Hugo awards the short st.., p.174
Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 1), page 174
SOMEWHERE OVER THE SPACE/TIME Bow
Where did the Myrmidopterans come from? Who were they? These were questions that Philip K. pondered even in the midst of his ineffable bliss. As he was eaten, his consciousness grew sharper, more aware, almost uncanny in its extrapolations. And he found an answer . . . for the first question, at least. The Myrmidopterans came from beyond the figurative horizon of the universe, from over the ultimate curvature where space bent back on itself. Philip K. understood that a paradox was involved here, perhaps even an obfuscation which words, numbers, and ideograms could never resolve into an explanation commensurate with the lucid reality. Never mind. The Myrmidopterans had seemed to approach Philip K. from every direction, from every conceivable point in the plenum. This fact was significant. It symbolized the creatures' customary independence o/the space/time continuum to which our physical universe belongs. "Yes," Philip K. admitted to himself, "they operate in the physical universe, they even have physical demands to meet—as demonstrated by their devouring of me. But they belong to the . . . Outer Demesnes of Creation, a nonplace where they have an ethereal existence that this continuum (into which they must occasionally venture) always debases." How did Philip K. know? He knew. The Myrmidopterans ate; therefore, he knew.
MOVING DAY
Then they stopped feeding altogether. One wave of the creatures lifted from his torn body, pulled themselves effortlessly out of his gravitational influence, and dispersed to the . . . well, the uttermost bounds of night. Golden and silver, silver and golden— until Philip K. could no longer see them. How quickly they vanished, more quickly than he would have believed possible. There, then gone. Of the second wave of Myrmidopterans, which he then expected to descend, only twelve remained, hovering at various points over him in outer space. He saw them clearly, for his optical cells, he understood, were now continuous with his whole being, not merely with his long-since-devoured original surface—a benefit owing to his guests' miraculous saliva and their concern for his slow initiation into The Mystery. These twelve archangels began canting their wings in such a way that they maneuvered him, Philip K., out of his orbit around the angrily expanding Papa. "Papa's going to collapse," he told himself, "he's going to go through a series of collapses, all of them so sudden as to be almost simultaneous." (Again, Philip K. knew; he simply knew.) As they moved him farther and farther out, by an arcane technology whose secret he had a dim intuition of, the Myrmidopterans used their great wings to reflect the giant's warming rays on every inch of his surface. They were not going to let him be exploded, neither were they going to let him freeze. In more than one sense of the word, Philip K. was moved. But what would these desperation tactics avail them? If Papa went nova, finally exploded, and threw out the slaglike elements manufactured in its one-hundred-billion-degree furnace, none of them would escape, neither he nor the twelve guardian spirits maneuvering him ever outward. Had he been preserved from rotting and his flesh restored like Osiris's (for Philip K. was whole again, though still approximately Mars-sized) only to
be flash-vaporized or, surviving that, blown to puree by Papa's extruded shrapnel? No. The Myrmidopterans would not permit it, assuredly they would not.
THE NOVA EXPRESS
Papa blew. But just before Philip K.'s old and in many ways beloved primary bombarded him and his escorts with either deadly radiation or deadly debris, the Myrmidopterans glided free of him and positioned themselves in a halolike ring above his northern pole (the one with the stem). Then they canted their wings and with the refracted energy of both the raging solar wind and their own spirits pushed Philip K. into an invisible slot in space. Before disappearing into it completely, however, he looked back and saw the twelve archangels spread wide their blinding wings and . . . wink out of existence. In our physical universe, at least. Then Philip K. himself was in another continuum, another reality, and could feel himself falling through it like a great Newtonian pomme d'amour. Immediately after the winking out of the twelve Myrmidopterans, Papa blew; and Philip K., even in the new reality, was being propelled in part by the colossal concussion resulting from that event. He had hitched, with considerable assistance, a ride on the Nova Express. But where to, he wondered, and why?
SPECIAL EFFECTS ARE DO-IT-YOURSELF UNDERTAKINGS
In transit between the solar system of his defunct red giant and wherever he now happened to be going, Philip K. watched—among other things—the colors stream past. Colors, lights, elongated stars; fiery smells, burning gong-sounds, ripplings of water, sheets of sensuous time. This catalogue makes no sense, or very little sense, expressed in linguistic terms; therefore, imagine any nonverbal experience that involves those senses whereby sense may indeed be made of this catalogue. Light shows, Moog music, and cinematic special effects are good starting places. Do not ask me to be more specific, even though I could; allusion to other works, other media, is at best a risky business, and you will do well to exercise your own imaginative powers in conjuring up a mental picture of the transfinite reality through which Philip K. plunged. Call it the avenue beyond a stargate. Call it the interior of a chrono-synclastic infundibulum. Call it the enigmatic subjective well that one may enter via a black hole. Call it sub-, para-, warp-, anti-, counter-, or even id-space. Many do. The nomenclature, however, will fail to do justice to the transfinite reality itself, the one in which Philip K. discovered that he comprehended The Mystery that the Myrmidopterans had intended him, as a tomato, to comprehend in toto. For as he fell, or was propelled, or simply remained stationary while the new continuum roared vehemently by, he bathed in the same ineffable pleasure he had felt during the many dining-ins of the gold and silver ant-moths. At the same time, he came to understand (1) the identity of these beings, (2) his destination, (3) the nature of his mission, and (4) the glorious and terrible meaning of his bizarre metamorphosis. All became truly clear to him, everything. And this time his enlightenment was not an illusion, not a metaphysical red herring like the Tiresias Syndrome. For, you see, Philip K. had evolved beyond self, beyond illusion, beyond the bonds of space/time—beyond everything, in fact, but his roguish giant-tomatohood.
How THE MANDALA TURNED
(or, What Philip K. Learned)
Although one ought to keep in mind that his learning process began with the first feast of the ant-moths, this is what Philip K. discovered in transit between two realities: It was not by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that one put on the omniscience and the subtle ecstasy of gods, but instead by becoming the fruit itself—in the form of a sentient, evolving world—and then by being eaten by the seraphically winged, beatifically silver, messianically golden Myrmidopterans. They, of course, were the incarnate (so to speak) messengers of the universe's supreme godhead. By being consumed, one was saved, apotheosized, and lifted to the omega point of man's evolutionary development. This was the fate of humankind, and he, Philip K., only a short time before—on an absolute, extrauniversal scale—an insignificant man of few talents and small means, had been chosen by the Myrmidopterans to reveal to the struggling masses of his own species their ineluctable destiny.
Philip K. was again profoundly moved, the heavens sang about him with reverberant hosannas, all of creation seemed to open up for him like a blood-crimson bud. Filled with bright awe, then, and his own stingingly sweet ichor, Philip K. popped back into our physical universe in the immediate vicinity of Earth (incidentally capturing the moon away from its rightful owner). Then he sat in the skies of an astonished North America just as if he had always been there. Millions died as a result of the tidal upheavals he unfortunately wrought, but this was all in the evolutionary Game Plan of the supreme godhead, and Philip K. felt exultation rather than remorse. (He did wonder briefly if Houston had been swamped and Lydia P. drowned.) He was a rogue tomato, yes, but no portent of doom. He was the messenger of the New Annunciation, and he had come to apprise his people of it. Floating three hundred fifty thousand miles from Earth, he had no idea how he would deliver this message, the news that the mandala of ignorance, knowledge, and ultimate perception was about to complete its first round. No idea at all. Not any.
None.
CODA
But, as the saying goes, he would think of something.
SAIL THE TIDE OF MOURNING
Richard A. Lupoff
Nurundere, captain, ordered his lighter to be hauled from the storage deck of Djanggawul and fitted for use of Jiritzu. Sky heroes bent their efforts, sweat glistening on black skin, dirt of labor staining white duck trousers and grip-soled shoes.
Much thought was given to their work and the reasons for it although little was said of the matter. The people of Yurakosi were not given greatly to speech: a taciturnity, self-containment was part of the heritage of their race, from the days of their desert isolation in the heartland of Australia, O'Earth.
They alone of the scattered children of Sol carried the gene that let them sail the membrane ships. They alone carried in their skin the pigment that filtered out the deadly radiation of the tracks between the stars, that permitted them to clamber up masts and through rigging as had their ancestors on the pacific waters of O'Earth centuries before, while spacemen of other breeds clumbered and heaved about in their massive vacuum armor.
The brilliant light of the multiple star Yirrkalla wheeled overhead; Djanggawul had completed her great tack and pointed her figureheaded prow toward home, toward Yurakosi, bearing the melancholy tale of her voyage to N'Jaja and N'Ala and the death of a passenger, Ham Tamdje of N'Jaja, at the hands of the sky hero Jiritzu.
Djanggawul bore yet the scars of the attempt by surner meat to seize control of the membrane ship and force from her crew the secret of their ability to live unsuited in space. At N'Ala she had shuttled the surviving surners to the orbiting Port Corley, along with the bodies of those killed in the mutiny.
And now, passing the great tack at Yirrkalla, Djanggawul heeled beneath the titanic solar wind that would fill all sails that bellied out from the rows of masts on her three flat decks. With each moment the ship gained momentum. Under the careful piloting of her first officer Uraroju she would sail to Yurakosi on this momentum and on the force of the interstellar winds she encountered on her great arcing course. There would be no need to start her auxiliary engines, to annihilate any of the precious rod of collapsed matter that hung suspended through the long axis of Djanggawul, where it provided the artificial gravity for the ship.
Sky heroes swarmed the storage deck of the ship, readying Nurundere's lighter for Jiritzu. They fitted the tiny ship with food concentrate, tested her recyclers, tried her hinged mast fittings, and clamped the masts to the hull of the lighter in anticipation of her catapulting from the deck of Djanggawul.
When the lighter was fully prepared, the sky hero Baime went to Djanggawul's bridge to inform Nurundere and Uraroju. Others in the work party hauled the lighter from its place in the storage deck, refixed the now vacant moorings that had held the lighter, and worked the tiny ship through a great cargo hatch onto the main deck of Djanggawul.
High above the deck Jiritzu stood balanced lightly on a spar near the top of a mainmast. He was dressed like any sky hero of the crew of Djanggawul, in white trousers and canvas shoes, black knitted cap and turtleneck sweater, the costume declared by Yurakosi tradition to have been the costume of the sky heroes' ancestors on O'Earth.
A tiny radio had been implanted behind one ear, and strapped to his thigh was a close-air generator. The oxygen-rich mixture that it slowly emitted clung to Jiritzu, providing him with the air he needed for breath, insulating him from the extreme temperatures of space, providing an invisible pressure suit that protected him from the vacuum all around.
He watched the cargo hatch roll slowly back onto the deck beneath him, the one of Djanggawul's three identical outer decks most easily accessible from the lighter's storage place, and watched his fellow sky heroes haul the lighter onto the deck. He kept his radio turned off, and by tacit agreement no man or woman of Djanggawul's crew, not even Jiritzu's kunapi half Dua, approached the mast he had climbed or made any sign of knowing of his presence.
Nurundere himself strode from the bridge of his ship to inspect the lighter, now standing empty on the deck. Jiritzu could tell him easily, not merely by his distinctive cap of white with its wide black band, but by his pale skin, the protective pigmentation of the Yurakosi almost totally faded now, whited out by the passing years and long exposure to the radiation of the naked stars.
Soon Nurundere would have to return to Yurakosi himself, give himself over to the life of a ground squirmer, crawl with the small children and the old men and women of Yurakosi, the only inhabitants of the planet whose able sons and daughters were desperately needed to sail the membrane ships between the stars.
Not so Jiritzu.
Again and again his mind flashed to the terrible scene inside the passenger tank of Djanggawul, the moments when the surner meat, the passengers whose payments financed the flights of the membrane ships and filled the coffers of the sky heroes' home planet, had shown firearms—an act unknown on the peaceful, neutral ships—and had briefly imprisoned much of the crew.
Again Jiritzu relived the horror of finding his betrothed, Miralaidj, daughter of Wuluwaid and Bunbulama, dead at the hand of Ham Tamdje.
Again Jiritzu relived the pleasure, the terrible pleasure of killing Ham Tamdje himself, with his bare hands. At the thought he felt sweat burst from his face and hands. His leg, where a bullet fired by Ham Tamdje had torn the flesh, throbbed with pain.
He closed his eyes tightly, turned his face from the deck below him to the blackness above, reopened his eyes.
Above him gleamed the constellation Yirrkalla, beneath which Djanggawul had made her great tack. The colored stars formed the facial features of the Rainbow Serpent: the pale, yellow-green eyes, the angry white nostrils, the blood-red venomous fangs. And beyond Yirrkalla, fading, fading across the immensity of the heavens, the body of the Rainbow Serpent himself, writhing and curving across the void that separated galaxies.
A drop of sweat fell from Jiritzu's forehead, rolled to the edge of one eye where it stung like a tiny insect, then rolled on, enlarged by a tear
He looked downward, saw that the work on the deck was completed, the lighter ready for his use. With heavy heart he lowered himself slowly to the deck of Djanggawul, avoiding the acrobatic tumbles that had been his great joy since his earliest days on the membrane ships.
He walked slowly across the deck of the great ship, halted before the captain's lighter. A party of sky heroes had assembled at the lighter. Jiritzu examined their faces, found in them a mixture of sadness at the loss of a friend and fellow and resignation at what they knew would follow.
Nurundere was there himself. The captain of Djanggawul opened his arms, facing directly toward Jiritzu. He moved his lips in speech but Jiritzu left his implanted radio turned off. The meaning of Nurundere was clear without words.
Jiritzu came to his captain. They embraced. Jiritzu felt the strong arms of the older man clasp about his shoulders. Then he was released, stepped back.
Beside Nurundere stood Uraroju, first officer of Djanggawul. Some junior officer, then, had been left upon the bridge. Uraroju was a younger person than Nurundere, her protective pigmentation still strong, barely beginning to white out; she would have many years before her as a sky hero, would surely become captain of Djanggawul with Nurundere's retirement to Yurakosi.
They embraced, Jiritzu for a moment closing his eyes, permitting himself to pretend that Uraroju was his own mother, that he was visiting his old people in their town of Kaitjouga on Yurakosi. The warmth of Uraroju, the feel of her womanhood, comforted Jiritzu. Then they released each other, and he turned to other men and women he would never again see, men and women who must return to Yurakosi with the tale of the tragic things that had transpired between Port Upatoi and Yirrkalla on the outward leg of their sail, and with the tale of the end of Jiritzu.
Watilun he embraced, Watilun the machinist and hero of the battle against the mutineers.
Baime he embraced, a common sailor, Jiritzu's messmate.
Kutjara he embraced, Kutjara with whom he had often swarmed the lines of Djanggawul.
Only Dua, kunapi half to Jiritzu of the aranda, spoke in their parting embrace. Radios mute, Dua spoke in the moments when his close-air envelope and that of Jiritzu were merged, when common speech could be carried without electronic aid.
"Bidjiwara is not here," Dua said. None but Jiritzu could hear this. "The loss of her aranda half Miralaidj is too great for little Bidjiwara to bear. The loss of yourself, Jiritzu, is too great for Bidjiwara. She remains below, weeping alone.
"I too have wept for you, my aranda half, but I could not remain below. I could not forego our parting time."
He kissed Jiritzu on the cheek, his lips brushing the maraiin, the swirling scarifications born by all kunapi and aranda, whose meaning he, Dua alone of all Jiritzu's shipmates, understood.
Jiritzu clasped both Dua's hands in his own, saying nothing. Then he turned away and went to inspect the lighter given him by Nurundere. He found all in order, climbed upon the deck of the tiny membrane craft, signaled to the sky heroes on Djanggawul's deck.
