Jim Crew sighed, “Ah!” He said, “Let’s go. I don’t think he’ll follow.”
His hand pulled Leif’s. The latter, his spine tingling at the idea of a knife sinking in from behind, let himself be guided down the crumbling tracks. When they’d traveled exactly five hundred steps, when he no longer felt that other feet were behind him, he said, “Crew, I’m going no further until you tell me what that was. This is getting me. For a moment I almost believed in the hereafter; I thought it was here after me.”
“You’re not too scared,” said the Bantu, chuckling. “All right. I can guess what you saw from the few words you let drop. I won’t tell you what I saw. Then you’d really be frightened.
“Do you remember this morning when you rejected our plea and turned to walk away? What thought came to you then?”
“ Quo Vadis? Where are you going?”
“That’s what we suspected,” said the African, “Though in things like that we can never be sure. What we did was not so much telepathy, in the sense you think of that power. We, the four of us, summoned up our group feeling, the sum total of all of us, all the patterns of our bodies, focused them, and hurled that pattern of patterns to you.
“You didn’t have to receive it. You could have blandly rejected it, not even knowing it was being offered you. Your ‘antenna’ could have been withdrawn, as it is in so many. But it wasn’t. It was out, even if only a little bit. And so you picked up what we’d sent—that feeling.
“Again, I repeat, we didn’t project words—that is, syllables clumped together to form individual meanings and these strung out in a false syntax. No, we gave you us, the concern that burned in all four. And, since it succeeded in stamping itself on you, you took it in, ferreted in your unconscious for the phrase or symbol that would most nearly match the feeling. Your memory came up with ‘Quo Vadis.’
“See, we didn’t directly speak to you. We dredged up your response. You, because you must explain events to yourself in terms of words, spoke to yourself in the most apt symbol. Had it been another man, one ignorant of that phrase and the story connected with it, he would have found some other thing to say to himself. You see what I mean?”
Though Crew could not see him in the dark (or could he?), Leif nodded and said, “That feeling of grief? You threw it at me?”
“Yes, though we couldn’t sustain it long because you have so little experience of grief in your own being. Moreover, Mopa, the man who laughed, broke up our rapport.”
“You’re the machine!” the doctor broke out.
“What?”
Leif laughed and said, “I wondered where the machine was that could receive and interpret and project the semantikon: the total of all the ikons the body-mind builds, the meaning-image. 1 might have known it was all around me, in more senses than one. And that it had been in existence quite a few millenia.”
“Your feeling gets through,” said Jim Crew. His hand squeezed on Leif’s. “We love you.”
Leif could overlook that. The we made it sound impersonal. Nevertheless, he flushed with embarrassment in the dark.
He said, “If you don’t explain about that horror we met a little while ago, I’m going to take this scalpel and do some fancy whittling on you.”
“What his name was,” said Crew, “is not known. We have a list of twelve; he could be any one of them. To tell briefly what he is, we have to go into our background. We Bantus in Africa, you know, are split up into two groups, both based originally on religious differences. Both, however, represent the only large bodies of Christendom left. The smaller nation, Chad, is dominated by the Holy Timbuktu Church, an organization that claims to have kept the teachings of our Founder uncorrupted.
“We, however, who hold central and southern Africa, believe that the Timbuktuians are an encrustation of superstition and oppressive authority.”
Leif grinned to himself in the dark. The fellow was speaking out of character; his style showed that he, like many a missionary, was quoting from the book. Crew’s case was only slightly different. He couldn’t be accused of having read his speech, for, ten to one, he was illiterate. The Bantus frowned upon print as a device that got in the way of natural communication.
“We Primitives have, as our name indicates, resolutely stripped off all such bindings and returned naked to the vital Truth. We have only the very few fundamental teachings that matter; through these we have attained to our present state, that is, one in which religion, mysticism, economics, politics, our whole life becomes one. We haven’t allowed petty morality to stand in our way: the only code we have is the Golden Rule, which we regard as the reality...
“That’s enough,” growled Leif. “Spare me the lecture. You’re talking like a Jackass Urielite now. Reality! You know how they mouth that word. You should know better. In one syllable words, tell me about that man.”
Crew squeezed Leif’s hand again. “You’re right. To be brief, we Primitives have utilized that gift once known as magic. The ancient Africans, you know, had a genius for magic. By magic I do not mean anything in a superstitious sense. Actually, magic was the misunderstood science of extra-sensory perception that those savages were using so wildly. They didn’t have the control or comprehension needed to develop it.
“And when the Christianity of that day came in, plus white imperialism, the gift was weakened. But after the Apocalyptic War, there was a religious revival among the few of my people left. A great man rose among us, just as Sigmen rose among the Haijac nations. His name was Jikiza Chandu, and he was the first man to realize that we must fuse a vision of God with insight into our bodies. Fusion was his rally-cry, and...”
“Fuse you did,” Leif concluded for him. “And what has this got to do with my question?”
For the first time since he’d known him, he detected annoyance in Crew.
The depigmented man said, “The person we just met was rejected from our society. He was a misfit, one who could not or would not, fit into the pattern of our group. He twisted the great gifts he obtained while living as one of us and used them for evil purposes. He tried to get control over our underground here, and during his efforts he allowed so much power to flow through him that he... to use a simile you could understand... blew out a fuse. In this case, the fuse was himself.
“He, like several others who tried to become the focus of our group by force, now haunts the tunnels and sewers by day and roams the surface streets at night. They cannot hurt their own people, unless they catch us off guard, but they have done some terrible damage up there. Their victims either commit suicide or go to the insane asylums.” “Why don’t you kill them? Or, at least, imprison them?”
“What? Violence on a fellow-creature?”
“You talked about reality. Isn’t self-preservation real?” “Use the sword, and you die by it. The meek shall inherit the earth. We know, because we’ve tested it through the centuries, that passive resistance means survival. Spill blood to save yourself for a little while, and in time you’ll be drowned in the backwash.”
“Indeed!”
“Pardon me, Doctor, but you saw what those ‘Men In The Dark,’ as we call them, can do. They use their twisted powers for the only use they can. They do not project; they reflect. That is, they can gather up the patterns of the energies broadcast by the victim, sum them up, amplify them, and send them back to the originator. He feels the abstraction, if I may call it that, absorbs it, and sees a specter that has risen from the depths of his own unconscious.
“You, if I may venture my intuition, were feeling both sad about Halla Dannto’s death and guilty because you had disobeyed the CWC’s orders about cremating her immediately. Also, you knew that you were going to break more commandments, that you were in love with the living Halla, and that come what might, you were going to find means to see her. Even if it meant jeopardizing the entire Plan.
“You may not even have been aware that these things were affecting you so deeply. When the Man In The Dark caught what was really deepmost in you at that
time, he showed it to you.
“The extraordinary thing is that the Man does not see what you do. Not at all. He senses to some extent your feeling, but he never visualizes anything. He does not know what horror he is wreaking upon you. Just the same, being insane and sadistic, he apprehends your reactions. And feeds upon them. If the victim becomes too terrified, loses his head, the Man gains more power, the force of the vision becomes more powerful, and so on.
“A Timbuktu friend of man, versed in technical matters, explained once to me that it was an uncontrolled positive feedback. Whatever that means, the effect is terrible; J. C. save those poor souls.”
“J. C. You too? What does that mean?”
“Jikiza Chandu, our Lord and Master.”
“I would have thought those initials stood for your Founder.”
“Oh, they do. He is Jikiza Chandu. Jikiza Chandu is He. We are all both. They are us.”
No wonder, thought Leif, that the Church of Timbuktu thought these fellows were the blasphemers’ blasphemers.
Yet, and here he shrugged with that acceptance that so maddened his associates, they based their reasoning upon several literally taken statements, and in this they were doing no more than their bitterest opponents. Moreover, those who had been to Bantuland said that theirs was the first, and only, large human society in which one could tread almost the length and breadth of a continent and find no jails, no hospitals, no insane asylums, no weapons factories (scarcely any industries, it must be admitted), no racial discrimination. And also, no lust nor love murders, no orphans, no stealing, no rich, no poor.
You could find plenty to criticize, to deplore, but your criticism didn’t affect the disciples of that half-Zulu, half-Hindu prophet, Chandu.
Leif laughed, and when Jim Crew asked why, he replied, “Oh, I’m thinking about certain incredible coincidences—that when you admit there are certain unconscious rapports between minds, you see that coincidence is only a word to hide our ignorance.”
“You are laughing about the J. C.’s?”
“Yes.”
“Good, I laugh, too,” and he did, squeezing Leifs hand again.
The doctor was about to protest when he was stopped by the Bantu.
“We’re here.”
Chapter 16
THE TUNNEI.S HAD been dark and somewhat dampish-chilly. Crew opened a door, and they stepped into a country bright and hot. Nobody was there to greet them, but the Bantu insisted that his people knew the two were coming.
“Steam heat,” he said in reply to the doctor’s unspoken question. He calmly removed his clothes and hung them upon one of the many hooks lining the walls of the large room. Almost all the hooks were covered with garments.
“Would you care?” Jim Crew said, his hand at the hooks. Leif shook his head. The pale man said, “We thought you might want to shower.”
Leif growled impatiently at the man who had stepped into the shower. “I thought we were in such a hurry to look at your child.”
The Bantu stepped out and still naked and dripping walked into another room. “Follow us, doctor. That shower took only a minute. And it was much more than you could see—it was a ceremony, one we Primitives always perform when we return home. It was also a prayer, a combination of physical and psychic cleansing and an asking of J. C. that Anadi might be saved. At the same time, we communicated with those who are holding hands and found out that Anadi will endure until you get to her.”
He led the surgeon through several small rooms, some of which had bunks lining the walls. One had an altar with a man hanging from a crucifix. His skin was black, and the face was an abstraction, belonging to no race except that which has suffered but has felt the touch of a hand that smooths out all lines of pain. If Leif had had more time, he would have stopped to discuss the sculptor and his technique with Crew. He had heard that the Bantus were the great artists of today, that they were doing things nobody had ever done before in painting, sculpture and music.
The first men and women they met were unclothed, like Crew. They crowded around the newcomer and swarmed over him, kissing and fondling him. He returned their caresses and then made swift introductions. One of the girls was a steatopygous Diana whose imperfect depigmentation had left her freckled with huge spots. She clung to Leif’s neck and whispered that she loved him.
“Brindled Beatrice, I love you, too,” he replied and dismissed her with a slap.
“Someday you should examine that levity and see what it is hiding,” remarked Crew.
Despite Leifs joking, the sweat had popped out on his head in a profusion even the steam-heat couldn’t account for. He was beginning to wonder what he’d let himself in for. His simple errand of mercy was far from simple.
Jim Crew took his hand and led him through another series of rooms. As the walls were concrete and painted over with murals, many of which were peeling already, Leif could not tell what these chambers had once been used for. In some the floors and sides had split wide open to admit earth, oozing through like blood in a wound, or to show hard rock behind.
Every place held a half dozen or so people who greeted Jim demonstratively and then rose to follow the two. Once Leif looked over his shoulder. They had formed a long line, two abreast, male and female, each pair holding hands and placing their outside hands on the shoulders of the person ahead of them. The sexes were staggered, so that each man had his outstretched fingers upon the skin of a woman in front, and the woman in her turn touched the back of a man.
A low mutter arose; man and woman chanting a whispering phone and antiphone. Though he could not make out the individual words, which he was sure were in Swahili, he felt the hairs rise on his neck. It sounded and felt like a thunderstorm gathering in the hills, ready to break, stretching the air with lightning-streaks in embryo.
He was glad when they finally stopped in the room where the little girl lay. Unconscious, she was stretched out upon a bed. A man and a woman crouched by her, her hands in theirs. Beside them stood a tall Negro, clothed in black and wearing a white collar turned backwards. He looked up at Leif through thick lenses and horn-rimmed glasses.
“Ah, Doctor Barker,” he said, stepping up and holding his hand out. Leif shook it while Crew said that this was the Reverend Anthony Djouba. A member of the Timbuktu underground, he was also a doctor. Crew’s friends had not hesitated in contacting him for aid for Anadi. Apparently, the two sects did work together now and then.
Leif examined the framework of wire and sponge rubber and quickdrying plaster that held the girl’s skull together.
“Very good,” he said. “You did this, abba?”
Djouba replied in a high, thin voice, “Yes, I brought along all the materials I had. They’re not much, but they’ll help.”
Leif examined his bag and agreed with him. Then he looked into the top of the cast around Anadi’s head, whistling as he did so at what he saw. She should have died instantly. That she hadn’t and that she still lived was to him proof that she possessed something extraordinary. For the first time, he began to wonder if, actually, there was more than a sort of modified black magic to this talk about “holding hands.”
Djouba, looking over his shoulder, “tsk-tsked” and said, “Pieces of bone in her brain. Even if we save her, doctor, I’m afraid she’ll be an idiot.”
Impersonally, the two discussed what they would do, then laid out their tools. Leif began to sterilize his equipment. Crew insisted that it wasn’t necessary. None of them feared germs; their bodies could handle the most virulent. Leif silenced him. He was the doctor; he was doing this operation. Get busy and scrub down that table. As soon as that was done, he and his friend should put Anadi on it.
Lifting Anadi was easy, as she weighed no more than ninety pounds. Immediately afterwards, Leif began working. For six hours he bent over the incredibly shattered cranium and injured brain. Then, exhausted, hands on the verge of trembling, he extracted the last fragment of bone and deposited upon the gray mass a thick film of blueprint jelly
. Djouba then capped the open skull with a plastic arch. At this point Crew protested again that the artificial top would not be needed. Anadi, he maintained, would in time regrow her own skull.
“In that case,” replied Leif, making no attempt to hide his incredulity, “you may remove the cap whenever you want to. But I’d like to see that when it happens.”
Djouba removed his thick glasses and polished them.
“Much as I hate to give these people credit for anything,” he said, “I’ll have to admit that she may do just that. I saw some strange things while I was a missionary in Bantuland.”
“But bone, doctor! I can barely conceive that a human being might, through advanced self-awareness, rediscover the lost faculty of regeneration of flesh. But bone!”
Djouba put his glasses back on. His eyes grew enormous behind the lenses.
“I didn’t say she could. I said she might.” Djouba smiled at Leif.
“I’d like to get going,” said Leif, impatiently, not wishing to become too involved with these people.
“Wouldn’t you two like to eat first?” asked one of the women. She was the Brindled Beatrice.
“I would,” he said.
Djouba hesitated.
Crew said, “It is about the only way we can now pay you, abba. As for the future, who knows?”
“Anadi does,” shrilled the Brindled Beatrice. “She always could tell the future.”
“I’ll stay,” said Djouba. Then smiling, “If she could look ahead into time, why didn’t she avoid getting her skull crushed?”
“She must have had a good reason. She’ll tell us when she mends. As for now, let’s eat.”
They went into a very large room that Leif suspected had once been a waiting room for an ancient subway. There they sat down to hot locust soup, freshly baked bread, candied yams, bananas and milk. Brindled Beatrice, who insisted upon sitting next to Leif, said that some of the food had been stolen or else contributed by Jack converts, but that most of it was shipped in through a secret method.