"We are a part of the herd," she said. "We're the part of the human herd that observes itself. We're the parts of the tribe that broke free so we could look back from the outside."
"But we can't stay out here forever, can we?" But she didn't hear me. I let go of her arm.
"That phenomenon-" she was pointing excitedly, "-just might be the place where we experience home. You know, the home that we're always longing to return to, but we can never find? That just might be it." She grabbed my hand and forced me to look at her eyes. "Whatever `space of consciousness' is being created over there-it includes us too! Just watching is being part of the herd! And to the extent that we can recognize ourselves in that mass, we're tuned into it. Do you see now why it's so dangerous?"
"Mm hm. Dangerous...." I wondered why she was shouting. Why was she so intense? She didn't have to be. It was nice out here. The herd seemed pleasant enough.
"It's our sentience-our awareness of self-that allows us to stay separate. That chorus is a-a calling, Jim. It's a communication without symbols. To listen to it, you have to abandon concept and listen instead for... experience. It's too powerful! It upsets, it annoys, it fascinates, it enchants. It can't help but have an effect on us, the way it washes over us. We just-can't allow ourselves to ... to. . . " She began to trail off. ". . . let ourselves ... Jim ... ?"
I was glad that she had stopped talking. Her words didn't make any sense any more anyway. They were just noises strung together. She was keeping me from concentrating on the sound of the rest of the herd. It was an incredible noise they were making. All of them together were making pattering noises. I'd heard this noise somewhere before-as if from a time before I was born. All the voices in the world, talking about something in words that weren't words because words hadn't been invented yet.
My mouth was moving with them. I made mumbling noises of my own, trying to ... understand. Trying to be a part ...
What was happening here?
Happening. It was happening. Herding. Calling. All the voices singing. Laughing. Boys and boys together. Girls and girls. Boys and boys and girls and girls and all of us. Calling. Someone was holding my hand, I couldn't move forward. Calling. The calling was getting louder. What?
Someone was pulling me backward. My feet moved. Moved. Kept moving.
I stumbled. Someone grabbed me, held me up. Someone was saying something. I knew that sound. All purple. "Shim! Shim!" He was calling me
-face hurt suddenly. Ringing. A slap. Not shim. Jim.
Me. "Who?"
"..Jim-!"
"Who ... ?" I couldn't finish the thought.
"Stay with me," the voice said. "Jim!"
"Um ... I have to know who ... ?"
"Who what?"
"There was someone-I was ... someone was calling me-"
"I was. I've been saying your name to you over and over,"
"No, it wasn't you. It was someone else. Someone from another-" I rubbed my head. Hard. I didn't have a word for the other place. I just knew it wasn't here. "I almost... had it..."
"Jim!"
"If I could just.. ."
"Jim, stay with me. Jim, look at me."
I looked at Fletcher. Her face was red and intense. I said, "I was-fading ... wasn't I?"
"You were gone."
"I-I'm sorry." I blinked. I looked around. "Where are we?"
"Market Street."
"Market... Street... ?"
She nodded.
"Oh, my God. . . ." I buried my face in my hands. I was overcome. "I had no idea it was that powerful. Jeez-" I glanced back. "Are they still going?"
"They're just breaking up."
"Oh." There was disappointment in my voice. I could hear it myself.
"Jim, stay here. Stay with me."
"I am. I am."
"What was it-? Describe it." She was forcing me to look at her. Look into her eyes. "Can you describe it?"
"We ... don't have the words for it,. . ." I said."Um ... no, that's not right. We do have the words for it." I pointed in the direction of the herd. "They have the words. The words are...they. .."
"Stay with me, Jim!"
"What they're doing... it's-" I grabbed her hand. "No, don't slap me again. Let me finish this. There are ... words beyond words. I know that doesn't make sense, but it does if you've let yourself hear them." I let the thoughts come bubbling up now. They floated clearly in the midst of my... fog? No, it wasn't fog.
I swallowed and said, "You're right. They are communicating, but they're not communicating in concept." I stopped to catch my breath, but I had to get the words out quickly, before they lost their meaning, before I lost the sense-"Over here, we talk in words. Words are concepts. Symbols. We communicate symbols. We exchange agreed-upon symbols. They don't do that. They talk in sounds. No-they talk in ... music. They make music and tune themselves to the music. They-I'm getting it. It doesn't make sense to me, but this is what I felt. They communicate in experience. They're communicating by creating experiences together and ... somehow... tuning themselves to each other ... somehow becoming the cells of a ... larger organism, the herd ... and. . ."
Oh, God. I could see it clearly now.
"They don't have identity any more," I said. "That's what they've given up. They've given up the ability to remember. They have no memory-and without memory, they can't have identity. The only identity they can have is the herd. They stay together for food and for sex, but mostly for identity. Oh, my God, this is a whole new kind of humanity we're looking at, isn't it!"
The realization was terrifying.
I was trembling. A chill swept up my spine and I shuddered. "Is there a place to sit down?" I asked. I wiped my forehead. I glanced around, confused. I felt dizzy.
Fletcher led me to a stone bench that had somehow managed to survive the firestorm and sat me down on it. She parked herself beside me.
"Why didn't you warn me-?" I asked; my voice croaked.
"I didn't know," she apologized. "It affects everybody differently." Her eyes were wet.
I looked away, I looked at the ground. The concrete had bubbled and blistered here. I swallowed hard, and admitted, "I'm feeling... very confused right now. And very upset. I feel like I've. . ." I made a frustrated face. "I feel ... ripped off. Ripped open. Ripped up. I feel like hell. I feel like-I've lost something important-" And then I let the tears come, I sobbed into my hands, and I didn't have any idea at at all what the tears were all about. I just couldn't stop crying.
NINE
"FEELING BETTER?" Fletcher asked. She offered me a handkerchief
I wiped my eyes and looked up at her. "How do you do it?" I asked. "How do you resist the ... pull?"
She shrugged. "I don't know that I do resist it. I think my way of participating is to watch. To try to understand. Because that's what I do everywhere in my life. I watch. I hold back and watch. Maybe that's why I ... can move through them the way I can."
I handed back the handkerchief. I still felt empty. Drained. I felt as limp as a wet sweat sock. She offered me her hand and I pulled-tried to pull myself to my feet. She grabbed my elbow and lifted me off the bench. "Come on," she said. "Just walk."
I looked at her as she guided me. The set of her mouth was firm. "Thank you," I said. We started back toward the jeep. The herd had lost is cohesiveness. The gathering was over and the members were scattering across the plaza. There were couples copulating on the dry grass of the lawn.
I asked Fletcher, "Is it always like this?"
She shrugged. "It varies. Sometimes they're positively frenzied. The intensity can build to such a peak we've even lost a few to heart attacks. Sometimes it's languid. This is about... average, I guess."
"Does this happen every day?"
She frowned. "About three or four times a week now. When it started, it was just once or twice a month. Then it began happening more and more often. Now... it's almost every other day. I expect within a month, it'll be every day. I think-and this is just a guess-but I think that it's some kind of... enrollment phenomenon. Since it started, the herd has been growing much faster than we expected. Something about the phenomenon pulls people into it-as you experienced."