It was John and then again it wasn't. He had the same
voice and his eyes were deep and kind as they had been on the Corinthian Plantation. But in this new place he was a head taller, quite a bit thinner, and his skin was more orange than brown. And above his head I could see a shimmering light that moved when he did.
You can imagine that I was amazed by the events unfolding around me. The last thing I remembered was being under a tree in a rainstorm. Now all of a sudden I was in a strange new land and my friend had grown a foot and changed colors on me.
"What the hell you doin' to me, niggah?" I said.
He pointed at me and said, "Neither master nor nigger be."
In this new place his words took on a new meaning. They brought about a vision: I saw Tobias and the cowering Pritchard in my mind. The slave master was holding a whip and the abject slave was writhing on the ground, begging our master for mercy.
I didn't want to be either one of them. I reached out in my imagination and pushed their images away. Then I turned my attention back to Taller John and his lecturing finger.
"That's right, Forty-seven," John said as if he knew what had been going on in my head, as if he saw the tableau of master and slave in my mind.
"Go beyond it," John continued. "Just because they treat you like that doesn't mean that you have to believe in them."
As the images faded from my mind I was once again aware of the strange land around me.
"You live here?" I asked.
"No," Tall John, the orange being from beyond Africa, said.
"But you were born here?"
"Yes," he said. "My ancestors were born here many millions of years ago. It is a planet called Elle and it is so far from Earth that it is as if it doesn't really exist."
"Far beyond the dirt?" I asked. The only time I had heard anyone use the word earth they were talking about the soil beneath our feet.
"Earth," he said again. "It is the planet you come from. Like the moon only larger and crowded with life."
"An' this place "
"My planet Elle," he interjected.
"Yeah. This place Elle is a earth too but so far away that you cain't get there?"
Tall John nodded and smiled. He was even taller now and his orange skin was tinged with purple. The light above his head brightened and I was beginning to think that he wasn't a boy at all.
"An' why couldn't we bring our real bodies here?" I asked.
"Because if I spent the rest of my life trying to get here I would hardly be any closer than I am now under that tree in my sleep."
"You as far from yo home as I am from my freedom," I said, surprising myself with the thought.
John smiled and nodded. He put his hand on my shoulder and we walked on in the strange landscape.
As we walked he spoke to me in his commanding tone.
"But I could bring us here because all I have to do is remember and the great mind delivers me."
"Like if I remembered the river you brought me to?" I asked. "I could go there just by rememberin' it?"
"Yes," John said. "Behind all of existence there is one great mind. And every single living, thinking being is a part of that mind. Once you learn to connect with it you can always return to a place or a thought that you once had."
"Like make-believe?" I asked.
"No. We are really here at this moment but as wraiths."
"Ghosts?"
"Someone ignorant of the Great Mind might see us as ghosts but no one on Elle would make that mistake."
As we walked the red and purple forest gave way to a wide plain made up of what looked like piles of stones. The stacks of rock were gray and red-brown and none were piled higher than a man. The piles were all shivering. They looked like rock-studded cocoons ready to release their butterflies.
"That's right," John said as if he could hear my thoughts. "They are living things, creatures of the Calash."
"These are your people?" I asked.
"No," the taller and taller boy said. "Not really. I mean, once we were all one people but that was so long ago that there are very few records that survive to document our relationship."
As he spoke one of the shivering piles of stones exploded outward, disgorging an albino creature that was made up of a great head, from which hung a dozen limbs that seemed to work as both legs and arms. The creature (which was about the size of a wild boar) climbed to the top of a nearby pile and shook itself, throwing off the water of its birth. Then it moved its head around until great blue wings sprouted from the back. The beautiful creature let out a terrible scream and then flew aloft on its blue wings.
"Where's it goin?" I asked as my friend and I watched the winged thing fade into the pink-and-red horizon.
"To seek the God-Mind and kill it," he said. "To rend the universe open and feast on its heart."
Up until that moment I wasn't truly troubled by the sights I beheld. Even the physical changes to John's body didn't seem so strange to me. I already knew he was different on the inside from the way he talked. But John's words about destruction set off a deep agitation in my heart. I had no idea what a God-Mind was but I had heard the word God before and I knew that killing was bad no matter who it happened to.
The stacks of birthing stones spread out as far as the eyes could see. Here and there albino members of the
+7
Calash race were rising up from their cocoons and taking flight.
"There must be more of'em than Mud Albert could count," I said.
"They are as plentiful as the stars," John agreed, "and yet there is but one."
"What's that mean?" I asked. "You will see," he said.
Another stack of stones burst open nearer to us. The big-headed white creature with its dozen limbs crawled out and shifted and turned until it had wings. But this one, rather than gliding off into the sky, turned its one great black eye upon my friend and me. The creature screamed as did the previous newborn, but instead of leaving he dove at us. John and I ducked down to keep from being battered by those blue wings. As we arose the eerie bird-like thing wheeled in the sky, obviously intent on attacking again.
"Let's skip this part," John said.
He waved his orange and purple hand through the air and suddenly we were standing on a black platform in a wide, glassy sphere. There was no sky above or ground below us, only thousands of small black platforms that jutted out from the sides of the globe. When I looked around the sphere I realized that we were in the largest place that I had ever been, even larger than that valley where I saw the she-bear and first imagined being free.
While I watched, a small creature walked out up the ledge nearest my eye. He was no larger than a baby chick but the same proportions as tall, lean John. He was bright yellow in color and when he saw my face he smiled and nodded. The light above his head lengthened like a candle reaching its highest flame.
"Hello, hero," he said.
"My name ain't hero, it's Forty-seven, but hello to you too, little yellah man."
As I spoke these words I noticed tiny little men and women were climbing out onto the thousands of ledges around me. They were every different color of the rainbow and all of them so bright that the big sphere got as clear as midday.
"Who are all these little people?" I asked.
"They are my people," Tall John said in my ear.
I turned to ask how we got from one place to the other. But as I did so I found myself facing another small ledge, and on that ledge I saw a tiny little Tall John standing there and smiling.
"Is this what you really look like?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"And is this your home?"
"This is Talam the primal hive," small Tall John said. "It is where we fled when the Calash tried to steal our technology and use it to tear open the fabric of the world."
I had no idea what his words meant but I knew that it couldn't be good.
"As I told you before, there is a higher place," John said.
"The Great Mind," I added.