"The purpose of life . . . is to survive, isn't it?"
"Is it?" He looked at her as if daring her, as if it were a secret that he knew and wasn't going to share.
Ozalie shook her head. "I don't know."
"Right. Only God knows." Foreman winked at her. "You're making this too easy, you know." Qzalie looked pleased with herself.
Forman looked around to the rest of us. "God chooses what the purpose of life is. That's God's job. And we're not going to be so presumptuous as to preempt that responsibility, not until we're willing to assume the responsibilities of gods. If we were gods, however, then we could choose for ourselves what the purpose of life should be. For myself, I'd choose that the purpose of life should be to make a difference on the planet. Some of you might choose to have a good time; play hard, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse. But then, that's not the kind of choice a god might make, is it?
"Okay, never mind that for now. We're not gods yet, and that particular discussion is beyond your ability to comprehend. Let's keep this on the level that even the average chimpanzee will be able to understand. All right, Ozalie, you don't know what God's purpose is for your life, do you? Do you know what your purpose is? Wait . . ." Foreman abruptly headed toward the back of the room for something. ". . . before you answer, let me read the. definition of purpose from the dictionary." He snatched one up off the table at the back of the room. " 'An intended or desired result. An aim or goal."' He handed the dictionary back to an assistant and returned to Ozalie. "Think hard. I promise you that your life depends on this. What is your purpose for yourself?"
Ozalie stopped looking so pleased with herself and looked uncertain instead. She shook her head and admitted, "I thought it was . . . I guess it's . . ." She looked very unhappy with herself and when she spoke again, her voice was almost a squeak. "I guess, I'm committed to survival, aren't I?" she admitted. "That's my only purpose, isn't it?"
Forman nodded thoughtfully: "Terrifying realization, isn't it?" he acknowledged. He turned to the rest of us. "Ozalie gets the irony: Do the rest of you? Survival is the wrong goal. You are destined to lose. If not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then the day after. If not the day after, then someday, I promise you, you will die. Count on it. Your life is a finite experience. But you-even though you've known that unconfrontable fact all your life--continue to pretend that you can win the battle of survival. You can't: All that you can do is postpone your defeat. And that's what you call victory."
Foreman looked angry. "Do you get how stupid that is? Postponing a defeat is not a victory. It is still a defeat! You're just stretching out the whole tragic exercise. And you call that a life? Yes, some of you are beginning to realize the cost of a lifetime
= dedicated to survival. There's no life at all in that kind of a life." For some reason, Ozalie was in tears now. She stood beside Foreman, weeping quietly; the tears were running down her cheeks.
Foreman handed her a tissue and waved her back into her seat. He crossed to the opposite side of the room. "All right, I said I needed two volunteers. You've already selected yourselves. Everybody check the bottom of your chair. You will find an envelope taped to the bottom of it. Don't open it yet."
I felt around under my seat, expecting to find nothing-and for a moment, I did. Then my fingers brushed the edge of the envelope and I pulled it off and brought it out and looked at it.
The people around me were finding envelopes of their own. We glanced at each other's, but they all looked the same.
Foreman was looking around the room. "All right, here's how it works. Don't open your envelopes yet. I'll tell you when. All of the envelopes have cards in them. All but two of the envelopes contain blank white cards. The two remaining envelopes have red cards in them. The assistants do not know which envelopes contain the red cards. The envelopes were shuffled for fifteen minutes before they were taped under the chairs. Nobody knows, not even me, where the two red cards are. And you know that you selected your seats at random, the same way you have every day for the past six days.
"Now, everybody's going to go through this process, but two of you are going to go through it up here on the platform as a way to demonstrate it for everybody else. The two of you who have volunteered to demonstrate this process have volunteered by the simple act of sitting down in the chairs that have the envelopes with the red cards in them taped to the bottom. You may now open your envelopes."
I fumbled with my envelope and dropped it. While I was picking it up, a woman on the other side of the room gasped. She stood up, white-faced. She was holding a red card.
"Where's the other one?" demanded Foreman. "Who hasn't opened their envelope yet?"
The woman next to me nudged my shoulder. I looked down. I'd opened my envelope and taken out the card, but I hadn't looked at it yet.
It was bright red.
And on it, there were plain black letters that spelled out:
You are going to die.
I looked up to Foreman, confused. Hurt. Angry. This was a nasty trick.
I looked at the woman next to me, resentfully. This was her card. She had asked me to move over one seat. This wasn't fair. And even as I was thinking all of those thoughts, I was standing up slowly.
I held the card up for Foreman to see. "I have it," I said.
20
The Fourth Corner
"A sane environment is one in which there is room to be crazy. A crazy environment is one in which there is no room to be sane."
--SOLOMON SHORT
And that's how I joined the Tribe. It was that easy.
The difference was simple. Instead of waiting until I was told to do something, now it was my job to invent my own responsibilities. If I saw something that needed doing, it was my job to see that it got done.
For example, about a week later I went to Jason and said, "I think we need weapon drills, Jason. I think everybody over the age of fourteen should know how to use a gun. I'm prepared to start teaching the classes twice a week."
Jason nodded and replied, "That's fine, Jim. We'll announce it at circle tonight." And then he thought a moment. "Let's make it an honor; you'll teach two at a time. That way we don't pull the rest of the camp off purpose. You choose who you want to honor, check it with me, and I'll announce it at circle. All right?"
"That's it?"
"You look surprised."
"I thought you might be a little concerned about teaching the children how to use guns."
"No," said Jason. "You've obviously thought it out, you think it's necessary-and for what it's worth, I agree with you. That business with the bikers proves you right."
And that was that.
I fell into the routine without question. I worked naked in the gardens for an hour every morning. I enjoyed singing to the plants; I liked to see their long spiky black tendrils unfold to the sun each day. I helped prepare dinner three days a week, and I herded bunnydogs the other four.
Hoolihan had given birth to several hundred libbit-babies. We culled out the fattest and pinkest and put those in cages to grow, at least twenty or thirty. The rest we ate.
Every other week, we went out scouting. I didn't go every time, but I went along often enough to not feel left out when I wasn't invited to join. Jason thought we might be able to move the camp within a month; he had an idea we might be safer higher up in the mountains, and everybody agreed with him.