Green Monkey Dreams (21 page)

Of course, by now I knew that the name Borth had given me meant Forever, but only now did I understandwhy.

It was your radio and television emissions and satellite launches that attracted the attention of the Vaeri at last
, Borth sent to me.

An expedition was sent and it was not difficult then to trace the source of the Murmi-based life forms back to Borth.

I am charged with creating monsters
, he sent, coming the full circle.

What will happen if they find you guilty? I thought.

I do not know. They will devise a punishment, I suppose.

He did not look too worried. I suppose it is hard to worry about anything when you are immortal.

‘How can you have condemned these creatures to Murmi fate? Have you no guilt for the wrong you have done them?' asked a Vaeri. ‘Porsoul is mentally programmed for immortality. By using Murmi instead of perfect Porsoul you have condemned your creations to futility and despair. It is cruelty beyond imagining to make creatures into whose essence is woven the understanding of immortality, but to make them from a clay which will not hold lifebreath eternally.'

I felt a stab of pure terror as I understood at last what the trial was about. A dozen different bits of information slid into place. Porsoul was immortal. Murmi was an imperfect form of Porsoul which, though it could capture the lifeforce breathed into it by its creator, could not continue to hold it. Borth had created humanity of Murmi.

In short, Borth Jesu H had given his precious creation mortality.

‘This monster race cannot be allowed to go on,' said another of the Vaeri, and I felt sick.

Borth spoke then, with greater eloquence than I had ever heard in his kind. So might a mother plead for the life of her baby.

‘I do not care what punishment you bestow on me,' he said at last. ‘But these creatures I have made deserve to live. Come with me and move among them. You will see then . . .'

‘I have seen how they live and what they make of the little lives you have bestowed on them, Borth Jesu H,' said a grave, stern voice. ‘These Uman are greedy and violent. They rape their world and one another. They dwell in poverty and squalor, in hunger and despair. They live for instant gratification and exist in terror of death.'

‘But that is the thing,' Borth said excitedly. ‘Don't you see? In spite of all that, they create, just as we do. They create beauty in their music and their words, in paintings and buildings and sculptures. They make for themselves a bittersweet immortality. Think of it!
No other race we have created, creates!

There was a long, strange silence at this.

Borth rushed on. ‘It is their fear of death, and their knowledge of its inevitability, that gives them such transcendent power. When Awen-du jumped from that bridge, she thought death was truth. She was prepared to give up her short and precious life to learn this single truth. Would any of us do such a thing? Would we have the courage or the greatness? These Ur-lings have a fleeting second – a minute lightness between birth and death which is their lives – yet they exist like a nova exploding in the infinite darkness of space. Our lives are dim candles beside theirs, for we have no passion, and our creations are as cold and perfect and lifeless as we ourselves have become. When we gave up death, we forgot to use our wings. We forgot to fly. In giving my Ur-lings mortality, I gave them passion and beauty. I gave them love and hate and desire.
I gave them wings.
'

I began to laugh then, for I saw that this was the truth I had spent my life searching for. That broke up the proceedings because the Vaeri, who do not laugh, thought I was having some sort of fit.

The last time I saw Borth was as he waited for his sentence to be pronounced, for of course he had been found guilty.

They are going to send me to Earth
, his thoughts floated into my mind.

Why? I thought fearfully, wondering if they would simply bomb the Earth and destroy both the creator and his creation.

No
, Borth sent.
They cannot unmake. It is forbidden and has been since my people discovered immortality. They mean to
expose me to sun crystal which causes Porsoul to become Murmi.

I did not understand and he was forced to say it more plainly.

I will be mortal there. They have elected to give me the gift of death. They have told me that I may move among my monsters and instruct them on the joys of death and mortality.

I was aghast for him, but he seemed unafraid.

I go uncaring. The Vaeri are a dead race – decadent and sterile. They became ghosts when they gave up death. If they saw your world and your people as I have, they would know that. Perhaps this is why they despise you so.

What will they do to me?

They will send you back as well
. Borth hesitated.
They mean to offer you immortality and, through you, humanity. They have dis
covered a way to reverse the process of degeneration.

We stared at one another for a time, as the other Vaeri began to assemble.

Good luck, I thought. Maybe I will see you on Earth.

I do not think so
, Borth sent.
I wish you luck
,
Awen-du. And I hope immortality pleases you. But before you take what they offer, look upon the Vaeri and then upon your own race, and see who lives more sweetly.

And his eyes asked a thing of me.

I returned to Earth. Borth was right: I did not see him again. I took the pills the Vaeri gave me, and these gave me immortality; not constant immortality, because I am made of Murmi, but a temporary immortality which could be extended infinitely by taking one pill after another. These pills prevent the degeneration from progressing. My life was immortal only by their grace, but the Vaeri told me that any offspring I had would be of unflawed Porsoul, so long as I was taking the pills at the moment of conception, and that these children would bear the seed of immortality.

Through me, humanity could grow to deathlessness.

I wanted to think, so I travelled. I grew no older outwardly, but inwardly I aged hundreds of years as I went about trying to see what path death played in our lives, and whether immortality would heal the ills of humanity.

In all that time, I let no man fertilise my ova and spawn a race of immortals. Whenever I saw something that made me consider it – a great man or woman dying, a great beauty fading – I thought of Borth's face, and the cold, dead eyes of the Vaeri.

Yet I could not resist it. I told myself I needed to live just a little longer to experience enough to ensure I would make the right decision.

But the ages I lived began to weigh heavily, and with them came at last the truth of Borth's words, for with immortality had come deadness to my soul . . . a numbness and an emptiness. Worst of all, sometimes, when I looked into the mirror, Vaeri eyes stared out at me, and I was chilled.

So at last I did not take the pills, and now I grow old.

Oh I pray that I am mad enough and brave enough to do what I know Borth wanted, and that is to die. I am still afraid of it. Though I am old and creaky and withered, life is sweet to me, it has a beauty that brings me to tears. Sometimes it has such radiance that it fills my soul and pains me sweetly.

That is something the immortals can never know or feel.

Wait. Before you go, there is one last thing. It is my theory that laughter, which the Vaeri never understood, is the answer humanity has evolved to cope with the gift of Borth Jesu H. Thus my own much-maligned flippancy is
an answer to the ultimate truths that I am privy to.

Borth? Well, I have often wondered what he found among his monsters. There had been talk of setting him back in time for some technical reason or other, and of course I cannot help but wonder if, by some strange chance, his is the body buried underneath the tower in the field next to the cemetery.

There is poetry in that thought.

If it is Borth buried under there, the only thing that nags at me is a desire to know why his arm was thrown out. Perhaps at the last irrevocable second, like any mortal, he feared death and flung up his arm to his brothers, the gods, in a futile plea for mercy.

Or maybe – and this is what I like to think – maybe, at that last minute, he felt the same great sweet sadness as I do to know he must lose his life and face the mystery of death, but his courage did not fail him. I picture him in my mind, lifting his arm and laughing as he gave his brothers the finger.

Oh yes. It pleases me to think our creator died laughing. I am, you see, an incurable romantic, and I like endings of all kinds to come with a flourish.

That is a very mortal thing to wish for. The Vaeri have no stories because they have no concept of endings – and stories must begin and end if they are to fly. But the Vaeri have forgotten how to use their wings. How dreary for them, poor things.

T
HE
P
UMPKIN
E
ATER

I
ride this day upon the Worldroad, alone, except for Courage, who rides on the pommel of my saddle fluffing his feathers. I did not dream of journeying thus as a child. Maeve told me that women did not travel unaccompanied, especially not beautiful princesses who must wait for their
prince to come for them.

Not that I am a princess any longer, nor beautiful enough
to make them catch their breath at the sight of me.

I wear the trews and knee boots of a man, and the wind blows my hair wild about my shoulders. I have split ends and chafed lips and my legs and arms are muscular and strong. I have left curling tongs and perfume and silk behind.

Maeve told me a woman was either beautiful or ugly, but I have learned to be something else altogether. No doubt it is fear
some in its strangeness, though, for a commonwoman in her pumpkin house peers out at me with a kind of dread, and her man waves his hoe at me and makes the warding sign to keep off evil.

When I was a princess, they bowed and smiled to see me go by, dazzled by my beauty, relieved to see a man
riding with me: my keeper.

Now, a pedlar glares at me and gives me a wide berth in his wagon. He does not know what to make of a woman alone riding the Worldroad. I am neither commonwoman nor princess, but some strange new hybrid. Worst of all,
I am manless.

‘What will come of it?' I hear him mutter. ‘If one rides alone, will not more ride after her?'

I remember drawing the card of long journeying the year my firstblood came, and the bird of my heart, caged for so
long, beat its wings against my breast.

I knew it could mean either a physical or mental journey, but this was the third time it had come to me. To draw a card three times is a trine, and summons all the meanings of the card. So then, a mental and a physical journey. I did not know how long that journey would be, or that not all
of it would take place on the road.

I had focused my mind and summoned the earth magic that belongs to women, willing it into my hands as I drew again to see what the journey would entail. I remember the spread as if it is before me now.

Under the significator, I laid the four permitted explanatory cards, face down, and crossed them with a fifth. I kept one ear on the door, not because of Maeve at her chutneys and sauces in the kitchen, singing tunelessly even though she swore she didn't, but for fear my mother would come and catch me.

She might well take the cards and fling them out the window, or tear them up. Worse still, she might just give her cold, cawing laugh, and the Seerat would be forever tainted with her sneers and black mocking glances.

My mother was more silent than not, and bitter-mouthed when she spoke. Sometimes I thought she was insane. I could not imagine how I had come from her, for it seemed to me we were not alike in any way. She was dark, lean and spiky and sombre as a winter tree, and as a child, I was blonde and plump. I decided I must be more like my father. I did not dare ask how he had looked, but I knew that he had blue eyes – mine were blue too – and I extrapolated the rest of him from my own features: shorter than my mother, with smooth creamy skin and pale hair like buttery down.

He had died fighting in the dragon crusades when I was still in my mother's womb. I knew this only because Maeve, who had come with my mother to the edge of the world afterwards, had let it slip after drinking fermented berry cordial. I learned that the rare indulgences in this small vice offered the best opportunity to wheedle information from her. That and eavesdropping were the only ways I had of learning anything. I did not know what a crusade was, and she would say nothing more about it other than that it was to do with fighting and was therefore the business of men.

For Maeve the world was divided into nobles and commoners, men and women. I believed her, but I had no intention of letting any of her categories shape me. I would be my own thing, I thought blithely, never knowing that this would be the hardest thing of all.