“Explain, riddlesome creature.”
The greenperson dropped from the ceiling, turned cat-agile in midair and squatted on the floor like a green toad. As toad it seemed more man than in its lizard guise but so close Dr. Alimantando shivered at its alienness.
“Desolation Road was never meant to be. We failed once when you were stranded here and founded the settlement, but no matter, we thought, the comet was on its way, destiny was assured. But we failed a second time, a catastrophic time when the comet came. It should have smithereened you into a diaspora to the nethermost parts of the globe; instead, you toyed with his tory and saved your town at the price-ticket of consensus reality: taking for granted, that is, that both those words are numinous and illusory.”
The greenperson drew little moist-finger railroad tracks on the floor tiles and shunted finger-trains across complex sets of points.
“Reality, railroads and weaving. Eva is close with her tapestry but she does not have enough yarn to weave the other histories of Desolation Road. I am one of those unwoven husk-histories: I would have no existence save for the great timestorm that parted momentarily the veils between our realities and permitted me to enter from my unreality, my alternative weaving, and travel at will.”
“How could you.. .”
Five green-bean digits raised in a sign of peace and hush.
“Our time-science is greater than yours. Bear me out, my tale will last only a little while. In another time you crossed the Great Desert and on attaining the farther green edge, settled in the small community of Frenchman, a town not unlike that you fled in Deuteronomy, save that its people did not brand you a demon, wizard, or eater of children.”
“That’s refreshing to know.”
The wind was rising outside the window; ghosts and dust were blowing through the alleys around the Mandella home.
“Our shepherding of you-that was not me, incidentally-sparked a fascination with the odd shades of our pelts. ‘Green people,’ you thought, ‘how might that be?’ You delved, you experimented, you probed; in short, and I must be short, for I tend to run to verbosity, you developed a strain of symbiotic vegeplasms which, in conjunction with the human bloodstream, rendered it capable of photosynthesising food from water, sunlight and trace minerals in the fashion of our sessile rooted cousins.” The greenperson upturned its apple-green backside for Dr. Alimantando’s inspection. “Observe: no asshole. One of the modifications we made to your original design, together with hermaphroditism-though I doubt you noticed thatpsychological polymorphism, which is how you see me as many different things, and Intimate Consciousness, by means of which we perceive, in common with our sessile cousins, the plants, the Universe directly rather than through the analogies and analogues of human perception, and thus we are able to directly manipulate space and time.”
Perhaps by a trick of the silvery moonring, perhaps by a dint of temporal probability and paradox, the greenperson’s features were growing more recognizably human, less greenly alien.
“But none of this came to pass,” complained Dr. Alimantando. “I never crossed the Great Desert, so you never came to be.”
“Let us rather say that the probabilities were radically altered. The one who guided you across the Great Desert, his probability was significantly decreased, while mine was significantly increased. Time lines converge, remember? You see, the comet was on its way, hooray, hooray, for a year and a year and a year and a day. The history after you abandoned Desolation Road would be slightly different: places, times, characters, but worldlines converge.” Finger-expresses collided head on on the spittle-drawn mainline. “The greenpeople would again spring Aphrodite-shelled from your brow, Dr. A, and leap off through time in search of an age and civilization friendly to them. They were persecuted, you know. Brown, yellow, red, black, even dirty white skin-that the world can accept, but green? Green?”
“But you yourself gave me the secret of the Temporal Inversion that was the key to chronodynamism; through it I saved Desolation Road from the comet… and destroyed you.”
“Well reasoned, my good doctor, but not quite correct. You did not annihilate me, you gave me life. I am the product of the stream of events you set in motion.”
“Your riddling grows wearisome.”
“Patience, patience, my good doctor. You see, I am not the greenperson who guided you across the Great Desert. You uncreated him, poor child, though I think that maybe he will come to be again, and maybe again guide you across the desert of grit and the desert of stone and the desert of sand. Time lines converge. No, I am another greenperson entirely. Maybe you have seen me before?” Dr. Alimantando studied the viridian features and they seemed to him somehow familiar, a memory, an unplaced recognition cast in jade.
“Now, the totally unacceptable part of the evening,” announced the greenperson. “Though I should not exist, I do. There must therefore be an extra-scientific reason for me; a miraculous cause.” The greenperson balanced on one leg. “One leg, ten legs, a thousand legs, a million legs: all the legs of science will never stand balanced unless the one leg of the miraculous supports them.” It set its leg down, bent, stretched. “The science which doesn’t include that which it can’t explain is no science at all.”
“Superstitious nonsense.”
“Those tree-dwelling arboreals you visited, they have a science, too, the study of the unstudiable. The things we call mystical and magical, the sciences of the higher orders of organization which distills like sweet nectar down the coils of Helix of Consciousness: this is their study. They study the unstudiable to know the unknowable: what is so great about knowing only what can be known?”
“You riddle and rhyme as readily as ever,” said Dr. Alimantando, temper prickling.
“Alliteration! I love alliteration! You want a riddle? Here’s a riddle: what is my name?”
Dr. Alimantando harrumphed in annoyance and folded his arms.
“My name, good doctor. Know my name and you know everything. A clue: it’s a proper name, not a jumble of letters or numbers, and it’s a man’s name.”
And for the same reason that people, however reluctant, are unable to resist a game of I Spy With My Little Eye, Dr. Alimantando began to guess names. He guessed and guessed and guessed into the dark and the cold of the night, but the greenperson, squatting amid sticky train tracks and growing more unplacebly familiar with the passing hours, just shook its green head and said no no no no no. Dr. Alimantando guessed until his voice was hoarse and the first glow of dawn began to light the edge of the world but the greenperson still said no no no no no.
“Give me another clue,” croaked Dr. Alimantando.
“A clue, a clue,” sang the greenperson. “A clue then. It’s a common name from your old home country, friend. I am a man of green Deuteronomy.” So Dr. Alimantando listed every family name he could remember from his youthful days in Deuteronomy.
“…Arumangansendo, Amaganda, Jinganseng, Sanusangendo, Ichiganseng…” and still the greenperson shook his head (growing increasingly familiar with every syllable of the tongue-rolling Deuteronomy names) and said no no no no no. As the world tipped its rim beneath the edge of the sun, Dr. Alimantando’s imagination was empty and he said, “I give up.”
“Done them all?”
“All of them.”
“Not quite true, good doctor. You’ve left one name out.”
“Yes, I know.”