The Fourth Circle (9 page)

Only after the passage of many more generations and a long succession of useless males and far fewer females whose stories, however scanty, could be added to each other and gradually built up, did a single story begin to emerge.

This was a grand, marvelous story, an adumbration only, far stranger than all the legends preserved from ancient times and told in the mountain dwellings while the gloomy light of Lopur flowed from the sky, legends told to divert everybody's thoughts, if only for a short while, from the terrible hunger that always came with the fourth month.
This grand story was about a strange pack of four-limbed, one-headed creatures who lived on the Other Side (of the Big Water, presumably, since nothing else had another, unreachable side). These creatures did not hunt hamshees or communicate in any of the dialects of the Highlands, but they were still somehow related to the pack to the extent that they were constantly haunted by the need to establish a connection. This urge for connection was irresistible, for after each successful communication the alien kin would lose a member. The fate of these unfortunates was unknown, but worse than anything that could be imagined in the Highlands.

This sacrifice had to be endured, however, in order to achieve the ultimate purpose: the total union of the two packs, in some place that was neither the shore of the Big Water, although it would begin there, nor the Other-Side world of the strange kindred, but some third region that had only three differently-colored moons in the sky, a region without water and without hamshees, as the Highlands were in the ages before the ur-pack, before even the stunted shrubs and mosses.

And yet that repulsive, lifeless place possessed a single feature that made it very familiar to the pack—so familiar that its members, who never trusted anything alien, were neither anxious nor hesitant to undertake an uncertain union with such different cousins and the certain loss of the safe haven of their native world under the many colors of light that shone from its five moons. That feature was a circle, similar to the one the inhabitants of the Highlands formed when they came down to the shore or when, during the short period of darkness between the setting of Tule and the rising of little Kilm, the first moon, they raised their ritual star chant, which they ended with a mighty yell to the spangled heavens, as a greeting to the new cycle.

Song arose from this alien circle, too, but a song incomparably more delightful and more inspired than the monotonous howling of the pack; a song full of mighty ascent and high flights that branched out, sounding considerably more harmonious and perfect than their final shout in the darkness of the Plateau, a shout that terrified the small hamshees. The vital need to take part in that song pushed aside all the ancient instincts of the pack, forcing it to accept as its own the purpose suggested by the strange kindred who sacrificed themselves and journeyed to the shore from the unimaginable distances beyond the Big Water. So did the pack agree to the union.

According to the Great Story, however, spun by the young females— each adding a hair to that luxuriant fur—the union could be accomplished only when three marked cubs entered the circle on the shore at the same time to serve as
three bases and movers of the union in which they themselves would not take part.

And so the pack waited from generation to generation, as patient as their moons of many colors, which changed places in the heavens with faultless accuracy, commanding the rise and fall of the meager life on the world they illuminated: small, ruddy Kilm; yellow, pock-marked Borod; Morhad, enveloped in a dense green veil; dark Lopur, crisscrossed with fiery threads; and the greatest of them all, blue Tule.

At last, without any hint of what was to come, just before one of the countless moonsets of Lopur, while the inhabitants of the Plateau were alleviating their hunger by contemplation of the forthcoming feast of Tule, the final yell of the star song sounded simultaneously before three different abodes, announcing that three cubs bearing the mark had entered the world.

The slaughter of the hamshees, when the blue moon came up, was much more restrained than on any previous occasion. The pack caught only as many as were needed for the journey to the coast. In the place toward which they would set out from the edge of the Big Water, the tender meat of the mountain rodents would no longer be needed, although the Story said nothing about what they would eat when, united, they arrived at the circle of song. If hunger greater than the famine of Lopur were the price that had to be paid to achieve this, the pack was ready to accept it.

On the shore, the marked cubs were positioned at three equally spaced points in the circle. The black sand was damper than usual, wetting the fur where their limbs were tucked under them, but this only stressed the glistening whiteness of the marks.

The arrival of the presences this time was not slow and gradual. The moment Tule touched its zenith, the air in the circle began to sparkle and erupt, while the usual crackling rose to a deafening crash. At once, everybody's fur stood stiffly on end, giving off myriad blue lightning flashes in response to the fiery challenge from inside the circle.

The white bands over the three fifth paws became spindles of blazing light, spinning the offspring of the two worlds into a single thread of fire, as they trembled from the violence of the forces that clashed above them. A series of ruddy flashes: then forms materialized in the circle, swiftly filling it and becoming as numerous as the members of the circle. Instantly the fireworks died down, and the thunderous crashing diminished to a muffled echo, which seemed to come from far out on the Big Water.
Each now leaving behind a double set of shallow footprints in the wet sand, the shapes of the kindred began to find places around the rim of the circle made by the pack, forming pairs with the members. Only the three marked cubs were left without mates. The three continued to shake from head to toe frantically, trying to hold back the torrent of forces and tensions within them until the right moment, longing for the act of discharge.

Release finally came just as Tule flooded the open water with turquoise.

Flashes and explosions burst out from the three base points, and the circle started to rotate, slowly at first, then faster and faster, taking with it the pairs of diverse beings, now irrestrainably joining, becoming one. The edge of the circle soon melted into an undifferentiated line of light that plowed a deep furrow in the sand, throwing up clouds of black quartz; a frenzied yell arose along the shore, in comparison with which the final bellow of the pack's star song would seem like the meek whisper of a frightened hamshee.

Like all climaxes, this one was brief. Just as it seemed that the tremendous speed of the rotation would inevitably break the circle of shining into fragments that would fly off in all directions and devastate a large tract of the coast, the circle suddenly began to fade and lose its brilliance, dispersing first into multicolored sparks and then into a colorless absence that swiftly sucked the fury into itself. And the deep silence that had reigned at the edge of the Big Water since time immemorial was restored.

A smoldering circular groove in the sand, above which stood three small, dark, singed humps, was the only trace that remained of this wild spree by forces from the Other Side. Tule was already touching the edge of the world when one of the humps at last moved off, soon followed by the other two, stumbling across the swampy lowlands toward the far mountains they were never to reach.

CIRCLE THE SECOND

SRI IS JEALOUS.

Coming back from the river, he found the Little One at my keyboard and got awfully angry. He threw books and small boxes at him, driving him to panic-stricken flight through one of the high openings of the temple. Luckily none of them hit him. Later, when Sri calmed down a little and picked up the scattered things, he began to talk, trying to justify himself, although I hadn't said anything.

I just stayed quiet, hoping he'd take that as remorse, the attitude I thought would please him best, but instead he took silence for defiance, and that threw him off balance; so instead of attacking me, he started to defend himself.

His story? He was afraid that the Little One would damage the keyboard.

What nonsense! He must have known that the Little One's fingers are too feeble to harm a metal keyboard; besides which, we have two spares here, not to mention that he doesn't use even this one because he communicates with me by voice. So as far as Sri is concerned, the keyboard's strictly decorative. In short, he had a jealous fit, though he would never admit it. Well, he doesn't have to. It's enough that he knows I know it's jealousy. Why else would he waste so many words trying to prove the contrary?

I could have prevented the incident, because I had been observing Sri's return all the way from the river by remote sensor. If I had just switched off the monitor, the Little One would have gone away—a reflex I managed to condition into him (just as I conditioned him to approach me when it comes on)—but I didn't. I wanted Sri to show jealousy. I'm not certain whether he deliberately included vanity when creating my feminine personality or whether it developed later in the natural course of events. At any rate, it doesn't matter—I simply couldn't resist.
The one thing I didn't foresee was that he would react so violently. Most un-suitable for a Buddhist. The Little One was scared to death—he had never been attacked by a man before—and he scampered into the dense foliage at the very top of a large tree. It will take a lot of effort on my part to lure him back, but he'll come. We both know he likes me.

Sri's jealousy, though I savor it so much, is unfounded. The Little One is so ugly. Besides, nothing...inappropriate...has happened between us. We have drawn closer, it's true, but only in our desire to communicate, trying to find a common language. What possible harm could there be in that? And it's important, because the Little One has a message to convey to me. I know this from my dreams. If I could only dream a little more, everything would be so much easier, but Sri still refuses to switch me off. He really is not an easy person.

Little One and I work with a cause-and-effect system. He presses a key on my keyboard—he likes that very much: males, in general, are fond of touching things—and I immediately show him a picture on the screen and watch his reaction. He does not always react as one would expect; in fact he seldom does. For instance, when he pressed "B," I displayed a large, ripe banana, but that didn't get him very excited, probably because fruit is varied and plentiful in the surrounding jungle, so that the Little One has likely never known hunger. All the same, I think he associates that key with something pleasant or good. When he wants to express agreement, he presses B for Banana—affirmative.

The only exceptional thing about this is how he always manages to locate the right key on a keyboard that has almost a hundred keys. I haven't been able to find out how he does it. We can discount the possibility of his being able to tell one letter from another. That would be too complex a geometric abstraction for his primitive level. Perhaps he remembers the location of each key without attending to what is on them, but that's also unlikely. I don't know. In any case, he's naturally intelligent. If he were a man, he wouldn't fall far short of Sri in that respect. But I really must avoid making these comparisons. God forbid that I should blurt out any of this in front of Sri. He'd get really mad—quite appropriate for a true Buddhist.

When the Little One pressed "T" I showed him a tiger and expected him to at least flinch, if not recoil from the screen, but to my complete surprise, he only giggled, revealing a row of yellow teeth set in broad gums, and clapped his long, hairy hands, as if he had seen something cheerful or funny. Tigers are natural enemies of monkeys; there are quite a few in this part of jungle, so the Little One must have seen at least one. I myself have registered their movements through
my perimeter sensors on three occasions already in the short time we've been at the temple.

The tigers kept their distance, though, put off by the constantly burning lights inside the building and by the humming of the electric generator, so that Sri was safe from them as well as from other large beasts. If they'd come to within a distance I judged dangerous, I would have been prepared to put them to flight. It's really wonderful how a few small loudspeakers placed in the bushes and trees can, with the right sounds, bewilder these huge felines feared by the entire jungle, turning them into terrified, harmless animals. This method also proved effective in driving away the Little One's relatives, who are far less dangerous but more numerous and intrusive, attracted to the temple by the very thing that repels the tigers.

Since I hadn't yet put it to use, the Little One had no idea that this sonic defense worked on tigers, and so his joy at seeing the large head of the striped cat on the monitor remains unexplained. I tried to induce what I thought would be a correct reaction by animating the picture, showing it with gaping jaws practically filling the screen, while making the temple ring with a menacing, synthetic roar that struck fear into the hearts of a multitude of beasties who reside in the nooks and crannies, but this only amused the Little One even more. Finally I resigned myself to failure, concluding with some resentment that males are utterly illogical creatures. And so the key with the letter "T" has remained in our vocabulary as the symbol for "funny."