Michael, like a hand-clasp.

Then, quite suddenly, the man dismissed me from his attention and turned to consider Rosalind. She looked back at him. She stood with her straight, confident air, eyeing him levelly and coldly for long seconds. Then, suddenly, to my astonishment, she broke. Her eyes dropped. She flushed. He smiled slightly….

But he was wrong. It was not surrender to the stronger character, the conqueror. It was loathing, a horror which broke her defences from within. I had a glimpse of him from her mind, hideously exaggerated. The fears she hid so well burst up and she was terrified; not as a woman weakened by a man, but as a child in terror of a monstrosity. Petra, too, caught the involuntary shape, and it shocked her into a scream.

I jumped full at the man, overturning the stool and sending him sprawling. The two men behind us leapt after me, but I got in at least one good blow before they could drag me off.

The spider-man sat up, and rubbed his jaw. He grinned at me, but not with any amusement.

‘Does you credit,’ he conceded, ‘but not much more.’ He got up on his gangling legs. ‘Not seen much of the women around here, have you, boy? Take a look at ‘em as you go. Maybe you’ll understand a bit more. Besides, this one can have children. I’ve had a fancy for some children a long time now — even if they do happen to take after their father a bit.’ He grinned briefly again, and then frowned at me. ‘Better take it the way it is, boy. Be a sensible fellow. I don’t give second chances.’

He looked from me to the men who were holding me.

‘Chuck him out,’ he told them. ‘And if he doesn’t seem to understand that that means stay out, shoot him.’

The two of them jerked me round and marched me off. At the edge of the clearing one of them helped me along a path with his boot.

‘Keep on going,’ he said.

I got up and turned round, but one of them had an arrow trained on me. He gave a shake of his head to urge me on. So I did what I was told, kept on going — for a few yards, until the trees hid me; then I doubled back under cover.

Just what they were expecting. But they didn’t shoot me; they just beat me up and slung me back among the undergrowth. I remember flying through the air, but I don’t remember landing….